I picked white and then built a UB deck without a single white card in it.
I did that at both Theros prereleases. First one was a random pack, and I randomed into Blue; all the Blue was garbage and I played Green/Black. The next day, less people came and I could choose Black; the Black was garbage and I played Blue/Red.
Looking forward to my prerelease tomorrow night. I'm in Taiwan on vacation now, so it should be fun playing outside my normal location. I'll probably take White or Red as my color. White enables tons of enchantment stuff with the guaranteed Archon, and the dragon in Red provides alpha strikes. The red is probably better if looking for mythics though. Assuming that any Red mythic can show up in the seeded pack, then Red has Xenagod and Mogis, both of whom seem back-breaking in limited. But I'll probably go white, because I like fliers that resurrect stuff.
I picked Herald, though I agree that it is a very difficult choice between that and Gild. The difference, for me, is that the demon has more relevant parts. The demon is relevant if you play it, since 3/3 fliers for 3 CMC are very strong in limited. The demon is relevant if you bestow it, since +3/+3 and flying turns almost anything into a game-winning bomb unless answered. The demon also helps heroic, which cannot be ignored, and if removal happens, the demon can outlast the removal if it was bestowed.
Gild, meanwhile, is absolutely the best at what it does. It is excellent, unconditional removal in two sets with a lot of high-cost, conditional removal. However, I tend to pick bombs before removal, and I'd do the same in this case. Also, while splashability would be more useful in most sets, devotion is a thing here, so the two B in the Herald' CMC might be useful. Two B is -2 from the cost of Marshmist Giant, and helps Gray Merchant of Asphodel.
Slightly off-topic, but anyone seen Attack on Titan? If so, now imagine Maw of the Obzedat as a close-up of one of the titans biting someone in half.
If you haven't seen Attack on Titan, and you think that Maw of the Obzedat is '****ing awful to behold,' go watch it. The show is great, but the first few episodes will not be pleasant for you.
Probably White, going for W/B. The White rare is probably the strongest of them, because it's a big flier, and it recurs enchantments. There are enough enchantment creatures in the set that a lot o the time it's going to act as a Sun Titan with flying.
However, I'm not actually sure if I'll be able to play a Prerelease at all. I'm going to Taiwan for Chinese New Year, and the prerelease days are the first two days of Chinese New Years. Here in Beijing, a lot of stores and restaurants have already closed down in preparation for the New Years vacation, so I'm not sure if card stores will still be open. Chinese New Year is a time for visiting family, so there's a good chance that the store managers will just close shop. However, if there is a store open, then I really want to play.
Hmmm, I'm a little surprised that people say that Hero is such a slam first pick. There's some decent removal in this pack as well as the counterspell.
In general, for limited purposes, a bomb creature like the Hero is an obvious slam first pick. Removal is good, but most of the time, if you fill a deck with a large number of good, game-winning creatures, you can beat out your opponents because they won't have enough removal to deal with your heavy-hitters. In general, you want to play 23-24 spells and 16-17 lands in any given limited deck. Of those cards (let's just say 23 spells), you want 15-17 creatures and 6-8 spells on average. Certain deck archetypes can work differently: if you have a lot of bestow dudes in Theros, you can get away with more or less creatures than listed above, since your creatures can be auras/your auras can be creatures. However, that's the general rule I play with. Also, most of the time, you'll win by damage.
Given those rules, it is usually really hard to pack your 6-8 spells with only removal, even if you prioritize removal over all else. Also, bomb creatures are generally better than removal in limited for three reasons.
1) removal is always reactive. It's better to put threats on the field than wipe your oppnent's threats off the field, unless you can get more than one for your spell and ensure a two-for-one. This is because a deck packed full of creatures is unlikely to run out of dudes, but a deck cannot run that much removal unless it plays less than ten creatures (in the case of decks that do, you'd better hope you get your creatures, because you only have a 1/4 chance of drawing one). As a result, it's usually better to use your good creatures to stop your opponent's good creatures, and use removal only when you really need it and cannot stop the threat with a dude.
