as per title, looking for opinions on best commons in each color. the format seems to have significant nuance so i'm trying to figure it out, mostly by first determining how deep each color is and what mechanics it is focused on. i think looking at the commons is a good way to do this.
EDIT: THIS IS NOT JUST "WHAT'S PLAYABLE AT COMMON". THIS IS TOP PICKS. CARDS YOU WOULD DRAFT HIGHLY.
here's my list
White Bonds of Faith - funny kind of spell. against some opponents this is a better Pacifism, against others you will probably have to play it as a pump aura instead. the pacifism mode is obviously better, though the added versatility gives this some interesting uses.
Elder Cathar - not only does this support a focused morbid deck, but it just really frustrates an opponent trying to get a board advantage. this basically guarantees that your opponent cannot make good combat trades until after it is dead.
Unruly Mob - this feeds into a Morbid deck very nicely, and if not dealt with early has the potential to become a huge/huge by the endgame. edit: removed from list after further consideration. too many scenarios where the upside does not occur in a relevant timeframe.
Blue Armored Skaab - this looks like a very potent enabler of the other Skaabs, loading up your graveyard with body-fuel. it has a solid defensive body as well, so no complaints.
Claustrophobia - this is close to a real removal spell in a format with weak removal, and in a color that is always desperate for real removal.
Forbidden Alchemy - look at top 4, put the big skaab in your hand, dump the land and 2 irrelevant creatures (that you will eat with your skaab). then a couple turns later, do it again. yep. thats awesome.
Makeshift Mauler - the big skaab that motivates the whole self-mill theme of blue. this guy should be able to just dominate the ground against many decks.
Stitched Drake - the other big skaab. this one flies. even better.
Black Dead Weight - very solid removal. outright kills little guys, renders bigger guys much more manageable.
Ghoulraiser - gravedigger is even better for less mana. unlike grave digger you can't selectively return a bomb with this in the late game, so its just a value play. its effect encourages you to just make the combat trade on turn 2 and then ghoulraiser on turn 3 (on the curve!) for your value.
Vampire Interloper - one of the only aggressively costed flyers in the format.
notable exclusion: Victim of Night, this will probably make maindeck play alot of the time but it does not deserve a high pick in most packs in my opinion. the excluded creature types make up alot of the format. i'd almost say this has greater similarity to Combust then it does to Doom Blade.
Red Brimstone Volley - this is a very good removal spell that rewards you heavily for being able to trigger morbid at will.
Geistflame - there will be sufficient opportunities to get a 2-for-1 removal out of this that i'd rank it as a high pick.
Tormented Pariah - this seems like a werewolf thats right on the sweet spot of the limited curve. most players can easily cast a spell per turn for the first 4 turns of the game. its on turn 5 that it becomes pretty common to miss playing something, so i think Tormented Pariah has an excellent chance to flip just 1 turn after being played, which makes it a very undercosted fatty.
edit: adding Pitchburn Devils
Pitchburn Devils - a reasonably sized body that is nearly guaranteed to produce 2-for-1 trades. strong card.
Green Ambush Viper - an efficiently costed creature that is occasionally as good as real removal. nice card.
Festerhide Board - this is very similar to Gorehorn Minotaurs in M12. this is one of the primary ways to cash in on Morbid triggers and get some awesome beatdown for your trouble.
Grizzled Outcasts - similar to Tormented Pariah, this is at a high enough spot on the limited curve that it is likely to flip just 1 turn after being cast. its front side is a 4/4 for 5, which is totally unplayable anyway so this is one of the more efficient werewolves.
Orchard Spirit - another efficient evasion guy in a format with many of those.
Somberwald Spider - spiders are always important for green decks, and this guy has the potential to be very big. this looks like a core creature for green.
Woodland Sleuth - nearly guaranteed card advantage on a usefully sized body.
Anyone else got a bit of drool running down their cheek when they saw Lost in Mist?
Tempotown here I come!
