How To Draft With Rashmi, Eternities Crafter In Kaladesh Remastered

Inventors’ Fair is a powerful card, but it’s clunky. Limited manabases are already finicky so colorless lands come at a huge cost. A deck with a very high density of artifacts, especially with some good targets, will happily play an Inventors’ Fair but it’s not free. If it’s grabbing a good-but-not-great artifact like Prophetic Prism or Prakhata Pillar-Bug, Inventors’ Fair isn’t going to be worth the colorless source. I could be wrong about this card, but I see it doing more harm than it helps.

Contraband Kingpin is a really great early play, but as I mentioned last week, it doesn’t pull me into Dimir. It’s arguably the best card in this pack, and a Dimir deck could splash Rashmi, but I’m not excited to take it here. If this were a more powerful gold card with overlapping colors with Rashmi like Winding Constrictor, I would absolutely take it out of this pack. Contraband Kingpin isn’t that powerful though.

Shipwreck Moray is better than it looks. Four energy is arguably worth more than a card in an energy deck. If Rashmi were an unbeatable bomb on the level of Dream Trawler, it would be correct to take Shipwreck Moray.

However, Rashmi is not on that level. I am not married to it, although I do want to play it. I believe the correct thing to do is just take the common removal spell in Revoke Privileges.

Fatal Push is much worse in Limited than Constructed. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great card for any black deck, but it’s no slam dunk. With Rashmi, I legitimately believe that Malfunction is a better removal spell to take over Fatal Push out of this pack. 

So the question is, do Airdrop Aeronauts and Revoke Privileges make a better pair of cards than Rashmi and Malfunction? 

I think this is quite close, but the main thing that makes me lean towards Airdrop Aeronauts and Revoke Privileges is that they’re only one color. It’s not fair to simply compare the two pairs of cards because the pair of white cards have a higher probability of making the same final deck. With this additional lens, I took Airdrop Aeronauts.

Sweatworks Brawler was one of the most underrated commons in Aether Revolt at the beginning of the format and I expect it to be the same here. This card is fantastic in decks of all speeds. It attacks well, it blocks well, and it’s above-rate for the mana investment thanks to improvise. Still, it’s off-color, so it’s important to compare it to other off-color cards in the pack.

Aetherborn Marauder and Sweatworks Brawler aren’t in the same league. Sweatworks Brawler is arguably more consistent, as there are more artifacts running around than +1/+1 counters. However, an undercosted 3/3 menace is nowhere close to the same power level as a 3/3 flying lifelink creature. And that’s being generous, as Aetherborn Marauder can be a 4/4 or 5/5 without much additional effort.

Wind-Kin Raiders can be played in the same deck as Rashmi, which is the best card in my pool. It also can be playing in an Azorius flyers deck. It also utilizes the Pacification Array in my pool very well thanks to improvise. On the surface, it looks like a great card to pick up here and I think it’s intuitive to take given the pool. However, I am confident it’s the incorrect pick. 

Notice that this pack has zero white or green commons. This means that somebody downstream has taken both a green card and a white card. This doesn’t drastically change anything, but it is another data point suggesting I should just take the best card in this pack rather than a card that goes well with my pool. Plus, an Aetherborn Marauder this late is a signal that black is open, especially with the information that a white common and a green common are missing.

Overall, this draft was fairly difficult to navigate. I ended up in a Sultai Good Stuff archetype, and took it to a 2-1 finish in a Traditional Draft on Magic Arena. I lost in the finals to a great Gruul Energy deck. It was a great and close match, but Quicksmith Rebel took me down in Game 3.