So here I am, back again with my set review… except this time, we are going to do it a little differently. We have a different cast stepping up to give you a look at the new set. This means that though different people offering different views is never a bad thing, you don’t need all of us to tell you that a 3/3 common flyer for five mana with an irrelevant ability is not going to be Constructed viable and is a very good guy in Limited. We’ve seen this often enough. I am not gonna waste some time on it. I’ll have some extra room left over for an article on the bad things about this set, and deck ideas and stuff that jumps up in my mind, kind of like a wrap-up. You get three articles of me covering the cards I feel jump out at you, and are interesting, and then the ol’ wrap-up article.
Let me explain the rating system again. I’ll be rating every card in both categories, Limited and Constructed, and give you the best use for this card. I’ll be rating em on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being the bottom-of-the-barrel crap rares, much like Craig Krempels, and 5 being the broken cards that are just too good, much like Kenji Tsumura.
Off we go!
Constructed: 3
Limited: 5
Best use for this card: Combo
The newest angel on the block is not bad. She is smaller than a Kamigawa dragon, which means that for the first month or so she won’t make any ripples in the format, but as soon as those guys rotate out she might find her place (we’ve been hearing that a lot this past year). She also gives you a kind of Wrath of God protection built-in, and if you find a way to sac a creature to untap her, you even have a combo right there. For Limited, this is obviously as insane as a creature will get.
Constructed: 1
Limited: 1
Best use for this card: Some controlish monstrosity.
Once this card has been in play for about a turn (or four or five), it will prevent all the damage creatures will deal to you most of the time. During that time you are paying an insane amount of mana on your turn, and you leave yourself open for anything your opponent might have, from burn to disenchant effects. And then it dies and he kills you with his men. Yeah. Okay.
Constructed: 1
Limited: 4
Best use for this card: Limited Bomb, Constructed target.
In Constructed, paying six mana for a 3/3 will never ever work towards winning you the game. Either its abilty will be irrelevant, or it will be the target of any removal spells this side of Lightning Helix. In Limited, this guy just has to be killed or they will have to stop dealing damage. It is still pretty small compared to its cost, and it doesn’t help you actively win the game, which means it is not a five.
Constructed: 2
Limited: 2
Best use for this card: Soldiers!
This is just like Goblin King, Elvish Champion, Lord of the Undead, and all those guys. None of them ever saw serious play, except to counteract Engineered Plague. And soldiers are a lot worse than goblins, elves or zombies. This set has three common soldiers – one of which sucks incredibly hard – so for Limited, forget it.
Constructed: 2
Limited: 3
Best use for this card: Ghost Dad.
Compare this card to Pacifism. That card hardly ever saw play in Constructed, and you’ll see that despite it being one mana and looking very good in an aggro deck, this will just not be good enough. Not even in the snow deck. In Limited we take what removal we can get, and this is fine, despite not being great.
Constructed: 3
Limited: 3
Best use for this card: White Weenie
Being a 3/3 for three is never bad, and when you stop paying the upkeep you get a bunch of dudes for your trouble. It is extremely slow, which means the card is not amazing. It is a very good card against Wrath-style decks, meaning they are damned if they do (you get some birdies) and damned if they don’t (you attack for three a turn). Right now the card seems a little too slow for Constructed, but keep it in mind for the future.
Constructed: 1
Limited: 1
Best use for this card: Coaster time.
Ruud Warmehoven and I were talking about this card before the prerelease, as this is the best example of a skilltester you will ever see. It eats up your mana and doesn’t affect the board whatsover, meaning that your opponent can still just keep playing men, while you are stuck paying upkeep. Then your guy dies, and you have nothing while your opponent has a million men.
Constructed: 3
Limited: 3
Best use for this card: Sideboard.
This new string of color-hosers are just what they are supposed to be: insane sideboard cards. It completely hoses an entire attack, as well as stops burn to the head and other such stuff. All that for a measily one mana.
Constructed: 2
Limited: 1
Best use for this card: Proclamation of Rebirth deck.
My buddy John Fiorillo started drooling when he thought of the idea of this guy with Proclemation. With him and Kami of Fog around you can set up a nice set of soft locks that will win you most games. It is rather expensive, and easy to hate out, but it has some potential. By itself this is just a poor dork, but in the combo it might work.
Constructed: 4
Limited: 3
Best use for this card: Kami of Ancient Law much?
A nice little reprint that will find its place in the same decks the Kami got played. Except for the spirit deck, of course, but those should leave Standard with the Kami. In Limited there’s a bunch of enchantments that need killing, and a 2/2 for two is always fine, so this is a creature that should always make the deck.