Corpse Lunge reminds me alot of Induce Despair which was a fairly high pick in a format packed to the brim with removal and value cards, in this set that has very few quality removals this is surely going to be a very high pick but one that loses value the more you get.
Victim of the night is kindly like a Deathmark that always has a few targets no matter what youre playing against. A card that is fantastic in some matchups and never a dead card is good in my book.
Green is absolutely packed with quality cards and has a bunch of playable transformers on top of that. Spider's Grasp, Rangers Guile, Prey Upon, Moomist are all powerful spells in their own right while Kindercatch, Darkthicket Wolf and Avacyn Pilgrim round out the creatures. Looking like a powerhouse for sure.
Red on the other hand looks completely shallow, besides the best removal in the set in Brimstone Volley (splashable likely making it this sets Doomblade) there isnt much else to look at really.
Overall when it comes to the commons i'd probably rank the colors U>=G>W>B>>R.
Blue just has everything, quality removal, tricks, early game creatures, lategame creatures, evasion, card advantage. Also some of their best creatures can come around later than they should if the other blue mages loads up on too many Skaabs to early.
A few notes. You can't say that Bonds of Faith is very good but Victim of the Night isn't. Their effects are very similar in terms of narrowness.
You missed Pitchburn Devils in red, that card is absolutely insane.
i think bonds of faith is much better then victim of night. as far as being a removal spell goes its vaguely similar to a restricted removal like Deathmark but the restriction is much less so. even white/green decks in this format will include some non-humans. i could easily imagine running into BR decks that are almost entirely vampires and zombies though.
but its not particularly the restriction being lesser that changes my mind on this, since its true that it will not be reliable removal against white decks. what changes my mind is that it offers a useful alternate mode instead of just sitting around dead in your hand.
re: Pitchburn Devils
it seems good but as a 5 drop i'm not convinced its truly a top common. clearly good and very playable, but how high would you pick it? its a big version of Mudbutton Torchrunner. how high of a pick was that card? clearly good but i can think of many things that are better. is it especially different as a 5 mana 3/3?
why is Delver of Secrets good? how many instants/sorceries are going to make up most of your decks? pretty typical to play like 15-18 creatures and 5-8 spells. of those spells, depending on your color choices, its likely that you've got a few enchantments and artifacts. i think it will be quite rare to ever play more then 3-4 instants and sorceries in your deck. Delver of Secrets seems like its going to be stuck as a 1/1 almost always.
the other cards you mentioned (think twice, silent departure, moon heron) are just fine and quite playable. but i'm trying to define TOP COMMONS, not just the playable ones. i'll pretty much always play Think Twice, but would you draft it highly? i wouldn't. its like a 5th pick.
it seems good but as a 5 drop i'm not convinced its truly a top common. clearly good and very playable, but how high would you pick it? its a big version of Mudbutton Torchrunner. how high of a pick was that card? clearly good but i can think of many things that are better. is it especially different as a 5 mana 3/3?
Pitchburn Devils is Spitemare, not Mudbutton Torchrunner. Torchrunner WAS a high pick, but that because of tribal synergy.
Spitemare was also a high pick, because it was a 2 for 1.
Pitchburn Devils is also a 2 for 1.
I would first pick this card, I would imagine. Its certainly better than geistflame.
For red, other cards I like are Pitchburn Devils, Harvest Pyre, and Crossway Vampire. I guess I'd take out Geistflame from my top 5, since I don't think just hitting for 1 twice is good enough when the threats will usually be large.
In green, I agree that all of these are good. I might bump Somberwald Spider from a top 5 list merely because green doesn't seem very short of large guys, and this one isn't ridiculously undercosted even with morbid since it already costs 5.
A good list, and it'll be interesting to see how archetypes affect the rankings, and how werewolves play.
For red, other cards I like are Pitchburn Devils, Harvest Pyre, and Crossway Vampire. I guess I'd take out Geistflame from my top 5, since I don't think just hitting for 1 twice is good enough when the threats will usually be large.
