Court Hussar
The bargain at the bottom of the card is the whole design: a 1/3 with vigilance that digs three deep the moment it lands, on the condition that you paid white to cast it. Skip the white and the dig still happens, but the body sacrifices itself, leaving you a Vedalken-shaped Impulse stapled to nothing. Note what the selection actually does and does not do: it pulls one card straight to hand and buries the other two on the bottom, so it is a one-shot dig, not deck manipulation. There is no scry, no setup for the following turn, just a single immediate look. That conditional sacrifice is a gold-card discipline from the era of two-color guild design, when cards were built to reward committing to a pair rather than splashing one color for the best half of the text. Honor the cost and you get a vigilant blocker that attacks without dropping its guard, plus a card pulled live out of three on the way in. It sits in a small family of Azorius creatures that pay rent in card advantage while holding the ground, the philosophy white-blue control would later inherit at higher rarities. The fragility keeps it honest: the dig is one-shot and the body folds to almost anything, so you are buying a single look and a wall, not an engine. Pay the toll and the creature does two jobs; cheat it and you get a cantrip wearing a costume.





