Average Picked At: 5.61 Total Times Picked: 395 Average Last Seen At: 5.34 Total Times Seen 1961
Pro Rating: 3.5 Pro Comment: This Lesson is nice because it isn’t a complete disaster if you don’t get any cards with Learn and play it in your main deck. A three mana 2/1 with Flying is just fine, and this also triggers all the mage craft stuff of course. Obviously, if you have Learn, it is going to usually be better in the sideboard.
Pro Rating: 4.5 Pro Comment: A 5-mana 4/4 with Flample is already a good deal -- and then Quandrix has two pretty nice abilities! His ETB ability doubles counters, and sometimes that will just be incredible -- other times you’ll get like one counter or even none, but because the baseline here is so reasonable, that’s perfectly fine! Then, when Quandrix attacks he will generally upgrade your whole board. This pays you off a bit for putting counters on Quandrix himself, since the bigger he is, the more formidable that is.
Average Picked At: 7.88 Total Times Picked: 277 Average Last Seen At: 7.17 Total Times Seen 2462
Pro Rating: 3.0 Pro Comment: Players will have a very difficult time ever wanting to block this, since any instant or sorcery suddenly makes things a lot harder thank to First Strike, and that’s especially true if you have a trick! This will just get through a lot for aggressive decks, and that’s kind of what you want your creatures to be doing. It also has hybrid mana, making it fit in multiple decks pretty easily.
Average Picked At: 10.60 Total Times Picked: 325 Average Last Seen At: 9.27 Total Times Seen 3155
Pro Rating: 2.0 Pro Comment: This is a solid trick, it gives a good enough stats boost to win most combats, and the Hexproof part makes it so that you can also use it to effectively counter removal. Like I always say, it IS still a trick, which means you will only be running it in aggro decks, and it comes with various risks – but it will be solid for those decks.
Average Picked At: 4.21 Total Times Picked: 144 Average Last Seen At: 3.67 Total Times Seen 476
Pro Rating: 4.0 Pro Comment: She is way easier to copy spells with than she looks, and the tempo loss you get from that is well worth the card advantage.
Average Picked At: 3.74 Total Times Picked: 47 Average Last Seen At: 3.53 Total Times Seen 154
Pro Rating: 4.0 Pro Comment: This set has a lot of multicolored stuff, but it still has a bunch of mono-colored too. This can deal with all of that stuff quite efficiently, and that’s enough for it to be an easy first pick and certainly premium removal.
Average Picked At: 2.28 Total Times Picked: 67 Average Last Seen At: 2.71 Total Times Seen 114
Pro Rating: 4.0 Pro Comment: Like most of these, it has two options you’ll choose more than the others in Limited, while the other two options are just some nice additional upside. Here, I think you’ll choose the bounce option and the +1/+1 counter option most of the time. Those two things together can really make things go awry for you opponent -- all of the sudden you’ve bounced their best attacker or blocker, AND you’ve pumped one of your creatures so it can win combat -- that’s pretty nice! Then, sometimes you’ll also get to counter and bounce, if your opponent plays the right permanent type for you to counter it. This format doesn’t have a ton of artifacts and enchantments though, so that won’t come up a ton. The shuffle effect will probably go unused when you draft this, but I guess it could occasionally be useful.
Average Picked At: 9.40 Total Times Picked: 326 Average Last Seen At: 8.19 Total Times Seen 2777
Pro Rating: 3.0 Pro Comment: This is another Learn card that is way better than it looks! The effect doesn’t always do something worthwhile – fogging a single creature isn’t always impactful, but when the fail case is fogging a creature and drawing a card – while also triggering some magecraft – you are in a pretty good place with this card, especially because it has the very big upside of sometimes helping you kill a creature in combat.
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: 6.90 Total Times Picked: 154 Average Last Seen At: 5.89 Total Times Seen 873
Pro Rating: 4.0 Pro Comment: So, this helps trigger all the cards in RW that like it when things leave your graveyard, AND it will effectively draw you cards at the same time. That’s pretty powerful, so of course they had to make the creature rather inefficient, as a 5-mana ¾. Even with that limitation though, this is going to be quite good. ¾ is enough size to attack on lots of boards, and as long as the best your opponent can do is trade with this, you’re going to be in business, because the cards you get from the effect will help you come out ahead from the trade. In some situations, even if the Dustspeaker is going to die without killing anything, attacking will still be worth it for the effect. You can also get serious value by giving it evasion or stats boosts that make things harder on your opponent. If this gets to use that ability more than once, chances are you just win.
