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Unlimited Improvements: Card Evaluations, Part 2

Hello everyone,

Welcome to part two of my article on card evaluations that I started last week. If you haven’t read part one, I recommend doing so first as it sets the foundation for what follows.

So now that you’ve been awed and amazed by the theory, we can move onto real world applications. Keeping in mind the relative value of resources, the Affects-The-Board Principle, and the concept of consistency, let’s talk about some different categories of cards; categories of cards that should often be avoided in limited Magic. I am going talk about types of cards you will often encounter, and why you should resist playing them. Some players might find some of these concepts basic, but hopefully everyone gets at least something to think about from this article.

I’d like to preface this article with one quick point: just because a card could sometimes, in some situations, do good things, does not mean it’s a good card.  I’m going to talk about certain cards, and people will inevitably respond with things like: “card X has been great for me when I’ve played with it,” or “in this certain situation card Y would be amazing,” etc. Magic is a complex game with an endless number of situations that can arise, and as such there can be times where a certain bad card is exactly what you’d want in that situation. That doesn’t make the card good, and doesn’t mean you should play the card in your deck. To maximize our win percentage, we want to play cards that are consistently good in the majority of situations.

Alright, let’s get to it.

CATEGORY 1: POTENTIAL DO-NOTHING CARDS

For our first group of cards, I’d like to talk about cards that can vary greatly in effect. These are cards that sometimes have good effects and at other times are worthless. This group of cards can be misleading, since they entice players with their potential rewards. The key thing to remember when dealing with this type of card is consistency. For each card, you have have to ask yourself the series of questions about consistency that I posed in the last article, and determine if the card is worth the risk.  So, let’s look at a few cards that are at least in some way inconsistent:

Example 1: [card]Survival Cache[/card]

Here is a card that many people were divided on. I saw some very good players say they liked it, while some hated it. Personally, I think this card is the best example of a card that can fool you into thinking it is better than it actually is. This card is not good. This card essentially has two parts, gaining life, and drawing cards. The life gain is guaranteed, the card draw is not. Based on the relative value of resources, we know that the card draw is the important part of the card, the life gain is not.

–      How likely is it that the card will have the desired effect? Not very; I’d guess 65% at best. Limited is not Constructed. You can make your deck aggressive, but decks just aren’t streamlined enough to guarantee that you come out of the gates fast(er). Limited is often a back and forth affair. It’s just way too hard to guarantee that you’re ahead on life totals. And if you’re not, it’s no small task to change that fact.
–      Does the card at least have a lesser effect when it doesn’t do its full effect? Yes.
–      Is the lesser effect still worth playing the card? No. Playing a card for nothing but lifegain is almost never worth it. As I discussed in Part 1, life is the least valuable resource a player has to work with.
–      Is the effect powerful enough to warrant the risk of being inconsistent? No. While [card]Divination[/card] is good, it’s not like it’s so strong that you want to risk having a blank just to have it in your deck.

Verdict: Bad. Don’t play.

Example 2: [card]Searing Blaze[/card]

This is an example of a card that seems inconsistent, but isn’t as much as you might think.

–      How likely is it that the card will have the desired effect? Very. Having a land to play is something that happens very often in a game, and is something that you have a lot of control over. You can save a land for your [card]Searing Blaze[/card]. If you don’t have one, it shouldn’t be long until you draw another.
–      Does the card at least have a lesser effect when it doesn’t do its full effect? Yes
–      Is the lesser effect still worth playing the card? Somewhat. Worst case scenario, a small Searing Blaze can still be fine, and can still act as a removal spell, not leaving you behind on resources. Killing a [card]Plated Geopede[/card], [card]Surrakar Marauder[/card], etc. is still well worth it.
–      Is the effect powerful enough to warrant the risk of being inconsistent? Definitely. Removal is very good in limited. Removal with added value is even better. Cheap removal with added value is even better.

Saying that Searing Blaze is good may seem obvious and a no-brainer, but I wanted to show how cards need to be evaluated on a case by case basis, and even though some cards may not be 100% consistent, they can be worth playing if they meet the criteria.

Verdict: Good, obviously.

Example 3: [card]Ardent Recruit[/card]

Some look at this card and see [card]Wild Nacatl[/card]. I see [card]Eager Cadet[/card].

