Taigam's Scheming

When this spell was first printed, surveil did not exist as a keyword: the effect was spelled out in full, and the mechanic was named and codified into the rules years later. What it does is convert raw card selection into graveyard fuel. Digging five deep at two mana is steep filtering, but every card you decline to keep lands in the graveyard rather than on the bottom of your library, and there lies the whole strategic distinction. A bottoming effect hides cards from you; this buries them where delve, flashback, threshold, and reanimation can reach them on purpose. That makes it a setup spell more than a smoothing one: it does not cantrip and does not refill your hand, so the payoff has to live in the yard or across the next several sculpted draw steps. The sorcery speed and the absence of any card advantage keep it from being a free engine. You pay two mana and a card to arrange five, walking away with an ordered top-of-library and a stocked graveyard rather than a bigger grip. It produces nothing in a vacuum and a great deal once your discard pile is a resource you plan to mine.