Fated Intervention is too heavy into green in my opinion, and the next best card being Graverobber Spider, it might be a good advantage to let the people to my left fight over green. Meanwhile, Springleaf Drum is both an enabler for inspire and a fixer for multicolor decks, so I'm going to go with that to keep my options open and possibly gain higher value from any impressive inspire cards I come across in future packs.
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My pick was the Elite Skirmisher. Nice aggressive heroic card that should have plenty of support and it doesn't over-commit me to white. I can see the arguments for the Drum however, so it's close.
It'd have to be Fated Intervention for me. The benefits of the card are obvious and though the 3 trees are a drawback, if there's one colour in which I'd be happy to risk such a cost it would be green. After that pick I'd go 2 colours ruling out any potential splash and maybe get a couple of fixers anyway...
Fated Intervention is not a strong enough one for me to lock into green on p1p1. I chose the drum since it is a strong enabler with inspiration and can ramp/mana fix.
Springleaf Drum is my pick, no colour commitment for first pick lets you see what colours are available, being an Inspired Engine and mana filter is also very useful.
1st pick you really only can go for flexibility or power.
The tokens biggest drawback is that is has 0 devotion. It costs GGG but doesnt give any devotion to green, quite sad. Its not really a bad card, but green and other colors have quite some 5 drops in Theros that are probably better than this anyway.
The Springleaf Drum seems to be the best in that aspect. It works good to color fix, good to get inspire, good to get your stuff out more quickly, so overall it does everything you will need regardless of what deck you end with.
With 8 people on the table i would assume that this will be picked on the first round.
I pick - Springleaf Drum
Elite Skirmisher
Graverobber Spider
Fated Intervention
Loyal Pegasus
Griffin Dreamfinder
Divination
Stratus Walk
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So i would argue that red cards wheel, as its the weakest color and this pack doesnt provide anything it wants.
Floodtide Serpent might provide us a nice option to enable some enchantment based tricks (its quite nice with cheaper Bestow, Ordeals and cantrip enchantments, so not a bad card if you can pick up some action).
No matter what, the Springleaf Drum is the pick that will just contribute to our deck, doesnt matter what we get we will play it almost guaranteed and it will help us to fix into anything if we need to.
There's no way Springleaf Drum is the pick here. Theros was all about making one huge dude and attacking with it, and BoG won't change that too much. We don't want to be three colors, and we don't want to use our first creature to help us accelerate into more creatures. We just want to smash face with our first creature.
I'd take the rare, partially because it's rare. Six power of creatures, and draw a good card next turn.
Elite Skirmisher and Graverobber Spider could be good too, but Skirmisher reminds me too much of Arena Athlete, which was just 'ok.' Spider requires black to be really great, though 4 mana 2/4 reach is always good. It could be the spider actually.
springleaf drum helps ramp to our bigger creatures with our first small ones, enables inspired and fixes color. let our neighbors fight over the green, we have time to pick our color.
Fated Intervention is the best card in the pack, no doubt. The rest of the cards aren't very good, and even though I like Springleaf Drum, I wouldn't pick ramp/fixing over, not a bomb, but a very good card. Scry 2 tacked on is just gravy. Picking the Spider pushes you in two directions just as much as Fated Intervention pushes you in one. You're also passing along a mediocre pack with green nearly cut right out. This way you could be rewarded in the second Theros pack. Potential wheels don't really excite, and it might be possible to see the spider on the way back, but it's very slim.
Fated Intervention is by far the best card in the pack despite being very heavy in green. Despite the fact that the person to your left may pick the Graverobber Spider, you still have the more powerful of the two cards.
For some dumb reason I thought Elite Skirmisher cost 1W and not 2W and snap picked it. Good thing it isn't a real draft, haha.
The correct answer here is probably to take the Fated Intervention. It can be a neat trick or plays as good value. It is heavy into green, but any deck playing green will probably be heavy into green.
