As a turn one play, Preordain is quite good.
It's like you get a built-in mulligan without
actually having to lose a card, since on turn
one, Preordain lets you do a decent amount of
digging to find whatever card you need. And it
doesn't involve shuffling, which makes it just
plain easier to use than Ponder.
As I may have mentioned in this space before,
I am a fan of Singleton formats. When I first
saw Preordain, the first thing I thought of was
a deck concept called "The Philosopher": a blue
deck with one copy of every card whose name is a
synonym or near-synonym for "think," like
Ponder, Concentrate, Recall, and so on. Granted,
Preordain wouldn't exactly fit in that deck by
name, but it certainly would based on its game
text. It couldn't be around at a better time,
now that there are so many cards that care about
the top card of your library, like Oracle of Mul
Daya or Conundrum Sphinx or Lash Out or
Timesifter or . . . well, take your pick,
really.
Welcome back readers today's card of the day is
a personal favorite of mine, Preordain an
improved version or compliment to Serum
Vision's. In standard this card mostly see's
play in Pyromancer's Ascension decks or other
combo decks looking to find their way to
important cards, outside of combo its an
interesting card but I doubt most decks have
room for it. In extended once again combo is
king, Hivemind could make use of this card as
well as any blue based combo deck. In eternal
this is a puzzling card I could see some decks
utilizing this card to find of course, combo
pieces. I could also see this card in a deck
utilizing a threshold something along the lines
of U/G thresh or perhaps a Quieron Dryad deck.
In casual and multiplayer if you are playing
combo it can help you find your pieces faster
otherwise outside of combo I don't think this
card is good enough to warrant play with so many
options around. In limited I would not draft it
highly but it can smooth out your draw's
cantrips so its decent. Overall a narrow niche
card but highly relevant.
Today's card of the day is Preordain which is
the 2011 replacement for Ponder using the core
mechanic of Scry. Seeing only two cards
instead of three is a drawback, but being able
to place one unneeded card on the bottom of the
library instead of shuffling the whole library
offers a little more control. Preordain is
not as powerful, but remains playable as a
single mana to help sort the top of a library is
a fairly small price to pay even in the fairly
early stages of a game.
For Limited this is a solid card to support any
Blue deck that can be played to maintain tempo
and avoid bad draws for a very low cost.
Likely a third pick depending on the pack in
Booster, Preordain can be safely added to any
deck using Blue in Sealed.
