Average Picked At: 1.65 Total Times Picked: 162 Average Last Seen At: 1.69 Total Times Seen 260
Pro Rating: 4.0 Pro Comment: This is a nice two-drop that is a bit of a swiss army knife. Making a creature into a Coward means that on his own, he can’t be blocked by it -- but that is true of your other Warriors too. He can pump himself to a 4/2 as well, which means if he can’t be blocked, he is hitting hard -- and he can give any Warrior you have Trample, which is pretty solid. If this comes down early, and you can’t kill it, you’re probably going to lose, and it has utility all game long thanks to its suite of activated abilities.
Average Picked At: 15.00 Total Times Picked: 0 Average Last Seen At: 10.50 Total Times Seen 5
Pro Rating: 2.0 Pro Comment: This has decent starting stats, a party creature type, and an ability that can keep it relevant. Seems fine.
Average Picked At: 1.00 Total Times Picked: 54 Average Last Seen At: 1.00 Total Times Seen 73
Pro Rating: 5.0 Pro Comment: A 4-mana 4/4 Flyer is usually great in Limited if that’s all it is. Then, you add the rest of the card to the mix and you certainly have a bomb. It helps you ramp, and it has a powerful death trigger. Now, sometimes you’ll play it and it will die and it won’t feel so good, but I think you will at least have a couple of mana lying around a decent chunk of the time, so that you can take advantage of that trigger, and obviously sometimes you’ll have a boat load and your opponent is going to be in a horrible place.
Average Picked At: 1.00 Total Times Picked: 54 Average Last Seen At: 1.00 Total Times Seen 61
Pro Rating: 5.0 Pro Comment: I think this is a bomb. A 5-mana 4/4 flyer is already good and she has an absurd ability. Sure, you need to have something in your graveyard, but when you know you have Drana coming, you can trade sort of aggressively, then play her with the plan of reanimating those things. It will be a real challenge for your opponent to overcome the value you get even if you just attack with her once, because it will be way more than you normally get for 5-mana. Your opponent gets to choose what comes back, but no matter what they choose, you’re going to be in a pretty great position. I mean, let’s say you get back a Grizzly Bear with her -- that means you are paying 5-mana for a 4/4 with flying and a 3/3.
Average Picked At: 11.00 Total Times Picked: 1 Average Last Seen At: 11.00 Total Times Seen 10
Pro Rating: 1.5 Pro Comment: I think this is fine. A 4-mana 3/3 that scries 1 would probably be a C-. We recently had Octoprophet, which was a 4-mana 3/3 that always Scried 2, and that was definitely a solid C -- and that’s what this will be a decent chunk of the time. Obviously with a full party it gets better, but you shouldn’t really look at this as doing that very often, because it won’t.
Average Picked At: 15.00 Total Times Picked: 0 Average Last Seen At: 7.50 Total Times Seen 7
Pro Rating: 2.0 Pro Comment: Those Hill Giant stats aren’t pretty, and that ETB isn’t super impressive either, though it can often enable an attack you just didn’t have before. But the Party upside here is nice, if you can get +2/+2 out of the trigger you end up with a much nicer card, and obviously, there’s a chance you can go even bigger. I think this is decent enough for White decks to play the first copy most of the time.
Average Picked At: 15.00 Total Times Picked: 0 Average Last Seen At: 11.00 Total Times Seen 5
Pro Rating: 1.0 Pro Comment: These types of Auras always underperform. It seems like it would be really efficient to put this on a land, but it doesn’t generally pan out that way. The land does come back, which in a roundabout way can help you trigger landfall, but this just asks for too much effort.
Pro Rating: 2.0 Pro Comment: This will be indestructible sometimes, and that’s nice – but it will often also just be a 5-mana 5/4, and that’s not so nice.
Average Picked At: 1.21 Total Times Picked: 56 Average Last Seen At: 1.18 Total Times Seen 84
Pro Rating: 4.5 Pro Comment: While she seems kind of like a buildaround, the good news is, RW decks in this format will have enough of both of those for Nahiri to be pretty good. She doesn’t make the most imposing tokens, but they can at least chump block for her, and if you have Equipment maybe do more than that. Her -2 will draw you a card a decent amount of the time, and her -3 will be able to do 2-4 damage often enough and that’s great.
Average Picked At: 1.15 Total Times Picked: 86 Average Last Seen At: 1.17 Total Times Seen 141
Pro Rating: 4.0 Pro Comment: This pig is pretty nice. It is a 4-mana 4/4 that draws you two cards, and that’s hard not to like. Sure, those two cards are lands, but remember this is Zendikar, and GW is one of the combinations that is most focused on landfall. In other words, this helps make sure you hit some land drops and will help you keep triggering landfall.
Average Picked At: 8.00 Total Times Picked: 1 Average Last Seen At: 8.00 Total Times Seen 1
Pro Rating: 3.5 Pro Comment: Well, this seems like a strong uncommon. Sure, he’s a little guy who dies to a lot, but the potential of pumping your entire team multiple times should not be overlooked. You can even get around the danger of it dying before you get to trigger it, at least in the late game, by playing it, and playing a land to get the trigger right away. You do need some board state for this to really shine, but even just pumping 2-3 creatures +1/+1 on multiple turns is pretty awesome for the mana investment.
