My big picture view on Neon Dynasty
Limited is that there isn't a predictable reason to associate most
color pairs with a specific synergy just due to density. So many of
the things you are told to do, from Ninjas to attack alone to
modified to the Orzhov both weird types stuff, have one or maybe two
non-rare cards that really pay you off for skewing your picks around
them. It's basically just artifacts and enchantments as themes called
out by the gold uncommons that you can really draft for in advance of
seeing those payoffs. If you get a single Silver-Fur Master you are
definitely supposed to bias towards cards it enhances, and the second
copy lets you go full ham on Ninjas and Rogues, but planning on that
before you see the card is a route to a bad deck a lot of the time.
A lot
of these mechanics also suffer from being fundamentally unimpressive
things to do. Ninjas is a prime offender. The old play pattern of
Ninjas was based on combat damage triggers and repeating those with
additional evasion. The new Ninjas don't have those, or if they do
they aren't repeatable, and there isn't a solid way to give your
Ninjas flying in the format like Smoke Shroud in Modern
Masters.
What
there is a lot of is weird sideways synergies. A lot of the upside of
Ninjas is in recurring creatures with enters the battlefield
triggers. Or it just happens a lot of the black Ninja stuff meshes
with the white Samurai stuff to make a cohesive aggro deck. The
format is going to be more about identifying these secret archetypes
as well as building them yourself. It's like In-N-Out Burger. Animal style isn't on the official archetype menu, but everyone knows about it and that's the thing everyone does.
A lot of the uncommons are synergy
linchpins that are more archetype agnostic than you think. The flow
of this draft format is more pick the good cards, paint your own
canvas as the pieces come to you than starting with a picture in
mind.
The
other defining aspect of this format are going to be the combat
tricks. There's a mix of very efficient one-cost tricks, tricks that
leave behind power so a lost combat is down both cards and position,
tricks stapled to channel creatures that are just low cost to
include, and mixes of all of the above. Combine this with the
relatively weak instant removal and some of the Ninjutsu incentives
(getting to that later) and you get a format where blocking and not
blocking are both bad. Attacking is good, even if your stuff doesn't
hit hard, and if you aren't blocking you need to put yourself in
spots where your opponent is soon forced to stop attacking by a true
brick wall or where you can re-trick against their trick and win. It's
going to take a bit of time feeling out the format for me to
definitively say if it's aggressive or not, but blocking is going to
go wrong a lot of the time.
Top
Cards - White
With
that stuff out of the way, lets talk commons and uncommons. I'm going
to try to approach this in the same way I liked to approach old Pro
Tour draft formats. Rather than a strict Top 3 list for each color, I
want to highlight the cards I'm expecting to be real draws to a
color (a generous B- or maybe high and unique C+ if you like grades). If the 4th
best common is something I'm paying attention to, or the 3rd
best in another color ignorable, why draw a line? Similarly for
uncommons I'm going to try to highlight the ones I'm starting around
my Top 10 or so commons (that list will come later too)
Commons
Intercessor's
Arrest
Spirited
Companion
Sunblade
Samurai
Imperial
Oath
Eiganjo
Exemplar
White
is super interesting this set. There's two white decks here: one that
leverages the good value white cards and interaction and doesn't care
a ton whether your deck has ten, seven, or two Plains, and a classic
heavier white aggressive deck. In the interest of hedging a bit my starting pick order biases
towards the first one, but it should be quickly obvious in most
drafts if you are the aggro deck at which point you can shift your
priorities and beat people up.
Sunblade
Samurai is probably the most interesting card here because it really
subsidizes three colors decks where white is a secondary or tertiary
color. Life AND a land or a solid creature with good types is just a
lot of good modes, and there are multiple white commons I'm willing
to splash.
One of
those is Intercessor's Arrest. This is just Bound in Gold from
Kaldheim, which was a great
card. There isn't anything like exploit that hard punishes auras, and
there will be big things to kill or weird stuff to shut down. In
general the removal in this set is just lower quality too, so a
three-mana clean kill is just above par. I'm also using Intercessor's
Arrest as the line for future uncommon discussion, anything better than or close to it is getting ranked.
The
other is Imperial Oath. I'm not as high as some people on this card
since I expect a bunch of 2/2s to get bogged down, but it does
immediately halt the game. The real kicker has to be casting the
second one in a scry as Squadron Hawk situation. You can block three
2/2s with a bit of life buffer, six 2/2s is not remotely reasonable.
One Imperial Oath is fine, a bunch of them and ways to ensure you hit
six mana to cast them is better. Even in the attacking decks the
tokens are good combat fodder for your Eiganjo Exemplar or Imperial
Subduer triggers to leverage.
