Average Picked At: 3.22 Total Times Picked: 27 Average Last Seen At: 2.83 Total Times Seen 67
Pro Rating: 4.0 Pro Comment: Radha does typically give you some serious mana, and in a format with lots of Kicker and other mana sinks, you usually have something to use it on. This is all coupled with a pretty reasonable body.
Average Picked At: 5.80 Total Times Picked: 116 Average Last Seen At: 5.24 Total Times Seen 575
Pro Rating: 3.5 Pro Comment: Fixing and ramp are big in this format as a result of kicker and various mana sinks, and Grow from the Ashes is really good at giving you both of those things, especially when you kick it. It can even allow you to splash double colored cards, which is nice upside.
Average Picked At: 6.95 Total Times Picked: 20 Average Last Seen At: 4.95 Total Times Seen 223
Pro Rating: 1.5 Pro Comment: This 5-mana 9/3 is pretty silly! And, actually fairly playable too. It is a historic spell, which definitely matters, and also a funny place to put something like Arcane Flight.
Average Picked At: 2.96 Total Times Picked: 54 Average Last Seen At: 2.90 Total Times Seen 125
Pro Rating: 4.0 Pro Comment: This is situational, but it is cheap enough that it is incredibly good removal.
Average Picked At: 5.94 Total Times Picked: 34 Average Last Seen At: 4.71 Total Times Seen 206
Pro Rating: 1.0 // 3.0 Pro Comment: This card is a pretty sweet build around and value engine. It doesn’t work out in every deck, but being able to exile creatures to make Saprolings tends to feel pretty good – the real value, though, comes from being able to sacrifice saprolings to draw cards and gain life. Note that that ability works with ANY saprolings too, not just the ones that Fungal Plots makes, and that’s pretty nice.
Average Picked At: 6.00 Total Times Picked: 56 Average Last Seen At: 4.62 Total Times Seen 223
Pro Rating: 3.0 Pro Comment: This is nice, because it is a one mana 2/1 that is good all game long. If you play it early, it is going to crack in for some pretty real damage. If you get it late, it may not be able to attack as effectively, but because it can sacrifice itself to save one of your creatures, it still has really nice utility.
Average Picked At: 9.03 Total Times Picked: 34 Average Last Seen At: 6.15 Total Times Seen 264
Pro Rating: 2.5 Pro Comment: This is a pretty legitimate finisher in this format. This format is grindy enough that casting Slinn Voda with Kicker, especially in a deck like UG, is very doable, and adding an 8/8 to the board that bounces pretty much all creatures is excellent. It does get its score dinged by the massive cost, but if you do manage to resolve it with Kicker, it will often feel like a bomb.
Average Picked At: 1.50 Total Times Picked: 16 Average Last Seen At: 1.47 Total Times Seen 17
Pro Rating: 5.0 Pro Comment: Obviously, this is a bomb, even in the absence of other Angels. A 5-mana 5/5 with those keywords will just take over the game. It attacks incredibly well if that’s what you need, and the lifelink creates a gap of 10 life between you and your opponent every time it hits them. Even if you’re behind, you also have a nice card, because it blocks incredibly well too. It is capable of killing most things in combat and gaining you life at the same time, and that’s nice.
Average Picked At: 5.82 Total Times Picked: 39 Average Last Seen At: 4.49 Total Times Seen 206
Pro Rating: 3.0 Pro Comment: Shanna is often just a large vanilla creature which gets a little bit of upside against creature abilities, but you know, two mana for a creature that can potentially get larger is quite good. Of course, the flipside is that she can also shrink at an inopportune time.
Average Picked At: 6.50 Total Times Picked: 4 Average Last Seen At: 3.74 Total Times Seen 49
Pro Rating: 1.0 Pro Comment: It is tempting to look at a card like this and see how much damage it could potentially do, but the thing to remember is that you have to tap three lands to play this in the first place, so even if you have like 6 in play – which is a pretty good number – you just get three 2/2s until your next turn. Now, you can use that more offensively sometimes, like to do lethal – or you can be more defensive with it. However, that defensive mode basically amounts to it being a convoluted fog, which isn’t particularly good. Sometimes you’ll have a huge number of lands and this will get you there, but it will be a dead card for a significant chunk of many games.
