It sounded more like Bacchus would just make up to three nonbasics (from a certain subset, e.g. probably not Strip Mine and LoA) available at the end of each draft.
If I'm gonna do any sort of "wild card" drafting rule it's gonna be for something much more interesting than an artifact land.
It's certainly possible to make a set where these are great, but unless you're sleeving up Court Homunculus and similar stuff it's an easy pass. Urborg is about as useful, and can't backfire when your opponent has a Naturalize effect, making it likely just better overall.
I'd rather have Embermage Goblin -- a singleton, so just a crappy expensive Prodigal Pyromancer -- than the Manticore. The expensive, limited ping ability is enough of a downgrade that it can't make up for the Desert Drake body.
It's pretty solid but short of staple status. Wouldn't really be surprised to see it out of a cube at 360, for example.
T3 cast, T4 activate, T5 activate... and when you untap on T6 you've attacked with a total of two power.
There's enough incidental Elves in green for the bonus to be a nice perk, and it CAN take over slow games. Being a lightning-rod for removal as a 3-drop isn't the worst thing, but I can't remember the last time she's made more than two tokens.
Like, if you have an incredibly low power level and want Storm to work I could see adding Basal Thrull or the variants that cost 2B, or even Culling the Weak maybe. But never this.
I don't think anyone would ever play Gladiator over Snare Thopter or the ETB-Bump in the Night guy, so it's got no hope of cracking my Rakdos section. Not good when your gold card is eclipsed by some middling colorless ones.
It certainly CAN do some work in the right boardstate, but aggro 4's... nah.
Cranial Plating is probably the big 'artifacts matter' pay-off card for us but I don't think that theme is quite viable (yet?) in C/Ube (without skewing your entire design ethos around it).
It's not great when your black pay-off card goes seamlessly into Gruul or Azorius decks
I mean it's probably good if your cube has Faerie Mechanist in it, but very weak otherwise.
Late-game mana sink abilities are cool, but coming on a 5-mana 3/3 just kills the card since it starts out so far behind.
Something like Shapers of Nature is vastly better -- starts as an OK-for-cost body, and actually builds into something more than a bigger vanilla creature (I mean you CAN use the treasure for something, but if you're spending mana on making them... you don't need to use them usually).
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New card for today: Incinerate
It's certainly possible to make a set where these are great, but unless you're sleeving up Court Homunculus and similar stuff it's an easy pass. Urborg is about as useful, and can't backfire when your opponent has a Naturalize effect, making it likely just better overall.
T3 cast, T4 activate, T5 activate... and when you untap on T6 you've attacked with a total of two power.
There's enough incidental Elves in green for the bonus to be a nice perk, and it CAN take over slow games. Being a lightning-rod for removal as a 3-drop isn't the worst thing, but I can't remember the last time she's made more than two tokens.
T5 Cloud Manta, T6 Fugue yourself to get a Dark Ritual is not a winning play for anyone ever
It certainly CAN do some work in the right boardstate, but aggro 4's... nah.
Scout "saves" for free, mana-wise, and can spend a dead card (your 10th land) instead of blanking an unknown draw step.
Prowler probably better than both. I recall him being a little popular here a few years ago, but no personal experience
It's not great when your black pay-off card goes seamlessly into Gruul or Azorius decks
Or as a much less exciting but still quite solid card, Dhund Operative.
Late-game mana sink abilities are cool, but coming on a 5-mana 3/3 just kills the card since it starts out so far behind.
Something like Shapers of Nature is vastly better -- starts as an OK-for-cost body, and actually builds into something more than a bigger vanilla creature (I mean you CAN use the treasure for something, but if you're spending mana on making them... you don't need to use them usually).
4/3 and 4/4 are different enough that I probably still like this more than the Pirates, though the different downsides can vary wildly.