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Theory

Magic : The Classroom – Choices – Part III

By Dan Eckstein ⋅ November 3, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment ⋅ Print This Post

In the last cou­ple of weeks I’ve had lessons involv­ing Sealed and how to ana­lyze your card choices. Both of these lessons were designed so that we begin to think of cards by their Expected Turn of Play (ETP). We also looked at how some cards may have a strong effect ver­sus their ETP but that was because of some other costs beyond mana require­ments. Please review these lessons before read­ing further.

Today I’ll begin eval­u­at­ing Zendikar specif­i­cally by look­ing at its card types. In sealed the most impor­tant card type is crea­tures. While in Con­structed it’s pos­si­ble to see decks that win by non­crea­ture means because of some cool combo or relent­less burn to the dome in Sealed it just isn’t plau­si­ble. You may occa­sion­ally see some­one cast Light­ning Bolt tar­get­ing a play­ers last 3 Life but for the most part it’s a crea­ture blast­ing through the red zone that wins the game.

When look­ing at crea­tures we need to look at what ben­e­fit we get from the card ver­sus its ETP. First we’ll look at the “Vanilla” crea­tures. Vanilla is how we name crea­tures that have no spe­cial abil­i­ties. Vanil­las in the game of Magic are becom­ing fewer and fewer. In fact there are only 5 Vanilla crea­tures in the whole Zendikar set. From my view­point I look to the fol­low­ing for­mula when eval­u­at­ing vanilla crea­tures. Power plus tough­ness divided by 2 needs to be equal to or greater than its ETP. So let’s see how our vanil­las line up.

Vastwood GorgerStonework Puma is the eas­i­est on ETP since it has no color require­ments so if I have 3 land I can play it no mat­ter what my deck is. That’s a good ben­e­fit but using the for­mula we only get 2 ben­e­fit from ETP of 3. Pil­larfield Ox and Vast­wood Gorger also don’t make the cut very often since the ox gives us 3 ben­e­fit to 4 ETP and Gorger yield 5.5 to an ETP of 6. How­ever it is impor­tant to notice that both crea­tures tough­ness is high enough to sur­vive mul­ti­ple removal spells and mul­ti­ple power lev­els from crea­tures in Zendikar. That means they will sur­vive more turns that other crea­tures so that may make them playable in a pinch. Shat­ter­skull Giant is prob­a­bly the least playable of the Vanil­las since his dou­ble red pushes his ETP up to 4.5 and only yields 3.5 ben­e­fit from his Power and Tough­ness. Lastly, Kraken Hatch­ling is the only card that gives more ben­e­fit than ETP cost. The for­mula yields 2 while you can expect to play it as early as turn 1. Sure it isn’t going to win a game for you but it goes a long way in stop­ping you from losing.

The rest of the numer­ous crea­tures in Zendikar must be eval­u­ated in a more com­plex man­ner. Basi­cally we need to see if there addi­tional text is worth the extra ETP cost involved or the extra ben­e­fits are worth the draw­back that’s in their text. I’m going to hit a few exam­ples and my scale maybe dif­fer­ent than yours in some areas but the exam­ples should pro­vide you with the ground work for your own conclusions.

First let’s look at crea­tures with clas­sic abil­i­ties. Basi­cally each abil­ity has a jus­ti­fi­able ETP costs. When can fig­ure each cost by research­ing the archives of Magic and com­par­ing the cost increase for an abil­ity. Be care­ful how far back you go for your val­ues. The infa­mous “power creep” has made many abil­i­ties cheaper than they used to be.

