A while back, I came up with a heuristic of categorizing gold cards. Not all power levels are the same, not carry the same message as a signal, not all are worth compromising your deck’s mana base to try and cast. To review:

Bombs: the best of the best, these cards combine a win-condition with being able to stabilize a losing board. Planeswalkers are often Bombs.

Accelerator: A subset of Bomb, these cards make a good deck a lot better but don’t always help a weak deck.

Signal: a gold card that is very powerful in its specific color pair but not worth splashing outside of that. Dominaria’s Adeliz is a great example: fantastic in the UR wizards deck but nobody in UW is going to splash for it because they won’t really have enough wizards to take advantage of it. As such, seeing a gold Signal is a strong sign that it is–wait for it–a signal that those two colors are open. I love seeing these pick 3 or 4. If I am in these colors, I would take a Signal over reasonable removal.

Splash: usually a higher cost gold card, or one that doesn’t mind being played later in the game.

Payoff: a gold card that needs to be cast on-curve to really shine. Imagine a hypothetical 1GR for a 4/4 vanilla creature. This card really wants to be cast on turn 3 or 4 to pressure the opponent. Having to wait around to draw splash enablers and casting on turn 7+ reduces the impact considerably. In a perfect world, you can see these gold cards wheel (or nearly wheel) if you are the only drafter in those colors.

Bombs

Unsurprisingly, each of the redesigned elder dragons are classic bombs. Not all are equal power level: I think Nicol Bolas (with 4 CMC) is the most powerful in a vacuum. Arcades is weird: 4 mana for a 3/5 flying & vigilance is pretty good; the classic “high floor”. His weird defender ability (in a set with limited walls) has some build-around but if you ignore those lines of text, you might be just fine. The others are giant, thumpy dragons with some defenses. Grab them if you see them and pounce on any fixing or ramp.

Now to the uncommons.

Splash

The Symbiont is a 3-for-1, excellent value in any deck at any time. The Skyrider Patrol is a great parity-breaker, slowly building a giant flying army. The Poison-Tip Archer is more modest, but it can block anything profitability and can grind out some wins.

Signal

These are some very clear build-arounds. The BW deck is centered on lifegain and lifegain triggers, so the Regal Bloodlord is a great fit that nobody else at the table would be interested in. Draconic Disciple is sneaky good in RG ramp, being both a ramper and a payoff. The Aerial Engineer is great in UW artifacts-matters and could be a Splash, except the artifacts in this set sort of suck. So you’re really only going to run this in a UW deck with lots of “affinity” synergies making it worth it to run the 2/1 Scarecrow and such.

Payoff

These are like the Signals that didn’t quite get there.  Both BB Ogre and Heroic Reinforcements are alright as long as they land on curve in an aggressive beatdown. I think Satyr Enchanter might be sneaky-good early on. People are rightfully down on Auras, especially in a set with this much instant-speed removal. However it doesn’t say Aura, it says enchantment. This includes the Luminous Bonbs and oblivion ring reprint, among other things. There doesn’t appear to be any other enchantment support (no Auramancer etc.) so don’t go nuts putting in mediocre Auras, but I think it could perform.

Trap

I think this card is going to be a little bit of a trap in Core 19. Everyone remembers how sweet it was in Amonkhet and RU spells is a blast to draft. I’m worried that it will be undersupported though. There’s only one other creature with faux-prowess in blue. That said, maybe there’s enough blue tempo with red creatures (like the 4/2 for 3 CMC) to make it a thing. I’m going to start out skeptical. Maybe it’ll climb the ladder to Signal, but I’ll wait to be beaten by it first.