Spirited
Companion is both one of those ways to ensure you cast Oath by
filtering deeper for lands, but it's also just free synergy real
estate. There's ways to recur cheap creatures from the graveyard, or
Ninjutsu this for a card, or just care about its types. This is way
less important once you decide to be a beatdown deck, but it isn't
even that bad there.
Eiganjo
Exemplar might be the most important card for starting down the aggro
path. There's all this stuff reminiscent of Exalted, but Exalted is
so good because it lets you trade up your medium but cheap bodies for
better cards. You start playing a game of War or High Card with a +1
modifier and eventually you have traded for all their B-'s with your
C's, and now your B-'s are fighting their backup squad and still
upgrade. Exemplar is both a two drop for starting the beats and the
true Exalted trigger to get these good lineups. It graces the top
commons list because two-drops are just good and because the
enchantment type lets it play for other synergy squads.
Underrated:
One mana tricks
One
mana tricks that leave stats around after resolving are really great.
Also, is Light the Way basically Condemn with upside? You can't load
up on these since they are combat tricks fighting for creature
dependent space with Equipment and Vehicles but they will win games
when cast.
Overrated: None, these cards are good
I
don't have any hate for any of the white commons. Just because I
didn't rank Mothrider Patrol doesn't mean I don't love 1/1 fliers
for one. I just want to place my common pick bets against the
archetype spread of white decks.
Uncommons
Selfless
Samurai
Michiko's
Reign of Truth
Banishing
Slash
Touch
the Spirit Realm
The
Top 3 here are way ahead of the commons, but I largely view Touch the
Spirit Realm as marginally better than Intercessor's Arrest.
Selfless
Samurai is just impossible to race against, or interact well against, or
really punish on rate. Just an all around silly card.
Banishing
Slash is a step ahead of Intercessor's Arrest and Touch the Spirit
Realm both because it can pre-clear an unflipped Saga and because it
might be a Shriekmaw. Just the most flexible removal spell and the
highest upside.
Michiko's
Reign of Truth is Nettlecyst. Or Cranial Plating. Whatever, pick your
era of analogy, it's probably unbeatable if your deck supports it.
Supporting it may also be “controlling generic permanents” the
way this set is built.
Underrated:
Norika Yamazaki, the Poet
Norika is settled right in the middle of aggression and engine and will
often just be looping good attackers or an early channeled Sunblade
Samurai. It could easily make this top uncommons list in a week, but the
3/2 for three stats mean the baseline is more average than good.
Overrated:
Pilots
Vehicles
isn't a real archetype. There's a lot of fine Vehicles to play, but
no real payoff for having a bunch and a lot of downside. Just treat
them as the big boost for your stuff that might require a
micro-adjustment of playing more stuff with specific stats to crew
them.
Top
Cards – Blue
Common
Moonsnare
Specialist
Moon-Circuit
Hacker
Blue
does not look great. There's some fine cards a step below these, like
Moonfolk Puzzlemaker, but I'm not moving into blue for that card
right now. Of course blue often looks like this then overperforms, so
just draft the color when its open for now and figure it out after
the fact.
I did
talk about Ninja'ing for Ninja's sake being back, but somehow the two
blue commons I care about are Ninjas. That's because Ninja'ing for
flickers sake is great, and these Ninjas do a great job of that.
Moon-Circuit Hacker is relatively efficient at it and pays you off
with something on par with Spirited Companion when it works, good
types etc etc.
But
Moonsnare Specialist is something else. Man-o-War is great, Man-o-War
that lets you flicker something too is great, but the real heater
with Moonsnare Specialist is chaining it. Ninja in Specialist after
blocks, then immediately use another Ninja to return Specialist.
Congrats, you have Spliced onto Ninja. You have built enough of a
Capsize to be graded on that scale. Shake your own hand because your
opponent might be too tilted. Specialist would be among the best
commons in the set if you deleted all the text except bouncing a
creature, and it has so much potential to do more.
Underrated:
Disruption Protocol and Cheap Artifacts
The
other blue decks I'm excited to play involve a lot of artifact
nonsense, and it feels like the payoff for that is casting Disruption
Protocol as Counterspell. I'm also very interested in using the red
Yamazaki to recur Mnemonic Sphere for peak nonsense.
Overrated:
Network Disruptor
Ok, so
you did a Ninja thing. Congrats, now what. You tapped a permanent
next turn? Great job, you attack for 2 or something again? Wow, big
plays over here.
