Sanar, Innovative First-Year: 5 Cards Nobody Includes (But Should)

The Commander and What He's Looking For

Sanar, Innovative First-Year is an impulse draw engine baked right into the command zone. Each turn, he reveals the top X non-land cards from your library, where X depends on how many colors are represented among your permanents. In a standard Izzet deck you're sitting at 2 colors, so you reveal 2 cards — but slot in colored artifacts, multicolor creatures, or any permanent that contributes an extra color, and that number climbs fast.

The critical point: exiled cards can only be cast that turn. This pushes the deck toward a very specific philosophy — you want cards with immediate, high impact, preferably with unpredictable or scalable costs, and you want to maximize the number of colors represented among your permanents to broaden your reveal. This isn't a slow value engine: it's a cannon, and it needs to be loaded with the right ammunition.

5 Hidden Gems Worth Running

1. Goblin Recruiter

Most players read this as "goblin tutor" and treat it as an obvious inclusion. But the real synergy is something else entirely: Goblin Recruiter doesn't bring cards to hand — it puts cards on top of your library in any order you choose. With Sanar, that means you can literally set up the next N reveals however you like — pick which goblins (or any cards you want to surface) will appear, in exactly the right sequence, to be exiled and cast on the following turn. It's free setup for Sanar's trigger, not just a simple tutor. Extremely high synergy in brackets 3–4 where consistency is crucial.

2. Goblin Spy

Costs 1 mana and has an ability that looks almost forgettable: you may look at the top card of your library at any time. Yet with Sanar it becomes perfect vision: you always know exactly what the trigger will reveal, you can decide whether to play lands from hand so you don't waste a reveal slot, and you coordinate your turns with complete information. In competitive pods where every decision matters, having permanent free information is worth far more than zero. CMC 1 means it barely registers on your curve. Bracket 2–4; it shines most at fast tables where every scrap of information translates into better timing.

3. Creative Technique

This is the most underrated gem on the list. Creative Technique has parley: it reveals the top card of each player's library and puts it onto the battlefield if it's a nonland permanent. But the synergy with Sanar actually runs in another direction: it's a high-impact card in its own right that you can exile and cast during the trigger turn, and at CMC 5 it fits perfectly into the arc of a mid-game. More importantly — if you manage to cast it on a turn where the trigger reveals both it and another bomb, you're converting a single activation into a cascade of permanents. The synergy multiplier lies in the fact that the permanents entering the battlefield through Creative Technique potentially increase the number of colors on the board, raising X for subsequent turns. Bracket 3; excellent in pods with high curves.

4. Cait Sith, Fortune Teller

Legendary artifact creature (FF collab), CMC 4. The relevant ability: look at the top card of your library; you may put it on the bottom or leave it — repeated through scry-like prediction mechanics. With Sanar this acts as an active filter before the trigger fires: you can clear the top of your library of cards you don't want to exile (or that don't match the colors you need), ensuring Sanar's reveals always hit exactly the right material. It's the kind of technical synergy that doesn't jump out at first glance, but in practice it means your commander almost never fires blanks. Works well in brackets 2–3 where the library is dense and top-of-deck control is worth its weight in gold.

5. Dreamshaper Shaman

Enchantment creature, CMC 6, with an ability that at the beginning of each end step exiles the top card of your library — and you may cast it for free if it costs 6 or less. The synergy here is twofold: first, it adds a second impulse draw engine running in parallel with Sanar — two separate triggers examining your library every round. Second, Dreamshaper is both an enchantment and a creature, so it contributes two permanent types, and if it carries a relevant color via colored ramp, it also feeds into the X count. In a deck already built around multiple reveals, having redundancy on that axis is essential. Performs best in brackets 3–4 with slower pods where you have time to establish both engines.

What NOT to Add

Goblin Lore: It looks thematic (goblins + card reveal), but randomly discarding 4 cards when your plan revolves around exiling specific cards off Sanar's trigger is the opposite of what you want. You lose material you would have wanted to cast.

Mass Polymorph: The "flipping" impulse of Mass Polymorph seems like it combos with a reveal engine, but it requires separate setup (sacrificeable creatures) that doesn't support Sanar's main plan. It's a standalone win-con that pulls the deck in a different direction rather than an amplifier.

Muxus, Goblin Grandee: Incredibly powerful in goblin tribal, but Sanar is not a tribal deck — it's an impulse deck that uses goblins as a frame. Muxus only works when you have a critical mass of low-cost goblins, and building around him pulls focus away from optimizing the reveal engine.

Verdict

Sanar is a commander that rewards players willing to think of the library as an active resource, not a passive reservoir. The 5 gems above aren't tribal support or generic ramp — they are cogs that increase the precision, depth, or redundancy of the central trigger. Players who build the deck with a clear understanding of what gets revealed, when, and why will transform a first-year goblin into a war machine.