THS: Flamespeaker Adept

December 31, 2013 Leave a comment

I’d evaluated Flamespeaker Adept as exceptional in both my original and updated evaluations. However, it’s never actually been stellar for me in practice because I’ve never had enough scry effects to go with it. I’ve wondered whether this is because I haven’t been valuing scry effects highly enough, whether I haven’t been in the right color pairs to make best use of the card, or whether it is unavoidable because Limited deck cannot run enough instants/sorceries to make good use of the card.

Here are the scry effects in Theros by color. They’re common instants with one-time effects unless otherwise noted:

  • White (2 commons + 1 uncommon): Battlewise Valor, Gods Willing, Vanquish the Foul (uncommon sorcery)
  • Blue (6 + 3 + 1 rare + 1 mythic): Aqueous Form (enchantment/recurring), Lost in Labyrinth, Omenspeaker (creature), Prescient Chimera (creature/recurring), Stymied Hopes, Voyage’s End, Dissolve (uncommon), Horizon Scholar (uncommon creature), Sea God’s Revenge (uncommon sorcery), Prognostic Sphinx (rare creature/recurring), Thassa God of the Sea (mythic enchantment creature/recurring)
  • Black (1): Read the Bones (sorcery)
  • Red (4 + 1): Portent of Betrayal (sorcery), Rage of Purphoros (sorcery), Spark Jolt, Titan’s Strength, Magma Jet (uncommon)
  • Green (0 + 1): Artisan’s Sorrow (uncommon)
  • Multicolor (0 + 1 + 1): Battlewise Hoplite (uncommon creature/recurring), Reaper of the Wilds (rare creature/recurring)
  • Artifact (0 + 1): Witches’ Eye (uncommon artifact/recurring)
  • Land (0 + 0 + 5): 5 Temples (rare lands)

I’m usually not excited to be playing Vanquish the Foul, Lost in Labyrinth, Stymied Hopes, Rage of Purphoros, Spark Jolt, or Witches’ Eye maindeck. Excluding those cards, blue has the most scry effects by far (13.7 in the average draft), followed by red (6) and white (4.8). Blue also has 5 of the 7 recurring scry effects in Theros: Aqueous Form, Prescient Chimera, Prognostic Sphinx, Thassa God of the Sea, and the multicolor Battlewise Hoplite. Perhaps most importantly, blue has all but 1 of the creatures with scry effects and it is these creatures that allow you to get a critical mass of scry effects while still running enough creatures.

It might be possible to draft an occasional R/W deck that makes good use of Flamespeaker Adept, but it seems that the best color pair for it is U/R, perhaps in a deck that also runs Spellheart Chimera, Mnemonic Wall, and Meletis Charlatan to take advantage of the higher than usual number of instants and sorceries in the deck. If you’re drafting that deck, keep an eye out for Aqueous Form and Prescient Chimera once you have a couple of Flamespeaker Adepts. (Aqueous Form turns Flamespeaker Adepts into an unblockable 4/3 that scrys on each attack, which seems strong in a format that has relatively little removal.) However, this deck is specific enough that Flamespeaker Adept probably just merits a rating of good rather than exceptional.

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THS: Tap abilities and untap effects

December 24, 2013 Leave a comment

Theros has a number of untap effects, all of which are in blue and green: Breaching Hippocamp, Triton Tactics, Savage Surge, and Prophet of Kruphix. (There is also Portent of Betrayal in red, but it will rarely be used just to untap a creature you control.) However, the set seems to lack creatures with powerful tap abilities that you can reuse with these untap effects. Let’s examine the tap abilities in the set to determine whether that perception is correct.