Kor AeronautOne of the most clas­sic abil­i­ties is Fly­ing. It’s become such a reg­u­lar thing that in today’s Stan­dard it’s almost impos­si­ble to find a card that Flies but does noth­ing else. The rea­son we want no other effects is so we can get a pure ETP eval­u­a­tion of the card. Wind Drake is the best exam­ple. It yields 2 ben­e­fit in our P/T for­mula but has an ETP of 3. There­fore we can think that Fly­ing cost 1 ETP. In Zendikar we have no pure fly­ers but Heart­stab­ber Mos­quito and Kor Aero­naut come close since their Kicker is the added abil­ity and we don’t have to pay that cost. Using fly­ing as a plus 1 to ETP Kor Aero­naut comes out ahead of nor­mal and there­fore a good pick. P/T for­mula yields 2 plus 1 for fly­ing means an ETP of 3 would be fine while the dou­ble White for Kor Aero­nauts puts it’s ETP of 2.5ish depend­ing on how white our mana base is. While the Mos­quito had an ETP of 1 to high for its fly­ing, power and tough­ness the kicker is a much stronger than the Aero­nauts so it’s still playable if you’re plan­ning on kick­ing it.

Another clas­sic of course is Tram­ple. Once again you really have to dig through the box of cards to find a Stan­dard for­mat plain Tram­pler. Stam­ped­ing Rhino fits the bill nicely show­ing that Tram­ple adds 1 to the Expected Turn of Play. Curi­ous though is Rhox Charger. This is one of many cards that basi­cally says Exalted is a free mechanic. In Zendikar we have only two crea­tures that have full time tram­ple. One is Mythic and the other rare so they aren’t likely to land in your card pool but if they do I would seri­ously con­sider them in your list. Ram­pag­ing Baloths has an ETP of 6 (note: 6 mana is high enough the dou­ble Green doesn’t affect ETP) while P/T ben­e­fit of 6 as well. The Tram­ple is basi­cally free as is the Land­fall which by the way only pro­duces a 4/4 for free. Last I checked that was pretty playable. The other is Terra Stom­per. Its ETP is a bit harder to fig­ure. I would place it at 6 as well but it also gives us 8 in the P/T Ben­e­fit for­mula. That’s pretty strong but we also get Tram­ple and it can’t be coun­tered on top of that. Let me dou­ble check my records but that seems like a bomb by the numbers.

We could go through all of the basic mechan­ics and come up with their cost in terms of ETP. In fact now that I think of it lets make that the home­work today. Post in the com­ments the ETP cost of any other mechanic and post the card that jus­ti­fies your opin­ion. That way we can all gain knowl­edge from each other.

The real dilemma is eval­u­at­ing new mechan­ics in a new expan­sion. In Zendikar we have Kicker, Land­fall, and Ally­ship (I made that one up).

Torch SlingerKicker of course doesn’t directly affect ETP since we have to add cost to make the kicker. It’s really sim­ple to just think about straight ETP for the crea­ture and then see if the kicker is worth the extra mana cost just as if we had two spells in one. Of course the over­all advan­tage of basi­cally hav­ing two options in every card makes kicker some­thing we should always con­sider. But our con­ver­sa­tion right now doesn’t really look at that yet. The only real ques­tion is whether it is worth keep­ing a sub par crea­ture for the poten­tial of being able to kick it when needed. Torch Slinger for exam­ple has an ETP that is a turn late for the P/T for­mula. Its kicker is also rel­a­tively blah. As burn goes 2 dam­age to just crea­tures isn’t worth 2 mana. Put them together and you still haven’t made up for the cost. While if your oppo­nent hap­pens to play some non­ba­sic land Gob­lin Ruin­blaster would be usable. The Crea­ture by itself is eas­ily 1.5 turns too slow but if you get a chance to kick it then it’s jus­ti­fi­able. Its land destruc­tion for four which is nor­mal and you get a 2/1 stick as a bonus. If Wiz­ards hadn’t said non­ba­sic this card would be sick but as it is I would keep it handy but not Main deck.

Land­fall is quite per­plex­ing since each some many dif­fer­ent effects hap­pen from dif­fer­ent cards. For our pur­poses her we are going to say that we will be able to trig­ger land­fall once. It may be that each land­fall will make us play it a turn later so we can play the crea­ture and then play our land for the turn. This would make the ETP go up one but there would also be times that our oppo­nent won’t find removal in time and we would get mul­ti­ple land drops with the crea­ture in play. This vari­abil­ity is too unpre­dictable so we are going to say just 1 land­fall each.

