Average Picked At: 4.00 Total Times Picked: 3 Average Last Seen At: 4.00 Total Times Seen 20
Pro Rating: 3.5 Pro Comment: There are enough creature tokens in the format that Vintage definitely matters, and there are certainly death triggers in the format.
Average Picked At: 11.33 Total Times Picked: 9 Average Last Seen At: 7.57 Total Times Seen 135
Pro Rating: 1.5 // 3.5 Pro Comment: Zada is really sweet if you are a deck that uses combat tricks and goes wide because using a combat trick on every one of your creatures look insane, and that does look like something many Red decks will do in the format. That said, the base level thing you get here is a Hill Giant, and this is probably another one that needs a build around.
Average Picked At: 3.50 Total Times Picked: 4 Average Last Seen At: 3.20 Total Times Seen 5
Pro Rating: 4.0 Pro Comment: Making this your Companion is going to be a challenge, especially if the format is one where you need to add to the board by turn two, and it probably is. The good news? Keruga is great in your main deck. Even if it just draws you one card on ETB you’ll be very happy, and it can often draw you multiple cards
Average Picked At: 8.00 Total Times Picked: 4 Average Last Seen At: 5.09 Total Times Seen 26
Pro Rating: 3.0 Pro Comment: Decreasing the cost of spells is nice, and there are a couple of playable counterspells in the set.
Average Picked At: 11.46 Total Times Picked: 13 Average Last Seen At: 7.83 Total Times Seen 154
Pro Rating: 2.5 Pro Comment: Life gain is not a huge theme in the format, which really limits how good Dina can be. There is incidental life gain around that she certainly takes advantage of, and her ability to buff herself can be useful sometimes too.
Average Picked At: 1.33 Total Times Picked: 3 Average Last Seen At: 1.33 Total Times Seen 3
Pro Rating: 5.0 Pro Comment: 7 mana is a lot, but obviously Elesh Norn has an absolutely massive impact on the board right away, often wiping away several opposing creatures and allowing your board to attack far more effectively. She often simply wins the game the turn she comes down.
Average Picked At: 1.40 Total Times Picked: 5 Average Last Seen At: 1.33 Total Times Seen 6
Pro Rating: 4.0 Pro Comment: Ragavan is obviously insane in basically all constructed formats, but in a non-cube Limited format like this one, he is merely quite good. If you play him early he will be giving you a whole bunch of value since you’re going to effectively draw cards and ramp and fix your mana – and Dash means you can sneak it in sometimes. However, the board does quickly become populated enough that Ragavan just ends up being a one mana 2/1 by the mid to late game – which is fine, but nothing special.
Average Picked At: 2.00 Total Times Picked: 2 Average Last Seen At: 1.50 Total Times Seen 4
Pro Rating: 4.0 Pro Comment: A 5-mana 4/4 with Haste is decent, and the upside of Haste to everything is pretty real on subsequent turns – and if your opponent’s stuff has to enter tapped, your things with Haste are even more likely to be able to get in there for damage.
Average Picked At: 15.00 Total Times Picked: 0 Average Last Seen At: 3.00 Total Times Seen 4
Pro Rating: 0.0 Pro Comment: Like we saw with Jin-Gitaxias, 8 mana just isn’t something you can count on getting, and Vorinclex’s abilities honestly aren’t even that great by the late game in Limited. You don’t have anything to spend all that mana on most of the time, and making your opponent’s mana worse doesn’t matter a whole lot either.
Average Picked At: 1.50 Total Times Picked: 2 Average Last Seen At: 8.50 Total Times Seen 3
Pro Rating: 4.0 Pro Comment: Even if you can’t use all of Kenrith’s abilities, he ends up being a 5-mana 5/5 that will have access to at least a couple of these, and that’s plenty for him to be good since every single ability he brings to the table is pretty impactful.
Average Picked At: 8.50 Total Times Picked: 4 Average Last Seen At: 7.06 Total Times Seen 24
Pro Rating: 2.5 Pro Comment: This gets nice with damaging spells, and there are of course many of those in Red – and even one in White in this set. Gaining life off of all of that is pretty powerful.
Average Picked At: 3.50 Total Times Picked: 6 Average Last Seen At: 2.92 Total Times Seen 13
Pro Rating: 4.0 Pro Comment: This is going to at least give you a 2-for-1, load your graveyard, and give you a 3/2 Menace. That’s a great deal.
Average Picked At: 5.00 Total Times Picked: 1 Average Last Seen At: 3.52 Total Times Seen 23
Pro Rating: 3.0 Pro Comment: This can gain life all on its own, but it is also small enough that it isn’t really going to survive gaining you that life. You need some other incidental life gain around to really take advantage. There’s enough life gain in Green/White for this work out fairly well.
Average Picked At: 9.00 Total Times Picked: 1 Average Last Seen At: 5.14 Total Times Seen 8
Pro Rating: 1.0 Pro Comment: The mana here is tough, and there aren’t really enough cards in this set that Niv-Mizzet can even hit and put in your hand. Your typical deck will probably have like two cards he can draw for you, so he isn’t even always going to be able to draw you a card.
Average Picked At: 5.50 Total Times Picked: 6 Average Last Seen At: 4.53 Total Times Seen 21
Pro Rating: 0.0 Pro Comment: This is effectively a 4-mana mana rock when you play it at first, and it does do a decent job of accelerating your mana – but that’s all it would be for awhile. You have to cast five spells to turn it into what is basically a vanilla 12/12. This is is a horrendous top-deck, and if you do play it on turn four, transforming it quickly is unlikely. Basically, its never good.
Average Picked At: 3.43 Total Times Picked: 7 Average Last Seen At: 3.20 Total Times Seen 11
Pro Rating: 4.0 Pro Comment: On its own, Obosh is effectively a 5-mana 6/5 – and it also effectively buffs the power of all of your other odd-numbered creatures. You can see why doing the Companion requirement can be quite powerful, because it means literally every creature in your deck will do double damage, and you know you have the opportunity to get Obosh every single game. It is definitely a challenge to meet the requirement though, as not having two drops can be sketchy. He’s great in your main deck too, though!
Average Picked At: 10.71 Total Times Picked: 14 Average Last Seen At: 7.04 Total Times Seen 135
Pro Rating: 2.0 Pro Comment: A 4-mana 2/2 with Double Strike isn’t a complete disaster, and this does upgrade a few other cards. Unfortunately, there aren’t very many First Strikers in this set.
Average Picked At: 2.00 Total Times Picked: 2 Average Last Seen At: 2.56 Total Times Seen 17
Pro Rating: 3.5 Pro Comment: Thalia’s always a nice card because of her bae stats Her tax effect is symmetrical, but you’re the one playing Thalia, so you have control over when you cast her – if you really need to cast some noncreature spells just don’t play her, and she’s even better if you don’t have a ton of noncreature spells in your deck.
Average Picked At: 9.89 Total Times Picked: 9 Average Last Seen At: 7.12 Total Times Seen 114
Pro Rating: 1.5 // 3.0 Pro Comment: I don’t think every Red deck will automatically have the things it needs for this to spit out a Spark elemental every turn, and its pretty bad when you’re not doing that.
Average Picked At: 4.00 Total Times Picked: 2 Average Last Seen At: 3.14 Total Times Seen 7
Pro Rating: 3.5 Pro Comment: If you have small creatures, Ezuri starts to do some pretty great stuff, as even just getting one +1/+1 counter a turn is pretty awesome, and you can end up with far more. It does take some work to really get it going of course, since it is just a Hill Giant at first, but I think decks will have enough creatures to give you experience counters.