Average Picked At: 10.12 Total Times Picked: 307 Average Last Seen At: 8.52 Total Times Seen 3079
Pro Rating: 1.5 Pro Comment: This does give you fixing, but at a pretty real cost. It enters tapped and requires another land to tap for it to come into play, effectively making it cost one mana. That’s some serious slowness, but you’ll run it if you need the fixing.
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: 8.49 Total Times Picked: 290 Average Last Seen At: 7.39 Total Times Seen 2533
Pro Rating: 1.5 Pro Comment: So yeah, BG has a lot of life gain payoffs as we’ve seen throughout the week and as we will continue to see in this video, so a card like Cram Session is a little bit better than it would normally be, I think. Although, I still don’t think it is great. It is basically a bad Revitalize – and Revitalize isn’t great to begin with!
Average Picked At: 1.54 Total Times Picked: 28 Average Last Seen At: 1.88 Total Times Seen 35
Pro Rating: 4.0 Pro Comment: You know, for an elder dragon, I gotta say, I’m not ultra impressed. 7-mana for a 4/4 flyer is kind of a rough rate, and while getting a 1/1 Pest every upkeep -- which by the way, includes your opponents -- while getting those tokens is nice, the other ability on this card will basically never come up in Limited! There just won’t be a reason to use all that mana by the time Beledros is out there. Now, I don’t think he’s bad, left unchecked he floods the board with PEsts and attacks pretty hard in the air -- but he’s also incredibly fragile at only 4 toughness -- lots of stuff in this set can kill him. But generally, you will get at least one Pest out of it before he dies, so there’s that.
Average Picked At: 1.65 Total Times Picked: 55 Average Last Seen At: 1.86 Total Times Seen 77
Pro Rating: 4.0 Pro Comment: This has good stats for the cost, and will effectively draw you a card when it comes down most of the time. Sign me up for that 2-for-1!
Average Picked At: 7.58 Total Times Picked: 335 Average Last Seen At: 6.67 Total Times Seen 2240
Pro Rating: 2.5 Pro Comment: This doesn’t exactly fix for you, since it is White and can only get Plains, but it does make sure you hit your land drops, and that’s always a nice thing to do with a 3-drop creature. It also gets extra value from the fact that it isn’t interested in staying in the graveyard, and in the late game it can give you a nice mana sink creature that can block all day and continue to thin out your deck. RW is the best home for this, since it likes to leave the graveyard and has the Spirit type. I think this is a solid Common.
Average Picked At: 5.65 Total Times Picked: 389 Average Last Seen At: 5.50 Total Times Seen 1929
Pro Rating: 3.0 Pro Comment: Another Lesson that will be nice to get when you “Learn.” It is going to be inefficient, but its a card you get for free when you “Learn”, and its one that adds to the board, so I’m on board with having one of these to wish for.
Average Picked At: 12.92 Total Times Picked: 274 Average Last Seen At: 10.95 Total Times Seen 3853
Pro Rating: 1.5 Pro Comment: If you’re only able to make one creature benefit from this it won’t feel all that good, even if you have a Lesson to grab. After all, most of the Lessons are actually mediocre cards, but they’re worthwhile because you get them for free when you Learn. So, you kind of need your card with Learn to do something worth close to a card, and if you’re just getting one counter and giving one thing Haste, I’m not sure you’re doing it here. “Learn” is sort of like “draw a card,” and does give you some card selection, but those cards to choose from just aren’t gonna be awesome. Keep in mind you can also choose to rummage instead of getting a Lesson, and sometimes that will be best. Now, where this does start to get interesting is when you play multiple creatures in a turn, which won’t be easy if you’re just casting a regular ol’ creature spell, but if you have ways to make multiple tokens in a turn, this will start to feel pretty good. All in all, I’m not super high on this to start, just because I don’t think it will be all that easy to make it work, but I could see myself being wrong here.
Average Picked At: 6.31 Total Times Picked: 140 Average Last Seen At: 5.34 Total Times Seen 776
Pro Rating: 3.5 Pro Comment: This is expensive, but because it lets you discard it to make a treasure early, part of that downside is mitigated against. Casting this will feel really good, as doing 5 damage to something and drawing a card chosen from among five is a really good deal. UR is all about big spells like this, so it fits right in, while also supporting the archetype’s ability to cast those spells since it can make treasure.