In green, I agree that all of these are good. I might bump Somberwald Spider from a top 5 list merely because green doesn't seem very short of large guys, and this one isn't ridiculously undercosted even with morbid since it already costs 5.
A good list, and it'll be interesting to see how archetypes affect the rankings, and how werewolves play.
Forbidden alchemy is a sick sick card because it digs so deep. But I'd definitely take Heron over armor scab. In fact I think the 1/6 crab is probably better than scab. For green the pump wolf would be in my top 5.
this isn't aimed at being a top 5 list. its not just whatever the best 5 commons are, regardless of how low the quality dips. if a color doesn't have 5 high pick quality commons its not gonna get 5 entries.
similarly, with cards like Moon Heron, which is fine and will make the deck nearly always, its not included just because its not a card that motivates me to pick it in picks 1-4. i put cards like Armored Skaab on the list because my perception of the format is that synergy from mechanics like Morbid, Flashback, and the ability to cast undercosted Skaab by eating your graveyard is the way to build the most powerful decks. enablers of those mechanics would be high picks for me, because if you don't have the enablers then you can't draft the most powerful deck.
this isn't aimed at being a top 5 list. its not just whatever the best 5 commons are, regardless of how low the quality dips. if a color doesn't have 5 high pick quality commons its not gonna get 5 entries.
similarly, with cards like Moon Heron, which is fine and will make the deck nearly always, its not included just because its not a card that motivates me to pick it in picks 1-4. i put cards like Armored Skaab on the list because my perception of the format is that synergy from mechanics like Morbid, Flashback, and the ability to cast undercosted Skaab by eating your graveyard is the way to build the most powerful decks. enablers of those mechanics would be high picks for me, because if you don't have the enablers then you can't draft the most powerful deck.
no, it does not. the only sense in which this is true is that they both have 3 power.
the drake can come out on turn 3 and start swinging earlier, and the drake has 4 toughness so can swing through traffic and survive alot of removal that the heron cannot. drake is clearly a more effective damage dealer, can be relied on to deal more damage on average. in my mind that means it definitely hits harder.
Creatures are rarely in your graveyard on turn three in limited unless the apposing player can't answer your creatures with his own. In most cases, you won't even attack with a creature until turn three. Stitched drake is a great card, but it's not always going to work.
To be fair, I'd say it won't be until turn 4 or 5 that you'll get it out. That said, it might leave you with enough land to cast a think twice or silent departure (which will be a great sideboard against blue decks in this set).
One of my personal favorites has to be Delver of Secrets. It has the potential to be an awesome 1 drop.
armored skaab seems more like a good support card, not as much something that is going to put you into blue. You probably aren't looking to pick them up without a couple drakes and maulers first.
Delver of secrets does not belong on the list, that card is a trap.
delver of secrets is bad. around 1/6 chance of transforming, otherwise a 1/1.
blue's 4 drops are a deck based choice: the flier if you are aiming for a flying beatdown, the scaab if you have graveyard tricks, and the crab for a more control/mill type deck.
delver of secrets is bad. around 1/6 chance of transforming, otherwise a 1/1.
blue's 4 drops are a deck based choice: the flier if you are aiming for a flying beatdown, the scaab if you have graveyard tricks, and the crab for a more control/mill type deck.
why choose? they all fit into every blue deck! (the scaab might not always be easy to cast on t4, but is still good in any deck with islands).
Regardless of which face is up, Delver of Secrets will absolutely transform if Moonmist is involved. Speaking of which, Moonmist seems like the earliest-pick fog effect that's been printed in awhile, and a good way to deal with Thraban Militia.
Regardless of which face is up, Delver of Secrets will absolutely transform if Moonmist is involved. Speaking of which, Moonmist seems like the earliest-pick fog effect that's been printed in awhile, and a good way to deal with Thraban Militia.
Huh, I hadn't thought of Moonmist in relation to Delver of Secrets. I still don't like it, though... it's just so bad when it doesn't transform, and it transforms so seldom unless you drafted a really weird deck.
