Draft Trainer

The Brothers' War Retro Artifacts Limited Quiz

Answered: 0/20
Accuracy: 0
Platinum Angel
Average Picked At: 1.00
Total Times Picked: 2
Average Last Seen At: 1.50
Total Times Seen 4
Pro Rating: 4.5
Pro Comment: Making it so you can’t lose and your opponent can’t win is pretty oppressive, and the Angel can even help you win the game with its 4/4 flying body. The downside of the card is always the massive mana investment coupled with the fact that it dies to a whole lot of stuff, and while the latter is still going to be true, the mana will be easier to come by in this format than normal. If she sticks around, your opponent just can’t win – obviously – and that’s enough for her to get into the lower bomb range. She doe still die to a lot, and gives you absolutely 0 value in situations where your opponent untaps and kills her, and that keeps her from being completely absurd. But she’s still great
Blackblade Reforged
Average Picked At: 4.60
Total Times Picked: 5
Average Last Seen At: 3.73
Total Times Seen 47
Pro Rating: 2.5
Pro Comment: Last time we saw this was Dominaria, a set with lots of legendary creatures, so it was pretty easy to equip it for the lower cost. There aren’t enough legendary creatures in this format for you to be able to consistently equip this for the lower cost. However, with powerstones around, actually paying to Equip this is going to be a little bit easier than it was last time we saw it
Chromatic Lantern
Average Picked At: 5.12
Total Times Picked: 8
Average Last Seen At: 3.49
Total Times Seen 49
Pro Rating: 2.0
Pro Comment: This gives you great fixing and a little bit of ramp, things that are reasonably beneficial, but you do have to remember it doesn’t add to the board in any meaningful way.
Mishra's Bauble
Average Picked At: 5.31
Total Times Picked: 52
Average Last Seen At: 3.89
Total Times Seen 229
Pro Rating: 1.5
Pro Comment: This is a free artifact that replaces itself, though it does take a whole turn to actually replace itself, so the UR deck won’t be quite as excited about this one
Quicksilver Amulet
Average Picked At: 7.71
Total Times Picked: 7
Average Last Seen At: 4.65
Total Times Seen 48
Pro Rating: 0.0
Pro Comment: Yeah, no. This kind of effect is easy to overrate because you think of the ideal situation of slamming some monster into play, but that’s hard to consistently line up in Limited, and this asks for so much mana to do its job that it almost isn’t worth it anyway. This kind of thing also never gives you an actual card of value, because it basically just gives you a discount. It does let you play a creature at instant speed, which is something – but we’ve seen this card and cards like it before, and they’re always awful in Limited.
Liquimetal Coating
Average Picked At: 13.26
Total Times Picked: 38
Average Last Seen At: 9.60
Total Times Seen 547
Pro Rating: 0.0
Pro Comment: You don’t want to be doing this. For the most part, this effect is meaningless! There are of course some cornercases – like if you have a card that destroys artifacts you can make it destroy any permanent – or if you need another artifact in play for some effect it can do that, but there’s a reason I said “corner cases.” This just doesn’t do enough.
Mazemind Tome
Average Picked At: 1.73
Total Times Picked: 11
Average Last Seen At: 1.53
Total Times Seen 17
Pro Rating: 3.5
Pro Comment: This was pretty good last time we saw it, and that will continue here. Using the Scry effect when you’re low on mana is fine, and actually drawing cards with this is very powerful, and also easier to do because of power stones. Gaining the 4 life helps make up for the fact that you sunk some mana into something that didn’t actually add to the board, too.
Well of Lost Dreams
Average Picked At: 9.67
Total Times Picked: 6
Average Last Seen At: 5.65
Total Times Seen 87
Pro Rating: 0.0 // 3.5
Pro Comment: There are ways to gain life in this format, and I think there are actually enough of them that this isn’t a straight up F. It will be an F in most decks in the format, but if you have 5+ ways to gain life – especially if those ways are repeatable – this can draw you a ton of cards, and powerstones will make it easier for you to pay the cost. It is a bit of a bummer that this is the only life gain payoff in the deck, making it less organic for you to find somewhere to play this.
Ivory Tower
Average Picked At: 13.97
Total Times Picked: 29
Average Last Seen At: 8.94
Total Times Seen 510
Pro Rating: 0.0
Pro Comment: This isn’t good in Limited. You need to be a draw go style control deck to really make this gain you life that matters, and that just doesn’t happen in Limited. This will frequently do nothing or close to nothing.