2) Limited removal is usually less reliable. Oftentimes, it deals damage/gives -X/-X instead of directly killing, which may not be enough to take out the target. Especially in Theros & BNG, most of the unconditional removal is either high-rarity, like Gild or Hero's Downfall, or high-CMC, like Draught of Hemlock (6 CMC). Because of this, you usually need to use your removal sparingly, and only on targets that really require it.
3) Creatures are easier to interact with than removal. Removal's only job is to get rid of creatures, while creatures can be enchanted, can have instants/sorceries cast on them, can be equipped, and can both attack and block. The only difference between blocking an opponent's creature with yours and killing it, and killing the creature with a kill spell, is that the creature survives and you can still use it. Removal offers the option of targetability, rather than giving your opponent the choice: that's why you need to use removal sparingly, like a scalpel.
The reason that Hero is such a bomb drop is that is is very easy to interact with, and provided it survives the turn it comes down, it has a good chance to sweep a game quickly. Theros limited is all about bestow dudes: you can win games off the back of a quick hero with a bestow guy or two on him. Hero makes that really easy, because he makes bestow cost 1 less. Since bestowing on him will give him +1/+1 from heroic in addition to the bonus from the bestow, he will quickly grow, and can probably take over the game quickly. There are a lot of playable bestow creatures/good enchantments in all colors, making him a very versatile pick, as you can pick any secondary color and still have him scale very powerfully.
The problem with the removal or the counterspell basically comes down to CMC. Weight of the Underworld gives -3/-2 and costs 3B: that's double the cost of the Hero. In the time it takes you to get enough mana to cast it, the Hero (coming down on turn 2) will almost certainly be 4/4 or bigger, making Weight a bad (or, at least, suboptimal) choice. Fall of the Hammer, meanwhile, requires a creature strong enough to take the Hero down. This depends more on turn order: if you went second, and the opponent dropped Hero on turn 2, you probably don't have a 2-power creature to use Hammer with. As a result, you'll run into the same problem of being unable to kill the Hero when you have the creatures/mana necessary. Finally, Nullify requires two things to be better than the Hero: you need to go first, and you need to drop two Islands in the first two turns. If you're second, then Nullify can't hit the Hero, and if you don't have two Islands in opening hand, you probably can't cast it in the first place.
The final reason that Hero is the superior pick is that Hero is rare, while the other three cards are commons. There is a good chance that you will see other copies of those cards wheel, because none of them are good enough to take over a bomb first-pick. Meanwhile, because the Hero is rare, and powerful, there is a near-zero chance of him wheeling. Because of this, if you don't take the removal/counter, you might get some later, while if you don't take the Hero, then he's not coming back. This makes the Hero a far more important pick, in addition to being most likely a tactically superior pick.
Hero is the easy pick here. Most bestow creatures are at the point where 1 mana off makes a big difference, and the heroic is very meaningful. The Hero is one of the best enablers in the format, and heroic allows it to scale very well with it's cost-reducing ability. Great package overall.
My second choice would probably be Oracle's Insights. Blue in Theros block (you get 2 Theros for every 1 BNG in draft) tends to be very tanky, with a lot of strong heroic abilities. Oracle's Insights gives you 3 advantages: 1) you pretty much never get screwed by the draw; 2) enables Inspired dudes; and 3) turns tanky Blue Heroic dudes into looters that scry instead of making you discard. Turn 4 is usually a fairly unimportant turn for Blue in Theros, as their main drops are either turn 3 or turn 5; turn 4 is usually for dropping a Griptide. Unless the opponent has a nut drop on turn 4, I'd probably rather have more, better draws for the rest of the game as opposed to a tempo shift.
Dawn to Dusk looks incredibly powerful to me, since we have both more and better Bestow creatures. Whenever I play Theros limited, Bestow is always extremely relevant, and having a way to both get rid of your opponent's creature and get your own back is very good. In this format, I would probably read 'ressurect/kill target enchantment' as 'ressurect/kill target creature.'
On a similar level, Odunos River Trawler seems like a similar version of this, just in B/W instead of just white. It costs 2B and brings an enchantment from gy to hand, and you can pay W and sac it to do it again. Again, enchantments are heavy duty, and in many cases are creatures, so in many cases, this guy is like a Gravedigger that costs 1 less and can sac itself for W to do it again.
