Welcome to my take on the pre-release primer! Instead of trying to be a sad photocopy of the fine work Limited Resources, et al do, I like to do a quick breakdown of the major properties of a limited set: removal, combat tricks, blue nonsense, and splashing. How these four stack up go a long way in determining the speed of the format, viability of enchantments, etc.
Removal
So we have 17 pieces of removal, 8 of which are uncommon. This is richer than M20, which had 10 common and 3 uncommon. Naturally some of these have conditions attached: three pieces need opponents with deep graveyards (see Milling, below), four (!) are enchantment-based, which might be weak with above average bounce effects. Removal will always be a premium and I think this set will be no exception.
P1p1: Eagle vs. Fenlurker vs. Druid. I think it’s between Druid and Fenlurker and I take the Fen on the strength of the 2-for-1. P1p2: Sad pack. Raise the Alarm I guess? P1p3: Bone Splinters vs. Dragon vs. Reduce. Unconditional removal first I suppose. When in doubt, take the one-drop over the five-drops. P1p4: Of note, Undead Servant that might wheel but I take Soul Salvage. p6: late-ish Smuggler p7: Shock. It’s red time people!
Self-Assessment
The late red in pack 1 (Smuggler & Shock) put me in red and the Audacious Thiefs & Murder plop me into black. Felt like the signals were clear there!
P1p1: easy Gargos, one of the best cards in the format. Now warping my picks pretty heavily towards P1p3: Power of Bone Splinters over a 2nd Spider P1p4: late Pacifism. Worth a speculation here P1p5: Pulse is very strong. Noting the strong black playables too P1p7: Shockingly late Weaponsmith. P1p8: Pacifism vs. Fenlurker. Wut.
Felt like I had to force green a bit here but I think Gargos is worth it.
Did I draft the hard way?
So… I definitely was forcing Green for Gargos. But not egregiously so. In the abstract, it felt like black and white maybe should have been my colors, but never a good enough reason to switch. I was hoping to get enough fixing to make Abzan happen, but the glut of Disfigures kept me from taking fixing options. Not a bad problem to have, but I worry about the overall power level of this deck.
Up at the cabin with the nerds on our Boys’ Weekend Escape. Sure there are some social board games (Root was fun), introducing Breath of the Wild, and grilling truly preposterous number of steaks. We even talked about our feelings a little!
P1p1: Spectral Sailor over Cloud-Kin Seer. Doesn’t feel great but a clear choice. P1p2: Not a great pack but I think Boreal Elemental is the best choice. I wouldn’t mind taking the Temple, but I want to make sure that I’m definitely one of those colors before I commit. P1p3: Hmmm, I wouldn’t call this a LATE Shock, but it is notable. P1p4: Scampering Scorcher does reasonable work. I’ll try it. P1p6: Skipping ahead to pick six, I see a Dawning Angel. Not a signal, but definitely what I’ll take over nothing.
Pack 2: I open Baby Chandra, who is excellent, and I happily take it. After being passed a Loxodon Lifechanter, I start taking white. Blue gets cut, but a wheeling Gauntlets of Light feels pretty good.
Pack 3: I crack open Empyrean Eagle, grab some splashing tools, and solidify a UWr Skies deck.
Assessment
How did I do Drafting the Hard Way ™? It felt pretty good, if anything I delayed too long committing to a color. But red was so cut in pack 2 that it made it hard to get in there, especially since it wasn’t that open in pack 1. Playable deck, low on interaction & removal though.
P1p1: Easy Bag of Holding, since it’s colorless. Chandra’s Outrage would have been #2. P1p2: Audaction Thief vs. Aerialist vs. Syphon. Tricky! I think the recurring advantage potential of Audacious Thief outweighs the inefficient removal of Syphon, but that might be wrong. P1p3: Rabid Bite vs. Barkhide Troll vs. Ancestral Blade vs. Evolving Wilds. I have no idea, so I fall back on a pretty good removal card. I think Ancestral Blade is #2. P1p4: Barkhide Troll over nothing. Still nothing I would consider a signal. P1p5: Well that’s a late Goblin Smuggler! Signal-ish, but nothing resembling red earlier keeps me from being too enthusiastic. P1p6: the first big fork! Embercat (a good red 2-drop) vs. Griffin Protector. I think the Griffin Protector wins games more than the efficient 2-drop does. But the recency of Smuggler (and importance of 2-drops) should have swayed me.
I finish out pack 1 with some medium black and white cards. Not sure why I picked the Fencing Ace over Gorging Vulture, that was a mistake.
Pack 2: eh, i get some feel-bad red cards coming by way, including a P2p3 Chandra’s Outrage, criminally late Goblin Smugglers (P2p6! P2p11!!!!). Pack 3 I trudge through, looking mournfully at the red that went by. I wheeled a Raise the Alarm though, so that’s cool.
Assessment
The big question is whether or not I should have gotten into red in pack 1. If I went Smugger –> Embercat –> Pack Mastiff in 5/6/7, then maybe So many Goblin Smugglers! I give myself a B, maybe B-.
P1p1: Kind of interesting. I think Ancestral Blade has more staying power than the other 2-drops, so I run with that. P1p2: Bag of Holding vs. Herald of the Sun. And a common missing? That’s very strange. Definitely take the Bag. Maybe there was a foil? P1p3: Three strong white cards. Aerial Assault is removal-ish, but I think the flexibility and cheaper cost of Gods Willing is superior. P1p4: Bishop of Wings over nothing.
