Apocalypse Limited Review: Gold Gary Wise The following is the sixth installment of my series examining the merits of the cards in Apocalypse for Limited play. Previous installments can be found here. GOLD This is the installment you've been waiting for. Money makes the world go round, but the value of money is based on bullion, and that means the world, like this draft set, revolves around gold. Gold cards determine how many colors and which colors we draft, so this is the installment to pay the closest attention to. The danger with the gold cards in this set is the temptation they offer and how that temptation can lead you from the beaten path. First you're blue-white, then you splash black, then you open Jilt, go four colors and screw up your mana base irreparably. When drafting Invasion block, you have to fight that temptation or make sure you have spells like Harrow or Dream Thrush, otherwise, you'll become the Midas of Magic. Keep in mind that as fewer people will be able to accommodate these cards in their decks than mono-colored ones, their draft value is slightly decreased in that you'll often be able to get them later on. Commons Consume Strength Jilt this, Jilt that, there's more than one insane common. Consume Strength is guaranteed to trade card for card at some point and will often get two or even three opposing cards. Best in an aggressive deck, Strength makes for a great splash in red-green, blue-black or green-blue, but to be honest, I don't really care what my colors are as long as I keep opening this thing. A 1st - 3rd pick. Gaea's Skyfolk Remember back in the day when Grizzly Bears seemed like a good deal? Well, those days are gone, as evidenced by the existence of the Skyfolk. Two mana 2/2 flyers without drawbacks don't happen because frankly, there's never been a set that would allow it, but Apocalypse isn't an ordinary set. It would be ranked higher if not for the overall strength of green-blue cards like Temporal Spring and Living Airship. A 3rd - 5th pick. Goblin Legionnaire People look at me strangely when I say so, but I think an argument can be made that this Goblin Soldier could be the best Bear of all time. I mean, River Boa is pretty hard to beat, but this thing is a Shock Troops (a high pick in its own time) for two mana with an additional ability. What's the matter R&D, couldn't give it first strike, trample and flying too? A 2nd - 4th pick. Llanowar Dead Obviously solid, this bear is a little disappointing when compared to the non-black gold bears in the set. The mana boost is helpful, but really you need it on turn three to be important, and the odds of having the mana to get the Dead out before then aren't too good. A decent card for your deck, this format is about power now, so don't take it too high. A 5th - 7th pick. Putrid Warrior White-black may have gotten the good end of the gold rares in this set, but the commons are certainly disappointing. The Warrior's triggered abilities are pretty good when you're beating down, but white isn't exactly a beatdown color, and let's face it, they don't interact the way you'd hope. A 5th - 7th pick. Quicksilver Dagger Sometimes this card is useless, sitting in a hand with no creatures in play and the like, but once it gets going, things get ugly. Like Sleeper's Robe, the Dagger has an inherent weakness in that the desire for card advantage requires a target creature, but they differ in the fact that unless the target is killed in response, card disadvantage will never happen. Best on a strong blocker like Jungle Barrier or Nightscape Familiar. A 4th - 6th pick. Razorfin Hunter The two-mana Tim's existence completely changed the environment for me much in the same way Flagbearers did. All of a sudden, you can expect a pinger in every draft, meaning that one-toughness creatures lose a little something while cards like Singe and Cursed Flesh became a little more important. The Hunter is obviously a great card that you'll always want in this color combo, and the more you have, the better each one is. A 2nd - 4th pick. Soul Link Again, black-white gets the short end of the stick, getting this mediocre creature enchantment. The potential for life gain is there, but it doesn't protect one's creature at all or boost like Armadillo Cloak. Playing it on a fierce opposing attacker is an option, but so is leaving it in your sideboard. I'd suggest the latter. A 10th - 12th pick. Squee's Embrace Kudos to R&D for a really interesting card concept. The Embrace is great, boosting your creature while not offering too many card disadvantage opportunities and allowing you to really exploit coming into play or sacrifice abilities like those of Hunting Drake and Goblin Legionnaire. This card seems to go later than it should, so don't pick it too early; you'll get one later on. A 4th - 6th pick. Temporal Spring Wow, I love this card. Temporal Spring is at worst a Time Walk that costs you a few points of damage and can often be more, netting card advantage on enchanted creatures and the like. In a format where mana problems occur so frequently, it's important to keep moving through your deck to find all your mana types, so