–      How likely is it that the card will have the desired effect? Next to zero early on in the game, which is when the effect really matters. It also requires your deck to have a critical mass of artifacts and depends on how much removal your opponent has. It also leaves you open to surprises from your opponent that can change this card from having its full effect.
–      Does the card at least have a lesser effect when it doesn’t do its full effect? Yes.
–      Is the lesser effect still worth playing the card? No. A 1/1 vanilla creature just does not cut it in limited, does not have enough presence on the board, and is not worth a card.
–      Is the effect powerful enough to warrant the risk of being inconsistent? No. The only time a 3/3 body is a huge presence is very early in the game, which is exactly when this card won’t have its full effect. Later on, when you have Metalcraft, it’s just a 3/3 vanilla creature, with the potential to be blown out by your opponent removing your metalcraft by surprise.

Verdict: Terrible. Don’t play.

Example 4: [card]Training Drone[/card]

The reigning World Champion played them. Must be good right?

–      How likely is it that the card will have the desired effect? Very low. It’s not the easiest thing to get a lot of good equipment cards in a single draft. Good equipment is very good in limited, and go as high picks. You could fill your equipment quota with bad equipment, but then you’re making your deck worse by playing bad equipment. Then, there’s the fact that you don’t want your limited deck to have too much equipment, as without creatures, they are do-nothing cards. Then there’s the fact that you have to hope you’re opponent doesn’t virtually 2-for-1 you by destroying your equipment.
–      Does the card at least have a lesser effect when it doesn’t do its full effect? No. Sitting there helping enable Metalcraft doesn’t count.
–      Is the effect powerful enough to warrant the risk of being inconsistent? No. Even if you draw some equipment, manage to stick it and get it equipped to the [card]Training Drone[/card], it’s still just a vanilla 4/4 for 3.  Slightly above the curve for a creature, but not when all its other downsides are factored in. [card]Training Drone[/card] isn’t even a 4/4 for 3 mana, like it first appears to be, as it has a “hidden cost” of whatever it takes to get equipment onto it. You’d be better off with a smaller creature that is 100% consistent. Pretty much any creature can become a significant threat with a good piece of equipment on it.

Verdict: Terrible. Don’t play it. Even if you drafted a “[card]Training Drone[/card].dek”, it’s still bad.

Example 5: Equipment Cards

That last card got me thinking about equipment in general. By their very nature, equipment cards are potential-do-nothing cards.  Without a creature to put it on, a piece of equipment does nothing. On the other hand, equipment cards are also potential-kick-total-ass cards. Let’s look at this further.

–      How likely is it that the card will have the desired effect? High, if you build your deck “right.” A limited deck is going to have creatures. Your opponent won’t have removal for them all. The key is managing to have the correct ratio of equipment to creatures.
–      Does the card at least have a lesser effect when it doesn’t do its full effect? No.
–      Is the effect powerful enough to warrant the risk of being inconsistent? This varies wildly, and can range from holy-hell-yes to oh-god-no.
–      How many other inconsistent cards are we already playing? How likely is it that we’ll get in a situation with too many cards in hand that don’t do anything relevant? This entirely depends on how much equipment you have, and how many creatures are in your deck that can effectively wear the equipment.

So, all those questions really told us was that the value of equipment varies dramatically. I think there are a few key things to keep in mind for evaluating equipment:

1 – You’ve spent a card for the equipment, so the effect the equipment has on a creature needs to provide enough of a boost to make up for that. The main way this happens is by equipment making your creature into a more significant threat. In general, equipment that makes your creature more threatening is good, while equipment that doesn’t, is not. Equipment that makes your creatures more threatening allows them to “trade up,” letting your early smaller creatures trade for your opponent’s larger threats, in a way gaining you virtual card advantage.

The most obvious way to make your creature a bigger threat is by boosting its power. A power boost is significantly more useful than a toughness boost. Quite often, if your opponent plays equipment that doesn’t make his creature a more significant threat, you can just ignore it and they’re down a card.

