I'd like to see a few more Monstrous cards like Fleecemane Lion-- cheap to play at first and then much later you can upgrade them. Too many Monstrous cards are already mid-to-high costing before they even turn monstrous.
I'd also like to see Mesa Enchantress, but I don't really expect to.
I don't think Oubliette's rules physically fit on a card anymore.
It is pretty hilarious though how Oubliette -- printed 20 years ago -- seems tailor made to interact with the Theros mechanics! It's relevant for Heroes, Bestow, AND Monsters.
The fact that it remains in play makes it relevant for devotion, even. And it has double-black in its mana cost.
A few cheap, common Walls that are wort playing, so that Prowler's Helm isn't such a blowout.
A cycle of permanents that cost 1WWW and the like, to support devotion strategies. For that matter, more devotion cards in colors that don't really support a devotion theme in triple-Theros. It'd be an interesting wrinkle to draft a few 1BBB creatures in Born, gambling on whether or not you get any Gray Merchants, but boy would that be annoying to go up against.
More scrying, and at least one or two cards that scry for more than one or two. I'd love to see a blue sorcery that says "Scry 7, then draw a card" for example. For that matter, a few more counter-scry cards like Returned Centaur might be nice.
1) Seeing late-pack Fanatics and Lightning Strikes are your green light to go for this strategy, but it's the Raiders and Oreads that do most of your heavy lifting. Even un-Bestowed, you'd be surprised at how often a 2/2 first strike is the most interesting thing on the board.
2) The two matches I lost, I lost to U/R Monstrous's big dudes and G/U Heroic's Centaur Battlemaster. Specifically, I lost to creatures too big for me to effectively deal with. Portent of Betrayal is probably the sleeper hit of a Red-based deck, provided you cast it on the right turn and target the right creature.
3) The more Oreads and Cerberuses you have, the better Spark Jolt gets. You'd rather have Titan's Strength, it's true, but those don't go as late in a pack and I killed many a 3-toughness creature with a Jolt and an Oread's first strike damage.
4) The real hardest part of making Red your main color in Theros isn't a shortage of good cards, it's that the best red cards are splashable in someone else's deck. The Heroic guy is taking your Titan's Strengths and Oreads, the Monstrous Ramp guy is taking your Ill-Tempered Cyclops and Stoneshock Giant, and everybody's snatching Lightning Strike just to keep you from getting them.
5) If you do try for this strategy, I have to echo what everybody else is saying- don't let the commitment to Mono-Red cheat you out of playing stronger cards. I didn't have anything in my maindeck that didn't deserve a maindeck slot, but I did have a Polis Crusher in my sideboard that I regret not splashing for.
I took one in a draft a little while ago, but when I built the deck I realized I wasn't willing to cut a card for it. The fact that my deck was creature-light contributed to the decision, but even in a creature-heavy deck I'd rather be available to attack.
I can imagine it being decent in a ground-stall, where the two of you are just staring at each other across the table and waiting to see who draws their bomb first. If I brain-lagged during drafting and ended up with a few decent bombs and a lot of chaff, I might run it and then cram in every creature I could, but that's not a winning strategy so much as it is a "lose less" strategy.
The good news is that if you suspect you're in the process of trainwrecking your draft, you can easily pick up one of these late and try to salvage it.
If anything, the more good white cards I see in P1P1, the MORE I want to just take the Archon.
If I pass a Rider and a Dryad and nothing else worth looking at, one of the two closest guys to my left is going to take the Rider and start cutting white as hard as he can.
If I pass a deck with four or five firstpickable white cards, the next three guys down the line are going to look at that and recognize that this is just a really heavily white-weighted pack. The existence of several white playables doesn't prove I'm not in white, since I would have had to pass a white bomb no matter what I took. Indeed, someone to my left might chicken out of white foreseeing the inevitable struggle over it. By the time we get down to the OP's Pack F, I take the Archon and there's a good chance one of the other white cards will table.
This kind of thing is why in all limited information games, the correct decision must be defined only with the information known to the player at the time the decision is made.
Right. So, back to the original question, let's say you pick Asp or End, or heck, even Lightning Strike because Red is underdrafted and kill spells are hard to come by in Theros. Then there's a second Gary in your next pack. Do you take it?
