Ravnica Allegiance Mechanics for Best of One Draft

#5: Adapt

Yea, it's trendy and all to bash adapt these days. The mechanic is solid for Traditional Limited, where having early plays that are good draws later on is important, but Best of One isn't really about that. Mana sinks are significantly worse if you can expect to have spells to spend all your mana on for a long time, and the opening hand fixing makes that much more likely.

That said, this is a good Vanilla Test reminder. I'm not going to drop a card in value because it has adapt that I don't think will be activated that often, I just think its baseline stats will matter more. Aeromunculus is a perfect example of this. I would gladly play a three mana 2/3 flier in Draft without an upside, the fact that it has adapt is just nice on top of a solid playable. Take and play the already fine bodies with adapt, as at the worst the ability represents a combat boost making blocks difficult, but don't fiddle too much with the ones that make you spend extra mana before you get something out of them.

#4: Addendum

The difference between Best of One and Traditional matches has almost no impact on addendum. The power level of each addendum card is largely tied to the literal text printed on it.

One we have the full set revealed, then we can start making some second level assumptions. For example, Sphinx's Insight is pretty mediocre in Best of One by virtue of being an expensive way to draw few cards. When trying to evaluate addendum cards in context of Best of One, ask the following questions:

-Does this card tangibly impact the battlefield, or am I using a valuable durdle slot on it?

-Am I overpaying for this effect if I cast it on my main phase?

-If I wait to cast this at instant speed, am I always going to want to cast it? Or do I have other things I would want to cast instead?

#3: Spectacle

Spectacle is pure weirdness on this scale.

By default, a mechanic that rewards you for getting ahead and attacking should be a bit better in Best of One. So Level Zero is that it is better in a vacuum. But spectacle isn't mentor that always rewards you for attacking, and you can get bricked by good blockers and suddenly your spectacle deck looks bad. So Level One is that spectacle is worse against properly adjusted opponents.

But some of these spectacle cards make it look like conditional kicker, which if it comes with a cost increase goes back to the same metrics as adapt. If I want to play the card normally, great it has an upside. If I don't then I'm not going out of my way for anything short of an exceptional effect. Rafter Demon is well into unexciting territory, and Light up the Stage is an unexciting mana for minimal cards proposition.

So this ends up being another wait and see. The questions are simpler though.

-Is this spectacle card baseline good?

-Can other decks reliably stop me from turning on spectacle with blockers?

I have a feeling that the answer to both is sometimes, so I expect spectacle cards to either gain a fair amount or lose a lot in Best of One on a case by case basis. Watch out, don't get fooled into playing below average things.

#2: Afterlife

One of the things I highlighted as amazing in Best of One draft is card advantage that plays directly to the battlefield. Afterlife is just that. You cast your creature, make an exchange, and there's still free Spirit tokens for future combat needs.

Once you put tokens on a mechanic, it can really skew a format. Afterlife might be enough to take Ravnica Allegiance Best of One down a peg from aggressive to just proactive. One toughness attackers are going to be really bad because they trade for the back half of a normal Orzhov card.

It also has some Level Two impacts on other mechanics. Slower decks are going to need a number of ways to stop small fliers, and cheap removal that doesn't exile is going to look kinda dumb if it leaves them with a Spirit token. These both point towards spectacle having a metagame upside, where larger ground creatures can attack profitably into the <a href="http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Hitchclaw+Recluse" target="_blank">Hitchclaw Recluse</a> style cards used to stop Spirit tokens and where your opponent needs creatures to stop attackers and not all purpose removal.

#1: Riot

Riot is basically the perfect Best of One mechanic. Haste for games you are racing, larger creatures in games that come down to actual combat fights, and all around just bigger and faster battlefield presence.

In many formats, afterlife would be the defining mechanic for Best of One Limited, but in Ravnica Allegiance Riot ensures huge creatures will be slamming into those 1/1s. The extra size ensures tokens are worth only fractional cards and aren't able to chip away relevant life totals over time. Oh, and having larger creatures makes spectacle enabling attackers less likely to be profitable attacks.

Riot as a mechanic is just raw power on a lot of axes, and all that is magnified in Best of One Limited. It isn't a snowballing, format defining mechanic like mentor was in Guilds of Ravnica, but I expect Gruul to be a strong contender for best guild just based on it having cards like this.