All of the Uncommon Eidolons also look really strong to me; in particular, I can see the White and Blue ones ending games really fast. Those Eidolons both cost 5W/5U to bestow, and grant +1/+1 and either double strike or unblockable respectively. The stat bonus isn't very good, but both abilities are game-breaking in limited. I'd guess that the strongest one is the White double strike one, though, simply because there are so many red cards now that give firebreathing. A double striker with firebreathing is pretty much the scariest thing possible in a limited game, beaten only by obvious bomb mythics (and sometimes, not even then).
Oracle's Insight also seems really strong. 3U is a little much to ask for an enchantment, but tap for 'scry 1, then draw a card' basically reads 'from now on, my draws will always be decent at very worst, and I will never be mana screwed/flooded.'
Finally, all tribute guys in general. Tribute gets flack as a mechanic for being a Punisher mechanic, but I think that almost all of the Tribute cards in limited are good enough for their cost, meaning that if the opponent pays tribute, then they become undercosted, and if they don't, your creature is still fine for what you paid. In addition, I feel that the effects themselves are mostly nasty enough that deciding whether or not to pay feels like a choice. Also, many of them get quite large from tribute, meaning that for damage-based removal sources, it may not even be possible to remove them if you pay tribute. Unfortunately, there are a few of them that just feel weak, like the Uncommon harpy for 3BB that enters as a 2/2. I don't think it's ability is strong enough to warrant paying, and if I don't, then the opponent has just dropped a 2/2 on turn 5, which feels like little better than a Time Walk to me. I think it would have been much better if it made them sacrifice 2 creatures instead of 1.
I wouldn't be surprised to see Phenax do something, if only because he activates Inspired, and is U/B, which includes powerful and relevant Inspired effects like Pain Seer. I doubt the mill part would be too useful, but considering that Phenax is an Inspired enabler, works well with Ashiok, and is not very hard to activate as a creature, I'd say Phenax has a chance. It also depends on whether or nor JOU also includes the Inspired mechanic. If it does, and has good U/B Inspired cards, then I'd predict that Phenax could be the backbone of an Inspired deck. To my knowledge, we don't have much in Standard that permanently gives all of your creatures a tap effect, so at least in this case, Phenax is cornering the market. Phenax could also fit into a Lazav deck, provided that one exists, since he's a good way to activate Lazav's ability. It depends on the meta.
That said, I actually have a question about that last part. If you have Lazav and Phenax out, and you mill your opponent and hit Xenagos, God of Revels, Lazav can become Xenagos, right? I'm not certain how useful that would be, since you couldn't activate your Xenagos as a creature, but it's possible, right?
I voted for Returned. TBH, I don't really get why the Hero is any good. Unlike other Heroic cards, you don't get any counters naturally on the Hero; as a result, Hero is only good late game, despite being a one-drop. To play the Hero well, you need three things: 1) your opponent doesn't have instant-speed removal; 2) that you have a card to target the Hero with; and 3) that you have mana left over to pump into the Hero. Without extra mana, Hero is worthless: if you run out of mana playing the spell, then you have to pay X as 0, so Hero doesn't get any +1/+1 counters. As a result, the Hero is only good as a turn 5-6 or later drop, where you will have the mana to play it, then play a spell on it and still have mana left over to pump into its ability.
Comparatively, the Returned is playable at any point in the game. It interacts very well with heroes itself, being a Heroic enabler, and the bestow cost of 3B is not too expensive. It is a bomb drop on any evasive creature, and there are a number of them that combo very well with Black right now. White has Wingsteed Rider, the new Noble Pegasus, and other good fliers; Red has the new flying and haste guy, Black has a number of Harpies, and Blue has a bunch of fliers as well. Because the Returned activates based on attack, not hit, you are guaranteed damage, which is not the case with the Hero, who can easily be chumped. In addition, if the creature Returned is on is killed, the Returned can still get in for at least 2 more damage, giving it 4 total 'guaranteed' damage as long as your opponent doesn't have instant-speed removal.