2 – The amount of equipment in your deck provides diminishing returns. Too much equipment and not enough creatures is a recipe for a whole lot of dead cards. As a general rule of thumb, I wouldn’t try to go over three in a deck.
3 – Very expensive equipment can be too much of a loss in tempo. One important thing to remember is that the equip cost is more important than the casting cost. You pay the casting cost once, you pay the equip cost for each creature you attach it too.

So how would I rate the equipment so far in Mirrodin block limited? Roughly as follows:

– Excellent: [card]Sword of Body and Mind[/card], [card]Sword of Feast and Famine[/card], [card]Strata Scythe[/card], Every living weapon except [card]Flayer Husk[/card];
– Above Average: [card]Copper Carapace[/card], [card]Darksteel Axe[/card], [card]Heavy Arbalest[/card], [card]Livewire Lash[/card], [card]Nim Deathmantle[/card];
– Satisfactory: [card]Barbed Battlegear[/card], [card]Argentum Armor[/card], [card]Darksteel Plate[/card], [card]Grafted Exoskeleton[/card], [card]Flayer Husk[/card], [card]Strider Harness[/card], [card]Sylvok Lifestaff[/card] (bordering on mediocre), [card]Viridian Claw[/card];
– Mediocre: [card]Accorder’s Shield[/card] (Overrated, toughness boost doesn’t increase threat, equip cost high while casting cost low), [card]Bladed Pinions[/card] (creature becomes barely any more of a threat, just evasive), [card]Infiltration Lens[/card] (“Ok, I just won’t block him then”, or, “I’ll just kill the creature since it’s no more of a threat and easy to kill with removal.”), [card]Piston Sledge[/card] (equip cost exacerbates one of the main downsides to equipment, the need for creatures), [card]Silverskin Armor[/card] (decent effect, just not very large);
– Terrible: [card]Echo Circlet[/card]

Living weapons are so good because by themselves, they inherently compensate for the inconsistency issues of equipment.

Verdict: Some great, some terrible, and some everywhere in between. Play ones that make your creatures into larger threats, and don’t play too many.

CATEGORY 2: RESTRICTED WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY CARDS

These cards are a subset of the potential-do-nothing category, but I’ll talk about them on their own. This group comprises cards that only have a useful effect during a small window of time.

Example 1: Discard Spells

While very important to constructed, discard is simply just bad in limited. Discard tries to act like a removal spell, trading card resources one for one, but is fraught with way too many inconsistencies.

The reason discard is bad is because, for the most part, discard spells only have a good effect at the beginning part of the game, when your opponent has a bunch of cards in hand. This doesn’t matter as much in constructed, since the majority of the game is decided in that opening part of the game anyways. In limited, that beginning portion of the game is only a small part of a longer war of attrition.

Later in the game, after card resources have been traded back and forth, your opponent generally won’t have anything left in hand except instants they can play in response to your discard spell, giving you no real targets, and making the discard spell a dead card. Discard is also useless once players hit top-deck mode, as your opponent can cast what they draw before you can play your discard spell. Contrast this to removal, which can deal with the top-decked card whenever you want.

Discard also generally has built in restrictions, such as restricting the types or converted mana cost of the card you can hit, increasing the chance for inconsistency.

Also, when using discard as opposed to removal, you save your opponent mana resources. When you bolt their creature, you trade a card for a card, and one red mana for whatever the creature’s casting cost was. When you use discard, you spend mana and your opponent doesn’t.

The only discard spells that have a case for gaining card advantage are cards such as [card]Mind Rot[/card] or [card]Mind Sludge[/card]. Only in rare cases does the reward outweigh the risk of inconsistency. In M11, I would rate [card]Mind Rot[/card] as a 20-23 card, and looked for decks that didn’t want to play it. [card]Mind Sludge[/card] had the potential to be a blowout, in the right deck, and was one of the rare cases where it was worth the risk for a big reward.

Verdict: Bad. Only play discard that can lead to a large gain in card advantage.

Example 2: Counterspells

Counterspells are in some ways like discard; removal spells that only work during given windows. Unlike discard however, it’s not a window that closes and tends to remain closed, it’s a window that pops up here and there as long as you have the required mana open. The best way to think about counterspells is that they’re essentially removal spells that you have to play the turn the target is cast, but they can also hit non-creature spells.

