Last week I started off with stories about my trip across the country and my time spent in Pittsburgh. At the same time, I only talked about two colors worth of commons for Future Sight drafting. Given that I’m planning on talking about the three remaining colors this week, let’s simply get things started.
White Commons
White is back to being very aggressive with the release of Future Sight. You now have two packs to pick up fast one-drop Suspend creatures (yes, Ivory Giant is a one-drop Suspend guy too, but it’s pretty hard to actually play him the fair way in your average White aggro deck), as well as a host of other strong creatures to go with them. Simply put, it’s pretty easy to get a huge amount of power on the table very quickly and then fly over the top for the win.
Gathan Raiders – The man, the machine. He has returned, and he’s at the top of the list this time. Red and Black had common removal spells to take over this guy, but White has no such luck, so instead you just get a ridiculously strong man for your troubles.
Whip-Spine Drake – You won’t be able to play him straight-up on turn 5 like a Blue drafter can, but you can still be attacking for three in the air on turn 4 if you’d like. Even if you don’t want to play him and unmorph him on turns 3 and 4, you can still consider him a 3/3 flyer for 5W.
Knight of Sursi – There aren’t a ton of guys that block the Knight very effectively; Castle Raptors and Errant Ephemeron are the only commons that simply win a fight with him. Ideally you’ll be able to Suspend him, but 2/2 flyers for four mana have always been fine, and this one comes with Flanking too.
Lucent Luminid – Your standard 3/3 flyer for five mana. The Luminid is a little more fragile than normal, since he’s vulnerable to Disenchant effects as well as creature removal, but he’s still a good man. Just make sure that you don’t space out and kill your own creature with a Cloudchaser Kestrel.
Blade of the Sixth Pride – One toughness is certainly a liability, but the Blade’s cheap cost mean that he’ll often get three to six points of damage in before he falls to your opponent’s Flowstone Channeler. If you have Rebel searchers, he’s a good guy to toss into play before blockers, since his high power means he’ll often get to trade for a three- or four-drop.
Judge Unworthy – This card is hard to pin down. Sometimes you’ll get to kill your opponent’s huge six-drop for two mana, while at the same time finding some massive creature to put into play on your next turn. Sometimes you’ll just want to kill a 3/3 and find some lands and a two-drop waiting for you. The fact that you don’t know what you’re going to hit means that you have to be conservative with your removal, and aiming removal spells at the second- or third-best of your opponent’s creatures is never what you really want to do.
Lumithread Field – The effect of the Enchantment half of this card is actually fairly strong, so there will be times when you simply play this face up and swing with the team. The main strength, though, is that you can often pull a spell out of your opponent before you give your team +0/+1, whether that spell is an opposing creature, a trick, or a removal spell.
Marshaling Cry – This card suffers from being a Sorcery, but it has two things going for it. First of all, when you have played a creature on turns 2, 3, and 4, giving the whole team a power boost can throw off your opponent’s plan to stabilize. Second, you can simply cycle it away at the beginning of the game, and then use the Flashback later on when you have a chance.
Saltskitter – There are times when this guy will be better than a Hill Giant; he’s bigger and he has faux-Vigilance. The problem is that your opponent can also just play a guy and stop him from blocking. Still, when your creatures are meant for attacking, they aren’t planning on blocking too much to begin with.
Lymph Sliver – Daunting Defender is back, in Sliver form. This time, though, it gives the bonus to your opponent’s creatures too, and when you’re just trying to kill someone dead, potentially making their blockers better isn’t what you’re going for.
Augur Il-Vec – A simple one-power Shadow creature is certainly nothing to write home about. Most of the time this man will sit the games out, but sometimes your opponent’s deck will be chock-full of Looter and Infiltrator Il-Kors, and then you can use him as a wall.
Gift of Granite – The best use for this card is as a counterspell against Red/Black decks. Ghostflame, Strangling Soot, and all of their friends won’t usually be happy to see a permanent +0/+2 attach itself to the guy they were trying to kill. Sadly, it’s hard to use this as a trump in creature combat, so it will usually languish on the sidelines.
Samite Censer-Bearer – 1/1s for one mana traditionally need to have a strong ability to be worth playing. The Censer-Bearer, while a Rebel, has an ability that is marginal at best. Lumithread Field does something similar, but it does it for the rest of the game.
Patrician’s Scorn – A sideboard card at best. It’s great that you don’t have to spend a turn killing whatever enchantment is bothering you, but unfortunately it will take out your Lucent Luminids along the way.
