Tempered Veteran is secretly a Selesnya gold card. Any white deck can play counters thanks to commons like Basri’s Acolyte, but Tempered Veteran isn’t just going to make any deck with a couple of ways to place counters. The six-mana ability is so expensive, and a 1/2 for two mana is an atrocious body. I don’t want to start a draft with this card, though once I have significant density of +1/+1 counters synergy, I will take Veteran highly.

Roaming Ghostlight is the best blue common by a significant margin. Mist Raven is a notoriously powerful common and would be the best common in most formats. There are so few Spirits that Ghostlight is one additional mana for one additional power. The extra mana reduces the power of Mist Raven significantly because of the consistency of playing on-curve. It’s not trivial to have five mana on Turn 5 the same way it is trivial to have four mana on Turn 4. Given that, I still take the best common removal — Scorching Dragonfire and Grasp of Darkness — over Roaming Ghostlight. And one of them happens to be in this pack.

Scorching Dragonfire is a fantastic common. Lightning Strike gets relegated to uncommon nowadays, and I believe that is a factor of density. If it’s common to have a red player with multiple copies of Lightning Strike, the texture of the game against red decks fundamentally changes. It becomes necessary to assume that three life is equivalent to zero because every red deck has a reasonable probability of having Lightning Strike. Scorching Dragonfire is worse than Lightning Strike, but a splashable removal spell that often trades up on mana is truly amazing. The exile clause is also a relevant piece of evaluation thanks to cards like Deathbloom Thallid. It’s a great card, but both the gold uncommon and rare in this pack are significantly more powerful than Scorching Dragonfire, and hence I can’t justify taking the common removal spell.

Primal Might is a significant improvement on Prey Upon. However, Prey Upon has never been close to a first pick in recent years. This is because the inability to pump the creature creates a conditional removal spell. A scalable version of Prey Upon is absolutely first-pick material. This card is better than every common, and many uncommons. Normally I would just take the rare here to get some data playing with it; however, this rare is fairly intuitive to understand.

I actually believe Alpine Houndmaster is worth more on the data side, since it’s difficult to understand how often the enters-the-battlefield trigger will fetch multiple cards. And I expect the Houndmaster to be toe-to-toe with Primal Might in terms of power level. As a tie-breaker to really put Alpine Houndmaster ahead of Primal Might in this pack, there is a good chance that Igneous Cur wheels, since the next red drafter in line will likely take Scorching Dragonfire.

If you find yourself taking Makeshift Battalion, Furor of the Bitten, or Short Sword, you’re marrying your first pick. Makeshift Battalion and Furor of the Bitten are likely playable cards in aggressive decks, but they’re still only filler-at-best there. Never take cards like that early in Pack 1. It just pigeonholes yourself in an unnecessary manner. Similarly, even though Short Sword is technically castable in any deck, it doesn’t end up making the cut in any aggressive deck, and even some aggressive decks don’t care for it. Formats as fast as Amonkhet had the card as a mainstay in many archetypes, but it still was not a high pick. Don’t fool yourself into thinking it keeps you open because it is colorless. It still only works in a small subset of strategies comparable to a gold card.

This leaves the three uncommons. Angelic Ascension is on-color, but how good will the card be? A Pongify variant that leaves behind an Angel is pretty crazy. I know at some point in this format I will cast this on my own one-drop at my opponent’s end step, and it’s likely best in Boros as the go-wide strategy. However, I don’t think it’s going to be a high pick. This is nowhere close to a removal spell because very few creatures in a Limited format are better than Air Elemental. Think of this card as a flash Aura. It can be used to ambush block in combat and upgrade a creature. Unlike Auras, Angelic Ascension loses the haste-damage-boost aspect. It’s probably playable and has a very high ceiling, but I don’t believe it’s a high pick.

Wildwood Surge is just Ivy Elemental. It has more text, and I think it’s easy to intuit Surge as a better Ivy Elemental. However, Ivy Elemental had the secret text of bolstering mutate synergy. Ivy Elemental wasn’t great outside of mutate decks. I expect Wildwood Surge to be similarly playable in any green deck, but only great in Selesnya. This leaves Jeskai Elder.

Jeskai Elder is incredible. I understand it can’t go with my powerful gold uncommon, but I don’t particularly care. With so many ways to trigger prowess at instant speed, it is too risky to block this card on Turn 3 without a three-toughness creature. Izzet turns this card into a terrifying threat. Dimir can discard reanimation targets. Simic triggers the main archetypal synergy. I would take Jeskai Elder over every single common, and I think it’s the clear pick here.

Fungal Rebirth is a very interesting uncommon. At first, I thought the ambush-during-blocks mode made this card better than every common. However, the most common morbid trigger will be after combat as over, and the value of ambush tokens is much higher in the early-game, when returning a permanent is both less valuable and less likely. I don’t believe this card is relegated to Golgari-only territory, though. I believe every single green deck will play this happily, as green decks are often creature-based and it shouldn’t be that difficult to trade a creature and cast Fungal Rebirth. 

I think Fungal Rebirth is the second-best pick in this pack. Can you figure out which blue card beats it here?

You might think it’s Mistral Singer because that flyer made my top commons list while the other blue commons didn’t. And Mistral Singer even goes well with the prowess theme alongside Jeskai Elder. Vodalian Arcanist helps with spells, and Rousing Read helps with discard for graveyard themes in Izzet and Dimir. All of those cards are reasonable, but Frantic Inventory actually comes significantly ahead here. Why?

Go look at the previous two packs. Notice that both had Take Inventory alongside other blue commons that are, in many scenarios, better than Take Inventory. This means that there’s a good chance at least one, if not both, of those copies of Take Inventory come back around. Fewer than three copies of Take Inventory is only playable in a dedicated synergy deck like Izzet or Simic. However, with three or more copies, the card becomes enticing in all blue decks. And with five copies of the card, it becomes unbelievably strong. Let’s do some math.

The expected number of copies of Take Inventory in any given draft is 2.4. This means it’s unlikely to hit that three-copies bar. However, if there are three copies opened in the first three packs seen, then the expected number of copies of Take Inventory in this specific draft is 5.1. Furthermore, if all three copies of Take Inventory seen in this pack end up in one player’s seat, it greatly increases the probability that the other players pass Take Inventory in Pack 2 and Pack 3. Hence, the expected number of Take Inventory in my deck at the end of the draft if I can get all three in this pack is close to five: the number that makes the card broken. While I think all the other options in this pack are better in the abstract than Take Inventory, I believe the correct pick out of this pack is Take Inventory in order to capitalize on the broken potential of the card.