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Moxonomy

Cephalid Inkmage

Creature — Octopus Wizard2 generic manaBlue mana

Two abilities built to feed each other. The enters-the-battlefield surveil 3 lets the caster rake as many as three cards into the graveyard per cast, and the threshold clause turns a seven-card yard into unblockable evasion. That is the loop: the fuel and the payoff on the same body, so a self-mill deck gets a beater that both stocks the graveyard and cashes it in. What keeps it from switching on turn three is arithmetic. Each cast moves at most three cards below, and surveil rewards precision rather than volume: you send only the dead cards to the yard and keep the ones you want to draw, so climbing from zero to seven takes a few turns of genuine graveyard investment. By the time the evasion comes online, you have committed to being a graveyard deck, which is exactly the deck this creature wants to be in. The Wizard framing is doing real work: surveil, unlike blind mill, lets the caster sculpt what comes next, so the same trigger that grows the yard also smooths the coming draws. It is a modest 2/2 whose ceiling is entirely conditional on the graveyard it helps build, designed to reward playing the archetype rather than to carry it alone.

Cephalid Inkmage (fdn)
FDN · #32uncommon
Pricing
Normal: $0.15
Foil: $0.21
Oracle Text

Rules text

When this creature enters, surveil 3. (Look at the top three cards of your library, then put any number of them into your graveyard and the rest on top of your library in any order.) Threshold — This creature can't be blocked as long as there are seven or more cards in your graveyard.
Legalities

Format Status

Standard
Legal
Pioneer
Legal
Modern
Legal
Legacy
Legal
Vintage
Legal
Commander
Legal
Pauper
N/A
Brawl
Legal
Historic
Legal
Alchemy
Legal
Timeless
Legal
Standard Brawl
Legal
More formats
Old School
N/A
Premodern
N/A
PreDH
N/A
Pauper Commander
N/A
Oathbreaker
Legal
Gladiator
Legal
Penny Dreadful
N/A
Duel Commander
Legal
Future Standard
Legal
COMPETITIVEBRAWL
Legal
TLR
Legal
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