Mapping Tome Scour’s Lore: Visualizing MTG Relationships

Mapping Tome Scour’s Lore: Visualizing MTG Relationships

In TCG ·

Tome Scour card art — blue sorcery from Magic 2014

Image courtesy of Scryfall.com

Visualizing MTG Lore Connections Through Tome Scour

Blue has long been the university library of the MTG multiverse—where secrets drift like dust motes in a sunbeam and every page turn hints at a hidden future. Tome Scour, a modest one-mana sorcery from Magic 2014, embodies that love of knowledge and the consequences of reading too far into it. With a single blue mana, you compel a target player to mill five cards. Five cards may not sound earth-shaking, but in the grand tapestry of blue’s strategy, they’re a deliberate nudge toward a larger story: a librarians’ feud between memory and fate, a race to outrun the graveyard, and a thousand little decisions that ripple through the game’s lore.

  • Mana cost: {U}
  • Type: Sorcery
  • Rarity: Common
  • Flavor text: "I hope none of those were important!"
  • Artist: Steven Belledin
  • Set: Magic 2014 (core set)
  • Mechanic: Mill
“I hope none of those were important!” — a snap of humor that reminds us milling isn’t always about winning the race; sometimes it’s about the chase through the library of the mind 🧠📚.

When you map Tome Scour onto a broader web of MTG lore, the card becomes a node in blue’s ongoing conversation about information, control, and inevitability. The flavor text and the art—a quiet desk, a scroll unfurling—echo blue’s long-running obsession with what remains after a library’s last page is turned. The card’s relatively humble text belies a deeper narrative: milling five cards can disrupt an opponent’s carefully drawn plan, but it also puts cards into the graveyard that other strategies may wish to exploit. In formats where graveyard interaction matters—Modern, Legacy, Commander, and beyond—Tome Scour is a small, precise instrument in a larger orchestration of tempo and inevitability 🔥🎲.

From a design perspective, Tome Scour showcases early 2010s core-set philosophy: a low-mana, low-color commitment spell that can swing the matchup through card flow rather than raw damage. Its mana cost of {U} and its status as a common card make it a familiar, approachable tool for players building tempo or mill-inspired decks. The card’s cadence—play a blue spell, watch the library shrink, then pivot to the late-game with a few keys in the graveyard—parallels the way lore in blue often unfolds: information gathered, plans refined, and inevitability arriving like a well-timed counterspell in the night. And the artwork by Steven Belledin adds flavor to that narrative—the calm, almost clinical vibe of a scholar who might be waking a sleeping threat with a well-placed tick of the clock. 💎⚔️

To visualize Tome Scour’s lore-based relationships, imagine a network graph where Tome Scour sits at the center of a blue lattice: nodes representing other mill and control spells, edges denoting color identity, shared flavor motifs, and interactions with graveyard-oriented strategies. You’d connect it to classic mill enablers, to modern versions that care about the library’s size and composition, and to neighboring blue staples that shape the metagame—think of how mill complements or conflicts with counterplay, card draw, and bomb-heavy decks. In practice, this kind of mapping helps players to see not just the card in isolation, but the way a single spell can tip the balance across multiple formats and times, across casual kitchen-table games and high-stakes tournaments 🧙‍♂️🎨.

For collectors and researchers alike, Tome Scour also offers a tiny window into the era of its release. Magic 2014 marked a continuation of core-set accessibility, and a common card with a foil version has its own micro-economics: around a modest baseline price with foils that spike in value for showcase decks. Its nonfoil version sits at a comfortable entry point for budget-minded players who want to experiment with mill or blue-control themes without breaking the bank. The card’s historical placement in a core set—rather than a niche expansion—helps anchor its narrative in the broader MTG story, reminding us that lore can be found in the everyday, not just in the legendary and the epic 🪄💎.

As you build your own visualization of MTG relationships, Tome Scour can serve as a gentle mentor: a reminder that even a single-mana spell can ripple through the multiverse in surprising ways. It’s a neat symbol of how knowledge—whether neatly filed on a scroll or scattered across a graveyard—can alter outcomes, shape strategies, and fuel both nostalgia and new discoveries. And if you’re looking to keep your desk as clean as your mill plan, consider a practical side quest: a quick gadget break with the product below, because sometimes a fresh, well-charged tool helps your brain stay sharp just as blue stays sharp at the table 🔥🎲.

Product spotlight — a small tangential note for the curious: a 90-second UV phone sanitizer with wireless charging pad—perfect for staying safe and organized between games. 90-second UV Phone Sanitizer Wireless Charging Pad 🧼🔌

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Tome Scour

Tome Scour

{U}
Sorcery

Target player mills five cards.

"I hope none of those were important!"

ID: aed4cfec-5cea-4987-890e-825b2802e9f9

Oracle ID: 446a9d7e-9c1a-4e83-8342-2ed5acae2eed

Multiverse IDs: 370706

TCGPlayer ID: 69967

Cardmarket ID: 262947

Colors: U

Color Identity: U

Keywords: Mill

Rarity: Common

Released: 2013-07-19

Artist: Steven Belledin

Frame: 2003

Border: black

EDHRec Rank: 11135

Penny Rank: 4476

Set: Magic 2014 (m14)

Collector #: 75

Legalities

  • Standard — not_legal
  • Future — not_legal
  • Historic — legal
  • Timeless — legal
  • Gladiator — legal
  • Pioneer — legal
  • Modern — legal
  • Legacy — legal
  • Pauper — legal
  • Vintage — legal
  • Penny — legal
  • Commander — legal
  • Oathbreaker — legal
  • Standardbrawl — not_legal
  • Brawl — legal
  • Alchemy — not_legal
  • Paupercommander — legal
  • Duel — legal
  • Oldschool — not_legal
  • Premodern — not_legal
  • Predh — legal

Prices

  • USD: 0.13
  • USD_FOIL: 1.51
  • EUR: 0.25
  • EUR_FOIL: 1.94
  • TIX: 0.03
Last updated: 2025-11-20