Three Steps Ahead

Counter, copy, loot: three jobs blue has always split across separate cards, welded into one instant whose base cost commits you to nothing. The single blue mana buys the privilege of choosing; every mode is an additional cost layered on top, so the card ranges from a lean single-line play to a three-mode blowout as your open mana allows. That is the structural trick of Spree, and this instant is one of its sharpest showcases: the card is never a dead draw, because you decide which of the three problems on the board it solves at the moment you cast it, not when you built the deck. The copy mode is the standout, duplicating a creature or artifact you control at instant speed (note the targeting: it makes a token copy, but the thing it points at has to be a creature or artifact, not any token you happen to have). What the mechanic does under the hood is convert deckbuilding flexibility into gameplay flexibility: rather than drawing the wrong answer for the situation, you draw a card that becomes the right answer once you know what you are paying for. The tax is real, since each mode past the first climbs your mana investment, but a one-card package that counters, copies, and digs delivers the answer density blue instants have always chased.