It’s important to note the point that counterspells also require you to keep mana open, costing you mana and tempo for the potential to use them. As mentioned in part 1 of this article, we want to use our resources in the most efficient ways, and leaving mana open and potentially not using it can be costly. In contrast, with a removal spell you can just wait until it’s convenient for you to cast it.

On the other hand, if you can counter an opponent’s large spell for a small amount of mana, you have the chance to gain tempo on your opponent.

For these reasons, counterspells have built-in inconsistency, and as such you need to be able to determine if the risk is worth the reward.

Unlike discard, I would rate counterspells as somewhat playable. The main three situations where you’ll want to run counterspells are: you’re seriously lacking on removal, your opponent has a game-ending bomb that you have no other way to deal with, or the counterspell is very cheap mana-wise (see: [card]Steel Sabotage[/card]).

Verdict: Average. Play if your deck needs it.

Example 3: Combat Tricks

By combat tricks, I mean cards you play at instant speed to mess with combat math. This can include pump spells like [card]Giant Growth[/card], ability granters like [card]Thunder Strike[/card], and shrink spells like [card]Turn The Tide[/card], among others.

Combat tricks are a tricky (Editor’s note: inherently tricky?) category to evaluate in a generic way. They have a fair number of windows to use them, but aren’t guaranteed to have the effect you want; sometimes being a dead card, sometimes doing great things. The main bonus of combat tricks is that they give you some reach, letting you win games that you otherwise wouldn’t. They also make it more difficult for your opponent to play properly, potentially leading them to make mistakes.

Some things to remember about combat tricks are:

  1. Try to play combat tricks that don’t lead you to get two-for-one’d. A card like [card] Bull Rush[/card] will lead you to spend your trick and your creature to trade for a creature, while a [card]Giant Growth[/card] will generally be a one-for-one, your combat trick for their creature, with your creature surviving.
  2. Try to play combat tricks that could potentially let you two-for-one your opponent.
  3. Try to play combat tricks that have a high probability of being useful.
  4. Don’t play too many, to avoid situations with too many useless cards in hand
  5. Play tricks that have a large enough effect that they will be more likely to trade for a full card. A +1/+1 pump spell is much less likely to trade for a full card than +3/+3 is.

Verdict: Play a couple of good ones, but not too many, and give higher value to ones that are most likely to remain at even parity or better in terms of card resources.

CATEGORY 3: DO NOTHING ON THEIR OWN CARDS

These are cards that require other cards to “turn them on.” They’re essentially dead cards on their own, but once you assemble the “combo,” they have effects. Many people like to build around these cards, but in general, they are best to be avoided.

One problem with these cards is the case where you don’t draw the other half of your combo, making the card essentially a blank. Having to depend on drawing certain exact cards from your deck is obviously not consistent.

Another problem with this type of card is that you generally have to play other suboptimal cards to combo with them, as opposed to other cards that are just good on their own. To turn on your [card]Furnace Celebration[/card], you sometimes have to play mediocre cards like [card]Oxidda Daredevil[/card].  You’d be better off playing two average but solid cards, than one potential dead card and one potential mediocre card that are good together.

Some examples from Scars of Mirrodin:

Example 1: [card]Liquimetal Coating[/card]

This is a card that tricks people, because when it does something good, it makes you feel like you’re awesome. Unfortunately, the majority of the time, it’s just a waste of a card. This card violates the Affects-the-Board principle, as it has no presense on the board, nor does it reduce your opponent’s card resources. The use of this card is to either enable Metalcraft, or to [card]Shatter[/card] something you normally couldn’t have.

The first ability is not nearly worth a card, and becomes completely redundant as soon as you have three other artifacts on board. So let’s examine the latter use. First you need a [card]Shatter[/card] effect. Then you need to want to target a non-artifact more than an artifact in play. Then you spend a card shattering your opponent’s non-artifact. Your opponent is down a card, and you’re down two cards. Before you even start getting “value” out of the card you need these conditions to all happen again. But essentially, you’ll generally always be down on a card on the transaction.

Verdict: Bad. Don’t play. There are situations where it seems awesome, but almost any bad card can have those situations happen sometimes.

