The way the Power Play thread popped up with minimal fanfare, I think most Conspiracies in general have just kinda coasted without due discussion. My biggest concern in this regard has been the emerging view that Hidden agenda cards are not only being deemed playable, but tier 1.
Let's be clear: I've looked at it from both angles. I see where the Hidden agenda fans are coming from, but I think they might be misinterpreting the cards.
For example, Double Stroke. A free Fork is certainly cool. But unless I'm missing something, that's NOT what this is. This is you making a bet, in the blind (before even seeing your hand), and hoping it pays off. I'm sure someone else who's done the math can explain why the odds of 1 specific card popping up are too low for this type of effect to be worth playing.
Thoughts?
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I'm officially proposing we retire the word "insane" from the MtG vocabulary.
"The best way to be different is to be better" - Gene Muir
This is you making a bet, in the blind (before even seeing your hand), and hoping it pays off. I'm sure someone else who's done the math can explain why the odds of 1 specific card popping up are too low for this type of effect to be worth playing.
Thoughts?
When you pick ANY card to put in your deck, you are making the same kind of "bet". That you will draw it, and it will impact the game state. So that's not much of a drawback compared to any other pick.
The reason why conspiracies in general so awesome is similar to the reason why utility lands are so great - in a 40-card deck, only ~23 of your spell picks end up mattering, which is only around half your picks, and in cube you're often leaving some solid cards out of your deck.
Pick Double Stroke over a "very good" card, then replace that "very good" card in your deck with one of the "solid" cards you would have cut. Now name that "solid" card with Double Stroke. If the result is better than "very good" (it often is!) then your deck got better because you picked Double Stroke.
Double Stroke is absurd and my playgroup is considering removing it. Have you ever seen a double stroke'd Turn 2 Green Sun's, followed by redrawing it later in the game for two 5 drops? Disgusting. Also disgusting on time warp, any of the confluences, the list goes on. It's not super hard to find the card either, with access to other conspiracies like Backup Plan, Advantageous Proclamation, as well as all the tutors available in the format.
Hidden Agendas are free spells. Sometimes they seem "lame" in a vacuum, but at the cost of a draft pick these cards always make the deck and when you can hit them they are stellar. Giving another one of your one drops haste or a +1+1 counter in an aggro deck is huge. Or how about +1+1 counter clause on a persist creature? They have been stellar for us from the beginning, and honestly should not be in an unpowered cube. (I am probably going to take World Knit out of my unpowered cube because the world knit deck is often one of if not the best at the table when it's drafted.)
Hidden Agendas are extremely powerful for a few reasons:
1) They do not require a slot in your deck. In a Cube, where every card is powerful, you're often left cutting strong cards to get down to 40. Hidden Agendas, like lands, offer a way to include more effects in your deck without having to cut spells.
2) They do not cost any mana nor any cards. The effect you get is totally free. If you never draw the card during a game, oh well. If you DO draw it, however, you get the effect completely for free. This makes something even as seemingly minor as Brago's Favor exceptionally powerful. Double Stroke is outright absurd.
In short, the only way that drafting Double Stroke ever hurts you is that you're giving up one pick, so it's maybe not a first pick card. But the potential payoff is huge. Think of it not so much like getting a free situational fork, but rather that you're getting a free powerup to a card in your deck.
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I would absolutely take it first in certain packs, along with pretty much any of the playable conspiracies with some easier to argue than others. Free spells are just so insane, even if it's a free augmentation, and with how powerful the cards in a cube already are you're really putting these cards that are already considered the best onto another level.
Here's the rub: Even if I entertained the idea that Hidden agendas are playable based purely on their low opportunity cost, that's still a rather selfish argument. By that I mean, we're only judging it based on the individual. What about our format as a whole? What about the community (peers, drafters, playgroups, etc.)?
There's another, bigger opportunity cost to consider here: The opportunity cost of a card slot in the overall cube, rather than a slot in one player's deck. In order to fit a Double Stroke or Muzzio's Preparations, I have to cut two colorless cards. Those two cards that I cut could, hypothetically, have fit into just as many pools without ever being dead. They could even be the final necessary pieces for someone's dream deck.
