Aegis of the Heavens

This gives a huge boost to toughness, one which means your creature will pretty much always survive combat, but the fact that it only boosts power by one also means your creature won’t always be winning combat. In other words, you’ll use this up a lot just to save a creature, and that’s often not going to be worth a card. It IS more worth it if you use it against damage-based removal, but that’s still only one type of removal that this does anything about. Aura-based removal and “destroy” effects will still do their thing. Overall, this often plays out as a one-creature fog, and that’s not really worth it most of the time.

Aethershield Artificer

The UW deck in this format is about artifacts, and there are enough of them around that this ability does actually come up, and when you can use it tends to feel pretty good, as +2/+2 and indestructible is going to be enough to make any creature a threat. Still, there aren’t SO many good Artifact creatures that this is easy to make work.

Ajani, Adversary of Tyrants

This is a pretty powerful planeswalker. He can sort of protect himself – either by making a creature or creatures you have better blockers, or by bringing back a small creature from your graveyard. And his ultimate isn’t the kind that completely ends the game – not immediately anyway, but over time getting 3 1/1s with lifelink every turn will kill your opponent, unless they were insanely ahead of you. He will make your board better and snowball the way good planeswalkers do if they are left unchecked. The lack of a way to protect himself or draw cards does keep away from bomb status, but I still think he’s really good.

Ajani's Last Stand

This basically amounts to being a conditional 4-mana 4/4 with flying.. That’s not a bad deal, but it isn’t one I’m ultra excited about either. If you can trade off a creature and get a 4/4 flyer though, that feels pretty good. It does get better in the GW Enchantments deck and in any deck that can make creature tokens, because then you aren’t really giving anything up for the 4/4. The last line of text on it is powerful for other formats, not so powerful for Limited where most discard isn’t especially good – of course, if your opponent makes you discard with their Psychic Symbiont, you’re going to be pretty happy, and that will come up a bit, just not a ton.

Ajani's Pridemate

This has a reasonable floor as a two-mana 2/2, and a crazy high ceiling. Life gain is all over in White, and Black-White especially is a life gain archetype, so Ajani will be able to hit that ceiling pretty easily. If your deck can get a few cards with lifegain in it he will more than pull his weight, and if your deck has a ton of life gain, he can get pretty insane.

Ajani's Welcome

This effect just isn’t worth it in your average Limited deck. It will gain you a fairly negligible amount of life, something like 5-7 a game on average. Even with a life gain archetype, this isn’t worth it.

Angel of the Dawn

A 5-mana 3/3 flyer that pumps your whole board and gives it vigilance is kind of nuts for a common, so I’m surprised to see it at that rarity again after Dawnfeather Eagle. Even when you just have like 2 other creatures in play this is nice, and it gets crazy if you’re going really wide. It is great in a race, because it lets you smash into your opponent without giving up blockers. This is one of White’s best Commons.

Cavalry Drillmaster

A two-mana 2/1 isn’t great, but this card gets some serious points for also being relevant in the latter part of the game. +2/+0 and first strike is enough to make most creatures a problem for your opponent to block, so chances are he’s going to come down and get you an attack you wouldn’t have had otherwise, in addition to offering up a body that can trade with a ton of things.

Cleansing Nova

Boardsweepers are always very powerful and very difficult to replace, and I always value the reasonably efficient ones like bombs. Sure, they can be awkward if you’re an aggro deck or something like that, but even then they are pretty much the only thing that can save you in so many situations. The way I tend to look at it is: If you’re ahead of your opponent you won’t use this and if things go the right way you’ll just win, but if things go sideways, you’re going to need a sweeper to fix things. It is also nice that it can hit just artifacts and enchantments in a pinch, that does actually come up on occasion.

Daybreak Chaplain

A two-mana 1/3 with lifelink is fine, but not much else. It is definitely an obnoxious blocker for decks with lots of 2/2s or creature tokens, and it carries equipment and auras well – as lifelink creatures always do. It is a fine card, especially if you have life gain payoffs.

Dwarven Priest

4-mana for a 2/4 isn’t terribly off-rate, and in a worst-case this is a 4-mana 2/4 that gains you 1 life. You can definitely go wider and gain a bunch with it too. This can sometimes help you stabilize, and fits especially well in the BW lifegain deck.

Gallant Cavalry

4-mana for two 2/2s with Vigilance is a pretty nice rate – not hard to get a 2-for-1 with them. It fits especially well in decks looking to go wide with creature tokens, which is a big focus of RW in this format.

Herald of Faith

A 5-mana 4/3 flyer is something you pretty much always play, so adding the fact that it gains you 2 life each time it attacks makes it really good. It slots well into both BW lifegain and UW flyers.

Hieromancer's Cage

This is premium removal. Exiling any nonland permanent for 4 mana is pretty great, even if it can potentially come back should the Cage be removed.

Inspired Charge

As always, this is really only well-suited to the go-wide aggro decks, and pretty much unplayable elsewhere. Mass pump like this is situational, and that is even more true in decks not really built with a ton of creatures and ways to go wide. It is a nice card for those go-wide decks though, and can certainly be a win condition for them.

Invoke the Divine

You can main deck this in this format if you’re really in need of playables, as there are enough good Artifacts and Enchantments running around, but it is still going to be more well-suited to your sideboard, where it will feel pretty good to bring in against some opponents.

Isolate

This doesn’t kill enough in Limited to ever be worth it.

Knight of the Tusk

If you’re in a White control deck, this does a kind of okay job of holding down the ground and even threatening to attack a little bit thanks to Vigilance + high toughness, but you still won’t run this a ton.

Knight's Pledge

This Aura is better in this format than it would be in most. There are enough early aggressive creatures with keyword abilities, that slapping this on something can sometimes just be a path to victory. You do still have a hug risk of getting 2-for-1’d, and that keeps it from being great , but in a lot of formats it would be near unplayable, whereas in this one, the Pledge is a good fit in some decks.

Knightly Valor

I always complain about the 2-for-1 risk that Auras can bring you, but Knightly Valor is the type of Aura that gets around that problem. It does this by creating a 2/2 creature token. This means that even if your opponent untaps and kills the thing that you put the Valor on, you’re going to still have that token. Basically you pay 5 mana here to add 4/4 of Vigilance to the board, and 2/2 of that can attack right away. That turns out to be a good deal, especially in a format with both token payoffs and Aura payoffs.

Lena, Selfless Champion

The fail case here is a 6-mana 3/3 that makes a 1/1 soldier – and that certainly isn’t good, but it will rarely do that little. Even if you only have two other creatures, this is pretty nice, and anything above that starts to get pretty insane. Having the ability to save all the tokens she makes – and your other small creatures is just gravy.

Leonin Vanguard

This card really overperforms in this format. It turns out playing this on turn one can often result in it getting in for a lot of damage, and the life it repeatedly gains you can also trigger a bunch of different payoffs. This is one of the good one drops where you can just slap an Aura on it early and try to ride it to victory sometimes.

Leonin Warleader

This has solid stats, and every time it attacks it makes two life link cats to join the fun. Now, those cats will often just get blocked, as your opponent does know they are coming, but you still gain life off of them. The Warleader can also sometimes die on that first attack, but you can take measures to make sure it continues to do its thing – combat tricks for example, and if you’re able to attack with the Warleader more than once, it will often just win you the game.

Loxodon Line Breaker

This is just a vanilla creature with mediocre stats. You’ll play this in a world where you can’t seem to find yourself enough playables or enough creatures, but in an ideal world you’re never playing it.

Luminous Bonds

Bonds is premium removal and one of the best commons in this set.

Make a Stand

This is the kind of card people tend to really overrate – “indestructible until end of turn” does seem pretty sweet, but the boost it gives you to power is really unimpressive. Sure, it lets your whole board survive almost no matter what, but if you want a go-wide payoff, it is way better to go with Inspired Charge, since it gives a much bigger stats boost – which is more valuable than indestructibility in most cases. Now, this does have additional applications – you can use it to blank a removal spell for example, but it is still highly situational, and not nearly as useful as you would think.

Mentor of the Meek

This can turn into a card-drawing engine, but it isn’t super easy to make that happen. The best way to do it is probably with a bunch of ways to make creature tokens, which there are a reasonable number of in this format. This is quite good when it does its thing, but it isn’t super easy to get it going.

