This block really goes out of it's way to make a mockery of Champions Block. Okina is a legendary land that gives +1/+1 to a Legendary creature for :symg:. This is uncommon, not legendary, targets everything, and gives trample(the biggest boon of all, frankly).
What a great card...seems like a tremendously high pick in Limited, too.
Okina is played in lots of lots of decks since it doesnt make your mana production worse, so its just a normal land except you sometimes can get some CA from it (Advantage: better then normal forest (except for things that care about forests) Disavantage: legendary). This, on the other hand requires a highly specialliesed deck (R/G) and worsen your mana base...
This proberly wont be that high pick in limited because trample isnt usually that important (naturally the +1/+1 is nice - but its not anywhere close to the sickness of sunhome)
Green Leyline - 4GG
Enchantment
Leyline (If ~this~ is on your opening hand, you may play it before your first draw step without paying it's casting cost).
Whenever you play a creature spell, you may pay 1G. If you do, the spell can't be countered.
I think the green one will cost 2G (or perhaps GG) so its comparable to Gaea's Herald. The Herald wasnt that much played in the first place (and was a creature) so maybe it'll be 1G.
Orange, that doesn't seem very likely to me. Each Simic creature with the Guild keyword would be a Clone? No no no. You would end up having a dozen copies of the same creature. Yay.
I do see now how ectroplasmic will is a 'little' overpowered ... lol .... yeah sorry bout that. i wanted an instant draw .. not because i think blue deserves to win all the time ... i just think a 'good' instant draw is not really in constrcted. I suppose they'll bring one out sometime in ravnica ... probably azorius. I should've thought about what they could do with just those four cards.
Dont worry, ectroplasmic shouldnt be played in most games... You should normaly have won before you could do so with those cards...
With those 4 cards in your hand and one mana you should have killed him in round 3 (because you would end up with a 10/10 flying trampling one mana critter in turn one)
You could run Mindsweeper and the Merfolk that makes a creature you control unable to be the target of a spell or ability to keep the Patron alive. For that fact, you could run Kira, Great Glass Spinner. Right now, my pretend build would be:
I actually think it could run off less land and less color, but everything helps with something. Mana Leak and Remand for early counter-magic. Bird, Elder and Farseek for mana excel. Farseek can get you the Garden which can play your Hierarch and Congregation to find your Stone-Seeder and Patron. It's just a rough draft, but I'm sure it could get better. With the Leafcaller, like from the Sachi, Freed the Real combo, it turns green into black/blue/white helping cast stuff and helping generate the 3 black to drop a HUGE Maga if needed. PLEASE HELP MAKE REVISIONS!
what about adding freed from the real (+ stone-seed + dimir Aqueduct you got an infinte amount of mana)?
If we are talking good cards to have together with vinelasher oboro, palace in the clouds beats everything (you wont really have the lands to play with Azusa if you are missing the palace - if you aint playing any moonfolks thats it)
Now that's strategy.
The problem with Reaper's analysis is that this is the obvious play, hence why people will all go for it (those with half a clue).
Now Ulthwithian on the other hand - you are meta-gaming the draft strategy
I dont doubt ppl will play for the color combinations I talked about but not the first few drafts which should improve atleast my own chances to win those, which is fine with me.
Guild cards seames to be better then non guild cards (atleast in RAV)
In limitet that meanes its proberly a good idea to either play 3 guild sharing 3 colors (because its the fewest colors there you can have a guild in all 3 packs) or play alot of green+maybe a strong second color and then splash.
So as to start from the back there proberly will be some green limitet decks trying to draft something like this:
G/W and B/G -> R/G-> G/U
Then there is the 3 color stuff. There is excatly 4 ways to play this (that took some time to figure out).
That meanes that the guild will get shared something like this:
G/W: ½
B/G: 1½
W/R: 1
U/B: 2
R/G: 2
U/R: 2
W/B: 1
G/U: 1
R/B: 2
W/U: 2
That meanes the mono green deck proberly will be a pretty good idea since its pretty strong in two out of 3 packs which none of the others can get close to. All except 2: and to a lesser extend 1: got one guild "alone" tho.
