Pro Rating: 5.0 Pro Comment: You can either straight up pay 5 mana for her as a 5 loyalty planeswalker – or pay 4 mana and 2 life to play her as a 3-loyalty planeswalker. Both options are fairly appealing. Her +1 does a good job of protecting her and disrupting your opponent, and her -X can also do a good job of that. Her ultimate is also quite good, as decreasing the cost of all of your spells and being able to tap her notebook to draw a card is awesome. She can get to that ultimate pretty quickly if you pay all mana for her, too. She won’t always be able to stick around, but it does seem like her +1 and -X will do a pretty good job of making that happen.
Pro Rating: 3.5 Pro Comment: This looks pretty good. Because of Haste, it stands a good chance at getting in and gaining an indestructible counter. And, while that counter might not stick around forever, it is definitely going to be a problem for your opponent while it does.
Average Picked At: 5.38 Total Times Picked: 64 Average Last Seen At: 4.24 Total Times Seen 243
Pro Rating: 3.5 Pro Comment: This looks pretty nice. A 3-mana 3/2 that made Treasure when it hit the opponent would already be playable, so adding the Ninjutsu angle, and the fact that it is more generally a Ninja/Rogue payoff, and you have something even nicer!
Average Picked At: 5.24 Total Times Picked: 78 Average Last Seen At: 4.10 Total Times Seen 306
Pro Rating: 3.0 Pro Comment: The BR deck is really about sacrificing stuff, as it often is – and you’ll have plenty of expendable things to sacrifice for value with the Chief, and there are other sacrifice synergies around too! It seems like a one drop that can really net you some serious cards in the mid to late game.
Average Picked At: 1.26 Total Times Picked: 31 Average Last Seen At: 1.26 Total Times Seen 32
Pro Rating: 4.0 Pro Comment: The casting cost is great for a 4/4, and the Crew is a little bit high, but it more than makes up for that with its activated ability, which will net you some cards, give you a creature token that can crew it, and even fix your mana a little bit. It may take a few turns to get going, but at times where you don’t have those turns, you’ll probably also just be able to crew it.
Average Picked At: 1.81 Total Times Picked: 32 Average Last Seen At: 1.91 Total Times Seen 49
Pro Rating: 3.5 Pro Comment: This has a very cool design. In the early game, you can use it to help you ramp your mana, and then once you’ve ramped your mana enough, you have a pretty nice Channel effect that will allow you to get back a whole bunch of permanents. That’s the kind of play that really helps you win the long game.
Average Picked At: 9.25 Total Times Picked: 36 Average Last Seen At: 6.33 Total Times Seen 464
Pro Rating: 3.0 Pro Comment: This is quite the modification payoff! Now, if you’ve only got one modified creature, it isn’t going to be able to do a whole lot, but with 2+, your chance of reanimating a creature are pretty reasonable. This has a fine baseline as a 3-mana ⅔ with Menace too, which also makes it easier for you to attack with more than once. It also means that Unforgiving One is also a good creature to modify in the first place, and luckily it counts itself! I do think that it requires enough set up that it isn’t something you take super highly.
Average Picked At: 7.24 Total Times Picked: 55 Average Last Seen At: 5.63 Total Times Seen 417
Pro Rating: 3.0 Pro Comment: If this was just an Aura, I wouldn’t be that impressed. Its costly, dependent on your board state, and doesn’t do anything to keep you from getting blown out by removal. I would be likely to give it a 1.5. However, because the card has Channel, which effectively makes it into a reasonable 3-mana spell that makes two 1/1 tokens that are good at crewing vehicles, it is a lot better. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that you’ll probably channel this more than you cast it as a spell! Still, once you have the Channel mode, it is nice that you have the Aura mode as a late-game possibility, because if you time it right on an evasive creature, an Aura like Born to Drive can end the game.
Average Picked At: 2.78 Total Times Picked: 32 Average Last Seen At: 2.43 Total Times Seen 56
Pro Rating: 4.0 Pro Comment: Well, this is very nice. You can play it early as a one mana 1/1 Flyer that helps you set up your other cards with ninjutsu, and then in the later part of the game it can come in with its ninjutsu ability and make a copy of one of your other attacking creatures, something that will virtually always be worth that 4 mana. You do need another attacker of course, but that doesn’t seem like a big ask. Things get really wacky when you return it to your hand via another creature’s ninjutsu, and then you can get its powerful trigger all over again!
