Ancestral Vision (Original Art)

Ancestral Vision is a blue sorcery from Time Spiral with the suspend 4 mechanic - (U) (Rather than cast this card from your hand, pay {U} and exile it with four-time counters on it. At the beginning of your upkeep, remove a time counter. When the last is removed, you may cast it without paying its mana cost.) Ancestral Vision is often played because of its synergy with cascade effects (can be cascaded into), and useful in shells that can stall the games long enough for the suspend to pay off. In 2007 Paul Cheon won Standard Grand Prix Krakow with his UW “Pickles” deck that ran 4 Ancestral Vision. In legacy it has long time been a staple in Shardless BUG Control decks ever since Shardless Agent’s printing in 2012. This was a grindy deck with plenty of removal and discard spells to interact early game and could refuel later after suspending an early Ancestral Vision. Paired with Shardless Agent, it made one of the best control decks at that time, since you could sometimes cascade into visions and just draw three free cards when it resolved. Other control/combo decks like Aluren also included this package to take advantage of this powerful card advantage engine. Wizards unbanned Ancestral Vision in Modern (effective April 8, 2016), where it saw lots of play in control decks such as Grixis and UW Control and also in UB Faeries. Together with the card As Foretold, it also made a strong combo in the Restore Balance decks since you could often cast the card for 0 mana generating a big advantage. Ancestral Vision is not on the reserved list and has been reprinted several times.