Here’s a list of all the creatures in Theros that have activated abilities that involve tapping the creature:

  • White: Ephara’s Warden (common) which is unplayable
  • Blue: Meletis Charlatan (rare) which is sufficiently mana intensive that you can’t usually use it twice in a turn
  • Red: Titan of Eternal Fire (rare) which allows Humans to tap for 1 damage
  • Green: Voyaging Satyr (common), Karametra’s Acolyte (uncommon), Sylvan Caryatid (rare)
  • W/B: Triad of Fates (rare)
  • U/B: Shipwreck Singer (uncommon)
  • Artifact: Opaline Unicorn (common), Witches’ Eye (uncommon)

Of these, the only cards whose effects are particularly compelling are Karametra’s Acolyte, Triad of Fates, and Shipwreck Singer, although reusing Titan of Eternal Fire’s effect is reasonable if you don’t have enough Humans. Triad of Fates offers the most interesting interaction since you can exile or save a creature that doesn’t already have a fate counter on it, but it also requires a 3-color deck (W/U/B or G/W/B) which is not a common occurrence in Theros drafts. I once used Shipwreck Singer + Triton Tactics to wipe out much of an opponent’s army so I know that combo has potential, but Breaching Hippocamp costs too much mana to be an effective combo with it and the other untap effects require green mana and so also require a 3-color deck.

If your devotion to green is 3 or more, Karametra’s Acolyte can generate additional mana using Savage Surge. However, Karametra’s Acolyte costs 4 mana, so this means you already have access to at least 7 mana, which is enough for most effects in Theros. The set only has 3 spells that cost more than 7: Ashen Riders, Boulderfall, and Colossus of Akros. No bestow abilities cost more than 7, and only 6 monstrosity abilities cost than much: Shipbreaker Kraken (8), Hythonia the Cruel (8), Stoneshock Giant (8), Nemesis of Mortals (9, although it will usually cost 7 or less), Colossus of Akros (10), and Polukranos World Eater (XXG, although spending less mana on its monstrosity ability will still usually win you the game). This means that Karametra’s Acolyte + Savage Surge will only prove useful in the rare occasion where your green devotion count is exactly 3 and you really need the 8th mana, or if you have Karametra’s Acolyte + Triton Tactics and your green devotion count is 2 or 3 and you really need the 7th or 8th mana.

So Shipwreck Singer + Triton Tactics is the only such “combo” that really stands out to me. If you’re U/B, you should consider drafting Triton Tactics a bit more highly than in other U/X decks, especially if you’ve already drafted 1 or more Shipwreck Singers.

EDIT: Triton Tactics and Savage Surge are both cheap enough that they should work quite well with Meletis Charlatan. With Triton Tactics, you can untap an additional creature for every 3 mana you have available after casting it and give Meletis Charlatan an additional +0/+3, making it a formidable blocker. With Savage Surge, you can give Meletis Charlatan +2/+2 for every 3 mana you have available after casting it. (This is mostly useful on defense; on offense, you’d have to cast Savage Surge before attacking, otherwise Meletis Charlatan would be tapped while the spell is on the stack and the spell would no longer be available to be copied once Meletis Charlatan is untapped. However, in the unlikely situation that your opponent has no untapped creatures and you have Meletis Charlatan, Savage Surge, and a lot of mana, you might be attack for lethal even if your opponent is at a healthy life total.)

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THS: Casting costs and 5cc spells

December 17, 2013 Leave a comment

Over the course of many drafts, I’ve noticed that Theros has a lot of good creatures that cost 5 mana. In a recent draft, I had 2 Gray Merchant, a Keepsake Gorgon, and 4 Prescient Chimera (I was only able to play 2 of the latter). And in my G/U Sealed deck from the PTQ, I had 5 5cc creatures — Prophet of Kruphix, Anthousa Setessan Hero, Nessian Asp, Centaur Battlemaster, and Prescient Chimera — 2 of which were bombs. I’d like to determine whether the format actually has a glut of good creatures at 5cc. If it is, I can deprioritize 5cc creatures while drafting and/or value Opaline Unicorn more highly.

This spreadsheet looks at bomb, exceptional, and playable creatures by color, rarity, and CMC, and then computes the number of creatures in each color/CMC combination in an average draft. The numbers do not indicate a glut at 5cc except in black, and only if you include all black spells (the All tab) instead of just looking at black creatures (the Creatures tab). Apparently, my hypothesis does not hold for the other 4 colors and, therefore, for most color pairs. And black decks rarely want Opaline Unicorn because it doesn’t add to the black devotion count for Gray Merchant.

