Average Picked At: 1.50 Total Times Picked: 2 Average Last Seen At: 6.00 Total Times Seen 4
Pro Rating: 4.0 Pro Comment: Ral is strong, but he isn’t quite a bomb. His +1 lets you draw cards and load the graveyard, and loading the graveyard is pretty nice because of his -3, which is a removal spell that is dependent on instants and sorceries ending up in the graveyard or in exile. The awkward thing is sometimes you play him and his -3 just doesn’t do enough damage, even in an Izzet deck! Still, he gives you tons of value, and sometimes he can even get to his ultimate, which pretty much means he wins you the game.
Average Picked At: 12.50 Total Times Picked: 16 Average Last Seen At: 10.82 Total Times Seen 204
Pro Rating: 1.0 Pro Comment: If you are short on creatures, you’ll play this. Otherwise, not so much.
Average Picked At: 14.00 Total Times Picked: 4 Average Last Seen At: 9.55 Total Times Seen 180
Pro Rating: 1.0 Pro Comment: This does a bunch of small stuff, but all of it is pretty irrelevant most of the time.
Average Picked At: 8.11 Total Times Picked: 18 Average Last Seen At: 8.00 Total Times Seen 154
Pro Rating: 2.0 Pro Comment: As usual with this card that has been reprinted a ton, it is a reasonable trick that can help almost any creature win combat.
Average Picked At: 5.00 Total Times Picked: 16 Average Last Seen At: 5.09 Total Times Seen 42
Pro Rating: 2.5 Pro Comment: This underperforms a little bit. The format can be somewhat fast, and while you can definitely power this out for 5 or 6 mana, sometimes that’s just a little too late. It is still a pretty nice finisher, especially in GW, but not as incredible as it looks at first glance.
Average Picked At: 9.09 Total Times Picked: 32 Average Last Seen At: 9.39 Total Times Seen 202
Pro Rating: 2.0 Pro Comment: This trick is fine. One mana for +2/+2 tends to be solid in Limited, and the life gain tacked on is nice.
Average Picked At: 4.33 Total Times Picked: 12 Average Last Seen At: 3.57 Total Times Seen 25
Pro Rating: 3.5 Pro Comment: Creatures with Flying that can give other creatures Flying when they attack tend to always be pretty good in Limited, but it gets especially spicy alongside Mentor creatures, because if you are sending them into the air with the Roc, the Roc is probably also getting Mentored, which can result in a ton of evasive damage in a hurry.
Average Picked At: 10.00 Total Times Picked: 11 Average Last Seen At: 7.84 Total Times Seen 144
Pro Rating: 2.0 Pro Comment: This is pretty nice in UR decks because of the spell-triggers, and it isn’t bad in UW control decks either.
Average Picked At: 10.44 Total Times Picked: 9 Average Last Seen At: 7.18 Total Times Seen 121
Pro Rating: 1.0 // 2.5 Pro Comment: This is a pretty bad counterspell in most decks in the format. Four mana to counter something tends to be way too clunky, and shuffling cards into your deck isn’t that big of a deal. However, the UW decks in this format can sometimes end up in very real controlling builds where Devious Cover-Up is actually a quality card, especially if you have two of them to loop. You can just lock down the board and outvalue your opponent until their dead! So, this gets a build around grade. In the right deck, it is pretty legit – but don’t try to play it in any old Blue deck.
Average Picked At: 3.00 Total Times Picked: 3 Average Last Seen At: 3.95 Total Times Seen 29
Pro Rating: 3.0 Pro Comment: Creatures with Edicts stapled to them always tend to be solid, and I think that’s the case here. The addition of the discard effect is nice, since sometimes having an edict creature is a bummer if your opponent doesn’t play anything, and this makes sure you get a card one way or another.
Average Picked At: 6.30 Total Times Picked: 10 Average Last Seen At: 5.06 Total Times Seen 97
Pro Rating: 2.5 Pro Comment: This isn’t a bad surveil payoff, as it can be really obnoxious as an attacker. Your opponent basically never wants to give you a free card, so they often have to block, and the best they’ll be able to do is trade.
Average Picked At: 3.33 Total Times Picked: 3 Average Last Seen At: 3.05 Total Times Seen 25
Pro Rating: 4.0 Pro Comment: Both options here can be pretty nice. Freezing down a creature can really help you slow your opponent down and/or help you win a race. The repeatable Surveil is great card selection too, and goes especially well with the Surveil payoffs in the format.
Average Picked At: 4.29 Total Times Picked: 7 Average Last Seen At: 3.97 Total Times Seen 36
Pro Rating: 3.5 Pro Comment: This ends up growing a ton in this format, as you will just have a lot of multicolored cards, and this quickly turns into a threat with Trample in most decks.
Average Picked At: 2.50 Total Times Picked: 4 Average Last Seen At: 3.00 Total Times Seen 29
Pro Rating: 4.0 Pro Comment: Another great card in this cycle. Izzet is of course all about spells, so this tends to have some significant power, and its great that it comes with a cantrip.
Average Picked At: 7.92 Total Times Picked: 24 Average Last Seen At: 7.02 Total Times Seen 134
Pro Rating: 2.5 Pro Comment: This has bad stats, and its combat damage trigger is only useful in very narrow situations.
Average Picked At: 8.25 Total Times Picked: 24 Average Last Seen At: 8.37 Total Times Seen 164
Pro Rating: 2.5 Pro Comment: This is a really nice card for aggressive Izzet and Boros decks, as it often wins you the game. It is a key card in those decks, but also not something you want to go after super early, since it is pretty much only good in those decks – where you’ll always want 1-2 copies of it.
Average Picked At: 5.15 Total Times Picked: 13 Average Last Seen At: 5.03 Total Times Seen 50
Pro Rating: 3.0 Pro Comment: The Flower half isn’t too bad, as making sure you hit a land drop early is pretty nice. Its actually kind of neat that it costs hybrid mana, so you can actually use it to help you splash either Green or White in a deck that doesn’t have the other Selesnya color. Meanwhile, if you draw this late ona stalled out board, Flourish has a good chance of shifting the game in your favor.
Average Picked At: 2.33 Total Times Picked: 3 Average Last Seen At: 2.33 Total Times Seen 3
Pro Rating: 5.0 Pro Comment: This is a bomb that is pretty unbeatable left unchecked. She can target herself with her buffing abilities, and because she is both Red and White, she can be a 4-mana 4/5 with Vigilance, Flying, Trample, and Mentor. That’s pretty darn good, and she gets even sillier when she can enable your other stuff to attack too. And if you have a board, playing her before combat on your turn is pretty sweet, because the buffs she gives to other creatures are no joke! And of course, she’s great for mentoring creatures too.
Average Picked At: 8.29 Total Times Picked: 21 Average Last Seen At: 6.62 Total Times Seen 140
Pro Rating: 2.5 Pro Comment: This is able to rumble pretty often in Izzet decks, so much so that it sort of feels like it doesn’t have Defender!
Average Picked At: 1.60 Total Times Picked: 5 Average Last Seen At: 1.57 Total Times Seen 7
Pro Rating: 5.0 Pro Comment: This thing is silly, because it allows you to pump several creatures while also adding a 4/4 to the board! And oftentimes it feels like you aren’t paying any mana for something that powerful. The downside, of course, is that you have to tap down a bunch of stuff to make that happen, and sometimes you just don’t have the time to do that, but most of the time it is worth doing, since it upgrades your board an incredible amount for a pretty low investment.