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Blue Blink Archetypes: The Step Through Approach

Blue has always been the color of tempo, subtlety, and the long game. When you weave in blink effects—recycling creatures in and out of play to maximize ETB triggers, value trades, and battlefield control—you unlock a playground where every decision counts. The card Step Through (from Modern Horizons 2) fits this philosophy like a perfect locket: a versatile, mana-y gem that answers both the need to bounce threats and the desire to hunt for wizardly tools. With a mana cost of {3}{U}{U} and a sturdy 5 colorless/blue mana investment, it embodies blue’s patient, resourceful approach to victory 🔮.

Card Spotlight: Step Through

Step Through is a Sorcery from the MH2 set, colored blue and carrying the latent dream of many blink decks: tempo plus recursion. Its primary effect—Return two target creatures to their owners' hands—is a precise tempo play. You snap off two attackers or two opponents’ threats, buying you a turn or two to reset the battlefield on your terms. But the card doesn’t stop there. It also comes packed with two cycling options that weave Wizard and type-based tutoring into the bargain:

• Wizardcycling for {2}: Discard Step Through to search for a Wizard card, reveal it, put it into your hand, then shuffle. This creates a toolkit for late-game inevitability, letting you assemble a surprise engine for your blue control shell.
• Typecycling: Discard Step Through to search your library for a card of a chosen type. This broadens your reach beyond Wizards, giving you the flexibility to fetch the exact type you need in a given matchup.

Faxed across the board, the card’s flavor text—“Doors open both ways.”—isn’t just a pretty line. It captures the dual nature of blue blink: you can open a door to tempo by bouncing threats, and when the moment is right, you swing open the other door to re-enter with a higher plan. The art by Randy Gallegos adds a dash of mystique to the idea that in MTG, opportunity can reappear from any angle 🧙‍♂️.

Blue blink archetypes thrive when you can pair disruption with repeated value. Step Through embodies that philosophy: it’s a bounce spell with built-in search levers that let you sculpt your late game while keeping opponents guessing. Doors open both ways—the question is which way you’ll walk, and when.

Strategies for Building Around Step Through

In a blink-focused blue shell, you aren’t just trying to recast creatures for value—you’re curating a cycle of plays that punish aggro while leaving your own threats untouched. Step Through gives you several levers to pull:

• Tempo with purpose: bouncing two creatures can derail an opponent’s combat plan, especially when you pair it with counterspells or bounce-proof blockers. The tempo swing can buy enough time to deploy a bigger blink engine or wheel through your deck for answers 🎲.
• Wizardcycling as a tutor beacon: the Wizardcycling option lets you hunt for a Wizard card. Whether that’s a back-up control spell, another blink engine, or a defensive flier, you’ve added a targeted layer to your card selection that blue decks crave 🧙‍♂️.
• Typecycling for toolkit diversity: Typecycling broadens your reach beyond a single creature type. If you’re aiming to assemble a specific suite—be it a counterspell suite, draw engine, or utility creature—the type-based fetch helps you pivot mid-game without exhausting your library or hand.
• Synergy with repeatable blink engines: Combine Step Through with cards like Cloudblazer, Conjurer's Closet, or spells that exile and return creatures for additional ETB value. Each bounce becomes a spark that lights up a chain of re-entrances, why blue players love the color’s long-game mindset 🔥.

On the surface, Step Through might seem like a straightforward bounce spell, but its cycling engines turn it into a modular toolkit. In a metagame where players chase combo pieces or heavy removal, Step Through offers resilience: it’s not a one-shot—it's a bridge to a broader strategic arc. Add in a few classic blue staples—draw spells, counter magic, and selective flicker—and you’ve got a deck that can pivot from defense to decisive tempo plays in a single turn ⚔️.

Deck Architecture: How a Step Through Blueprint Might Look

Imagine a control-leaning blink deck where the goal is to stall the opponent while you assemble a late-game finisher. Step Through becomes the tempo valve that keeps your engine firing. You’d likely center on:

• Countermagic suite to protect your key plays
• Draw engines to refuel after each bounce chain
• Blink enablers to maximize ETB triggers from your own legends or utility creatures
• Wizard and non-Wizard targets to exploit Wizardcycling and Typecycling

With MH2’s broader design space, you can tailor your list to your local meta. The card’s rarity as common means it’s reasonably accessible for budget-minded players who want to dip their toes into blink archetypes without breaking the bank. The nostalgia-driven flavor of a card that features “Doors open both ways” resonates with longtime blue fans who remember when tempo decks ruled the meta—and it still has plenty of life in the modern landscape 🧊🎨.

Lore, Art, and Collectibility

Step Through’s flavor text is a reminder of MTG’s core mechanic: transition, reuse, and surprise. The art, a Randy Gallegos piece, captures the moment of passage—an elegant nod to how a well-timed bounce can change destiny in a single moment. Collectors will note its Modern Horizons 2 pedigree, with a common rarity that still carries a strong EDHRec footprint and modest market price around the $0.10–$0.25 range in non-foil form, offering an approachable entry into a blue blink narrative that’s aged surprisingly well 🧙‍♂️💎.

When you pull Step Through into a modern blink shell, you’re not just casting a spell—you’re scripting a sequence. You’re saying: I’ll bounce, I’ll cycle, I’ll fetch, and I’ll win through control and tempo. It’s the kind of decision that makes blue the most versatile color in the color pie for players who love planning three turns ahead while still answering threats in real time 🧭.

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