Also worth pointing out is that Delver is still a Human when transformed, so Moonmist also flips a 3/2 flying Delver back into a vanilla 1/1 at instant speed.
you know moonmist effects opponents creatures too right? there will be many situations where it is basically uncastable because your opponent controls a much scarier transforming human then you do.
Yeah moonmist transforms your opponent's creatures, but there aren't that many truly scary human transformations. Double faced cards aren't that common and each deck will have maybe 3 humans that transform. More importantly it's a good combat trick for GR decks.
I don't mind delver of secrets. It's certainly not a high pick but I suspect I'll play it in half of my aggressive decks. It's a 1/1 beater in the early game that upgrades into an evasive threat later on, much like intimidator initiate. This format feels very aggressive to me and even though there are a few good defensive creatures, there are many more cards that really punish you for playing draw-go. 1 drops are going to be important in any aggressive format, and even better when there are some good auras like curiosity and spectral flight to back it up. Trading with a 2/1 and triggering morbid or stitched drake isn't bad either.
No, if you drafted a dozen of them, there'd be reason to play nothing else in your deck but instants and sorceries, regardless of what they were, or what color. So they'd flip pretty often then.
Wit's End is the PERFECT answer to your opponent's Monomania however.
Just hold on to your Wit's End when they Monomania, so you can Wit's End them on your next turn!!!
I think this is fairly reminiscent of the "Jace Battles" we have seen in past standards.. My guess is we will soon witness the great Monomania-Wit's End battles.
No, if you drafted a dozen of them, there'd be reason to play nothing else in your deck but instants and sorceries, regardless of what they were, or what color. So they'd flip pretty often then.
There you have it, folks! The winning Innistrad draft strategy:
and here i was wondering what the use of memory's journeys was. thanks for opening my eyes : )
this is the correct amount of work to go through to get an army of 3/2 fliers. and if, for some reason you are against scarecrow.dec, you can just mill them out and then... unmill them again!
EDIT: THIS IS NOT JUST "WHAT'S PLAYABLE AT COMMON". THIS IS TOP PICKS. CARDS YOU WOULD DRAFT HIGHLY.
here's my list
White
Bonds of Faith - funny kind of spell. against some opponents this is a better Pacifism, against others you will probably have to play it as a pump aura instead. the pacifism mode is obviously better, though the added versatility gives this some interesting uses.
Chapel Geist - very solid flyer
Elder Cathar - not only does this support a focused morbid deck, but it just really frustrates an opponent trying to get a board advantage. this basically guarantees that your opponent cannot make good combat trades until after it is dead.
Unruly Mob - this feeds into a Morbid deck very nicely, and if not dealt with early has the potential to become a huge/huge by the endgame.edit: removed from list after further consideration. too many scenarios where the upside does not occur in a relevant timeframe.Voiceless Spirit - another solid flyer
Blue
Armored Skaab - this looks like a very potent enabler of the other Skaabs, loading up your graveyard with body-fuel. it has a solid defensive body as well, so no complaints.
Claustrophobia - this is close to a real removal spell in a format with weak removal, and in a color that is always desperate for real removal.
Forbidden Alchemy - look at top 4, put the big skaab in your hand, dump the land and 2 irrelevant creatures (that you will eat with your skaab). then a couple turns later, do it again. yep. thats awesome.
Makeshift Mauler - the big skaab that motivates the whole self-mill theme of blue. this guy should be able to just dominate the ground against many decks.
Stitched Drake - the other big skaab. this one flies. even better.
Black
Dead Weight - very solid removal. outright kills little guys, renders bigger guys much more manageable.
Ghoulraiser - gravedigger is even better for less mana. unlike grave digger you can't selectively return a bomb with this in the late game, so its just a value play. its effect encourages you to just make the combat trade on turn 2 and then ghoulraiser on turn 3 (on the curve!) for your value.