Green Commons
Green is also aggressive in this set, but in a different way. You have efficient guys to play to try to get the old-fashioned win by just playing bigger and better creatures than your opponent. You also have Sprout Swarm and Sporoloth Ancient for when that plan doesn’t work. When that happens, you sit back for a handful of turns and then swing for the fences with a horde of Saprolings.
Sprout Swarm – Nick Eisel already let the cat out of the bag on this one. All of the strengths of this card boil down to this: on its own it can put three or four creatures into play each turn. When you combo that with other creatures, like Primal Forcemage or Herd Gnarr, then you can lock the ground up very easily. Locking the ground up while you spew tokens into play means that it won’t be long until you can just attack with 30 Saprolings. Then there’s the fact that there are plenty of Thallids in the block that get out of hand very easily, from Thallid Germinator to Pallid Mycoderm.
Sporoloth Ancient – In addition to cutting your Thallid Germinator‘s production delay from three turns to two turns, this man brings along a very good body and its very own Saproling generator. The easiest way to think about it is that one Thallid makes a token every three turns, but when you add this guy into the mix you get a token every turn. With Thallid values going up, this guy, just like Sprout Swarm, can make things get out of hand very quickly.
Gathan Raiders – Green is the only color that has two commons better than the Raiders. Even so, Gathan Raiders are still extremely strong, and building a surprise 5/5 when you’re already filling the board with fatties and Saproling tokens is just as good as you would think.
Nessian Courser – Trained Armodon is back, and this time it only asks for one Green mana. The Courser is a good man to get your assault started with, and even a good guy to pull off the top later on in the game. You should also keep in mind that Cowards can’t block him.
Kavu Primarch – His usual mode will be to play Hill Giant on turn 4, but when he comes off the top at the end of the game then you can Super-Size him, even if you’re missing the requisite eight mana. Still, he doesn’t have Trample or anything like that, so while it might be hard for your opponent to actually kill this potentially giant man, it won’t be too hard to contain him.
Thornweald Archer – The most apt comparison to make for this creature is Stoic Ephemera. You can use him as a defensive removal spell, where your opponent will have to be willing to lose the best guy that they’re attacking with. The Archer is certainly easier to get out of the way than the 5/5 Ephemera was, but he can also get in there for two points when you decide he’s better on offense than he is on defense.
Llanowar Empath – A 2/2 for four mana usually comes with flying. This one usually comes with an extra creature, but there are a few kinks in this plan. First of all, you only get to Scry 2, so you have a decent shot of missing. Second of all, sometimes the card that you’re really looking for is that fifth land so that you can get the Sporoloth party started, or a removal spell to kill the guy that’s bashing you in the face. Scry 2 will help you find these things, but it still comes attached to a very small body for the cost.
Edge of Autumn – Edge is great on turns 2 and 3, where you can use it just like a Rampant Growth to speed you up to your massive men. Unlike Rampant Growth, you can’t fire it in there on turn 6 to locate that one splash land you included. On the other hand, you can cycle it, though you need to make sure that you can afford to lose the land it’s asking for.
Petrified Plating – There will be times when your opening hand includes this and Mire Boa, on the play, against the Black deck with no removal, and the game will be over nearly instantly. More likely, though, is that the Suspend won’t have a two-drop to buddy up, and even when it does you’ll risk getting blown out by a simple Feebleness or Dead / Gone. Essentially, this is no Moldervine Cloak.
Quiet Disrepair – This is either a time-delay Disenchant or a build-your-own Honden of Cleansing Fire. I was a fan of Cleansing Honden way back when, but this version is dramatically worse. If you’re using the Disenchant half, your opponent has a turn to find a way to get rid of it, or at least has a turn to get one more use out of his card. If you’re using the lifegain half, then your opponent has the opportunity to get the plain old two-for-one by blowing up the host.
Llanowar Augur – The spell that this Augur casts, Predator’s Strike, is a very good one. Unfortunately, it’s much worse when you have to cast it in your upkeep. Still worse is the fact that it comes attached to a dramatically underwhelming body.
Virulent Sliver – Poisonous suffers from the fact that if you’re going to get ten hits in, your opponent has probably taken twenty damage anyway. I suppose if you managed to get something like three of this guy in play then that might change.
Wrap in Vigor – Regenerating the team is not something you’re usually looking to do. I guess you could board this in if your opponent destroyed you in game 1 with Magus of the Disk.
