Dark Intimations

Few cards have advertised their own dependency so plainly. The top half is a respectable Grixis value sorcery: an edict that hits creatures and planeswalkers, a discard, recursion of a creature or planeswalker card from your graveyard, and a draw. That alone is a reasonable rate of attrition for three colored pips. But the second ability is the tell. Its only function is to wait in your graveyard for a Bolas planeswalker spell, then exile itself to hand that planeswalker an extra loyalty counter. The card is not built to be cast and forgotten; it is built to be cast, parked, and cashed in later. That makes it one of the rare designs whose ceiling is gated entirely by a named character rather than a mechanic. Strip every Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker out of the multiverse and the lower half is blank text, a sunk clause with no trigger. It is a deliberate piece of narrative engineering: a spell that demands you also field the villain it was written to empower, rewarding the commitment with a head start on a body of loyalty that is otherwise hard to buy. The value engine on top is the consolation prize, generous enough that the card does honest work even when the payoff never arrives, but the design's true subject is the legend it points at, not the attrition it provides.