In the same way you can tell someone is from the XVIII century because he is arroused by ankles, you can tell someone is from USA because he feels nipples disturbing.
Either Black Oak, Pringleaf, Dreamfinder, or Spider. Spider seems really great with 2 packs of Theros so its probably the best pick but at the same time Spring is ramp and Dreamfinder is value. Black Oak seems like it could be good but also seems like it could be very bad, just as I feel for SPringleag.
Fated Intervention is raw power and blowout potential. Its cost is heavy green, but so what? If you see any opening at all in green in the rest of the pack you will have a superb reason to move in on it. If not, so what? The second best card in the pack is also green, so you're better off taking the better of the two green cards, and the rest of the pack is just okay to bad. If you don't end up in green, too bad, but I'd much rather gamble on powerful picks early in a draft while I feel out colors than be very conservative by taking only mediocre but safe cards. I'm not playing all my picks at the end of the draft, and Theros and Born of the Gods have very few truly unplayable cards, so it's worth taking more risks with regard to hooking on powerful cards even if you don't ultimately have the deck to run them.
Fated Intervention is raw power and blowout potential. Its cost is heavy green, but so what? If you see any opening at all in green in the rest of the pack you will have a superb reason to move in on it. If not, so what? The second best card in the pack is also green, so you're better off taking the better of the two green cards, and the rest of the pack is just okay to bad. If you don't end up in green, too bad, but I'd much rather gamble on powerful picks early in a draft while I feel out colors than be very conservative by taking only mediocre but safe cards. I'm not playing all my picks at the end of the draft, and Theros and Born of the Gods have very few truly unplayable cards, so it's worth taking more risks with regard to hooking on powerful cards even if you don't ultimately have the deck to run them.
This a thousand times. I think people tend to overthink these little experiments. Sometimes the right answer is the easy one.
This a thousand times. I think people tend to overthink these little experiments. Sometimes the right answer is the easy one.
Right. Taking something like Springleaf Drum over Fated Intervention P1P1 because it "keeps you more open" seems insane to me. You want to stay open, but you do that by taking strong cards in whatever colors they're appearing, not by taking the crappier but less committing cards.
Note that this philosophy isn't always correct in every format. It works well in Theros because the playables are very deep, but that's not true of every set.
It's not just because it keeps you more open. With the way curves go in THS (monstosity and bestow making good uses for late game mana abundant) 5 drops are worse than usual and ramp is better. Drum is probably better than voyaging satyr because of inspired interactions, and I don't think intervention is that much better than Asp, and I'd say Satyr vs. Asp is close enough that I'd take the satyr if it were colorless.
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I primarily play limited, so most of my spoiler season comments view cards through that lens.
Fated Intervention because it is good, instant speed could get you some great surprise blocks.
I really don't mind being locked into green at the start in Theros block, just because green is so damn good in the format (at least it is in triple Theros, and I doubt that will change much in BNG-THS-THS).
I think there's a lot of overestimation of the drum. It is definitely not better than a Voyaging Satyr. The Satyr doesn't need anything else to do its job; the Drum needs you to have the Drum on the battlefield as well as a creature that you don't mind not attacking or blocking with. The Satyr, being a creature itself, can be enchanted and start attacking or blocking effectively, or can be used as a platform for combat tricks. That's a lot more relevant than enabling a couple of inspired creatures. Remember, you're only picking from one pack of Born of the Gods, and there aren't actually all that many Inspired cards that are worth enabling or aren't better enabled simply by attacking with them. The Drum asks a lot of you before it does anything, and even then it honestly doesn't do that much.
Fated Intervention isn't a bomb or anything, but the raw power of suddenly dropping two 3/3s on the board on your opponent's turn can't be ignored. That is great on defense to eat or trade with one (or more!) attackers, or on offense to screw up your opponent's defensive plans with two more bodies out of nowhere. There are other five-drops available but none that do everything this card does. It's far and away more powerful than anything else in this pack.
