How does Future Sight actually work?
General forum
Posted on Sept. 3, 2016, 2:10 a.m. by theindigoeffect
I've been told that Future Sight generates card draw, and it's also supposed to be a reliable card draw engine, but I fail to understand how the card works.
Based on the card's explanation, I don't see how it's beneficial at all: in fact, it seems to put you at a disadvantage, since everyone at the table can see what your next card is, and on top of that, you still have to pay the card's cmc, so why would you want to use it at all?
Raging_Squiggle says... #4
Note that Omniscience + Future Sight alone is not a combo. Omniscience's alternate cost only applies to spells you cast from your hand, not the top of your library. So, unless you already have an infinite combo set up to draw you cards, which at that point, Future Sight is irrelevant, they won't do you much good.
The reason Future Sight is good is because it pumps through your deck, which is now essentially a disconnected part of your hand. It also allows you to play land cards off the top of your library for your land drops per turn. Sure the opponents can see what the card will be, but that's hardly a drawback for the advantage the card provides. Sure, you have to pay the Mana Cost for the spell, but you'd have to do that anyway if it was in your hand.
Conclusion: It is a great card advantage card because it skips you drawing the card and goes straight to casting it. It can be done as many times as you can pay the Mana Cost for the card revealed, and it lets you get lands as well.
September 3, 2016 3:38 a.m.
Future Sight is basically +1 card at every point you have it out. On top of that you have cards like Top, Fetchlands, etc to help you shuffle your deck and see more cards.
September 4, 2016 5:25 a.m.
Future Sight+Etherium Sculptor+Sensei's Divining Top lets you draw your entire library. In EDH, that combo usually ends with Laboratory Maniac or some Blue Sun's Zenith shenanigans.
The reason lots of people like running this combo is that all of the pieces alone have quite a bit of utility.
Future sight may allow other players to see what you draw, but EDH decks are usually fairly redundant, so giving away info like this isn't all that bad. You can even use it to deter players from making plays. Seeing a negate on the top of your library makes your opponents think twice about casting big spells. If you can reliably shuffle your library, future sight has the potential to draw you tons of cards. It's a fantastic late-game draw engine if you've got the mana to utilize it. Is it the best available draw engine in blue? No, not by a long shot. Still, it's a damn combo piece.
September 4, 2016 8:25 a.m.
Just expanding on what some others have said, the key here is that it provides a constant supply of card advantage.
To go into a bit of maths behind the game, take the card Preordain for example. This card is considered a "cantrip", or a "do something and draw a card" card. When casting any card (normally) we would subtract one from your current "card advantage" position. This is because now the card is doing its thing. But Preordain lets us scry and then draw a card. The drawing of a card effectively adds one back onto our current card advantage position, since we have as many cards after casting it as we did before.
But with Future Sight we have a slightly different scenario. As long as we're casting a card from the top of our library, we haven't actually changed the number of cards in hand. So at this point our card advantage position isn't going down, despite the fact that we get to cast a spell (regardless of if it draws us cards). So for each card we cast off the top of our library, we're effectively adding one to our card advantage position without having to subtract one.
In reality its a little more complicated than that because we only have access to the topmost card of our library at any point in time, however this gives you a basis of understanding how the card advantage is generated.
As people have said, there can be a downside to your opponent seeing what you're going to draw, however there can also be some benefits to this ad well (aa mentioned above).
September 4, 2016 10:16 a.m. Edited.
You get to cycle through resources in your library instead of resources in your hand. This means that the basic land you would have drawn next turn can be cast this turn getting you one step closer to a card you need. You have a better selection of resources than your opponents and this is one aspect of card advantage.
Similarly you now have a hand size of 8 cards and can physically cast cards you wouldnt have had access to before. This is most definitely card advantage.
September 4, 2016 10:48 a.m.
It's clearly card advantage. It's often even information advantage to be quite honest, since you knowing the top card of your library can be much more useful than your opponent knowing it.
IsaoBlack says... #2
Most of the time I see Future Sight get comboed out with a card like Omniscience and a card draw engine like Azami. In essence this vomits out your entire deck for free, only stopping when you have a land on top (which then gets drawn to hand to keep going).
September 3, 2016 2:19 a.m.