But since U/B seames to be pretty focused on its mill team (which proberly wont be strong egough then its only really in the first pack) it might be more fair to remove it from the list so:
The problem with this card is that if you can get the most expensive creature in your deck (not hard it all if you have a low curve or if you have some way to tutor) you can systematically search your deck for every creature and put them into your graveyard. I'm sure there's some way to abuse a card that puts every one of your creatures into your graveyard.
All this talk about plainswalk reminds me of a quote by Terry Pretchet. "How can a yellow black tiger hide in a green field?" or something simillary (I dont have the book handy so I cant look it up sorry - Its a book about the time before Vimes got promoted. I guess it was "Nightwatch")
what about using elves of the deep shadow instead of Llanowars? then you allready have the green mana for llanowars there is only two cards you are missing green mana for (creeping mold and Scarab. And you still need the black mana for the scarab) Deep shadow will let you play an second turn putrefy alot easier then llanowars and its alot better for helldozer...
I wont go over the easy choices aka. Meloku and the put land into to play-ers.
Soratami Savant and either a gardener or a scout and 5 untaped lands is two mana leeks a turn which is kind of hard to beat.
Oboro Envoy and the jitte (I didnt have more then that one) was my main deck answers for jittes (as long as they do not deal damage the jitte isnt that usefull).
Oboro, Palace in the Clouds is just an enabler for seed the land that serves double duty as a land (btw. its a bit annoneying with the high nr. but the deck is alot more consisten with it)
Seed the Land is just incredible in this deck (should be easy to see why)
Seshiro the Anointed + seed the land is pretty difficulty to beat.
Sensei's Divining Top and 12 shufflers are nice in a combo deck.
Kodama's Reach > Seek the Horizon in my deck because of the low mana curve (and because it sometimes comes out turn two...)
I might shift the elder for Life from the Loam and add trade routes or Soratami Cloudskaterbecause I would get a (kinda) use for more then one Oboro, Palace in the Clouds.
Vinelasher Kudzu might make sideboard (but not main) to combat thoughness specifik sweepers. but proberly some white boost thoughness instead...
Sasaya, Orochi Ascendant is not good in this deck since I dont have anything to use the mana on.
Okina is played in lots of lots of decks since it doesnt make your mana production worse, so its just a normal land except you sometimes can get some CA from it (Advantage: better then normal forest (except for things that care about forests) Disavantage: legendary). This, on the other hand requires a highly specialliesed deck (R/G) and worsen your mana base...
This proberly wont be that high pick in limited because trample isnt usually that important (naturally the +1/+1 is nice - but its not anywhere close to the sickness of sunhome)
What about "Leyline - If you do not control any land you may put this into play. You can't play lands this turn.".
(I dunno if this is to harsh a drawback (you are essentli getting a turn behind in early manadeployment) and the green one atleast isnt that good)
or alot more elegant (Since R_E wasnt sure it couldnt be played for free later on):
Green leyline 1g
Enchantment
Leyline - You may play this as a land, without paying its manacost.
Creature spells you play cannot be countered.
I think the green one will cost 2G (or perhaps GG) so its comparable to Gaea's Herald. The Herald wasnt that much played in the first place (and was a creature) so maybe it'll be 1G.
And its the perfect legend killer if need be,,,
Dont worry, ectroplasmic shouldnt be played in most games... You should normaly have won before you could do so with those cards...
With those 4 cards in your hand and one mana you should have killed him in round 3 (because you would end up with a 10/10 flying trampling one mana critter in turn one)
I might have missed something but how do you do that?
what about adding freed from the real (+ stone-seed + dimir Aqueduct you got an infinte amount of mana)?
If we are talking good cards to have together with vinelasher oboro, palace in the clouds beats everything (you wont really have the lands to play with Azusa if you are missing the palace - if you aint playing any moonfolks thats it)
Remember noobs, Damage to the player doesnt mean a thing until it gets that last lifepoint out of the player.
Ok, ok that wasnt fair. You might actually destroy their draws with mill if you are lucky and/or are using selected milling.
