Buff blue's card draw?
Short video of the day (well, from seven months ago) is "POV: Does blue card draw need a buff?".
Argument of the video is "blue's card advantage engines are tied to higher mana cards that blue can't ramp into, unlike green which can easily put down a huge creature, draw x cards where x is its strength".
The video also claims that green cards which draw a truckload of cards are cheaper in price than blue cards. Think [[rhystic study]], [[faerie mastermind]], [[consecrated sphinx]] against any draw x spell in green.
What's your opinion on this?
I can't speak with certainty, but every time I try to put together a blue deck, you need turns and turns to setup small mana expensive do nothings that will draw you cards in the long run. A [[mystic remora]] can enter the field on turn one but won't stay around too long unless you blink it repeatedly, a faerie mastermind will draw you cards after your opponents do, a consecrated sphinx and a rhystic study will make everyone mad and occupy gamechanger slots. Funny that all these, except for the sphinx, won't necessarily put you ahead of someone who draws ten once.
You can get effects that double your draws but you always get strings attached: you need to have a empty hand, you can't double your draw step draw, you need max speed or the city's blessing. You can get an [[archmage emeritus]] or [[archmage of runes]], but effects like those only turn spells into cantrips you're going neutral with your regular spells and positive with flashbacks or cards that are cantrips already. Plus creatures, creatures, enchantments and planeswalkers aren't easy to tutor in mono blue.
The neater things you can do I feel like are only tied to artifacts or unblockable creatures. So you have [[insight engine]], amazing card, you get [[curiosity]] effects, [[coastal piracy]] effects. An insight engine works well in both artifacts decks and proliferate decks, but it's not tied to anything exactly. The other two though, you do need to commit to having unblockable creatures, so you have to get down your birds or whatever, and you need to build around them, but those aren't as universally easy to build around as a big trampling dinosaur.
I like blue because my favourite thing about magic is the possibility of playing exactly how you want: mtg is a spectrum, and you can play 100% creatures decks as much as 0% creatures decks. I like y'shtola as a commander because she both enables you to avoid creatures and actively discourages you from using too much mana on the ones you don't need. In pauper, I tried playing mono red madness, and it was lovely because you'd play out a guttersnipe and that one guy kills your opponent even without attacking.
I still don't understand however, why it seems that the power creep has somehow shifted the card draw in edh away from the colour of ancestral recall. And obviously I'm not saying the other colours shouldn't draw cards, of course, but isn't it too much?
Or is it just my impression and there's a whole world of card draw I'm unaware of that doesn't involve other colours? That you necessarily need to wait a ton of time to get a good amount of card draw, or put up effects that get triggered passively and hope your opponents are forced to take certain game actions? That generally your card draw plan is an "if and when, maybe" instead of "yes and now"?
Posted Aug 31, 2026, 2:30 AM UTC