MTG Scry, Surveil, Explore and Connive guide image showing a blue mage controlling a magical deck, shaping future draws with card selection, clues, counters, tokens, and discovery effects.

MTG Scry, Surveil, Explore & Connive Guide

Eight Magic: The Gathering mechanics let you shape what happens next — the top of your library, your hand, your board, your counters. None of them do it the same way, and the differences are precise: one sends cards to the bottom, another to the graveyard; one grows a creature, another copies a token; one is a free-form choice, another is a strict comparison against a number.

This guide covers scry, surveil, explore, investigate, connive, proliferate, populate, and discover — with exactly what each lets you do and the rules that separate them.

This is the thirteenth article in our series on advanced MTG mechanics, following our guides to cascade and storm, unearth and persist, and devour and amass.

Part One: Shaping the Top of Your Library

Scry

Scry N means: look at the top N cards of your library, then put any number of them on the bottom in any order and the rest on top in any order.

  • Every card you look at goes somewhere you chose — either the top (in whatever order you like) or the bottom (in whatever order you like). Nothing leaves your library.
  • Scry 0 does nothing at all, and doesn't even count as a scry event for abilities that trigger "whenever you scry."
  • If multiple players scry at the same time, they all look at the top of their own libraries simultaneously and make their decisions in turn order.

Surveil

Surveil N means: look at the top N cards of your library, then put any number of them into your graveyard and the rest on top in any order.

The single difference from scry that matters most: surveil never sends cards to the bottom of your library — only to the graveyard or back on top. That makes surveil a strictly graveyard-focused tool, while scry is purely about hiding unwanted cards away from your draws.

  • You choose the order for cards kept on top, exactly as with scry.
  • Cards sent to the graveyard are not discarded. Surveil puts cards from the top of your library into your graveyard. They were never drawn and never discarded, so effects that care about discarding a card from hand do not see this.
  • An ability that triggers "whenever you surveil" fires after the whole process finishes, even if you had fewer cards left in your library than the number specified.

Explore

Explore is a keyword action: reveal the top card of your library. If it's a land, put it into your hand. Otherwise, put a +1/+1 counter on the exploring creature, then choose whether to put the revealed card back on top or into your graveyard.

  • The counter is guaranteed on a nonland reveal — you always get it, regardless of what you then do with the card.
  • Only the choice of top-or-graveyard is optional when a nonland is revealed; everything else about the process is automatic.
  • A nonland explore feels similar to surveil 1, but it is not surveil. You get the +1/+1 counter, then choose whether the revealed nonland card stays on top or goes to your graveyard. It will not trigger abilities that care about surveilling.

Part Two: Card Advantage on a Delay

Investigate

Investigate means: create a Clue token. A Clue is a colorless artifact with "{2}, Sacrifice this artifact: Draw a card."

  • It's card advantage you bank for later, not an immediate draw. The Clue sits on the battlefield as a real permanent until you choose to cash it in.
  • Because it's an artifact, it interacts with artifact synergies — cost reducers, sacrifice payoffs, and anything that counts your artifacts all see a Clue as a genuine one.
  • To stop someone from getting the Clue, you have to answer the source — counter the spell or stop the triggered ability that causes the investigation. Once the Clue exists, it's just an artifact like any other.

Connive

Connive means: draw a card, then discard a card. If the discarded card was a nonland card, put a +1/+1 counter on the conniving permanent.

  • The counter is conditional on what you discard, not on what you draw. Draw a land and discard a nonland, and you still get the counter — the check only looks at the card leaving your hand.
  • It genuinely draws first. This means connive can find you a better card to keep before you have to decide what to discard, unlike effects that make you discard blind.
  • Discarding a land gives you the card selection with no counter. Connive still does its filtering job either way; the counter is simply a bonus for discarding something else.

Part Three: Spreading and Copying

Proliferate

To proliferate means: choose any number of permanents and/or players that already have a counter, then give each of them one more counter of every kind they already have.

  • It doesn't target. Proliferate simply asks you to choose, as the ability resolves — so hexproof, shroud, and protection do not stop your own permanents or an opponent's poison-laden creature from being chosen.
  • It never creates a new kind of counter. Proliferate only adds to counters that are already there. A permanent with zero counters gets nothing, no matter how you'd like to help it.
  • You choose which permanents and players, individually. You are never forced to proliferate everything with a counter — you could add to your own +1/+1 counters while leaving an opponent's poison counters alone.
  • Doubling Season is the classic proliferate partner — it doesn't have proliferate itself, but because it doubles any effect that would put counters on your permanents, the single counter proliferate adds becomes two. It's a combo of two separate cards, not one mechanic doing double duty.