Mighty Leap

This is a playable combat trick, and it offers more upside than most combat tricks because sometimes it can just end the game for you out of nowhere. I mean, I guess all combat tricks can do that – but not all of them offer you flying, which can just make a stable board into game over for your opponent sometimes. Still, it’s just a combat trick and it has the inherent risks that they all have – serious blowout potential – you’ll play one in any white deck with like 15 creatures in most cases, but it isn’t going to be great most of the time.

Militia Bugler

This guy’s pretty good as a 3-mana 2/3 with Vigilance already, something that will often make the cut. The additional ability it has does make it better, but in your typical Limited deck, that trigger will miss like half the time. And I don’t think you should warp your deck too much to make it so that you hit more consistently with this, if your’e doing that, your deck is going to be in trouble because it has too many small creatures in it. The good news is, a 3-mana 2/3 with Vigilance that draws you a card about half the time is still a nice card.

Novice Knight

This can be a reasonable blocker in the early game, and then in the late game it can sometimes lose its defender to actually do something. Overall, this isn’t great. You’re going to usually have better things around to put your Auras and Equipment on, as the bonus here just being “loses defender” really isn’t that impressive compared to putting them on something with a keyword ability.

Oreskos Swiftclaw

Two-mana 3/1s are usually fine for aggro decks, but there are enough tokens in this format that this guy is a bit worse than usual.

Pegasus Courser

This flying horse is great because it offers good defensive stats as long as you need it to, and when it is time to go on the offensive it can send a lot of damage up in the air. You’ll play as many of these as you can get your hands on in creature-heavy white decks.

Remorseful Cleric

A two-mana 2/1 with Flying is a good aggro creature, and this comes with a bit of added value in the ability to get rid of cards in the graveyard. That isn’t going to be super relevant in this format, but there’s enough graveyard stuff going on for it to matter a bit. Mostly though, you’re just getting an efficient aggressive creature.

Resplendent Angel

3-mana 3/3 flyers have been known to quickly kill opponents who don’t have removal for them, and this one comes with a whole bunch of extra text. Add all the rest of to the mix and she gets a whole lot stronger – if your deck is capable of gaining lots of life she can just make a bunch of Serra Angels. It is hard for most decks to gain 5 life a turn in Limited, but she has that covered with her second ability, which basically reads “Cause a 10 point life swing between you and your opponent, make a 4/4 Angel.” Sure, she could get killed in response to the ability which will really hurt, but if your opponent can’t answer this they’re just dead.

Revitalize

Even in a format with a lifegain archetype, Revitalize doesn’t tend to be worth it.

Rustwing Falcon

There’s always sort of a card like this where talking about the Vanilla test/French Vanilla test is important – this card isn’t good. I mean yeah, it’s a one mana ½ with flying, maybe that’s more than you expect to get for one mana, and hey at least it is relevant in the late game because evasion. But the problem is that a ½ quickly gets outmatched. Sure, if your opponent has like no flyers or something maybe it remains relevant – but in most cases it will quickly get outclassed by like turn 3, at which point it is useless. In the most aggressive decks around, you can play this, but everyone else should avoid it.

Shield Mare

A 3-mana 2/3 that gains you 3 life when it comes into place is pretty nice, and this one also gains you 3 life if it is targeted by an opponent. The fact that sometimes it will be difficult to block makes it even a little bit more valuable, but like most of these Mares, it is playable enough without that line of text that it definitely isn’t a sideboard card. That’s just some color-specific upside on a solid card.

Star-Crowned Stag

There are frequently board states where turning off one of your opponent’s blockers means you can just attack with everything, and this is the kind of common that really forces your opponent to play less aggressively or end up in a world of hurt, and that’s not too hard to punish. This is an ideal card for the top-curve of aggro decks in this format.

Suncleanser

This is mostly a two-mana ¼. Its abilities will very, very rarely come up.

Take Vengeance

This isn’t premium removal – but it is fine. It at least kills things pretty efficiently at two mana, but the conditions it asks for make it much less powerful. The creature has to be tapped, and that means most of the time a more offensive minded deck won’t be interested in this type of removal, they want a way to get blockers out of the way – this doesn’t do that. It’s also only a sorcery, so if you’re the defensive-minded deck where this is better-suited, you still have to take a hit to the face from something before you kill it.

Trusty Packbeast

This has ok stats as a 3-mana 2/3, but you won’t really play this without a few artifacts. The good news is, the UW deck will be interested in running those.

Valiant Knight

A 4-mana ¾ that can make itself indestructible for 5-mana is already kind of decent. This format has enough good Knights at Common – namely Cavalry Drillmaster and Gallant Cavalry – that the additional upside comes up relatively often, too.

Aether Tunnel

This does make any creature into a threat, but it is also a super risky Aura that doesn’t do anything to mitigate against a 2-for-1. That said – if you happen to have a couple of Vine Mares, you should probably run this, as putting the Tunnel on a hexproof creature like that is pretty much game over in most scenarios. This is a really specific build around in that sense – I basically would advise not playing it unless you have at least one Vine Mare, but when you pull that off, it will feel good.

Anticipate

This is fine, and is a good way to get deeper into your deck, but it doesn’t actually do that much. It is going to be a 23rd card in a lot of decks, though, and if you manage to build a spells matter deck it gets a little bit better.

Aven Wind Mage

3-mana for a 2/2 flyer is already a good rate, so adding the “pseudo-prowess” ability this thing has makes it a pretty nice common. Your opponent will have to think twice before attacking into or blocking this if they have X/3s, because who knows what you might have in your hand!

Aviation Pioneer

Paying 3-mana for 2/3 worth of stats, and the 1/1 has flying is a pretty nice deal. It is also one of the better enablers for the UW artifact deck, since it gives you an evasive artifact creature so cheaply.

Bone to Ash

This counterspell is expensive and doesn’t even counter all types of spells – but I think getting a 2-for-1 when you use it is a good consolation prize. One should basially never choose NOT to develop their board to leave this up, but once you have nothing else to do, it will feel pretty awesome.

Cancel

This just doesn’t do enough most of the time to make the cut very often. Leaving up mana for countermagic can be a big cost, and while this does counter everything, three mana is a lot to have to leave up when you’re just trading 1-for-1.

Departed Deckhand

This is a two-mana 2/2 that is unblockable the vast majority of the time, and in the late game it turns into an incredible manasink that makes your other creatures nigh-unblockable. Sure, your opponent can target it with any spell, including a combat trick to kill it – but if it didn’t have that downside it would be a bomb.

Disperse

The flexibility of bouncing any nonland permanent at instant speed is nice, and two mana is a fair cost for that. You can just do a ton of things with it. Bounce spells frequently just give you some tempo – that is, they play like an 5-drop and you pay tow mana to make them do it again – and that’s nice. But that’s really just the base of this card. Sometimes you can actually trade cards with your opponent, or blow them out – like if they try to put an aura on something or use a combat trick. Those situations will arise, so be ready for them in this format.

Divination

Divination isn’t terrible but certainly not the kind of card you look forward to casting either. You’ll play it in Blue control decks and spell matters decks, though.

Djinn of Wishes

A 5-mana 4/4 with Flying will always make the cut, and this has a very powerful activated ability that is a great mana sink. Sure, sometimes you’ll hit a land, but you’ll hit a real spell with at least one of those wishes, and sometimes you’ll do it with all three! That basically amounts to this being an imposing creature in the air who draws you a bunch of extra cards.

Dwindle

This is not the best removal, but it is kind of passable. Three mana to give something -6/-0 is not the greatest rate ever, since the creature can still use abilities and block, but at least it will only do that last thing once, since it will die when it blocks. Still, 3 mana is a lot to not be able to really get rid of a creature. Don’t underestimate how much worse it is to let a creature you have “removed” block, even if it does die right away.

Essence Scatter

Creatures are the most common type of spell in Limited, and Essence Scatter will always have lots of targets, and it does the job efficiently enough to be pretty nice.

Exclusion Mage

This is Blue’s best uncommon. Man-O-Wars like this are valuable because they allow you to develop your board while you set your opponent’s back a bit, all with one card.

Frilled Sea Serpent

This can be a decent finisher for Blue decks that need one. It isn’t efficient to cast, and it costs a ton to make it unblockable, but it does give you inevitability in the late game.

