The 34 Best Flicker And Blink Cards in Magic Ranked

Last updated on January 3, 2025

Ephemerate | Illustration by Bastien L. Deharme

Many of the strongest creatures in Magic are so powerful because of an ability that triggers when they enter the battlefield. From iconic creatures like Eternal Witness to the meanest of monsters like Atraxa, Grand Unifier, enter triggers are a way that a permanent guarantees that it comes with some value no matter how quickly it’s removed afterwards. 

Powerful enter triggers are cool and all, but what do you do with the creatures after the trigger? Just attack and block? Play fair Magic? I’d rather just keep triggering those creatures and reaping the rewards of those enter effects. That’s where blink and flicker spells come in.

What Are Flicker Cards in MTG?

Eerie Interlude | Illustration by Svetlin Velinov

Flicker and blink cards in MTG are cards that exile permanents and then return them to the battlefield. Most flicker and blink cards are blue cards or white cards and aim to generate value by re-using abilities that trigger when permanents enter the battlefield. Some are even instant-speed, letting your creatures dodge removal spells or other forms of interaction.

Over time, flickering creatures has become a more and more powerful strategy as more powerful creatures have been printed. Especially in the Commander format, blink-focused strategies helmed by commanders like Brago, King Eternal are remarkably popular and powerful.

#34. Roon of the Hidden Realm

Despite the text on the card still being pretty solid, Roon of the Hidden Realm is just too expensive and clunky to make the cut these days. Not only is it 7 total mana for that first blink, but Roon has to stick around for long enough to activate its ability. In today's era of Magic, this is just too slow to be a reasonable blink commander.

#33. Splash Portal

I’d only really consider Splash Portal if you know you’ll be able to draw the card most times that you cast it. I’d recommend it if you’ve got a high density of the specified creature types, or if your commander belongs to one of them. If not, I’d rather be running the instant-speed 1-mana blink spells.

#32. Another Round

Another Round is a big-mana payoff for blink decks. You can spend 3 mana to blink your entire board once, but spend 5 and they’ll blink twice. Spend 7 and they’ll blink three times. This X spell is a great way to finish out a long game or generate enough value to end it soon. Unfortunately it’s held back some by being a sorcery – this would be a lot better if you could cast it in response to a removal spell.

#31. Hallowed Respite

Hallowed Respite would be one of the best blink cards if it were an instant. As it stands, this Azorius card () can’t be used to dodge removal. It also can’t target legendary creatures, which narrows its usefulness in Commander. You’ll just want to make sure to target something that generates enough value for this 2- or 3-mana sorcery to be worth casting.

#30. Scrollshift + Blur + Acrobatic Maneuver

Scrollshift, Blur, and Acrobatic Maneuver are all basically the same. Three mana is a tad expensive for a blink, but these each also draw a card. I don’t know if a blink deck needs every effect like this, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see one or two of these make a Commander flicker deck.

#29. Touch the Spirit Realm

I’m a big fan of cards that have flexible effects. Touch the Spirit Realm can either be a Banishing Light or Flicker of Fate. Use this white enchantment to remove something problematic, or blink a creature at instant speed to protect it or get an enter trigger.

#28. Eldrazi Confluence

It’s hard to argue with how flexible and powerful Eldrazi Confluence clearly is. Even as a 4-mana colorless instant, this modal spell gets tons of work done for an Eldrazi player. The unfortunate part is that colorless decks are just about the only place this’ll reliably be castable. Two colorless mana pips can be difficult for a multi-color deck to generate consistently.

#27. Semester’s End

Blinking an entire board of creatures at instant speed with Semester's End saves them all from a board wipe, makes them bigger, and retriggers all their powerful enter abilities. It can also blink planeswalkers, making it a fine protection spell for superfriend decks. There’s cheaper ways to blink a whole board, which is ultimately what matters, but students of the school of flicker should still be excited about Semester's End.

#26. Conjurer’s Closet

For decks looking to blink creatures, there are very few options outside of blue and white. Conjurer's Closet is the colorless version of something like a Teleportation Circle. This is the artifact for you if you’ve got some powerful enter-the-battlefield abilities to reuse but lack the colors to go all-in on blink.

#25. Momentary Blink

It’s not the most mana-efficient way to blink creatures, but Momentary Blink is far from ineffective. Two instances of instant-speed flicker on one white instant is still a good deal.

