Magic the Gathering Card Analysis: Kitsune Mystic/Autumn-Tail, Kitsune Sage

The Magic: The Gathering card Kitsune Mystic is a flip card from the Champions of Kamigawa expansion set. Flip cards come into play as ordinary creatures, but become powerful legendary creatures when certain conditions are met. Kitsune Mystic is a 2/3 fox wizard creature with a casting cost of one white mana and three colorless mana. If it has two or more auras attached at the end of a turn, Kitsune Mystic flips and becomes Autumn-Tail, Kitsune Sage.

Autumn-Tail, Kitsune Sage is a 4/5 legendary fox wizard creature with a very powerful ability. You can pay one colorless mana to move an aura enchantment from one creature to another. This ability is very cheap to activate and can be used in several different ways.

First, you can move aura enchantments off of Autumn-Tail, Kitsune Sage and onto other creatures. Now that the conditions have been met and the card has flipped, you may no longer need these enchantments. With Autumn-Tail, Kitsune Sage's ability, you can attach them to other creatures you control.

Second, you can move enchantments from creatures you control to other creatures you control in order to boost their power or give them special abilities. For instance, if you attached an aura such as Dragon Breath which gives a creature haste, you can move it to a creature you have just cast from your hand, making the haste ability continually useful.

Third, you can move aura enchantments which your opponents have cast. For example, your opponent might cast Guilty Conscience on a creature you control, which causes the creature to deal as much damage to itself whenever it deals damage. You can move this aura enchantment to a creature your opponent controls. You can also move beneficial enchantments from your opponents' creatures and use them to boost your own creatures.

This is also very useful because you can remove an aura enchantment from a creature that is about to be destroyed, sacrificed, or returned to its owner's hand. Normally this would cause the aura enchantment to be destroyed, as it has nothing to attach to.

However, with Autumn-Tail, Kitsune Sage, you can move beneficial enchantments around to other creatures you control and cause harmful enchantments to do damage to more of your opponents' creatures. You can even keep aura enchantments on Autumn-Tail, Kitsune Sage while you wait to cast a creature spell for which it would be more useful. This ability makes Kitsune Mystic/Autumn-Tail, Kitsune Sage a very powerful card for white decks.

Sources

• Flip cards from MTG Salvation Wiki
• Flip Service from Daily MTG
• MagicCards.info