Example 2: [card]Bloodshot Trainee[/card]

This card sort of fits into this category, but in reality it is actually not a bad card. If you have at least two repeatable ways to get this guy in Hulk-Smash mode, I would play it.

The reason this card is better than most cards in this category is twofold. First, “the combo” is very powerful. Repeatable removal is one of the best things you can have in limited. This high reward makes the high risk worth it. Secondly, and more importantly, when this card is at its worst, it’s still worth something. A 2/3 for four is under the curve, but isn’t nothing. While [card]Liquimetal Coating[/card] sits there wasting space, [card]Bloodshot Trainee[/card] can still attack, block, trade with creatures, etc. Not to mention, even without the combo, your opponent may be scared of it and use up a valuable removal spell to kill your guy.

Verdict: Playable with enough enablers. I’d want two enabling equipment minimum.

Example 3: [card]Furnace Celebration[/card]

[card]Furnace Celebration[/card] has been a popular card in Scars to draft around, but I remain unconvinced that it’s any good, even when you manage to draft a deck around it.

I started to touch on this card earlier, noting how it is inconsistent since it only does good things if you manage to draw the cards that combo with it. Also, you might find yourself playing suboptimal cards just to make this card reasonable.  Third, since the effect requires you to sacrifice an artifact, you’ll find yourself in the negative on card resources unless you can do it with something that replaces itself like a Spellbomb. While this is definitely doable, how many of those types of cards can you truly fit in your deck instead of cards that actually do something? No matter how you slice it, this card just leads to worse card quality on average than if you didn’t play it.

Verdict: Bad. Don’t play it. Don’t draft around it.

CATEGORY 4: DO-SOMETHING EVENTUALLY CARDS

This class of cards includes cards that don’t have the effect you want when they first enter play, but have the potential to do something later. In essence, these are dead cards until some conditions are met at a later time, and are therefore inherently inconsistent.

The poster child for do-something eventually cards are Quests ([card]Quest for Ula’s Temple[/card], [card]Quest for the Holy Relic[/card], etc.). I’ll just say it: Quests completely sucked in limited. Every single one of them.Yet people played them. Sometimes they did good things against me, sometimes they were complete blanks. Such is the nature of inconsistent cards.

The problem with this type of card is that you might not be able to meet the conditions to get the cards to do anything. This becomes more and more true the later in the game the cards are drawn. A Quest top-decked later in the game was basically giving up your draw step. A [card]Quest For the Gravelord[/card] token early in the game might be pretty sweet (though not a blowout), but a top-decked [card]Quest For the Gravelord[/card] during crucial turns later in the game is quite lame.

Let’s look at some Do-Something-Eventually Cards from Scars:

Example 1: [card]Golem Foundry[/card]

This card does nothing until you’ve cast it for three mana, then played three more artifacts. At that point you get a [card]Hill Giant[/card]. Then, after playing three more artifacts, you’ll get another [card]Hill Giant[/card]. The game will likely be over one way or the other after this point.

Contrast this to just playing a [card]Hill Giant[/card], say [card]Blade-tribe Berserkers[/card]. Foundry is a huge mana and time investment, and the payoff isn’t even that big: an extra 3/3. It also has the inconsistency of needing you to have enough artifacts to cast.  I said that cards are the most important resource, but the small gain in card advantage here is not worth the loss in mana, time, and potential to do nothing. Just imagine top-decking this card later in the game. It would purely be a dead card at that point.

Verdict: Bad, never play.

Example 2: [card]Titan Forge[/card]:

This card  is similar to [card]Golem Foundry[/card], but different in certain ways. While it does have the same mana and time investments, it doesn’t share the same inconsistency problem, as you’ll generally always have the choice to spend mana, unlike not always being able to play artifacts.  Forge’s payoff is also much larger, as a 9/9 is a significantly better threat than a 3/3.

This card, however, still does require a significant time and mana investment, calling into question whether the card advantage is worth it. I would say this card is worth it only in matches involving two very slow decks, and I’d be wary main-decking it.

Verdict: Could be good in the right matchup, where the time and mana investment is feasible.

Example 3: [card]Culling Dais[/card]

You spend a card to play it, then have to spend cards to put counters on it. With damage not stacking, the amount of situations where you want to just sack your creature are low. It would take a lot of time for this card to generally reach the point where you pull ahead in card resources instead of being in the negative.