#24. Teleportation Circle

Cards like Teleportation Circle are designed to take advantage of blinking for pure value. This white enchantment can’t save your creatures from removal like instant-speed flicker, but it’ll blink one of your creatures or artifacts every single turn.

#23. Thassa, Deep-Dwelling

Thassa, Deep-Dwelling is like a blue Teleportation Circle. Just like that card, the end-of-turn blinking is a great way to accrue value by blinking permanents with strong enters triggers. Keep in mind that this god becomes a lot more vulnerable once it’s a creature, though.

#22. Kaya, Ghost Assassin

There aren’t many blink effects like Kaya, Ghost Assassin, which brings back the exiled permanent at the beginning of your next upkeep. If a board wipe is cast in the meantime, whatever creature you exiled is still protected. This planeswalker can exile itself, too, which can protect it from a threatening board of attackers. The -2 is also pretty useful, especially in Commander where it’s difficult to generate true card advantage over three opponents.

#21. Disorder in the Court

This Azorius card is a great way to save a creature or two from removal. When you cast Disorder in the Court, there’s a solid chance that you’re dodging removal, making Clue tokens, and re-triggering powerful enter the battlefield abilities all at once. That’s a lot of value.

#20. Flickerwisp

There are quite a few iconic and powerful creatures with blink effects. Flickerwisp can target any permanent, so you can even get rid of your opponent’s tokens or target a land for it to come back untapped during your end step. Those are definitely corner cases though, and Flickerwisp does its best work flickering a permanent for enter the battlefield value.

#19. Charming Prince

We can talk about expensive and powerful blink cards all day, but blink deck absolutely needs cards like Charming Prince to function. Synergistic and value-generating cards that fill out the lower end of the mana curve are some of the most important cards in any Magic deck.

#18. Norin the Wary

Norin the Wary is a weird red card that doesn’t really match up with the traditional creature flickering strategy. Decks that use Norin the Wary aim to get it on the battlefield alongside something like Impact Tremors or Purphoros, God of the Forge. Those cards convert Norin’s constant flickering into damage.

#17. Ghostly Flicker

Ghostly Flicker is a staple of blue blink decks. Being able to target artifacts and lands is a welcome bonus compared to many other flicker cards. Hitting two permanents and bringing them back immediately also opens this blue instant up to some shenanigans, like targeting Archaeomancer and Gilded Lotus which allows you to re-cast it infinitely.

#16. Salvation Swan

A patently Bloomburrow take on Restoration Angel, Salvation Swan makes its predecessor proud. Not quite as universally effective, but it’s still a 3-power white creature with flying and flash that can save a creature by blinking it.

#15. Restoration Angel

Restoration Angel is an absolute classic. You can attack on your turn, then use this to ambush the opponents during combat with a surprise 3/4 flier and a newly untapped creature that you blink. Or of course, use it to save a creature from removal or just re-up on a powerful enter the battlefield trigger.

#14. Lae’zel’s Acrobatics

Lae'zel's Acrobatics is a splashy mass-blink spell. You’ve got essentially a 50% chance of blinking the board twice instead of once. This is most effective if you’ve got some strong enter triggers out on the battlefield, but either way I’d save this in your hand until you need it to dodge removal or a board wipe.

#13. Eerie Interlude

Eerie Interlude might be my favorite blink spell to use for board wipe protection. Sure, you have to hold up 3 mana, but that’s worth doing to save yourself from a Wrath of God. When you consider the amount of value that blinking a full board of creatures might result in, it's not hard to see how Eerie Interlude can be a great deal.

#12. Eldrazi Displacer

The activated ability on Eldrazi Displacer makes it one heck of a value creature. Of course, a card like this lends itself to combos too – Brood Monitor pays for its own blink cost, for example. You can also use it to protect your creatures from removal or even blink opponents creatures to prevent them from attacking or remove their counters.

I’ll use this spot to mention Lilysplash Mentor and Abuelo, Ancestral Echo. They’re more color intensive and can’t combo as reliably, but they’ll accomplish a similar level of value generation as you blink permanents.

#11. Phelia, Exuberant Shepherd

If you can keep Phelia, Exuberant Shepherd on the table for a few combat steps, you’ll get tons of value out of it. The difficult part is making sure this 2/2 with no combat keywords survives combat every turn. Phelia gets bigger when you use it to blink creatures, so Phelia becomes hard to block as it survives longer.