Vampire Interloper - one of the only aggressively costed flyers in the format.
notable exclusion: Victim of Night, this will probably make maindeck play alot of the time but it does not deserve a high pick in most packs in my opinion. the excluded creature types make up alot of the format. i'd almost say this has greater similarity to Combust then it does to Doom Blade.
Red
Brimstone Volley - this is a very good removal spell that rewards you heavily for being able to trigger morbid at will.
Geistflame - there will be sufficient opportunities to get a 2-for-1 removal out of this that i'd rank it as a high pick.
Tormented Pariah - this seems like a werewolf thats right on the sweet spot of the limited curve. most players can easily cast a spell per turn for the first 4 turns of the game. its on turn 5 that it becomes pretty common to miss playing something, so i think Tormented Pariah has an excellent chance to flip just 1 turn after being played, which makes it a very undercosted fatty.
edit: adding Pitchburn Devils
Pitchburn Devils - a reasonably sized body that is nearly guaranteed to produce 2-for-1 trades. strong card.
Green
Ambush Viper - an efficiently costed creature that is occasionally as good as real removal. nice card.
Festerhide Board - this is very similar to Gorehorn Minotaurs in M12. this is one of the primary ways to cash in on Morbid triggers and get some awesome beatdown for your trouble.
Grizzled Outcasts - similar to Tormented Pariah, this is at a high enough spot on the limited curve that it is likely to flip just 1 turn after being cast. its front side is a 4/4 for 5, which is totally unplayable anyway so this is one of the more efficient werewolves.
Orchard Spirit - another efficient evasion guy in a format with many of those.
Somberwald Spider - spiders are always important for green decks, and this guy has the potential to be very big. this looks like a core creature for green.
Woodland Sleuth - nearly guaranteed card advantage on a usefully sized body.
You missed Pitchburn Devils in red, that card is absolutely insane.
Tempotown here I come!
Corpse Lunge reminds me alot of Induce Despair which was a fairly high pick in a format packed to the brim with removal and value cards, in this set that has very few quality removals this is surely going to be a very high pick but one that loses value the more you get.
Victim of the night is kindly like a Deathmark that always has a few targets no matter what youre playing against. A card that is fantastic in some matchups and never a dead card is good in my book.
Green is absolutely packed with quality cards and has a bunch of playable transformers on top of that. Spider's Grasp, Rangers Guile, Prey Upon, Moomist are all powerful spells in their own right while Kindercatch, Darkthicket Wolf and Avacyn Pilgrim round out the creatures. Looking like a powerhouse for sure.
Red on the other hand looks completely shallow, besides the best removal in the set in Brimstone Volley (splashable likely making it this sets Doomblade) there isnt much else to look at really.
Overall when it comes to the commons i'd probably rank the colors U>=G>W>B>>R.
Blue just has everything, quality removal, tricks, early game creatures, lategame creatures, evasion, card advantage. Also some of their best creatures can come around later than they should if the other blue mages loads up on too many Skaabs to early.
i think bonds of faith is much better then victim of night. as far as being a removal spell goes its vaguely similar to a restricted removal like Deathmark but the restriction is much less so. even white/green decks in this format will include some non-humans. i could easily imagine running into BR decks that are almost entirely vampires and zombies though.
but its not particularly the restriction being lesser that changes my mind on this, since its true that it will not be reliable removal against white decks. what changes my mind is that it offers a useful alternate mode instead of just sitting around dead in your hand.
re: Pitchburn Devils
it seems good but as a 5 drop i'm not convinced its truly a top common. clearly good and very playable, but how high would you pick it? its a big version of Mudbutton Torchrunner. how high of a pick was that card? clearly good but i can think of many things that are better. is it especially different as a 5 mana 3/3?
the other cards you mentioned (think twice, silent departure, moon heron) are just fine and quite playable. but i'm trying to define TOP COMMONS, not just the playable ones. i'll pretty much always play Think Twice, but would you draft it highly? i wouldn't. its like a 5th pick.