Average Picked At: 4.58 Total Times Picked: 71 Average Last Seen At: 3.69 Total Times Seen 220
Pro Rating: 4.0 Pro Comment: This is a premium removal spell. The set has a ton of artifacts and enchantments that are also creatures, so even if those creatures aren’t tapped, you can kill them – plus the additional flexibility of taking down other permanent types in addition to creatures is quite nice. The additional upside will give you a 2/2 sometimes too, and when you’re doing that this will feel downright absurd!
Pro Rating: 2.0 Pro Comment: This seems like a solid little Ninja if you’re in the market for those. The Ninjutsu is very nicely costed, though keeping in mind that you have to return a thing to your hand does make it seem a bit less efficient. And really, neither casting this the normal way nor Ninjutsuing it is going to make you feel like you’re doing a great job. Its solid, and Lifelink makes it a good creature to Modify.
Average Picked At: 9.01 Total Times Picked: 125 Average Last Seen At: 7.39 Total Times Seen 1198
Pro Rating: 2.5 Pro Comment: If you can give it either of these keywords, you’ll be pretty happy, and if you can give it both, it will feel quite formidable. Menace and Deathtouch are pretty nasty together, since you can kill both things that block it
Average Picked At: 2.78 Total Times Picked: 27 Average Last Seen At: 2.61 Total Times Seen 73
Pro Rating: 5.0 Pro Comment: This new Umezawa is very powerful. Adding a card selection and drawing effect to every ninjutsu is a great payoff, and Satoru would be a very strong build around if that’s all that was going on here, but all of your cards gain ninjutsu too, so it isn’t even a build around! So yeah, now you get a huge effect when you ninjutsu things, one that certainly trumps any sort of downside that comes with having to bounce a creature to your hand. There’s some upside there too – because you can rebuy ETB abilities or even cheat a creature into play for way less mana!
Average Picked At: 9.05 Total Times Picked: 65 Average Last Seen At: 6.71 Total Times Seen 497
Pro Rating: 2.5 Pro Comment: Like always, these provide some very nice fixing, and its nice to see them at Common, as it will make splashing a third color pretty simple. Fixing is great, even if you aren’t going three colors – a dual land really helps your mana base in a two color deck.
Average Picked At: 5.23 Total Times Picked: 74 Average Last Seen At: 4.97 Total Times Seen 371
Pro Rating: 3.5 Pro Comment: A 3-mana 2/2 with First Strike is already pretty playable, especially in a format with lots of ways to modify creatures, and the fact you get to do some additional damage to the opponent or (more rarely) a planeswalker if you have spare mana lying around is pretty nice. Obviously it gets spicier if you have more Shrines around.
Average Picked At: 4.18 Total Times Picked: 76 Average Last Seen At: 3.81 Total Times Seen 257
Pro Rating: 4.0 Pro Comment: This looks like a very nice Uncommon. A two mana 2/2 with Lifelink would be a solid card, a two mana 2/2 that can sacrifice itself to make something indestructible would be solid too – and this does both of those things plus in most ways it is better than just being a two mana 2/2 with Lifelink, since it can let larger creatures attack on their own and gain that useful keyword. The whole package here is just great: Solid stats, and two nice abilities. I think you can first pick this pretty happily.
Average Picked At: 14.95 Total Times Picked: 110 Average Last Seen At: 12.12 Total Times Seen 1558
Average Picked At: 4.49 Total Times Picked: 202 Average Last Seen At: 4.62 Total Times Seen 714
Pro Rating: 3.5 Pro Comment: Two mana to do 3 is always premium, so also doing 2 to the opponent sometimes is pretty nice. This is one of Red’s best Commons.
Average Picked At: 11.60 Total Times Picked: 52 Average Last Seen At: 8.68 Total Times Seen 666
Pro Rating: 1.0 // 3.0 Pro Comment: This is a super artifact-centric version of Dig Through Time. Because you have to have a decent number of Artifacts in play to make casting it worthwhile and you need ot hit two of them in the top seven cards of your library, I think this probably has to have a build around grade. This format, as I’ve been saying, has a ton of Artifacts, but this card needs you really be in on them. You probably need 10+ artifacts in your deck to get there with it, and even in this format I don’t think that’s always going to happen.
Average Picked At: 3.17 Total Times Picked: 83 Average Last Seen At: 2.81 Total Times Seen 177
Pro Rating: 4.0 Pro Comment: This is very good. Even without Channel, this would be an excellent card, as it will let you add a decent body to the board while taking down an opposing creature. Going after the opponent's face is really nice upside too. But, then you add Channel to the mix, and you make a far more flexible card. I mean, most of the time you’ll want to cast this because of the 2-for-1 potential, but sometimes you’ll have to fire this off as a straight up removal spell for less mana.