So let me put it to you guys in another way:
How many placeholders and/or outright bad cards are we running that we swap them out for cards for drastically reduced functionality? None of my cubes are perfect, but even my weakest card will have a bigger impact on a greater number of games than a card-specific, often one-time-use "power-up".
Think of it not so much like getting a free situational fork, but rather that you're getting a free powerup to a card in your deck.
You realize you're making my argument for me here, right? I made the Fork analogy to explain how other people view this card incorrectly. I see it very much the way you describe; a hyper-narrow "power-up". The difference is I'm not willing to give it a pass because it's free, colorless and doesn't take a deck slot. When did we cubers stop holding cards to the general rule that being dependent on something else is a huge, often make-or-break drawback?
I could see the argument for playing literally any of these effects if they were tacked onto mana producing lands, but not as potential do-nothings. I'm just not a fan of running dead cards (even if they exist outside of my deck).
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At the end of the day, if you're not playing a card like Cloudgoat Ranger or the other ones you've mentioned for power reasons, Hidden Agendas and conspiracies in general have no business being in your cube. And the rule I hold these cards to is the power-level aspect, as in: in a cube environment, are these cards powerful? And the answer is an overwhelming yes. Being free, colorless, and not taking a deck slot is exactly one of the reasons they are powerful.
Think of it not so much like getting a free situational fork, but rather that you're getting a free powerup to a card in your deck.
You realize you're making my argument for me here, right? I made the Fork analogy to explain how other people view this card incorrectly. I see it very much the way you describe; a hyper-narrow "power-up". When did we cubers stop holding cards to the general rule that being dependent on something else is a huge, often make-or-break drawback?
When you stopped having to draw the thing that is dependent on the other thing to be good. If card A is only good when you have card B, then it sucks when you draw only card A. With conspiracies, you never draw card A. It's just there to use and be awesome if you draw card B. It's like drafting lands in that the only downside is what you didn't draft instead of the land.
As an example, if you drafted Demonic Tutor, and then later found a card that said "Search your library for two cards and take it into your hand. Reshuffle your library afterwards." would you draft that card and replace Demonic Tutor in the deck with the new card? Because that is what you're doing. Except it's stronger than that because if you picked those two cards first and second and then got completely locked out of black, you can just choose to double up a different instant or sorcery instead. That's the opposite of narrow.
Here's the rub: Even if I entertained the idea that Hidden agendas are playable based purely on their low opportunity cost, that's still a rather selfish argument. By that I mean, we're only judging it based on the individual. What about our format as a whole? What about the community (peers, drafters, playgroups, etc.)?
There's another, bigger opportunity cost to consider here: The opportunity cost of a card slot in the overall cube, rather than a slot in one player's deck. In order to fit a Double Stroke or Muzzio's Preparations, I have to cut two colorless cards. Those two cards that I cut could, hypothetically, have fit into just as many pools without ever being dead. They could even be the final necessary pieces for someone's dream deck.
You don't have to justify choosing not to run the cards. As far as I can tell, most of us don't. But when we're asked to evaluate power level and pick order we will (correctly) identify these cards as powerful, high-pick cards.
Lets assume you are playing lightning bolt in your deck and selected double stroke for the HA that you are associating with it. You are just giving that spell a power up. Lightning bolt with out double stroke has just as much of a chance of being drawn with the HA in place as it does without it.
In drafting the HA you aren't banking on just one card working with it like you would be with Time Vault and an untapper, you are just hoping it works with a n instant or sorcery. It isn't narrow at all.
Edward Mass, all of the cards in your cube are apparently not worth playing because you usually won't draw them. You should remove all the cards from your cube and replace them with the non-Hidden Agenda conspiracies.
Edward Mass, all of the cards in your cube are apparently not worth playing because you usually won't draw them. You should remove all the cards from your cube and replace them with the non-Hidden Agenda conspiracies.
1) They're too strong for an unpowered environment in my opinion. They also have essentially zero downside and zero opportunity cost during deck building considering the power level of the effect they provide.