Let’s look at this from a slightly different angle by enumerating the playable 5cc spells in the format:

  • White: Celestial Archon (rare)
  • Blue: Prescient Chimera (common), Prognostic Sphinx (rare)
  • Black: Gray Merchant of Asphodel (common), Lash of the Whip (common), Keepsake Gorgon (uncommon)
  • Red: Rage of Purphoros (common), Stoneshock Giant (uncommon), Stormbreath Dragon (mythic)
  • Green: Nessian Asp (common), Centaur Battlemaster (uncommon), Anthousa Setessan Hero (rare), Arbor Colossus (rare)
  • Multicolor: Kragma Warcaller (B/R uncommon), Pharika’s Mender (B/G uncommon), Sentry of the Underworld (W/B uncommon), Prophet of Kruphix (G/U rare), Underworld Cerberus (B/R mythic)

Note that all but 2 of the spells listed are creatures. Black is the only color with 2 playable 5cc spells at common. However, red and green also have excellent 5cc spells at common and uncommon, so you should probably not go out of your way to pick up 5cc spells early in the draft if you’re in one of those colors, and you might want to actively avoid all but the best 5cc spells if you’re B/R, B/G, or R/G. B/G players should be especially wary since Gray Merchant and Nessian Asp are 2 of the most powerful commons in the format and you won’t want to leave any copies of either of them in your sideboard, regardless of what the spreadsheet says.

Some other observations from the spreadsheet:

  • White: Most of the good creatures are 2cc and 3cc. This makes Divine Verdict more playable in Theros than in other formats.
  • Blue: There are plenty of good creatures at 3cc and 4cc, so you should prioritize the good 2cc commons (Omenspeaker and Vaporkin).
  • Black: Baleful Eidolon is the only 2-drop that’s always playable (although Returned Phalanx is good in a control deck and Fleshmad Steed is good in an aggro deck), so it should be valued highly. Otherwise, black creatures seem to be spread fairly evenly across the mana curve, except for a bit of a glut at 5cc.
  • Red: There are plenty of good creatures at 3cc and 4cc, so you should prioritize the good 2-drops (Deathbellow Raider and Arena Athlete).
  • Green: The creatures are well distributed across the spectrum so there’s less need to prioritize creatures at a particular casting cost than for other colors.
  • U/R: Blue and red both have a lot of good creatures at 3cc and 4cc, so creatures at those casting costs should be especially deprioritized in U/R, or the color combination should be avoided if there isn’t a good reason to go into it. (U/R also has the weakest multicolor cards in Theros.)
  • B/G: This is a especially slow color combination so Sedge Scorpion and Baleful Eidolon should be valued even more highly than usual in B/G.

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THS: Multicolor cards and color pairs

December 10, 2013 Leave a comment

This spreadsheet lists the cards in Theros that are either multicolored or that get better if a player is playing a specific color pair. Some of these cards are perfectly playable on their own, e.g., Agent of Horizons is still a 3/2 for 3 mana, even if you’re not playing blue; but it’s quite a bit better if you’re also playing, or even splashing, blue. Note that this list does not include cards like Rageblood Shaman which is best in a R/B Minotaurs deck, but does not require Swamps or black mana/creatures itself.

W/U, W/B, U/B, B/R, R/G, and R/W have 4 such cards each, while the remaining 4 color pairs have 3 such cards each. Looking at the cards that are exceptional or bombs (since cards that are merely good aren’t sufficient reason to play a color pair), we see that the 5 colors with the highest average number of exceptional/bomb cards in a typical draft are also the 5 color pairs with an exceptional uncommon:

  • W/U: Battlewise Hoplite
  • U/B: Shipwreck Singer
  • B/R: Kragma Warcaller
  • B/G: Pharika’s Mender
  • G/U: Horizon Chimera

In this list, white and red occur once, blue and black occur thrice, and green occurs twice. This means that if you’re white or red, you’re least likely to open or be passed a very strong W/X or R/X multicolor card, so it’s safer to commit to a second color sooner. If you’re blue or black, you should try to delay jumping into a second color as long as possible so you can pick up exceptional multicolor cards that are being passed late when no one else is able to play them. Doing this enabled me to get triple Shipwreck Singer in one draft, and double Kragma Warcaller in another.