Steppe LynxThe eas­i­est to eval­u­ate Land­falls are the crea­tures that get a tem­po­rary boost in Power and Tough­ness until end of turn. These effects are tem­po­rary and as such they seem to be cheap­est. Steppe Lynx is only a .5 for ETP of 1 but with a land fall he becomes 2.5 for the same ETP. Effec­tively say­ing that the Land­fall bonus cost us .5 and its poten­tial is a gain of 1.5 in the short term. While Win­drider Eel cost is a full one over expected ETP(2 from P/T and 1 for Fly­ing) and only gives a short term plus one for the Land­fall. Plated Geo­pede and Ter­ri­to­r­ial Baloth do the same. The Geo­pede does have First Strike as an addi­tional bonus so depend­ing on the value of First Strike it is bet­ter. (Maybe you could be the first to fig­ure out First Strike for the Home­work.) The worst temp pumper is Hagra Croc­o­dile. Not only does land­fall appar­ently cost us two turns but we also get the can’t block draw­back. And for a bonus that lets us break even at best. Shame on any­one play­ing that card. Even Hedron Scram­bler is bet­ter than that. The rest of the Land­falls fall into rar­ity slots. The uncom­mon almost seem like free effects while the rare’s and Mythic seem to give us cheaper ETP for extra bonus’s. All we really need to do is keep them in play long enough.

If the Land­fall was var­ied then the Ally­ship is just a wishy washy. In the com­mon slot we have addi­tional ETP cost rang­ing from free up to 1.5 turn delay. The free is obvi­ously the best. Oran-Rief Sur­vival­ist, Tuk­tuk Grunts, and Umara Rap­tor are all cards that with the +1/+1 counter come out the same as they would to just cast the same size crea­ture and have to poten­tial to see other allies to make the stronger. I con­sider these all to be playable on their own and the Ally­ship is a bonus. One the other end Jog­ara Bard is unplayable. 2.5 for an ETP of 4 and an effect that is only use­ful IF the Bard isn’t the first to the “party.” In the uncom­mon Allies we find almost no playables com­pared to cost. The worst is Seascape Aeri­al­ist where we extend our ETP by 2.5 just to make other Allies (that we prob­a­bly don’t have) fly. Hagra Dia­bolist adds the same to our ETP value but at least he makes our oppo­nent lose life. Kazandu Blade­mas­ter on the other hand is quite a pack­age. For an ETP of 3 we get a 2/2 with First Strike and Vig­i­lance. That on its own is worth the price of admis­sion. Add a cou­ple of other Allies in there and we have some real mus­cle. Most of the rares are playable if you get one. The big excep­tion is Kabira Evan­gel. It only has an addi­tional cost of .5 but Pro­tec­tion until end of turn and non-instant speed is pretty lame. If it had Flash then it would be very use­ful but it doesn’t so it’s rel­e­gated to nearly unplayable.

Hope this has given you some food for thought in your upcom­ing Sealed tour­na­ments. I see we are almost out of time. The bell just seems to get faster and faster. I do want to say quick con­grat­u­la­tions to the Foot­ball team on their Dis­trict Cham­pi­onship. Hope you make it to States!

Dan is a High School Teacher who does everything he can to squeeze Magic into his schedule. Between being a Father, Husband, and Coach it’s pretty hard. Articles by Dan focus on tips and lessons for beginners that he has learned while teaching his students how to play their best. As a player Dan has a propensity to go Crazy For Combos so occasionally these articles happen as well.

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Comments

  1. While I don’t agree with the ETP eval­u­a­tion sys­tem I feel it pro­vides a great foun­da­tion on which to teach new play­ers how to eval­u­ate their card selec­tion, not just in sealed, but in gen­eral. There are going to be times when the eval­u­a­tion doesn’t hold up at all, though.

    For instance — land­fall is much more awe­some when you have har­row, Khalni heart, etc. Allies way bet­ter when you play with a full deck of ally’s.