Verdict: Bad. Rarely play.

Example 4: [card]Lux Cannon[/card]

This is similar to [card]Titan Forge[/card], though requiring less of a mana investment. The payoff is very good: unconditional, repeatable removal, and as such this card is worth it.  The time required is the only thing keeping it from being amazing.

Verdict: Good, but not great. Definitely playable in some decks, but not a first pick.

CATEGORY 5: DO-NOTHING CARDS

I’ll end with do-nothing cards, as they are the simplest and the easiest ones to spot. Even so, I often see players playing with them. This category includes cards that always directly and completely violate the Affects-The-Board-Principle.  This group includes, but is not limited to: lifegain cards, mill cards, fog effects, player-only burn, rituals, etc.

Example 1: [card]Elixir of Immortality[/card]

A recent poster child for do-nothing cards is [card]Elixir of Immortality[/card].  Many players would tell me how it was so good for them, but in reality, this card does absolutely nothing.  It is not worth spending a card to gain five life.  It’s almost never worth playing a card that only gains life.  Lifegain can be good, but only on a card that also has some other advantage attached to it, such as on a creature like [card]Obstinate Baloth[/card]. The second effect on Elixir fools some players, but actually doesn’t give you any card advantage.  You’re moving cards from a zone that doesn’t affect your in-game card resources (graveyard), to another zone that also, more often than not, doesn’t affect your resources (library). The idea that you’re mixing your good cards back in to be reused doesn’t hold any merit, because they end up randomly in your library, potentially nowhere near the top.  The small percentage chance that you’ll be able to redraw a bomb card isn’t worth the fact that you spent a card for this effect. In the majority of limited games, you won’t go through your entire library; it’s not like you’re running out of cards that will have an effect on the game. Instead of trying to eventually get a good card back later, you’d have been better off having a good card now instead of the Elixir.

Verdict: Bad. Don’t play…unless maybe you can pull off a “Shawn Petsche Special” and draft six [card]Squadron Hawk[/card]s and two Elixirs late (Editor’s note: the easiest 8-4 draft I ever played on Magic: Online).

Example 2: Mill:

Mill cards are basically useless, unless your entire strategy is to kill your opponent by decking. When you play cards like [card]Shriekhorn[/card], [card]Tome Scour[/card], etc. you’re spending a card to have no impact on your opponent’s active card resources.  You’re just wasting time/mana/cards to do nothing. I’ve heard the argument that milling can be beneficial because you might “get rid of some good cards from their deck,” but this is faulty logic.  You have equally as much chance of milling the cards your opponent doesn’t want as you do have of milling their good cards.  The next card they draw will still be a random card, unaffected by you as to whether it’s a good draw or not.

Since mill effects don’t affect active card resources in any way, nor any other of the four resources that matter, they are essentially useless. Cards that have other effects with mill “tacked on,” like [card]Merrow Witsniper[/card], should just be evaluated as if the card didn’t have the mill effect at all.

Verdict: Terrible. Absolutely never play unless it’s your entire strategy.

Example 3: [card]Fog[/card]

Fog effects are another group of cards that players play more than they should.  Cards like [card]Fog[/card], [card]Blunt The Assault[/card], [card]Batwing Brume[/card], etc. are not worth spending a card on. Fog effects trade a card resource to reduce your opponent’s time resource. In general they just delay the inevitable. Instead of actively trying to prevent your opponent from killing you, you waste a card so that it takes them longer to kill you.

The playable type of fog effects are cards you can get card resource value out of, such as [card]Safe Passage[/card]. With [card]Safe Passage[/card], you can often set up combat situations where your opponent will lose cards, since your creatures still deal damage.

Verdict: Don’t play without the possibility of gaining card advantage.

Example 4: [card]Exsanguinate[/card]

[card]Exsanguinate[/card] could be any of a certain group of cards that are referred to as “[card]Lava Axe[/card]s”. Lava axes seem alright, giving you a vision of killing your opponent with them, but in reality they are mostly bad. If we look back at the relative value of resources, lava axes trade your card resources (valuable resources) for your opponent’s life resources (not as valuable).

