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
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
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Voltage Flare
Lethal Exploit
Twisted Embrace
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Ninja's Kunai
Intercessor's Arrest
Master's Rebuke
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Spirited Companion
Sunblade Samurai
Okiba Reckoner Raid
Moon-Circuit Hacker
Top Uncommons
Twinshot Sniper
Life of Toshiro Umezawa
Blossom Prancer
Generous Visitor
Selfless Samurai
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Michiko's Reign of Truth
Behold the Unspeakable
Rabbit Battery
Banishing Slash
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The top 6 gold uncommons (GR, RB, UB, UG, WB, WR)
Seismic Wave
Tempered in Solitude