2) Sometimes they start feeling a little bit more like Unhinged or a scar cube than "real" Magic. Oh, so you can play Cruel Ultimatum in your mono green ramp deck? That seems...strange, unpredictable, and possibly messes too much with the general structure of the game.
Edward Mass, you're free to evaluate cards as you see fit, but you have to understand that your opinions don't tend to square with the thinking of the community at large. Sometimes the group think is incorrect, but in the cases we've been discussing I don't think you've provided much evidence to change the general opinion. (For example, considering Cloudgoat Ranger overrated without much reason.)
You don't have to justify choosing not to run the cards. As far as I can tell, most of us don't.
This is a great point. I just wanted to offer my take, since I'd read some chatter which seemed to indicate that HAs were being treated as better than a wide segment of the field (which seems like a bad eval, IMHO).
Edward Mass, all of the cards in your cube are apparently not worth playing because you usually won't draw them. You should remove all the cards from your cube and replace them with the non-Hidden Agenda conspiracies.
Not wrong though. A hidden agenda has the exact same chance of coming up in a game as any other card (except for the non-HA conspiracies).
If it helps someone evaluate the cards correctly (which is apparently not trivial), then that is helpful.
I see where you're coming from, but we'll have to agree to disagree. Your argument boils down to "most cards do nothing a certain percentage of the time, by virtue of never being drawn." And you're using that to create a false equivalency with HAs, which basically do nothing at least 50% of the time, in spite of being drawn. (Using "drawn" loosely in this case.)
But again, to each their own. I enjoy the debate as much as anything else.
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I'm officially proposing we retire the word "insane" from the MtG vocabulary.
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Most of the cards are really powerful, and the upgrade they provide is both worth the pick and the risk of not drawing the card. Since you've never played with them, I could see how they're hard to measure. But I assure you, they're absolutely powerful enough to justify their slots if you elect to run them. Since you can only play 23 nonland playables from your pool, spending an extra pick to improve the quality of one of the ones that will make your final 40 is a great thing to be doing.
Not wrong though. A hidden agenda has the exact same chance of coming up in a game as any other card (except for the non-HA conspiracies).
If it helps someone evaluate the cards correctly (which is apparently not trivial), then that is helpful.
I see where you're coming from, but we'll have to agree to disagree. Your argument boils down to "most cards do nothing a certain percentage of the time, by virtue of never being drawn." And you're using that to create a false equivalency with HAs, which basically do nothing at least 50% of the time, in spite of being drawn. (Using "drawn" loosely in this case.)
But again, to each their own. I enjoy the debate as much as anything else.
I feel like you're considering the HA to be "drawn" every game, and then do nothing some portion of games, and estimating that value to be low somehow.
I count the HA as being "drawn" whenever the card it's stapled to is drawn. It then has an effect 100% of the time that card is played. So it "does something" exactly as often as the card it's stapled to (counting, drew the card + played the card). Not some unrelated, difficult-to-calculate amount of the time. Exactly that amount of the time.
And you're using that to create a false equivalency with HAs, which basically do nothing at least 50% of the time, in spite of being drawn. (Using "drawn" loosely in this case.)
The fact that you're comparing it to a card you would need to draw is missing the point entirely. If they were just 0 mana cost cards you played in your 40, they would be 100% awful and there would be no argument. While I understand the effect is always active, you should compare the closest analog to your other cards, which is how good it is assuming the card it affects is drawn.
As it turns out, a card that reads "make your best card better with a small amount of opportunity cost lost during the draft phase" is very strong. Note that they get much better when you run strong spells. Double Stroke is insane with Mind Twist, but if the strongest you have is Bolt, well, it's still really good honestly but you get what I'm saying.
The main reasons to exclude them are:
Too powerful
Too annoying to keep track of (My personal reason, I didn't like having to write ***** down for them)
Feels like fake Magic
You can disagree all day, but the first time you lose to the Muzzio's Prep + persist combo or Double Stroke + Lingering Souls I have a feeling you'll realize why they become valued on the level of power in some cases.
