Astral Drift

Enchantment

Whenever you cycle Astral Drift or cycle another card while Astral Drift is on the battlefield, you may exile target creature. If you do, return that card to the battlefield under its owner's control at the beginning of the next end step.

Cycling {2}{W} ({2}{W}, Discard this card: Draw a card.)

Legality

Format	Legality
1v1 Commander	Legal
Archenemy	Legal
Arena	Legal
Block Constructed	Legal
Canadian Highlander	Legal
Casual	Legal
Commander / EDH	Legal
Commander: Rule 0	Legal
Custom	Legal
Duel Commander	Legal
Gladiator	Legal
Highlander	Legal
Historic	Legal
Historic Brawl	Legal
Legacy	Legal
Leviathan	Legal
Limited	Legal
Modern	Legal
Oathbreaker	Legal
Planar Constructed	Legal
Planechase	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Tiny Leaders	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (48)

psionictemplar on Why is Squad a Cast …

10 months ago

I had never seen a "squad" keyworded card before this thread, but I completely expect this to be a balance issue. Can you imagine the absurdity of reanimating a squad card and instantly creating a mass of creatures? Or using flicker effects such as Astral Slide or Astral Drift and doing the same?

SufferFromEDHD on The Norn Identity

2 years ago

Don't give up on the rabbit full of tricks! Easily the best commander from Jumpstart.

I'm playing it in paper and loving it because it is such a unique strategy to mono white. It utilizes and gives new life to a lot of forgotten jank.

3 drops in my list that might be a better fit than Skyclave Apparition = Astral Drift, Touch the Spirit Realm, Debt of Loyalty.

A 4 drop I am surprised to not see in any lists is Saltskitter built in illusion token generator.

lagotripha on Esper Priest

2 years ago

Most of the stuff that springs to mind like Planar Guide or Parallax Wave isn't modern legal. Astral Drift is a build around, but awkward.

The big card is Eldrazi Displacer, cause of the flickerwisp interactions. It saw a lot of play alongside Tidehollow Sculler to kill people's hands.

There are a few lists like this to look at Staring Contest: A List of Blink-Effect Cards

Vessiliana on Zur de France

2 years ago

Have you thought about adding Astral Drift? It is nice redundancy for Astral Slide and is also Zur-able.

keizerbuns on Jurassicycle Park

2 years ago

Thanks ClockworkSwordfish!

I thought about using the Krosan Tusker over Shefet Monitor but I like that Monitor can grab deserts as well as basic lands and that's really handy to grab the Hashep Oasis so I can buff my Yidaro when it comes in. However I am still in the testing stages of this deck so I could swap them out and see which one I like better, and I like your idea of swapping out Beneath the Sands for Krosan Tusker so I will give that a test too.

Somehow I didn't actually see Drannith Healer when I was putting this deck together but you're right, that is a way better card for early-game survivability so I think I'll put Drannith Stinger in the side board and put that in its place.

I did also think about putting in more ETB creatures to combo with the Astral Drift but I would have to remove some cards with cycling to fit them in and I don't wanna lose the cycling synergy the deck has, otherwise I would.

Thanks for all the suggestions, I really appreciate them! :D

ClockworkSwordfish on Jurassicycle Park

2 years ago

I always did wonder how to build a deck around getting the 4+ cycles on Yidaro... this looks like a pretty good way to go about it, though!

A couple thoughts come to mind when looking at your build, though. Shefet Monitor being able to put a land right into play is lovely, but paying four mana for the privilege is awfully steep... I can't help but wonder if he (and Beneath the Sands?) wouldn't be better off as Krosan Tusker! Three mana to draw two cards is arguably as good and not quite as slow.

The other thing I'm left wondering about is your early-game survivability. Dedicating several turns to cycling a card creates one heck of an opening, and I'm skeptical that you have enough defenses to throw off a dedicated foe! For instance, Drannith Healer could serve as a better deterrent than the Stinger - since it can only nail your opponent directly, how often will it deal enough damage to make a difference when you're planning to end up swinging with an 8/8 trampler? Maybe you've had some good results with it, but just from looking at the list I was curious!

