Average Picked At: 10.52 Total Times Picked: 288 Average Last Seen At: 8.99 Total Times Seen 3206
Pro Rating: 2.5 Pro Comment: This is great in aggro decks, as it often helps you hit for a ton of trample damage – even saving your creature a decent chunk of the time – and ON TOP OF THAT, you get to learn, which Is just great.
Average Picked At: 8.18 Total Times Picked: 303 Average Last Seen At: 7.24 Total Times Seen 2556
Pro Rating: 2.5 Pro Comment: This is often a 6-mana 8/8 or something like that in the late game for UG decks, and that makes it a solid thing to have at the top of your curve.
Average Picked At: 8.48 Total Times Picked: 126 Average Last Seen At: 6.26 Total Times Seen 934
Pro Rating: 2.0 Pro Comment: Eight mana is a whole lot, but the UR deck looks capable of producing that kind of mana. This will often get you a 2-for-1 which is nice, but the thing I wonder is how often the mana it gives you back will even be usable. If you just spent a bunch of mana to cast this, it was probably the last card you had in your hand, so where’s that mana going? Probably nowhere most of the time. This has some serious explosive potential in the later part of the game, but in really only fits in the UR deck, and even then it won’t always work out.
Average Picked At: 7.10 Total Times Picked: 103 Average Last Seen At: 5.84 Total Times Seen 821
Pro Rating: 3.5 Pro Comment: Obviously the stats are massive for the cost, but having to sacrifice a creature every turn is a little bit rough. You’ll need some expendable things around to make that worth it. Pest tokens provide that for you. The good news is, even if you end up not having something worth sacriificing and just have to play Daemogoth on an empty board or something, you’ll still get some value back when you sacrifice it to its own ability. Gaining 2 life and forcing your opponent to discard something while you gain life and draw a card isn’t incredible for the mana investment, but Daemogoth probably also deterred an attack for a turn too because of the huge body, and that’s honestly not bad for 4 mana. I think the fail case here is pretty good, and the upside of having such an early 7/6 sounds pretty nice.
Average Picked At: 2.20 Total Times Picked: 51 Average Last Seen At: 2.12 Total Times Seen 88
Pro Rating: 4.0 Pro Comment: So, even if you have 0 other creature tokens, this makes it so that when you have a nontoken creature die, you get a 3/2 flyer. That’s already a pretty good deal, as it will allow you to both attack and trade aggressively, since getting a 3/2 flyer is pretty much equivalent to a whole card. Sometimes things don’t line up well for you to use something like this, but the additional token upside makes it pretty darn good.
Average Picked At: 9.29 Total Times Picked: 398 Average Last Seen At: 8.34 Total Times Seen 2915
Pro Rating: 3.0 Pro Comment: These are all good fixing, and then all have a nice late-game mana sink to help improve your draws when you’re flooding out. You can take these over most medium cards, especially if you are interested in splashing or they are on color for you.
Average Picked At: 10.65 Total Times Picked: 135 Average Last Seen At: 7.92 Total Times Seen 1253
Pro Rating: 2.0 Pro Comment: This has some decent, if unexciting late game utility. It isn’t great for your mana, so you probably can’t run it if your mana is already looking a little sketchy.
Average Picked At: 7.70 Total Times Picked: 97 Average Last Seen At: 6.21 Total Times Seen 929
Pro Rating: 1.0 // 3.0 Pro Comment: This will be nice with fight spells and tricks. Copying those kinds of things will feel great. It has mediocre stats and needs the right deck composition to really thrive, though.
Average Picked At: 9.73 Total Times Picked: 293 Average Last Seen At: 8.80 Total Times Seen 2965
Pro Rating: 3.0 Pro Comment: This guy can get pretty big on his diet of instants and sorceries, and he’ll work especially well in RW, because that deck can load the graveyard reasonably well, and it also likes it when cards leave the graveyard in any way, and Tome Shredder will do that for you.
Average Picked At: 7.00 Total Times Picked: 311 Average Last Seen At: 6.37 Total Times Seen 2099
Pro Rating: 2.5 Pro Comment: In many Blue decks in this format, this tends to make pretty efficient creatures, and is worth playing.
Average Picked At: 11.06 Total Times Picked: 333 Average Last Seen At: 9.19 Total Times Seen 3231
Pro Rating: 2.5 Pro Comment: This is underwhelming as a three-drop on curve, but in the late game it can become a legitimate win condition, especially in UG decks which are particularly good at getting lots of lands in play.
