Thread by @JasonILTG

Today, let's talk about blue's most underrated common: Clever Conjurer. ALSA of 7.56 in Bo3, just above Secret Door at 7.82, making it the 6th least-picked blue common. For reference, You Find the Villains' Lair and You Come to a River are taken above it. 1/x

However, from the Metagame graph, it does look like that's changing, but more as a factor of the other cards going down than Conjurer going up much. 2/x

The baseline use of Conjurer is as a mana dork. And you might think that that's not very impressive at 3 mana when the 2/3 body isn't super exciting either, but it turns out that there are a *lot* of good 5+ MV cards in this set: strategy.channelfireball.com/all-strategy/c… 3/x

And I've found the most success in blue decks, especially UG, with stabilizing behind a 5-drop: Rimeshield Frost Giant is the prime example with its Ward 3 and 5 toughness, but green also has Elturguard Ranger and Owlbear. 4/x

So Conjurer ramping from 3 to 5 is in fact pretty good, but other cards do this too: Find the Path, for example, hasn't been particularly good in my experience. Dungeon Map has been good, but its upside is more obvious. So why is Conjurer not just like Find? 5/x

For one thing, while a 3 mana 2/3 body isn't the best, it also isn't nothing. Compare Conjurer to Vampire Spawn: both are 3 mana 2/3s that provide a bit of tempo boost. Obviously Spawn does so immediately and at any point, but being comparable to Spawn is pretty good. 6/x

For another thing, the tempo advantage doesn't end once you're out of things to ramp to. After you get a big creature out early, you can then start using Conjurer to give that big creature vigilance, which helps you turn the corner faster. 7/x

And in UG especially, you can sometimes have enough mana sinks that you're always able to use the mana from Conjurer. Plus, Conjurer also sometimes doubles as a mana sink itself by letting you use Dungeon Map and 50 ft of Rope multiple times a turn. 8/x

Finally, Conjurer just randomly embarrasses tap removal - obviously Ray of Frost and Charmed Sleep, but it also counteracts a bit of Scion of Stygia and 50 ft of Rope. Relatedly, it even untaps Lurking Roper in lieu of any lifegain! 9/x

Conclusion: it's hard to talk about U's "top commons", since no U commons are really draws into U. But Clever Conjurer plays a very important role in defensive U decks, especially UG, by helping you stabilize quicker and get ahead on tempo, while going criminally late. 10/10

I feel like all my U decks have Conjurer in them. Most of them are UG, but I included a UB deck here for variety as well:
17lands.com/deck/1a1cf6e50…
17lands.com/deck/62fc796fc…