Now that the format has matured, it’s time to delve into a couple of picks in the second pack. My good friend and fellow Limited content creator Alex Nikolic was kind enough to send me a fascinating draft of his that he took a trophy with. Be careful, though! These are a little tricky.
Pack 2, Pick 1
The Picks So Far:
The Pack:
The Pick:
The nice this about this pack is that I’ll almost certainly wheel a playable blue card, although it’s questionable how useful that card will be. I very rarely want more than one copy of Unexplained Vision, and Overwhelmed Apprentice is quite poor. The Apprentice may look good initially in a mill deck, but milling for two isn’t particularly impactful and neither is the 1/2 body. Sure, scry 2 is nice, but the accumulation of all of those effects still does not yield a good card in my opinion.
Weeks ago, I would have said that there’s an argument for each of Animating Faerie, So Tiny, and Emry, Lurker of the Loch. Now I’m just certain that the correct pick is Emry. Emry looks like the kind of card that often is too conditional in Limited. A 1/2 for three is incredibly overcosted. If she’s going to provide card advantage, your opponent can choose to kill her. If she isn’t, then they can ignore her, right? Well, not really. All it takes is one card like Golden Egg or Scalding Cauldron, and if Emry is left alive, the game is over. It’s often in your opponent’s best interest to kill her as soon as possible to avoid the potential value.
Yes, Animating Faerie can also provide solid value and So Tiny is a fantastic removal spell. However, neither has the game-ending potency that Emry does.
Pack 2, Pick 2
The Picks So Far:
The Pack:
The Pick:
Scalding Cauldron is one of the commons that breaks Emry. The ability to remove a creature every turn is extremely unfair for most games of Limited. And I wouldn’t fault anyone for taking the Cauldron for this reason. But take a moment to consider what the pick is without Emry in the pool. In that case, I don’t think Scalding Cauldron is even in the discussion. I would rather have Lucky Clover or Run Away Together every time.
Run Away Together is a phenomenal interactive spell that enhances the potency of every adventure card. Furthermore, it is a key piece to any Merfolk Secretkeeper deck, which is almost certain an avenue to take this draft. So, before considering Scalding Cauldron, let’s simplify the problem by deciding which is better between Lucky Clover and Run Away Together. Emry makes both marginally better, but not by the same delta as Scalding Cauldron, which complicates this pick.
Lucky Clover ranges from unplayable to the best card in the deck. While it doesn’t look particularly amazing in this deck yet, it certainly has potential. The one-two-punch with Reaper of Night to make your opponent discard four cards is extremely good, but if that’s all Lucky Clover offers, it’s likely not good enough, since that combo is substantially less useful off-curve. On the other hand, Run Away Together is always solid, but rarely one of the best cards in a deck. It has a lot of potential, but the ceiling is only achievable in response to a removal spell. Overall, I think Lucky Clover is better than Run Away Together by a reasonable margin. Run Away Together can be difficult to include in multiples and is a common. And I will miss Lucky Clover a lot if I end up in that deck.
Between Lucky Clover and Scalding Cauldron, I still take Lucky Clover. Yes, it’s important to have something like Scalding Cauldron to turn Emry into a value machine, but there are enough ways to do that that I’m not concerned. Speculating on a Lucky Clover opens the door for a very potent deck that the pool of cards drafted so far already supports.
Pack 2, Pick 3
The Picks So Far:
The Pack:
The Pick:
In my opinion, So Tiny is the best blue common. There are already two in the pool, but I would basically play any number of copies of the card. But would I take it over the second copy of Lucky Clover? I don’t believe so. If my deck wants one Clover, it’ll want two.
The real question in this pack: Wishclaw Talisman or the second Lucky Clover? Wishclaw Talisman is a card I started high on, and I still think is better than most people do, but I no longer think it’s as good as any reasonable quality card (e.g. Bake into a Pie). However, in this situation, Wishclaw Talisman can get the Lucky Clover when needed, or something else entirely. While it’s not clear that the secondary color for this deck should be black, it’s the most likely.
Overall, I’m not sure what the correct pick is here, but I’m leaning towards Lucky Clover and Alex agreed. Having two copies of that card really enables some powerful deckbuilding, and the Talisman takes more mana to be a copy of Lucky Clover while also coming along with a “the opponent might have Garruk” risk. It’s a low risk, and I still think the Talisman is good, but just not better than Lucky Clover in this case.
The final pool had some fascinating choices. The later parts of the draft handed Alex two copies of Improbable Alliance and a Mad Ratter. He had a good number of ways to trigger these, but not too many repeatable sources of card draw like Merchant of the Vale to keep the ball rolling. So what’s better: a worse manabase with black cards that also adds two more Adventure cards, or the red cards? And if it’s the red cards, do you play Sundering Stroke?
This is how Alex built the deck. It’s one of the many options and I think I agree. With four copies of both So Tiny and Merfolk Secretkeeper, by the time you can cast Sundering Stroke, I’m not sure it really provides much. A bit unintuitive, but I believe Izzet while excluding Sundering Stroke is correct.