Uncommons
Behold
the Unspeakable
Replication
Specialist
Prosperous
Thief
Behold
the Unspeakable is bananas. Bog down the game, draw a ton of cards,
then either kill them with a huge flier or have a profitable thing to
loop with a Ninja. One of the best uncommons in the set.
Replication
Specialist is a big flier that makes tangible advantages. Good stuff,
moving on.
Prosperous
Thief is basically the reason to do the aggro Ninja thing outside the
gold uncommon, and only because it makes that snowball into something
bigger. It's also just another efficient Ninja for flickering since
the damage treasure makes it effectively cost one there.
Underrated:
Anchor to Reality
There
is a good thing to pseudo-Tinker for at common: Thundersteel
Colossus. And Vehicles are weirdly hard to kill. In any aggressively
slanted blue deck I'm willing to play this duo to punk people out of
games.
Overrated:
Mobilizer Mech
A
solid Build Around F. Name the scenario you actually want this over
a two-drop that can crew Vehicles on its own. If you can crew this,
you can crew anything else and just have a different card that isn't
conditional. The best I've got is maybe you have a surplus of Pilot
tokens and really need a way to launder fake three power into real
three power, at which point this card is about as good as any
equipment.
Top
Cards – Black
Commons
Lethal
Exploit
Twisted
Embrace
Okiba
Reckoner Raid
Undercity
Scrounger
The
first three cards here seem to be the Limited guru consensus best
cards, but I'm a Twisted Embrace apologist. Starting with Geothermal
Kami there's enough ways to loop this and bury people in removal to
override any weird awkwardness, and the instant removal just sucks in
the format. Lethal Exploit wins out for first place as that hard to
get instant removal, but Twisted Embrace is a real build around in
addition to being removal.
Okiba
Reckoner Raid isn't quite Vampire Spawn because it is pretty bad
later on, but it's just so easy to squeeze into a curve. It's also
one of the core pieces of what I envision Orzhov Aggro to look like,
letting you squeak in a high damage black Ninja before following up
with Befriending the Moths to force lethal, or just giving Dragonfly
Suit menace. Great card, but falls off fast enough I'm not taking it
over removal to start.
Undercity
Scrounger is just an engine, churning out Treasures regardless whose
turn the creature died on. Or the best brick wall for a multicolor
control deck. Black is a bit short on artifacts for some of its
synergies too, making this doubly important as an artifact that makes
more. You can take this card early because it predicts opening up a
wide range of synergies and reliably get paid off on one or more of
them.
Underrated and Overrated:
Virus Beetle
I
really do like Virus Beetle, but people love their Ravenous Rats too
much and need to be put in their place. Pick this card because you
are making it do real work as a synergy piece, not because it's a
random sorta value thing. If your final deck isn't making it work by
counting artifacts or reliably Ninja-ing it or sacrificing it, cut
it. It's an insane synergy piece, but a trap of a normal card.
Uncommons
Life
of Toshiro Umezawa
Assassin's
Ink
Dockside
Chef
Nezumi
Prowler
If you
kill your opponent's early creature with Life of Toshiro Umezawa, the
game may as well end on the spot. Then later it's Elephant Guide (or
insert your choice of aura that leaves a body around). Now imagine
there was a card that did this twice every turn, and you will get a
fraction of my experience learning about that card at the Betrayers
of Kamigawa Prerelease.
All
that stuff about bad instant removal doesn't apply to Assassin's Ink.
It's not just good removal, it's good removal in a set that doesn't
have other good instant unconditional removal.
Dockside
Chef and Nezumi Prowler are a step down from those in the mix of the
best commons. Dockside Chef is how you leverage a lot of the
sacrifice stuff or Undercity Scrounger, and Nezumi Prowler is just a
pile of upside and stats.
Leech
Gauntlet and Gravelighter are a bit behind all of these cards and
still good, but aren't as independently great or unique.
Underrated:
The Long Reach of Night
I'm a
bit cooled on this card after realizing how weird the text is, but it
still hits on recurrable value and good types. This is the kind of
card I want to Ninja back to my hand, and it has the evasion to help
itself out.
Overrated:
These cards are just good
Similar
to the white commons, all the black uncommons feel like they deserve
space in a deck. Maybe Go-Shintai of Hidden Cruelty is a bit clunky,
but it kills a lot of stuff. Or maybe someone really wants to slam
Enormous Energy Blade on the table, but they know in their heart it
isn't a good idea.
Top
Cards – Red
Commons
Kami's
Flare
Voltage
Surge
There
is a serious drop off in quality beyond the two obviously good
removal spells in red. The cards aren't bad, but they aren't draws to
decks. Three- and four-drops that don't dominate games, mediocre
two-drops, and Experimental Synthesizer is fine but meshes oddly
poorly with the blue artifact cards. I think Peerless Samurai is the
third best red common, but it's still just a three drop with limited
scope of play.