    Those cards will also have a poten­tial impact on what your ETP is. They can get you from turn “three” to turn “five” using the ETP sys­tem. And if Khalni is on the field first? They can take you from turn three to turn seven.

    But yeah, it’s a really good foun­da­tion on which to teach new play­ers to eval­u­ate their cards.

    Steve Floor | November 4, 2009, 11:41 am | #

  2. Both accel­er­a­tion and syn­ergy are upcom­ing. remem­ber it’s a multiparter.

    Thanks for your con­tri­bu­tion and comments.

    I appre­ci­ate hear­ing from the readers.

    Mtgxman | November 4, 2009, 12:08 pm | #

  3. I think I have some­thing more pro­duc­tive to say than Steve’s com­ment. The ETP sys­tem is a solid sys­tem when it comes to eval­u­at­ing vanilla crea­tures and crea­tures with non-triggered abil­i­ties (tram­ple, first strike vig­i­lance, etc.), but when it gets to land­fall and allies, it requires almost a whole new sys­tem. The sys­tem has to be a dynamic form of ETP where not only does it have the reg­u­lar ETP val­ues (look­ing at the turn two Kazandu Blade­mas­ter which shat­ters it’s ETP to begin with) but then you have to account for scal­ing, such as a turn 3 umara rap­tor. Not only do you have to scale the Blademaster’s value up for becom­ing big­ger, you scale Rap­tor up for mak­ing the Blade­mas­ter big­ger. Land­fall scales sim­i­larly based on how many cards such as har­row or khalni heart you have to play or in play. Bal­roth Wood­crasher, by the vanilla ETP sys­tem, is a card which is never, EVER worth play­ing. But I can not count how many times that wood­crasher went from a 4/4 to a 16/16 tram­ple due to a well timed khalni heart trig­ger or har­row. 16 + (say) 1, so 17 for 6, yeah, ridicu­lous. Even if it’s not best case sce­nario, you’re still look­ing at hope­fully hit­ting that land drop any­ways and at least get­ting a tem­po­rary 9 for six.

    My cur­rent rem­edy for land­fall is to take all the tem­po­rary effects and divide them by half. So, if a wood­crasher gets +4/+4 and tram­ple, that crea­ture only receives and +2.5 value to it’s ETP. This makes it a 4+2.5, so a 6.5 for 6. Thus Wood­crasher is a playable card. Land­fall can also be scaled up by .5 for each card which allows the play of more than one land, i.e. Fetch Lands, Har­row, etc. (By this same sys­tem, steppe lynx is a 1.5 for 1, mak­ing it pretty good. I would also add at least 1 due to the fact that it’s going to hit mul­ti­ple land drops due to it’s pos­si­bil­ity to be a turn one drop.)

    For Allies, here’s my ETP solu­tion. First, you con­struct the ETP value of the card AFTER it trig­gers on itself. We’ll use Umara Rap­tor. The ETP value for the Rap­tor after trig­ger is 3 for 3, so it’s good. Now, my scal­ing for allies (not just allies which gain coun­ters) is to add +.5 to each ally’s ETP value for each ally which will be in the deck. This is due to each ally giv­ing another ally +1/+! PERMANENTLY. Ide­ally, you’d play all your allies and none of them would die, how­ever this is not the case, which is why it is only .5 and not 1.

    I’ll start on the home­work and get back to you.

    Samuel Blitch | November 4, 2009, 10:45 pm | #

  4. Cas­cade — Enlisted Wurm is a bet­ter judge than Blood­braid Elf due to the iffi­ness of the mana cost. Could be four, could be five, but if you did your land base right, then it is four. Wurm is also more dra­matic, let me explain. Wurm is a 5 for 6 if you look at it with no effect, mak­ing cas­cade a 1, how­ever it becomes much more valu­able when you cas­cade into some­thing like a Ranger of Eos. You’ve not only played the Wurm for it’s ETP value but also the ETP value of what it cas­caded into. The cas­cade value, there­fore, is the aver­age of all the ETP val­ues of all cards that the Wurm can fea­si­bly Cas­cade into. (Makes a giant num­ber when there are Blood­braid Elves and Rangers of Eos and sim­i­lar cards in your deck.….…. or Baneslayer)