Also, 6 of the 10 color combinations have more good/exceptional/bomb multicolor cards, so there’s more incentive to draft them. On the other hand, U/B, U/R, B/G, and R/G have few such cards (even though there are dual lands for U/B and R/G in Theros), so there’s less incentive to draft these color pairs unless you get a multicolor bomb in that color pair or are being passed particularly strong/synergistic cards in both colors.

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THS: Sealed pool #2

December 3, 2013 1 Comment

For those who haven’t seen it yet, I posted my build of the previous sealed pool in the comments section of that post. (I prefer that to a separate post so people reading this later don’t see my build before they see the pool.) While most people who looked at that pool came up with the same build, a few of us later found a build that seemed to do better, and that build is also included in the comments.

I played at another sealed deck PTQ this weekend. I opened an amazing pool with Abhorrent Overlord and Whip of Erebos, so of course it didn’t come back to me, unlike the crappy pool I opened last week. In its place, I got a pool with 2 bomb but little removal. I did only slightly better this time, going 1-2 drop, even though I always chose to play first. I’d like to blame opposing bombs (my round 1 opponent killed me from 17 life on turn 5 with just Anax and Cymede and Labyrinth Champion on the table, although this was my fault as I should have realized he could do 17 damage and should have blocked the Champion to force a trick) and bad luck (missing my third land drop in round 3 when I’d kept a 2-land-plus-cantrip hand on the play). Here’s my pool, which I’ve also posted on TappedOut. How would you have built it? Post your builds in the comments and I’ll post the build I played at the PTQ, and how I’d build it today, in the comments section a couple of days from now.

Artifact
Bronze Sable
Flamecast Wheel
2 Fleetfeather Sandals
Opaline Unicorn
Prowler’s Helm
Traveler’s Amulet

White
Battlewise Valor
Cavalry Pegasus
Divine Verdict
Ephara’s Warden
Favored Hoplite
Glare of Heresy
Gods Willing
3 Lagonna-Band Elder
Ordeal of Heliod
3 Setessan Battle Priest
Silent Artisan
Traveling Philosopher
Wingsteed Rider

Blue
Aqueous Form
Breaching Hippocamp
Fate Foretold
Griptide
Lost in a Labyrinth
Meletis Charlatan
Mnemonic Wall
Omenspeaker
Prescient Chimera
Thassa’s Bounty
Thassa’s Emissary
Triton Shorethief
Vaporkin

Black
Baleful Eidolon
Boon of Erebos
Cutthroat Maneuver
Dark Betrayal
Gray Merchant of Asphodel
Keepsake Gorgon
2 Ordeal of Erebos
Pharika’s Cure
Returned Centaur
Returned Phalanx

Red
Arena Athlete
Boulderfall
Coordinated Assault
Deathbellow Raider
Demolish
Dragon Mantle
Messenger’s Speed
2 Priest of Iroas
Purphoros’s Emissary
Spearpoint Oread
Titan of Eternal Fire
Two-Headed Cerberus
Wild Celebrants

Green
Anthousa, Setessan Hero
Centaur Battlemaster
Commune with the Gods
2 Fade into Antiquity
Feral Invocation
Leafcrown Dryad
Nemesis of Mortals
Nessian Asp
Nessian Courser
Nylea’s Presence
Savage Surge
Sedge Scorpion
Shredding Winds
Staunch-Hearted Warrior
Time to Feed
Vulpine Goliath