Gearsmith Prodigy

This is not a very exciting artifact payoff for Limited. You will basically never make this a 2/2 in the early game, and by the time it can be one, a 2/2 doesn’t really matter.

Ghostform

I’m never a huge fan of this kind of card. It basically pans out as a really risky Blue Lava Axe, and that kind of card tends to not be worth it. You use up a card to do something that won’t generally matter unless it kills your opponent. That’s too situational.

Horizon Scholar

This isn’t the best rate for a 4/4 flyer, but it make sup for that by letting you Scry when it comes into play.

Metamorphic Alteration

This kind of effect always seems like it would be really flexible – after all, you can make their best creature a copy of the worst creature on the board, or make your worse creature a copy of the best creature on the board, right? Well…yeah, but this effect often just doesn’t matter. Any effect where you use up a card and don’t get a card’s worth of value is suspect, and that’s how this will feel a lot of the time. It basically has two options: It is either a bad removal spell or a bad Aura for enhancing one of your creatures. Now, that modality does mean this is playable, I’m just saying don’t get caught up on the best case scenarios.

Mirror Image

While this has some problems – for instance you can’t play it on an empty board – overall this tends to be fine, as it will give you a second copy of whatever your best creature in play is. In the later game that is probably worth more than 3 mana. It also gets better when you copy things with ETB triggers.

Mistcaller

This is just a one-mana 1/1, and nothing more, so you don’t want to play it.

Mystic Archaeologist

This is a pretty sweet card. You can play it early if you need the two drop, and then in the late game it is the kind of mana sink that will just win games for you. If you’re flooding out, that will quickly end thanks to the extra cards, and that card advantage will let you bury your opponent. Obviously it does die to pretty much everything, but its worth it for this much power.

Omenspeaker

This has decent stats for a defensive deck, and relevance at all stages of the game thanks to Scry makes this an appealing card to me for my Blue decks.

Omniscience

You won’t be able to cast this in Limited, don’t play it.

One with the Machine

This is pretty hard to make work, even in a format with an artifact archetype. A lot of the Artifacts in this format that you play for that deck are cheap, so you will often pay 4 to draw like 1-2 cards, and you don’t want to do that. There are exceptions to this of course, and sometimes you’ll end up with a deck that can take more advantage, but it is pretty darn hard to do in this format.

Patient Rebuilding

This is real strong. If a card is just pure mill, it doesn’t tend to be great, even if it does present a clock like this does. This is because mill is the kind of effect that just won’t matter until your opponent is out of cards. HOWEVER, Rebuilding adds some card draw for you, and this drastically increases your chances of making the game lost long enough for Rebuilding to mill your opponent out, because you’ll have more fuel to keep your opponent at bay. This is a bomb.

Psychic Corrosion

There is a mill deck in this format, but it revolves largely around the Rare Patient Rebuilding. Playing this in a deck that doesn’t have other mill stuff going on is a real bad deal, because it is a 3-mana Enchantment that has no impact on the game until very, very late. If you are in a Patient Rebuilding deck, you end up playing it for sure though, so this is a very specific build around.

Sai, Master Thopterist

You can make this guy work in this format, but it isn’t a cake walk, and that’s why I think it needs a build around grade. There are enough Artifacts in this format for this to churn out 1/1 tokens, but a lot of them are mediocre at best. If you end up with enough powerful Artifact payoffs though, like Sai, you can start running those mediocre cards, since they won’t be mediocre anymore. In your typical deck in this format – even a UW one – you probably won’t have enough Artifacts to make him work, he just needs a real critical mass to get there. He isn’t terrible in those decks, but he isn’t great either. If you can really build around him though, he becomes one of the best cards in your deck.

Salvager of Secrets

We’ve seen other cards like this, and they’re basically always nice cards for Blue decks in Limited – buying back removal spells is unsurprisingly quite good. That said, it doesn’t fit into every deck ever – you’ll play this in all your control decks, though.

Scholar of Stars

You can draw a card off of this often enough for it to be solid.

Sift

This is a fine draw spell if you’re a control deck in the market for one of those.

Skilled Animator

You generally need to be animating something with this for it to be worthwhile, and it isn’t as easy as you’d think, just because there aren’t an overwhelming number of great artifacts in this format. Still, it does the job often enough that it tends to be pretty solid.

Sleep

Cards like this are hard to represent properly with a rating. This card is at its best in an aggressive deck. People sometimes think of it the other way around, but there’s a pretty basic reason why it is better in an aggro deck: your opponent’s creatures are tapped for two rounds of blocking. They’re only tapped for one round of attacking. This is the kind of card that can just straight end games, because suddenly your board of 10 power can just bash into your opponent a couple time. It isn’t terrible in less aggressive decks, since it can buy you some time, but it is definitely the kind of card that is best when you have a board state that can punish your opponent. This card has an enormously high ceiling, and anyone playing a creature-heavy Blue deck in Limited will love this, and have this be one of their best cards. Meanwhile, control decks are far less interested.

Snapping Drake

This has passable French Vanilla stats, so you’ll play it sometimes.

Supreme Phantom

There are only two other Spirits in this set – one is Uncommon, and one is Rare, so this is mostly just a two-mana 1/3 with flying, which is pretty alright. If you end up with a couple of Departed Deckhands and a Remorseful Cleric, it will feel a lot better – but don’t count on that.

Surge Mare

Starting out as a 0/5 for UU is kind of rough. Yeah, you can make it also be a 2/3 or a 4/1, and it has a nice trigger when you hit the opponent, but unless your opponent is playing Green, it isn’t going to be able to get through very often.

Switcheroo

I’m never a huge fan of these cards. When they can do what you want them to, they seem utterly busted, but they also end up stuck in your hand a lot. It is just way too situational – you have to end up with two creatures where the trade feels like it is worth 5 mana and a card, and lots of board states don’t get there. It does get better if you have a bunch of creature tokens around, but I’m still not super interested in this.

Tezzeret, Artifice Master

This is a super good planeswalker for Limited. If a planeswalker can draw cards, protect themselves, and pressure your opponent, they tend to be incredible, and Tezzeret does it all. His 1/1 flyers can quickly become a problematic air force, his 0 ability drawing you cards gets more powerful the more artifacts you have, and his ultimate will usually just win you the game.

Tolarian Scholar

There’s not a reason to play this in this format other than desperation – there isn’t a Wizard archetype like there was in Dominaria.

Totally Lost

This isn’t efficient, but unlike a lot of Blue spells that interact with your opponent’s creatures – this one actually lets you trade for a card, since it puts the card back on top of your opponent’s library. So this one gives you both tempo and a card, and sometimes you can get a two-for-one if a combat trick or an Aura is involved.

Uncomfortable Chill

Adding a cantrip to this effect is a big upgrade. That said, it is still way too situational to be worth it most of the time. It is easy to imagine ideal scenarios where this feels like a Fog with a cantrip effect, or even better – it lets you set up some awesome blocks, but those situations are too rare.

Wall of Mist

If your deck has a lot of flyers or is interested in being defensive earlier, you will play this on occasion.

Windreader Sphinx

On its own, this is a 7-mana 3/7 Flyer that draws you a card when it attacks – that actually wouldn’t be a terrible finisher. The dream though is to have other flyers, so that the turn you play this, it can immediately net you cards. And that isn’t a pipe dream, as UW has a ton of flyers – like usual. It does cost 7 mana, though, and needs a bit of help to really full worth that 7 mana.

Abnormal Endurance

We have seen almost this card before – Supernatural Stamina, which did the exact same thing and had a synonymous name, but it cost one less mana. Supernatural Stamina was pretty nice – a trick that makes your creature able to kill something it couldn’t before, and keeps your creature alive is strong. Especially if that creature has a ETB ability, because you get to trigger it all over again! That said, increasing the mana cost by 100% does significantly decrease how good a trick is. Still, this will often allow you to win combat without permanently losing a creature, and while that’s situational, it seems alright for a trick.

Blood Divination

The ideal thing to do with this is sacrifice something that gives you value when it dies – or better, use a Threaten effect to steal your opponent’s creature and THEN sacrifice it, that’s some insane value. That said, there will be lots of times where you just can’t cast this thing because you can’t give up your board position.

Bogstomper

This is a big vanilla boi who you’ll play if you’re desperate for top curve.

