Elminster's Simulacrum

Cloning is usually a selfish act: you point Clone or Phantasmal Image at the best body on the board and take it for yourself. This inverts the target entirely. Every copy comes off an opponent's side, one token per player, each mirroring a creature that specific opponent controls rather than the single scariest thing across the table. That scaling premise is where the whole design lives. In a heads-up game it functions as a six-mana instant-speed clone of one creature, respectable but overpriced. Its home is the multiplayer pod, where "for each opponent" turns a single card into a board-wide value grab: a copy of one player's ramp creature, another's evasive threat, a third's commander if they leave it exposed. The instant-speed timing does most of the engineering. Casting it at end of turn or in response to something lets you wait until an opponent has committed the creature worth copying, and it lets you dodge your own main-phase tempo cost rather than telegraphing the play a turn early. (Copy effects only duplicate a creature's printed characteristics and any copy effects on it, so a token off a pumped or counter-stacked attacker still comes down at base stats; what matters is the body you name, not its temporary size.) "Up to one" per opponent keeps it from being dead against a player with an empty board: you simply skip them. The two blue and six total is the tax you pay for that per-opponent scaling, and in the format this card was built for, the scaling is the point.