Skip to content
Moxonomy

Glacial Grasp

Instant2 generic manaBlue mana

A tempo tapper with a refund clause, built to solve the oldest problem soft interaction has: spending a card to inconvenience one creature bleeds you out over a long game. The trailing draw fixes that, pulling the play back to card parity so the effect reads as smoothing rather than a losing trade. The untap-denial rider is where the real body of the card lives: freezing the creature through its controller's next untap step turns a one-turn stall into two full turns of freedom from an attacker or blocker. Because it is an instant, the tightest window is the beginning of combat step, before attackers are declared, when tapping an opponent's threat actually keeps it out of the swing; wait until attackers are on the board and you have only stranded a blocker for a turn. The two-card mill lands on whoever controls the tapped creature, so pointing it at an opposing threat chips their library, not yours; it is incidental to the tempo play, not a self-mill payoff, and it makes fueling your own graveyard awkward since you would have to freeze one of your own creatures to do it. Strip away the flavor and you are left with an unglamorous piece of blue interaction: it kills nothing, but it locks down a threat for long enough to matter and replaces itself on the way out.

Glacial Grasp (znr)
ZNR · #59common
Pricing
Normal: $0.13
Foil: $0.20
Oracle Text

Rules text

Tap target creature. Its controller mills two cards. That creature doesn't untap during its controller's next untap step. (They put the top two cards of their library into their graveyard.) Draw a card.
Legalities

Format Status

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