Transfigure is an odd mechanic from Magic's oddest set, Future Sight. Transfigure's rules text reads "Transfigure COST (COST, sacrifice this creature: Search your library for a creature card with the same mana value as this creature, put that card onto the battlefield, then shuffle. Transfigure only as a sorcery." Like other Future Sight mechanics, Transfigure exists on exactly one card: Fleshwrither. That's it. End of list. Unlike other Future Sight mechanics, though, Fleshwrither isn't overpowered, confusing, or obsoleted by other mechanics. The question then becomes: why has Transfigure not returned, even as a one-off in a Modern Horizons set or in a Commander preconstructed deck?

Transfigure decreases variance, increases shuffling time, and rewards combo decks, which doesn't fully align with Wizards of the Coast's current design priorities. Fleshwrither is a conservative use of the mechanic--you have to land and protect a mana-intensive Hill Giant before you can pay to sacrifice it to find your tutor target--but it's easy to imagine a few more Transfigure creatures that are more efficient or can find more dangerous cards. Even Fleshwrither is no slouch, as putting the creature directly into play is huge. Assuming you're playing the Fleshwriter on-curve and sacrificing it the next turn, that leaves you with two open mana to protect whatever you tutored up. There are over 3,500 creatures with a mana value of four that Fleshwrither can find in Commander, of which the top targets include:

• Luminous Broodmoth
• Enduring Curiosity
• Phyrexian Metamorph
• Sakashima of a Thousand Faces
• Urza, Lord High Artificer
• Spark Double
• Mirkwood Bats
• Pitiless Plunderer
• Sheoldred, the Apocalypse
• Yawgmoth, Thran Physician
• Ojer Axonil, Deepest Might
• Icetill Explorer
• Timeless Witness
• Hostage Taker
• Roaming Throne
• Solemn Simulacrum

There are several dozen more I could list but suffice to say the four-drop slot in Commander is stacked, and if your deck has a Black-inclusive color identity and takes advantage of creatures dying or the graveyard, Fleshwrither is worth a look. There are cheaper and easier ways to find a Roaming Throne or a Spark Double, but they don't let you do it every turn in conjunction with Oversold Cemetery or Palace Siege.

Transfigure's design begins back in Urza's Destiny. Urza's Block introduced Cycling, which let you pay two generic mana to discard a card from your hand to draw a new card. As the block expanded with Urza's Legacy and Urza's Destiny, the block played around with the Cycling space. In Urza's Destiny, as designed by the one-man design team of Mark Rosewater, that culminated in creatures like Heart Warden, Yavimaya Elder, and Brass Secretary that let you pay two generic mana and sacrifice them to draw a card--essentially, they Cycled not from hand, but from the battlefield. Here's the issue with that: it required you to have them on the battlefield.

Cycling is beautiful because it lets you cash a useless or difficult-to-cast spell in for a new card for a cheap and simple payment. If Darkwatch Elves is outclassed or your opponent isn't playing Black, you can pay two at instant speed to try to get something better. If you've already spent two mana on a bad Llanowar Elves, paying another two mana and sacrificing your Heart Warden isn't as appealing. Rosewater's concept was strong at times, though--Yavimaya Elder was nicknamed the "Green Ancestral Recall," as it let you chump block (or even trade with a 2/2, back when damage went on the stack) and then sacrifice itself for two lands and another card. If you were desperate, you could even cast it for 1GG then sacrifice it immediately--it's a steep price for three cards, but Green has gotten worse deals. That on-board upgrade carries forward in Fleshwrither--a 3/3 for four isn't exciting, but it can attack until outclassed and then trade up for a better creature.

The other half of Transfigure's design, as suggested by the name, is Ravnica: City of Guild's Transmute. Wizards was gunshy of tutors after the reign of Trix decks--which used the hyperefficient Vampiric Tutor to land the combo--and the efficient tutors that had defined the early years of the game and made assembling combos trivial, from Demonic Tutor to Demonic Consultation to Enlightened Tutor. Odyssey's Diabolic Tutor doubled the cost of Demonic Tutor and established a baseline for a fair tutor (even if the set's Entomb was the true new Demonic Tutor), and set the stage for the restrictive tutor model of Transmute, which let you turn cards with Transmute into cards with the same mana value by paying the Transmute cost and discarding the card at sorcery speed. None of these saw much play, but they were interesting in their open-endedness--Clutch of the Undercity, an overcosted Boomerang with a life loss effect tacked on, is a good analogue for our friend Fleshwrither. If you don't need a hybrid Boomerang-Lava Spike, then cash it in for a Jace, the Mind Sculptor. Of course, Transfigure is backwards Transmute--Transmute, you pay three mana to tutor something up and then presumably cast it on turn four, while with Transfigure, you pay four to play Fleshwrither, and then spend three the next turn to find and put your target onto the battlefield.

That's not the only issue--Transfigure, unlike Urza's Destiny's "Cycle from play" cards, requires you to activate it at sorcery speed. That's a legitimate disadvantage--you can't chump block and Transfigure mid-combat--but it makes sense, as Transmute was also sorcery speed only, and hypothetically Transfiguring up a Skinrender or Ravenous Chupacabra during combat would be a little swingy. From a flavor perspective, Transfigure is a bit odd, too--while the mechanic name is flavor-agnostic, suggesting shapeshifting, requiring a sacrifice makes it feel very fatal and much closer to Emerge or Offering.

Where is Fleshwrither/Transfigure at its best? If you're trying to find a Mirkwood Bats or a Pitiless Plunderer in a single turn, you're paying 3BBBB, which is steep, but is still the same price as finding your four-drop with Grim Tutor and casting it. Transfiguring Fleshwrither triggers any death effects--Fleshwrither is an all-start in my Savra, Queen of the Golgari deck, where it finds Yawgmoth, Thran Physician or Meren of Clan Nel Toth and triggers my Grave Pact/Savra/Dictate of Erebos--and provides a body for later reanimation. "Gets you closer to Threshold/Delirium" is the graveyard player's equivalent of "dies to Doom Blade," but a Fleshwrither in the graveyard is often going to be better than a Vampiric Tutor in the graveyard. Fleshwrither is the epitome of a role-player card: not every deck would consider it, but the decks that want it can exploit it quite well. Teysa Karlov, Meren of Clan Nel Toth, and especially Etrata, the Silencer can use the Transfiguring Horror well, and its stock only goes up as Wizards prints more and more relevant four-drops. A recent interaction I love: not only can you Transfigure Fleshwrither to find Elegy Acolyte, but it triggers the Acolyte's Void ability the same turn.

Where does Transfigure go from here? As of 2018, Mark Rosewater is on record that Wizards R&D isn't interested in printing tutoring mechanics like Transmute and Transfigure, which explains why Transfigure hasn't yet returned in force. Indeed, in 2016, he noted that it's a 9 on the Storm Scale, meaning a minor miracle would be needed for it to return. Still, those comments were pre-Modern Horizons, pre-Universes Beyond, and pre-Jumpstart. Transfigure is a perfect target for a Modern Horizons set, where it could show up to enable a sacrifice theme in Limited, or could return as a cameo mechanic, a la Massacre Girl, Known Killer. It could even turn up as part of the text of a splashy Jumpstart Legend or as a version of Mystique in an upcoming X-Men set. Magic is more open to one-off designs currently than it has been since Future Sight, and Transfigure is nothing if not open-ended.