The only other card here I might consider taking instead would be Griffin Dreamfinder. It's not as powerful, but it has the potential to be more synergistic with a grindy, controlling, bestow-heavy deck, if that kind of strategy is strong in the new format. Without knowing that already, though, I'd be loathe to take it over the more straightforwardly strong Intervention, whose performance I can much more easily estimate coming into the new metagame.
Practice for Khans of Tarkir Limited:
Draft: (#1) (#2) (#3) (#4) (#5)
I considered the spider briefly as well.
Fated Intervention seems like a weak rare to me.
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The tokens biggest drawback is that is has 0 devotion. It costs GGG but doesnt give any devotion to green, quite sad. Its not really a bad card, but green and other colors have quite some 5 drops in Theros that are probably better than this anyway.
The Springleaf Drum seems to be the best in that aspect. It works good to color fix, good to get inspire, good to get your stuff out more quickly, so overall it does everything you will need regardless of what deck you end with.
With 8 people on the table i would assume that this will be picked on the first round.
I pick - Springleaf Drum
Elite Skirmisher
Graverobber Spider
Fated Intervention
Loyal Pegasus
Griffin Dreamfinder
Divination
Stratus Walk
---
So i would argue that red cards wheel, as its the weakest color and this pack doesnt provide anything it wants.
Floodtide Serpent might provide us a nice option to enable some enchantment based tricks (its quite nice with cheaper Bestow, Ordeals and cantrip enchantments, so not a bad card if you can pick up some action).
No matter what, the Springleaf Drum is the pick that will just contribute to our deck, doesnt matter what we get we will play it almost guaranteed and it will help us to fix into anything if we need to.
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I'd take the rare, partially because it's rare. Six power of creatures, and draw a good card next turn.
Elite Skirmisher and Graverobber Spider could be good too, but Skirmisher reminds me too much of Arena Athlete, which was just 'ok.' Spider requires black to be really great, though 4 mana 2/4 reach is always good. It could be the spider actually.
Rasputin Dreamweaver EDH
The correct answer here is probably to take the Fated Intervention. It can be a neat trick or plays as good value. It is heavy into green, but any deck playing green will probably be heavy into green.
Three toughness, splashable, life loss for the opponent, life gain for you AND regenerate
Ideally the Black Oak wheels
Fated Intervention is good but the GGG scares me
While it's about 3x less powerful than Fated Intervention, it's also 5x more likely to be included in my starting 40.
(5/3) * X > X
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This a thousand times. I think people tend to overthink these little experiments. Sometimes the right answer is the easy one.
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Right. Taking something like Springleaf Drum over Fated Intervention P1P1 because it "keeps you more open" seems insane to me. You want to stay open, but you do that by taking strong cards in whatever colors they're appearing, not by taking the crappier but less committing cards.
Note that this philosophy isn't always correct in every format. It works well in Theros because the playables are very deep, but that's not true of every set.
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I really don't mind being locked into green at the start in Theros block, just because green is so damn good in the format (at least it is in triple Theros, and I doubt that will change much in BNG-THS-THS).
Fated Intervention isn't a bomb or anything, but the raw power of suddenly dropping two 3/3s on the board on your opponent's turn can't be ignored. That is great on defense to eat or trade with one (or more!) attackers, or on offense to screw up your opponent's defensive plans with two more bodies out of nowhere. There are other five-drops available but none that do everything this card does. It's far and away more powerful than anything else in this pack.
The only other card here I might consider taking instead would be Griffin Dreamfinder. It's not as powerful, but it has the potential to be more synergistic with a grindy, controlling, bestow-heavy deck, if that kind of strategy is strong in the new format. Without knowing that already, though, I'd be loathe to take it over the more straightforwardly strong Intervention, whose performance I can much more easily estimate coming into the new metagame.
R Citizen Cane (Feldon of the Third Path)
The odds of getting into green aren't in my favor.