    Dou­ble Strike — I’m going to use Viashino Slaugh­ter­mas­ter to define this one. a 1R 1/1 with Dou­ble Strike gives the abil­ity a value of 1. Often times though this abil­ity is paired with another such as a +1/+1 buff, or the abil­ity to play gob­lins, but I’m count­ing those as free­bies. Final Ver­dict — 1 (I did con­sider enchants and arti­facts… not that important)

    Death­touch — Giant Scor­pion, a 2 for 3 with just Death­touch, Death­touch is 1

    Exalted — This was the most dif­fi­cult one to deter­mine because so many cards give it to you for free. The num­ber I came up for it is 1, using a mix of Akrasan Squire and Out­rider of Jhess. Akrasan Squire is a 1 for 1 which has exalted (0), Jhess is a 2 for 4 with exalted (2), so I aver­aged them, see­ing as almost all other cards give it to you for free, and made it one. So any­thing with a free exalted is actu­ally awesome.

    First Strike — Light­bringer Pal­adin if you ignore the “Destroy evil” abil­ity. 4 for 5 with First Strike. First Strike = 1 (Also, Razor­foot Grif­fin is 2 for 4, plus 1 for fly­ing, plus 1 for First Strike, 4.)

    Fly­ing — defined by you, 1

    Haste — I’m going to say that since Bush­whacker can kick to make it a 1.5 for 2 with haste, and since haste has it’s own card (burst of speed) haste is .75. (Bet­ter than .5 on Bush­whacker since it gives it to every­body, worse on burst of speed because it cost it’s own mana, though it gives it to everybody.

    Intim­i­date — I love how Wiz­ards spells these out for us. Exam­ple, Blade­tusk Boar — 2.5 for 4. See­ing how Blade­tusk boar can some­times be the nuts, I’m going to say 1. It’s a total of three, not four, because it is only SOMETIMES good. A Puma stops it, any red stops it, and both of those are two pop­u­lar these days. It’s defi­natly still playable, just not all the time. So actu­ally give this two val­ues, 1 and 1.5. 1 for the mir­ror or any arti­fact crea­tures, 1.5 for any­thing else.

    Life­link — The nuts. The absolute worst exam­ple is Rhox War Monk. It has an ETP of, in my opin­ion, 3–5, I’m aver­ag­ing 4. So, a 3.5 for 4. That would make life­link .5 right? Wrong. Life­link scales with power. I fig­ure it to be .25 per every point of power. So, Rhox War Monk is actu­ally a 4.25 for 4, pretty good eh?

    Pro­tec­tion — I will say one, although every card which has the abil­ity, from what I’ve seen, bal­ances out nor­mally on P/T alone, then has a nutty abil­ity like “Exile that per­ma­nent” or First Strike (Pokes Devout Light­caster and White Knight) to make it insane, THEN YOU ADD PROTECTION. Final Ver­dict — One for merit (.5 for any­thing that’s not a color)

    Reach — Giant Spi­der, 3 for 4, reach gives 1. Sec­ond string, Oran-Rief Recluse, 2 for 3, reach gives 1.

    Regen­er­ate — I’ll give it .75 because it’s insane on River Boa and Cud­gel Troll

    Shroud — Jar Jar Sphinx is a 5 for 6 with fly­ing (makes it 6) and shroud (6?) In all cases where shroud is actu­ally good on a crea­ture, that crea­ture is good on it’s own. So I’ll give shroud a .75, just because it makes Jar Jar Sphinx that much more badass.

