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Moxonomy

Crimson Operative

Artifact Creature — Human Villain3 generic manaRed mana

Prowess creatures share a chicken-and-egg problem: the body wants noncreature spells to pump it, but the turn it lands, its controller has usually spent their mana just getting it onto the battlefield. The impulse-draw enters-the-battlefield trigger is the fix. Exiling the top card and granting a window to play it means the card revealed can itself be the cheap noncreature spell that grows the creature: the ETB does not pump the body directly, but it can hand you the fuel that will, once the mana frees up again. The generous timing on that exiled card is what keeps the flip from being wasted. Because it lingers past this turn rather than expiring at cleanup, the card survives to become a land drop, a combat trick timed for when the creature can actually swing, or an instant held up on the crack-back. That runway turns the trigger into both an aggressive resource engine and a hedge against a stalled hand, since even a flooding draw step gets an extra card to spend. The artifact type is a quiet bonus, folding a plain Human body into cost-reduction and artifact-count effects it would otherwise miss. What results is a prowess threat that helps pay for its own pumps rather than relying entirely on a hand pre-loaded with spells.

Crimson Operative (msh)
MSH · #126common
Pricing
Normal: $0.07
Foil: $0.13
Oracle Text

Rules text

Prowess (Whenever you cast a noncreature spell, this creature gets +1/+1 until end of turn.) When this creature enters, exile the top card of your library. Until the end of your next turn, you may play that card.
Legalities

Format Status

Standard
Legal
Pioneer
Legal
Modern
Legal
Legacy
Legal
Vintage
Legal
Commander
Legal
Pauper
Legal
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
Legal
Oathbreaker
Legal
Gladiator
Legal
Penny Dreadful
Legal
Duel Commander
Legal
Future Standard
Legal
COMPETITIVEBRAWL
Legal
TLR
N/A
Printings elsewhere

Other printings

1 set
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