Invasion Draft: Gold Rares Gary Wise Absorb While the gold counters are obviously very powerful, there are some inherent problems with them as far as their use in limited play goes. I've preached already about how one should try to maintain a proactive attitude in Limited play as opposed to a reactive one, and counter magic is inherently reactive. Throw in a difficult casting cost and you have a card that, while playable, shouldn't be drafted as highly as just about any 2-power flyer. A 5th - 7th pick. Ęther Rift Any card that gives your opponent an out clause is generally not going to be viable in Limited play. This card is not the exception to that rule. A 12th - 14th pick. Armored Guardian Well this thing's a powerhouse. In the early game, it provides a 5-toughness body that will slow down opposing offenses, while in the late game it provides a way to break through creature lock. Either of its abilities could make this a high pick, but the combination of the two makes it incredible. A 1st - 2nd pick. Artifact Mutation A great card in the wrong environment, Aura Mutation would be card advantage in most Limited formats, but at present there's very little out there worth using it on. The best targets seem to be the Attendants, and they can be sacrificed in response in order to avoid the advantage of getting 1/1s. Sideboardable, but not too often. A 9th - 11th pick. Aura Mutation Better than its cousin in Invasion-only Limited, there are a lot of viable targets for this Mutation. The best of these seems to be Armadillo Cloak, which will often allow the caster to block/kill the once-cloaked creature and have a token left over. That's a lot of card advantage. A 7th - 9th pick. Barrin's Spite Remember Undo? Back in the early days of Limited play, there was a card that appeared to be weak but proved to be very strong. It cost UU1 and returned two target creatures to their owner's hand at sorcery speed. The Spite is just better, clearing two blockers out of the way as Undo did, but killing one of them in the process. There isn't much to complain about here. A 1st - 2nd pick. Blazing Specter Okay, the Specter is obviously good, and I'm not going to tell you otherwise, but it may not be as exceptional as you think. Not only are you paying four multi-colored mana for a 2/2, but also almost every other flyer in the format can at least trade with it in combat. The Specter's abilities are strong, but cards like Breath of Darigaaz and Zanam Djinn should be taken over it. A 1st - 3rd pick. Captain Sisay Now here we have an interesting card. By its lonesome, Sisay is weak, but if you have a Dragon, Necropolis or the like to go searching for, it can be amazing. Don't pick it too high, but if you have a Dragon, you really want this in your deck. A 4th - 10th pick. Coalition Victory Everyone seems to have their story about the time they saw someone die to Victory, but the simple fact is there are much easier ways to win a game than paying 8 mana in the realm of five colors with permanents of each color in play. Try it out if you're playing for fun, but don't mess with it with anything on the line. A 10th - 12th pick. Crosis, the Purger Crosis is one of the better dragons by virtue of its special ability and the fact that its being black makes it un-Banishable, but in the end, there's only one thing that matters: it's a Dragon. Pick it. A 1st pick. Darigaaz, the Igniter Makes fire, who cares? Flies, who cares? As long as it hits for its allotted 6 points per turn, I'm happy. A 1st pick. Dromar, the Banisher "The best dragon" Dromar 'Washes Out' the table each turn. The argument against this ability is that it returns itself to its owners hand 3/5ths of the time, but that really shouldn't ever matter. It's especially fun to name 'red' when you have a Shivan Emissary in play (I've done this!). A 1st pick. Dueling Grounds This seems to be one of the under appreciated cards in the set. Any time a card provides as powerful effect as this one, it's worth taking a look at. Get a Cloak (Traveler's or Armadillo on just about any creature) and all of a sudden you have a board situation that should give your opponents fits. A 7th - 9th pick. Hanna, Ship's Navigator Like Sisay, the strength of this card depends wholly on the other cards in one's deck. While a 1/2 for 3 is seldom a good buy, in a deck with Exotic Curse, Attendants and the like, it can be great. A 4th - 10th pick. Since when is a 2/2 for 4 bad? Kangee, Aerie Keeper Everyone gets so fixated on how good Kangee is with cards like Ordered Migration and Dream Thrush that they seem to underrate it when they have no birds in their deck. At 2/2 for 4, Kangee should be good enough to make any UW deck. The bird ability is just the bonus. A 3rd - 5th pick. Meteor Storm Mainly, this card serves as notice to your opponent that they only have a few turns to break through your defenses. What are you at, 16? Well, I have three cards in hand, so you have five turns to live. Combine this time bomb mentality with the potential ability to kill just about anything that walks, flies or swims and you