    Tram­ple — defined by you, 1

    Vig­i­lance — Here’s the issue, if you believe every num­ber I’ve said up to this point, then this skill is free. On every crea­ture, even Fel­i­dar Sov­er­eign, the skill is added on to crea­tures who either bal­ance out or are the nuts. (Sovereign’s life­link makes it a 5+1 for 6 with vig­i­lance, Grif­fin Sen­tinel is a 2 for 3 with fly­ing (3 for 3) and vig­i­lance (3? for three)) So, I will give it a 1, because if you find a card with vig­i­lance, it’s good.

    That should be all of them, alpha­bet­i­cally, not includ­ing land­fall and kicker because I defined those in my last post.

    For fun, let’s do a tally on everybody’s favorite card, Banes­layer Angel.

    5 for 5, holy crap, it wins already, *in the main­board*
    fly­ing, 6 for 5, wow, it’s like an Air Ele­men­tal +1, *def­i­nitely*
    First Strike 7 for 5, *absolutely*
    Life­link adds 1.25, 8.25 for 5 *EVERY TIME, I SWEAR!*
    Prot from Demons and Drag­ons makes it 9.25, +1 because of all the things that, as MC Ham­mer so aptly put, can’t touch this.

    So on a scale of 1–5, Banes­layer gets a 9.25 accord­ing to my num­bers.…… cool.

    That’s my home­work, so now every­body else can crit­i­cize my rea­son­ing skills before real­iz­ing I’m right.

    Samuel Blitch | November 4, 2009, 11:59 pm | #

  5. Wow, Sam you get the A. The curve is blown for that response. Great job.

    Any­one else can add on as well.

    Mtgxman | November 5, 2009, 2:14 pm | #

  6. This analy­sis is miss­ing numer­ous impor­tant fac­tors, and is based off of a method that is com­pletely mis­guided. For exam­ple, Wind Drake is BETTER than Griz­zly Bears. Sure, maybe when Wiz­ards costs a given flyer they make it cost one more–but the card will be BETTER than the cor­re­spond­ing ground-pounder, so when WE eval­u­ate the cards we should count fly­ing as being more than one. Fur­ther, WotC costs things based off of rar­ity and color, too. Take, for exam­ple, Vam­pire Nighthawk–we can’t accu­rately reverse engi­neer the ben­e­fit of Fly­ing + Death­touch + Life­link because it is SUPPOSED to be ahead of the curve.

    Another clear rea­son why this analy­sis needs a lot of work is that it rates cards as follows:

    Mon’s Gob­lin Raiders > Griz­zly Bears > Hill Giant

    Hill Giant ~= Faerie Squadron (3 Ben­e­fit, 4 ETP vs. 4 Ben­e­fit, 5+ ETP)

    It is very clear that Hill Giant > Bears > MGR (Depend­ing on your deck and the speed of the format…but assum­ing your curve is pretty rea­son­able at both spots), and Faerie Squadron » Hill Giant.

    Of course, this is where the whole color pie thing comes into play. The rea­son the author views “Exalted” as being “Free” is because of a fairly big mis­cal­cu­la­tion: Green is sup­posed to get a crea­ture bet­ter than 3/3 for four mana, and tram­ple is almost worth­less on a crea­ture of that size.

    In the end, just play magic, look at what good play­ers play, and fol­low your intu­ition. Doing things by the num­bers in such a con­vo­luted man­ner leads to at best a very small ben­e­fit to the afore­men­tioned strat­egy, and at worst will make you dis­count inter­nal set syn­er­gies. Notic­ing these is what sets the great drafters who win on a fairly reg­u­lar basis apart from the decent ones who win on occasion.

    Tails2k5 | November 5, 2009, 9:03 pm | #

  7. Tails, the issue with your view is that you are bas­ing your views on com­par­isons between cards. This is more of a way to see if a card is playable. For exam­ple, Out­rid­ers of Jhess is not playable because it’s value is less than the expected turn of play. It is also by this same sys­tem that you can judge how RIDICULOUS Kazandu Blade­mas­ter and Vam­pire Nighthawk are.