Comparing the Hero and the Returned in the case that opponents do have instant-speed removal, the Returned is never going to 2-for-1 you: you'll either get the creature killed and have a Returned, or the Returned killed and still have a creature. Meanwhile, not only will Hero 2-for-1 you, it will get you Time Walked, since you need to spend most of your mana on the Hero's Heroic ability to get any real use out of it. Given that BNG adds a lot more removal to the Theros pool, and that a good amount of it is instant-speed, I'd say that Hero is a lot riskier than Returned, and it doesn't necessarily have a better payout in terms of damage either.
On a different level, I could also see taking the Retraction Helix, though I think the Returned is still a stronger pick. That said, if you are explicitly going to draft for Inspired dudes, you could probably make Retraction Helix work for you better than Returned, especially if you picked up a Mnemonic Wall or two from the Theros boosters. Still, I don't think I'd first-pick the Helix. If I had first-picked an inspired guy, though, especially a strong one like Arbiter of the Ideal, I'd probably make sure to second/third-pick a Helix if it was available.
At this point, I have literally seen this thread made and remade every year, for every single set. Every time a new set comes out, people whine and complain that Standard/Modern/whatever got shafted, and that all of the cards are jank and nothing is playable. Obviously, these people all tend to be wrong, as Standard decks are nonetheless constructed, and sleepers obviously happen.
Frankly, from this set I see a lot of power uncommons. The rares are a mixed bag: half of them seem agressively-costed, while the other half seems underpowered. I feel roughly the same about the Mythics. However, there seem to be a lot of strong uncommons, and a few strong commons as well. For example, for Mono-Black Devotion, Marshmist Giant is basically an Affinity card, and might see play. Bile Blight and Drown in Sorrow also seem like possible adds. RG gets some love, and the Red archetype seems possibly good enough for constructed, since it's a 3/2 for 1RR that gives everything you have trample, and takes trample away from all your opponents.
Bottom line: this thread happens every set, and every set within a few months of release, deceptively strong cards have emerged and most of the wailing and gnashing of teeth has stopped. For Standard, BNG does not seem incredibly potent, but it also does not seem incredibly weak. I am sure that in a month or two, most of the power cards will have emerged and the set will no longer seem weak. It might even take a year for the cards to become worthwhile. After all, Desecration Demon is a big thing in Standard right now in MBD; what was he when RtR came out? Absolute trash, held up as the newest, best example of a 'skill tester' weeding out noobs. First he was a crappy 'skill tester,' and now he's a Tier 1 deck's main-liner. Give things time: all may not be what it appears to be.
I doubt this will do much now, but it might be more useful when Madcap Skills is out of Standard. Depending on how things shape up next year, this might be a go-to card for rushing beatdown. Right now, though, it's just not good enough compared to Madcap. The main problem with this is not that it requires devotion (that's actually good, since it scales better than Madcap Skills), but rather that MS provides evasion through the 'can't be blocked' phrase, while this does not. Long story short, maybe this will be more useful next year, but unless we see something that's really good with this and really bad with MS, either in the rest of BNG or in JOU, I can't see this making any waves in Standard until next year.
Now, for limited, this is much better. This is probably very playable in limited, because you can put it on an evasive creature (such as the Icarus expy) and get through for a lot of damage quickly.
Seems pretty cool. This is Underworld Dreams, but with better benefits: Underworld Dreams is BBB for just the enchantment part, while this is a decent body + the ability + more easily splashable for just 1 CMC more. OTOH, considering that Black Devotion is the big deck right now, I can't help but think that maybe the BBB from UD would have been more useful as a Devotion enabler. Either way, fun card. I always liked UD, so this seems to be a fun repackaging.
My personal theory is that this guy could be Standard playable, but certainly not in current Standard. It seems to me that a large number of high-CMC cards have been printed for Theros and BNG, or at least, the very small portion of BNG that we currently have. If the tendency towards powerful, high-CMC cards continues into JOU, and is not disrupted by a Core Set/next block opting for very fast cards, then slower decks might be more viable. Also, come next year, AEtherling will be out of Standard. Thus, if this guy basically does AEtherling's job, just not as well, then next year when we don't have AEtherling anymore, maybe this guy will be good enough to fill it's boots.