#10. Brago, King Eternal

A long-time favorite of flicker players in Commander, Brago, King Eternal can blink as much as you want every time it deals combat damage to a player. Whether in the command zone as your Azorius commander or just serving as a powerful repeated blink enabler, Brago, King Eternal might truly be eternally present in the decklists of Commander blink players. It’s relatively vulnerable to removal, so you might want to keep an extra blink spell handy just to save Brago.

#9. Parting Gust

Parting Gust can blink a creature or serve as exile removal if you gift the fish. At 2 mana, neither effect is particularly overcosted either. Exile is a powerful way to remove a creature for 2 mana. It’s an instant that brings the creature back at end step, too, meaning it can effectively be used to dodge removal and board wipes.

#8. Soulherder

Soulherder is like a version of Teleportation Circle that also grows into a big threat. This Azorius spirit is exactly the kind of card you want on the board in a flicker deck. It both enables and pays off blink on the same piece of cardboard (one of the scariest Magic art pieces on it), which is hard to argue with.

#7. Kykar, Zephyr Awakener

Kykar, Zephyr Awakener generates absurd value if left unchecked. It’s not as immensely broken as Displacer Kitten despite their similar text, but there’s no doubt that Kykar awakens an absurd amount of value if left unchecked while you cast noncreature spells.

#6. Felidar Guardian

If you’re using Felidar Guardian fairly, it’s an underwhelming blink creature. If you’re using it alongside Saheeli Rai, it’s one of the best blink creatures ever. That was the combo that got this card emergency banned in Standard, and combos like that are just as possible in Commander.

#5. Deadeye Navigator

Deadeye Navigator has long been a powerful Commander card. Two mana repeated blinks can outpace your opponents in value quickly, and if you blink something like Peregrine Drake you can generate infinite mana.

#4. Emiel the Blessed

Blinking a creature for 3 mana opens Emiel the Blessed up to infinite combos with Peregrine Drake. You can generate infinite mana by blinking the drake and untapping lands, and you can use that infinite mana to bounce everyone's permanents and make infinite 1/1s with Aether Channeler. Or, just draw your whole deck with Wall of Omens. Or just about anything else – you have infinite mana. 

Emiel the Blessed enables your blink strategy and serves both as an enabler and payoff for infinite mana. If your deck isn’t interested in going infinite, I’d look elsewhere for 4-mana blink enablers.

#3. Displacer Kitten

Displacer Kitten is one of the most inherently broken blink cards. There’s basically an infinite number of ways to make this blue creature insane. Blink Urza, Lord High Artificer every time you cast a mana rock. Blink the kitten itself by casting an instant when someone tries to remove it. Blink Spellseeker every time you cast the card that it tutors for.

The sky's the limit with Displacer Kitten, which says a lot when we’re talking about a 4-mana nonlegendary creature.

#2. Yorion, Sky Nomad

Companion is a mechanic that pushed a few cards over the edge. Yorion, Sky Nomad is a solid blink card in the 99 of a Commander deck, and it really shined in Modern.

In Modern, Yorion was used as a companion in 80-card decks that took advantage of Omnath, Locus of Creation and Risen Reef. The deck was powerful enough to warrant giving Yorion a Modern ban in 2022. Yorion was functionally an eighth card in the opening hand, and it came down in the late game to provide exceptional value.

#1. Ephemerate

Ephemerate is the blink card. One mana, instant speed, rebound? Use it to dodge removal and/or triple up on a powerful enter trigger. In terms of raw efficiency, there’s no better way to blink a creature than Ephemerate.

Best Flicker and Blink Payoffs

Blinking creatures is fun and all, but to build a deck around it you’ll need some creatures with powerful enters the battlefield triggers. Look for creatures that generate card advantage especially so that you don’t run out of things to do after you spend cards blinking creatures.

The most hyperbolic example is Atraxa, Grand Unifier. I have a hard time imagining a game where the person that Ephemerates their Atraxa doesn’t win.

The Duskmourn cycle of impending Overlords are each defined by their powerful enter triggers. For example: Cast Overlord of the Floodpits for 3 mana as an enchantment. After that you can flicker it – it comes back as a creature and its enters ability triggers again.

