I'd like to talk about something everyone agrees we should have but most never seem to run enough of: card draw.

Before we get too deep, though, I'd like to make a couple of things clear. It starts with terminology. In Magic: The Gathering, we talk about card draw and card advantage. They are related, because draw is a form of card advantage, but they are not synonymous.

Divination is card draw. You pay some mana, you add some cards to your hand. Dragon Fodder is card advantage. Anything which leaves you with more resources than you started with is card advantage. So, a card which makes more than one token leaves you with two cards' worth of stuff - card advantage. A card which kills multiple Creatures (like, say, Wrath of God) is also card advantage. A card which says "scry 1, then draw a card. Each opponent discards a card" is card advantage, because even though you only drew one, you also made other people go down a card. And Divination is card advantage, because card draw is a form of card advantage.

Card advantage is good. To make your deck work well, you want to leverage it most of the time. Card draw is a piece of card advantage, but sometimes decks don't have access to, or don't want to, draw a ton of cards. A good example is Maelstrom Wanderer: that deck may be old school, but it doesn't want to draw cards. It wants cards in the Library so it can Cascade and cast them for free. However, casting them for free - and building a deck which means every spell you hit will be cast for free - is a good way to leverage card advantage.

Today, we're going to talk just about card draw. Card advantage is probably worth another article entirely, but for our purposes, we're just going to look at ending up with access to more cards in your hand than you had before. Looting (drawing then discarding), rummaging (discarding then drawing), and cantrips (a spell with the effect "draw a card", which means it replaces itself but doesn't give you more cards) are all great forms of card selection and advantage, but they're not draw. Even Witch's Mark isn't draw, because in addition to the spell you have to discard another card in order to draw two. That's just parity. (However, you do wind up with the Wicked Role token, which I guess means you wind up one resource heavy, so at least it's advantage!)

To do so, let's look at yet another unloved Commander:

Here's the deck I threw together with him.

Drawing Cards with Johann | Commander | Mark Wischkaemper

• Commander (1)
• 1 Johann, Apprentice Sorcerer

• Creatures (12)
• 1 Aquatic Alchemist
• 1 Archmage Emeritus
• 1 Beluna's Gatekeeper
• 1 Frolicking Familiar
• 1 Guttersnipe
• 1 Mocking Sprite
• 1 Obyra's Attendants
• 1 Scalding Viper
• 1 Storm-Kiln Artist
• 1 Unruly Catapult
• 1 Vantress Transmuter
• 1 Young Pyromancer

• Instants (14)
• 1 Abrade
• 1 Big Score
• 1 Brainstorm
• 1 Consider
• 1 Counterspell
• 1 Dig Through Time
• 1 Flame of Anor
• 1 Frantic Firebolt
• 1 Lightning Bolt
• 1 Negate
• 1 Opt
• 1 Quick Study
• 1 Reality Shift
• 1 Silundi Vision // Silundi Isle

• Planeswalkers (1)
• 1 Ral, Storm Conduit

• Sorceries (15)
• 1 Blasphemous Act
• 1 Expressive Iteration
• 1 Lorien Revealed
• 1 Mizzium Mortars
• 1 Mizzix's Mastery
• 1 Pirate's Pillage
• 1 Ponder
• 1 Preordain
• 1 Rise from the Tides
• 1 See the Truth
• 1 Serum Visions
• 1 Solve the Equation
• 1 Treasure Cruise
• 1 Vandalblast
• 1 Witch's Mark

• Enchantments (5)
• 1 Arcane Bombardment
• 1 Double Vision
• 1 Fiery Inscription
• 1 Jace's Sanctum
• 1 Thousand-Year Storm

• Artifacts (12)
• 1 Arcane Signet
• 1 Crystal Ball
• 1 Fellwar Stone
• 1 Fire Diamond
• 1 Mind Stone
• 1 Mindsplice Apparatus
• 1 Pyromancer's Goggles
• 1 Scroll Rack
• 1 Sky Diamond
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 The Magic Mirror
• 1 Twinning Staff

• Lands (40)
• 9 Island
• 6 Mountain
• 1 Cascade Bluffs
• 1 Castle Vantress
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Evolving Wilds
• 1 Forgotten Cave
• 1 Frostboil Snarl
• 1 Halimar Depths
• 1 Izzet Guildgate
• 1 Lonely Sandbar
• 1 Molten Tributary
• 1 Mystic Sanctuary
• 1 Prismari Campus
• 1 Reliquary Tower
• 1 Restless Spire
• 1 Riptide Laboratory
• 1 Rivendell
• 1 Shivan Reef
• 1 Stormcarved Coast
• 1 Study Hall
• 1 Sulfur Falls
• 1 Swiftwater Cliffs
• 1 Temple of Epiphany
• 1 Terramorphic Expanse
• 1 Training Center
• 1 Volatile Fjord

Buy This Deck Export text

Johann is expensive for what he does, and what he does isn't that great. We can peek whenever we want, and once a turn we can cast an Instant or Sorcery from the top of our Library. Quick quiz: is this draw? Advantage? Neither?

