M13 DRAFT UNCOMMON REVIEW - by Stephen Murray (Views: 543)Friday 27th July 2012- I hope everyone had a great time at a Pre-release events and the various special FNMs and sealed events people had going on the week after! I know I had a sweet time battling people with wildly different decks, and after Avacyn Restored limited season I am pretty psyched up to be having this change.
As I like to keep mentioning about uncommons, they are always more interesting to me than rares/mythics simply because you'll see them more often. While you will open an on colour rare and see 'this card is blatantly insane', uncommons are generally a bit less obvious, and maybe you should just be passing them for the good common in the pack.
On the other hand, this set has a bunch of interesting cards that get better when you are drafting certain strategies and synergies. Today, I am going to talk about the uncommons people are taking too highly, dazzled by their silvery appeal, and the uncommons people should take higher when the circumstances arise.
During these I will mention 'premium commons' to which I refer to removal like Pacifism
, Murder
and Searing Spear
, or awesome creatures like Sentinel Spider
, Aven Squire
, Welkin Tern
or Faerie Invaders
. 'Mid-tier commons' would be the regular not-insane-but-usually-make-the-cut cards like Wind Drake
, Bloodhunter Bat , Centaur Courser
or Silvercoat Lion
.
WHITE
Angelic Benediction
- Overrated
This card, just like last time in Shards, seems to be just generally taken too highly by people. The effect certainly LOOKS powerful, and in certain circumstances, it is. The problem is that those circumstances where it is powerful are much too rare for this to be taken over the premium commons of the set, or even just the regular mid-tier cards you need to fill out your deck.
For it to be good, you need to be REALLY focused on exalted. I mean, basically all of your creatures. Once you get some Attended Knight
s or Silvercoat Lions on the field, this starts looking pretty embarrassing when they get multiple large blockers in play. The creatures with exalted on your field still get to form part of a large army that can swarm or block. This not having a body attached is a real detriment, rendering it dead more than I'm comfortable with.
Summary: Secretly unplayable in normal decks. It's a trap!
Healer of the Pride
- Overrated
I was pretty excited to try this out in these early events, but in reality I think this is pretty bad. I don't mean it's unplayable or anything, and against *certain* decks, it's pretty great.
The main downsides to this card are that the body is too small and 4 mana is a lot. There will be a whole lot of times where if you have this in your hand and your opponent is beating down with 3/3 monsters, flying monsters and giant exalted men, you simply won't have the time to deploy this before your other guys to gain the life. If you are making a 2/3 now, your board position will be improved so little that you might still not be able to block and just take another 6 damage while they make another, better creature. Whereas if instead you'd made a 2/3 flier, a pair of drakes, or even a 0/4 you would basically be gaining life immediately by not being punched for a million damage that turn and the next.
Which brings us to the cost. If you are slamming these guys over say, Aven Squire or Attended Knight, you are less able to take the initiative and punish a slow draw by your opponent. If your hand is full of Healers and Captain's Call
, sure you may gain a bunch of life on turn 5, but you only need to gain all that life *because* your hand is too slow.
I would have this in my deck if I was super defensive, but I'd hope not to need to. Sideboard her in if your opponent is mono-Goblin Piker
s and Chandra's Fury
, or other weak aggressive decks.
Summary: Not actually good at defending you, best in the sideboard.
Crusader of Odric
- Under-appreciated
Did you know cards like this used to be rare? It's true! And worth a ton if you go far back enough!
I wouldn't start off my draft by taking this over a premium common. Not YET anyway. But by pack 3 or even 2 and I'm already deep into the tokens archetype? I could definitely see me taking one of these 1st out of a powerful pack. These are pretty okay even in a regular deck with just a bunch of monsters, but when I've got a few Captain's Call and a couple Attended Knights? Maybe even some Fungal Sprouting
because I'm a maniac? These suddenly become basically the best cards you can play on turn 3, as they just kill your opponent stone dead.
Sure, this does get killed by a Murder or Pacifism. But sometimes they don't have it, and they die. You can also fairly easily play around things like Searing Spear, and have answers to Pacifism in your deck in the form of War Priest of Thune
, Oblivion Ring
, Unsummon
or Acidic Slime
. Sometimes you will make a second one!
Summary: An actual monster in the right deck. When you have it, go for it!
BLUE
Jace's Phantasm
- Overrated
Look guys, I know this looks potentially insane. I mean, look at those numbers! That's a dragon! But it takes so much work to make happen, it's just too unreliable and low impact. The base stats of 'Flying Man' are not THAT bad. I mean, if you are super aggressive with the evasion, maybe have some Ring of Evos Isle
that you want to put on creatures and curve our with your Welkin Tern, then maybe 1/1 flier for 1 is good enough.
