As you can see, Grand Architect follows the
Elvish Archdruid school of design: taking two
old cards and combining their abilities. It lets
you do a lot of stuff you would never see
otherwise, like tap Silver Myr for two mana, use
Cloud Sprite like Llanowar Elves, and
kill Titans with Razormane Masticore. You can
even ignore the part about artifacts, and play
it alongside Lord of Atlantis, taking advantage
of the fact that most Merfolk are blue. An
interesting card with broad applications.
Today's card of the day is Grand Architect
which is a three mana 1/3 that also has three
distinct abilities. The first grants all
other Blue creatures you control +1/+1 making it
a living Crusade or unspecific lord which is
already a good effect for a three mana creature.
The second ability costs one Blue to activate
and makes a target artifact creature Blue until
end of turn which can allow your own creatures
to benefit from his first effect or other
effects or possibly be used offensively against
an opponent creature. This effect may not
be used as often as it costs mana, but it is
useful and can allow artifacts you already have
to have an added threat when attacking or
defending if you have available resources.
The third effect also benefits from the option
the second offers and can turn any untapped Blue
creature, Grand Architect included, into two
extra mana for artifact spells or abilities.
This is a very useful bit of acceleration that
can be played without concern of summoning
sickness. The variety of effects and
affordable cost add up to make this an extremely
versatile and worthy addition to Blue's arsenal.
For Limited the double Blue is a concern that
slows it down to the fourth or possibly even
fifth turn for some decks, but adding
acceleration and pumping up Blue or sometimes
artifacts helps mitigate that quite a bit.
The set being so focused on artifacts and the
format on creatures makes this an ideal card all
around and it should be a first pick in Booster
and included in Sealed if the deck is primarily
Blue. If the deck is going to be split
evenly the mana base needs to be carefully
weighed, but it is still strong enough to merit
play even a little later in the game. The
acceleration factor will lose some value once
more mana is available, but with the extra mana
the second ability should become a bigger draw
which balances it out. Not quite as
impressive as in Constructed formats, but still
playable and nice to have in your pool.