Bone Dragon

Hard to find anything wrong with this card, it boasts impressive stats, and it refuses to stay dead. You do need some ample graveyard resources to bring him back, but just the fact that you can play this early and say “if you can’t kill ths, you’re probably dead!” and then get him back later in the game is pretty disgusting.

Child of Night

A two-mana 2/1 with Lifelink is nothing special, even in a set where lifegain is an archetype (the BW one in particular). I don’t think this is the kind of card you feel bad about having as a two-drop, but I think you can do a whole lot better.

Death Baron

There are enough Zombies and Skeletons in this set – even at lower rarities – that the lord effect actually comes up sometimes, making this a pretty nice card. Skeleton Archer + Baron is one of the sweetest things around.

Demon of Catastrophes

If you can jump through some hoops, you can have a 4-mana massive flyer – in this case a 6/6 with trample too. Black has expendable creatures who do nice things when they die, and if you can combo this with those that’s pretty sweet. Even if you can’t, giving up your 2-drop on turn 4 for a 6/6 with flying and trample is often worth it anyway, since it has to be answered or your opponent is dead.

Diregraf Ghoul

One mana 2/2s already aren’t great in Limited because they can get outclassed so quickly. They are pretty good in constructed because you can have a critical mass of cards that allows your deck to consistently curve out, but that doesn’t happen in MOST limited formats. This one-mana 2/2 also comes with a downside – and it is actually a significant one. If you get him late and he has to come into play tapped it could really cost you. Obviously coming down as a one-mana 2/2 on turn one it won’t really matter that he’s tapped, but at all other stages it definitely does.

Doomed Dissenter

This is a pretty key Common for Black decks in this format. In addition to just being a pretty good two-drop in a vacuum – after all, you get 3/3 worth of stats! It gets extra good in situations where you sacrifice it for value, and there a plethora of ways to do that in this format.

Duress

As usual, this is a sideboard card. Most decks don’t have enough cards this can hit.

Epicure of Blood

This has sub-par stats, and a serviceable (albeit underwhelming) life gain payoff. You’ll play it often enough.

Fell Specter

A 4-mana 1/3 with flying is pretty awful stats, but one that makes your opponent discard something and does 2 damage to them? That’s not bad. It isn’t going to be easy to cash in the discard damage more than just when you play the card, but there are some other good ways to cash in on it, with the UB signpost uncommon first coming to mind.

Fraying Omnipotence

Yeah…no. Don’t play this. This kind of card does do something really cool, but in Limited it is virtually impossible to make sure this just works in your favor. In fact, because you generally tap out to play this, your opponent will be the one who gets to rebuild before you do! You basically already have to have a half-board better than your opponents’ half-board to be worth it…and if that’s true, you don’t need to cast it.

Gravedigger

Gravedigger is back! Every time it is around it is one of Black’s better Limited cards. We’ve seen it tons of times, most recently in Amonkhet. Just like in that set, he is uncommon – which is a good thing, in past core sets Gravedigger at common made Black decks a little overpowered. So what makes this good? Well a 4-mana 2/2 isn’t very good, but getting a creature back from your graveyard at the same time makes this a 2-for-1. It gets better if you have creatures with ETB or death triggers, or just big bomby creatures, as the value of the cards he is getting back go up.

Graveyard Marshal

Wow this thing is good. A two-mana 3/2 does great on the vanilla test, and then this comes with the very powerful ability to turn any creature card in your graveyard into a 2/2 Zombie Token. This means he is great on turn two because of the stats, and excellent late because it can turn your graveyard into a horde of zombies. It does cost double Black, but that’s not a huge hurdle since playing it late is so good.

Hired Blade

You can flash this in to kill some stuff, but it isn’t the best ambush blocker as a 3/2. It can only survive blocking one power creatures, so most of the time it is just sort of a super conditional removal spell with some creature upside. Which is fine, but not something that always makes your deck.

Infectious Horror

A 4-mana 2/2 is terrible on the vanilla test – so surely it does SOMETHING right? Well, I guess it does technically do “something” – but that “something” isn’t much. Making your opponent lose 2 when this attacks is just not good, since they will be able to easily block and kill this on almost any board state. There aren’t a lot of creatures in Limited that are stone unplayable, but this is one of them.

Infernal Reckoning

Uh yeah, this wasn’t printed with Limited in mind at all. It was printed as a sideboard answer against Eldrazi in the Eternal formats. There aren’t enough artifact creatures in this set for this to be worth putting in your deck.

Infernal Scarring

No toughness boost means it is kind of difficult for you to make the creature into a better attacker. Sure, unlike a lot of Auras at least this one replaces itself, but it isn’t really worth it.

Isareth the Awakener

A 3-mana 3/3 with Deathtouch is already a really good card. Creatures with deathtouch are great, because they can trade for anything. This particular one also comes with another huge block of text this is also powerful. Death touch creatures are already kind of a pain to block, and this one gets to bring back a buddy from the graveyard every time she attacks. So, the best your opponent will do here is trade with her, and that will generally be a 2-for-1 situation.

Lich's Caress

This is a good removal spell. Sure, it is a little bit clunky at 5 mana, but It even does a good job of making up for the fact that you may well have to take your entire turn to cast it by gaining you some life, which makes up at least a little bit for the fact that you may not get to advance your board the turn you cast it.

Liliana, Untouched by Death

This Liliana is all about Zombies, and this isn’t a set with a Zombie archetype. There are a decent number of Zombies around in this format, but getting a critical mass for her abilities to actually do enough to justify playing her is near impossible, there just isn’t enough support. She is very hard to build around, and that mostly makes her unplayable.

Liliana's Contract

This might hurt, but 5-mana to draw 4 cards is a pretty good deal. Now, the scary thing about this card is that if you tap out to play and go down 4 life, your opponent can really take advantage. If they are already ahead on board, you basically can’t play this, since you’ll be dead or closed to it. Still, it is powerful enough that I think it is certainly a card you play often enough. And yeah, the demon clause here is irrelevant.

Macabre Waltz

This kind of card is always one you would like one of in your Black decks, but you don’t want to go after them too early. They aren’t very good early, but in the late game they can really help you restock your hand and get ahead of your opponent.

Mind Rot

Mind Rot just isn’t very good in Limited these days. You get a 2-for-1, but the cost of doing that early is that you don’t add to your board, which can be a huge liability. Then, in the late game is useless. You can sometimes find a situation where siding it in makes sense – like against a control deck that holds on to lots of cards.

Murder

Murder is always incredibly good. 3-mana at instant speed to kill anything is great. Sure, you can’t really splash it, but that’s probably a good thing for the health of the format!

Nightmare's Thirst

This is much harder to set up than it looks. It does have a baseline of giving -1/-1 at least, and that can be useful in situations to help a creature win combat, but being able to do more than -2/-2 with it just doesn’t happen all that often. It is a serviceable card for the BW deck, but not the amazing payoff it looks like.

Open the Graves

On the face of this, it is a 5-mana enchantment that doesn’t do anything immediately to improve your board state, and that can be bad. But, being able to get value out of every creature that dies is great. Suddenly your trades aren’t really trades any more, and you come out on the better end of all of them. That said, it does require you to have some board presence – and its ideal home is in the BR sacrifice deck that can really easily get the Zombie tokens and really easily use them – but it is pretty nice in most Black decks.

Phylactery Lich

While obviously quite powerful, this has two different things holding you back. 1) The triple Black cost means it just won’t be playable in most Limited decks, and 2) having artifacts for this to put its phylactery counter on is a real cost, and Black doesn’t have much artifact synergy apart from this, so basically almost no Limited deck will be able to play this. For the odd mono-black artifact-heavy deck you end up with it will be strong – but that’s not really going to happen.

Plague Mare

Plague Mare comes with a pretty powerful ETB trigger – note it only hits your opponent’s creatures – that’s actually pretty powerful on a three drop. You can easily set up attacks where this finishes off creatures, and it obviously really punishes any X/1s your opponent is playing. Just how good the Mare is in a given game is somewhat dependent on your opponent’s deck, but I think it is a solid playable in any deck at all. Making it give you at least a 2-for-1 isn’t far-fetched.

Ravenous Harpy

This is a cheap sacrifice outlet that can really combo quite well with the good sacrifice fodder in this format, as well as Threaten effects. It does start out incredibly vulnerable, and takes some time to make bigger, and you won’t always have fodder for it, which is rough – but when those things line up, it can be pretty impressive.

