There are a lot of good cards in this pack. I wouldn't be ashamed to pick Skyguard, Bolt, Siren, Raised by Wolves or Tromokratis here. I'm pretty sure I would take Raised by Wolves here; every time I've cast this it's been a colossal beating and sort of similar to getting both halves of a bestow guy at once.
I would not take Tromokratis, due entirely to its cost. It's just too expensive and doesn't quite have the immediate impact I would be looking for.
The best green card is Raised by Wolves.
The best red card is Bolt of Keranos.
The best blue card is Siren of the Fanged Coast.
The best white card is Akroan Skyguard.
Black has nothing to offer.
There are a lot of defensible picks here, but I think the most solid pick here is Raised by Wolves, followed very closely by Siren of the Fanged Coast. Bolt is fine, but I wouldn't pick it ahead of what I'm seeing here. I like Skyguard, but I'm not sure I want to be committing to that strategy right off the bat.
It's entirely possible that as the format evolves my pick might change in this situation. If I opened this pack in my next draft, I know I would take Raised by Wolves because I want to play with it myself to get some time in with it. But it's possible that Siren is better.
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It's not your job to win games of Magic where you're mana screwed.
It's your job win every game of Magic where you're not.
Ok Siren isn't a first pick from what I have saw so far. Most of the time its a 4/4 which isn't bad but can be delt with. I haven't played Raised by Wolves yet so that could be a first pick here probably wheeling the badger. Tromokratis is great if you get him out but thats hoping blue is open and its usually drafting high.
The safe bet would be Akroan Skyguard or Bolt of Keranos.
I'd take Siren of the Fanged Coast. Air Elemental is still a great card, even with the modest Tribute drawback.
I don't hate Raised by Wolves, but it's a little more situational than I like my 5-drops to be. You're getting a lot of value out of it (an aura and two creatures) but it's a small, vanilla aura and creatures that won't always be relevant... as much as you generally want some bears to mix it up in the early turns, bears usually get bad fast in this format. Again, I don't hate it, but I think the Siren is safer (and I like being blue if I can help it).
If I weren't taking Siren, I'd take the Skyguard. It's not that much worse than Wingsteed Rider in practice, and it's exactly what you need to be snapping up early if you want to try for a Heroic deck.
I think I prefer the Siren here, but both it and the wolf are excellent picks. The skyguard is quite nice to, but my gut feeling so far is that it isn't quite as high of a pick as wingsteed rider was..that extra point of toughness is quite relevant.
I think it's Akroan Skyguard by a good margin. There's tons of cheap bestow guys in BNG and it's as good as Wingsteed Rider imo.
I'd stay away from 1st picking most red cards, Air Elemental is just not that impressive at all, Tromokratis does not have hexproof and is expensive, and Raised By Wolves can be 2 for 1'd (obviously) but it would be my 2nd choice.
1. Akroan Skyguard
2. Raised by Wolves
are ahead of the others by a bit
Siren for me. As good as Raised by Wolves can be, you have to find an opportunity to land it. Against some decks, you never have a clean shot at playing it. Siren is never bad. Even if you steal a 2/2, you're in great shape because it means that 2/2 was their best creature and they're way behind.
Tromokratis by a mile for me. It's a bit hard to cast, and this is a fast format, but this guy ends games and there's not a lot of removal that can deal with it.
Siren is not as good as people are valuing it. A situational 5 drop is not really where I want to be P1P1 when one of the biggest bombs in the format is in the same pack. It's a fine card, but I wouldn't take it over the 8/8
Raised by Wolves is basically the same thing. It's a fine card, but most of the time it underperforms as grizzly bears are often irrelevant by turn 5
I'm fine with voting for other cards but in what way is Siren "situational"? The only time it's not playable is when your opponent has literally zero creatures in play. Congratulations, you're at 5 mana and your opponent has zero creatures in play! Presumably you're winning. And as soon as they do produce a creature, you either steal it or get a 4/4 Flying. Most creatures are not as good as a 4/4 Flying so you'll end up ahead in that deal either way.
It's like calling Doom Blade situational because sometimes you won't have anything to target. Doesn't make it bad.