I dont doubt ppl will play for the color combinations I talked about but not the first few drafts which should improve atleast my own chances to win those, which is fine with me.
Ravnica: G/W, B/G, U/B, W/R
Guildpact: W/B, U/R, R/G
Dissenssion: R/B, W/U, G/U
Guild cards seames to be better then non guild cards (atleast in RAV)
In limitet that meanes its proberly a good idea to either play 3 guild sharing 3 colors (because its the fewest colors there you can have a guild in all 3 packs) or play alot of green+maybe a strong second color and then splash.
So as to start from the back there proberly will be some green limitet decks trying to draft something like this:
G/W and B/G -> R/G-> G/U
Then there is the 3 color stuff. There is excatly 4 ways to play this (that took some time to figure out).
1: B/G->R/G->R/B
2: U/B->U/R->R/B
3: U/B->W/B->W/U
4: W/R->U/R->W/U
That meanes that the guild will get shared something like this:
G/W: ½
B/G: 1½
W/R: 1
U/B: 2
R/G: 2
U/R: 2
W/B: 1
G/U: 1
R/B: 2
W/U: 2
That meanes the mono green deck proberly will be a pretty good idea since its pretty strong in two out of 3 packs which none of the others can get close to. All except 2: and to a lesser extend 1: got one guild "alone" tho.
But since U/B seames to be pretty focused on its mill team (which proberly wont be strong egough then its only really in the first pack) it might be more fair to remove it from the list so:
G/W: ½
B/G: 1½
W/R: 1
U/B: 0
R/G: 2
U/R: 1
W/B: 0
G/U: 1
R/B: 1
W/U: 1
which meanes the W/R->U/R->W/U becomes the strongest posible route to go (because you will never share)...
The "problem" is that we are down to only 3 "super" routes and 2 guilds isnt in any of them.
Have I overlooked something?
Like reanimtaion comboes?
what about using elves of the deep shadow instead of Llanowars? then you allready have the green mana for llanowars there is only two cards you are missing green mana for (creeping mold and Scarab. And you still need the black mana for the scarab) Deep shadow will let you play an second turn putrefy alot easier then llanowars and its alot better for helldozer...
16 [UNH] Forest
4 [SOK] Oboro, Palace in the Clouds
2 [UNH] Island
// Creatures
1 [CHK] Azusa, Lost but Seeking
4 [SOK] Sakura-Tribe Scout
4 [CHK] Sakura-Tribe Elder
4 [CHK] Soratami Savant
2 [CHK] Meloku the Clouded Mirror
2 [CHK] Budoka Gardener--Dokai, Weaver of Life
1 [CHK] Seshiro the Anointed
3 [SOK] Oboro Envoy
4 [CHK] Sensei's Divining Top
4 [SOK] Seed the Land
4 [CHK] Kodama's Reach
1 [BOK] Umezawa's Jitte
4 [CHK] Time of Need
I wont go over the easy choices aka. Meloku and the put land into to play-ers.
Soratami Savant and either a gardener or a scout and 5 untaped lands is two mana leeks a turn which is kind of hard to beat.
Oboro Envoy and the jitte (I didnt have more then that one) was my main deck answers for jittes (as long as they do not deal damage the jitte isnt that usefull).
Oboro, Palace in the Clouds is just an enabler for seed the land that serves double duty as a land (btw. its a bit annoneying with the high nr. but the deck is alot more consisten with it)
Seed the Land is just incredible in this deck (should be easy to see why)
Seshiro the Anointed + seed the land is pretty difficulty to beat.
Sensei's Divining Top and 12 shufflers are nice in a combo deck.
Kodama's Reach > Seek the Horizon in my deck because of the low mana curve (and because it sometimes comes out turn two...)
I might shift the elder for Life from the Loam and add trade routes or Soratami Cloudskater because I would get a (kinda) use for more then one Oboro, Palace in the Clouds.
Vinelasher Kudzu might make sideboard (but not main) to combat thoughness specifik sweepers. but proberly some white boost thoughness instead...
Sasaya, Orochi Ascendant is not good in this deck since I dont have anything to use the mana on.