Benalish Dad

For the first time… (checks notes) ever, I tried to do card ratings without listening to several hours of LR/LoL. As mentioned during my rolling ratings, I have a newfound respect for how hard this is. It’s hard! Making sure you read every word on cards is hard! Thinking of the best (and worst) cases is hard! It was fun, but now I’m eager to delve into the podcasts and see how I did.

First, here are my ratings: Benalish Dad’s Card Ratings. Again, I’m using my somewhat simplified tier system

Six hours on an airplane is a pretty decent excuse I suppose. Was there also six straight hours of Octonauts for Lil Chandra? You know it!

Stuffed bear

First, that is one hell of a name and flavor win for Gothic Land. But is it any good? The activation cost is pretty burdensome if you’re paying it every turn to attack. However, if you get to sit back on defense and hold off a horde of smaller creatures with the threat of activation, THAT sounds appealing. I think this could end up being a common that defines aggressive decks, since they’re going to need an answer to a controlling deck that drops this early and passes the turn.

And we’re off! Thanks to readers for pointing out some errors in reading the plain English on the cards. I definitely have a newfound respect for the content creators churning out the grades. It is not easy.

Ritual guardian

Appears to be a brief respite on Sunday, with only a few spoilers dropping. That said, it could just be that the mythicspoiler.com admins are enjoying the long weekend. We can catch up on some skipped ones too.

rating system

• Game-Changers (aka bombs, As)
• Power (aka Bs)
• Draft-Changers (aka Build-arounds)
• Signals (top commons)
• Variable Playables (playable cards that have a home)
• Filler (borderline playables that don’t have a home)
• Avoid (Fs & D-. Or just too narrow to plausibly make work)

Ghoulcaller’s harvest

I suppose I shouldn’t be too impressed with myself that I managed to continue this a whopping two days in a row, what with being on vacation and all. But still! Two days! Go team! Let’s see what Wizards has brewed up for us to salivate over.

diregraf rebirth

Trying something new in the spoiler season, especially with being completely tired of Adventures in the Forgotten Realms. Using my hand-crafted rating system, I’m going to try and pick some–perhaps even most–of the spoilers and try to rate them as they drop. Obviously there will be a ton of context missing. Actually, pretty much *all* of the context will be missing. But it will still be a good exercise for me to do some card evaluation.

A quick primer on the Benalish Dad’s, no-it-really-IS-different-from-LR’s-grades, rating system

• Game-shifters (Bombs). They are (pick two to three) efficient, powerful, sustainable advantage, and/or catch you up when behind.
• Power (Reasons) These powerful cards usually only fulfill one of the ‘bomb’ criteria. They tilt the battlefield rather than remake it like a true bomb.
• Draft-shifters (build-arounds). When placed with proper support, these can be as powerful as bombs/power cards. Build-a-bomb!
• Signals (best commons). A common that fits in any deck of that color (most frequently reliable removal or a very solid 2/3-drop) can be one of the best signals.
• Variable Playable. These are good cards that generally have a home in a few of the color’s archetypes, but not all of them.
• Filler. Signals’ lamer cousin. Generally these are cards that are totally playable, but don’t really have a good home
• Avoid. The weird rares, the off-rate creatures. Generally speaking, if you never put one of these cards in the 40 you’ll be better off.

What does smooth, clean efficient removal look like? This! Clearly a powerful card, this draws the line on the difference between “power” and “bomb”. This is not a bomb. It answers a threat, probably with a hefty mana advantage. But it doesn’t fulfill the “multiple” categories of a true bomb, of which the most important are “repeatable advantage” and “turns around a losing situation”

power