This
is getting long, so I'll spare you the discussion of why Shock with
two-for-one yourself upside is a bit worse than Lightning Strike that
upgrades to Searing Blaze with minimal effort.
Underrated:
Ironhoof Boar
The
trick half of Ironhoof Boar is worse than it looks, but the
Charging Monstrosaur half is going to hit like a truck. This is what
I want to cast off Peerless Samurai.
Overrated:
Simian Sling
I
think a lot of people are viewing these reconfigure cards like Living
Weapons and not creatures with upside. This is basically not a card
that provides no value and won't trade until you pump mana into an
overpriced Tormentor's Helm equip, and that card wasn't even that
exciting.
Uncommons
Twinshot
Sniper
Rabbit
Battery
Seismic
Wave
Tempered
in Solitude
Good
news for red: the uncommons are nuts. Red is likely ending up as a
support color because it will get divided by people first picking
great cards and the second tier of medium stuff drying up too fast.
Twinshot
Sniper is Shriekmaw, but also Shock, but also synergy with Ninjas and
artifacts? Cool, it's the best uncommon, take it.
Rabbit
Battery is everything Simian Sling wishes it was. It is an efficient
equip, provides a massive upgrade, and the chip shots are free value
on top of all that. Boots of Speed wishes it granted toughness and could attack or pick up other enhancements on its own.
Seismic
Wave is easy to misread, but it does three damage to a non-artifact
creature if you target one between the two effects. That's on top of just Arc Trailing
sometimes.
I have
heard “aggro doesn't need card advantage” takes on Tempered in
Solitude. Those people can wait for my next blog post discussing
aggression as a resources, but until then they can lose because their
opponent draws two cards a turn for free while attacking. No matter
how much people tell me Limited has changed, no one has really proven
to me that two cards for free a turn reliably loses to someone
without a Howling Mine.
Underrated (and Overrated):
Reinforced Ronin
This is also both overrated and underrated, in a similar way to Virus
Beetle. You should not play this as an aggro card. The whole point of
Reinforced Ronin is that it enables everything. There's five or so
uncommons that turn the channel into a card drawing loop, a bunch of
artifact trigger lineups, and then from there you can sometimes free
roll beatdown with it. When I get excited about any synergy engine
that isn't enabled by a Ninja, it's probably enabled by this card.
Overrated:
Dragonspark Reactor
This
is not Shrine of Burning Rage. That card incremented way faster. This
is a powerful build around for a really dedicated deck, but you need
to be really, really dedicated.
Flame
Discharge is an honorable overrated mention. It's acceptable removal
and an instant in a world where that is valuable, but it's way worse
than either common because you need to do extra work for it to match
them in quality.
Top
Cards – Green
Commons
Master's
Rebuke
Jukai
Preserver
All
that chat about bad instant removal? Master's Rebuke is a decent one.
Fang of Shigeki is already among the better green common low drops,
and the high drops are all big/bigs. This is the biggest re-trick in
the format to hold onto.
Jukai
Preserver is more rates and types goodness. It's probably the least
exciting common I've ranked, but it's a lot of good rate and types in
one card.
This
might look a lot like the red and blue lists of dry commons, but the
next tier down for green is pretty impressive. Greater Tanuki,
Geothermal Kami, Tales of Master Seshiro top a list of just solid
workhorse commons. If your 13th
through 23rd
best cards are largely green that's good, but don't expect a ton of
your best 8 cards to come from the color.
Underrated:
Geothermal Kami
This
isn't quite Elite Guardmage, but it isn't hard to make it close.
Starting with Twisted Embrace and continuing to various Sagas there
are quite a few profitable enchantments to recur with this. I'm
expecting to get this late after picking those other cards up and it
is competing for four-drop space, but the walking hot tub will do
good work.
Overrated:
Greater Tanuki and Careful Cultivation
In a
common trend, I actually like Greater Tanuki but I know it's
overrated. It is not Krosan Tusker, which was actually Divination.
Careful
Cultivation is the real offender. It's a split card mediocre ramp
creature or unplayable card, which isn't a split card. Greater Tanuki
is a bit of an extension of that issue, where a 6/5 trample is fine
to cast but discarding it to three mana Rampant Growth isn't really a
good thing.