This type of effect is only good at one point in the game, the end point. If you can use a lava axe to kill an opponent, obviously it’s good. Any other time, it doesn’t affect the board, and having it in your hand instead of something that affects the board is just allowing your opponent to take control of the game.

Verdict: Bad. Don’t play.

Example 5: [card]Concussive Bolt[/card]

[card]Concussive Bolt[/card] is essentially a [card]Lava Axe[/card], so why am I mentioning it? To show that you need to evaluate each card on a case-to-case basis. If a card is far enough to an extreme, it can break the rules. I actually like [card]Concussive Bolt[/card].

Lava axes are only good at the end point of the game, but the key is how much damage [card]Concussive Bolt[/card] can potentially let you do. This amount is high enough that this card accelerates you to that end point faster than would normally happen. Not only does it give you 80% of a [card]Lava Axe[/card], but it can let you swing with your entire team unblocked, which can lead to a blowout.

If you have the right type of deck, aggressive with enough artifacts to reliably have Metalcraft, I think this card is worth playing. You don’t want too many though, as drawing this card before you’re ready for the finishing blow is essentially drawing a dead card.

Verdict: Good in the right deck. Don’t play too many, max 1-2.

[card]Example 6: Necrogen Censer[/card]

Here is a card people sometimes feel compelled to play, and I’ll admit I even once broke my own rules and ran it. I was given an abysmal sealed pool, and decided my only chance for victory was the build the most streamlined aggro deck possible, with [card]Glint Hawk[/card]s, [card]Glint Hawk Idol[/card]s, [card]Kemba’s Skyguard[/card]s, [card]Glimmerpoint Stag[/card], etc, along with two [card]Necrogen Censer[/card]s.  It was a mistake. Admittedly, probably nothing was saving that pool, but playing the Censers was a mistake.

Knowing the relative value of resources, it’s easy to see that Censer trades your card, mana and time for your opponent’s life. Not a good trade, even with the potential for a rebuy with something like a [card]Glint Hawk[/card]. In the few games I played before dropping, my opponents would play simple mediocre creatures, and I’d sit there with these non-interactive Censers wishing I had anything that could tangle on the board and not have me just lose to vanilla creatures beating my face in.

Verdict: Bad. Don’t play.

Example 7: Bounce

Bounce cards are cards that return an opponent’s card(s) to their hand. Bounce is a difficult group to evaluate, as it varies greatly from card to card, and deck to deck. On paper, bounce trades your card resources for your opponent’s less valuable resources, and we know that usually isn’t a good thing. Bounce generally has a couple things in its favour though: it can have a valuable surprise factor, and it can often take enough of your opponent’s mana and time resources that it can be worth it.

The key thing is to know how much your deck can benefit from the gain in tempo. If you’re a control deck, bounce isn’t the best since you’re spending a card to just delay the inevitable instead of trying to establish control. As a delaying tactic, the bounce spell needs to provide enough of a tempo loss for your opponent to be worth the card. Aggressive strategies however can sometimes use bounce to decent effect.

You should try to keep the amount of bounce you play low, because a lot of it in hand turns you from having a potentially sneaky trick into having nothing with an opponent who just had to wait a bit longer before crushing you.

In Scars I would say that [card]Disperse[/card] and [card]Quicksilver Geyser[/card] are both playable, but I wouldn’t want more than one, max two. [card]Lumengrid Drake[/card] and [card]Steel Sabotage[/card] are better since they have the potential to not be a loss of a card.

Verdict: Playable, but keep it low. The larger swing in time and mana you can take from your opponent, the better.

CONCLUSION

Oof. I feel like I’ve written a novel, yet barely scratched the surface of the subject. There are so many more cards and situations to consider when it comes to card evaluations. I guess any more discussion will have to be for another time.

Obviously, evaluations can change in certain situations, and some of the points discussed won’t hold 100% of the time. However if you take in the points above and try to generally stick to them most of the time, I think you’ll be pretty well off and improve how well you do in limited Magic.

And hey, let me know if you have any comments, things you liked, things you didn’t, things you want to discuss, or if there’s anything you’d want me to write about for future articles on limited.

Until next time.
– Paul MacKinnon

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