Reassembling Skeleton

This is good in any deck looking to get value out of sacrificing stuff, and pretty much useless everywhere else! However, in the former it really is a key card, as it guarantees you sacrifice fodder on every turn in the later part of the game.

Rise from the Grave

This DOES let you go after your opponents’ graveyard too, and that helps it be a little bit better than most versions of this type of effect, because you’ll have more of a chance of reanimating something that is actually worth spending 5 mana on. Now, that situation still won’t arise all the time, and that limits how good this card can be.

Skeleton Archer

A 4-mana 3/3 isn’t great stats, but not too far off from what you expect – something like a 4/3 or a ¾ would be better – but the ETB trigger on it makes up for that. You can use it to do the last damage to a creature your opponent blocked with, to straight up kill an X/1, and in a worst-case scenario, you still get to hit your opponent for one.

Skymarch Bloodletter

A 3-mana 2/2 with flying is solid stats, and the ETB trigger here is also nice. There is even a lifegain deck in this format to take advantage of that ETB trigger. This is one of Black’s better commons.

Sovereign's Bite

I don’t like cards like this in most formats. They don’t impact the board in any way. Sure, 6 damage of life swing can be nice, and sometimes it will end games, but you gotta have cards that actually impact the board. This card is pretty bad unless you’re way ahead of your opponent and beating down on them. It isn’t good if you’re behind or at parity, because it just won’t do anything.

Stitcher's Supplier

This is an inherently powerful card, since it loads the graveyard so very well. Unfortunately, there isn’t much of a graveyard deck in this format. There are certainly decks where it would shine in most formats, but they will be few and far between here. If you manage to get some Reassembling Skeletons, Macabre Waltzes, and a graveyard reliant rare like Graveyard Marshal or Isareth, MAYBE you can consider it, but even then I’m not so sure.

Strangling Spores

Giving a creature -3/-3 at Instant speed for 4 seems like an ok deal to me. These kinds of weakening effects always have a little extra utility too, sure – you can use it as straight up removal to kill something with 3 or less toughness – but you can also use it to weaken a creature and then block it to kill it without losing your creature. It falls a little short of premium removal because of its cost, but it is decent card.

Two-Headed Zombie

A 4-mana 4/2 menace is some pretty aggressive stats. A lot of the time he will at least get you a 2-for-1, thanks to that Menace. Menace creatures are always super amazing with combat tricks too, since you KNOW your opponent has to set themselves up for a 2-for-1 if they want to kill it. So this will be a nice pick up for aggressive black decks, but it’s nothing special.

Vampire Neonate

This is a kind of okay card pretty much all game long. Early, it can do some blocking, and late it can help you trigger life gain payoffs and even serve as a win condition. It is fragile and slow, but it does do the job sometimes.

Vampire Sovereign

This does a good Siege Rhino impression. Ok, maybe that’s hyperbolic, but this is a very good uncommon. 5 mana for a ¾ flyer is already a serviceable card, adding the Lightning Helix to your opponent’s dome effect makes this even better. The Sovereign is much better than her bite, since she brings an impressive body with her. The 6-point life swing means you get value out of it even if it dies.

Walking Corpse

This is a Black Grizzly Bear and nothing more. The Zombie type has some small upside in this format, but not enough to make this worth putting in your deck most of the time.

Act of Treason

This is bad in a lot of decks, but in can be good in a couple scenarios: one of these is that your deck is incredibly aggressive, and Act of Treason can consistently end games for you. The other is that you have sacrifice outlets that let you actually kill your opponent’s creature in addition to stealing it.

Alpine Moon

This thing isn’t printed for Limited, it is printed to hose various strategies in constructed. It doesn’t do anything here.

Apex of Power

This card is cool, but I don’t think it is especially good. Getting to 10 mana is very hard in Limited, so when you get there you better win! But it won’t even always do that. Its too random – sure, 7 cards is a huge percentage of your deck in Limited, but on average like 3 of those are going to be lands. Maybe you get 4 other spells, but you can’t even cast all of them, because the card still makes you pay their mana costs. Sure, it gives you your 10 mana back, but still. Yes, its powerful IF you ever cast it, but doing it is hard, and it still isn’t always going to win you the game on the spot, as it should.

Banefire

X burn spells are excellent in Limited, they scale as the game goes on, unlike most Red removal spells – meaning this can kill pretty much anything. It can also go to the dome to end the game when necessary.

Boggart Brute

This type of creature is always pretty solid in aggro decks. 3-mana 3/2 with menace just tends to play pretty well, and get in for lots of damage early.

Catalyst Elemental

A 3-mana 2/2 that can sacrifice for two Red seems…not that great. It can help you cast bigger creatures and spells and that’s nice, but you actually end up losing mana on it in the long run!

Crash Through

This is always something that makes the cut sometimes, especially if there is a spell deck in the format. The bonus it gives is nothing special, but it replaces itself and triggers stuff – and yeah, some of the time the Trample actually matters too.

Dark-Dweller Oracle

So this is a two-mana 2/2 with some serious upside. This is red’s pseudo-card draw effect, and this is the most powerful version of it, because you can even play lands off of this – with some of these effects you don’t get to play lands. It has a really low mana-cost to use the effect too, so you have a good shot at actually being able to play what you reveal. In a worst case scenario, this can sacrifice itself for the effect – it gets really nasty though when you bring in creature tokens, or creatures that your opponent targets with removal. It kind of incentivizes your opponent to cast removal on their own turn in a weird way, since if you reveal anything that isn’t an Instant you won’t get to use it. Making your opponent do it on their own turn is pretty nice I think, especially with the additional upside here. Still, it does require some set up, but it is a pretty nice Red card that grind you out a win, and that’s not always something Red is capable of.

Demanding Dragon

This is really a pick your poison type situation for your opponent. I don’t normally like when a card gives my opponent choices, as whatever they choose is likely to not be that impactful, but on most board states either of these options is a problem for the opponent. There WILL be some board states where they have plenty to sacrifice, or they might be at too much life – its true, but the fact this is a 5-mana 5/5 flyer means that losing that life or giving up any board position at all could be a huge bonus. This just pressures them a ton, and they sure as heck wish they could hold on to that 5 life or a creature when this hits the table.

Dismissive Pyromancer

This is a two-drop with a lot of upside. Just rummaging tends to be pretty nice in Limited, and this does it for only one mana, which is a pretty good deal. You’ll have that spare mana lying around pretty frequently in the late game. Then, it also has the flexibility to be a removal spell – and a reasonably efficient one at that!

Doublecast

Fork effects tend to be far too situational to be worth it in Limited, and that’s generally the case here.

Dragon Egg

So the main idea here is that you can sacrifice this to something to get the Dragon out of it – and the good news is that that’s pretty doable in this format, and it feels pretty good when you do it. It is pretty much only playable in decks that can do that.

Electrify

This tends to be premium removal in most formats (though..maybe not when we saw it in Amonkhet). 4-mana for 4 damage at Instant speed is a solid deal.

Fiery Finish

This is clunky removal, but at least it does enough to kill pretty much everything. Still, a 6-mana Sorcery is an expensive one, and that certainly makes it less of a priority than more efficient removal spells.

Fire Elemental

This has mediocre stats, but they aren’t so mediocre that you never play it.

Goblin Instigator

So I THINK this is basically a better Dragon Fodder or Krenko’s Command. Why better? Because if you can find a way to do it, you can abuse the ETB trigger on these to get more Goblins. Either way, this card’s good. As a two-drop that brings you two bodies, it is good at basically all stages – it also provides sacrifice fodder for the RB deck.

Goblin Motivator

We have seen many an incarnation of this card, and they always tend to be decent but not great. Haste only has so many uses, though it does do enough to keep the Motivator a relevant card in the late game sometimes, it isn’t always enough.

Goblin Trashmaster

So at worst, this is a 4-mana 3/3 that can blow up an artifact when necessary. In this format, you always play that card, since there are enough Artifacts. The Goblin upside here isn’t a small thing, either, as this format does have enough goblins at lower rarities for this to pump a few cards in your deck.

Guttersnipe

A 3-mana 2/2 isn’t good, but making every single instant or sorcery spell you play do 2 to the opponent is pretty good – provided you’re playing this in a UR spells deck it can do some very real work. It is really fragile though and doesn’t give you much of a board presence, so there are some significant downsides.

