There’s a concept in Magic: The Gathering called card value where you essentially want each one of your cards to eliminate as many of your opponent’s cards as possible. Trading one card for one of your opponents (a one-to-one trade) is usually considered the baseline value to strive for, but there are keywords that can help tip the scale more in your favor.
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One of those keywords is flashback, which allows you to replay cards directly from your graveyard for a certain cost. Since most cards wind up in your graveyard eventually, this allows any card with flashback to be played twice. Here is everything you need to know about flashback.
How Flashback Works
Flashback is an activated ability keyword found on instants and sorceries that allows you to cast that spell directly from your graveyard. Afterward, the spell is exiled, preventing you from continually casting the card over and over again.
The equivalent to flashback for permanent cards is called unearth.
Introduced during the Odyssey block, it was initially marked by a small headstone next to the card’s name as a visual aid, but that has since been retired. Flashback timing works the same as its spell type, so a sorcery with flashback can only be played when you could normally play a sorcery.
Cards with flashback will always have the keyword ‘flashback’ written beside its cost–usually a mana cost different from the casting cost of the card itself, but not always. Flashback costs can range from mana in alternate colors to the card’s casting cost to paying life, tapping or sacrificing creatures, or sacrificing other permanents.
Flashback costs are typically greater than the spell’s initial casting cost, but not necessarily. Some cards with flashback will actually be cheaper to ‘cast’ from the graveyard than it is to cast it from your hand.
How to Make The Most Out Of Flashback
Flashback is a useful thing to have in almost any deck because it provides you with something inherently useful: value. Once a card with flashback is cast from your hand, it remains in your graveyard ready to play again once you can afford to pay the flashback cost.
However, several deck strategies exploit flashback’s ability to be played directly from your graveyard. Any strategy that puts cards into your graveyard, whether that be mill, dredge, delve, discard, or even directly placing cards into your graveyard with the intent of playing them later, will benefit from having cards with flashback.
Unlike most spells, instants and sorceries with flashback don’t become unavailable once they enter your graveyard—they simply gain a different casting cost and get exiled once they resolve.
An excellent strategy in green and black for exploiting flashback is to include spells with flashback in a deck that tries to fill its own graveyard to reanimate creatures. Cards like Grisly Salvage or Satyr Wayfinder will cause you to put cards in your graveyard, and if those cards have flashback, it’s almost as though you put them in your hand instead.
Another great strategy is to discard cards with flashback. Faithless Looting and Desperate Ravings not only make you discard more cards that could potentially have flashback, but they themselves have flashback to be played again to fill your graveyard with flashback cards further.
You can even leverage flashback on cards that don’t have the keyword itself. Cards like Snapcaster Mage, Dralnu, Lich Lord, and Return to the Past give instants and sorceries in your graveyard flashback, allowing you to play them again.
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The Best Cards With Flashback
Flashback has been in Magic: The Gathering for many years, with nearly 200 cards mentioning the keyword. We can’t go over every card with flashback, but we can mention some standouts.
Draw More With Flashback
Flashback is a great way to give yourself more cards. Normally, a spell that tells you to draw cards is one-and-done, but cards like Deep Analysis and Think Twice can give you a two-time well to draw from when your hand runs dry.
If it’s draw and discard you want, Faithless Looting and Desperate Ravings have already been mentioned, but Faithful Mending deserves its mention for adding some life gain to the mix. Ignite the Future also deserves mentioning as it provides an even more powerful effect if the flashback cost is paid, as does Increasing Ambition.
Two-For-Ones (Or More)
Using one card to kill another is fine, but using one card to kill two cards is far more efficient. Cards like Ancient Grudge, Wreck and Rebuild, Ray of Revelation, and Chainer’s Edict are great for taking out two cards for the price of one.
Divine Reckoning can potentially hit even more cards, albeit at the expense of some of your own.
Recycle, Reuse, Reanimate
Reanimation is a common strategy to pair with flashback cards. Can’t Stay Away, Unburial Rites, Dread Return, Visions of Dread, Wake to Slaughter, and Sevinne’s Reclamation can bring other cards out of your graveyard if they happen to find themselves in it.
Make More Creatures
Why make one creature when you can make two? Wurmquake, Visions of Glory, Roar of the Wurm, Increasing Devotion, and Chatter of the Squirrel produce more creature tokens than what a typical spell provides.
Other Flashback Cards
There are lots of flashback cards that don’t fit into a specific paradigm. Galvanic Iteration and Increasing Vengeance both copy spells or effects to further boost your efficiency. Prismatic Strands and Moment’s Peace can stop many strategies in their tracks. Seize the Day puts you on the offensive, and Cabal Therapy is well-known for providing a sacrifice outlet on top of discard.
Cards That Grant Flashback
Don’t have any cards with flashback? No problem. Check out Snapcaster Mage, Lier, Disciple of the Drowned, Katilda and Lier, Dralnu, Lich Lord, The Fugitive Doctor, and Return to the Past can all grant instants and sorceries in your graveyard flashback.
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