As I was smashing people with my Corpsejack Menace deck recently, I was reminded that one of the best feelings in Magic is beating people with a deck you’ve designed using a largely overlooked card or cards. The key to this process is identifying the overlooked cards that might actually be worthy of playing a significant role in tier-one decks but that currently aren’t. This can be quite difficult given the number of Magic players/designers out there and the amount of discussion about Constructed Magic on the Internet. The older a format is, the harder this becomes.

Collective Blessing – When I’m looking for good cards for Constructed, a good starting point is often with cards that are incredible in Draft, such as Collective Blessing. While one might argue that the strength of Blessing is hurt by the prodigious amount of removal in Constructed, it does make every creature into something that needs to be removed, and it stays in play every time the board is swept. Blessing seems as though it could be a strong game ender in a tokens deck or in a deck with resilient creatures such as Thragtusk, Predator Ooze, and Strangleroot Geist. The fact that it costs 6 becomes less of a problem as the format becomes more dominated by control and there are fewer aggro decks around threatening to end the game before you make it to 6 mana.

Deadbridge Goliath – This monster seems like a no-brainer to me. While there is a lot of strong competition at the 4-drop slot, he is a 5/5! He’s a great attack-stopper against aggressive decks and a huge threat against control decks. Even if the opponent does have a way to kill a 5/5, he can still help out from beyond the grave because he has scavenge. Due to his incredible obesity, he’s great for pumping up creatures with evolve. Thanks to his graveyard ability, he’s also good in decks that like to fill up the graveyard using cards such as Lotleth Troll and Grisly Salvage. I’ve also found him to be a good friend to Ulvenwald Tracker.

Goblin Electromancer – Just imagine casting the following cards for 1 less mana: Searing Spear, Syncopate, Dissipate, Bonfire of the Damned, and Sphinx's Revelation. Now wipe the drool off your chin and start designing some decks with Goblin Electromancer.

Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord – Even just as a large monster for 4 mana, he’s pretty good. Add the ability to chuck creatures at your opponent’s face, and he becomes a devastating game-ender. Yet that’s not all! The ability to fetch him from the graveyard gives your Golgari deck a relentless late game against control. Now how much would you pay?

Pack Rat – Pack Rat may be the best card to open in Return to Ravnica Limited. So the question becomes: How is it not being played in Constructed? The obvious answer is that it’s less powerful in a format with a lot more decks equipped to remove him, especially with mass removal. Even so, given that you can stock your deck with cards that enjoy being in the graveyard, such as Gravecrawler, it seems that there should be a way to make use of the Rat in Constructed.

Shambleshark – Both Experiment One and Gyre Sage have seen play in tier-one Standard decks, in part because evolve on a cheap creature can be quite powerful. Given the power of flash, the only reason this dude isn’t also seeing play is that, ironically, none of the evolve decks in the format use blue. This guy’s powerful enough that perhaps that should change.

Signal the Clans – This is an instant-speed tutor for 2 mana; there almost has to be a powerful way to work with it. Yes, it’s two colors, and it only fetches creatures, but since one of the colors is green, these things aren’t that big a deal. In many ways, the need to fetch three of the same creature to ensure you find the one you want is a much bigger deal—the beauty of most tutors is the ability to play with silver bullet one-ofs. Yet I used to add blue to decks just so I could have Intuitions in order to search for things that I was playing at least three of. Given how many of the power cards in this environment are creatures, it seems that having a cheap, instant creature tutor would be good. If nothing else, it should be good in decks that have a creature-based combo, such as the Bloodthrone Vampire, Gravecrawler, Blood Artist combo.

Wayfaring Temple – This seems to be a perfect cornerstone card for a G/W tokens deck—not just because it has the ability to populate either. For one thing, the Temple can be a massive 3-drop in a deck generating a bunch of tokens. For another, he can be especially cool with instant token-makers like Midnight Haunting and Eyes in the Skies because they provide a Giant Growth–like effect for the Temple while also achieving their primary purposes of making more token creatures.

As a result, the key to one of these cards making a breakthrough may be the addition of Dragon’s Maze to the format. Not only can a new set provide crucial support cards to synergize with some of these, but it may shift the metagame in a way that favors one of these cards. When a new set comes out, it’s important to realize that not only will it directly bring new cards into the metagame, but it may also bring new existing cards into the metagame in the process. Why wait though? Let’s see if you can build a strong deck with one of these cards or another overlooked card now. Happy deck-building!