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Moxonomy

Enervate

Instant1 generic manaBlue mana

A cantrip built around the most marginal effect in the game: tapping something. The Twiddle line (Twiddle itself can tap or untap, for free) was designed when tapping a permanent could plausibly matter, gumming up an opponent's blocker or denying a land for a turn, but the effect was always too small to spend a card on. Enervate's answer is to bolt a card draw onto it, with a deliberate delay: the replacement card does not arrive until the next turn's upkeep, so you cannot chain it into the same turn's play and you eat a full rotation of tempo loss before the cantrip pays you back. That lag is what keeps a two-mana "tap a thing, draw a card" from being a free trade. In practice the tap is rider, not reason; you cast this to cycle it and take the incidental upside of stalling an attacker, holding down a key blocker, or stranding a mana source for a turn. It documents an era when filtering came stapled to a tiny rules-text effect rather than offered clean, the way Brainstorm and later cantrips would eventually be priced. What lingers is the bargain it strikes: a near-dead ability subsidized into playability by a single delayed card, and the lesson Wizards took from it about how cheap a cantrip's "real" effect needs to be to justify the slot.

Enervate (5ed)
5ED · #84common
Pricing
Normal: $0.22
Foil:
Oracle Text

Rules text

Tap target artifact, creature, or land. Draw a card at the beginning of the next turn's upkeep.
Legalities

Format Status

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

Other printings

2 sets
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