Multicolor
Battlewise Hoplite
Kragma Warcaller
Polis Crusher
Prophet of Kruphix

Land
Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx

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THS: Sealed pool

November 26, 2013 4 Comments

Unfortunately, last week’s prep didn’t help me do well at the PTQ. I opened a weak pool — the person verifying the registration said he was happy he didn’t have to play with it — and then ended up with that pool after it was passed left 3 times. I also had some weak draws and ended up going 0-2 drop. But before I blame everything on bad luck, let me post the pool here and see whether I might have misbuilt it. (The pool’s also up at http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/theros-sealed-pool-2013-11-24/ which might be easier to work with.) How would you have built this pool? Post your builds in the comments and I’ll post my build later this week.

Artifact
Akroan Horse
Bronze Sable
Burnished Hart
Flamecast Wheel
Fleetfeather Sandal
Prowler’s Helm
Traveler’s Amulet
Witches’ Eye

White
Battlewise Valor
2 Cavalry Pegasus
Gift of Immortality
Glare of Heresy
Gods Willing
Observant Alseid
Phalanx Leader
Scholar of Athreos
Setessan Battle Priest
Silent Artisan
Traveling Philosopher
3 Wingsteed Rider

Blue
Annul
Aqueous Form
Lost in a Labyrinth
Meletis Charlatan
Mnemonic Wall
Nimbus Naiad
Prescient Chimera
Thassa’s Bounty
Triton Shorethief
Voyage’s End

Black
2 Asphodel Wanderer
Baleful Eidolon
Cavern Lampad
Fleshmad Steed
March of the Returned
Ordeal of Erebos
Read the Bones
Scourgemark
Viper’s Kiss

Red
Borderland Minotaur
2 Boulderfall
2 Demolish
Dragon Mantle
Fanatic of Mogis
Firedrinker Satyr
Flamespeaker Adept
Lightning Strike
Ordeal of Purphoros
Purphoros’s Emissary
2 Satyr Rambler
Two-Headed Cerberus
2 Wild Celebrants

Green
2 Agent of Horizons
2 Fade into Antiquity
Karametra’s Acolyte
Leafcrown Dryad
2 Nemesis of Mortal
2 Nessian Asp
Nylea’s Disciple
Nylea’s Emissary
Nylea’s Presence
Ordeal of Nylea
2 Shredding Winds
Time to Feed
Vulpine Goliath
Warriors’ Lesson

Multicolor
Horizon Chimera
Spellheart Chimera
Steam Augury
Triad of Fates

Land
Unknown Shores

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THS: Maindeck flyer removal

November 22, 2013 Leave a comment

Today, we’ll use the updated card valuations to determine whether it makes sense to maindeck Shredding Winds in Theros. (Arbor Colossus and Bow of Nylea also kill creatures with flying, but those cards are good enough to play on their other merits, so I won’t evaluate them here.)

This spreadsheet lists all the flyers in Theros. Yellow highlight means that a cards can grant flying to another creature (e.g., Cavalry Pegasus); if the text is gray instead of black, it means the card does not have flying itself (e.g., Fleetfeather Sandals). A few things stand out:

  • Shredding Winds can kill all these creatures with the exception of Prognostic Sphinx and Sentry of the Underworld (if they have WB open), a really large Wingsteed Rider, and perhaps a bestow creature enchanting an already large creature.
  • White, blue, and black will have 9, 11, and 4 creatures with flying in an average 8-person draft. Each color is shared on average by about 3 players, so a typical W/U deck will have 7 flyers and Shredding Winds will usually have a target even if you don’t seen a flyer in game 1. Every other color combination will have 5 or fewer flyers, so it doesn’t make sense to side in Shredding Winds unless you see a must-kill flyer.
  • You don’t need flyer removal against red or green since they have almost no flyers. On the artifact side, neither Anvilwrought Raptor nor Fleetfeather Sandals are particularly exciting, and you’re better off siding in artifact removal against them anyway.
  • Nessian Asp is excellent in this format and so it likely to be played by every green deck that has it. It can block and kill all of the creatures listed in the spreadsheet except Abhorrent Overlord (rare) and Ashen Rider (mythic), which are marked with an S in the Must Kill column. In addition, there are 4 other flyers marked with a Y that I consider must kill — Cavalry Pegasus (white common), Wingsteed Rider (white common), Prognostic Sphinx (blue rare), and Shipwreck Singer (U/B uncommon) — each of which will win the game eventually if left untouched. These are flyers you need to be able to kill even if you have multiple Nessian Asps. Both commons in the list are white, so it might make sense to side Shredding Winds in against W/X decks if you have other cards you need to side out, even if you haven’t seen many flyers and they are not W/U.