Right, it's advantage. We get access to an extra card most people don't have, so we have more resources, but we're not actually getting more cards than anyone else, so it's not draw.

There are multiple ways to consider what card draw is, too. There's straight up "draw two cards" or "draw four cards". In most cases, that's the purview of Blue, though Green has the shifted Harmonize. Black also plays in this space, though it normally has an additional cost, like Sign in Blood. After that, we get draw tied to some other thing, like Green with Soul's Majesty or White with Puresteel Paladin. Finally, Red often has the ability to Exile something then cast it within a certain timeframe, which has the potential to be very powerful but is even more limiting because you don't get to keep the card forever.

You also have to consider what you're trying to do. I love Hunter's Insight and Hunter's Prowess, and often include them in Green decks with Creatures, especially when the decks are ramping to a large threat. In that case, I want to spend my early turns getting my mana together and casting that giant threat, not fiddling around with my Library. However, if I stall out, it's nice to refill my hand somehow, which is where that big spell comes in; I cast it and get a brand-new grip full of new threats. On the other hand, sometimes you're digging early for particular pieces. Maybe you need a combo piece or a tutor, or you're just looking for a critical mass of Equipment or token generators. If that's the case, it might make sense to go for cheaper, lower-value spells, or even just card parity which allows you access to more of your Library, like Preordain or Ponder. (Those spells are kind of cantrips and kind of not, because anything which lets you see deeper than you draw leaves you with better than just the top card of your Library.)

In the case of Johann, I really need to churn through a lot of cards quickly. Why? Because the way I'm going to attempt to win is by overwhelming my opponents with card advantage. They're doing something? I have Counterspell. Attacking me? Reality Shift. Trying to stay alive? Guttersnipe. Because he gives us access to early stuff, and because we benefit by having an Instant or Sorcery on top of our deck, I've prioritized smaller, cheaper spells we can tie together and which organize the top of our Library to our advantage. Ponder and Preordain, as well as their earlier, less-good version Serum Visions and the best version of the one-mana spells like this that isn't on the reserved list: Brainstorm. In addition, we've got some great spells which benefit from having lots of things in your Graveyard, like Treasure Cruise and Dig Through Time, plus cool cards like See the Truth (cheap and, if we cast it from the top of our Library, gets us three cards!) and Expressive Iteration, which draws us one (Draw) and gives us an extra one we can cast just this turn (Advantage).

Now let's go really deep. Crystal Ball is card selection, not draw, because we Scry 2. However, if we currently have an Island on top of our Library, it's of no use to us this turn. If we activate Crystal Ball, it has cost us but no cards. If we can move the Island to the bottom of our Library and now have Flame of Anor on top of our Library, we have access to one more card we didn't have before, and it cost us no cards. That means it functions as well as drawing the card because we can play it. Drawing the card would be better, but Crystal Ball is a great form of card advantage if you can play the card on top of your library. Scroll Rack is the same here, except we can actually use it to stack the top of our Library into a chain of cards we can cast off the top - that can be as effective as drawing several cards.

The Magic Mirror is particularly strong here. We'll probably cast it for a severely reduced price, and if it sits out there for two turns it's worth it. More and we're going to be swimming in cards.

We also have several ways of copying our spells. If you copy a Ponder, it's more than just parity - now we're actually drawing. That means our little spells remain relevant as we go through the game and spells get more powerful. When Preordain means you draw three cards for Blue, it's pretty powerful.

The important thing here is we're going to draw more cards than anyone else. We're going to mess with the top of our Library to encourage more card draw, and we're going to have the answer and a goofy threat and constantly be pinging our opponents with Fiery Inscriptions and Ral, Storm Conduit.

However, this wouldn't work with a Green stompy deck or a White Equipment deck. Remember the thing I mentioned two paragraphs ago about Preordain getting more powerful as the game goes along, because we want to copy spells, and when we copy that spell it remains relevant? That's creating synergy within our deck, so spells are useful at every point in the game. (This, by the way, is a good demonstration of my argument why Sol Ring shouldn't be in every deck, because that card has seriously diminishing returns in decks that don't want to ramp hard the entire game.) A Coastal Piracy sitting out there in your Spirits Typal deck draws while you do what you want to be doing - attacking with your fliers - and makes sure you have more fliers coming into your hand. Divination, in that situation, costs you three mana and you get two cards, which is great, but now you're three mana down and can't cast as many things. Hunter's Prowess is expensive at five mana, but if you draw nine cards off it, you have a whole new hand and then some to play with, and besides, you're probably ramping and can afford it anyway.

Build draw into your deck. Divinations are fine, but whenever possible, lean into the strategy you're already using and draw cards along the way. You'll find your games are much smoother and your decks more successful when you prioritize getting more cards than your opponents into your hand.

Thanks for...

Oh wait. You want to know how this deck wins? No idea. Guttersnipe triggers? You'll figure it out. You'll have the cards to do it, that's for sure.

Thanks for reading.