This is, of course, dependent on Standard becoming slower and more 6-7 CMC friendly. My gut tells me that this guy probably won't see any Standard play, but who knows? It should also be noted that this guy works best for a completely different build than AEtherling does. AEtherling wants to be a singleton finisher for a control deck; this guy wants to work with other guys, so if the other player can block, this guy can force an alpha strike.
I did that at both Theros prereleases. First one was a random pack, and I randomed into Blue; all the Blue was garbage and I played Green/Black. The next day, less people came and I could choose Black; the Black was garbage and I played Blue/Red.
Gild, meanwhile, is absolutely the best at what it does. It is excellent, unconditional removal in two sets with a lot of high-cost, conditional removal. However, I tend to pick bombs before removal, and I'd do the same in this case. Also, while splashability would be more useful in most sets, devotion is a thing here, so the two B in the Herald' CMC might be useful. Two B is -2 from the cost of Marshmist Giant, and helps Gray Merchant of Asphodel.
Slightly off-topic, but anyone seen Attack on Titan? If so, now imagine Maw of the Obzedat as a close-up of one of the titans biting someone in half.
If you haven't seen Attack on Titan, and you think that Maw of the Obzedat is '****ing awful to behold,' go watch it. The show is great, but the first few episodes will not be pleasant for you.
However, I'm not actually sure if I'll be able to play a Prerelease at all. I'm going to Taiwan for Chinese New Year, and the prerelease days are the first two days of Chinese New Years. Here in Beijing, a lot of stores and restaurants have already closed down in preparation for the New Years vacation, so I'm not sure if card stores will still be open. Chinese New Year is a time for visiting family, so there's a good chance that the store managers will just close shop. However, if there is a store open, then I really want to play.
In general, for limited purposes, a bomb creature like the Hero is an obvious slam first pick. Removal is good, but most of the time, if you fill a deck with a large number of good, game-winning creatures, you can beat out your opponents because they won't have enough removal to deal with your heavy-hitters. In general, you want to play 23-24 spells and 16-17 lands in any given limited deck. Of those cards (let's just say 23 spells), you want 15-17 creatures and 6-8 spells on average. Certain deck archetypes can work differently: if you have a lot of bestow dudes in Theros, you can get away with more or less creatures than listed above, since your creatures can be auras/your auras can be creatures. However, that's the general rule I play with. Also, most of the time, you'll win by damage.
Given those rules, it is usually really hard to pack your 6-8 spells with only removal, even if you prioritize removal over all else. Also, bomb creatures are generally better than removal in limited for three reasons.
1) removal is always reactive. It's better to put threats on the field than wipe your oppnent's threats off the field, unless you can get more than one for your spell and ensure a two-for-one. This is because a deck packed full of creatures is unlikely to run out of dudes, but a deck cannot run that much removal unless it plays less than ten creatures (in the case of decks that do, you'd better hope you get your creatures, because you only have a 1/4 chance of drawing one). As a result, it's usually better to use your good creatures to stop your opponent's good creatures, and use removal only when you really need it and cannot stop the threat with a dude.
2) Limited removal is usually less reliable. Oftentimes, it deals damage/gives -X/-X instead of directly killing, which may not be enough to take out the target. Especially in Theros & BNG, most of the unconditional removal is either high-rarity, like Gild or Hero's Downfall, or high-CMC, like Draught of Hemlock (6 CMC). Because of this, you usually need to use your removal sparingly, and only on targets that really require it.
3) Creatures are easier to interact with than removal. Removal's only job is to get rid of creatures, while creatures can be enchanted, can have instants/sorceries cast on them, can be equipped, and can both attack and block. The only difference between blocking an opponent's creature with yours and killing it, and killing the creature with a kill spell, is that the creature survives and you can still use it. Removal offers the option of targetability, rather than giving your opponent the choice: that's why you need to use removal sparingly, like a scalpel.
The reason that Hero is such a bomb drop is that is is very easy to interact with, and provided it survives the turn it comes down, it has a good chance to sweep a game quickly. Theros limited is all about bestow dudes: you can win games off the back of a quick hero with a bestow guy or two on him. Hero makes that really easy, because he makes bestow cost 1 less. Since bestowing on him will give him +1/+1 from heroic in addition to the bonus from the bestow, he will quickly grow, and can probably take over the game quickly. There are a lot of playable bestow creatures/good enchantments in all colors, making him a very versatile pick, as you can pick any secondary color and still have him scale very powerfully.
