Something many players struggle to understand is that there can be multiple great options for a draft, and one isn’t necessarily better than the others. Draft is a living game, and the correct path to take your options one week can be different the next week. The world isn’t black and white.
The following draft is an embarrassment of riches. Every pack contains cards that are comparably premium. I can see taking it many ways depending on what you believe to be true about War of the Spark Limited. What would you do?
Pack 1, Pick 1
The Pack:
The Pick:
While Finale of Revelation is a powerful mythic that scales to the late-game, there are a lot of ways to gain card advantage in this format. The fact of the matter is that Finale of Revelation isn’t even always better than Tamiyo’s Epiphany. It has a much higher ceiling, but also a lower floor. I take it higher than Epiphany, and do take it early, but not over premium removal.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a pack with this much premium removal before. It’s hard to compare them all, but they each have merit. Jaya’s Greeting is the cheapest, and I favor red over both black and white. Prison Realm can interact with any utility creature or planeswalker and has the scry value, but it’s also a sorcery and positively interacts with cards like Callous Dismissal. And Ob Nixilis’s Cruelty functions in between the other options as it kills more than Jaya’s Greeting, but less than Prison Realm. It’s in a better color than Realm but a worse color than Greeting. Overall, Ob Nixilis’s Cruelty has the least downside without sacrificing much of the upside in comparison. I think it’s a safer first pick, but I wouldn’t fault anybody for taking any of these options.
Pack 1, Pick 2
The Picks So Far:
The Pack:
The Pick:
Ugin’s Conjurant is a fantastic Magic card. Many players dismissed the card because “it has a downside,” but there’s a lot more upside than downside. Colorless bonus. Proliferate synergies. Curve filler. Ugin’s Conjurant does it all and makes your deck 100% of the time. However, the rest of these cards are really good. Do they unseat the Conjurant?
Jaya, Venerated Firemage is fantastic in some scenarios and mediocre in others. More often than not, Jaya leans towards her ceiling. I’m happy to first-pick her, but she’s about on the same tier as Jaya’s Greeting. I’ve done over 50 drafts at this point, and I’m still unsure which is better between those two.
While I’m not sure about this, I currently have Aven Eternal as the second-best common, noticeably above Jaya’s Greeting as the third (with Ob Nixilis’s Cruelty as the best). While I wouldn’t fault anybody for taking one of the red cards here, I’m deciding between the Ugin’s Conjurant and Aven Eternal and I believe the correct pick is Ugin’s Conjurant. Starting out a draft with both Ob Nixilis’s Cruelty and Ugin’s Conjurant is the rare case of getting to be both flexible and powerful.
Pack 1, Pick 3
The Picks So Far:
The Pack:
The Pick:
The best card in this pack is Trusted Pegasus. However, with Ob Nixilis’s Cruelty in the pool and white as the worst color in War of the Spark, does Vizier of the Scorpion become a better pick?
I believe it does, but the pick is incredibly close. I originally thought that Vizier of the Scorpion would be a premium card in the format, but I now believe it’s worse than Lazotep Reaver. It’s still a powerful card that plays an important role, and I would take it here, but if white becomes underdrafted due to the self-correcting nature of Draft, the Pegasus becomes the correct pick because it is the better card.