As an aside, I find myself disagreeing with a lot of what you say and I can't help but feel it's because you have some preconceived notions about card evaluation that are completely off the norm. Not necessarily a bad thing, but I wouldn't be surprised to if you suffer a lack of support in this forum. Don't be swayed too much by the groupthink, but understand that the majority often holds opinions for good reason
Most of the cards are really powerful, and the upgrade they provide is both worth the pick and the risk of not drawing the card. Since you've never played with them, I could see how they're hard to measure. But I assure you, they're absolutely powerful enough to justify their slots if you elect to run them. Since you can only play 23 nonland playables from your pool, spending an extra pick to improve the quality of one of the ones that will make your final 40 is a great thing to be doing.
i think wtwlf said it best here. these are just way too good for a non-powered environment, & if playing UN-cards is distasteful to you, as has also alrdy been said, these oftentimes come off feeling like those b/c of their ridiculousness
As far as the opportunity cost of running them in your Cube over other colorless spells, most people I've seen that run a Conspiracy section run Lore Seeker, and thus include an extra 15 cards in their Cube to make up that additional pack.
Lore Seeker isn't inherently tied to Conspiracies, but they play around in a similar space and tend to come together. If you're running a Lore Seeker pack anyways, you can ignore this bit, but it makes it so the Conspiracies are truly "free".
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I'm all for the conspiracies and draft-affecting cards, but I don't run Lore Seeker because the externalities left a bad taste in my mouth. Taking Lore Seeker is decent - you're giving up a fairly high pick for another first pick. Sitting in the seat after the Lore Seeker is awesome - you just get an extra second pick for free. Sitting in the seat behind the Lore Seeker is the worst, because you get the lowest pick out of the extra pack.
I'm all for the conspiracies and draft-affecting cards, but I don't run Lore Seeker because the externalities left a bad taste in my mouth. Taking Lore Seeker is decent - you're giving up a fairly high pick for another first pick. Sitting in the seat after the Lore Seeker is awesome - you just get an extra second pick for free. Sitting in the seat behind the Lore Seeker is the worst, because you get the lowest pick out of the extra pack.
I think that's part of the fun - do I second pick this loreseeker or let it go knowing that I will get 6th or 7th pick out of the loreseeker pack. I like that it adds that layer of analysis.
Plus, even being the 7th person to see a loreseeker pack probably impacts your win rate by, like, 1%. It's not that huge unless you are desperate for a specific card for a very narrow archetype or something.
I think that's part of the fun - do I second pick this loreseeker or let it go knowing that I will get 6th or 7th pick out of the loreseeker pack. I like that it adds that layer of analysis.
Plus, even being the 7th person to see a loreseeker pack probably impacts your win rate by, like, 1%. It's not that huge unless you are desperate for a specific card for a very narrow archetype or something.
Either way, the person who benefits most from the card is someone who never even had to consider taking Lore Seeker. And if it happens to be first picked (which should be about 50% of the time if you're evaluating the card correctly), the person who gets shafted most on the extra pack never even had a choice in the matter. That's what I mean by externalities: the decision is interesting in itself, but the impact on people who were not involved in the decision is too swingy.
It also sounds like you might be evaluating the card wrong. The correct way to view it is a value comparison between (a) your alternative in the pack + a random 7th-8th pick, versus (b) a random first pick + a random 9th pick + a colorless bear. Given that the difference between a 7th-8th pick and a 9th pick is minimal, the judgment is really about whether your alternative in the pack is better than an average first pick. Given that one of the slots in the pack is occupied by Lore Seeker, on average the best remaining card is going to be slightly worse, meaning Lore Seeker is the right pick just over 50% of the time based on expected values. Of course, you might value the certainty of a 45th percentile first pick more than the slightly higher expectation on a random first pick, which would push the percentage down a little, but not much.
This actually makes me want to add a custom version that just gives you a first pick from the new pack and throws away the rest of the cards.
Let's be clear: I've looked at it from both angles. I see where the Hidden agenda fans are coming from, but I think they might be misinterpreting the cards.
For example, Double Stroke. A free Fork is certainly cool. But unless I'm missing something, that's NOT what this is. This is you making a bet, in the blind (before even seeing your hand), and hoping it pays off. I'm sure someone else who's done the math can explain why the odds of 1 specific card popping up are too low for this type of effect to be worth playing.