The problem with the removal or the counterspell basically comes down to CMC. Weight of the Underworld gives -3/-2 and costs 3B: that's double the cost of the Hero. In the time it takes you to get enough mana to cast it, the Hero (coming down on turn 2) will almost certainly be 4/4 or bigger, making Weight a bad (or, at least, suboptimal) choice. Fall of the Hammer, meanwhile, requires a creature strong enough to take the Hero down. This depends more on turn order: if you went second, and the opponent dropped Hero on turn 2, you probably don't have a 2-power creature to use Hammer with. As a result, you'll run into the same problem of being unable to kill the Hero when you have the creatures/mana necessary. Finally, Nullify requires two things to be better than the Hero: you need to go first, and you need to drop two Islands in the first two turns. If you're second, then Nullify can't hit the Hero, and if you don't have two Islands in opening hand, you probably can't cast it in the first place.
The final reason that Hero is the superior pick is that Hero is rare, while the other three cards are commons. There is a good chance that you will see other copies of those cards wheel, because none of them are good enough to take over a bomb first-pick. Meanwhile, because the Hero is rare, and powerful, there is a near-zero chance of him wheeling. Because of this, if you don't take the removal/counter, you might get some later, while if you don't take the Hero, then he's not coming back. This makes the Hero a far more important pick, in addition to being most likely a tactically superior pick.
My second choice would probably be Oracle's Insights. Blue in Theros block (you get 2 Theros for every 1 BNG in draft) tends to be very tanky, with a lot of strong heroic abilities. Oracle's Insights gives you 3 advantages: 1) you pretty much never get screwed by the draw; 2) enables Inspired dudes; and 3) turns tanky Blue Heroic dudes into looters that scry instead of making you discard. Turn 4 is usually a fairly unimportant turn for Blue in Theros, as their main drops are either turn 3 or turn 5; turn 4 is usually for dropping a Griptide. Unless the opponent has a nut drop on turn 4, I'd probably rather have more, better draws for the rest of the game as opposed to a tempo shift.
Dawn to Dusk looks incredibly powerful to me, since we have both more and better Bestow creatures. Whenever I play Theros limited, Bestow is always extremely relevant, and having a way to both get rid of your opponent's creature and get your own back is very good. In this format, I would probably read 'ressurect/kill target enchantment' as 'ressurect/kill target creature.'
On a similar level, Odunos River Trawler seems like a similar version of this, just in B/W instead of just white. It costs 2B and brings an enchantment from gy to hand, and you can pay W and sac it to do it again. Again, enchantments are heavy duty, and in many cases are creatures, so in many cases, this guy is like a Gravedigger that costs 1 less and can sac itself for W to do it again.
All of the Uncommon Eidolons also look really strong to me; in particular, I can see the White and Blue ones ending games really fast. Those Eidolons both cost 5W/5U to bestow, and grant +1/+1 and either double strike or unblockable respectively. The stat bonus isn't very good, but both abilities are game-breaking in limited. I'd guess that the strongest one is the White double strike one, though, simply because there are so many red cards now that give firebreathing. A double striker with firebreathing is pretty much the scariest thing possible in a limited game, beaten only by obvious bomb mythics (and sometimes, not even then).
Oracle's Insight also seems really strong. 3U is a little much to ask for an enchantment, but tap for 'scry 1, then draw a card' basically reads 'from now on, my draws will always be decent at very worst, and I will never be mana screwed/flooded.'
Finally, all tribute guys in general. Tribute gets flack as a mechanic for being a Punisher mechanic, but I think that almost all of the Tribute cards in limited are good enough for their cost, meaning that if the opponent pays tribute, then they become undercosted, and if they don't, your creature is still fine for what you paid. In addition, I feel that the effects themselves are mostly nasty enough that deciding whether or not to pay feels like a choice. Also, many of them get quite large from tribute, meaning that for damage-based removal sources, it may not even be possible to remove them if you pay tribute. Unfortunately, there are a few of them that just feel weak, like the Uncommon harpy for 3BB that enters as a 2/2. I don't think it's ability is strong enough to warrant paying, and if I don't, then the opponent has just dropped a 2/2 on turn 5, which feels like little better than a Time Walk to me. I think it would have been much better if it made them sacrifice 2 creatures instead of 1.