What
Greater Tanuki does point to is a similar to Imperial Order. A
deck where you overload on six drops because they are good. The
typical fail point of ramp in Limited is burning cards on mana and
not having a volume or quality of big things to make it worth it, and
Tanuki gives you the option of Rampant Growth when you have two other
six-drops in hand. Once you get to this hypothetical all giant idiots
deck that wants nineteen or more mana sources, then I'm excited about
Careful Cultivation, but it's a support piece and not an incentive.
Care about these cards when your deck has five six drops, not when it has one.
Uncommons
Blossom
Prancer
Generous
Visitor
Kappa
Tech Wrecker
I'm
going to call Blossom Prancer Thragtusk. The highest value commentary
I can add on the card is letting people argue about if that is
hyperbole.
Generous
Visitor is insane if it triggers twice. Over half of green's commons
are enchantments. About half of the rest can find or recur
enchantments. It will trigger twice.
Kappa
Tech Wrecker is either the best early blocker, a way to enable your
fight-ish removal, Disenchant, or loop synergy. Similar does
everything well vibes to Nezumi Prowler. Remember: this and the
common deathtoucher are the setups for Spinning Wheel Kick you are
looking for.
I have
Go-shintai of Boundless Vigor a bit below these, in the good but not
great common range. It just takes a while to spin up. The upside of
multiple Shrines may pan out such that it moves up into this higher
tier. Boseiju Reaches Skyward is in a similar tier, just pretend the
second chapter doesn't exist and it's a giant but a bit slow
Mulldrifter.
Underrated:
Storyweave
People
always disrespect Feral Invocation, but whenever it wins a combat
things get real bad for your opponent. This is that with upside of
generating surprise blockers to Feral Invocation.
Spinning
Wheel Kick is also getting a bit too much hate. The whole lack of
instant removal thing applies yet again, and even if it is six mana
to do anything it's awfully close to six mana win the game if you
control something.
Overrated:
Historian's Wisdom
The
upside on this card is Sheltered Boughs, an unplayable common from
Crimson Vow. Cool
story.
Honorable
mention goes to the channel side of Roaring Earth. If you want to
talk about inefficient X spells, that's a good start. It gets a pass
because it's a buy out to a great early drop, but you really want an
aggressive curve to support this enchantment.
Top
Cards – Other
Common
Ninja's
Kunai
Ninja's
Kunai is a Top 10 common to first pick because it isn't much worse
than any of the top cards in colors and it is colorless. Typically
this card doesn't let you pay in installments, costs more, and can't
be thrown at people's face, there's all the recursion and good types
discussion too. Note the equipment does the damage, so no lifelink or
deathtouch upsides here.
Uncommons
Every
gold uncommon except GW, WU, GB, and UR
Walking
Skyscraper
Edit: Containment Construct
The
other gold uncommons
Colossal
Skyturtle, Invigorating Hot Spring, Oni-Cult Anvil, Naomi, Pillar of
Order, and Silver-Fur Master should all be obvious payoffs for doing
the official color pair theme thing. Asari Captain need a smidge of
discussion, but the first time you play it then leverage an attack
with Mothrider Patrol or Peerless Samurai should make it obvious the
card is great.
Walking
Skyscraper for six mana is unbelievable. That's not a lot of work.
The
rest of the gold uncommons are solid, but not directly game breaking
or archetype making. Don't forget Gloomshrieker can be Ninja'ed
back.
Edit: Adding Containment Construct after thinking about the basic curves it offers with The Modern Era and Akki Ronin as well as being a Reinforced Ronin setup. Treat it like an Izzet hybrid/gold card with some risk it just won't pay off each draft.
Top
Commons
Here
is an preliminary Top 10 list of the commons I listed with tier
breaks, as well as the commons basically tied for 10th
place. Every uncommon I ranked is at worse starting in the same rank
as the 3rd
through 5th
place cards here.
Moonsnare
Specialist
Kami's
Flare
-----
Voltage
Flare
Lethal
Exploit
Twisted
Embrace
-----
Ninja's
Kunai
Intercessor's
Arrest
Master's
Rebuke
-----
Spirited
Companion
Sunblade
Samurai
Okiba
Reckoner Raid
Moon-Circuit
Hacker
Top Uncommons
These are the uncommons I think are distinctly better than that Voltage Flare tier, with the top two blocks starting off ahead of every common.
Edit: Adding multicolor cards.
Twinshot
Sniper
Life
of Toshiro Umezawa
Blossom
Prancer
Generous
Visitor
Selfless
Samurai
-----
Michiko's
Reign of Truth
Behold
the Unspeakable
Rabbit
Battery
Banishing
Slash
-----
The top 6 gold uncommons (GR, RB, UB, UG, WB, WR)
Seismic
Wave
Tempered
in Solitude