Average Picked At: 11.61 Total Times Picked: 103 Average Last Seen At: 8.88 Total Times Seen 1337
Pro Rating: 1.5 Pro Comment: So, there are a reasonable number of tokens in this format -- that’s a product of a set with an instant and sorcery theme, so being able to use this to steal one for only a single mana is some actual real upside. Note, by the way, if you need to do 2 more damage with your own creature, you can use this on your own guy too, and if its YOUR token, it also only costs one Red. Still, these Threaten effects tend to be highly situational. That said, by being so cheap a reasonable chunk of the time, it does overcome some of that downside. I have a hard time believing in Threatens until I see them work out in a format.
Average Picked At: 9.21 Total Times Picked: 303 Average Last Seen At: 8.14 Total Times Seen 2954
Pro Rating: 3.0 Pro Comment: This is a pretty nice Common. By turn 5 you’ll often have something this can bring back without really trying, so just playing this, getting something back, and having a 2/2 flyer is going to feel pretty good. I think basically every White deck in the format will want the first copy of this.
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: 2.93 Total Times Picked: 46 Average Last Seen At: 3.12 Total Times Seen 129
Pro Rating: 4.0 Pro Comment: This is a cool card. So, three mana for a 3/3 with Vigilance and Trample is already something you’d always play! Then you factor in the ability to reanimate creatures DIRECTLY TO THE BOARD and you end up with something incredibly strong. It doesn’t have incredible size, and you won’t always be able to reanimate stuff with it, but I think you’ll be able to often enough that this is pretty good.
Average Picked At: 11.25 Total Times Picked: 297 Average Last Seen At: 9.78 Total Times Seen 3429
Pro Rating: 1.0 Pro Comment: I’m not super interested in this. It is just another Anticipate variant, and those are always replaceable. It does help you load your graveyard I guess if that’s what you want, and give you some card selection, and it will trigger magecraft, but it just has an underwhelming effect that is not often worth a card.
Average Picked At: 6.88 Total Times Picked: 42 Average Last Seen At: 5.31 Total Times Seen 257
Pro Rating: 3.5 Pro Comment: This is cheap enough that I think I can get behind playing it all the time in UG decks. Sure, copying your 2/2 with it won’t feel amazing, but it is perfectly fine, and if you can copy your 4 drop with it you’ll be in pretty good shape in terms of what you get in return for your mana. UG is a ramp color pair too, so having the extra mana to do this is reasonably likely. Overall, I don’t think this it is amazing -- after all, you need to pair it with something else for it to even do anything.
Average Picked At: 6.44 Total Times Picked: 370 Average Last Seen At: 5.83 Total Times Seen 2237
Pro Rating: 3.5 Pro Comment: So, this is a lesson that I think you don’t feel terrible about playing in your main deck, especially because it provides sacrifice fodder and life gain, which BG is interested in.. Now, if you have cards with “Learn” it will be better, as it gives you a card that does something useful on just about every board state, while some of the other lessons are more situational.
Average Picked At: 8.36 Total Times Picked: 39 Average Last Seen At: 5.76 Total Times Seen 326
Pro Rating: 2.0 Pro Comment: This kind of effect can be pretty disappointing, just because you need things to line up right when you have the mana up. Using this on a creature that’s going to get removed will feel fine, but even that is just a 2-for-2, and nothing crazy. I just feel like this type of card always underperforms in Limited, so I’m not expecting big things from this.
Average Picked At: 6.31 Total Times Picked: 403 Average Last Seen At: 5.73 Total Times Seen 1935
Pro Rating: 2.5 Pro Comment: So, this pretty much just ramps for you, it doesn’t provide fixing because you can only get a Forest, and that’s a pretty big bummer. Still, ramping looks like a smarter strategy in ths format It does have Learn, which will either let you rummage or get a Lesson from your sideboard, and both of those are nice additional effects.
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: 9.11 Total Times Picked: 38 Average Last Seen At: 6.09 Total Times Seen 359
Pro Rating: 1.0 Pro Comment: So, UR is all about having a bunch of mana, so pumping significant mana into X will be easier than it might first seem. So the lands give you treasure, and that will make it easier for you to cast the spells you draw for Blue cards you hit. Hitting Red cards damages the opponent, and sometimes this will just be able to close them out. If you’re a straight up UR deck, virtually every card in your deck will give you one of these effects. But the question becomes, how much mana do you need to spend to feel like this is working out for you? If you pay 6 total mana and exile 4 cards, there’s a good chance you’ll do something like get a treasure, draw a card, and do 2 to your opponent. That’s...not very good. I think the main plan with this is to really have it be a win condition in the late game when you have a ton of mana – and UR can certainly do that -- but that also means it is pretty terrible in the early game.