The Elder Dragon War
Read ahead exists to solve the Saga's oldest problem: chapters unlock in a fixed order, so the effect you want most is often the one gated behind the ones you don't. Here that tension is real, because the three chapters point in three different strategic directions. Chapter I is a symmetrical two-damage sweep that also chips at each opponent; chapter II is a rummage of any size; chapter III drops a 4/4 flyer. Read ahead lets you skip past the sweep and the loot to land the Dragon immediately, or start on the discard-draw when you're flooding, or open on the sweep when the board demands it. The design trick is that the modes are close enough in value that no single starting chapter is obviously correct, which is exactly the decision Read ahead was built to create. The catch is the counter math: skipped chapters never trigger, so choosing to open later trades away the abilities you leapfrogged. Start on III for the immediate body and you get one Dragon and nothing else; start on I and you eventually see all three across three turns. It reframes the whole cycle from a scripted three-act story into a menu you commit to on entry, and the commitment is the cost. A card that would be a middling one-note enchantment if it resolved top-to-bottom becomes a genuine sequencing puzzle the moment you get to pick your entry point.