But when you start thinking 'maybe I should draft some Mind Sculpt
to make it big' then it all goes down hill. I dunno if you noticed, but a lot of decks simply never put many cards in the graveyard by themselves. Decks with a ton of creatures tend to just play them and land, so their 2/3 removal spells combat tricks aren't going to get the job done. Once you have to use your second mill card, you might as well be trying to kill them through library damage! If your plan is to mill them twice, then beat them to death, what happens when they remove your guy? It's like you just spent 3 cards for their 1, and you're suddenly out of action.
This is different from someone say, removing your Crusader of Odric, because the cards you are playing to make that good can still beat your opponent to death, but simply milling them for 14 cards isn't going to win many matches.
Summary: Would you windmill slam Flying Men
? No, so pick this appropriately.
Switcheroo
- Under-appreciated
Do you remember Persuasion
? No? Then how about Mind Control
. This card is not those cards, but it's not as far off as people seem to think. Mind Control effects are clearly insane in limited, and this requires a little bit of work, but you should be taking this early and getting the cards you need for it to work. Sure, maybe you'll have to pass it in pack 3 and your whole deck is full of only 1st pick quality men, but then you could probably pick a ham sandwich and get the same result in that case.
Just a quick scan for commons in this set gives you plenty of expendable things to give your opponent. White provides several soldier making cards, green has Elvish Visionary
and Bond Beetle
(if you have enough things to make that card worth it), red has Krenko's Command
, black has Ravenous Rats
, and Blue has Archaeomancer
and Unsummon. When you venture into other rarities you can occasionally get some super sweet value bonus, such as giving them Roaring Primadox
for their only guy.
But let's face it, you don't need super value cards like that. Things like 2/2 ground men become outclassed often, so you won't mind giving them a real body for their best guy most of the time. And would you really complain about giving them a Watercourser in exchange for a Sublime Archangel
or Nefarox?
If you have absolutely zero synergy with this, I guess you are forgiven for taking premium commons over this, but even then, I don't think you should. This even goes well with opponents using Encrust
and Pacifism on your guys!
Summary: Even a 'bad' Control Magic is actually a very powerful magic card.
BLACK
Blood Reckoning
- Overrated
There was a card like this before. Hissing Miasma
they called it. And it was almost unplayable. This card is more expensive, and all the creatures are better now. Sure, sometimes you will have the perfect deck/opponent match up, where they have all 1/1's and 2/2's and you have all walls and life gain and a couple of unblockable guys where they simply won't be able to win. Maybe YOU are the super aggressive one, and you dealt them a ton of damage early, and all they have are 2/2 Drake tokens to kill you with.
Most of the time, you will play it, falling further behind on the board, and your opponent will lose 5-6 life before you get killed. If their deck is not totally single-minded on swarming you, they can still pretty easily just stop attacking if they need to and beat you up with a Serra Angel
or something. Worse, if they have a Vampire Nighthawk
or Arctic Aven
, they might actually be able to completely ignore this card.
Summary: Don't put this in most decks. Use your judgement as to whether your deck can actually use this effect, and sideboard in or out appropriately.
Veilborn Ghoul
- Under-appreciated
This is absolutely not what I'd look to pick up early. While it looks deceptively powerful as a relentless attacker, it simply isn't that good at that job. Weak to first strikers and tokens, it costs to much to rely on.
But if you look at this more as a card you can do interesting synergy tricks with, then it's a lot more appealing. The main cards to pair this with are things like Rummaging Goblin
and Wild Guess
. Black/red decks often have this issue where they have all these sweet removal cards but bad win conditions, so sometimes you just lose from being attritioned out of a game when they just draw a bunch of average men.
This card fills the role of actually giving you a reasonable win condition, and being really able to charge up the effectiveness of the red 'looting' cards, letting you win those battles by pulling ahead of your opponent. Squee, Goblin Nabob
might not be around to be best friends with your Looting, but Veilborn Ghoul does a decent impression. If you're already stocked well on removal, consider Veilborn for your RB deck.
Summary: Actually very sweet when discarding him for fun and profit.
RED
Mindclaw Shaman
, Volcanic Geyser
- Overrated
These are kind of a stretch, because these are both pretty sweet. The thing I mostly want to impress upon you here is that even cards with potentially super sweet upsides should consider hitting the bench.
With Mindclaw Shaman, the dream of hitting awesome spells is so alluring that sometimes people don't consider sideboarding something like this out when faced with an enemy with say, only a few spells in their deck. Imagine playing it against a deck that is 20 creatures and a Ranger's Path
. For all the times your opponent's deck is sweet and you get to borrow his Murder, don't forget that one match where this is a 5 mana 2/2, and sideboard accordingly.
