We have a rare today! And one that looks quite good (is it though?), but so is the rest of this pack. Let’s take a look.
The Pack:
The Pick:
Let me just take a minute to rain on your parade here . . . Sweltering Suns isn’t actually very good. But this format is so aggressive. Aren’t sweepers one of the few ways that help get you back in the game? Well, yeah, the problem with Sweltering Suns is the color of the card. Almost every red card is aggressive. If I am not playing an aggressive red deck, I either have an insane U/R deck, like the one that Martin Juza drafted at the Pro Tour, or my deck is quite bad. But that U/R deck is not in every pod, and I don’t like first picking a card at its best in a deck I don’t know if I can draft.
So disregarding the rare, I think this pick is actually a pretty easy Ahn-Crop Crasher. There aren’t many cards I take over this, and Gravedigger is not one of them. I do see merit in thinking that there are so many good red cards that we should avoid taking them, but when it’s one of the best cards in the set, I just think that thought process goes out the window.
Pack 1, Pick 5:
The Picks So Far:
I have solidified in red. Enigma Drake is a pretty good reason to end up in a U/R tempo deck, but I should mention that I haven’t seen any copies of Slither Blade. Should I still stay the course for U/R?
The Pack:
The Pick:
While it is tempting to stay on the course for U/R, I really have not been a fan of Floodwaters. The card is just too expensive and so is two mana to cycle. If it was one mana to cycle, the card would be quite good, but as is, I avoid including it in my deck. In the spells version of U/R, Floodwaters is better, but given that I have Cartouche of Zeal and Ahn-Crop Crasher, I am leaning more towards the tempo version. That deck doesn’t have much interest in playing cards that cost six mana.
Cartouche of Ambition, if you haven’t figured it out yet, is very important for handling the aggressive decks of this format. But the thing is, I really dislike R/B. Black just doesn’t bring enough to the table when it comes to aggression, and hence every other color pairs better with red in my opinion. So while this card is a good option here, my preferences lead me away from the card.
Now we have Tah-Crop Elite. I was much higher on this card at the beginning of the format. As it turns out, four mana is a lot in Amonkhet Limited. But R/W is a great color combination, the card is good there (especially with cards like Cartouche of Zeal to give it haste), and the rest of this pack doesn’t actually have much else to offer. I am taking Tah-Crop Elite here, but I’m not too happy about it.
As it turned out, white was very open for the rest of this pack. I ended up in a hyper-aggressive R/W deck with a Trial of Zeal and five Cartouches to take down the league!