Insectoid Exterminator

A three-mana 2/2 flyer in a medium-speed format with one to two removal commons per color is asking the format a real question: am I worth the card slot before the trigger ever matters? In TMT, the answer is yes in narrow homes and no in most others. The Disappear trigger needs a permanent to leave the battlefield, and the set's most reliable engines for that are the Food subtheme (Anchovy & Banana Pizza, Omni-Cheese Pizza) and the token-and-sacrifice texture that lives in BG and WB. Those are the decks that pick it, and they pick it around P1P7 to P1P9, after their removal and their key two-drops are accounted for.

In a straight BG Food build, the trigger is genuinely free: a Pizza sacrificed for a life or a card on your end step arms the scry on the same end step. In WB the support is thinner but the evasion matters more, because WB tends to grind through Grounded for Life and small flyers close the games that ground stalls won't. UB Mill, if it materializes, can also use it as a clock body that occasionally smooths draws.

Outside those decks it is a Wind Drake at three mana that dies to Stomped by the Foot and Dimensional Exile without ever scrying. Don't draft it as a generic flyer; the body is too soft for the removal density and the Equipment-fueled ground creatures (Bespoke Bō on a 2/3 erases it on the swing back). Maindeck in the sacrifice decks, sideboard or pass in the rest. The Sneak-cost angle is real but marginal: a 2/2 flyer is not the cheapest enabler the format offers.

A three-mana 2/2 flyer for aristocrats and tokens decks already sacrificing permanents every turn, where the end-step scry comes free off triggers the deck generates anyway. The problem is the rest of the format: at three mana, an aristocrats build wants a payoff that punishes the board, not a body that smooths a draw by one card. Mind Stone and a dozen better three-drops compete for the slot in any list past its first draft. Goes in the early budget version of a Meren or Korvold deck and comes out the moment a real card is available.

The card the slot map wants here is the 3-drop in an aristocrats or sacrifice shell, and Modern simply does not have one running this kind of evasive scry body. The closest active home is Yawgmoth Combo, where the 3-mana slot is occupied by Yawgmoth, Thran Physician himself and the support pieces that feed him: Young Wizard fodder, Blood Artist for the drain, Grist or a tutor for redundancy. Insectoid Exterminator competes with none of those. A 2/2 flyer that scries once at end step does nothing for the combo loop, does not block the way the deck's value creatures do, and does not generate the death triggers the deck is built around; it merely benefits from them passively.

The axis that sinks it is the body against the floor. Modern's three-mana slots are paid for with effects, not stats, and a vanilla 2/2 flyer with a delayed cantrip is a draft-quality rate in a format where a turn-three play has to either advance a combo, swing a race, or answer a threat. The Disappear trigger is genuinely free in the decks that want it, but free upside on an underpowered body is still an underpowered card.

Legal, but yet to register in tracked tournament play this season, and the structural read explains why: there is no Modern deck whose 3-drop slot is so soft that a scry-on-a-flyer beats the incumbent already holding it. No active home.

A three-mana 2/2 flyer for black sacrifice and tokens decks that want a cheap evasive body and treat the scry as incidental. The trigger is free in those shells, but a single end-step scry does not move games, and the body sits at a rate aggressive black decks have undercut for years. Legal, but it has not registered in tracked Standard play so far, and nothing in the current sacrifice lists asks for it over a creature with a death trigger or real protection. Filler that the format has not found a reason to run.

Printed this season and legal, but it has yet to register in any tracked Pioneer tournament deck. The structural read explains why. The Disappear trigger wants a deck that loses permanents every turn, and Pioneer's home for that is the Rakdos Sacrifice line built around Cauldron Familiar and Witch's Oven, with Mayhem Devil as the payoff. That deck already has its three-drops settled and does not want a 2/2 flyer whose only reward is a single end-step scry. The scry does nothing to advance the sacrifice loop or pressure the opponent, which is what those slots are asked to do.

The flying body is below the curve for an evasive black three-drop, and that floor matters most in a deck that has no use for the trigger. But the decks that would trigger it for free, the aristocrats builds, are not short on three-mana effects with actual board impact. There is no slot conversation here because the card competes against payoffs that close games rather than smooth draws.

Pioneer's aggressive black decks (Mono-Black Aggro, Rakdos Midrange) want their threes to threaten the opponent's life total or trade up, not to filter. A 2/2 flyer that scrys once a turn is a Limited card wearing a constructed cardpool. The archetype that would reward the trigger and tolerate the body, a dedicated black aristocrats tempo deck, does not exist in the current format. Until one does, this stays on the bench.

A three-mana 2/2 flyer in black, and the Disappear trigger lands in a format that has the sacrifice-and-tokens texture to feed it. The problem is the body sits below where Pauper's black aggro and aristocrats slots have already settled. MBC has long been built around the Gray Merchant of Asphodel payoff and the cheap removal that protects it, and the curve that supports that plan is not asking for a vanilla-statline flyer whose upside is a single end-step scry.

The decks that would arm the trigger reliably are the sacrifice-leaning Goblins and aristocrats builds, and those decks already contest this three-drop slot against bodies that do real work on death or on entry. A 2/2 flyer with a scry attached is a value floor, not a threat, and in Pauper's compressed band a scry is the smallest possible payoff for the slot. The trigger is genuinely free in those shells, but the floor it props up is too low to justify the card over the existing options.

Legal, but yet to register in tracked tournament play. That reads as accurate to the card rather than a quirk of timing: nothing in the current Pauper roster wants a 2/2 flyer at this rate, and the scry does not change the math. Under a tix on MTGO, and not played at any price. The ability is the interesting part; this is the entry-level version of it, and the format has better three-drops in every color that wants one.

A 3-mana 2/2 flyer in a format where Black Lotus makes three mana on turn zero and Ancestral Recall draws three for one. The Disappear scry is free in a sacrifice shell, but Vintage does not field a black aggro deck for it to sit in, and a single end-step scry is not a reason to build one. Legal, but yet to register in tracked tournament play. Noise.

A 3-mana 2/2 flyer in a format where the most-played evasive black creature near that cost is Murktide Regent at the top of the curve and Orcish Bowmasters at two, neither of which competes for this slot honestly. The scry is genuinely free in a sacrifice shell, but Legacy's aristocrats-adjacent decks do not exist at tier level, and a single end-step scry does not earn a card slot anywhere that Dark Ritual or Reanimate is setting the pace. At three mana it pays the Force of Will tax for a body that does nothing the turn it lands. Legal, but yet to register in tracked tournament play. Does not clear the bar.