There’s also value creatures like Aether Channeler and Helpful Hunter that can fill out your curve and serve as blink targets.

Blink players also often include Panharmonicon and Strionic Resonator-style trigger-doubling effects to get even more extra triggers from their creatures.

Lastly, there’s lots of combo potential amongst blink creatures. I mentioned Peregrine Drake before, which goes infinite with Deadeye Navigator. You can also go infinite with a flicker creature like Restoration Angel and Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker.

Is There A Difference Between Blink and Flicker?

No, there is no difference between blink and flicker in MTG. Both are Magic slang for the effect of exiling a creature and then returning it to the battlefield. Some players say that one means to return the creature immediately and the other means to return it at the next end step, but there’s no documented rule saying which is which, and most players use the terms interchangeably.

Can You Flicker Tokens?

No, you can’t flicker tokens in Magic. When a token leaves the battlefield, it simply stops existing. When it’s exiled from the first half of the flicker effect, it stops existing and doesn’t come back. You can still target a token with a flicker effect, turning it into a psuedo removal spell against opposing tokens.

Does a Flickered Creature Have Summoning Sickness?

Yes, a flickered creature has summoning sickness when it returns to the battlefield. The creature enters the battlefield normally unless stated otherwise by one of the relevant cards. 

What Happens if you Blink an Attacking Creature?

Blinking an attacking creature exiles the creature and brings it back untapped and not attacking. Blinking a creature essentially “resets” it to how it enters the battlefield, so even creatures that were attacking when they were blinked enter untapped, out of combat, and with summoning sickness.

Does Blinking a Creature Save it from Removal?

Yes, blinking a creature saves it from removal. When the creature is blinked, it leaves the battlefield, which makes it no longer a valid target for the removal spell. Even if it immediately re-enters the battlefield, the creature is no longer the target of that spell. According to the game rules, the creature is treated as a new object when it re-enters, and the original target no longer exists.

Can You Flicker to Avoid a Board Wipe?

You can only flicker to avoid a board wipe if the flicker brings the creature back at the next end step. Ephemerate doesn’t save your creature from a board wipe, but Eerie Interlude does. The board wipe needs to resolve before the creatures come back to the battlefield, so the creatures have to come back at the next end step (or some later point) or else they simply flicker then die.

What Happens When You Flicker a Face Down Creature?

When you flicker a face-down creature in MTG, the card returns to the battlefield face-up, as long as the face down card was a permanent. When the flicker effect exiles the face-down creature, the game just exiles the card that represents that creature and tries to bring that card back to the battlefield. If that face-down creature was a permanent, it’ll enter the battlefield face up like normal. If the face-down creature was an instant or sorcery card, it can’t return to the battlefield and simply stays exiled.

Do Creatures Lose Counters and Attachments like Auras When Blinked?

Yes, creatures lose all counters and attached permanents when blinked. The counters disappear completely, as counters can’t move zones. Auras go straight to the graveyard since you exiled the creature it was attached to. Equipment simply detaches and remains on the battlefield.

Can you Blink a Planeswalker?

You can blink planeswalkers with cards like Displacer Kitten that can target permanents other than creatures. When you blink a planeswalker, it comes back to the battlefield with the amount of loyalty that it would have if it were cast from your hand. Blinking Teferi, Time Raveler brings it back with 4 loyalty.

Importantly, blinking a planeswalker allows you to activate its loyalty abilities again since the game sees it as a brand new permanent.

What Happens if You Flicker a Mutated Creature?

When you flicker a mutated creature, all the mutated creatures are exiled together and return separately. No matter how many creatures are in the mutated pile, they are all exiled together and return separately.

Flickering Finale

Restoration Angel | Illustration by Johannes Voss[

Now armed with the knowledge of Magic’s best blink and flicker cards, you too can Ephemerate your Cloudblazer and feel the rush of spending one mana to draw four cards. In all seriousness, there’s tons of incredibly effective permanents to blink for absurd value, so I hope you experiment with your favorite enter-triggering cards.

What’s your favorite permanent to blink? What about your favorite blinking permanent? Were you a victim or perhaps a perpetrator of the Saheeli Rai/Felidar Guardian Standard combo? Let us know in the comments below or over on the Draftsim Discord.

Thanks for reading, and until next time, be mindful – you don’t want life to go by in a Blur!