Average Picked At: 4.00 Total Times Picked: 36 Average Last Seen At: 3.96 Total Times Seen 127
Pro Rating: 3.5 Pro Comment: This looks really good. A three mana 2/3 with Toxic 1 is already passable, so the fact that this can turn an artifact into a 4/4 is pretty awesome! You can animate a noncreature artifact, or upgrade an Artifact creature that is smaller than a 4/4. There are plenty of targets in the set, including things like Mite tokens, so this is often going to give you a big advantage for only three mana
Average Picked At: 11.12 Total Times Picked: 67 Average Last Seen At: 9.13 Total Times Seen 788
Pro Rating: 2.5 Pro Comment: This seems like a solid utility land cycle. They enter tapped, so you don’t want too many of them, but the fact you can cash them in in the later stages of the game for a card is really nice, and can help when you’re flooding out.
Average Picked At: 1.92 Total Times Picked: 12 Average Last Seen At: 1.80 Total Times Seen 21
Pro Rating: 4.5 Pro Comment: 7 mana is a lot, especially when you have to have two mana of two different colors! But Kaya definitely delivers. Each time you use her -3 you’re going to be getting a pretty sweet two-for-one, since she removes an opposing creature and gives you a flying 1/1 copy of it. In other words, the effect is both removal and a way to protect her quite effectively, which is pretty insane for one ability! Her other two abilities are also very good, but the -3 is really the star of the show here. It is also great that she comes with Hexproof, as these days more and more things seem capable of killing planeswalkers. So yeah, she’s kind of hard to cast, but she is pretty close to unbeatable on most board states, so I think she is a bomb.
Average Picked At: 8.23 Total Times Picked: 31 Average Last Seen At: 5.70 Total Times Seen 199
Pro Rating: 2.5 Pro Comment: A 4-mana 4/4 vehicles with Crew 3 is not especially good, but this does replace itself, and Toxic has some real upside. The 2-for-1 potential is very real.
Average Picked At: 10.28 Total Times Picked: 60 Average Last Seen At: 8.45 Total Times Seen 735
Pro Rating: 2.5 Pro Comment: This trick is always decent. It doesn’t have the upside of helping you do more damage to your opponent, but it trades that in for the flexibility of winning virtually any combat and saving your creature from most removal
Average Picked At: 2.18 Total Times Picked: 11 Average Last Seen At: 2.15 Total Times Seen 29
Pro Rating: 2.5 Pro Comment: A one mana ½ with Toxic 1 will get some poison going if you play it on turn one, and it does have an ability that keeps it somewhat relevant. It gives your opponent a poison counter if you target your own creature with a combat trick (and there are several solid ones in Green) and if they remove one of your creatures too, which means this card will pretty consistently chip in at least one poison.
Average Picked At: 11.30 Total Times Picked: 87 Average Last Seen At: 9.74 Total Times Seen 849
Pro Rating: 2.5 Pro Comment: have the time to use the ability.
Average Picked At: 9.02 Total Times Picked: 61 Average Last Seen At: 6.60 Total Times Seen 581
Pro Rating: 1.5 Pro Comment: This will have its moments, but this format also has a lot of tokens and creatures who give you value when they die, and when your opponent has those to sacrifice this won’t feel worth a card at all, even with the poison counter on top
Average Picked At: 10.44 Total Times Picked: 18 Average Last Seen At: 7.76 Total Times Seen 291
Pro Rating: 1.5 Pro Comment: You have a pretty good chance of hitting two lands when you cast this, and that’s some pretty serious ramp – but I love that you can choose some combination of lands and proliferating when you cast this. Sometimes in the late game drawing your ramp spell is pretty awful, and this becomes a 4-mana Sorcery that Proliferates twice in that situation, and that’s often going to have a significant impact on the board. That said, format looks fast enough that there won’t be that many decks looking to take this.
Average Picked At: 10.24 Total Times Picked: 59 Average Last Seen At: 7.93 Total Times Seen 688
Pro Rating: 1.5 Pro Comment: None of what this does feels especially meaningful. It has mediocre stats and an ETB ability that is underwhelming. A 3/2 with Flash can ambush block stuff, but not that effectively – it just ends up being a surprise trade or chump block. The tap effect will be nice at times, but this just doesn’t feel like it has enough of an impact to make the cut consistently.
Average Picked At: 10.29 Total Times Picked: 75 Average Last Seen At: 8.35 Total Times Seen 692
Pro Rating: 2.0 Pro Comment: Glad to see a Phyrexian variant of the Mirrodin Spellbomb! At worst, these all cycle away while giving you some artifact synergy, and that makes it hard for them to be terrible. Then, when you have the mana, it does something reasonably significant while still replacing itself. +2/+2 and Flying is the kind of boost that matters a big chunk of the time.
