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Soaring through the Enchantment and Artifact Landscape: Wind Sail and friends
If you’ve ever built a blue tempo deck that wants to punch above its weight class, Wind Sail is the kind of card that makes you grin before you even untap. This Starter 1999 gem—costing only {1}{U} and arriving as an uncommon in the white-bordered Starter set—asks you to think in terms of tempo, projection, and the tiny wins that compound into momentum. One or two target creatures gain flying until end of turn. It’s not flashy, but it’s deceptively potent: a two-for-one tempo spell that can swing a battlefield by granting evasive reach when you need it most. 🧙🔥💎⚔️
Wind Sail sits at the intersection of deck design and rules finesse. In a world full of counters, removal, and haste-blessed threats, the ability to hand two of your creatures a temporary flight path can be the difference between riding a slick tempo curve and watching your opponent stabilize on the ground. The flavor text—“It pays to be at home both on the sea and in the sky.”—isn’t just poetry; it speaks to the card’s core use: mobility and surprise. When you’re playing with enchantments and artifacts, that mobility becomes a throughline for how you value the battlefield as a whole. 🎨
Interacting with enchantments and artifacts: what really happens when wings appear
Enchantments and artifacts form a big chunk of MTG’s “sticky” board presence. Auras attach to creatures to grant evasion, pump, or utility; artifacts—often as equipment or totemic accelerants—shape combat phases, mana flows, and card advantage. Wind Sail interacts with these layers in a straightforward, rules-consistent way that savvy players can exploit for meaningful tempo swings.
- Temporary flying by Wind Sail: The effect lasts only until end of turn, not permanently. If you’ve got an aura granting flying to your creatures, Wind Sail’s grant is independent and stacks in the sense that your creatures will have flying twice if both effects apply simultaneously—but in MTG, the rules care about continuous effects, not literal stacking badges. The practical upshot is simple: don’t rely on Wind Sail alone to win long games; use it to punch through blockers or to push through a last-minute alpha strike.
- Enchantments that grant flying and Wind Sail together: When you enchant a creature with an aura that already grants flying, Wind Sail can still target another flying creature or a non-flying creature to give it wings for a turn. If an aura later stops granting flying (for example, a removal spell hits the enchantment), the Wind Sail grants on that turn still stands for its duration. This is a classic case of temporary, rule-consistent layering: multiple sources can grant or deny abilities, but the effects that say “until end of turn” are independent of the source.
- Artifacts and flying-capable boards: Artifacts don’t usually grant flying by themselves, but they’re often the engines behind big turns—think mana rocks, card draw artifacts, or equipment that enables efficient combat. With Wind Sail, you can give two creatures—perhaps a pair of utility creatures or a valuable early-game beater—targeted evasion to threaten big turns even when your board doesn’t have outright fliers. The fact that Wind Sail is a spell that you cast on your own turn adds the element of surprise; your opponent suddenly deals with two flying threats or blocks poorly defended attackers. 🎲
- Targeting considerations: Since Wind Sail targets, you need to be mindful of protections like shroud or hexproof. If a potential target can’t be targeted, you’ll need to adapt. The two-target flexibility is your friend here—save one target for a guaranteed evasive threat and use the second on a creature you’re trying to push through with a well-timed swing.
In practice, the most satisfying Wind Sail moments come when you surprise your opponent with two unexpected evasive attackers just after their removal spell clears the way for a precise alpha strike. It’s slow-blue tempo distilled into a single, clean moment: cast, target two creatures, and suddenly your ground state is no longer relevant—the sky becomes your ally for a fleeting turn. And because it’s from Starter 1999, it carries that nostalgic charm: a pointer to a time when Magic’s color wheel was still learning to sing in harmony with the art and story. 💎
“A card that makes the sea and the sky trade places for a moment—now that’s blue magic.”
Flavor aside, Wind Sail also invites a practical conversation about set design and how enchantments and artifacts shape tempo. The card’s modest mana cost and the freedom to select one or two targets give players a straightforward tool for board control without overrelying on the top of the library or a hard-to-resolve chain of fetches. It’s a quintessential blue spell from a Starter set that emphasized clean, interactive play, and it remains a cheerful reminder of why flying has always been such a coveted strategic dimension in MTG. 🧙🔥
Format implications and value: where Wind Sail fits in today’s table
Wind Sail is legal in legacy, vintage, and commander, and it sees occasional love in casual and budget-focused builds. Its rarity is uncommon, and the print in Starter 1999 means the card is more about nostalgia and niche synergy than staple play in modern decks. The card’s art by Matt Stawicki, combined with its white-bordered frame from the 1997-era design language, invites collectors to consider a piece of Magic’s late-90s white-border era as a place to explore and reminisce. While the current price points on major trackers show modest value for nonfoil copies, the true value of Wind Sail in a deck is the flexibility it offers to bend tempo in a hurry. In a world of megacombos and complex synergy decks, sometimes a simple two-target flying grant can feel like a breath of fresh air in a crowded format. And yes, it’s still a valid win condition moment when perched on a couple of airborne threats. 🎨
Beyond the card itself, the Starter 1999 set represents a particular era of Magic design—where small, elegant tools could shift the tempo of a single turn and inspire players to experiment with timing, targets, and interactions with enchantments and artifacts. For modern players, Wind Sail remains a friendly reminder that sometimes the most memorable plays come from a carefully timed spell that makes a couple of creatures fly “just for a turn.”
Curious to expand your collection or test Wind Sail in a casual blue tempo shell? If you’re shopping for practical, real-world gear off the battlefield, consider treating yourself to a neat, modern gadget while you draft—like the 2-in-1 UV Phone Sanitizer + Wireless Charger—a wink to the way clever, compact tools can upgrade your setup as you upgrade your board. 🧙♂️🪄