Scorn Effigy

The interesting math here is the zero. Foretell usually asks you to prepay part of a spell's cost, then settle the rest later at a slight premium over the card's face value: convenience with a small surcharge. This one inverts the arrangement. The prepayment is , the foretell cost is nothing, and so the whole exercise buys a three-cost body for two mana total, a modest discount for the willingness to commit early. That inversion is what makes the card such a clean teaching object for what foretell actually sells, which is not raw efficiency but tempo laundering and mana smoothing. A slack turn-two board state absorbs the prepayment, banking a creature until a later point when the free cast slots in around whatever else you want to do, and the foretold card quietly registers for anything that counts foretold cards or spells cast from exile without forcing the body onto the battlefield first. The 2/3 Scarecrow is deliberately plain: colorless, no evasion, no keyword beyond the mechanic itself, present only as the frame the demonstration hangs on rather than a payoff worth chasing. As instructional design it is nearly ideal, built to make its own rules text legible. Spend a little now, cast for free later, and let the sequencing do the work.