Average Picked At: 9.61 Total Times Picked: 358 Average Last Seen At: 8.38 Total Times Seen 2945
Pro Rating: 3.0 Pro Comment: These are all good fixing, and then all have a nice late-game mana sink to help improve your draws when you’re flooding out. You can take these over most medium cards, especially if you are interested in splashing or they are on color for you.
Average Picked At: 5.83 Total Times Picked: 380 Average Last Seen At: 5.40 Total Times Seen 1945
Pro Rating: 1.5 // 3.0 Pro Comment: This is yet another lesson that you wouldn’t really ever want in your main deck, as a 5-mana 4/4 just isn’t good these days, but being able to draw this when you “Learn” sounds pretty good!
Average Picked At: 1.63 Total Times Picked: 51 Average Last Seen At: 1.93 Total Times Seen 85
Pro Rating: 4.5 Pro Comment: I think this is the best of this set’s Command cycle. This is partly because unlike the other card we’ll see in it, it has four options that will frequently be useful. I mean, 5-mana for the Lightning Helix effect itself isn’t terrible – and would probably be borderline playable. Then, you add all these other options and you really have something sweet. I mean, you can really look at this as a 5-mana 3/2 creature with Flash and an ETB ability that Lightning Helixes something. Once you look it at it that way, it becomes clear that this is very powerful! And it even has two other options that are nice! Giving up a permanent to draw some cards is sometimes nice in the late game, and obviously the board pump + indestructibility effect will be backbreaking for your opponent too in the right situation.
Average Picked At: 4.38 Total Times Picked: 419 Average Last Seen At: 4.50 Total Times Seen 1409
Pro Rating: 3.5 Pro Comment: This is a nice removal spell for Green. Even if it couldn’t reduce its cost, I would think this would be pretty good. +1/+2 is a nice boost that enables creatures to effectively fight a lot more things. Once you factor in the fact it will only cost a single Green mana sometimes, I think we’re looking at premium removal. It does have the downsides Green removal tends to have – like 2-for-1 potential – but it is definitely worth it.
Average Picked At: 11.63 Total Times Picked: 99 Average Last Seen At: 8.52 Total Times Seen 1351
Pro Rating: 0.5 // 2.5 Pro Comment: This format doesn’t have very many of these three permanent types, so this is best left in your sideboard.
Average Picked At: 10.24 Total Times Picked: 265 Average Last Seen At: 8.73 Total Times Seen 2945
Pro Rating: 2.5 Pro Comment: 4-mana 2/2s with Deathtouch normally arent the most exicting thing int he world. They can trade fo ranything, but doing that at 4 mana isn’t exactly exciting. I like that they compensated for that here by letting the Band put it +1/+1 counters on other stuff when it dies. This also means that it is a good place to put counters, since it will do something with them when it dies, unlike most creatures.
Average Picked At: 10.26 Total Times Picked: 128 Average Last Seen At: 7.61 Total Times Seen 1247
Pro Rating: 2.5 Pro Comment: Yet another Lesson I’m pretty excited about. There’s just something about being able to grab these cards with narrow but useful effects out of your sideboard at the ideal time. Your opponent won’t always have an Artifact, or an X/1 to kill, or be at 1 life, but when any of those things are true, grabbing Start from Scratch when you Learn will feel pretty awesome.
Average Picked At: 5.48 Total Times Picked: 128 Average Last Seen At: 4.95 Total Times Seen 718
Pro Rating: 4.0 Pro Comment: This is premium removal. Two mana for three damage would already be there, but adding the nice modal effect to deal with problem permanents makes it even better.
Average Picked At: 2.04 Total Times Picked: 28 Average Last Seen At: 2.05 Total Times Seen 38
Pro Rating: 4.0 Pro Comment: So, obviously enough Kasmina’s static ability won’t come up in Limited basically ever. There are very few planeswalkers in this set, and they are all Mythic Rare. But, even without that part coming up, I like Kasmina a fair bit. She can make creature tokens to protect her, and that’s always a really big plus. She does have to lower her loyalty to do it, but it isn’t hard to imagine playing her and using her +2 to Scry, and then making a 2/2 or 3/3 to protect her on the next turn, and then continuing to alternate. She’ll give you a ton of value if you only untap with her in play once. I mean, even if Kasmina’s death is imminent on your opponent’s next turn, you can just make a 4/4 with her -- in which you case you paid 3 mana for a 4/4 and Scry 2, and I’d do that all day! Then, obviously, if she is allowed to stick around longer than that, she’ll get wacky. It is kind of funny because her static ability and ultimate both won’t be very good in Limited, but here other two abilities are good enough that I’m going to value her highly.