Skittering Cicada: How It Expands Its Plane's Culture

In TCG ·

Skittering Cicada art by Denis Zhbankov, a colorless insect creature with glowing wings and a gleaming exoskeleton

Image courtesy of Scryfall.com

From hush to hype: Skittering Cicada and the colorless plane’s evolving culture

In the sprawling tapestry of Magic: The Gathering, some cards aren’t about big haymakers or flashy lines of play. They’re about shaping the culture of a whole plane. Skittering Cicada, a rare creature from Commander Masters, embodies that idea with quiet confidence 🧙‍♂️. A 3-mana 2/2 insect with Flash, it invites a world where colorless spells aren’t niche tricks but the heartbeat of a deck’s identity. When your board is humming with colorless energy, this little flyer becomes more than a stat line—it becomes a cultural ambassador for a plane that prizes efficiency, artifact-driven wonder, and improvisational tempo 🔥.

The card’s body is straightforward: {3} mana for a colorless creature that can swing in with surprising force. Its real magic rests in its aura of possibility. “Flash” lets you surprise opponents by weaving in plays at instant speed, but Skittering Cicada’s ability expands that idea: you may cast colorless spells as though they had flash. That subtle rule tweak shifts how you think about sequencing—no longer are colorless plays constrained to your turn. You can respond, ramp, or press advantage in ways that feel sneaky and elegant, almost like the wingbeats of the Cicada signaling a stealthy cultural shift on its plane. And when you do cast a colorless spell, until end of turn, this creature gains trample and a temporary boost equal to the spell’s mana value. The result is a creature that scales with your artifact-heavy ambitions, turning every colorless drop into a potential torrent on the battlefield ⚔️💎.

Strategic angles: building around colorless spells

Skittering Cicada excels in low-commitment, high-variance strategies that reward careful planning and bold improvisation. The core idea is simple: cast colorless spells to feed the Cicada’s power spike while leveraging flash to keep opponents honest. Because the buff is +X/+X and trample for the turn, the bigger your colorless spell, the more dramatic the tempo swing. Think along the lines of formidable colorless finishers, massive mana rocks, or other legendary artifacts that push your mana value into the stratosphere. Each time you drop a colorless spell, you threaten a sudden crescendo from the Cicada, and that cadence keeps defenses guessing 🎲.

  • Tempo with a twist: use Flash-enabled colorless plays to threaten your opponent’s life total while keeping up blockers. A well-timed ramp spell followed by a surprise Cicada pump can flip a board state in a single swing.
  • Big-spell payoff: aim for high-mana-value colorless spells to maximize the +X/+X on the buff. Casting a heavy artifact spell becomes a two-step victory—first you set the stage, then you ride the Cicada’s empowered attack to push through damage.
  • Artifact synergy: leverage a toolkit of colorless accelerants and creatures that maximize your colorless synergy. The deck can lean into the craft of artifact culture—focusing on resilience, tempo, and elegant, mechanical flourish.
  • Commander Masters flavor: as a rare in a Masters set, Skittering Cicada fits naturally into EDH/Commander builds that celebrate legendary creatures, artifact interactions, and clever combat math, all while staying thematically true to a plane that values function over flamboyance.

Flavor-wise, the art and text paint a plane where cycles of life and machinery intertwine. The Cicada feels like a traveler between disciplines—a native of both the wild and the workshop. Its gleaming, translucent wings echo the neon shimmer of modern gear, and its presence signals a culture that respects the quiet power of colorless magic as a distinct art form 🧙‍♂️🎨. The card’s rhythm is a call to players to embrace restraint as a path to brilliance, a reminder that sometimes the most profound cultural shifts come from small, precise moves rather than a single thunderous blow 🔥.

Flavor, art, and card design: what makes Skittering Cicada sing

Denis Zhbankov’s illustration for Skittering Cicada captures a moment of poised intent. The insect’s shells catch light in a way that feels almost architectural, as if the creature is a living artifact—an emblem of a plane’s identity where pragmatism meets wonder. The Flash keyword and the conditional buff on colorless spells are a masterclass in design economy: you don’t need color-pie gimmicks or multi-colored mana to create memorable, meaningful gameplay. The card rewards players who lean into artifact culture, who see colorless as not a fallback but a deliberate, stylish choice. It’s a reminder that MTG’s colorlessness is more than a lack of color—it’s a design philosophy with its own flair 🧙‍♂️💎.

As a Commander Masters specimen, Skittering Cicada also highlights how Wizards of the Coast reimagines familiar mechanics for new contexts. The plane’s culture can tilt toward rapid, modular play, where the tempo of colorless spells shapes the ecosystem around it. The rarity and presence in a modern Masters set further suggest a collecting charm: this is not merely a competitive card but a conversation piece about how colorless identities evolve in the game’s narrative and in players’ decks.

Collector value and playability notes

With a market price hovering in the teens to around ten dollars historically, Skittering Cicada sits in a sweet spot for EDH players who love flavor and reliability in a colorless shell. Its flash-enabled niche is broad enough to slot into a variety of builds and its rarity as a rare in Commander Masters keeps it aspirational for collectors who enjoy chasing unique interactions—where one well-timed colorless spell can tilt a whole encounter. For players who enjoy the interplay of speed, surprise, and synergy, this Cicada is a little engine with a big voice—quiet, but capable of turning the tide with a well-timed ramp spell or a giant artifact draw. And yes, those who delight in plane-wide culture-building will appreciate how a single card can shift a community’s expectations about what colorless magic can do 🚀.

For fans who want to explore more about how colorless strategy can shape playstyles and deck-building narratives, the accompanying articles in our network offer a broader lens on card advantage, audience-first design, and the evolving aesthetics of digital and physical MTG culture. And if you’re looking to carry a little MTG energy into your everyday carry, consider style-forward protection for your devices—the neon vibe of the linked product below pairs nicely with the electric pace of colorless strategies.

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