Spitting Image

A clone effect that comes back: that is the rare trick worth paying the toll for, and retrace is the mechanic that makes flooding a virtue instead of a dead draw. The first cast copies whatever is most threatening, and every subsequent cast (a land discarded from hand on top of the six mana) does it again, building a board out of stalled-out resources that other decks would simply discard at end step. Most copy spells answer a single board state once and then rot in the graveyard as a spent card; here the graveyard residence is the point. The price is real on both ends: six mana is steep for a clone, and each replay permanently shrinks your hand by a land. That dual cost is what keeps the loop from being free; you are converting late-game lands into bodies, one at a time, until the fuel runs out. The hybrid pips let the spell sit in either a green or a blue shell and give each casting a choice about which mana to spend, which matters when you are casting it three times across a long game. What it copies is left wide open by design: an opponent's bomb, a creature with a strong enters-the-battlefield trigger, your own best engine piece. A spell that wants you to draw lands rather than spells inverts the usual deckbuilding contract, and that inversion is precisely what justifies the rate.