Tromo might be better but there's no reason to throw shade at Siren.
I think I'd pick Siren because it will fit in a larger number of decks. I'd probably include it as a curve topper in a semi-aggressive deck, while Tromokratis would only be good in a control oriented deck.
Akroan Skyguard This is just the type of P1P1 card you want to have an option of taking. There will be plenty of 5-6 drops to be had as a draft goes on. The 1-3 drops(of quality) are always hardest to come by. This flier is top-notch and you immediately start preparing to build an aggressive fliers/heroic and/or some sort of aggro deck. You may in fact not need any 5 drops with cards like this.
We would also be cutting off white pretty hard as only the unplayable Ephara's Radiance would be seen to our left. If you take the next best card, Siren of the Fanged Coast, you will be passing the big Kraken, Nullify and Floodtide Serpent which are all fine playables for blue. I'd prefer to pass all four playable blue cards, try to cut the strong white cards and get rewarded in pack 2.
Even if we don't get rewarded in pack two we will have taken the most-effective creature in the pack and would know we had a very reliable playable.
Practice making the smart choices and you'll reap the benefits on Day Two.
We would also be cutting off white pretty hard as only the unplayable Ephara's Radiance would be seen to our left. If you take the next best card, Siren of the Fanged Coast, you will be passing the big Kraken, Nullify and Floodtide Serpent which are all fine playables for blue. I'd prefer to pass all four playable blue cards, try to cut the strong white cards and get rewarded in pack 2.
I understand picking skyguard, but I do think you are overvaluing sending signals, out of p1p1 especially.
We would also be cutting off white pretty hard as only the unplayable Ephara's Radiance would be seen to our left. If you take the next best card, Siren of the Fanged Coast, you will be passing the big Kraken, Nullify and Floodtide Serpent which are all fine playables for blue. I'd prefer to pass all four playable blue cards, try to cut the strong white cards and get rewarded in pack 2.
I understand picking skyguard, but I do think you are overvaluing sending signals, out of p1p1 especially.
Care to back that up? How do you know how highly I'm valuing signals? I merely mentioned that it's one of many points in picking Skyguard. In P1P2 if you get sent a pack with 4 tasty blue cards it will make you think that blue might be a place to look, especially if we keep feeding playables. If we cut off a color almost completely and send a ton of blue playables left that isn't trivial.
Sending signals is an important top end drafting skill to have. I often have players come up to me after a draft and say "You must have been drafting W/R heroic", ""you effectively kept me off of black", etc. If your neighbors can settle into colors earlier it benefits you greatly. Now if our opponent opened a crazy white card than he may still go white, but we can only control so much in a draft from one spot out of eight.
I think Dolphan pretty much covered it. People are too open and there are often too many good cards in a color in p1p1 and p1p2 to really consider signal sending changing what you choose. You should note which signals you send, but picks shouldn't change to change them.
I agree that "sending" signals (ooh, scare quotes) is such a minor consideration that it doesn't really bear mentioning.
I do think the pick here is between Siren and Skyguard, however. We wouldn't flinch at first-picking a Wingsteed Rider, and I think Skyguard should occupy a similar mental space. While I believe it's a little worse than Wingsteed Rider (though it's closer than it often gets credit for, IMO, the cheaper and less color-intensive cost matters a lot), it occupies the same structural role in Born of the Gods as Rider did in Theros as the foundational common for white Heroic decks.
I'm still voting for Siren, but I recognize that I have a personal bias in favor of "any blue archetype other than UR" over "any non-blue archetype" that may affect my judgment.
I'm fine with voting for other cards but in what way is Siren "situational"? The only time it's not playable is when your opponent has literally zero creatures in play. Congratulations, you're at 5 mana and your opponent has zero creatures in play! Presumably you're winning. And as soon as they do produce a creature, you either steal it or get a 4/4 Flying. Most creatures are not as good as a 4/4 Flying so you'll end up ahead in that deal either way.
It's like calling Doom Blade situational because sometimes you won't have anything to target. Doesn't make it bad.
Tromo might be better but there's no reason to throw shade at Siren.
