Went 4-0, opening Chandra as my promo helped a lot. Even got to ultimate her once.
Chief of the Foundry is an all-star. Fabricate creatures go from good to nuts if you control one of those. Plus with vehicles its body can remain relevant without you needing to actually risk it in combat (and the vehicles get bigger, to boot)
It's a rare johnny card, like harmless offering. It's a constructed-only card, and they do a few of those every set. There are a few neat things you can do with that card. Phage the Untouchable + Hushwing Gryff for example. (If they choose phage, they lose because phage triggers before hushwing gryff is on the battlefield (yes, that is how triggered abilities work, they wait until a player has priority to go onto the stack but can trigger at any time, and hushwing gryff only stops the trigger, not the putting on the stack), and if they choose hushwing gryff you get the phage without losing. If they choose neither you still don't lose because the gryff and phage enter at the same time)
I mean, yeah, aggro decks would play a 2 mana 1/2 unleash creature all day, but non-aggro decks would stay the hell away from it. I wouldn't call a card that's only good in aggro decks one of the best commons when the other cards listed are good removal spells that work in all decks.
I actually rate Thriving Ibex higher than Thriving Rats in a vacuum because a 2/4 for 4 isn't completely embarrassing in the way that a 1/2 for any amount of mana is.
Guess we get an inkling of how the next magic story or two turns out.
I'm really not getting why twin bolt needed a functional reprint
Probably they wanted to theme the spell after Chandra so they can put the quote about her mom on it, but Chandra specifically only uses fire magic and not lightning magic.
Black doesn't usually get a 3/4 for 4 mana but it's still not amazing and not a high pick. There are powerful cards for sure, but the set still has staples like goblin piker and yoked ox so I suspect the power level will be more in line with recent sets than you think.
I don't think I'm as thrilled with the thriving cycle as you. I rate Thriving Turtle as just bad (can be a good sideboard card though), Thriving Rats as very cuttable, and the others as good but not great. The problem is that they only go above the curve after you attack once with them. A 1/4 for 1 mana is great, but a 1/4 that comes into play tapped and doesn't untap during the next untap step? At least the other three kind of pass the vanilla test on their own.
And Murder is always going to be great. It was even great in Conspiracy 2, a high-powered multiplayer format where it should have been at its worst.
What bothers me is liberating combustion says "and/or" while verdant crescendo just says "and". So I can get two Nissas but only one Chandra.
You can't get two Nissas. You search both zones but you only have permission to get a single Nissa.
The reason Liberating Combustion says and/or is so you don't have to shuffle your library if you already see your Chandra in your graveyard and just pick her up from there. Verdant Crescendo makes you search your library regardless (for the land), so to save space they just have you search both zones.
In limited almost every deck is a midrangey deck that wins by attacking with creatures. Therefore, cards that are good against that deck are really good (e.g. arrest) where you don't have to worry about arrest being too inefficient to deal with a swarm of 1 and 2 drops or too narrow to deal with a combo or control deck.
Don't forget that with sovereign realm you have to play all but two of the cards you draft. A draft only contains 42 picks, and you still have to have a legal deck of 40 cards. So the sovereign deck will be playing all of the 10-14th picks too. And it starts 2 cards down.
Aside from automatically ramping you, it also allows a greater threat density by letting you play sligtly less lands then you would have otherwise.
And I believe the lack of sweepers actually makes the 1v1 removal more valuable, and as such will only be spent on the bombs, not some medium-sized creature.
45 picks, because there are no basic lands in the packs (it's where the draft matters cards go), but that only slightly changes your point.
Well, 44 picks, since one of them was Sovereign Realm. Minus any other conspiracies you drafted or any "draft matters" cards that remove cards from your pool.
In a normal set, the 15th card is a basic land.
In eldritch moon, 3/4 packs have a checklist instead of the basic land. In exchange, 1/8 packs have two rares (a flip rare and a normal rare). So after you open 8 packs, you get 6 fewer basic lands and 1 extra rare. Don't tell me you'd rather have 6 basic lands than a rare.
