Ancestral Recall

Three cards for one mana, with no clause attached: no discard, no life payment, no sorcery-speed restriction, no graveyard cost, no condition of any kind. That absence is the point. Richard Garfield priced a one-mana instant at three cards in 1993, and the entire design history of blue card draw since has been an attempt to walk that number back: Brainstorm shuffles the cost into the library, Ponder restricts it to scry-plus-one, Preordain caps the dig, Treasure Cruise demands seven cards of graveyard work, Gush asks for two lands back, Visions of Beyond needs twenty cards in a yard to match the rate. None reach the bar. The card is one of the founding members of the Power Nine, restricted in Vintage essentially since restriction existed as a concept, and banned in every other sanctioned format it has ever been legal in. Every subsequent blue draw spell is, in a structural sense, this card with a tax bolted on; the design space blue card advantage occupies is the space between Ancestral Recall's rate and the rate Wizards is actually willing to print.