I asked the brain trust at the Lords of Limited Discord about one particular pick, P3p7:
Brightwood Tracker is a C-, nice to have one of as a mana sink. The Gauntlets is usually a bad card. BUT my deck was well-positioned to make it awesome! Lots of cards that wanted buffs, high-toughness creatures. It could have helped me steal a game or two.
Assessment
Pretty easy to find my lane in white and green. I read pack 1 as being Green being open-ish and got moderately paid off in pack 3 with pick three Rabid Bites. The red in pack 2 was tempting but ultimately not for me.
It was brought to my attention that I completely overlooked a piece of iconic removal.
Okay, well the first lesson is that I’m an idiot and not to be trusted. It is interesting how recent these cards are though. Righteous Blow is from Avacyn Restored and then this paradigm lay fallow until Impeccable Timing reappeared in Kaladesh. However, once I got over my embarrassment (and my rationalization engines started kicking in) I started to wonder, are these cards really removal? Or… is it just a combat-trick on steroids? Let’s compare:
So, what are the differences between these two cards? Interestingly, Bladebrand’s cantrip nature isn’t terribly important. Since your creature is almost certainly going to die, you’re just replacing the creature with a card from your library. Imagine if Bladebrand read: “Sacrifice a creature. Destroy target attacking or blocking creature.” I would argue that it would play nearly exactly the same way. They both function relatively similarly on your attack, since the attacker is still blocked. There is more difference on defense. Bladebrand needs a creature whereas I.T. can wipe out an attacker without board presence, a key advantage for I.T.
There are some other minor differences: Bladebrand also works better with your first-striking creatures and is worse when facing first-striking creatures. Bladebrand can bring down an opposing bomb (as long as you can block it) whereas I.T. really can’t. But they have the key similarity that they *don’t* hit creatures that aren’t engaging in combat. Since those are often the creatures that you need to kill most (Risen Reef etc.), that’s a major functionality gap.
When evaluating removal, it’s worth breaking down the four dimensions of What Removals Does For You.
Removing oppo’s blocker
Killing utility creatures
Answering opponent’s bombs
Handling oppo’s aggressive attackers.
Weigh these four variables against the cost. The reason why Lightning Strike is so fantastic is that it aces three of these tasks, only falling short on answering an opposing bomb, at the very reasonable cost of 2-mana. Consign to the Pit does do all four of these, but at 6-mana the cost is significantly more prohibitive.
Given how Impeccable Timing (and its peers) only handle three of these functions, I think they should be evaluated more as combat tricks. Since they do wipe out early attackers, they are helpful for control decks. But the inability to hit utility creatures, not removing blockers, and decreasing utility against Big Bombs, is enough to tip the scales to “Not Removal”.
P1p1: Gravedigger vs. Ancestral Blade. Power level & desire color. Close, I think I just generally like low-to-the-ground decks and trying to make an under drafted color work. Plus I just love white! What can I say.
P1p2: Chandra’s Outrage vs. Cloud-Kin Seer (uncommon missing). This is a tougher choice. I really like Cloud-Kin Seer
P1p3: Very weak pack. Bow vs. a random Temple? Yuck. Bow I guess.
P1p4 is more interesting. Beserker vs. Syphon vs. Scuttlemutt.
I think Berserker is the most powerful in the vacuum (good 2-drop), Syphon is just fine removal, and Scuttlemutt is the most open. I want to take the good 2-drop, but I’m feeling sufficiently unsettled where the colorless fixing card felt like the more disciplined choice.
I ended pack 1 in pretty clear UR. White is nowhere to be seen and there was a late Fenlurker too, but that’s about it.
Pack 2 is just incredibly dry. Shocked to see Red and Blue both so dry when I can’t recall passing anything aside from the Chandra’s Outrage. Pack 2 I get some more pieces and end up with… this?
Not a very interesting P1p1. Risen Reef vs Pacifism, Agonizing Syphon. Though gold, Risen Reef is just head and shoulders above. This DID lead to an interesting P1p2
Classic example of how “pick orders” change with context. Murder is clearly better than Rabid Bite in a vacuum. But my P1p1 is a powerful gold card with some green in it. That’s enough to tilt me towards trying to stay “on color” and take the R.B. If my P1p1 was some random good red card, I definitely would have taken the Murder since there was no previous picks that had any influence.
Pack 1 ends with me confident about green and very little else. Pack 2 I ruin the table but cutting HARD into red and get rewarded (probably unjustifiably) with a P3p1 Drakuseth! Well that’s clear enough I guess.
Heyo! That’s a P1p1 bomb! Choice of TWO Chandras (sucks passing Baby Chandra though).
Signals: P1p6 Goblin Smuggler is a little late, which raised my hopes that red would be open. P1p9 Fathom-Fleet Cutthroat is nice going with my earlier black removal. I waffled between RB aggro and control, with the tail end of pack 3 putting me in aggro.
Interesting Picks
P3p2: Meteor Golem vs. Audacious Thief vs. Goblin Smugger (#2) This was tough. Meteor is the best card in the vacuum while both three-drops are powerful. I eventually went with the Golem only to have massive aggro cards slip through to me, including another two Smuggers in the middle of the pack. Right call at the time, but boy this deck would love a thief.
Benalish Dad 