any card that halts that kind of movement is a great bonus. A 3rd - 5th pick. Uncommons Ęther Mutation It may not look like it, but this is one of the set's power cards. Ęther Mutation is the ultimate in temporal advantage, not only returning an important creature to its owner's hand, possibly getting rid of an offending enchantment while doing so, but also providing the caster with a number of creatures with which to do as they please. Take this above all of the great blue-green common cards: You won't regret it. A 1st - 3rd pick. Captain's Maneuver As good as Kor Chant was, this card may be better. Yes, it's a little more mana intensive, but short of damage prevention, this card often provides the lock, turning a creature's damage against its owner, its fellow attacker or itself. The Maneuver will provide you many opportunities for card advantage and acts as a Disintegrate late in the game. That sounds pretty good to me. A 1st - 3rd pick. Death Mutation Eight mana is just so much. Sure, the Mutation has a powerful ability, but the cost of holding it for what seems like forever may just be too steep. I like the Mutation as an off-color sideboard card for blue-white-green style decks against must-kill creatures like Tahngarth. Don't be afraid to play it if you draft it, but don't draft it too high. A 6th - 8th pick Ebony Treefolk This thing is obviously huge, but I've found it difficult to pump more than once or twice in any given turn. Obviously massive, take the Treefolk high, but don't even think of taking it over Consume Strength. A 2nd - 4th pick. Flowstone Charger This card is especially strong in blue-white-red decks that use Raka Disciple, being the ultimate target for the flying ability. Five points per turn is a lot for anyone to handle, and having a toughness of five on defense doesn't hurt too much either. A 4th - 6th pick Gerrard's Verdict As far as discard goes, it doesn't get much better than this. Two mana and a card for two cards is a pretty damn good deal as it is, but add in the life gain and it becomes really strong. Important note: don't forget that it's target player. This can be really important when you're low on life with two extra lands in hand. A 4th - 6th pick. Jungle Barrier Wow, this thing is big. I'd think that four mana would be a fair price for a 2/6 wall, but the fact you draw a card for it makes this thing insane. Throw in the fact you can gate it with Cavern Harpy and the like and you have an "issue" for the beatdown deck that soon turns into a "problem" and then a "loss". A 4th - 6th pick. Martyr's Tomb One of only two unplayable gold commons, the two life and one mana required for activation are just too much, especially when you add in the initial four mana casting cost. An interesting idea, the Tomb just isn't efficient enough. An 11th - 13th pick. Minotaur Illusionist This thing is REALLY big for its colors, with the toughness of four being extraordinary. The Illusionist is the ultimate target for Squee's Embrace, but you really don't need to combine it with anything: the card is awesome on its own, so you should pick it high. A 2nd - 4th pick. Squee's Revenge Coin flip cards are usually sketchy, and when the flip can net you nothing, they are absolutely unplayable. This is no exception. A 15th pick. Rares Cromat Might as well get this party started right. Cromat offers versatility in a creature the likes of which has not been seen since Morphling, but let's face it, it comes at a price. Where Morphling provides the drafter with peace of mind though an easy casting cost, Cromat is as hard to get out and keep effective as any creature in the format, but once he gets out, he's virtually unstoppable. Boost it, make it fly, return it to your library, it doesn't matter: if you get the Legend into play, you should win in a turn or two. A 3rd - 5th pick, because you might get it back if you open it. Death Grasp Spiritmonger, Jilt, Illuminate, Goblin Trenches, Pernicious Deed, you can have them all. For my money, this is the single best draft card in Apocalypse. If you can muster the mana, Death Grasp delivers the most devastating effect you can find: the pointing of a spell at a person accompanied by the phrase "take X". The life gain is a huge bonus, often giving you an opportunity to win the race, and that added advantage probably makes this better than even Ghitu Fire. A 1st pick. Fervent Charge I've heard some people rant about this card, and while I agree its very powerful, that casting cost is really frustrating. Black-red-white is a very difficult color combination to draft successfully, with white's splashable cards seldom synergetic with the black-red approach. What this means is that you draft this primarily for the five-color deck, where it's often tough to squeeze in creatures between your high-caliber spells. Draft your Urborg Elf highly once you get it. A 3rd - 5th pick. Fungal Shambler As powerful as this thing is, I can't get over the seven-mana casting cost. Obviously, once you get it into play, the Shambler is a wrecking ball, but the price you pay is the length of time it will spend in your hand when you draw it early, and often