Havoc Devils

4-mana for a 4/3 trampler is perfectly fine.

Hostile Minotaur

4-mana for a 3/3 with Haste is passable.

Inferno Hellion

This is pretty bad. Obviously it is quite efficient, but the fact that it goes away every time it does anything is pretty rough.

Lava Axe

I’m not usually interested in Lava Axe in Limited. Sure, it can give your aggro deck some reach, but this card is automatic card disadvantage. In other words, it doesn’t impact the board at all, and is basically only good if it kills your opponent – which it just won’t do often enough to make up for the other times where it is an utterly useless sorcery that costs 5 mana.

Lightning Mare

This is a reasonably efficient creature with some reasonable upside. Firebreathing is nice, but obviously it will die in combat to most things – unless of course your opponent has a board full of Blue creatures!

Lightning Strike

This card is premium removal. Instant speed two mana for 3 damage is an excellent deal. Gets some bonus points for also being able to dome the opponent when that is necessary.

Onakke Ogre

This might look like a throwaway vanilla creature, but 3-mana for a 4/2 is a passable statline, especially in a set that has a 4 power or more archetype, and this one does!

Sarkhan, Fireblood

Talk about an underwhelming planeswalker. Sure, he costs 3 which is super low for a planeswalker, but he is far too dragoncentric to be anything special in Limited. The first +1 isn’t bad, rummaging is a nice effect in Limited – the second one could also come in handy, provided you have a few Dragons, and his ultimate IS the kind that wins the game. But he comes with no real card advantage engine, no removal, and no way to protect himself. Mostly, he’ll just be an Enchantment that lets you rummage every turn – and that might make a bunch of dragons late. That’s not a bad card, but it certainly won’t feel the way you expect a planeswalker to either.

Shock

This is another premium removal spell for red, as it can kill most early creatures and because it only costs a single mana it will basically always help you trade up.

Siegebreaker Giant

This brings some pretty imposing stats, even if it can die in combat fairly easily, it makes sure to make an impact thanks to trample! The unblockable effect isn’t a bad mana sink, but it is pretty costly, and it isn’t as easy to make that ability turn in to a ton of damage as it might seem at first.

Smelt

This set HAS artifacts, but not so many that you ever main deck this.

Sparktongue Dragon

This basically has kicker, and the feel of playing this will feel pretty familiar.Basically you either get a 5-mana 3/3 flyer, acceptable not great – or an 8-mana 3/3 flyer that cast Lightning Bolt. Neither option is efficient, but at least it scales some as the game goes on.

Spit Flame

The floor on this is absolutely premium removal. The ceiling is that you can just keep on bringing it back if you have some Dragons. Even if you have like, 2-3 dragons in your deck this gets way better. This thing having a fail case of being a premium removal spell, and a ceiling of being a recurring one – and that’s pretty great.

Sure Strike

This is always a serviceable combat trick that basically wins you any combat. In exchange, it isn’t the kind of trick that can save your creature for removal.

Tectonic Rift

Blowing up lands is terrible in Limited, but the “can’t block” part of the card will appeal to some aggressive decks.

Thud

This removal spell is cheap, but it does ask for a pretty big sacrifice in the form of one of your creatures. And you can’t just give up some creature token here, because if you do that you’re getting basically no value. So, this is usually going to Two-For-One you – unless you use something like Act of Agression, which would be pretty disgusting. This CAN also target your opponent too, so keep that in mind. This can be hard to make work – you need a creature that replaces itself somehow or has a good death effect, or to steal an opponent’s creature to get the full vaue.

Tormenting Voice

This is the kind of card that ends up being your 23rd card in Red a lot of the time. That’s what it has been every time we have seen it. It helps you dig through your deck but with a fairly significant cost. Sure, it gets a little better in the UR deck which cares about spells, but not by a lot.

Trumpet Blast

I don’t like this sort of effect – it doesn’t pump toughness at all, so you basically HAVE to set up an alpha strike that kills your opponent for it to work out, unlike other spells that also pump creature toughness and can get you some advantages in combat. Basically this will only be playable in decks where you can go really really wide to kill your opponent, and is an F everywhere else.

Viashino Pyromancer

This is an aggressive two-drop. It doesn’t have the greatest stats, but unlike other 2 drops it still does something in the late game. Now, doing 2 to your opponent won’t always be super meaningful, but at least its something.

Volcanic Dragon

6-mana for a 4/4 with flying and Haste seems pretty good to me. Not the most interesting card to talk about – just some good stats and keyword abilities. Still, it is a 6 drop and isn’t super impressive or anything.

Volley Veteran

So obviously, this is something of a build around, but there are enough goblins around for this to do 2 damage a decent chunk of the time. Either way, though, this has a reasonable floor, as a 4-mana 4/2 that does 1 to a creature it can pick things up, do 1 last damage and so forth. Obviously it hasn’t an even higher ceiling of MORE than 2 damage, but this set doesn’t have so much Goblin support that that will be a regular occurrence.

Blanchwood Armor

Decks are rarely mono-colored in this format, and the boost this gives just isn’t worth the risk of getting 2-for-1’d in those cases. Though, like with all Auras – the qualifier is “Unless you have a couple of Vine Mares,” in which case this is solid.

Bristling Boar

Bristling Boar has anti-menace, and doesn’t like it when creatures team up to block it. That isn’t irrelevant text – it means your opponent HAS to have a 3-power or more creature to kill it in combat, and if they don’t? Well, you have what basically amount to free attacks. IT also does a solid job on the vanilla test as a 4-mana 4/3.

Centaur Courser

This is a boring vanilla creature, but the stats are good enough for it to be solid.

Colossal Dreadmaw

Of course Colossal Dreadmaw is back! My guess is it will be about as good the last 50 times we saw it – a solid playable. The kind of Green creature that fits well at the top of your curve thanks to its size and evasive keyword ability. But you can find better finishers at higher rarities.

Colossal Majesty

This is a nice build around for 4 power or more decks, and it can turn into a real card-drawing engine in the right deck. Now, you probably need 5+ cards with 4 or more power, and while that’s doable in RG, I think this still needs a build around grade.

Daggerback Basilisk

This can trade with anything, but at 3-mana that won’t always feel like the greatest deal. Still, death touch does keep it relevant all game long.

Declare Dominance

I don’t like cards like this very much. I know some people think they are great in Limited, but I respectfully disagree. I don’t think it is terrible or anything, I mean it gives a creature a huge boost and basically forces your opponent into uncomfortable blocks. So what’s the problem with this? Well, the fact that a pretty decent chunk of the time you won’t be able to cast it for any sort of value. If you are behind its pretty useless, at parity it can be good sometimes, but if your opponent just has a big dude on their side of the board it is still pretty useless. If you’re ahead it will work wonders, and is a great way to clear out blockers – so that means it is really good in one scenario that you just won’t always be in, and kind of bad in the others.

Druid of Horns

So, this is supposed to be here to support the GW deck in the format, but that deck just has a really hard time coming together, and it is partly because of cards like this. Sure, if you can get an Aura on this, it will feel pretty good – but it starts out incredibly efficiently! One nice thing about it is that even if your opponent does kill it in response to an Aura, you still get the 3/3, because it only has to be targeted by an Aura. It isn’t a bad card exactly, it is just supposed to be one of the key cards for the GW deck, and it just doesn’t usually feel that special.

Druid of the Cowl

This has the kind of body that can block two drops, and also provides you with some ramp. That’s always a pretty nice Green common.

Dryad Greenseeker

A two-mana 1/3 is passable on the Vanilla test, but the fact that this can tap to draw you cards is nuts. Yes, that card has to be a land, but guess what? It will be a land a significant percentage of the time. This will do a bad Courser of Kruphix impression, but a bad Courser is still really good!

Elvish Clancaller

This set has enough elves that this is actually a reasonable playable in most Green decks. You’ll basically never have a second one, though, so the other ability is irrelevant.

Elvish Rejuvenator

This card is pretty cool. It helps you ramp into stuff. It doesn’t do a good job on the vanilla test of course, but the ramp it gives you makes up for that mostly.