Average Picked At: 7.67 Total Times Picked: 114 Average Last Seen At: 6.67 Total Times Seen 688
Pro Rating: 2.5 Pro Comment: This has decent stats and an okay historic trigger. Tapping stuff down can often really enable attacks you just didn’t have before, and that’s a good place to be in an aggressive deck.
Average Picked At: 4.84 Total Times Picked: 19 Average Last Seen At: 3.56 Total Times Seen 68
Pro Rating: 3.0 Pro Comment: Like most two-color cycles of lands, these are some pretty nice fixing, and they’ll often come into play untapped.
Average Picked At: 1.00 Total Times Picked: 12 Average Last Seen At: 1.00 Total Times Seen 12
Pro Rating: 5.0 Pro Comment: This Karn gives you a ton for only 4 mana. Starting at 5 loyalty is a pretty big deal, especially because he can tick up to 6 right away. If you play this on turn 4, he is almost impossible to kill. His +1 will always let you draw a card, and his -1 can improve your card quality, while his -2 can protect him if that’s what you need. The -2 ability doesn’t always create something bigger than a 1/1, but there are enough artifacts in this set that it will be a 2/2 or so often enough. Karn’s a bomb, he can draw you a ton of cards and add to the board with creature tokens.
Average Picked At: 9.33 Total Times Picked: 94 Average Last Seen At: 7.83 Total Times Seen 883
Pro Rating: 2.5 Pro Comment: Another card with Kicker where neither the unkicked OR kicked version seems very efficient, but the upside offered by that flexibility is very real. Kicking this late and Threatening an opponents creature will add a lot of damage to the board in most cases, and will often really allow you to attack in a situation where it didn’t look like a good idea.
Average Picked At: 10.58 Total Times Picked: 85 Average Last Seen At: 9.21 Total Times Seen 1079
Pro Rating: 1.5 Pro Comment: There is a bit of a spell theme in this set, but not really enough of one that Warlord’s Fury feels amazing here. It does replace itself, so it isn’t terrible.
Average Picked At: 11.11 Total Times Picked: 27 Average Last Seen At: 7.69 Total Times Seen 372
Pro Rating: 0.5 Pro Comment: 5 mana for a tutor effect just isn’t worth it 99% of the time. And yeah, you do get to tutor up two things, but this is still woefully inefficient, and spending a turn casting this and not adding to the board is rough.
Average Picked At: 7.10 Total Times Picked: 123 Average Last Seen At: 6.72 Total Times Seen 789
Pro Rating: 2.5 Pro Comment: This is another card with Kicker where both options don’t exactly seem efficient, but having the choice between them is great. You either get a 3-mana 2/3 or a 6-mana 2/3 that makes two 1/1 tokens. When you kick it, it can really allow you to stabilize in situations even when you are pretty far behind.
Average Picked At: 7.39 Total Times Picked: 132 Average Last Seen At: 6.93 Total Times Seen 726
Pro Rating: 2.5 Pro Comment: In a Red deck, especially a UR deck, this will be a 3-mana 3/2 that does 2 damage to the opponent a decent chunk of the time, and that’s a decent enough card.
Average Picked At: 5.11 Total Times Picked: 19 Average Last Seen At: 3.61 Total Times Seen 73
Pro Rating: 3.0 Pro Comment: Like most two-color cycles of lands, these are some pretty nice fixing, and they’ll often come into play untapped.
Average Picked At: 10.05 Total Times Picked: 75 Average Last Seen At: 8.06 Total Times Seen 937
Pro Rating: 2.0 Pro Comment: This trick will often allow your creature to win combat early, and sometimes the kicker side of things can get you lethal out of nowhere, in addition to also being the sort of boost that will allow almost any creature to take down any other creature. It is still a trick of course, and comes with the significant downside those have.