that will be too long. Fortunately, the color combination is pretty good, so that shouldn't be an issue a lot of the time. A 4th - 6th pick. Goblin Trenches What can I say about this card? Trading a land for two creatures is obviously a great deal, and for just three mana, the card becomes a threat really quickly. The Trenches is up there with Jilt as far as power cards go, and is probably the better pick most of the time. On offense or defense, the Trenches dominates all. It's a 1st pick. Guided Passage This card proved to be a little disappointing to me. At first, I saw this and thought "Ancestral", but it really isn't all that. As good as a creature, land and non-creature spell can be, that usually equates to Quirion Elves, Lay of the Land and Forest, and by the time you can cast the Passage, that stuff isn't too useful any more. I'm not saying this isn't playable, because it is. I just wouldn't take it too high. A 5th - 7th pick. Last Stand If you're going to play a spell with a White ManaBlue ManaBlack ManaRed ManaGreen Mana casting cost, you'd better get a lot of bang for your buck, and in this case, you just don't get enough. Last Stand seems good in practice, but with most five-color green decks, you're only going to be playing one or two of each non-forest basic land type in your deck, virtually nullifying a number of functions, and frankly, I'd rather cast Rith's Charm to get those three tokens. A 7th - 9th pick. Lightning Angel Now this is power. The Angel is cheap, evasive, fast and strong, and while the casting cost is obviously tough, it happens to fall in to one of the best three-color combinations in the format. This card is good enough that if you open it and Jilt and are playing blue-white-red, I can say with certainty that you should be passing Jilt. A 1st pick. Mystic Snake Any card that provides you inherent card advantage is obviously a good thing, and the Snake does so in remarkable fashion, countering an opponent's spell while providing you with a 2/2 body. The Snake becomes insane when you Repulse it after damage is on the stack, or start recurring it with Cavern Harpy. A very solid card, take it over the Airship, Spring and other blue-green commons. A 1st - 3rd pick. Overgrown Estate This was one of the hardest cards in the set to appraise. On the one hand, the Estate is a hard to cast, non-interactive card, while on the other, it's three mana for what could end up being 30 life or more. In the end, the Estate is playable in those decks that can cast it, but I wouldn't recommend splashing it except as a sideboard card against decks with little long game. A 5th - 7th pick. Pernicious Deed An obvious powerhouse, the Deed is an automatic first pick if you're even playing one of the colors in that you should be able to pick up a Reef Shaman, Urborg Elf or Helionaut to help make casting it easier, and that weakened card slot is definitely worth it. Just hold a few creatures back before you cast it, wait for your opponent to overcommit and blow up the world. A 1st pick. Powerstone Minefield A very powerful sideboard card that could conceivably be played main deck if you have a lot of three toughness creatures. Some decks will just lose to the Minefield. Because it's tough to build your deck around a third-pack card its draft value is lower than it would be in, say, Invasion. A 6th - 8th pick. Prophetic Bolt The power cards keep on coming. Another one of the better-than-Jilt rares, the Bolt basically kills a creature while replacing itself with another strong card, so you have high quality card advantage that could provide even more card advantage by searching for the right card. The Bolt is as good as anything you're going to get. A 1st pick. Spiritmonger The best creature in the set, Spiritmonger does it all: regenerates, changes color, gets bigger and beats down like nothing we've ever seen. The drawbacks here are a lack of evasion and the possibility of halting it with cards like Benalish Trapper, Shackles, Terminate and the like. That said, I still won't complain too much about opening it. A 1st pick. Suffocating Blast This card is obviously very powerful, but I think I'd take Jilt over it because of versatility. Thanks to Exclude, players have learned to be wary of strong mana draws that don't cast spells, so they should be able to play around the mana-intensive Blast. Obviously dominant, if you have bounce without spells, you should probably take it over Jilt, but in the end the common wins out more often than not thanks to the plethora of ways it can be used. A 1st - 3rd pick. Vindicate Okay, Vindicate is obviously an awesome card, but it does have a few things going against it: It doesn't kill regenerators, is cast at sorcery speed and as a result, is difficult to gain card advantage off of. Still, if I'm sitting on your left, I hope you pass it. A 1st - 3rd pick. Yavimaya's Embrace 8 mana is sure a lot to pay only to have your new creature bounced. As strong as this enchantment is, I personally don't like waiting lack long for something that can be nullified that easily. If you get it, you can play it, but don't take it too high. A 5th - 7th pick.