You've already passed one Gary. At the very least, you know the guy to your left will see that and figure that you're not running black. Maybe he'll take it, or maybe he'll take one of the other three bomb commons you passed. Either way, somebody to the left of you is going to take that Gary on the assumption that black is open, and you're going to have a very hard time getting any good Black cards in P2. Therefore, do you want to take the second Gary knowing how hard it'll be to get enough good black cards to make Black Devotion work?
This is less of a problem for Wingsteed Rider-- if you pass that and get passed a lot of solid Heroic cards, you can move into a Heroic archetype. The person who takes that Rider will be fighting you for White Heroic cards, but the Heroic deck can be RW, GW, UW, or even UG, and even within White there are several choices for Heroes besides just the Rider. As long as you can cut heroic enablers in one of those colors, you'll be all set to reap the rewards in P2 as the other heroic guy chooses a different color combo.
This, oddly enough, is an argument against taking Wingsteed Rider over Gary P1P1-- passing even one Gary pretty much forfeits the archetype, but passing one Rider doesn't mean you can't go Heroic.
And thus you see why signal-sending is a bad idea, since by passing a second Gary, and committing to giving him even more black, regardless of how good it is, you've probably just promised the winning deck to the guy to your left.
Passing the Gary in this pack is excusable only if you don't think it's the strongest card. Passing a second Gary which IS the best card in the pack, for no other reason than because you already passed one, is a great way to lose.
I've actually seen situations like this before. It's a case of both decisions being right at the time you make them but wrong in hindsight.
You see a pack with a strong card that requires a degree of commitment, say Fanatic of Mogis, alongside a stronger-in-a-vacuum card, say Voyage's End. You take the End because you're more confident you'll end up at least splashing it regardless of what color or colors you end up in. Then your next pack also has a Fanatic, this time next to a Nimbus Naiad or something. You curse and realize you should have taken the first Fanatic and then you'd have two, but you take the Naiad now because you've already taken one strong blue card.
You would have taken the first Fanatic had you known a second was coming along, and if you had taken the first Fanatic, the second one would have been a much better choice. But because you don't have the first Fanatic, the second one isn't as strong for you as it could be, while the Naiad became better for you having an End. You didn't make a "wrong" choice, but you still had to watch a solid red deck fall into the next guy's lap.
I'd also like to point out that people play Dragon Mantle fully content in the knowledge that all it does is cantrip and target a creature. The Lesson can target two creatures, and can potentially draw you two cards.
The Lesson is only "bad" if you're staring down a clogged board you can't get through. And even then, it triggers two Heroes and/or pretends to be a Lure effect so your other guys can get through.
Technically, this is true. However, the argument would be a very silly one, as Godsmack is mostly a good counterspell, while Rider is a must-answer threat.
My point is, most people seem to be against the Rider on the grounds that it's a commitment to an archetype. Gods Willing doesn't have that baggage. If I could think of a black common in Theros that could claim to be on the same tier as Gary, I would've suggested replacing that one too.
What I'm seeing so far is that there's two schools of thought on the issue. One is willing to aim for an archetype as early as P1P1, and is taking Gary. The other wants flexibility in their P1P1 yet still wants something they could splash in the event that the color isn't open, and are taking Asp.
I know I already said Gary, but on second thought I think I might actually prefer the Rider. Both commit you to an archetype and can't be splashed, but Gary's archetype is more vulnerable to getting cut out of. Black devotion needs a critical mass of solid black cards. If Black dries up, Gary is dead in the water. The Rider at least lets you hold off on picking your second color, and if White starts to dry up you can lean more on the other color.
What if, in the previous example, the white "bomb common" had been Gods Willing instead of Wingsteed Rider? Willing is arguably as good of a card as the Rider, but it doesn't really pressure you into an archetype the way Rider does. Yes, Heroic decks still want it, but so does every deck that runs white. Would this change anyone's evaluation?
I think given those five, I'd take Gary. I've seen monoblack in action, but I've never piloted it myself. It looks scary enough that I kinda want me a piece of that. And if the black doesn't flow as it should, then I at least breathe a little easier knowing that the real monblack guy at the table has one fewer Gary to throw at me.
Asp, Rider, and End are all relatively safe options. Yes, the Rider wants to be in a Heroic deck, but cheap fliers are a commodity in this format and any White drafter should have a few Bestowers or combat tricks, heroics be darned. I don't feel any of these really locks me in to an archetype. Heck, I'd splash for an Asp even if I didn't go green.
Honestly, I don't really feel that you've committed to a color or colors until at least P1P5, so I'm willing to take a high-risk but potentially powerful card like Gary and suck it up if I don't end up in those colors.
