Scry

Scry is a keyword action that lets you look at the top card or cards of your library and decide whether to keep each one on top or put it on the bottom, in any order you like. “Scry 2” means you look at the top two cards and can bury however many of them you don’t want.

It’s one of the cleanest pieces of card selection in Magic, smoothing out draws without actually drawing extra cards, which is why it shows up on lands, spells and abilities across almost every set.

How Scry Works in Practice

When you scry, you look at the specified number of cards first, then decide on each one individually whether it stays on top or goes to the bottom. You can reorder the cards you keep however you like, which matters when you’re setting up your next two or three draw steps rather than just the next one.

Scry is especially strong on lands, since it effectively lets a land also improve your next draw, smoothing the awkward gap between having too many lands and not having enough.

Scry vs Surveil

Scry and Surveil both let you look at the top of your library, but they send unwanted cards to different places. Scry buries a card you don’t want, while Surveil puts it in the graveyard, which matters enormously for decks that want cards in the bin for Recursion or Reanimator strategies.

If a deck cares about the graveyard, Surveil is doing double duty as both selection and self-mill, whereas Scry is purely about improving what you draw next.