Note the phrasing: They lose their other card types, but not their abilities
Key Takeaway You are paying for a shot at a grail, not the grail itself
And since a lot of your value adds up slowly over time, it can be tough to keep up with super-fast combo or aggro decks if you fall behind early
This actually came as a surprise to me, as conditional mana ramp that adds extra hoops to jump through beyond having fewer lands than your opponent is almost always unplayable, but when that hoop is take this creature off the battlefield, and the reward is both ramp and potentially filling your hand with any land with the Plains subtype, the results are surprisingly effective
Lilysplash Mentor is just a one-of for blink value, but the real payoff here is Dour Port-Mage, which is the most important engine piece in our deck
This is how it works We asked our authors to send us their personal top 10 blue cards of the Modern format