It's a colorless Gray Ogre that turns into a harder to equip Leonin Scimitar that might give somebody menace... It's not the worst filler card you could put in, but it's pretty meh.
Let's be clear - if this cost 2 it would be very, very good. As it stands, this is maybe slightly worse than Thraben Inspector (+1 power, cost not spread out, card is always a mediocre artifact but also never a land you don't need). I keep thinking it's a delirium enabler because of the types, but it's pretty hard to get into the yard!
I think this is a little underrated. The card is powerful enough to be worth running on its own merits a lot of the time, but the problem is an overall lack of synergy in a pretty synergy-focused format. A good deck is generally going to have 10-12 slots devoted to some kind of archetypal theme, and ideally most of the rest will be high-impact cards like removal or bombs. That doesn't leave a lot of room for a card that merely trades well in the early game.
It's a card I'm very happy to pick up if I've gotten an Avacynian Missionaries, but that's almost the only relevant interaction in the set. Otherwise, it's a reasonable 23rd but that's about it.
I think this is a crucial 'hole-filling' card in the WR Equipment deck archetype. A perennial issue with Equipment decks (and I say this as someone who played quite a bit in Mirrodin Limited) is having too many pants and not enough people. This was only ever really 'solved' with Living Weapons (and Bestow for Auras).
However, this guy holds equipment well, and then gives you more for the rest of your creatures once it dies. Its biggest drawback is that it's a DFC that can't transform Heirloom.
The W equipment based decks want it (there is some support for GW human equipment in this format, but all of the equipment payoffs are in white), and it's mediocre filler otherwise.
If you're in need of a 6-drop, then this costs 6 mana and gives you an acceptable amount of stat points.
I'd rather not have to put this into my deck, but trample is especially relevant from my experience in this set. There's a lot of token produces and creatures that provide clues, so decks can chump block for a very long time.
IT's actually a nice curve topper in the BG delirium deck. It becomes much better once it gets trample because chumping does not work anymore as said already.
If you're playing a Delirium deck, you're probably doing it for the very cheap payoff cards like Topplegeist or Obsessive Skinner. That, conveniently, means that if you're trying to fill out your curve, you will need filler near the high end. Dire Swine serves that role.
I'd look for stuff like this on the wheel, but 7th or 8th pick isn't the worst. You do typically want one, but it's still a low-priority card.
Better than I thought it would be. Sometimes +1/+1 is enough, and it's often +2/+2 or more in decks that have incidental investigation, which is great for a 1-mana trick that replaces itself.
I think this card is quite playable, but if you have no other ways to make clues, leave it out.
My evaluation of the card has changed to, "I will always play the first copy in werewolves/delerium, and play as many of these as I can in UG clues". Cantripping is just really big on an effect like this, and it only costing 1 mana makes it really easy to leave open. It worked really well in my GB delerium deck as the only instant, since it enabler delerium and randomly blew my opponent out (countering his reduce to ash). Worst case scenario it cycled and got an instant in the yard, which was still pretty good.
The card is basically Wildsize, with a tiny bit lower floor and a hugely higher ceiling (and also just generally more efficient).
Wildsize was a very good card, and this is better. All combat tricks have an upper limit as to how many you can play, of course, but I'd always play the first two, and would be happy to take the first one as early as 4th pick.
I like Confront the Unknown a decent amount. If the +1/+1 makes a significant difference in a combat (and that is a somewhat big if) then it's a very good card, if not then it's sub-par ... that adds up to a decent card in my view. In a deck which generates or takes advantage of clues, the card goes from decent to good or very good if the deck has a decent number of creatures.
Unless I have a lot of vampires or a very low curve deck, I want to avoid this card. Of course, if this is my opening pick, I will gobble up every vampire I can find.
The BR vampire deck is real, and this is a legitimate card in it, but I wouldn't first pick it. It's the sort of deck that only one person can be drafting, and you have to be pretty confident you're "the" guy before you'd really want to spend a pick on this.
Obviously in pack two or three the likelihood of anyone wanting this goes way down, and you can probably pick it up on the wheel.
Unless I have a lot of vampires or a very low curve deck, I want to avoid this card. Of course, if this is my opening pick, I will gobble up every vampire I can find.
Pretty much that was my last draft. Opening pick Gorger, it was made easier by the fact that the only other red cards in the pack were Structural Distortion and Hulking Devil, and no good black as well. But I will probably pick any good removal over this.