Constructed: 2
Limited: 4
Best use for this card: Master Decoy much?
Exactly the same, yet more vulnerable. This will not be attacking much, as you would rather tap something, which means that it is slightly worse than the Decoy, which never saw play anyway. In Limited this is an awesome creature, despite being slightly worse because it dies to many removal spells.
Constructed: 3
Limited: 5
Best use for this card: Fifth Wrath of God.
It might just be me, but pitching two actual spells seems like a very high cost to pay, even if you do get a Wrath effect out of the deal. Most of the time Wrath of God will be superior, and the cost will be too high (or impossible in a two-color deck). I don’t think this card is as good as people make it out to be. In Limited this is, of course, spectacular. Wrath effects are very good there… even for seven mana, since that is about the time you want to Wrath anyway.
Constructed: 1
Limited: 4
Best use for this card: Making draft all about a coinflip.
I don’t like ripple at all, as it makes draft even more random than it sometimes can be. It makes drafting the card random, because even if you pick them highly, it could be that there isn’t enough in the draft as a whole. It also makes playing it random, because you might not hit. If, after taking those two risks, you end up with six to eight of them, it does mean that you can randomly win the game on turn 3. That’s a lot of random for a win on turn 3. Neither of those things should be occuring in a healthy draft format. More about this in my fourth article.
Constructed: 3
Limited: 1
Best use for this card: Mill decks, Combo decks, or any deck that doesn’t win through damage.
If you don’t plan on winning a game through damage, this is about the best defensive creature you can get. It stops any creature straight up, and it doesn’t have any disadvantages. It’s nigh impossible to kill, and very cheap. If you ever do plan on winning through damage, stay clear… this will just not be the card for you.
Constructed: 4
Limited: 4
Best use for this card: White Weenie
Pump knights are back, and they are just as good as the original, and they might even be better. They might not be of the level of the Hands, but they will rotate out, and these will be guaranteed to see play in Standard. Three abilities and two power on a two-mana card is just too good to ignore.
Constructed: 2
Limited: 4
Best use for this card: Limited.
This will stop your opponent from attacking as soon as it has blocked twice, as noone wants to risk having the Pig wake up. The flavor of this card is awesome. The pig is asleep, and it’s so big that it takes at least three bumps to wake him. When he does finally wake up, be afraid. This little piggy is coming for you!
Constructed: 2
Limited: 1
Best use for this card: “Tinker” deck.
The “new Tinker” is everything but. The amount of restrictions on this card, combined with its casting cost and vulnerabilty, means that it is highly unlikely that you will see this card in succesful decks any time soon. Getting artifact creatures to sac shouldn’t be too hard, but finding a good target to fetch is harder. It might be doable, of course, but getting a 2/2 to survive a turn after is what makes it impossible. Tinker this is not. In Limited, this is just a 2/2 for four.
Constructed: 1
Limited: 3
Best use for this card: the snow deck.
The ability looks passable, as it gives you an army of men to swing with, but they are still easily killable or can be irrelevant, and once again, relying on a 1/1 for three that needs to survive a turn before it does anything is impossible. In Limited flying is so good, as is converting useless lategame lands, but it is also so slow and so vulnerable that it isn’t even an auto play, let alone an auto pick.
Constructed: 3
Limited: 1
Best use for this card: Mono-Blue… duh!
Like I said before, the cost of these cards seems a little high to me, but still, this card looks a lot better in a mono-Blue deck than the poor man’s Wrath of God. Playing a turn 5 Tidings is what you will idealy do with this as a backup, and you’ll feel pretty safe. I could see this see play in almost every Blue-based control deck as a one-or two-of, as it swings games by itself. Being unable to hit guys sucks, and without Tidings it is rarely worth the cost of three cards. It also doesn’t take care of global spells (like Wrath), which means that though it can swing games, there is no guarantee it will. In Limited, this is far too costly.
Constructed: 4
Limited: 1
Best use for this card: Top and Brainstorm, amongst others.
Combine this card with Sensei’s Divining Top and some general smarts, and you will have the game locked soon enough. The only thing holding this card back in Standard is the lack of other “top of library” control cards. Still, I am sure we will see a deck based on this card. Having a couple of two- and three-mana cards float around on top of your deck – with Top in play – shouldn’t be too hard, and should lock up many a game. This is my pick for the most scary and interesting card of the set, and could be insane in Extended.
Constructed: 4
Limited: 4
Best use for this card: Sideboards.
It’s pretty obvious that this card will see a lot of sideboard play, and is very good at what it does. I don’t understand how a color-hoser this good has been made again, but hey, I’ll play with it.