Blue Commons
In this set, Blue has a decent amount of evasion to go with a decent amount of utility. There isn’t a huge fatty for the color, except for Gathan Raiders, which comes directly to the rescue in that department. Blue is a little bit shallower than other colors, and this isn’t helped by the fact that White drafters will be picking your Whip-Spine Drakes just has high as you will. Still, the top of the list contains a lot of power.
Gathan Raiders – After writing about this guy four times there isn’t much left to say. This is the only fatty that Blue has, and as such he tops the order.
Aven Augur – 2/2 flyers for four mana are always good, etc. This one is special, though, because when his usefulness runs out, you can cash him in for an Undo. Predator’s Strike and Sacred Nectar are not exciting effects to throw your guy away for, but Undo most certainly is. In other words, the creature half of this spell is good, and the spell half of this spell is great.
Whip-Spine Drake – Unlike in White, you really only have one option in how you play the Drake, unless you feel like you need the creature badly enough to lock him in as a 2/2. Still, 3/3 flyers for five mana are, as I’ve said before, always high picks.
Infiltrator il-Kor – If you hit the Suspend on turn 2, the Infiltrator will start hitting and it will hit hard. Unfortunately, one toughness is a bigger liability on a five-drop than it is on a two-drop, and you will find that most opponents have a way to remove the Infiltrator without working too hard at doing it.
Foresee – Unlike Inspiration, Foresee is not "Draw two cards," it is "Draw two spells." On the times that you miss with the Scry 4, you can comfort yourself with the fact that you still do get to draw two random cards and you are no longer drawing dead for four turns. If you are all set in terms of creatures by the time pack 3 rolls around, there’s a decent chance that you should be picking this card over the creatures I listed above.
Venser’s Diffusion – This Regress trades in the ability to bounce lands for the ability to bounce Suspended guys. While Regress wasn’t the world’s greatest spell, this set is a much better home for it, and hitting a Suspend guy in response to the last counter coming off is a pretty strong play.
Blind Phantasm – For the same cost as Nessian Courser, Blue loses one point of power. The Phantasm isn’t exactly exciting, but it’s not a bad guy and it does a pretty decent job of holding the fort for a turn or two.
Unblinking Bleb – The random morph is always fine, and this one can get into fights as a 2/3. Once he’s flipped face up, you can actually start burning through your deck pretty fast. He combos very well with Fathom Seer, and he gains from the fact that Blue is constantly trying to reuse its own morphs so that it can draw another two cards or kill another creature.
Leaden Fists – You can think about the Fists mostly as an instant-speed Assassinate. The drawback that you have to put up with is that this Assassinate can be countered three turns later by Coral Trickster, Dream Stalker, or Cloudchaser Kestrel. The upside is that there will be games that you win just by tossing this on your evasion creature for the last three points of the game.
Logic Knot – Delve makes this a perfectly playable counterspell, and there’s a decent chance that after more time playing with the set it will move up a couple of slots. The reason that being a playable counterspell is relevant is Sprout Swarm, which now asks people to maindeck counterspells (such as this or Cancel) and targeted discard effects (such as Psychotic Episode).
Sarcomite Myr – The Myr isn’t a great creature on its own, but it does do some cool things. Early on in the game it will probably be trumped by pretty much anything your opponent can muster, but later on it can jump over defenders for a couple of points. If it turns out that he really just does nothing, he will at least cycle for, unfortunately, five mana.
Vedalken Aethermage – There is little to no chance that you’ll ever cast this guy just as is, but the Wizardcycling part is actually very strong. It gets a bunch of bomb rares (such as every Magus, Endrek Sahr, Ith, and Teferi) as well as a host of solid commons and uncommons, such as Prodigal Pyromancer, Aven Augur, Crookclaw Transmuter, and Ana Battlemage.
Mesmeric Sliver – Fateseal 1 is not impressive, and giving your opponent the ability to Fateseal you is even less impressive. Perhaps the least impressive thing about this guy is that he is a 2/2 for four in a set that includes a Blue 2/3 for three.
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This concludes my "initial impressions" of Future Sight draft. While these orders are not the result of three months of non-stop drafting, they have been looked over and picked apart by Magic-playing minds I value quite a bit. Hopefully they will help you out when you start your own drafts after this weekend’s release events.
As always, if you have any questions, feel free to contact me in the forums, via email, or on AIM.
Benjamin Peebles-Mundy
ben at mundy dot net
SlickPeebles on AIM