Pack 1, Pick 2
The Picks So Far:
The Pack:
The Pick:
I think this is a pretty clear Memorial to Folly, yet I keep seeing Memorial to Folly wheel, which shouldn’t happen. You play the card in every black deck and it’s very good. It’s not on the power level of Eviscerate or Vicious Offering, but it’s not far behind. That said, I could see the logic for the other two cards in this pack as well. Here is why I wouldn’t take them.
Divination spawns a variety of archetypes in this format, but aggressive decks are more common now and blue is quite clearly overdrafted (in my experience in Magic Online competitive Leagues). The card isn’t as good as it was a week or two ago. It’s still quite good, but it’s on the slower side. I prefer affecting the battlefield on the early turns, and while a Turn 3 Divination has never been exciting, in the current metagame, it can be a real liability.
Garna, the Bloodflame is a powerful card, but B/R is an archetype I don’t care for. Successful B/R decks are chock-full of removal and grind out the game through cards like Garna and Ghitu Chronicler. The problem is that there are a variety of cards that just put a wrench in this plan (I’m looking at you, Cold-Water Snapper). So while Garna is powerful and I can see taking it, I don’t think it makes sense to take a gold card in the color-combination I’m biased against over a solid black uncommon here.
Pack 1, Pick 4
The Picks So Far:
The Pack:
The Pick:
The big question here is whether it’s worth it to take a nonblack card.
Fungal Infection is a solid card where the first copy pretty much always makes your maindeck, but it isn’t particularly exciting in this format. Pegasus Courser and Saproling Migration are both more powerful than Fungal Infection by a reasonable margin, yet with only black cards in the pool, it isn’t intuitive whether or not it’s a good idea to speculate.
I think Fungal Infection is replaceable enough that I would rather take either the Pegasus Courser or Saproling Migration. And I think the decision between these two cards comes down to archetypal preferences between W/B and B/G. Personally, I’m not a huge fan of either of those archetypes, but I do think a quality version of the B/G Saproling deck can be one of the best decks out there. I also think that not every seat can really facilitate that deck and I like to hedge early when I can. Still, in the end, Saproling Migration is where I would land.