have a strong card that can conceivably be picked first. A 1st - 4th pick. Noble Panther The cool thing about the rare slot is that R & D can take the prerogative and make some cards that are a little more powerful then their casting costs suggest they should be. 3/3 for three mana would have been a great deal here, but the Panther's first strike ability makes it an incredibly efficient creature. There aren't a lot of creatures the WG mage should be taking over this one. A 1st - 3rd pick. Overabundance There may be times you want to sideboard this in if you're playing aggro RG against an activation cost-heavy control deck, but I haven't seen it. An 11th - 13th pick. Pyre Zombie This is the prize. If you open this card, you play RB. If it were just an unkillable creature, it'd be really good. If you could only sac it for its damage effect, it'd be really good. Put them together and you have insanity: a Hammer of Bogardan that kills 4/4 attackers. A 1st pick. Raging Kavu What makes this card good? It's a mere 3/1 for 1RG that, while chock full of special abilities, is just as easy to kill as any other 1-toughness creature. Simply put, this card throws off the math, making it impossible for one's opponent to calculate potential combat damage and the like. Throw in the fact it has a power of three for as many mana and you have a very solid card. A 4rd - 6th pick. Reckless Assault Now this card is a powerhouse. Like any RB card, the Assault's main weakness is a susceptibility to Acolytes, but with that said, I'd take my chances. Yes, repeated activations can pile up, but the simple fact is that with only one mana required per activation the Assault is efficient and relentless. A 1st - 3rd pick. Rith, the Awakener Thanks to Brian Kibler, we know this monster is even better with Armadillo Cloak. Good to know. Rith, despite not being black, should be considered one of the better Dragons due to its central color, green, enabling the fast and consistent ability to cast it in a timely manner. A 1st pick. Sabertooth Nishoba Moving down the list we find yet another powerhouse. The Nishoba is big, hard to block and hard to kill. That it tramples prevents the use of regenerators from efficiently stopping it, while its pro red and pro blue aspects make it a bane to most of the decks in the format. I'd take Charging Troll over it, but not much else. A 1st - 3rd pick. Spinal Embrace Amongst the five best cards in the set, one may not appreciate just how powerful the Embrace is until they see it in play. You're attacking with your Dragon and a 4/4 creature, about to win the game, when your opponent suddenly taps six mana into their pool. All of a sudden, your two best creatures are dead, your opponent has gained six life and your hopes of winning are gone. Draft this card. A 1st pick. Stalking Assassin Obviously very powerful, the Assassin is a high-maintenance card that's very hard to protect. With a toughness of one, the Assassin requires the use of a minimum of seven mana in order to kill its first creature, so it isn't an early game card, but in the mid to late game, if your opponent doesn't find a way to deal with it, the game should end in a hurry. A 1st - 3rd pick. Teferi's Moat I may take a bit of a stoning on this one, but I think this card is vastly overrated. First, it costs five mana, which is a lot for a reactive card. Second, it doesn't shut down fliers, which are usually the first creatures one wants to prevent from attacking. Throw in the fact that it only stops one color of creature in a format where people are drafting three, four or five colors, as well as the fact that cards like Tidal Visionary, Blind Seer and Kavu Chameleon throw a major wrench into the Moat player's plans and you have a card that, while playable, is being picked way too high. A 3rd - 5th pick. Treva, the Renewer Treva is the weakest of the Dragons. It can be banished and its ability is amongst the weakest...fortunately, it's a 6/6 flyer. A 1st pick. Tsabo Tavoc That Tsabo is massive is obvious. She's got a power of 7, she's got first strike, and she stops Dragons and a whole bunch of other stuff. Someone might look at her and decide that 7 mana is just too much to pay, regardless of how dominant she can be once she enters play. Someone might be wrong. A 1st - 3rd pick. Undermine Undermine is a strong tempo card. Where Absorb is purely reactive, Undermine helps keep pressure on, stopping the crucial spell or just doing the all-important 3 points of damage. One can always recover from Absorb, but if you're at 3 or less and your opponent shows you Undermine, its time to concede. A 4th - 6th pick. Vile Consumption Maybe its conceivable that a really aggressive UB deck with, say, 4 Soul Burns might want to play this in the hope that it'll help bridge the gap between creature damage and... who am I kidding? A 12th - 14th pick. Void This is a potentially destructive card. First pick caliber, Void isn't great in every situation, but cast on turn five to remove two 4-cc creature and 2 more cards in hand, you won't regret your choice. A 1st - 3rd pick.