It’s that time again…
It’s the time when I’ve drafted a format so much that I feel like I’ve explored essentially every possibility, and I’ve grown very bored of it.
This means that we’ve been drafting a lot of old sets recently, or doing crazy things like bring whatever three packs you want to the draft. This is far more fun than drafting triple Time Spiral, in my opinion. When we do end up drafting Time Spiral though, I tend to either force the Empty the Warrens deck (which is still fun), or I go on complete tilt and draft some five-color mess, or I try to draft a deck that abuses Clockspinning. Just the other day I drafted a five-color Suspend deck featuring such hits as Scion of the Ur-Dragon, Restore Balance plus Claws of Gix, Kaervek, Ith, and Mishra all in the same deck.
Needless to say, I can’t wait for Planar Chaos. The set looks amazing from the fifty cards or so that are spoiled already.
This week I want to say goodbye to the triple Time Spiral format, and also give you something to think about when we get to add in the second set. It’s always good to know if a card was underrated or overrated before adding in the new set, so that we can then evaluate the impact Planar Chaos may have on specific cards.
I do want to mention that I’ve written about some of these cards in previous articles, but I still wanted to include them here because I feel they are important enough to keep an eye on.
Underrated
Basal Sliver
He may not look like much on the surface, but this guy is quite the Grey Ogre. The most practical uses for his ability are powering out an early Haunting Hymn or Mindstab if you couldn’t Suspend it on turn 1. He’s also good at powering out a big fatty, my favorite being Stronghold Overseer. That alone should make him a great filler creature in your deck, and sometimes an MVP… but there’s also more!
If you manage to draft a Sliver archetype, I’ve had several occasions where I was some three-color combination that, initially, didn’t include Black. I splashed multiple Basal Slivers in order to “go off” with Squall Line, Disintegrate, or Verdeloth the Ancient. If you have both Gemhide and Basal out, the game is simply over if you draw your X spell.
Don’t forget you can also use his ability with damage on the stack to cast something like Crookclaw Transmuter at a discounted price.
Ignite Memories
This card recently made a small splash onto the Standard scene in the Storm deck. I’ve been playing it in Limited since a few weeks after the set came out though, despite the pleading from my teammates in three-on-three drafts that I take it out of my deck. I’ve had a lot of success with this card, and it tends to steal away games that couldn’t otherwise be won. The conservatives out there will tell you how inconsistent it is, and how you’re building your deck around a random effect that may not even do anything in the end. They are right to an extent, but you usually also have Empty the Warrens to power up, and Ignite is deceptively powerful. If you are still unwilling to try it maindeck if you have the tools to set it up properly, I will at least encourage that you side it in against a slower deck with lots of big drops that will be stuck in their hand. Worst case in that matchup is usually a Lava Axe, which is more than acceptable.
Funny story: one night at CMU we were doing a team draft, and I won a game on turn 5 after the following sequence of plays. I also went first this game.
Turn 3: Weatherseed Totem
Turn 4: Suspend Nantuko Shaman
At this point my opponent played Mana Skimmer, tapping out.
On my turn 5, the Shaman came into play. I cast Lightning Axe on Mana Skimmer, and then Ignite Memories for three copies. My opponent apparently had three six-drops and a three-drop in his hand (he had mulliganed). I hit a Jedit’s Dragoons all three times with Ignite, and attacked with Shaman for the win.
Lucky to be sure… but the worst-case scenario there sees him take nine damage, and that is quite unlikely.
Demonic Collusion
Remember Diabolic Tutor? That card was very playable if you had something good to fetch with it. Why, then, is this card getting such a bad rap when it only costs one mana more? Anyone who complains about the Buyback ability being too expensive simply hasn’t played much Black in this format. Personally I love having this card to go get a bomb, or to just chain Dark Withering and discard an extra land. If you have multiple Witherings or other Madness stuff, the discarding actually turns into a bonus rather than a drawback.