There are some problems with draft data, but I think we can draw the conclusion that it's pretty strong from the fact that here they found that in 67% of games where a player cast prophet, that player won. It's the 4th best rare or mythic in that respect (and since two of the cards above it are 7+ mana, it might be the second best rare/mythic you can play). I think that makes it a bomb.
Had a train wreck of a draft tonight. The only saving grace was ending up with three Kragma Warcaller, and a grand total of one other Minotaur to go with it. And not even a good one-- it was Felhide Minotaur.
Is it realistic to go for Minotaurs.dec? If you do, what cards do you want to see in it, alongside minotaurs? Which Minotaurs aren't even good enough to make the cut with three Warcallers?
Green is definitely long on heroic enablers (Time to Feed, Savage Surge, Warrior's Lesson, Feral Invocation) and short on heroes. That said, most of green's heroic enablers are also strong plays when you use them on a Sedge Scorpion, Nessian Asp, or Agent of Horizons as well, and of course Leafcrown Dryad is both creature pump and creature as needed, so a green-based heroic deck needs to either look for its Heroes in another color, or be prepared to just play like a deck full of small beaters and combat tricks.
They printed Treefolk Harbinger.
I'd like to see a few more Monstrous cards like Fleecemane Lion-- cheap to play at first and then much later you can upgrade them. Too many Monstrous cards are already mid-to-high costing before they even turn monstrous.
I'd also like to see Mesa Enchantress, but I don't really expect to.
The fact that it remains in play makes it relevant for devotion, even. And it has double-black in its mana cost.
A cycle of permanents that cost 1WWW and the like, to support devotion strategies. For that matter, more devotion cards in colors that don't really support a devotion theme in triple-Theros. It'd be an interesting wrinkle to draft a few 1BBB creatures in Born, gambling on whether or not you get any Gray Merchants, but boy would that be annoying to go up against.
More scrying, and at least one or two cards that scry for more than one or two. I'd love to see a blue sorcery that says "Scry 7, then draw a card" for example. For that matter, a few more counter-scry cards like Returned Centaur might be nice.
1) Seeing late-pack Fanatics and Lightning Strikes are your green light to go for this strategy, but it's the Raiders and Oreads that do most of your heavy lifting. Even un-Bestowed, you'd be surprised at how often a 2/2 first strike is the most interesting thing on the board.
2) The two matches I lost, I lost to U/R Monstrous's big dudes and G/U Heroic's Centaur Battlemaster. Specifically, I lost to creatures too big for me to effectively deal with. Portent of Betrayal is probably the sleeper hit of a Red-based deck, provided you cast it on the right turn and target the right creature.
3) The more Oreads and Cerberuses you have, the better Spark Jolt gets. You'd rather have Titan's Strength, it's true, but those don't go as late in a pack and I killed many a 3-toughness creature with a Jolt and an Oread's first strike damage.
4) The real hardest part of making Red your main color in Theros isn't a shortage of good cards, it's that the best red cards are splashable in someone else's deck. The Heroic guy is taking your Titan's Strengths and Oreads, the Monstrous Ramp guy is taking your Ill-Tempered Cyclops and Stoneshock Giant, and everybody's snatching Lightning Strike just to keep you from getting them.
5) If you do try for this strategy, I have to echo what everybody else is saying- don't let the commitment to Mono-Red cheat you out of playing stronger cards. I didn't have anything in my maindeck that didn't deserve a maindeck slot, but I did have a Polis Crusher in my sideboard that I regret not splashing for.
I can imagine it being decent in a ground-stall, where the two of you are just staring at each other across the table and waiting to see who draws their bomb first. If I brain-lagged during drafting and ended up with a few decent bombs and a lot of chaff, I might run it and then cram in every creature I could, but that's not a winning strategy so much as it is a "lose less" strategy.
The good news is that if you suspect you're in the process of trainwrecking your draft, you can easily pick up one of these late and try to salvage it.
If I pass a Rider and a Dryad and nothing else worth looking at, one of the two closest guys to my left is going to take the Rider and start cutting white as hard as he can.
If I pass a deck with four or five firstpickable white cards, the next three guys down the line are going to look at that and recognize that this is just a really heavily white-weighted pack. The existence of several white playables doesn't prove I'm not in white, since I would have had to pass a white bomb no matter what I took. Indeed, someone to my left might chicken out of white foreseeing the inevitable struggle over it. By the time we get down to the OP's Pack F, I take the Archon and there's a good chance one of the other white cards will table.