Average Picked At: 8.41 Total Times Picked: 369 Average Last Seen At: 7.36 Total Times Seen 2511
Pro Rating: 2.5 Pro Comment: This can attack in the air early, and then stay back to trade with anything late. Like most cheap deathtouch creatures, this is pretty solid.
Average Picked At: 1.58 Total Times Picked: 33 Average Last Seen At: 1.83 Total Times Seen 44
Pro Rating: 4.5 Pro Comment: After you get past paying one mana for X, this card will always give you your mana’s worth. 4 mana for two 2/1 flyers is quite the deal, as is 5 mana for three, and so on. Now, they do come into play tapped, which means they can’t really save you if you’re in bind, you’re going to have to get to untap. It is also pretty cool that if you cast it for 8, you can blow up Enchantments and Artifacts and the like. This is a strong card, even if it is a little bit clunky -- not being able to block with them rights way will be a problem sometimes.
Average Picked At: 6.67 Total Times Picked: 298 Average Last Seen At: 6.24 Total Times Seen 2046
Pro Rating: 3.5 Pro Comment: This seems like a nice Common payoff for gaining life. It may not be quite as cheap as Ajani’s Pridemate, but it adds Menace to the mix and I think that’s a fair trade. This will get pretty big, and that’s always nice with an evasive ability.
Average Picked At: 4.52 Total Times Picked: 164 Average Last Seen At: 4.04 Total Times Seen 542
Pro Rating: 3.5 Pro Comment: This kind of effect is always nice, especially in the early game when you really need to hit your land drops. Either way, this will draw you a card most of the time when you play a spell, and even if it is always a land, that is a pretty big bonus to add to all of your spells. As we’ve seen UG also likes having lots of lands, so this is a big enabler for those decks.
Average Picked At: 11.70 Total Times Picked: 281 Average Last Seen At: 9.63 Total Times Seen 3544
Pro Rating: 1.5 Pro Comment: This isn’t amazing. 4-mana to draw 2 at instant speed is alright, and it is nice the life loss is symmetrical, but I tend to have a hard time getting behind this kind of card draw in Limited. It is pretty inefficient and expensive, and by choosing to spend 4 of you r mana to cast this you probably already paid some life in a way -- since you didn’t add to your board with that mana. Then, paying more life can be surprisingly painful. Again, it is nice that it can give you some reach against some opponents, and in BG especially you’ll be able to gain enough life that you don’t need to worry about it, but I still think this is a card that gets cut a reasonable chunk of the time.
Average Picked At: 5.82 Total Times Picked: 159 Average Last Seen At: 5.37 Total Times Seen 754
Pro Rating: 3.5 Pro Comment: Now THIS is how you design a good discard spell for Limited! First, it lets you take whatever you want for a very efficient cost of two mana. That’s going to allow for significant disruption. What really saves this though, is the fact that you get a +1/+1 counter out of the deal too. Most discard spells get terrible in the extreme late game, but this makes sure that you get some value out of it no matter what, and it is can be some pretty significant value!
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: 11.99 Total Times Picked: 278 Average Last Seen At: 10.05 Total Times Seen 3652
Pro Rating: 1.5 Pro Comment: This card has okay stats and it can loot, and that’s enough for it to be a reasonable inclusion in most decks. Looting isn’t a bad mana sink to have late, as it can really improve your draws.
Average Picked At: 1.41 Total Times Picked: 27 Average Last Seen At: 2.08 Total Times Seen 38
Pro Rating: 5.0 Pro Comment: Well, this is great. While it may not have any fancy keyword abilities or a super efficient body on its own, it makes up for that with the fact that it will immediately make your board a lot scarier. This can happen as a result of having in Spirits in play already, but even if you don’t, this suddenly makes trading with your creatures or even blocking small ones in combat kind of a nightmare, since they’ll just come back in buffed up spirit form. The same is true if you’re the one on defense. It will utterly warp games around it, and help you whether you are ahead or behind, and those are the hallmarks of a bomb.
Average Picked At: 7.23 Total Times Picked: 292 Average Last Seen At: 6.73 Total Times Seen 2172
Pro Rating: 2.5 Pro Comment: This effect at Sorcery speed is really clunky. If you have to use this to kill a smaller creature, it feels really miserable because of the tempo hit. This does try to make up for that a little, by having the damage Trample, and that is some nice additional upside, but I still think this falls well short of being premium removal.