Average Picked At: 3.80 Total Times Picked: 245 Average Last Seen At: 3.16 Total Times Seen 1433
Pro Rating: 3.0 Pro Comment: So, a two mana 1/1 with double strike is actually a reasonable rate -- it is effectively a 2/1 with upside, in that it can just outright kill X/1s in combat and is a great place to stick Equipment and Auras, and use combat tricks. This is already good with equipment, but the Equipped Warriors get double strike thing makes it even better. Now, you can’t really count on that always coming up, but obviously the RW deck will be the best at using it. It also means that playing it will sometimes immediately impact the board, since it may make your attacking creatures way scarier!
Average Picked At: 1.34 Total Times Picked: 101 Average Last Seen At: 1.38 Total Times Seen 176
Pro Rating: 4.0 Pro Comment: Clones are always nice, and while this can only copy your creatures, paying three to get a copy of your best creature will frequently be a good deal. It also holds on to the Rogue creature type, so that is nice in a format that cares about that! If this was just the Clone side, it would be good, and it can also be a land! Sometimes though, a Clone – especially one that only copies your creatures – isn’t really what you need, and when that happens? You can just play this as a land. The upside there is very very real.
Average Picked At: 6.00 Total Times Picked: 1 Average Last Seen At: 6.50 Total Times Seen 3
Pro Rating: 3.0 Pro Comment: This will get large without a whole lot of effort, and that is really nice because it also happens to have Trample! It does die to just about everything initially, and sometimes it will be better to play it and then a land in the same turn to make it so fewer spells can take it down.
Average Picked At: 15.00 Total Times Picked: 0 Average Last Seen At: 2.00 Total Times Seen 2
Pro Rating: 3.5 Pro Comment: This is one of the better uncommon modal DFCs in this set. That’s because one side of it is a removal spell. Sure, it is Pounce for one more mana -- but the fact it can be removal when that works out for you, or a land when that’s what you need is just super good. Being an Instant also means that the Fight side of the card will find more windows than Sorcery speed versions of that effect.
Average Picked At: 15.00 Total Times Picked: 0 Average Last Seen At: 10.50 Total Times Seen 4
Pro Rating: 2.0 Pro Comment: This is a surprisingly decent card for stalling if you’re in a controlling deck, as the statline and the life help make you harder to kill.
Average Picked At: 1.85 Total Times Picked: 128 Average Last Seen At: 1.79 Total Times Seen 221
Pro Rating: 4.0 Pro Comment: A two mana 3/2 does a nice job on the vanilla test, and by having all of the “Party” creature types, the Paragon will make all of your party payoffs into much better cards! Keep in mind though, that the Paragon can only fill one of those roles, a single creature can’t be a whole party. But filling in any role that you might need is great. Most of the time, it will be better to cast this for kicker, since it is likely to draw you a card most of the time, and a 5-mana 3/2 that draws you a card is a nice deal, but the fact you can play it earlier is nice -- it can help you set up Party cards, or it can just give you an aggressive early creature who can do some damage.
Average Picked At: 2.42 Total Times Picked: 382 Average Last Seen At: 2.14 Total Times Seen 972
Pro Rating: 4.0 Pro Comment: If it were always 5 mana, it would probably be decent -- even though it can hit anything, it would be a little bit too clunky to consider premium. But, at 4 mana it gets into premium territory, and at 3 it is even better than that.
Average Picked At: 2.03 Total Times Picked: 86 Average Last Seen At: 1.90 Total Times Seen 218
Pro Rating: 3.5 Pro Comment: I like this card a lot -- I always love these Red card advantage engines, and that’s what we have here. You won’t exactly be triggering it ever turn, but you will get landfall going often enough that it is going to really help you win games. One kind of cool thing about this version is that it doesn’t exile the cards forever -- you get them in your graveyard, and that might actually matter. The fact it does damage when you don’t cast things from Exile is nice too -- especially because if you hit a land off of this, you’re not going to be able to play it -- since you already triggered landfall, and thus have played your land for the turn. So basically, this does 1 damage to your opponent when you hit a land, and draws you a card when you hit anything else.
Average Picked At: 15.00 Total Times Picked: 0 Average Last Seen At: 7.00 Total Times Seen 6
Pro Rating: 1.5 Pro Comment: So, here is a strictly better Mind Rot! It adds draining life and milling a card to the mix, in addition to making your opponent discard the two cards. Playing it early is sometimes a liability because it means you aren’t adding to the board on turn three, and getting it late can be bad too, because your opponent is in top deck mode. Mid-game or so is usually where it is at its best. Mind Drain adds enough extra stuff to the mix to overcome Mind Rot’s usual problem though -- it will do something no matter what. And sure, draining your opponent for 1 and milling their top card for three isn’t a good deal, but it is a heck of a lot better than a dead card, which Mind Rot often is.