Lotus Blossom (Original Sketch)

Lotus Blossom is a two-mana artifact from Urza’s Saga (1998), that lets you put a petal counter on it at the beginning of your upkeep. You can tap and sacrifice Lotus Blossom to add X mana of any one color, where X is the number of petal counters on it. Lotus Blossom is a classic example of a “delayed payoff”. It doesn’t do anything right away, but if you can wait a few turns, you can generate more mana for just two mana invested early. It was most commonly seen in combo and control archetypes that wanted explosive turns after a bit of setup. After a few turns, you could use Lotus Blossom to power out game-ending cards like Yawgmoth’s Bargain, Stroke of Genius, or Mind Over Matter. During Standard (Urza’s Block 1998-1999), Lotus Blossom saw play in Academy Combo and Tinker-based blue decks, which sought to assemble Tolarian Academy, Time Spiral, Mind Over Matter, and huge mana engines. These archetypes included “Academy Bloom” decks ¬– using Tolarian Academy and cheap artifacts to produce absurd mana and finish with Stroke of Genius or Brain Freeze (in later variants). Lotus Blossom was also used in Mono-Blue Control (Urza’s block era), as a backup ramp engine to cast Morphling or Time Spiral. Today, Lotus Blossom occasionally appears in artifact-based Commander (EDH) decks – especially the ones that rely on proliferate effects or time manipulation (e.g. Atraxa, Praetors’ Voice or Karn, Silver Golem). Lotus Blossom is not on the Reserved List.