Another route you could take things is to lean more heavily on Astral Drift. If you run a handful of creatures with helpful comes-into-play abilities, such as Lone Missionary, Wall of Blossoms or perhaps best of all, Stonehorn Dignitary, then you can easily bolster your position every time you cycle!

TypicalTimmy on How to make new 2-color …

3 years ago

StopShot, that's why I "draft" differently. When I "draft", I buy a bundle of my choice and my friend(s) buy a bundle of their choice. Then you get 10 full packs to build with. None of this 6-pack nonsense from splitting a box, or this garbage-tier 1-card rotation nonsense.

I'm not sure if you can tell, but I really dislike Draft. It's my most hated "format". You can literally lose every single game the entire night because you had bad luck with packs. I once drafted and was forced into Jund because I had like maybe 6 or 7 cards of red, green and black. Not enough to make a Gruul / Rakdos deck and zero reanimation for Golgari. I also had zero removal. Blue held zero synergy and white made a couple of tokens and that was all, and I didn't want to splash a 4th color. Lost every single game. Some games I'd get 1 creature out and it'd die to immediate removal because that's all I fucking had and nothing else.

On the way out of the LGS I threw the entire stack of cards, with their sleeves, in the garbage can. I seriously can not stress enough how much I hate draft.

One of the single worst experiences I've had in all of Magic was when we were sitting down to draft Modern Horizons. Some lady to my right was there, not to play the game, but to finance buying packs. So, what she would do is log onto the TCG Player app and snap photos of EVERY SINGLE CARD to see what the most expensive card was that was given to her. That's what she picked. So in a 15 card pack, she'd snap a pic of 13 cards (minus basic land, minus token). Even if something was like $1.17 as a bulk rare, that's what she drafted. When that same pack gets back to her and she has to go through, idk maybe 9 cards now or whatever, she'd resnap the pics to find the $0.44 cent card. I was drafting Slivers, because of course I was, and the table was moving faster than she was. Eventually she had about six or seven piles of cards waiting for her to go through.

And INSTEAD of the table calling her out for this bullshit, they ARGUED WITH ME on how it was inappropriate of me to set the stack of cards aside.

LIKE HELLO?! I'M SORRY, TELL HER TO FUCKING PLAY THE GAME OR LEAVE. Not my fault that at a table with SIX PEOPLE, FIVE OF US CAN UNDERSTAND THE GAME AND ONE OF US CAN NOT.

God I hate draft.

Ugh. Tirade over. As for your design, with the partner-color restrictions, I happen to like this idea quite a lot. It does make sense, to a degree, but my concern is that it "locks" players into specific deck archetypes that they may not have the cards for. I think it creates another Piper situation, albeit the opposite.

In my example, I didn't have a single Commander. So if I drafted 15 white cards, thinking I'd eventually get a Commander later and it just never happened, I'm pretty much F-'ed. But if I draft a bunch of Commanders and none say that I can partner with , I'm equally screwed. Similarly, what if I get a bunch of Commanders who allow me to partner with or , but my cards are pretty heavy into Mardu? Now I have Commanders that don't actually allow me to play my deck.

I think the benefit of not having a color restriction is that it allows players to pull out of ruts they got dug into, literally by sheer bad luck. Because you can do all of the meta analysis and pre-game brewing and watching leaderboards and whatever, but the packs are randomized and nothing you do will change that. So if you go in absolutely certain Golgari Reanimator will be the #1 winning deck and you pull ZERO reanimation, you're not going to play Golgari Reanimator. Period.

I feel like the removal of the color restrictions opens the system up enough that players aren't forced into a situation where they literally can't play the game.

• By the way, the champion of our Modern Horizons draft was a guy who drafted three Deep Forest Hermit and like two Astral Drift with a playset of Regrowth. Come to think of it, he may have been cheating. There's also far too much cheating in Draft. I can not tell you how many times I'll see players walk around from table to table trading cards to get playsets of something.

Bro. You play with the cards you picked or opened. Stop!

FoldedCorner on A Vicious Cycle

3 years ago

You might want to try Sundial of the Infinite . This lets you use Astral Drift and Astral Slide offensively. During your end step, with the re-enter triggers on the stack activate Sundial, leaving the permanents in exile forever.