From the analysis above, I would say it doesn’t make sense to run Shredding Winds maindeck, but it is a great sideboard cards against decks with flyers, and it can be brought in preemptively against W/U decks which tend to have a lot of flyers, and even against other W/X decks which may have fewer flyers since white has a couple of common flyers that can take over or win the game given enough time.

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THS: Maindeck artifact removal

November 21, 2013 Leave a comment

Today, we’ll use the updated card valuations to determine whether it makes sense to maindeck artifact removal in Theros. This spreadsheet lists all the artifacts in Theros.

A quick glance at it reveals that there are only 5 bomb/exceptional artifacts, the legendary enchantment artifacts that are the weapons of the gods. A typical 8-person draft will have 2 of these 5, so you do need the ability to deal with them, but not necessarily maindeck since there’s about a 1/4 chance of facing one in any given match. Apart from these, the only artifacts that I consider good are Akroan Horse and Guardians of Meletis, although Fleetfeather Sandals and Prowler’s Helm can be scary if you have a stalled board. Even if you consider all 4 of these in addition to the weapons of the gods, there will only be an average of 9.5 of them in a typical 8-person draft, so each player will usually only have 1, and you don’t usually want to run artifact removal maindeck or even side it in just to handle a single card unless it absolutely wrecks you.

Even against an opponent with playable artifacts, you’re better off siding in removal that destroys enchantments in addition to artifacts. Fade into Antiquity, Artisan’s Sorrow, and Destructive Revelry (and perhaps even Annul), are better sideboard cards than Demolish since Theros doesn’t have many particularly scary artifacts or lands that. Even Ray of Dissolution is a better artifact removal spell than Demolish since it kills the weapons of the gods and also has many other targets. The only color that has access to artifact removal but not enchantment removal is red, and if you’re in red but not green (or blue), you’re probably better off siding in Wild Celebrants, or running them maindeck since they’re reasonable as just a 5/3 for 3 mana that may occasionally destroy an artifact. The only reason to even side in Demolish is if you don’t have enough other artifact removal, and there’s never a reason to run it maindeck unless it also destroys enchantments.

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THS: Maindeck enchantment removal

November 20, 2013 Leave a comment

When I first read through the Theros spoiler, I figured enchantment removal would be maindeckable, just as Shatter was in Mirrodin, because it was an enchantment themed set with a higher than usual number of enchantments. So in my first Theros event, I drafted enchantment removal highly and played 3 of the 5 enchantment removal spells I drafted maindeck. That didn’t work out too well. Nowadays I often go to the opposite extreme, picking enchantment removal fairly low and rarely playing any maindeck. But I’d never done any analysis to determine whether this was the right play from a statistical standpoint.

Let’s now use the updated card valuations from yesterday to determine whether it makes sense to maindeck enchantment removal in Theros. This spreadsheet lists all the enchantments in Theros, and then summarizes quality by color and rarity. The total row for each color does not sum the rows above it, but instead computes the average number of cards of that color/rarity/quality in an 8-person draft.

Even though Theros is enchantment-themed, it turns out that there aren’t actually that many bomb/exceptional enchantments in the typical draft. In fact, the average Theros actually has the same number of exceptional enchantments as the average M14 draft. While there are a lot more good (/) enchantments than there were in M14 (31 vs. 10), you don’t usually need removal for those. Of course, card quality can be different from whether you need to deal with a card. For instance, if your opponent has a bestowed Aura on a flyer, you probably lose the game in short order if you don’t deal with either the flyer or the enchantment.