Springleaf Drum
Average Picked At: 8.85
Total Times Picked: 53
Average Last Seen At: 6.48
Total Times Seen 383
Pro Rating: 1.0
Pro Comment: It is surprisingly hard to set up this kind of mana ramp in Limited. This can get your mana going incredibly fast provided you have some early creatures, but that’s far from guaranteed, and then by the mid-to-late game it has waning usefulness
Quietus Spike
Average Picked At: 6.00
Total Times Picked: 2
Average Last Seen At: 3.91
Total Times Seen 33
Pro Rating: 1.0
Pro Comment: This isn’t very good. 3 to play and 3 to equip for death touch is a lot even with power stones. And sure, if you hit your opponent they lose some life! But the creature wielding this really can’t kill the opponent on its own since it is always half, and you’re far from guaranteed to actually get your creature in for damage. Sure, your opponent has to trade with whatever you equipped it too, but that’s often a pretty big deal because of the amount of work it takes just to equip this
Cloud Key
Average Picked At: 15.00
Total Times Picked: 0
Average Last Seen At: 4.84
Total Times Seen 64
Pro Rating: 1.0
Pro Comment: Using up a card to reduce the cost of one card type just isn’t worth it most of the time in Limited. You really want to add to the board in some way and get this effect, and that isn’t an option here. Even in a world where you ramp a lot, using up a card and mana to play this thing doesn’t feel very good.
Adaptive Automaton
Average Picked At: 2.00
Total Times Picked: 10
Average Last Seen At: 2.13
Total Times Seen 23
Pro Rating: 3.0
Pro Comment: There’s really only one tribal deck in the format – UW Soldiers - and this will definitely fit in nicely there. However, you might be surprised how easily this can fit into other decks too – the format also has tons of humans and Phyrexians! I think that probably means this will work out often enough to value fairly highly.
Soul-Guide Lantern
Average Picked At: 7.34
Total Times Picked: 47
Average Last Seen At: 5.27
Total Times Seen 298
Pro Rating: 2.0
Pro Comment: This is another artifact that replaces itself, making it useful in the format. It also hates on the graveyard – something else of value in a format with Unearth and a couple of graveyard decks. You can main deck this pretty happily
Wurmcoil Engine
Average Picked At: 1.00
Total Times Picked: 11
Average Last Seen At: 1.08
Total Times Seen 12
Pro Rating: 5.0
Pro Comment: A 6-mana 6/6 with Deathtouch and Lifelink is easily a 4.0, and this comes with the absurd effect of leaving behind two 3/3 tokens – each with one of those keywords – when it dies. So, your opponent either gets killed by this massive 6/6 that puts the game out of reach thanks to lifelink, or they get 3-for-1’d. Yeah, that’s a bomb – and definitely an A. Keep in mind exile effects and Aura-based removal do make the Engine a little sad, but yeah – still a bomb
Sundering Titan
Average Picked At: 2.60
Total Times Picked: 5
Average Last Seen At: 2.40
Total Times Seen 16
Pro Rating: 1.5
Pro Comment: This is a big monster that you can definitely ramp into, and in the majority of games you can probably use the land destruction effect to hurt your opponent more than it hurts you. Though, if you and your opponent are in completely different colors, it is going to hurt you both equally. The effect is often negligible when you play this creature, though. And yeah, A 7/10 is some business, but it also doesn’t come with evasion or anything. There are definitely some commons and uncommons in the set that have prototype that are just better if you’re in the market for ramping into artifacts.
Runechanter's Pike
Average Picked At: 4.29
Total Times Picked: 7
Average Last Seen At: 3.45
Total Times Seen 38
Pro Rating: 1.0 // 3.0
Pro Comment: In the right deck, this makes any creature into a threat that just can’t be blocked effectively, and luckily this format does have a deck interested in instants and sorceries – and there is also a pretty hefty self-mill theme. It is definitely a build around, because this is bad if you aren’t granting a significant power boost to go with the first strike.
Mesmeric Orb
Average Picked At: 4.80
Total Times Picked: 5
Average Last Seen At: 4.24
Total Times Seen 36
Pro Rating: 0.0
Pro Comment: This is a symmetrical mill card, and not really something you should be playing. It is hard to have much control over who has more permanents to untap, and you never know if this will hurt you more than your opponent. It is true that it will hurt your opponent first since they will untap first, but that still isn’t enough for me to ever play this thing.
Phyrexian Processor
Average Picked At: 2.20
Total Times Picked: 5
Average Last Seen At: 1.92
Total Times Seen 12
Pro Rating: 3.5
Pro Comment: This can churn out some beefy tokens, and that’s something made a bit easier by power stones. It does cost a fair bit of mana to get it going, but it does become a pretty nice engine before long.
Ornithopter
Average Picked At: 12.48
Total Times Picked: 29
Average Last Seen At: 7.71
Total Times Seen 469
Pro Rating: 1.0
Pro Comment: This is another 0 mana artifact that doesn’t really give you a full card of value. You just don’t get enough out of playing a 0/2 Flyer to make it worth the card, and that matters a ton in Limited. This can basically come down and chump block something – and sometimes you can equip it or give it some counters, which makes things more interesting – but that’s a lot of work to make a terrible card passable
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