Liege of the Pit
I’m sure most of you will agree with me that this card is a bomb. The problem is that I regularly see people taking Dark Withering or Tendrils over it in the early picks of the draft, and it just makes no sense to me. Strangling Soot I can understand, since it’s just so ridiculous, but if you’re going to take a card with a Black commitment at least take the best one. If you flip this guy against any non-Blue deck, they basically need Temporal Isolation or they’re absolutely dead. It should be picked very early with few exceptions.
Fallen Ideal
This is my new favorite splash card into the Empty the Warrens archetype, for those decks that are short on Strength in Numbers. Besides being awesome in that deck, this card is just all around good in anything with Green, as a Flying Baloth is more than just annoying. The fact that it comes back to your hand is nice too, and the card just isn’t seeing as much play as it really should.
Dream Stalker
I believe I already said how much I like this guy back when I did my U/R article, but it’s worth mentioning again because I’m still getting them fourteenth on a regular basis. The number of comes into play abilities you can abuse with this guy is high. He gets rid of Temporal Isolation, and he fixes your mana by returning a land and then replaying it. I don’t think he’ll clean your house for you, but he pretty much does everything else.
Penumbra Spider
This is the best Green common in the set, hands down. Stop taking Durkwood Baloth over it, because you’re making me sad when I have to pass them to someone else sixth or seventh pick.
Tolarian Sentinel
This guy is even better than Dream Stalker for most decks. I know I wrote about him before, but the fact of the matter is that I feel like he’s only going to get better as more sets get introduced into the format. He’s flexible, and the cost for what he does is reasonable. I like to make sure I have one in every Blue deck I draft, if possible.
Ixidron
I can’t emphasize how much this guy is underrated. He is a stone cold bomb, and I’m not sure if the average drafter realizes this. I’ve seen everything from Snapback to Coral Trickster taken over him, and cringed more every time. He will usually function as a Wrath of God, which is excellent in this format since Blue usually will have the worst creatures on the table minus the Errant Ephemerons and Crookclaw Transmuters. The key is to make him more than a Wrath by having Fathom Seers, Dream Stalkers, and Tolarian Sentinels to ensure board dominance. If you get him online with Sentinel I’ve found it very hard to lose unless the opponent can break up the combo first.
Tromp the Domains
If Ixidron is a bomb, this card has to be one of the very top cards in the set. There is absolutely no reason this should go later than second or possibly third, and even a pack where this is the third best card is hard to imagine. I guess if you didn’t play back when Overrun ruled Limited, you don’t fully understand why Tromp is far better than Overrun and should be played in virtually any deck. I don’t even think I’d take Spectral Force over Tromp, and that’s saying a lot. I don’t know what else to say here besides the fact that Tromp is splashable and says “I Win” more often than not.
If you’re passing it, you are likely making a mistake.
Jedit’s Dragoons
These are great to have in your hand when someone casts Ignite Memories.
In all seriousness, this guy is a pain and will likely clog the ground against anything but the heaviest hitters. If you combine him with Momentary Blink, you will usually end up with one very annoyed opponent. The Goons also help if you need to stall for time to unleash some bomb like Akroma or Sacred Mesa but aren’t really good in your run of the mill White aggro deck.
Weatherseed Totem
This one is mind-boggling to me.
When I get into Green, this is the one card I really want in my deck. This thing provides acceleration as well as a nearly unstoppable creature should the game stall out or get to a point of racing. I probably like this card far more than you do, and that’s okay. You should spend a little more time playing with it, and you may come around and agree too. This is much better than all of the Green commons most of the time.
Overrated
Temporal Isolation
Hopefully by now the cat is out of the bag on this one, and most of you have lowered it on your pick orders slightly. It’s still a pretty strong card, but you have to be very careful with it or it could just get you killed. What I’m talking about is if you drop it on some guy, and then later said guy attacks you with the Shadow granted from the Isolation and is bounced or killed with damage on the stack, delivering the final blow. The other thing going against this variant of Pacifism is that (I hope) people are realizing that Tolarian Sentinel and Dream Stalker are awesome, and they are free answers to the card. I think most of the time I may actually take Benalish Cavalry over this if I’m aggressive, or Momentary Blink if I have some good tricks with it. I’ve killed too many people with their own Isolations, and I’ve lost a lot of respect for the card.