Ghastbark Twins

This is a finisher, but not a great one. I don’t think it is a whole lot better than Colossal Dreadmaw as a finisher, since it costs 1 more and has +1/+1. However, Ghastbark can do double duty and that’s kind of nice. If you’re behind and you play this, the fact that it can block two bodies – and probably kill both of them with those stats, will come in handy.

Ghirapur Guide

This has mediocre stats and a mediocre ability! Put them together and you have well…maybe a slightly more than mediocre card. The ability just doesn’t do enough on most boards.

Giant Spider

This card has been in, by my estimation, one million Limited formats, and it is always serviceable but unexciting. A 4-mana 2/4 is a little below what you want stats wise, but the Reach is great and can shut down a lot of flyers.

Gift of Paradise

Tapping out for a spell like this can be a liability, but you gain life, and that makes it a little less dangerous. Then, this provides some nice fixing – and it is fixing that can let you splash double-colored cards, which is no small thing.

Gigantosaurus

A 5-mana 10/10 does a great job on the vanilla test – but let’s be real, this is unplayable in 99% of decks in this format. Your deck has to be super green – like mono-green or almost mono-green for this to be worth playing, and that’s pretty hard to pull off in Limited, because usually one color just isn’t that open for you to do it.

Goreclaw, Terror of Qal Sisma

This is pretty good. While it is something of a build around, your average Green deck is going to have enough 4-power creatures – lets say 5 -- to make this guy worth it, especially because he bring solid stats as a 4-mana 4/3, and he becomes a 4-mana 5/4 with trample every time he attacks. Decreasing the cost of your future 4 power creatures and giving a mini-overrun effect to them is nice.

Greenwood Sentinel

This has okay stats and a nice keyword ability.

Highland Game

This is a pretty unexciting two-drop. Two-mana 2/1s need to do something interesting, and this doesn’t – gaining 2 life doesn’t qualify as interesting – it just isn’t’ enough value. You’ll play it if you need a 2 drop though.

Hungering Hydra

This is a creature that can scale as the game goes on, and it is pretty challenging for players to deal with in combat. It just gets bigger and bigger the more damage that is dealt! It doesn’t have evasion exactly, but making it so only one creature can block it does make it significantly harder for you opponent to do anything more than chump block – and that’s exactly what you want them to be doing against a creature like this.

Naturalize

This is strictly sideboard material in this format. Bring it in against someone who has multiple targets.

Oakenform

This gives a nice stats boost for the mana, but I think steering clear of this Aura is the right thing most of the time. Unless you have Vine Mare of course.

Pelakka Wurm

Can you believe that this was once an Uncommon? Pelakka Wurm is a bomb. Just the stats and trample alone are serviceable, but what really makes it a bomb is the fact that it can stabilize you on just about any board state. The 7 life you get, and the card you get to draw if they can take it out, makes it so you get value no matter what, and if they can’t deal with the Wurm, well – that probably means they’re going to die to it.

Plummet

This is sideboard material. Bring it in against an opponent who has multiple good targets.

Prodigious Growth

This does give the kind of boost that makes any creature into a problem for your opponent, but it is also super risky, as a 2-for-1 would destroy you tempo-wise as well as card-wise. In other words, this is a high-risk high-reward type card, and that’s not something I love in Limited, but it definitely makes decks because of the upside.

Rabid Bite

This is a great removal spell for Green, just like every time we see it. Keep in mind that this card doesn’t actually involve “Fighting,” it just punches one of your opponent’s creatures in the face. Ideally your deck has some beefy guys in it to really take advantage, but even killing their 3/3 with yours is a good deal here. You do have to really pay attention to when your opponent has mana up when you cast this though, as you open yourself up to all kinds of blow outs if they mana for a pump or removal spell in response.

Reclamation Sage

There are enough Artifacts and Enchantments in this set that you can play this in your main deck and have it be a 2-for-1 a reasonable chunk of the time. It is, of course, still better out of your sideboard.

Recollect

I’m never a huge fan of these sorts of effects. They don’t impact the board at all and the payoff for them is usually minimal. That said, Recollect can be good if your deck has several bombs in it – but guess what, your deck was already good because it has several bombs in it.

Rhox Oracle

5 mana for a 4/2 certainly isn’t good, but making this draw you a card is a big deal! With 4 power, it means you can get easy 2-for-1s with this, even trading up for more imposing X/4 creatures. It is true it dies to basically everything, but you still get a 2-for-1 if that’s what happens.

Root Snare

Fog is already a terrible card in Limited, and this one costs two mana instead of one. So yeah, it is unplayable. Fog effects just aren’t worth a card in this format, you basically are just giving yourself card disadvantage every time you play this, you might as well mulligan to 6!

Runic Armasaur

A 3-mana 2/5 is pretty studly on the vanilla test, and coming with a upside to punish activated abilities is nice additional upside. Most opponents are going to have a handful of activated abilities in their decks, so drawing one with this is probably going to happen a significant amount of the time.

Talons of Wildwood

This is a fairly reasonable Aura. It doesn’t give an impressive boost, but it gets around the downsides of 2-for-1s by being able to come back whenever you need it.

Thorn Lieutenant

This starts with good stats for two mana, and has an ability that makes it so that your opponent can never kill without you getting some value back, since you get a 1/1 token when they target it. Then, in the late game, it has a pretty real ability for improving its stats. Yeah, this is pretty great.

Thornhide Wolves

This is a vanilla creature with passable stats, so you’ll play it at the top of your curve sometimes.

Titanic Growth

This is a nice combat trick. But it is still a combat trick that comes with a lot of inherent risk and requires your opponent to play into it to actually take an opponent’s creature away from that.

Vigilant Baloth

This is a very efficient French Vanilla creature that will also make your deck.

Vine Mare

A 4-mana 5/3 would sometimes make your deck, especially in a format with a 4 power+ archetype. Then, you add Hexproof to it and the fact that it can’t be blocked by Black creatures, and you have something quite good. Hexproof goes particularly well in the GW deck in this format too, since it really likes Auras. This is a frustrating card to play against sometimes when someone slaps an Aether Tunnel on it, but even in the absence of Auras, this is a pretty nice card.

Vivien Reid

Vivien comes down with 5 loyalty, but both her +1 and -3 are kind of underwhelming. She won’t always have a target for the -3 so it may as well not be there – would have been sweet if they added “land” to it! And her +1 is nice for drawing cards. Her ultimate is the kind that can instantly win a game. But yeah, she has some problems. She doesn’t protect herself at all – I mean I guess a planesawlker being able to kill flyers could lead to some protection – but she needs you to have some board presence to really thrive, where she will start drawing you cards. I’m not trying to say she is bad, but she’s not a planesawlker who pulls you ahead when you’re behind. You’re still gonna be behind when you play her. If you’re at parity or ahead of your opponent she does come out pretty well, basically drawing you cards and threatening to turn your board into something frightening.

Vivien's Invocation

This is expensive, but it definitely gives you your mana’s worth most of the time. 7 mana to put the best creature into play from your top 7 wouldn’t be that good, BUT – the fact that this lets that creature do damage equal to its power generally means you’re getting a 2-for-1 here, and you’ll normally also be able to get 7 mana’s worth of value out of the deal.

Wall of Vines

I don’t usually like do-nothing walls. And I don’t really like this one, either. It does get bonus points for Reach I guess, but meh.

Aerial Engineer

A 4-mana 2/4 isn’t the worst floor, and in the UW color pair this will be a 4/4 a lot of the time even if you don’t try very hard.

Arcades, the Strategist

I feel like this was printed mostly with EDH in mind so people could have a defender lord, as there isn’t much defender in this set. Still, I mean it is a 4-mana 3/5 with Flying and Vigilance, which is great stats. But the difficulty in taking full advantage of this card is real. I don’t even really think this is worth splashing for in most cases despite the reasonable stats, because 3-colors of mana is hard enough to do in Limited that you want a bigger payoff than this. Sure, if you end up with a few creatures with defender it moves up a bit, but that’s just not going to happen often enough. Basically I wouldn’t recommend splashing just for this, but if you’re already going with these three colors, it is a fine inclusion.

Brawl-Bash Ogre

A 4-mana 3/3 Menace as a floor isn’t bad, and sure you can make it a 5/5 if you sac a creature, and there are ways to sacrifice for value in this set, but it is still kind of tough to set up a little to often.