Pitchburn Devils is Spitemare, not Mudbutton Torchrunner. Torchrunner WAS a high pick, but that because of tribal synergy.
Spitemare was also a high pick, because it was a 2 for 1.
Pitchburn Devils is also a 2 for 1.
I would first pick this card, I would imagine. Its certainly better than geistflame.
In blue, I think Moon Heron should definitely make the list. Assault Griffin should still be quite good in this format. Probably better than Forbidden Alchemy or Armored Skaab.
For black, I'd add Corpse Lunge and either Markhov Patrician or Victim of Night to round out the top 5.
For red, other cards I like are Pitchburn Devils, Harvest Pyre, and Crossway Vampire. I guess I'd take out Geistflame from my top 5, since I don't think just hitting for 1 twice is good enough when the threats will usually be large.
In green, I agree that all of these are good. I might bump Somberwald Spider from a top 5 list merely because green doesn't seem very short of large guys, and this one isn't ridiculously undercosted even with morbid since it already costs 5.
A good list, and it'll be interesting to see how archetypes affect the rankings, and how werewolves play.
Forbidden alchemy is a sick sick card because it digs so deep. But I'd definitely take Heron over armor scab. In fact I think the 1/6 crab is probably better than scab. For green the pump wolf would be in my top 5.
similarly, with cards like Moon Heron, which is fine and will make the deck nearly always, its not included just because its not a card that motivates me to pick it in picks 1-4. i put cards like Armored Skaab on the list because my perception of the format is that synergy from mechanics like Morbid, Flashback, and the ability to cast undercosted Skaab by eating your graveyard is the way to build the most powerful decks. enablers of those mechanics would be high picks for me, because if you don't have the enablers then you can't draft the most powerful deck.
You know the Heron hits as hard as the drake?
no, it does not. the only sense in which this is true is that they both have 3 power.
the drake can come out on turn 3 and start swinging earlier, and the drake has 4 toughness so can swing through traffic and survive alot of removal that the heron cannot. drake is clearly a more effective damage dealer, can be relied on to deal more damage on average. in my mind that means it definitely hits harder.
To be fair, I'd say it won't be until turn 4 or 5 that you'll get it out. That said, it might leave you with enough land to cast a think twice or silent departure (which will be a great sideboard against blue decks in this set).
One of my personal favorites has to be Delver of Secrets. It has the potential to be an awesome 1 drop.
Delver of secrets does not belong on the list, that card is a trap.
blue's 4 drops are a deck based choice: the flier if you are aiming for a flying beatdown, the scaab if you have graveyard tricks, and the crab for a more control/mill type deck.
why choose? they all fit into every blue deck! (the scaab might not always be easy to cast on t4, but is still good in any deck with islands).
Huh, I hadn't thought of Moonmist in relation to Delver of Secrets. I still don't like it, though... it's just so bad when it doesn't transform, and it transforms so seldom unless you drafted a really weird deck.
Also worth pointing out is that Delver is still a Human when transformed, so Moonmist also flips a 3/2 flying Delver back into a vanilla 1/1 at instant speed.
I don't mind delver of secrets. It's certainly not a high pick but I suspect I'll play it in half of my aggressive decks. It's a 1/1 beater in the early game that upgrades into an evasive threat later on, much like intimidator initiate. This format feels very aggressive to me and even though there are a few good defensive creatures, there are many more cards that really punish you for playing draw-go. 1 drops are going to be important in any aggressive format, and even better when there are some good auras like curiosity and spectral flight to back it up. Trading with a 2/1 and triggering morbid or stitched drake isn't bad either.
There you have it, folks! The winning Innistrad draft strategy:
-A dozen Delver of Secrets
-A bunch of Dream Twists to put cards from your library into your graveyard.
-A bunch of Memory's Journeys to put them back into your library.
and here i was wondering what the use of memory's journeys was. thanks for opening my eyes : )
this is the correct amount of work to go through to get an army of 3/2 fliers. and if, for some reason you are against scarecrow.dec, you can just mill them out and then... unmill them again!