Green isn't the best at card draw, but it is the
best at going and getting a land, and it's
pretty good when you want to draw a creature.
Tracker's Instincts is a good tool to get you
another creature, and it manages to sneakily
dodge the usual limitations on similar green
spells by putting the other three cards into the
graveyard... in the graveyard-themed deck.
Flashback-based decks will love this card even
though they typically run creature-light. Most
of them are GRU or GBU already anyway, as green
and blue have some of the best Flashback and
graveyard-matters cards in the set.
It's getting harder and harder to complain these
days. Not only is the art in Innistrad amazing,
green is getting the sort of card drawing
spells its theoretical rankings in the color pie
ability distribution suggest it should. Four
cards is often more than it sounds like, in the
sense that the chance of one of them being a
creature you want is actually on the high side.
When you get the chance to do it again, that
chance basically goes up to 100%, and
considering that it both shrugs off
counterspells and puts the cards you don't draw
in your graveyard, where you may well have a way
to use them again, you have the makings of a
great card.
Today's card of the day is Tracker's Instincts
which is a two mana Green spell, or three mana
Blue cost for Flashback, that reveals the top
four cards of your library to put a creature
from them into your hand and the rest into the
graveyard. This is potentially support for
graveyard recursion and can search a bit of your
library to get a key creature in hand, but it
really requires the right build to be of much
value.
Green/Blue without Black would be left without
many of the best graveyard options, yet
balancing the three colors is even more
problematic. Overall a card with potential
that may not reach many tournament decks until
the Innistrad block is completed or the previous
sets rotate out of Standard.
For Limited this is almost a desperation play as
it can add a creature in a topdeck situation,
but in most cases simply running a creature
instead of Tracker's Instincts is probably
better. The loss of three other cards to
the graveyard can be either a minor or major
penalty depending on luck and the chance of
getting a worthwhile creature for the expense is
probably too small. A Green/Blue build is
an option to get the most use out of the card,
though milling yourself for six is slightly
risky and somewhat inefficient for a gain of one
card and possible Flashback effects.
Unless your pool is very weak and this is used
as a method of finding a bomb in an otherwise
underpowered deck it can be passed more often
than not in Booster and left in the sidedeck of
Sealed.
Welcome to another great card of the day review
here at Pojo.com! Today we are looking at
Tracker’s Instincts from Dark Ascension.
Tracker’s Instincts is an uncommon green sorcery
that costs one generic and one green mana.
Tracker’s Instincts says you reveal the top four
cards of your library and put a creature card
from among them into your hand and the rest into
your graveyard. Tracker’s Instincts has
Flashback for two generic and a blue mana.
Tracker’s Instincts can be a good card for
filling up your graveyard, but all in all, it is
what it is, an uncommon, nothing super special.
It is always nice to dig down a bit to find a
card you may really need, and then put the rest
into the graveyard where these days you can
utilize them as much as if they were in your
hand.