Populate

To populate means: choose a creature token you control and create a token that's a copy of it.

  • Only tokens qualify. A real, nontoken creature card can never be the source of populate, no matter how impressive it is.
  • If you control no creature tokens, nothing happens. Populate isn't wasted exactly, but it produces no effect if there's nothing eligible to copy.
  • If a token you just created is itself part of the same effect, you may copy that new token — some cards create a token and then instruct you to populate in the same breath.
  • Copying a token copy uses that token's copiable values. If the token you populate is already a copy of another creature, the new token will usually copy that same underlying creature. It does not copy counters, Auras, Equipment, temporary boosts, or other non-copy modifications on the token.

Discover

Discover N means: exile cards from the top of your library until you exile a nonland card with mana value N or less. You may cast that card without paying its mana cost; if you don't, put it into your hand instead. Put the rest of the exiled cards on the bottom of your library in a random order.

Discover is close cousins with cascade, which we cover in depth in our cascade guide, but the differences are worth knowing exactly:

  • The threshold is "N or less," not "strictly less than." Cascade requires the found card to have a lower mana value than the cascading spell. Discover only cares whether the found card's mana value is at or below the fixed number N — the two spells don't need to be related at all.
  • You get a real choice, not just cast-or-bottom. If you decide not to cast the discovered card for free, it goes to your hand rather than being lost — cascade's declined card goes to the bottom with everything else.
  • The remaining cards go to the bottom in random order, same as cascade, rather than being ordered by you.

Quick Reference

Mechanic What it does Cards can go to
Scry Look and rearrange the top of your library Top or bottom of library
Surveil Look and filter the top of your library Top of library or graveyard
Explore Reveal one card; land to hand, else counter + choice Hand, top of library, or graveyard
Investigate Create a Clue token (banked card draw) N/A — creates an artifact
Connive Draw, then discard for a possible counter Hand, then graveyard
Proliferate Add to counters that already exist N/A — adds counters
Populate Copy a creature token you control N/A — creates a token
Discover N Find a nonland card with mana value N or less Battlefield/stack, hand, or bottom of library

Why These Matter in Commander

Scry and surveil are the backbone of consistency in a 100-card singleton deck, where you can never rely on drawing multiples of anything. Surveil edges out scry for graveyard-focused decks specifically because filling the graveyard is a bonus, not a cost.

Investigate is a resilient form of card advantage — a Clue sitting on the battlefield survives most forms of hand disruption and can be cashed in exactly when you need it, which is valuable in the long, high-interaction games Commander produces.

Proliferate is the reason counters decks want redundancy over raw size. A single proliferate effect is mediocre with one counter type on the board, but explosive once you have several permanents and players carrying counters — poison, loyalty, +1/+1, energy, all at once.

Populate rewards token generators that make good tokens, not just lots of tokens — a single powerful token copied by populate is worth more than five mediocre ones.

Discover is a genuine value engine at any point in the curve, since finding a card and choosing between casting it free or banking it in hand gives more flexibility than cascade's all-or-nothing cast.

You can find the pieces for these strategies in our full catalogue, or import your decklist directly with our decklist search tool. Preordain is a great low-cost example of scry in action, pairing scry 2 with a card draw for a single blue mana.

Frequently Asked Questions

What's the actual difference between scry and surveil?

Scry lets you put unwanted cards on the bottom of your library, out of the way but still in the deck. Surveil lets you put unwanted cards into your graveyard instead — which is worse for card availability but much better if you have graveyard synergies, since those cards become immediately usable by recursion effects.

Does explore always give a +1/+1 counter?

Only if the revealed card is not a land. Revealing a land skips the counter entirely and puts the land straight into your hand instead. Revealing anything else always gives the counter, regardless of what you then choose to do with that card.

Does connive's counter depend on what I draw?

No — only on what you discard. You draw a card first, then discard one; if the discarded card is a nonland, you get the counter. What you drew has no bearing on whether the counter appears.

Can proliferate target a creature with hexproof?

Yes. Proliferate doesn't target — you simply choose permanents and players as the ability resolves. This means hexproof, shroud, and protection from everything do nothing to stop a permanent from being chosen, as long as it already has at least one counter.

Can populate copy a non-token creature?

No. Populate only works on creature tokens you control. A real card, no matter how powerful, is never a legal source for populate — only actual tokens qualify.

What's the real difference between discover and cascade?

Discover checks the found card's mana value against a fixed number, using "or less" rather than "strictly less than" — it doesn't compare against the discover spell's own mana value at all. It also lets you choose to put the found card in your hand instead of casting it, where cascade's declined card is lost to the bottom of your library with everything else.

More guides in our advanced mechanics series:

Related guides:

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