I'm back once more to cover the best Magic: the Gathering cards of 2024! This year has been a major one for the game across just about every format. Few colors better exemplify this than Blue. Long known as the best of the five colors, Blue is almost always sure to have some big hitters among the bunch. Admittedly, many of the best Blue cards of this year feel a lot more quaint, utilizing simple effects that nevertheless have massive impacts across several formats. As a result, there's plenty to discuss here, so let's have a look at some of the best this year has had to offer for Magic's most powerful color!

5. Pollywog Prodigy

I debated giving this slot to some of the more competitive cards, but I think this one deserves a pretty strong shout out. Pollywog Prodigy is very much a Commander-focused card, but it's one that's extremely good for that specific format. Not only does it get bigger the longer a game goes on, but it also draws you ridiculous amounts of cards as your opponents cast spells. Even something as simple as a mana rock will likely net you extra draws. That makes this card get out of hand fast, completely dominating whatever game it's played in and has driven its price up considerably as a result.

4. Three Steps Ahead

Modal spells rock, and Three Steps Ahead exemplifies this perfectly. Most of the time, you'll see this cast as little more than a Cancel. As games go long, though, it can be five mana to counter a spell and then draw and discard a card. If there's nothing you want to counter, you can simply do the looting as well. If the situation especially calls for it, you can even clone a creature for some rock solid value. Three Steps Ahead has become one of the key cards in Blue decks in both Standard and Pioneer for good reason, and it's easily one of the best designs of the year by a large margin.

3. Consign to Memory

There was a time when Ceremonious Rejection was a huge card for the Modern meta. Players ran it to deal with powerful artifacts and the then ongoing menace of Eldrazi. Consign to Memory takes this and builds on it tremendously, allowing players to also hit triggered abilities. While this is clearly meant to primarily deal with the likes of the Eldrazi from Modern Horizons 3, it's also proved tremendous at stopping powerful artifacts like The One Ring and shutting down crucial abilities as well. This has made it a runaway staple in Modern, Legacy, Vintage, and Commander. An easy pick for a list like this.

2. Simulacrum Synthesizer

I'd hardly say Simulacrum Synthesizer is the best card from an overall gameplay perspective. It's not played in top decks anywhere and is seen as more of a fun and somewhat casual build-around. But that's why I think it deserves to be rated so highly. Cards like Consign to Memory and Three Steps Ahead are great workhorse nuts and bolts cards that act as the glue to hold decks together. Compared to Simulacrum Synthesizer, though, they're dull and boring. Synthesizer ended up being a big player in artifact heavy Standard and Modern decks, as well as just about every artifact Commander deck running Blue in it. A big winner for the cool and unique decks it enabled throughout the year.

1. Abhorrent Oculus

Remember Skaab Ruinator? The card was hyped as one of the best cards in the original Innistrad set as a cheap, large creature. Turns out it was harder to get online than people expected, as the need to exile cards from your graveyard proved more difficult than it looked. Many players had flashbacks to the Ruinator when the Oculus was previewed and as a result, many remained skeptical of whether or not the card was good or not.

It didn't take very long for people to realize that the card was indeed as good as it looked. Not being limited to needing to exile creatures meant you could run Oculus in a more spell-heavy deck and cast it with ease. This made it a nearly instant powerhouse in Standard, Pioneer, Modern, and even Legacy! It's rare to see a brand new card from a Standard-legal set impact so many formats in an instant, making it an easy pick for the best Blue card of the year.

Paige Smith

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