Sygg, River Cuttroath gets another potential card draw, bringing you 66.66% (repeating of course) of the way there simply by counterspelling
I have no problem spending bigger amounts of money on the cards if I can afford it (as long as Im not being ripped off) and I have no plan to flip the cards, at least within the next 20 or so years
Another angle is to play with some of those suspend cards with no mana cost, like Ancestral Vision, Crashing Footfalls, Resurgent Belief, Lotus Bloom, or Mox Tantalite, and get a zero-mana creature in the graveyard for Ellie and Alan to discover them with
Modified is going to show up in most color combinations with +1/+1 counter themes, but it is especially necessary for red
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