When you took a look at the Battle for Zendikar spoilers, what excited you the most? I’ll forgive you if it was a certain flying vampire or a particularly powerful Planeswalker, but I had my sights set on something a little bit spicier.

Bring to Light is a very exciting card.

With fetches, tri-lands, pain lands, and the new BFZ battle lands, we’re blessed with extremely strong mana bases in Standard at the moment. Three colour decks were fine before rotation, and with the help of our new tools, going up to four, or even five, is absolutely possible. Don’t get me wrong, five colour decks can still stumble on colours occasionally, and you need to be very careful with what you fetch for, but I think Bring to Light is a payoff that’s well worth the cost.

Allow me to digress for a moment and talk about the value of choices in Magic. Having options is having power. It’s what makes every card in the “Command” cycle so powerful—they give you multiple choices, and you can always choose the best one for the situation you’re in. That’s exactly what Bring to Light gives you, but the options aren’t printed on the card, they’re up to you to decide when you construct your deck!

Bring the right tools

So you’ve got your lovely new five-colour land base, you’ve got your 4 copies of Bring to Light, all that’s missing are some great targets for your versatile tutoring toolkit. Here are my picks for the top Bring to Light targets in standard:

Siege Rhino

Siege Rhino is probably the card you’ll search for the most using Bring to Light because it is good in the most situations. It’s good on an open board, it’s good when you’re a little bit behind, and it’s good when your opponent is on three life. But I’m sure by now you don’t need to be told why this card is so good!

Languish

Languish is a nice formidable sweeper that can clean up a packed board, and helpfully leaves all of your Siege Rhinos alive. It’s a great option against decks that go very wide very fast, such as elves or Atarka red.

Tragic Arrogance

Tragic Arrogance is another strong sweeper while you have a single creature on the board. You keep your best creature, they keep their worst. Simple.

Dragonlord Ojutai

Dragonlord Ojutai is great in topdeck wars and on stable boards where things have gone quiet and you don’t have a significant threat. Grab it when an opponent is low on resources and start burying them in card advantage.

Ugin’s insight

Speaking of card advantage, I like running an Ugin’s Insight in my Bring to Light deck as it allows me to reload quickly and grab some great tools for closing out the game when I’m in a stable position. While Ojutai is a great option on a stable, empty board, Insight is a better choice in a stagnant board where you have some high CMC permanents in play.

Crux of Fate

Crux of Fate is another nice board wipe that’s pretty great in any situation that enables you to grab a 2 + for 1. Where this really excels, is on boards where you have an Ojutai and your opponent has no dragons.

Utter End

While Utter End failed to make a huge impact when it first appeared in standard, it feels like now is its time to shine. With Hero’s Downfall gone and a shortage of strong instant-speed removal available, it’s looking better than ever. Grab this when you need to snipe a troublesome Hangarback Walker or a particularly problematic Planeswalker.

Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy

Didn’t expect to see a 2-drop here did you! Well, I think you’re probably not likely to see this happen often, but it’s still a semi-viable line of play. Picture the scene if you will; your game has ground to a halt, your graveyard is stacked, your hand is 1 bring to light, and your opponent is in a similarly bleak situation. By using BTL to grab a Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy you can flip it next turn and immediately flash Bring to Light back, and get things moving again.

This play is a bit like using Mystical Teachings to search up Mystical teachings, expect it’s probably not quite as good. It’s a last-ditch chance to grab some card advantage when all your other options are exhausted, but it’s an option to keep on your radar all the same.

The options are endless! (kind of)

Those are some pretty great choices for a 5 mana spell, and will probably be what you see Bring to Light searching up for most of its stay in Standard. But, the beauty of the card is in its flexibility. If you’ve got an idea for something you’d rather be searching for, you have the power to make that happen! I look forward to seeing what people do with the card. It’s certainly something I’m excited to start playing with, and from what I’ve seen around the internet so far, it seems a lot of other players are in the same boat.