I might be biased because I've been drafting triple BNG (blah) where red is the scariest color, but it's situational in the sense that if your opponent has a swarm of ground-based creatures but no bomb then they'll usually be fine with you taking one, especially if they have a way to deal with it but not a 4/4 flier. There are also rare cases where it's going be a 1/1 flier for 5 and you make your opponent use a removal spell on whatever you take which is anywhere from a great to an average play. I'm not saying it's going to be a bad card very often, and will sometimes be a great card, but the variance is high enough that I'll take Tromokratis because it is always a bomb. Expensive, but a bomb
Reading signals is vastly more important than sending them. If you can pick up on what the person on your right is drafting by midway through pack 1, that's a pack-and-a-half of open color for you. In contrast, trying to put someone on your left into a color is uncertain (maybe they opened a bomb, maybe they hate blue, etc), and the payoff is only 1 pack. It's certainly worth keeping track of, and it could be a tie-breaker, but using it as a reason to pass 2-packs worth of an open color to your left is usually a mistake.
Unless that removal spell is Retraction Helix/Voyage's End/Griptide. It's still not a bad deal for you unless you really needed to steal that creature to turn the board around.
I didn't say it's a bad card, I just think people overvalue it. It is a marginally worse Air Elemental, which is still a good card and first-pickable. I'm not taking it over one of the scariest creatures in the format though
Reading signals is vastly more important than sending them. If you can pick up on what the person on your right is drafting by midway through pack 1, that's a pack-and-a-half of open color for you. In contrast, trying to put someone on your left into a color is uncertain (maybe they opened a bomb, maybe they hate blue, etc), and the payoff is only 1 pack. It's certainly worth keeping track of, and it could be a tie-breaker, but using it as a reason to pass 2-packs worth of an open color to your left is usually a mistake.
No man actually wanted to do the things you are warning against. Also saying that reading signals is more important, while true, doesn't make sending signals less important.
How does sending signals in any way interfere with picking up on signals from your other neighbor? (the answer is it doesn't) so when people say you should focus on reading signals OVER sending them, it doesn't make sense as one doesn't impede the other.
The best card is skywatch and on top of that, whether we took a blue card or not here, the 3 people to our left will all get a chance to dive in as well. It's something to watch and put some thought into, perhaps you want to fight with 4 close neighbors over blue here, I don't.
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There are a lot of defensible picks here, but I think the most solid pick here is Raised by Wolves, followed very closely by Siren of the Fanged Coast. Bolt is fine, but I wouldn't pick it ahead of what I'm seeing here. I like Skyguard, but I'm not sure I want to be committing to that strategy right off the bat.
It's entirely possible that as the format evolves my pick might change in this situation. If I opened this pack in my next draft, I know I would take Raised by Wolves because I want to play with it myself to get some time in with it. But it's possible that Siren is better.
It's your job win every game of Magic where you're not.
The safe bet would be Akroan Skyguard or Bolt of Keranos.
.
I don't hate Raised by Wolves, but it's a little more situational than I like my 5-drops to be. You're getting a lot of value out of it (an aura and two creatures) but it's a small, vanilla aura and creatures that won't always be relevant... as much as you generally want some bears to mix it up in the early turns, bears usually get bad fast in this format. Again, I don't hate it, but I think the Siren is safer (and I like being blue if I can help it).
If I weren't taking Siren, I'd take the Skyguard. It's not that much worse than Wingsteed Rider in practice, and it's exactly what you need to be snapping up early if you want to try for a Heroic deck.
My left drafter should take the Wolf or Bolt? I would hope Nullify is there on the hitback
If Tromokratis wheels, it might be worth grabbing as a 9th pick, provided we stay in blue. Definitely not a 1st pick though.
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I'd stay away from 1st picking most red cards, Air Elemental is just not that impressive at all, Tromokratis does not have hexproof and is expensive, and Raised By Wolves can be 2 for 1'd (obviously) but it would be my 2nd choice.