Average Picked At: 2.98 Total Times Picked: 42 Average Last Seen At: 2.80 Total Times Seen 95
Pro Rating: 3.5 Pro Comment: This looks quite good. It fixes and ramps your mana effectively, and actually can become a 3/3 in the later stages of the game, and that’s enough size to at least be relevant all game long.
Average Picked At: 6.67 Total Times Picked: 30 Average Last Seen At: 4.96 Total Times Seen 180
Pro Rating: 3.0 Pro Comment: This is a pretty nice rate! Menace and Reach can be a bit awkward together, since one is an aggressive keyword and the other is defensive, but it also means that this can do a reasonable job as an attacker and a reasonable job as a blocker. It certainly isn’t exciting, but seems like a solid 5-drop.
Average Picked At: 1.62 Total Times Picked: 8 Average Last Seen At: 1.42 Total Times Seen 12
Pro Rating: 5.0 Pro Comment: Obviously, this has some very impressive efficiency. It can also come down and do something right away thanks to Haste! Ward also means this can’t be dealt with efficiently. Toxic and Trample might seem like a strange pair, but its actually pretty great! If your opponent takes any damage at all from the Rex, even 1 trample damage, they end up with 4 poison – and you still destroy their creature. Triple Green can be surprisingly hard to get in Limited, but I still think this does enough right away, and is hard enough to deal with, that it is a bomb.
Average Picked At: 5.73 Total Times Picked: 15 Average Last Seen At: 4.52 Total Times Seen 79
Pro Rating: 1.5 Pro Comment: A two mana 3/1 isn’t a terrible baseline, and the Chronicler comes with an interesting effect. Obviously, it is going to be at its best in a deck with very multicolored cards, since you make the effect one sided. This is not a set with a huge multicolored theme, with only the signpost uncommons and some rares and mythics actually being multicolored, so the Chronicler’s effect will only be coming up zero to 2 times in most games. Once nice thing is that even if you do have multicolored cards of your own, you can play with that knowledge – in other words, you can trade it off or something so you don’t give your opponent a card. That’s something else that makes this feel more beneficial than not.
Average Picked At: 12.35 Total Times Picked: 52 Average Last Seen At: 9.90 Total Times Seen 864
Pro Rating: 0.5 Pro Comment: This is a sideboard card. Against someone who isn’t a creature heavy deck, it is worth using. Against your typical Limited deck, though, it isn’t. It will just wiff far too often, and going down a card for no effect is brutal.
Average Picked At: 4.80 Total Times Picked: 10 Average Last Seen At: 3.43 Total Times Seen 39
Pro Rating: 4.5 Pro Comment: This is expensive, but it does give you quite the impressive creature. Ward 3 and pay three life is pretty legit, as it makes it harder for your opponent to efficiently deal with the Goliath, and they are going to take a hit in terms of their life no matter what they do – and that’s the fail case here. Then, if you untap with it and cast some noncreature spell, the game is pretty much over, since you make an army of tokens that can either allow you to finish your opponent off or gain a massive advantage on the board. You won’t always find yourself able to do that of course, but you’re still talking about a 6/6 Flyer that is an absolute pain to kill. I think this sneaks into the lower “bomb” range, since it gives you solid value even if the worst-case thing happens, and if it sticks around, you’re just going to win.
Average Picked At: 7.58 Total Times Picked: 12 Average Last Seen At: 5.29 Total Times Seen 75
Pro Rating: 2.5 Pro Comment: This has a solid stat-line and an ability that will be useful on occasion. You can definitely find situations where sacrificing something with this can net you some nice mana to cast an artifact, but more often than not, the ability won’t matter
Average Picked At: 11.61 Total Times Picked: 62 Average Last Seen At: 9.83 Total Times Seen 874
Pro Rating: 1.5 Pro Comment: This has a mediocre stat-line, and its ability isn’t that impressive either. Getting back removal is nice of course, but putting it on top of your library isn’t that powerful. You’ll usually have to wait a turn to get it, and if you didn’t have something worth getting out of the graveyard, you’re even more out of luck.
Average Picked At: 8.50 Total Times Picked: 22 Average Last Seen At: 6.01 Total Times Seen 209
Pro Rating: 2.0 Pro Comment: This is hard to chump block, and it can end the game in two swings thanks to Toxic. The stat-line isn’t amazing for the cost though, and there will still be enough boards where your opponent can just double block it to take it down. It also doesn’t deliver any bonus value you get to hold on to in the event it gets destroyed, and if I’m going to spend 7 mana, I feel like I should get something, even a bit of life or a 1/1 token would make a big difference.