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I dunno, this guy has some decent upside if you are in the BR madness deck, but that deck has way more trouble getting enablers rather than payoffs. Most of the common vampires that do not have madness already are mediocre curve filler besides the Voldaren Duelist (Vampire Noble, etc), so playing mediocre cards to get this guy online is not too great. I would rank this somewhere between pick 5-8 for the RB deck: I would never take this over cards such as Fiery Temper, Ravenous Bloodseeker, Twins of Mauer Estate, Gisa's Bidding, but I would probably speculate on it if the pick was between this and Bloodmad Vampire or Reduce to Ashes
As a general rule, I like to have a handful of instants in my deck. It makes the game harder for opponents in general. In that space, this card has a decent amount of utility. It's cheap, makes for good ambushes on the opponents' probable best creatures, is reasonably hard to play around, and just punishes the kind of super-aggressive greediness that I think is one of the least fun things about Magic.
That said, this isn't a card I would always run, one I am very ready to abandon against a careful opponent, and definitely not a card I would take highly, since it gets punished by instants just as much as it punishes others.
Combat tricks get kind of a bad rap because good players don't lose to them nearly as much as weak players, but the fact is that most people aren't so good that combat tricks won't totally shut them down once in a while, especially near the beginning of a format.
I like Aim High if my deck is in the market for a combat trick. Opposing flyers can just win games, and this can do a good job of removal against an attacking flyer. If that is not needed, then this can function as a standard combat trick since +2/+2 will turn around a combat a decent amount of the time.
I do not like relying on combat tricks on defense, though, as that can lead to an unfavorable blowout. In this past weekend's GP Barcelona coverage (I think it was in the top 8?) I almost yelled at the screen "Don't cast that combat trick on your 1/2 blocking creature, don't don't don't!" but he did and William Huey Jensen blew him out and won that game 3 due to it with Just the Wind on his 1/2. Aim High, though, is also decent on offense so with that flexibility I think it's an okay card to include as long as I have enough creatures in the deck to justify including a combat trick (a deck with only 13 creatures, for example, is not one in which I would pretty much ever include a combat trick like this).
It's a card I'm very happy to pick up if I've gotten an Avacynian Missionaries, but that's almost the only relevant interaction in the set. Otherwise, it's a reasonable 23rd but that's about it.
However, this guy holds equipment well, and then gives you more for the rest of your creatures once it dies. Its biggest drawback is that it's a DFC that can't transform Heirloom.
I'd rather not have to put this into my deck, but trample is especially relevant from my experience in this set. There's a lot of token produces and creatures that provide clues, so decks can chump block for a very long time.
I'd look for stuff like this on the wheel, but 7th or 8th pick isn't the worst. You do typically want one, but it's still a low-priority card.
This card should be played by now.
I think this card is quite playable, but if you have no other ways to make clues, leave it out.
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Wildsize was a very good card, and this is better. All combat tricks have an upper limit as to how many you can play, of course, but I'd always play the first two, and would be happy to take the first one as early as 4th pick.
Unless I have a lot of vampires or a very low curve deck, I want to avoid this card. Of course, if this is my opening pick, I will gobble up every vampire I can find.
Obviously in pack two or three the likelihood of anyone wanting this goes way down, and you can probably pick it up on the wheel.
Pretty much that was my last draft. Opening pick Gorger, it was made easier by the fact that the only other red cards in the pack were Structural Distortion and Hulking Devil, and no good black as well. But I will probably pick any good removal over this.
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Have a good day. Do not get your spirits too high though.
That said, this isn't a card I would always run, one I am very ready to abandon against a careful opponent, and definitely not a card I would take highly, since it gets punished by instants just as much as it punishes others.
Combat tricks get kind of a bad rap because good players don't lose to them nearly as much as weak players, but the fact is that most people aren't so good that combat tricks won't totally shut them down once in a while, especially near the beginning of a format.
I do not like relying on combat tricks on defense, though, as that can lead to an unfavorable blowout. In this past weekend's GP Barcelona coverage (I think it was in the top 8?) I almost yelled at the screen "Don't cast that combat trick on your 1/2 blocking creature, don't don't don't!" but he did and William Huey Jensen blew him out and won that game 3 due to it with Just the Wind on his 1/2. Aim High, though, is also decent on offense so with that flexibility I think it's an okay card to include as long as I have enough creatures in the deck to justify including a combat trick (a deck with only 13 creatures, for example, is not one in which I would pretty much ever include a combat trick like this).
That said, +2/+2 is generally enough to get through whatever you need to get through. Starting one in your green decks isn't embarrassing.