That said, I actually have a question about that last part. If you have Lazav and Phenax out, and you mill your opponent and hit Xenagos, God of Revels, Lazav can become Xenagos, right? I'm not certain how useful that would be, since you couldn't activate your Xenagos as a creature, but it's possible, right?
Comparatively, the Returned is playable at any point in the game. It interacts very well with heroes itself, being a Heroic enabler, and the bestow cost of 3B is not too expensive. It is a bomb drop on any evasive creature, and there are a number of them that combo very well with Black right now. White has Wingsteed Rider, the new Noble Pegasus, and other good fliers; Red has the new flying and haste guy, Black has a number of Harpies, and Blue has a bunch of fliers as well. Because the Returned activates based on attack, not hit, you are guaranteed damage, which is not the case with the Hero, who can easily be chumped. In addition, if the creature Returned is on is killed, the Returned can still get in for at least 2 more damage, giving it 4 total 'guaranteed' damage as long as your opponent doesn't have instant-speed removal.
Comparing the Hero and the Returned in the case that opponents do have instant-speed removal, the Returned is never going to 2-for-1 you: you'll either get the creature killed and have a Returned, or the Returned killed and still have a creature. Meanwhile, not only will Hero 2-for-1 you, it will get you Time Walked, since you need to spend most of your mana on the Hero's Heroic ability to get any real use out of it. Given that BNG adds a lot more removal to the Theros pool, and that a good amount of it is instant-speed, I'd say that Hero is a lot riskier than Returned, and it doesn't necessarily have a better payout in terms of damage either.
On a different level, I could also see taking the Retraction Helix, though I think the Returned is still a stronger pick. That said, if you are explicitly going to draft for Inspired dudes, you could probably make Retraction Helix work for you better than Returned, especially if you picked up a Mnemonic Wall or two from the Theros boosters. Still, I don't think I'd first-pick the Helix. If I had first-picked an inspired guy, though, especially a strong one like Arbiter of the Ideal, I'd probably make sure to second/third-pick a Helix if it was available.
Frankly, from this set I see a lot of power uncommons. The rares are a mixed bag: half of them seem agressively-costed, while the other half seems underpowered. I feel roughly the same about the Mythics. However, there seem to be a lot of strong uncommons, and a few strong commons as well. For example, for Mono-Black Devotion, Marshmist Giant is basically an Affinity card, and might see play. Bile Blight and Drown in Sorrow also seem like possible adds. RG gets some love, and the Red archetype seems possibly good enough for constructed, since it's a 3/2 for 1RR that gives everything you have trample, and takes trample away from all your opponents.
Bottom line: this thread happens every set, and every set within a few months of release, deceptively strong cards have emerged and most of the wailing and gnashing of teeth has stopped. For Standard, BNG does not seem incredibly potent, but it also does not seem incredibly weak. I am sure that in a month or two, most of the power cards will have emerged and the set will no longer seem weak. It might even take a year for the cards to become worthwhile. After all, Desecration Demon is a big thing in Standard right now in MBD; what was he when RtR came out? Absolute trash, held up as the newest, best example of a 'skill tester' weeding out noobs. First he was a crappy 'skill tester,' and now he's a Tier 1 deck's main-liner. Give things time: all may not be what it appears to be.
Now, for limited, this is much better. This is probably very playable in limited, because you can put it on an evasive creature (such as the Icarus expy) and get through for a lot of damage quickly.
This is, of course, dependent on Standard becoming slower and more 6-7 CMC friendly. My gut tells me that this guy probably won't see any Standard play, but who knows? It should also be noted that this guy works best for a completely different build than AEtherling does. AEtherling wants to be a singleton finisher for a control deck; this guy wants to work with other guys, so if the other player can block, this guy can force an alpha strike.