    Exalted is not free, it actu­ally holds value, how­ever the crea­tures which have it nor­mally are bet­ter than crea­tures that don’t have it because Wiz­ards nor­mally gives it for extra. This piece is designed to help view­ers see which cards are awe­some. Also, keep in mind that if you under­stand basic deck­build­ing mechan­ics in sealed and draft, so while Bears are good, you need to scale your mana costs. This is just how to get the best for your turn.

    Samuel Blitch | November 5, 2009, 10:18 pm | #

  8. But..but…playability is ALWAYS rel­a­tive to the field. And fur­ther­more, playa­bil­ity is not binary–some cards are quite sim­ply ‘more playable’ than oth­ers. If the goal of this sys­tem is to dis­cern that Vam­pire Knighthawk is playable, or that Mind­less Null isn’t, well, these are fairly easy things to tell. The far more impor­tant deci­sions are the ones that aren’t obvious–for exam­ple, some cards are hard to eval­u­ate, like Hagra Croc­o­dile in a moderately-aggro deck and Crypt Rip­per in a deck with not so many swamps, etc. etc. Vast­wood Gorger, the dis­par­aged Croc­o­dile, and par­tic­u­larly Shat­ter­skull Giant are fine cards in the right deck, and this analy­sis sug­gests they are more or less unplayable.

    Fur­ther­more, how does Vast­wood Gorger have an ETP of 6? And Pil­larfield Ox an ETP of 4? How many games do you really hit your first four much less six land drops?

    Tails2k5 | November 6, 2009, 4:09 am | #

  9. Tails that cost bal­ances out with all the times that mana accel­er­a­tion gives you a turn 6 on turn 4. And it’s not hard to hit a 4 drop almost every time if you know what you’re doing.

    Samuel Blitch | November 6, 2009, 9:33 am | #

  10. Tails

    There is an art and a sci­ence to Magic. This is more of the sci­ence aspect design to help develop the intu­itive feel later.

    As for your exam­ples. a kicker squadron only has 3 ben­e­fit and an extra turn of ETP for fly­ing. So you’re right that squad > Giant it has to wait for the extra turn which proves the point.

    Sec­ond, would you swing a hill giant into 4 MGR’s? Same mana invested? If you had 2 Bears would I attack with a Hill Giant? Same mana invested? While 1 on 1 the giant is supe­rior it also entails more mana invested which should be weighed accordingly.

    Nighthawk is WAY ahead of the ETP curve. That’s why it’s a lim­ited BOMB. In my opin­ion it’s one of the best cards you could hit in sealed. Of course that is why it was spoiled here on Man­a­na­tion. Con­spir­acy the­o­rist have long ago decided that Wiz­ards gives the best cards to the best sites. ;)

    Mtgxman | November 6, 2009, 12:09 pm | #

  11. Yes, I will always trade a Hill Giant for three 1/1s. If I had a Durk­wood Boars, I’d trade it for two 2/2s. This is called card advan­tage. And are you agree­ing that Faerie Squadron > Hill Giant? It clearly is a much higher pick, but this analy­sis rates it lower. MGR is a last-pick cal­iber card. The point is most lim­ited games last to the point where pure ‘effi­ciency’ what­ever that means is vastly trumped by the impact each card comes, namely, your MGR may be ‘super effi­cient’, but it will not affect the board at all and as such is a dead card. Faerie Squadron wins far more games than Hill Giant does.

    Samuel, do explain how to hit four land drops almost every time? Run­ning 24 lands in a 60 card deck gives you roughly a 50% chance of doing so. And how many times have you seen a fourth turn six drop in draft? There is maybe one card that makes this pos­si­ble in Zendikar.

    Tails2k5 | November 6, 2009, 2:31 pm | #

  12. First off Tails, this is a lim­ited series, not con­structed. Sec­ond, I have seen a turn three 4 drop into a turn four 6 drop almost any time I play against green. The land accel­er­a­tion is ridicu­lous. Also con­sider cards like, if you want to move to con­structed, llanowar elves, or back to Zen lim­ited, Green­weaver Druid. Trust me, if you do it right, you get that four mana at turn four.

    Samuel Blitch | November 10, 2009, 7:21 pm | #

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