Draconic Disciple

This helps you fix and ramp which is great – if that’s all it was I would feel pretty good about it. But, in the late game, it transforms into a win condition by giving you a scary dragon token.

Enigma Drake

This is a pretty nice spell build around, as by the late game it is a very real win condition. It can take a long time to grow, so that holds it back some.

Heroic Reinforcements

This is a great signpost for the RW deck. On its own, it adds 4/4 of Haste to the board, and most of the time it is going to be allowing you to do way more damage, often ending the game on the spot.

Nicol Bolas, the Ravager

The Nicol Bolas is definitely a bomb. The one downside is that it is a little challenging to cast, but even just the creature side is quite good as a 4-mana 4/4 flying that forces your opponent to discard. That alone is enough to pressure your opponent a lot – but later in the game this can turn into a pretty absurd Planeswalker. Nicol Bolas the Arisen does everything you want a bomb planeswalker to do – it can draw you a bunch of cards, it can kill stuff, it can reanimate creatures, and the ultimate puts your opponent on a 2-turn clock

Palladia-Mors, the Ruiner

A 6-mana 6/6 with Flying Vigilance and Trample, even across three colors – especially when one of those colors is excellent at fixing - is already great. Add to that fact that she has hexproof until she deals damage and she gets even better. Sure, the hexproof likely won’t last long, but your opponent will have their turn and not be able to kill it immediately in most cases, and you’ll get one hit at a minimum thanks to that keyword.

Poison-Tip Archer

A 4-mana 2/3 with Reach and Deathtouch is already quite good. Adding the fact that it does a bit of damage over the course of the game is nice, but honestly most of this card’s value is in those two keyword abilities.

Psychic Symbiont

Hello 3-for-1. I like this a lot, a 6-mana 3/3 flyer is obviously pretty bad – but making your opponent lose a card while you draw one, and then having a 3/3 that can be attacking in the air? Yeah, this is really sweet.

Regal Bloodlord

A 5-mana 2/4 with flying isn’t really worth it, but if you end up with ways to gain life – which is doable in BW, it turns into a token engine that will take over the game. In good BW decks, your opponent will have to kill this or die, basically.

Satyr Enchanter

I’m kind of disappointed in this as a signpost uncommon – I feel like they should have at least made it a 3/3, that would have helped this a lot, or maybe given it First Strike or something. As it stands, you could end up in a GW deck where you don’t actually want to play this thing because it doesn’t have good stats, and that’s never a good sign for a signpost uncommon. Still, he is going to be pretty powerful when you build around him, basically doing an Enchantress impression is pretty strong in the right deck.

Skyrider Patrol

A 4-mana 2/3 with flying is almost reasonable on the vanilla test, but what makes this super strong is the fact that it not only gives creatures +1/+1 tokens, it gives whatever creature it puts the token on that turn FLYING too. Sure, there’s a mana investment there, but that effect will take over games, making this come pretty close to being a full-blown bomb.

Vaevictis Asmadi, the Dire

This is better than it looks. The random effect is frustrating for sure, but you get to decide what to get rid of on each side, and most of the time this is enough for you to come out ahead. Basically, it is more upside than downside, and we’re already talking about a 6-mana 6/6 flyer! The random aspect does keep it from being a bomb, but its close.

Amulet of Safekeeping

This is a card meant as a sideboard card for Constructed. It isn’t relevant in Limited.

Arcane Encyclopedia

This is not an efficient way to draw cards, and playing something like this early is usually a bad idea because you don’t add to your board. However, in the late game, it can grind out some nice value, and it will sometimes make it in your UW deck.

Chaos Wand

This is expensive and slow for sure, but it is a great mana sink that lets you steal your opponents’ spells. Now, you never know what spells your opponent has, and sometimes this will be pretty underwhelming, but the upside is real.

Crucible of Worlds

This doesn’t do anything in this format.

Desecrated Tomb

This is near-impossible to make work in Limited.

Diamond Mare

So this card has kind of a great design for Limited. That doesn’t mean it is really good though, just to say that upfront. What I like about it is that it can fit into any deck, and actually synergizes really well with two archetypes: BW lifegain and UW artifacts. Still though, it is mostly a 2-mana 2/2 that is going to gain you like 3 life in a game, and that’s not exactly special.

Dragon's Hoard

This format has a bit of a dragon sub-theme, but not really enough of one for this to be more than a 3-mana mana rock that fixes for you. That’s something you’ll play if you need fixing, and if you have a few dragons you’ll be happy to draw cards off of this too.

Explosive Apparatus

This isn’t efficient, but this format has an artifact deck, which means this makes the cut sometimes.

Field Creeper

This isn’t efficient, but this format has an artifact deck, which means this makes the cut sometimes.

Fountain of Renewal

There is a lifegain archetype and an artifact archetype, and this work well in both. Sure, gaining life doesn’t have the biggest impact, especially only one a turn – but being able to eventually pitch this for a new card makes up for that.

Gargoyle Sentinel

This has decent stats, and while it has Defender, the fact it can gain flying and lose defender in the later part of the game makes it a real threat.

Gearsmith Guardian

You aren’t going to be playing a 5-mana 3/5 artifact in your deck if it doesn’t have Blue in it, but if you’re in the UW artifact deck, this is a pretty solid inclusion.

Magistrate's Scepter

This is way too slow. There’s no way to add extra counters to this or anything, and if you spend your mana setting this up, you’ll lose.

Manalith

This isn’t the best fixing there is, but hey, it is still fixing and that is always nice when you’re trying to splash.

Marauder's Axe

Not boosting toughness is a big problem for equipment, since it makes your creature hit harder, but doesn’t really help them survive combat in any way. Basically, you need a creature with an evasive ability to make this worth it – so if you have a bunch of fliers this becomes reasonably appealing, but other than that, not so much.

Meteor Golem

A 7-mana 3/3 that just destroys a permanent is something you’ll play all day. I really love the flexibility it has too – I mean usually you’re going to want to kill a creature, but sometimes blowing up an enchantment or artifact will be better, and that’s nice. This DOES cost 7 mana, but it feels like 7 mana worth of card to me.

Millstone

This generally won’t be able to mill your opponent out on its own, so don’t play it. Spending mana on this kind of thing is a bad idea when you could be adding to your board.

Rogue's Gloves

This is really only worth putting on something evasive, but even then the amount of mana you have to put into it really makes it hard to make it worth playing.

Skyscanner

A 3-mana 1/1 flyer is pretty bad, but one that replaces itself is nice, especially as an artifact in a format with an archetype that pays you off for them.

Suspicious Bookcase

This is a kind of decent blocker, and it has an ability that definitely pushes through damage late. If you’re in the market for artifacts or mana sinks, you’ll play this sometimes.

Transmogrifying Wand

This is a little better than it looks – since I think it looks unplayable. It turns out that having a source of repeatable removal is pretty nice, even if it does still give your opponent a 2/4, you’re usually able to downgrade their best creatures. You can use it on your own stuff in a pinch too!

Cinder Barrens

These are all good fixing, and are worth playing even in two-color decks because making your mana better is a big deal.

Detection Tower

This is too situational to ever want in this format.

Forsaken Sanctuary

These are all good fixing, and are worth playing even in two-color decks because making your mana better is a big deal.

Foul Orchard

These are all good fixing, and are worth playing even in two-color decks because making your mana better is a big deal.

Highland Lake

These are all good fixing, and are worth playing even in two-color decks because making your mana better is a big deal.

Meandering River

These are all good fixing, and are worth playing even in two-color decks because making your mana better is a big deal.

Reliquary Tower

You’re basically never going to be able to cash in on the effect this has, so mostly it just hurts your mana base.

Rupture Spire

If you need fixing, this can do it! Having to basically pay mana for a land is kind of rough, but worth it sometimes.

Stone Quarry

These are all good fixing, and are worth playing even in two-color decks because making your mana better is a big deal.

Submerged Boneyard

These are all good fixing, and are worth playing even in two-color decks because making your mana better is a big deal.

Timber Gorge

These are all good fixing, and are worth playing even in two-color decks because making your mana better is a big deal.

Tranquil Expanse

These are all good fixing, and are worth playing even in two-color decks because making your mana better is a big deal.

Woodland Stream

These are all good fixing, and are worth playing even in two-color decks because making your mana better is a big deal.

Plains

Island

Swamp

Mountain

Forest