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Moxonomy

Unlucky Witness

Creature — Human CitizenRed mana

Red's tension with card advantage is old: the color burns bright and runs out of gas, and every attempt to fix that has come loaded with a catch. This is one of the cleaner answers to the problem, because the payoff is tied to the one thing a 1/1 for one red mana is going to do anyway, which is die. The refill is not free advantage in the blue sense; it is impulse draw off a death trigger, exiling two and letting you play one before your next end step, so the value is conditional on the body already being spent in combat, chumping, or feeding a sacrifice outlet. That conditional framing keeps the card honest. A 1/1 that drew a card outright would price differently; forcing you to trade the creature away first holds the rate in check and pushes it into decks that were going to throw the body under a bus regardless. It rewards a plan that treats small creatures as fuel rather than as board presence, which is exactly the axis aggressive red and sacrifice-adjacent builds live on. The impulse window matters too: the card you exile is not yours to sit on, so the trigger asks you to have mana up and a use ready when the witness meets its end, not to bank the value for later.

Unlucky Witness (snc)
SNC · #128uncommon
Pricing
Normal: $0.14
Foil: $0.28
Oracle Text

Rules text

When this creature dies, exile the top two cards of your library. Until your next end step, you may play one of those cards.
Legalities

Format Status

Standard
N/A
Pioneer
Legal
Modern
Legal
Legacy
Legal
Vintage
Legal
Commander
Legal
Pauper
N/A
Brawl
Legal
Historic
Legal
Alchemy
N/A
Timeless
Legal
Standard Brawl
N/A
More formats
Old School
N/A
Premodern
N/A
PreDH
N/A
Pauper Commander
N/A
Oathbreaker
Legal
Gladiator
Legal
Penny Dreadful
N/A
Duel Commander
Legal
Future Standard
N/A
COMPETITIVEBRAWL
Legal
TLR
Legal
Printings elsewhere

Other printings

1 set
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