1. Akroan Skyguard
2. Raised by Wolves
are ahead of the others by a bit
Siren is not as good as people are valuing it. A situational 5 drop is not really where I want to be P1P1 when one of the biggest bombs in the format is in the same pack. It's a fine card, but I wouldn't take it over the 8/8
Raised by Wolves is basically the same thing. It's a fine card, but most of the time it underperforms as grizzly bears are often irrelevant by turn 5
Standard:
GU Prophet
Legacy:
WBU Shared Fate
Trades
It's like calling Doom Blade situational because sometimes you won't have anything to target. Doesn't make it bad.
Tromo might be better but there's no reason to throw shade at Siren.
I think I'd pick Siren because it will fit in a larger number of decks. I'd probably include it as a curve topper in a semi-aggressive deck, while Tromokratis would only be good in a control oriented deck.
Um, yes it does. Yeah, he loses it on attacking/blocking, but that still keeps him safe from Sip/Excoriate/Asphyxiate.
We would also be cutting off white pretty hard as only the unplayable Ephara's Radiance would be seen to our left. If you take the next best card, Siren of the Fanged Coast, you will be passing the big Kraken, Nullify and Floodtide Serpent which are all fine playables for blue. I'd prefer to pass all four playable blue cards, try to cut the strong white cards and get rewarded in pack 2.
Even if we don't get rewarded in pack two we will have taken the most-effective creature in the pack and would know we had a very reliable playable.
Practice making the smart choices and you'll reap the benefits on Day Two.
I understand picking skyguard, but I do think you are overvaluing sending signals, out of p1p1 especially.
Care to back that up? How do you know how highly I'm valuing signals? I merely mentioned that it's one of many points in picking Skyguard. In P1P2 if you get sent a pack with 4 tasty blue cards it will make you think that blue might be a place to look, especially if we keep feeding playables. If we cut off a color almost completely and send a ton of blue playables left that isn't trivial.
Sending signals is an important top end drafting skill to have. I often have players come up to me after a draft and say "You must have been drafting W/R heroic", ""you effectively kept me off of black", etc. If your neighbors can settle into colors earlier it benefits you greatly. Now if our opponent opened a crazy white card than he may still go white, but we can only control so much in a draft from one spot out of eight.
I do think the pick here is between Siren and Skyguard, however. We wouldn't flinch at first-picking a Wingsteed Rider, and I think Skyguard should occupy a similar mental space. While I believe it's a little worse than Wingsteed Rider (though it's closer than it often gets credit for, IMO, the cheaper and less color-intensive cost matters a lot), it occupies the same structural role in Born of the Gods as Rider did in Theros as the foundational common for white Heroic decks.
I'm still voting for Siren, but I recognize that I have a personal bias in favor of "any blue archetype other than UR" over "any non-blue archetype" that may affect my judgment.
I might be biased because I've been drafting triple BNG (blah) where red is the scariest color, but it's situational in the sense that if your opponent has a swarm of ground-based creatures but no bomb then they'll usually be fine with you taking one, especially if they have a way to deal with it but not a 4/4 flier. There are also rare cases where it's going be a 1/1 flier for 5 and you make your opponent use a removal spell on whatever you take which is anywhere from a great to an average play. I'm not saying it's going to be a bad card very often, and will sometimes be a great card, but the variance is high enough that I'll take Tromokratis because it is always a bomb. Expensive, but a bomb
Standard:
GU Prophet
Legacy:
WBU Shared Fate
Trades
I didn't say it's a bad card, I just think people overvalue it. It is a marginally worse Air Elemental, which is still a good card and first-pickable. I'm not taking it over one of the scariest creatures in the format though
Standard:
GU Prophet
Legacy:
WBU Shared Fate
Trades
No man actually wanted to do the things you are warning against. Also saying that reading signals is more important, while true, doesn't make sending signals less important.
How does sending signals in any way interfere with picking up on signals from your other neighbor? (the answer is it doesn't) so when people say you should focus on reading signals OVER sending them, it doesn't make sense as one doesn't impede the other.
The best card is skywatch and on top of that, whether we took a blue card or not here, the 3 people to our left will all get a chance to dive in as well. It's something to watch and put some thought into, perhaps you want to fight with 4 close neighbors over blue here, I don't.