The more I draft this format, the more important two-drops become. I’m not looking to put Goblin Assailant in my decks, but Burning Prophet, Lazotep Reaver, Sky Theater Strix, Pollenbright Druid, and more are all cards I prioritize now because of this necessity. If you can play to the battlefield on Turn 2 and Turn 3, you increase the potency of your best cards while decreasing the potency of your opponent’s best cards. To be clear, I’m not taking two-drops over premium cards, but they have all gone up in my pick order.
Pack 1, Pick 3
The Picks So Far:
The Pack:
The Pick:
Pack 1, Pick 1, I take Saheeli, Sublime Artificer over Pollenbright Druid. But does God-Eternal Rhonas change that?
Rhonas is a fantastic rare, and biasing picks towards green is something I’m willing to do as long as there isn’t a huge power-level gap. Still, Saheeli is too much better than Pollenbright Druid. Saheeli is playable in more than just Izzet. It can be fine in versions of Simic and Gruul as well, and hence it’s still possible to play both her and Rhonas.
Note that if Rhonas were as good of a card as Liliana, Dreadhorde General, I would take Pollenbright Druid. It’s a good rare, but it’s beatable.
Pack 1, Pick 4
The Picks So Far:
The Pack:
The Pick:
I thought Samut, Tyrant Smasher would be bad. Then many players told me to try it out because it beat them.
I did. Many times. It’s still bad. Maybe I’m utilizing Samut incorrectly, but so far I have not been impressed by it on either side of the battlefield.
If you want to take a mana fixer, take Mana Geode over Guild Globe. Even though the Globe cantrips, scrying from the Geode is still valuable, and it yields both ramp and a repeatable five-color source, which the Globe can’t do. However, I don’t think it’s correct to take fixing this highly.
Divine Arrow is a solid removal spell, but it’s nothing special. And while it might seem odd to you, I’m not even convinced it’s a better card than Thunder Drake. Thunder Drake has overperformed by a huge margin. It’s way easier than I expected to get the second counter, upgrading the little Drake to a Dragon. It’s my pick here.
Pack 2, Pick 1
The Picks So Far:
Take a minute to go over the first pack. I’m likely to be a multicolor Simic deck, but it’s still plausible to choose a different secondary color.
The Pack:
The Pick:
Widespread Brutality is a powerful rare, but it’s not as good of a splash in a Gruul multicolor deck. Pyroclasm isn’t worth this mana cost off the splash. It’s a much better card to splash in Izzet, where it’s easier to create a large army to upgrade the Pyroclasm to a Wrath of God. But it’s not meant for the deck I have here.
Huatli, the Sun’s Heart has gone up in my evaluations. It’s not a great card, but I no longer think it’s unplayable. Seven loyalty is a lot, the lifegain matters, and it’s not difficult to devise a deck where she’s playable. I don’t prioritize Huatli, and I’m not taking her here, but she would be solid in the deck I’m currently drafting.
This pick is between Tamiyo’s Epiphany and Jaya’s Greeting. Cheap removal is always a premium, and Jaya’s Greeting is also splashable. However, Tamiyo’s Epiphany is incredibly important for the Simic ramp strategy because the archetype is prone to flooding and needs sources of card advantage. I think this pick is close, and wouldn’t fault anybody for going the other way. But I think it’s more important to make sure I have enough interaction, and hence took the Jaya’s Greeting.
Pack 2, Pick 3
The Picks So Far:
The Pack:
The Pick:
I hate having to put a Prismite in my deck. If I need it for the fixing, I’ll play it, but the format is fairly hostile to one-toughness cards and so I’d much rather play a Snarespinner in my two-drop slot. My fixing seems fine for now, and so I think taking Prismite would be a mistake.
Contentious Plan has impressed me. It’s not great by any means, but it’s much better than the two-mana cantrips usually are. When you can put more than a counter on something with Plan, it doesn’t feel fair, and the floor of cycling for two is fine. With Izzet as a spells-matters deck that likes proliferate thanks to Spellgorger Weird and amass, and Simic as a proliferate strategy, Contentious Plan makes my deck often. It’s playable in both Azorius and Dimir, although not optimized there. It would be a solid pick here, but I think Snarespinner is actually a better pickup.
Snarespinner is better than it gets credit for. Wind Drakes are very important in this format, and this little Spider snatches them right out of the sky. It’s extremely important to have enough early plays in order to protect and pressure planeswalkers. Snarespinner even gets an additional nod because it’s possible the Huatli from the opening pack comes back around, and that’s a strong curve.
Here’s how the deck turned out:
