Professor Zei, Anthropologist

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Professor Zei is a 2cmc UR hybrid looter (tap + discard to draw) with a sorcery-speed sacrifice ability that retrieves one instant or sorcery from your graveyard. The looting ability is useful in spellslinger and wheels shells that want to cycle through cards, while the sacrifice mode provides modest spell recursion. However, both abilities are slow and the self-sacrifice is a one-shot payoff, limiting Zei to fringe territory even in its best homes.

• The looting ability has no mana cost — only {T} + discard — making it free to activate in untap-heavy or Jeskai/UR shells, which meaningfully distinguishes it from most looters that cost {1} or more.

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• The sacrifice recursion is sorcery-speed only (explicitly restricted to your turn) and self-destructs the creature, so it cannot be used as a repeatable engine; treat it as a one-shot graveyard tutor attached to a looter body.

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• Professor Zei's hybrid {U/R}{U/R} cost means it fits in mono-blue, mono-red, or Izzet Commander/Brawl decks, giving it broader color-identity flexibility than its blue-heavy playstyle suggests.

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• EDHREC rank: #10,872