Search Warrant

The lifegain is a courtesy attached to the real product: information. For two mana, you get to see an opponent's hand, the kind of peek a control deck pays full price for elsewhere, and the life payout scales with exactly the variable that matters when you cast it. Look at a full grip and you bank a healthy chunk of life off cards you now know are coming; look at an empty one and you have confirmed the opponent is hellbent and there is no life to be had at all. The design folds reconnaissance and a stabilizing buffer into a single white-blue card, which is honest to both colors: white wants to stay alive, blue wants to know the plan. The catch is the catch of every hand-reveal effect: it shows you the threats but does nothing to stop them, so the value lives in how you spend the next few turns rather than in the card itself. That makes it a planning tool, not an answer, and the better you already read the matchup, the more the reveal is worth. It reads as a flavor piece, the guard demanding to see your papers, but the mechanical job is plain enough: buy time, buy knowledge, and let the lifegain ride on whatever the opponent happened to be holding.