Sovereign's Realm may not be as good as it first appears. You get insane mana consistency, but you are forced to play with nearly your entire draft pool. Plus, there is the real danger that your draft pool does not even have 40 cards (very possible if you draft too many conspiracies or cards that remove cards from the draft) and you can't even legally play Sovereign's Realm.
Personally, I think the new templating is indicative of a mythic in Kaladesh that creates tokens and whose text would be too long to fit using the old templating.
Murder is like Cancel -- a simple staple effect that you could tack a small upside to (as in Hero's Downfall) but is strong enough that you can't shave an entire 1 mana off its cost without having to make it more conditional somehow.
There shouldn't be a problem as long as the TO is still giving the packs out without any preference to any player. Maybe the players should be told not to trade packs pre-draft.
Some people might get 2x mythics from EMN packs but that could have happened anyway.
Actually purposely making sure every player gets 2 different arts would make things worse, as it makes it much less likely than is proper for a player to get 2x mythics.
And since there are only 2x EMN per draft (not 3) the problem isn't that big.
Why is it bad that it be less likely for all players to get two mythics?
I guess it's not "bad" per se, just not the same as drafting in the purest form (you're supposed to have a 1/64 chance of getting two nonflip mythics in your first two packs, if you know all the mythics are in the same art you can lower that chance to 0)
Bloodbriar just has great potential by itself. I had great success with three of them in a G/B delirium deck I drafted last Friday. Delirium already wants to play cards that self-sacrifice like Terrarion and Vessel of Nascency, and you really only need 1 sacrifice to make Bloodbriar above average (and in the case of those two cards, the playing and sacrificing them is something you want to be doing anyway unlike Lunarch Mantle).
Chief of the Foundry is an all-star. Fabricate creatures go from good to nuts if you control one of those. Plus with vehicles its body can remain relevant without you needing to actually risk it in combat (and the vehicles get bigger, to boot)
I actually rate Thriving Ibex higher than Thriving Rats in a vacuum because a 2/4 for 4 isn't completely embarrassing in the way that a 1/2 for any amount of mana is.
Probably they wanted to theme the spell after Chandra so they can put the quote about her mom on it, but Chandra specifically only uses fire magic and not lightning magic.
I don't think I'm as thrilled with the thriving cycle as you. I rate Thriving Turtle as just bad (can be a good sideboard card though), Thriving Rats as very cuttable, and the others as good but not great. The problem is that they only go above the curve after you attack once with them. A 1/4 for 1 mana is great, but a 1/4 that comes into play tapped and doesn't untap during the next untap step? At least the other three kind of pass the vanilla test on their own.
And Murder is always going to be great. It was even great in Conspiracy 2, a high-powered multiplayer format where it should have been at its worst.
You can't get two Nissas. You search both zones but you only have permission to get a single Nissa.
The reason Liberating Combustion says and/or is so you don't have to shuffle your library if you already see your Chandra in your graveyard and just pick her up from there. Verdant Crescendo makes you search your library regardless (for the land), so to save space they just have you search both zones.
Well, 44 picks, since one of them was Sovereign Realm. Minus any other conspiracies you drafted or any "draft matters" cards that remove cards from your pool.
In a normal set, the 15th card is a basic land.
In eldritch moon, 3/4 packs have a checklist instead of the basic land. In exchange, 1/8 packs have two rares (a flip rare and a normal rare). So after you open 8 packs, you get 6 fewer basic lands and 1 extra rare. Don't tell me you'd rather have 6 basic lands than a rare.
It sounds insane when it works, though.
I guess it's not "bad" per se, just not the same as drafting in the purest form (you're supposed to have a 1/64 chance of getting two nonflip mythics in your first two packs, if you know all the mythics are in the same art you can lower that chance to 0)