Looking at the totals, it appears that white and blue (especially blue) have a disproportionate number of the exceptional enchantments in Theros. In fact, those colors have the only exceptional cards at common/uncommon: Heliod’s Emissary, Nimbus Naiad, and Thassa’s Emissary. If you’re playing against a U/x deck, it is likely you’ll want to keep your enchantment removal in even if you haven’t seen enchantments that you care about removing. If you’re playing against a W/U deck, you may even want to side in additional enchantment removal, even if you haven’t seen targets. On the other hand, you’re less likely to need enchantment removal against R/G, so you can consider siding it out if you haven’t seen good targets and have other cards you want to side in.

We still need to determine whether it makes sense to run enchantment removal maindeck. All the colors have roughly the same number of enchantments in a typical draft, and very few of them are completely unplayable, so let’s look at the grand total row. An average draft will have 55 enchantments between 8 players, or about 7 enchantments/player. If we exclude filler, unplayable, and TBD enchantme1nts, we’re still left with 40 enchantments, or 5 per player. If your opponent has 5 enchantments that you would be happy to destroy, that means you’ll usually see 1-2 enchantments in most games. That means you probably want to run 1 enchantment removal spell maindeck and relegate additional ones to the sideboard.

Sealed deck are built from 6 packs, so they have access to a lot more enchantments, an average of 10 playable ones per player. However, they’re also likely to be distributed evenly across the colors and so a player will usually only be playing 4-5 of them. On the other hand, since color choices in Sealed are dictated by the strength of a color, players are more likely to play a colors with bomb/exceptional enchantments, so the quality of these 4-5 enchantments is likely to be higher than in a draft. You probably don’t want to run more than 1 enchantment removal spell maindeck, though, since there are unlikely to be enough targets for them.

We’ll look at artifact removal tomorrow, but that is unlikely to change this conclusion since Theros has very few impressive artifacts.

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THS: Updated evaluations

November 19, 2013 Leave a comment

I’d posted my initial evaluations of the cards in Theros several weeks ago. Since then, I’ve updated several of my valuations based on experience with the format and the analysis I’ve posted here. This spreadsheet lists my current valuations and the original valuations. (Valuations that have changed are highlighted.) I’ve used the same evaluation key as before: B for bomb, + for exceptional, / for good, ~ for situationally playable and filler cards, S for sideboard cards, x for cards that are unplayable in most circumstances, and ? (TBD) for those requiring further evaluation.

Too many of my evaluations have changed for me to explain each one individually, but here’re the general themes:

  • I’ve updated several of the cards that were marked TBD based on analysis during the intervening weeks.
  • White and red cards that target creatures have gone up in my estimation because of how powerful R/W heroic decks are.
  • I value equipment less because it does not target a creature when cast, and so is often inferior to enchantments, which do target the creature.
  • I value enchantment/artifact removal less because I’ve often found myself in situations with no targets (or no good targets) on the other side of the board. I’ve marked all such cards as sideboard cards for now, but I’m going to crunch some numbers later this week to determine whether my experiences might have been atypical and whether I should perhaps start running them maindeck again.
  • I value a lot of removal less, especially expensive removal like Sip of Hemlock and Rage of Purphoros. I also value Last Breath less because the 4 life is often very relevant if you’re playing an aggressive R/W deck.
  • On the other hand, cards like Leonin Snarecaster and Heliod’s Emissary that let you deal with creatures temporarily while adding a creature to the board have gone up in my estimate.
  • I value large creatures without monstrous less, unless they have flying or very useful abilities. On the other hand, I value Nessian Asp a lot more; 4/5 and reach can completely shut down a lot of aggressive decks.
  • Heroic triggers that don’t result in a +1/+1 counter have gone down in my estimate because that does not enable those creatures to keep attacking on subsequent turns. This is especially true for white and red creatures since those colors tend to be more aggressive.

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