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Pojo's Magic The Gathering
Card of the Day

Daily Since November 2001!

Tracker's Instincts
Image from Wizards.com

Tracker's Instincts
Dark Ascension

Reviewed March 6, 2012

Constructed: 3.67
Casual: 3.87
Limited: 3.33
Multiplayer: 3.67

Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale
1 being the worst.  3 ... average.  
5 is the highest rating

Click here to see all of our 
Card of the Day Reviews 

BMoor

Tracker's Instincts

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.

Constructed- 3.5
Casual- 4
Limited- 4
Multiplayer- 3.5


David Fanany

Player since 1995

Tracker's Instincts
 
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.
 
Constructed: 4/5
Casual: 4/5
Limited: 4/5
Multiplayer: 4/5
Michael "Maikeruu" Pierno

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.
 
Constructed: 3.5
Casual: 3.5
Limited: 2.0
Multiplayer: 3.5

John
Shultis
Phoenix
Gaming

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.

Limited: 3/5
Casual: 3/5
Constructed: 3/5
Multiplayer: 1/5


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