Thoughts?
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When you pick ANY card to put in your deck, you are making the same kind of "bet". That you will draw it, and it will impact the game state. So that's not much of a drawback compared to any other pick.
The reason why conspiracies in general so awesome is similar to the reason why utility lands are so great - in a 40-card deck, only ~23 of your spell picks end up mattering, which is only around half your picks, and in cube you're often leaving some solid cards out of your deck.
Pick Double Stroke over a "very good" card, then replace that "very good" card in your deck with one of the "solid" cards you would have cut. Now name that "solid" card with Double Stroke. If the result is better than "very good" (it often is!) then your deck got better because you picked Double Stroke.
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1) They do not require a slot in your deck. In a Cube, where every card is powerful, you're often left cutting strong cards to get down to 40. Hidden Agendas, like lands, offer a way to include more effects in your deck without having to cut spells.
2) They do not cost any mana nor any cards. The effect you get is totally free. If you never draw the card during a game, oh well. If you DO draw it, however, you get the effect completely for free. This makes something even as seemingly minor as Brago's Favor exceptionally powerful. Double Stroke is outright absurd.
In short, the only way that drafting Double Stroke ever hurts you is that you're giving up one pick, so it's maybe not a first pick card. But the potential payoff is huge. Think of it not so much like getting a free situational fork, but rather that you're getting a free powerup to a card in your deck.
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There's another, bigger opportunity cost to consider here: The opportunity cost of a card slot in the overall cube, rather than a slot in one player's deck. In order to fit a Double Stroke or Muzzio's Preparations, I have to cut two colorless cards. Those two cards that I cut could, hypothetically, have fit into just as many pools without ever being dead. They could even be the final necessary pieces for someone's dream deck.
So let me put it to you guys in another way:
How many placeholders and/or outright bad cards are we running that we swap them out for cards for drastically reduced functionality? None of my cubes are perfect, but even my weakest card will have a bigger impact on a greater number of games than a card-specific, often one-time-use "power-up".
You realize you're making my argument for me here, right? I made the Fork analogy to explain how other people view this card incorrectly. I see it very much the way you describe; a hyper-narrow "power-up". The difference is I'm not willing to give it a pass because it's free, colorless and doesn't take a deck slot. When did we cubers stop holding cards to the general rule that being dependent on something else is a huge, often make-or-break drawback?
I could see the argument for playing literally any of these effects if they were tacked onto mana producing lands, but not as potential do-nothings. I'm just not a fan of running dead cards (even if they exist outside of my deck).
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When you stopped having to draw the thing that is dependent on the other thing to be good. If card A is only good when you have card B, then it sucks when you draw only card A. With conspiracies, you never draw card A. It's just there to use and be awesome if you draw card B. It's like drafting lands in that the only downside is what you didn't draft instead of the land.
As an example, if you drafted Demonic Tutor, and then later found a card that said "Search your library for two cards and take it into your hand. Reshuffle your library afterwards." would you draft that card and replace Demonic Tutor in the deck with the new card? Because that is what you're doing. Except it's stronger than that because if you picked those two cards first and second and then got completely locked out of black, you can just choose to double up a different instant or sorcery instead. That's the opposite of narrow.
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You don't have to justify choosing not to run the cards. As far as I can tell, most of us don't. But when we're asked to evaluate power level and pick order we will (correctly) identify these cards as powerful, high-pick cards.
In drafting the HA you aren't banking on just one card working with it like you would be with Time Vault and an untapper, you are just hoping it works with a n instant or sorcery. It isn't narrow at all.
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This is probably not helpful
If it helps someone evaluate the cards correctly (which is apparently not trivial), then that is helpful.
1) They're too strong for an unpowered environment in my opinion. They also have essentially zero downside and zero opportunity cost during deck building considering the power level of the effect they provide.
2) Sometimes they start feeling a little bit more like Unhinged or a scar cube than "real" Magic. Oh, so you can play Cruel Ultimatum in your mono green ramp deck? That seems...strange, unpredictable, and possibly messes too much with the general structure of the game.
