continuing from the previous post that focused on Black and Blue common and uncommon creatures with a focus toward limited. The creatures amongst the two colours encouraged decks that rewarded a slower more controlling roll. The presence of the megamorph mechanic across all colours suggests that these remaining, classically more aggressive colours, will still reward players for reaching latter stages in a game. I'm also applying a base-line development for a player to be a face-down 22 on turn 3 at a minimum.
Indeed, we see a continuing trend with the cheaper green cards. Everything so far tell us this format will be slow. There are some acceptable or better than expected returns for 2 mana in Atarka Breastbreaker and Scaleguard Sentinels respectively with the latter moving to exceptional if you have a dragon. This isn't a scenario to expect. For those interested in some of the numbers required - primarily from a 60 card perspective - I'll refer you to Frank Karsten's recent number crunching article. It suggests you can expected to open a little more than 1 dragon over your two Dargons of Tarkier packs. For cards like Scaleguard Sentienls the bonus is really that, just gravy and not something to expect at all. Still, it's a card that can battle through your opponent's 2-drop or megamorph either on the play or draw. That is a big deal for any deck that wants to be aggressive. At uncommon however, you can't rely on it.
A note on the other cards above. Servant of the Scale is still a 1 mana 1/1. Even with a significant upside, which this doesn't offer.Adding +1/+1 to your board for a mana and a card is not be something you should accept taking up space in your 40 cards. Glade Watcher is a little more reasonable. It does follow the trend of helping you get to latter stages of the game as a road block against opposing 2 and 3 drops. It might even act as a card that hinders some aggressive strategies as it is common. It also be a non-zero body later. Assuming this is your first card cast and you 3-drop is a megamorph, you only need 3 more power to start attacking with this creature. On the play, I certainly think this is a relevant body to attack with, especially with the dearth of good 4-drops that we saw so far. If you do indeed have a 4-drop creature in green, we're lucky that 3 of the 4 available get to you formidable. there are some abilities akin to the 3/3 attacking that I would suggest as incidental and not something to expect but in this instance I would be surprised if he did not get to attack now and again given how himself and a single facedown get you 63% of the way there. Indeed, this particular combination of creatures is one that I can see being the basis of turning on formidable across the colours which exhibit the ability.
Similar to the other colours, we've a lot of depth at 3 mana in green, again including megamorphs.
So far, the majority of our megamorphs have given incentive us to play them face down first. That doesn't quite carry through into green. Both Aerie Bowmasters and Salt Road Ambushers are more desirable on turn 4. The Bowmasters primarily due to their size. It trumps megamorphs or any two-drop we've seen so far (bar 1 with deathtouch) along with many 3- and 4-mana creatures. They're also a distinct concern for a blue deck in shutting down many of it's fliers. This coupling of defensive and aggressive roles is not one we've seen so far as atrait for Dragons of Tarkir creatures. Salt Road ambushers also fulfils this role to some extent allow for an unexciting but low-level acceptable body on turn 4 but also giving you an even greater incentive to get to face-up mana for your megamorphs. Even a simple Guardian Sheild-Bearer ends up as a 5/4 attacking on turn 5!
The other 3 -drops offer some specialised characteristics depending on the direction your deck goes. Again we see green acting well in the middle of the aggro-control axis. Maybe your BG or UG control deck requires a 2/4 for 3? Maybe your GW aggro or RG Monsters deck wants a 4/1 for 2G to bash through after tapping/removing a block? Well, you've got access to both. I think it good to highlight here that much as how Abzan picks played out in Fate-Khans-Khans draft, the kind of Abzan deck you draft (analogous to the kind of green deck you might aim for in Dragons-Dragons-Fate) require a focus to some very different cards depending on weather or not you are a lower-curve aggressive green deck or want to aim for a big-monster role.
At 4 and 5 mana for non-megamorphs, we've got a few creatures but none hugely exciting. Circle of Elders and Conifer Strider both don't match up well with opposing face-down 2/2's which will make a large part of what your opponent is doing in their early turns. Both of these trade down in mana cost putting you at a disadvantage - the former only after a double block but without your own trick there, you're not going to be able to attack through any more than one creature on your opponent's side.Lurking Arynx suffers the same fate a lot, even if you use it's formidable ability.
Stempeding Elk Herd is more than acceptable though. In fact the power / toughness return vs' cost ratio is as large as any other 4 or 5 cost card we've seen so far. For a larger-monster green deck I can see this being one of, if not the top common. The fact that is offers a considerable formidable bonus in giving a pesudo-evasion is also very significant. I described above how formidable is a clause that is not met with difficulty. The presence of trample on those high-power low-toughness green commons results in a much more beneficial interaction than just "My 3 or 4 drops vs your 2 drop" which would otherwise be commonplace. The easily accessible common Elk* allows this transaction to be a 1-for-1 trade couple with 2-3 damage coming through, not even considering the kind of damage the Elk causes.
Green contrasts well with both black and blue. It offers more of an aggressive slant but still allows you to fill out a controlling creature curve.What strikes me most is that it is a deeper colour, offering more subjectively playable cards than either blue or black. I would expect a higher proportion of sealed decks to end up green because of it's depth of playables and as far as drafting goes, the colour allows such distinctly different directions in deck strategy that I can easily foresee two green players as neighbours with very little competition over picks.
Red is next!
As always, comments welcome,
- AJ
*Some approximate numbers (I'm a physicist, not a mathematician :-) . Consider a draft table with 8 players, each in a 2-colour combination. 16 colours are taken up by this in total, meaning just over 3 instances of each WUBRG. An even distribution of colour focus amongst such a table would result in around 3 players sharing the cards of each colour. 107 commons are in Dragons with 160 available for the table over 2 packs. Something like 1.5 of each common is to be expected per table meaning if you're fighting with 2 other users of this colour for that particular common, you can expect one about half the time.
Green contrasts well with both black and blue. It offers more of an aggressive slant but still allows you to fill out a controlling creature curve.What strikes me most is that it is a deeper colour, offering more subjectively playable cards than either blue or black. I would expect a higher proportion of sealed decks to end up green because of it's depth of playables and as far as drafting goes, the colour allows such distinctly different directions in deck strategy that I can easily foresee two green players as neighbours with very little competition over picks.
Red is next!
As always, comments welcome,
- AJ
*Some approximate numbers (I'm a physicist, not a mathematician :-) . Consider a draft table with 8 players, each in a 2-colour combination. 16 colours are taken up by this in total, meaning just over 3 instances of each WUBRG. An even distribution of colour focus amongst such a table would result in around 3 players sharing the cards of each colour. 107 commons are in Dragons with 160 available for the table over 2 packs. Something like 1.5 of each common is to be expected per table meaning if you're fighting with 2 other users of this colour for that particular common, you can expect one about half the time.
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