Sorcerous Sight

A cantrip from the era before cantrips had a name. The Portal sets carried simplified rules templating and effects pitched toward instruction rather than optimization, and this card teaches two lessons at once: peek at the opponent's hand, then replace itself. The information half is the historical curiosity. Looking at an opponent's hand was a real piece of play in a beginner context, where reading threats and planning around a known card is the whole point of the exercise; in a more advanced setting the data rarely justifies the slot. What survives is the second line. A single blue mana that draws a card has always been the floor for blue card-smoothing, and bolting a free scouting clause onto that rate is exactly the sort of value-bundling Portal could afford because it was never balancing for tournament play. The design reads as a forerunner of the modern blue one-drop cantrip, where the draw is the point and any rider is gravy, except here the designers treated the rider as the showcase. It remains a footnote, but an honest one: a snapshot of blue's signature toolkit (information and a fresh card) handed over in its gentlest possible form.