Right. So, back to the original question, let's say you pick Asp or End, or heck, even Lightning Strike because Red is underdrafted and kill spells are hard to come by in Theros. Then there's a second Gary in your next pack. Do you take it?
You've already passed one Gary. At the very least, you know the guy to your left will see that and figure that you're not running black. Maybe he'll take it, or maybe he'll take one of the other three bomb commons you passed. Either way, somebody to the left of you is going to take that Gary on the assumption that black is open, and you're going to have a very hard time getting any good Black cards in P2. Therefore, do you want to take the second Gary knowing how hard it'll be to get enough good black cards to make Black Devotion work?
This is less of a problem for Wingsteed Rider-- if you pass that and get passed a lot of solid Heroic cards, you can move into a Heroic archetype. The person who takes that Rider will be fighting you for White Heroic cards, but the Heroic deck can be RW, GW, UW, or even UG, and even within White there are several choices for Heroes besides just the Rider. As long as you can cut heroic enablers in one of those colors, you'll be all set to reap the rewards in P2 as the other heroic guy chooses a different color combo.
This, oddly enough, is an argument against taking Wingsteed Rider over Gary P1P1-- passing even one Gary pretty much forfeits the archetype, but passing one Rider doesn't mean you can't go Heroic.
I've actually seen situations like this before. It's a case of both decisions being right at the time you make them but wrong in hindsight.
You see a pack with a strong card that requires a degree of commitment, say Fanatic of Mogis, alongside a stronger-in-a-vacuum card, say Voyage's End. You take the End because you're more confident you'll end up at least splashing it regardless of what color or colors you end up in. Then your next pack also has a Fanatic, this time next to a Nimbus Naiad or something. You curse and realize you should have taken the first Fanatic and then you'd have two, but you take the Naiad now because you've already taken one strong blue card.
You would have taken the first Fanatic had you known a second was coming along, and if you had taken the first Fanatic, the second one would have been a much better choice. But because you don't have the first Fanatic, the second one isn't as strong for you as it could be, while the Naiad became better for you having an End. You didn't make a "wrong" choice, but you still had to watch a solid red deck fall into the next guy's lap.
The Lesson is only "bad" if you're staring down a clogged board you can't get through. And even then, it triggers two Heroes and/or pretends to be a Lure effect so your other guys can get through.
My point is, most people seem to be against the Rider on the grounds that it's a commitment to an archetype. Gods Willing doesn't have that baggage. If I could think of a black common in Theros that could claim to be on the same tier as Gary, I would've suggested replacing that one too.
What I'm seeing so far is that there's two schools of thought on the issue. One is willing to aim for an archetype as early as P1P1, and is taking Gary. The other wants flexibility in their P1P1 yet still wants something they could splash in the event that the color isn't open, and are taking Asp.
I know I already said Gary, but on second thought I think I might actually prefer the Rider. Both commit you to an archetype and can't be splashed, but Gary's archetype is more vulnerable to getting cut out of. Black devotion needs a critical mass of solid black cards. If Black dries up, Gary is dead in the water. The Rider at least lets you hold off on picking your second color, and if White starts to dry up you can lean more on the other color.
What if, in the previous example, the white "bomb common" had been Gods Willing instead of Wingsteed Rider? Willing is arguably as good of a card as the Rider, but it doesn't really pressure you into an archetype the way Rider does. Yes, Heroic decks still want it, but so does every deck that runs white. Would this change anyone's evaluation?
Asp, Rider, and End are all relatively safe options. Yes, the Rider wants to be in a Heroic deck, but cheap fliers are a commodity in this format and any White drafter should have a few Bestowers or combat tricks, heroics be darned. I don't feel any of these really locks me in to an archetype. Heck, I'd splash for an Asp even if I didn't go green.
Honestly, I don't really feel that you've committed to a color or colors until at least P1P5, so I'm willing to take a high-risk but potentially powerful card like Gary and suck it up if I don't end up in those colors.
It seems the Prophet's stock has dropped to 59%. Still, that's the same win rate as Gods Willing, so it does seem the card is in a pretty high tier.
Is it realistic to go for Minotaurs.dec? If you do, what cards do you want to see in it, alongside minotaurs? Which Minotaurs aren't even good enough to make the cut with three Warcallers?