Pardic Dragon in Modern Masters draft, and to a lesser extent, Time Spiral block draft, can serve as a very decent six-drop. I'm wondering what you guys think about him as a two drop?
Does he typically stay in limbo forever, or is it worth it to try just for the random quick dragon?
Do you choose not to suspend when you have no other plays and can?
At my LGS, since 2006, the call of "Failed the skill test!" has been reserved exclusively for suspending turn 2 pardic dragons without a way to remove the counters. Doesn't happen very often as you might imagine. Generally that's accurate - to unsuspend a dragon requires your opponent to skip two spell drops from turn 2-3 (and before turn 6-7, which is when you could have hardcast it) and that's just very unlikely unless they kept a garbage hand. Obviously if you have synergy (rift elemental, fury charm) the math changes completely and suspending the dragon becomes much better, not that i'm recommending playing either.
I'm still wondering if you want to suspend him down turn 2 on the play. It sounds like a lot of duress from the other side of the board to me in a slow matchup. It might make them fire off early on several spells, right? And there's always the chance it just goes 2-1-0 because your opponent kept a shaky hand. I don't want to say never do it, but I want to figure out when its okay.
On the other hand, you suspend it turn 2 and your opponent is relatively active. At the point when he's out of gas and dragon comes off suspend naturally, what turn is it going to be on average?
Also, if you pick up a dragon, how much does your evaluation of Fury Charm go up? How about Rift Elemental? Or discard like Thieving Sprite and Raven's Crime? How insane would it be with Death Cloud?
While it doesn't read this way on the card, against good competition, this is the de facto text on Pardic Dragon:
Pardic Dragon
RR4
Creature - Dragon
Flying
RR: Exile Pardic Dragon. Activate this ability any time you can play a sorcery and only if Pardic Dragon is in your hand.
R: Pardic Dragon gets +1/+0 until end of turn.
4/4
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Providing a plethora of pompous and pedantic postings here since 2009.
:dance:Fact or Fiction of the [Limited] Clan:dance:
Signalling is like farting: it's a natural thing that helps people avoid being where you are, and if you try to do it deliberately, things turn to crap fast.
Quote from Hardened »
I hereby found the American Chapter of the Zealots of Semantics. All glory to The Curmudgeon.
The dream is that your opponent will do nothing and this guy will pop out early. The reality is that opponents rarely do nothing and if you had just waited you would have been better off 95% of the time.
I had 3 separate guys suspend this against me yesterday. When they did, it never came out to play. Whereas it was perfectly respectable the times my opponents hard cast it on 6.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Quote from Bateleur »
Ambush Krotiq makes me laugh so much. I keep rereading the card and it keeps not having Flash. In what sense is this an ambush again? I just have visions of this huge Krotiq poorly concealed in some bushes, feeling slightly sad that his carefully planned ambushes never seem to work.
Consider three things: the turn number, how many cards your opponent has seen and how many of those must have been lands for the suspended dragon to come into play that turn.
So the question you have to ask here is: at what point during the game do you expect the opponent to have drawn ten lands, because that's when you're going to see your suspended Dragon.
(Hint: the game will be over first!)
Of course, this is an oversimplification. For every spell your opponent has drawn but is unable to cast you can subtract one from the ten land benchmark. But then if your opponent has three spells stranded in their hand that's like a triple mulligan anyway (or they're badly manascrewed), making suspending the dragon a strictly win-more play.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
--
(I'm on on this site much anymore. If you want to get in touch it's probably best to email me: dom@heffalumps.org)
Forum Awards: Best Writer 2005, Best Limited Strategist 2005-2012
5CB PotM - June 2005, November 2005, February 2006, April 2008, May 2008, Feb 2009
MTGSalvation Articles: 1-20, plus guest appearance on MTGCast #86!
<Limited Clan>
toodumbtopost already noted this, but I would not suspend it unless I had synergy. If I had drafted some Rift Elementals, I would consider suspending it.
I got super keen and suspended him once without Rift Elemental to help him out. Fortunately, my opponent such misplay was morally wrong and decided to cover up my shame and put it on top of my library with Riftsweeper when it had 5 counters on it, just so I could hardcast it and kill him with it.
I had him last night, never suspended him. A 4/4 firebreathing flyer at six is just fine the way he is. I did have two Rift Elementals I could have been rocking, but found I never really had the free mana to be activating them.
I will confess, I made a somewhat dubious choice when I picked him, as I picked him over Molten Disaster, which I'm pretty sure is wrong. I have never played with the dragon before, so I hadn't fully considered the implications of the suspend clause. I just saw RR - Suspend 2.
Does he typically stay in limbo forever, or is it worth it to try just for the random quick dragon?
Do you choose not to suspend when you have no other plays and can?
On the other hand, you suspend it turn 2 and your opponent is relatively active. At the point when he's out of gas and dragon comes off suspend naturally, what turn is it going to be on average?
Also, if you pick up a dragon, how much does your evaluation of Fury Charm go up? How about Rift Elemental? Or discard like Thieving Sprite and Raven's Crime? How insane would it be with Death Cloud?
Pardic Dragon
RR4
Creature - Dragon
Flying
RR: Exile Pardic Dragon. Activate this ability any time you can play a sorcery and only if Pardic Dragon is in your hand.
R: Pardic Dragon gets +1/+0 until end of turn.
4/4
:dance:Fact or Fiction of the [Limited] Clan:dance:
I had 3 separate guys suspend this against me yesterday. When they did, it never came out to play. Whereas it was perfectly respectable the times my opponents hard cast it on 6.
Consider three things: the turn number, how many cards your opponent has seen and how many of those must have been lands for the suspended dragon to come into play that turn.
Turn - Cards - Lands
4 - 10 - 10
5 - 11 - 10
6 - 12 - 10
7 - 13 - 10
...oh, wait, are you seeing a pattern?
So the question you have to ask here is: at what point during the game do you expect the opponent to have drawn ten lands, because that's when you're going to see your suspended Dragon.
(Hint: the game will be over first!)
Of course, this is an oversimplification. For every spell your opponent has drawn but is unable to cast you can subtract one from the ten land benchmark. But then if your opponent has three spells stranded in their hand that's like a triple mulligan anyway (or they're badly manascrewed), making suspending the dragon a strictly win-more play.
(I'm on on this site much anymore. If you want to get in touch it's probably best to email me: dom@heffalumps.org)
Forum Awards: Best Writer 2005, Best Limited Strategist 2005-2012
5CB PotM - June 2005, November 2005, February 2006, April 2008, May 2008, Feb 2009
MTGSalvation Articles: 1-20, plus guest appearance on MTGCast #86!
<Limited Clan>
Draft my cube! (630 cards)
I will confess, I made a somewhat dubious choice when I picked him, as I picked him over Molten Disaster, which I'm pretty sure is wrong. I have never played with the dragon before, so I hadn't fully considered the implications of the suspend clause. I just saw RR - Suspend 2.