Ral, Monsoon Mage // Ral, Leyline Prodigy
Ral has always been Wizards' spellslinger avatar, but this is the first version whose front face turns a coin flip into the pivot of the card rather than a garnish on it. As a 1/3 Wizard he shaves a mana off your instants and sorceries, and each such spell you cast during your own turn asks you to gamble: lose the flip and you take a point, win it and you get the option to transform. The cleverness is that the "downside" damage is trivial and the "reward" is entirely optional, which means the front side is really a race counter. You are not flipping for a bonus so much as measuring how many spells it takes before you choose to graduate him. The planeswalker side then rewards the tempo you spent getting there: he enters with extra loyalty for each instant and sorcery already cast that turn, so a busy turn can flip him straight into ultimate range. What makes the piece cohere is the throughline: the front-face cost reduction, the plus-ability cost reduction, and the finisher that exiles the top eight and lets you free-cast the instants and sorceries among them are one engine at three escalating scales. The two-sided structure lets a single slot be a cheap early enabler and a game-ending payoff, with the flip serving as the seam between building pressure and cashing it in. A creature that is secretly a loyalty accelerant, gated behind a coin you are happy to keep flipping.
Rules text
less to cast.
Whenever you cast an instant or sorcery spell during your turn, flip a coin. If you lose the flip, Ral deals 1 damage to you. If you win the flip, you may exile Ral. If you do, return him to the battlefield transformed under his owner's control.
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Ral enters with an additional loyalty counter on him for each instant and sorcery spell you've cast this turn.
+1: Until your next turn, instant and sorcery spells you cast cost less to cast.
−2: Ral deals 2 damage divided as you choose among one or two targets. Draw a card if you control a blue permanent other than Ral.
−8: Exile the top eight cards of your library. You may cast instant and sorcery spells from among them this turn without paying their mana costs.