Assassinate
This is such a mediocre removal spell, but unfortunately it tends to make the cut. It can’t deal with good utility creatures if the person controlling them is cautious and plays around the card. Coral Trickster owns it, which is simply sad since he shouldn’t own anything. I don’t know what else to say, except that I’d rather have something like Urborg Syphon-Mage or Trespasser Il-Vec over this almost every time.
Temporal Eddy
If slow and clunky is the name of your game, this is not the card for you. I really like this card in U/G or other archetypes without a lot of board disruption, but when you have other bounce, please don’t overload your deck with multiple copies of this. My advice would be to play it in the absence of other things, but please don’t take it high, and yes, Wipe Away is a far better option. Snapback, of course, is the best of the three.
Durkwood Baloth
This guy is my whipping boy, I guess. I really don’t like the card much in draft, simply because it just never seems to get the job done for me. I wrote a lot about it in my G/R Empty the Warrens article, but the main thing I want to get across here is that I wouldn’t pick this anywhere near as highly as everyone else does. Play it, sure, but please don’t spend early picks on it.
Corpulent Corpse
If Durkwood Baloth is too slow, this guy is completely mediocre in comparison. Sure, he has Fear, but I’d rather have a 5/5 with no abilities than a 3/3 with Fear. If he had Suspend 4 he’d be amazing, but Suspend 5 seems to be where the line is drawn for this draft format. He’s just a tad too slow to be top notch.
Faceless Devourer
The only deck I’ll really play this guy in is something with no other form of evasion. In BR you should be killing everything they play, and in UB there are far better guys. I guess his place is in G/B, or as a sideboard card. Remember, he can deal with Stronghold Overseer, which is extremely helpful.
So why is this guy in the overrated section? Put simply… he can’t block! I like my creatures to be able to block, and also to avoid dying to everything in the format that deals one damage. I constantly see people playing him in decks where he doesn’t belong, the worst of these cases being someone with multiple Looters in their deck. They Loot into lands and can’t cast this stupid Devourer card because it will kill their only way to dig to better stuff. Sure, you can discard it to a Looter, but that’s not why I’m putting cards in my deck. My point here is that this guy really isn’t that great, and you should try to avoid playing him if you have other evasion or lots of removal. Otherwise you’ll regret it on turn 3 when you wish you had a Basal Sliver or some other dork to trade with your opponent’s first guy.
Gaze of Justice
This card just plain sucks, and plenty of people regularly put it into their decks. One time I had a deck with four Icatian Criers and three Dark Witherings, and decided to try playing two copies of this card. Any guesses as to what happened? I drew Gaze and it sat in my hand and did nothing all of the time, because my Criers got killed and my other guys needed to block something.
So what about in a normal White deck, you ask? Shouldn’t you want to attack with your creatures rather than spending an entire turn to kill some guy? This card only helps if you’re way ahead, and at that point there are better options. I might play it in mono-White if I had no other way to deal with things, but honestly… the card is a piece of junk.
Stuffy Doll
I’ve heard this called a bomb on many occasions, and it’s simply not true. There are plenty of easy answers to the card like Feebleness, Crookclaw, and Flowstone Channeler. Not to mention the fact that you can just fly over the stupid thing, or evade it in some other way. The Doll is certainly playable, but I’d much rather have something like a Lightning Axe or other top common for my deck (and obviously they are good in combination). Don’t fall into the trap of overvaluing it just because it’s a rare, like everyone always does.
Next week I hope to be bringing some insights from the Planar Chaos prerelease to the table.
Until then,
Nick Eisel
Soooooo on MTGO
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