Constructed: 2
Limited: 4
Best use for this card: Sideboard card for Blue.
Assuming you can get the snow permanents from basic snow-covered lands, this is still a fairly poor Time Elemental. The body often doesn’t matter, as that is not really what you care about in a card like this. Temporal Adept is a card that saw some play, but mostly for the shot of landlocking your opponent, which this guy will be a lot less succesful at. In Limited, this is almost a bomb that will dominate games.
Constructed: 1
Limited: 3
Best use for this card: Craaaaaaaazzzzzzzzzzzzzzzyy decks.
It takes a man with very big balls to play this guy. Either that, or very little brains. In Limited, he is actually okay. He is so big, and he will decide games if left unchecked. Of course, he’s only for the very late game. In Constructed… well, this is a Leviathan. Of course you don’t play it in Constructed.
Constructed: 2
Limited: 2
Best use for this card: The Illusion deck.
Living the dream in draft by picking as many of this guy as possible is what makes drafting this format so random. I don’t like it. There aren’t many Illusions in the format, meaning this will rely on itself and others like him to get bigger. In Constructed, this is unlikely to spawn a deck. You don’t want enough creatures in play to make this a good option.
Constructed: 3
Limited: 3
Best use for this card: Midrange Blue or Blue/Black.
This card is pretty hard to gauge. Usually, Control Magic spells are the best in control decks. This card will guzzle up mana and disappear over time, dealing you a lot of damage. That means you can’t just steal a random dork and hope to let it sit there to trade with something else, because it will hurt your development and hurt you in the end. No, that means this card is best in a deck that wants to attack – to steal a blocker and next turn attack with it, threatening to end the game fast.
In Limited, this card is best with things that sac guys, as a creature-kill spell, as the threat of a “chump, chump, take ten” is very much alive, and doesn’t look appealing. Can be insane, but can also be very scary.
Constructed: 2
Limited: 1
Best use for this card: Blue Skies.
I like this guy in itself, I suppose. It’s like a bad Spiketail Hatchling. Of course, that says enough – it is just a bad Spiketail Hatchling – so no matter how much I like it, it will probably never be good enough. The Hatchling never even saw much play in its second shot at Standard. The original Blue beatdown decks are dead.
Constructed: 3
Limited: 2
Best use for this card: Hatching Plans!
Finally, the card Hatching Plans was waiting for! It is not an early-game card, but in the late-game, saccing a land won’t be the worst. Saccing a guy that was going to die anyway is always good. It’s the only instant card-drawing we’ve got… who knows, it might have a place.
Constructed: 3
Limited: 4
Best use for this card: Mono-Snow Control
Big owl. W00t.
Constructed: 1
Limited: 3
Best use for this card: Master Decoy Proxy.
Bad Master Decoy. Next! [I think you’re underestimating this fella in Limited, Jeroen… – Craig.]
Constructed: 4
Limited: 2
Best use for this card: Control decks.
This thing has its upsides and its downsides when compared to Mana Leak. In the early game it is equally good, countering almost anything. In the mid-game it is much worse, and in the late-game it is better. I feel that this card is slightly better than Mana Leak, because there seems to be a lot less mid-game these days. I am not sure, but the fact that it’s close to a proven Constructed card says enough about this card. In Limited this will get bad fast, and counters aren’t very strong in Limited anyway.
Constructed: 1
Limited: 3
Best use for this card: Being ridiculously lucky.
Another ripple card. One-sided Upheaval or horrible bounce spell? No one knows. More on ripple later.
Constructed: 2
Limited: 2
Best use for this card: the Counterbalance deck.
I thought this card was a lot better than it was, as it is just too expensive for what it does. In Constructed, this dies to easily, and is definetely too costly, but it is one of the few cards that can put cards from your hand on top of your library, giving it some possibilty of play with Counterbalance. Play it sometimes in Limited – it is one of the few card-drawing spells in the format, after all – but don’t take it high.
Constructed: 4
Limited: 4
Best use for this card: Blue Skies.
If there is room for this card anywhere, it will be very good. The discard isn’t that bad, since it will replace itself most of the time (remember, the age counter comes before the payment of the upkeep), and when they kill it, you will get your cards back. Meanwhile, it will put them on a fast clock. In Limited this is even better, as huge flyers are just very good, and who cares about pitching some lands anyway?
…
The first batch of cards isn’t bad – though there isn’t much for Constructed, and Limited format seems pretty bad – but who knows. The next cards might change our mind!
See you tomorrow.
Jeroen.