MTG Salvation

Since some time and spoilers have passed, I was looking back at the Ixalan leak. Most of the cards are pretty lackluster, but this one's kind of interesting.

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Deadeye Tracker B
Creature- Human Pirate
B, T: Exile two target cards from an opponent's graveyard. Deadeye Tracker explores. (Reveal the top card of your library. Put that card into your hand if it's a land. Otherwise, put a +1/+1 counter on this creature, then put the card back on top or into your graveyard.)
1/1

It's a reasonable source of card selection/ advantage as well as graveyard hate. It might be decent in large cubes, as it is at least unique.

I'm kind of surprised the mass path to exile wasnt discussed at all. This seems pretty decent, but that's it. It seems really conditional though. I feel like this might explore once in a lot of matchups or even zero times.

Other sources put the cost of the ability at 1B, not B. It's is probably a bit expensive at 2 mana, I would have given it a shot at 1 mana and it would have been fine filler for a number of decks. I does a few things rolled into one card though; graveyard hate, card advantage, top deck manipulation with the ability to put fatties etc. in the graveyard.

It would have been interesting if this was more like a black scavenging ooze, in that its ability didn't require a tap. Without a tap required the 2 mana to activate is a lot more palatable as I can fire it off a few times or threaten to do it in combat.

Lore wise, does deadeye carry meaning on many planes or did they just like the sound of it on innistrad (Deadeye Navigator) and re-use it for pirates on Ixalan?

Is this really "two target cards" and not "up to two target cards"? So you can't even activate the ability if you don't have enough targets, even if you just want to explore?

While this is an interesting effect, I'm hard-pressed to imagine a cube deck, even at 720, that will be excited to have this anywhere but its sideboard.

Of note: removing the cards looks to be part of the effect, not part of the cost, so they don't have to have cards in the grave.

I don't think it works that way. For example, you cant activate Voidmage Prodigy without a spell to counter or Phyrexian Reclamation without a creature to target, and I believe this works the same way.

The reason being that the ability goes onto the stack with the target already chosen; like with a card such as Prodigal Sorcerer, it's not 'Tap: deal 1' and then when they pass priority you choose the creature, part of the activation's resolution involves choosing a target before hand. Even with the extra text you still need to put the ability onto the stack with the targets always chosen, like with pretty much all 'target' abilities/spells/etc

Ah. Well it was borderline at best, so if you can't use it without hitting the grave, it's not much of a card.

Yeah, if it said up to 2 and cost B, it'd testable, but even then not terribly exciting. Requiring your opponent to have cards in the grave and costing 1B, I just don't see it making the cut.

I'd happily consider this if I could reliably activate it on turn 2. Sadly, unless the actual card reads differently, it's not reliable at all.

And with confirmation that the activated ability costs 1B this card is dead in my eyes....(see what I did there?)

Quote from Lionaur »

Hi, I'm new at magic and I want to ask you if can Deadeye Tracker target their owners graveyard?

no it says it can only target an opponents graveyard.