Edward Mass, you're free to evaluate cards as you see fit, but you have to understand that your opinions don't tend to square with the thinking of the community at large. Sometimes the group think is incorrect, but in the cases we've been discussing I don't think you've provided much evidence to change the general opinion. (For example, considering Cloudgoat Ranger overrated without much reason.)
This is a great point. I just wanted to offer my take, since I'd read some chatter which seemed to indicate that HAs were being treated as better than a wide segment of the field (which seems like a bad eval, IMHO).
True, but I don't take it personally.
I see where you're coming from, but we'll have to agree to disagree. Your argument boils down to "most cards do nothing a certain percentage of the time, by virtue of never being drawn." And you're using that to create a false equivalency with HAs, which basically do nothing at least 50% of the time, in spite of being drawn. (Using "drawn" loosely in this case.)
But again, to each their own. I enjoy the debate as much as anything else.
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I feel like you're considering the HA to be "drawn" every game, and then do nothing some portion of games, and estimating that value to be low somehow.
I count the HA as being "drawn" whenever the card it's stapled to is drawn. It then has an effect 100% of the time that card is played. So it "does something" exactly as often as the card it's stapled to (counting, drew the card + played the card). Not some unrelated, difficult-to-calculate amount of the time. Exactly that amount of the time.
The fact that you're comparing it to a card you would need to draw is missing the point entirely. If they were just 0 mana cost cards you played in your 40, they would be 100% awful and there would be no argument. While I understand the effect is always active, you should compare the closest analog to your other cards, which is how good it is assuming the card it affects is drawn.
As it turns out, a card that reads "make your best card better with a small amount of opportunity cost lost during the draft phase" is very strong. Note that they get much better when you run strong spells. Double Stroke is insane with Mind Twist, but if the strongest you have is Bolt, well, it's still really good honestly but you get what I'm saying.
The main reasons to exclude them are:
Too powerful
Too annoying to keep track of (My personal reason, I didn't like having to write ***** down for them)
Feels like fake Magic
You can disagree all day, but the first time you lose to the Muzzio's Prep + persist combo or Double Stroke + Lingering Souls I have a feeling you'll realize why they become valued on the level of power in some cases.
As an aside, I find myself disagreeing with a lot of what you say and I can't help but feel it's because you have some preconceived notions about card evaluation that are completely off the norm. Not necessarily a bad thing, but I wouldn't be surprised to if you suffer a lack of support in this forum. Don't be swayed too much by the groupthink, but understand that the majority often holds opinions for good reason
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i think wtwlf said it best here. these are just way too good for a non-powered environment, & if playing UN-cards is distasteful to you, as has also alrdy been said, these oftentimes come off feeling like those b/c of their ridiculousness
Lore Seeker isn't inherently tied to Conspiracies, but they play around in a similar space and tend to come together. If you're running a Lore Seeker pack anyways, you can ignore this bit, but it makes it so the Conspiracies are truly "free".
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I think that's part of the fun - do I second pick this loreseeker or let it go knowing that I will get 6th or 7th pick out of the loreseeker pack. I like that it adds that layer of analysis.
Plus, even being the 7th person to see a loreseeker pack probably impacts your win rate by, like, 1%. It's not that huge unless you are desperate for a specific card for a very narrow archetype or something.
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It also sounds like you might be evaluating the card wrong. The correct way to view it is a value comparison between (a) your alternative in the pack + a random 7th-8th pick, versus (b) a random first pick + a random 9th pick + a colorless bear. Given that the difference between a 7th-8th pick and a 9th pick is minimal, the judgment is really about whether your alternative in the pack is better than an average first pick. Given that one of the slots in the pack is occupied by Lore Seeker, on average the best remaining card is going to be slightly worse, meaning Lore Seeker is the right pick just over 50% of the time based on expected values. Of course, you might value the certainty of a 45th percentile first pick more than the slightly higher expectation on a random first pick, which would push the percentage down a little, but not much.
This actually makes me want to add a custom version that just gives you a first pick from the new pack and throws away the rest of the cards.