Similarly, Volcanic Geyser makes people take notice. An instant X spell! While a nice solid removal spell/Lava Axe
, the extra mana makes this much worse at killing creatures, and if you are a 15/16 land super-fast beatdown special, sometimes this simply isn't going to be very good unless you are losing to flood and need to topdeck 6 damage to the face. I take Searing Spear over this most of the time, and for hyper aggressive decks I can see an argument for Chandra's Fury for the role of 'Lava Axe'.
Summary: Good card most of the time does not equal good card all of the time!
Arms Dealer
- Under-appreciated
On it's own, this is a slightly weird 4 damage creature removal for the same cost as Turn to Slag
, except it can attack or chump-block instead of destroy a Ring.
With other Goblins, this can totally dominate boards. Krenko's Command and Goblin Arsonist
suddenly become incredible value for mana with this guy in play, and suddenly their sweet defence is not so sweet any more.
Knowing how powerful this is if you get to draft around it, and without your opponents taking your sweet Goblin spells, I am inclined to say take this over the best commons, since the pay-off is so worth it.
Summary: Recurring removal spells are good, even if vulnerable!
GREEN
Roaring Primadox
- Overrated
This is another weird one to list. On the one hand, it is actually pretty sweet when you have synergies to go with it. My issue is that so far people are happy to pick up these super early and pick them high without giving them support. You simply don't want to play this in a deck without a bunch of sweet things to return. Don't forget it is any creature! Previous incarnations of this card were green-only, but this plays just as nice with Ravenous Rats, Bloodhunter Bats
, Attended Knight and so on. Just stop taking it when your whole deck is 5 mana Spiders and Centaur Coursers. A 4/4 for 4 is not such a great deal that you are willing to play it without abusing the effect, and it's just awful returning things constantly with no benefit.
Summary: Is pretty bad without creatures that benefit from the 'drawback'. Pick high if you want, but be prepared to support it.
Rancor
- Under-appreciated
Haha, just kidding, everyone knows this is awesome.
Fungal Sprouting
- Actually under-appreciated
I mention this card simply because people tend to consider it totally unplayable. As in, even when they see it 13th, they think "this is a brick, I don't care". However, I don't agree, and this is exactly the sort of card that you can take advantage of wheeling. If you ever find yourself in a position to take advantage of multiple monsters, such as Predatory Rampage
or Crusader of Odric or indeed Odric himself, this will almost certainly give you minimum 3 Saprolings, and very easily 4. This is usually as good or better than Captain's Call, which means it really shouldn't be in packs during picks 12-14.
It certain looks win-more (as in, it's only good when you're winning) and unlike Captain's Call it won't help if you top deck it on an empty board. However, as a way to keep up pressure with your generally uninspiring monsters, (looking at you Spiked Baloth
!) you can do a lot worse than unleash the Saprolings.
Summary: Not unplayable. Not wonderful or anything, but not total trash. Pick it over random weak hate-drafts!
ARTIFACTS
The Rings – Overrated
I'm not saying the various Rings (Evos Isle, Thune etc) aren't playable to good, they can be. Just that most of the time, you need to have a ton of creatures in the appropriate colour to play them, barring weird scenarios where you REALLY want that haste ability for your giant monsters.
Try not to end up with 3 rings of various colours alongside removal, leaving yourself without enough guys to wear them!
Summary: Watch out for the Legendary Ring that gains control of all creatures equipped with Rings.
Chronomaton
- Under-appreciated
So far I've seen a lot of these in sideboards, but I feel like this shouldn't be the case most of the time. As a 1 drop, obviously the base stats are not very exciting, but as a mana sink and monster that will remain relevant into the late game, I want this in my deck.
Sure, sometimes you will have 2, 3 and 4 drops and this won't grow for a long time. But then, hey, it will join in the beat down. Sometimes you'll draw it turn 10 and it won't be that great, but neither will a random 2/2.
But any games where you don't curve out well, or you have combat tricks to hold up then don't use, you will have a threat that they can't ignore.
It DOES get punished quite severely by Unsummon and such. But just play around things: don't get too greedy and go for 10/10 when 4/4 will do.
Summary: Turns into a fatty without much help.
I think that about covers it. Don't take this as a 'best and worst' selection, since everyone knows Talrand's Invocation
and Oblivion Ring etc. are amazing, but more as a challenge to your card evaluations. And even if I'm wrong about every card on this list, it's better to experiment with pick orders than always pick the same things every time!
Happy drafting!
Stephen Murray
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