Natural Selection

In 1993 the bundle of effects here (look at the top three, reorder them, optionally force a shuffle) landed in green, on an instant, for a single mana, because the boundaries of each color's relationship to information had not yet hardened. This is one of Alpha's library-manipulation experiments, from when Richard Garfield was still sketching what each color should be allowed to know about the future. Green's claim is striking in hindsight: not just sight of the top three but the authority to reorder them, with the option to make whoever let you target their deck shuffle it all away. It reads as a green Brainstorm written before Brainstorm existed, except it operates on any player's library and never draws a card. That last omission is the design tell. Green's library-sculpting authority would later migrate almost entirely to blue, with the green that remained reshaped around lands and creatures (Sylvan Library and the various top-of-library tutors). The friction is obvious in retrospect: for one mana you set up your own next three draws or strip a combo player's lethal off the top of theirs. That it landed where it did says more about the openness of Alpha's design space than about any considered statement on what green does. It sits on the Reserved List, has never been reprinted, and has effectively been disowned by the modern color pie.