This article is a quick look at some of the best commons in the set. Jules requested this article a couple days ago and I think it's a great idea, so I'm gonna take a crack at it. Some of my choices might be a little skewed towards 'cuteness' rather than power level, but I tried to pick some good ones that I think might be underrated in limited play.
Here is my list of Top 8 Commons for Gatecrash Limited:
This green instant is pretty awesome. On the surface, this 2 mana spell returns a creature card from your graveyard back to your hand. We can use this spell to get back our utility creatures that may have died earlier in the game (such as Guildmages) or rebuy our awesome bomb rare or mythic rare and force our opponent to deal with it twice in one game. Although we can't necessarily gauge the speed of the format based off of just a set spoiler, we can guess that Gatecrash Limited will be largely be around the same speed as Return to Ravnica Limited, where games would end around turns 7-9 on average. This timing estimate means that our 'Regrowth' abilities are very relevant on creatures that are 6 mana or less, so rebuying a bomb creature in the late game is a very real possibility. For the Prerelease this weekend, this card is extremely useful since every deck is guaranteed to have at least one bomb creature in it (the Prerelease promos).
With the Gruul mechanic focused on discarding creature cards to use Bloodrush activations, this card helps rebuy those discarded creature cards and use them again to pump our creature to infinite damage or help commit another large creature to the battlefield. The feature of this card that pushes it a little over the top is: Instant. The instant clause allows you to do some pretty awesome things in combat like swinging in the red zone, then wait for your opponent to declare bockers and then cast this card to recur a Bloodrush creature and activate its Bloodrush ability on any of your creatures that are being blocked to save them from dying and kill the blocker (combat trick) or pump one of your unblocked creatures to deal lethal damage to your opponent (psuedo-burn spell). This card also helps you play around mana famine and allows you to 'throw away' a Bloodrush creature early and buy it back later when you have the mana available and need a creature on the board.
Since the spell only requires one green in its mana cost, Wildwood Rebirth is easily splashable if you end up playing Boros with a Green splash or Dimir with a Green splash. Rebuying creatures in Boros is pretty important to keep your head above 3 creatures on the battlefield to keep your Battalion triggers active. Keeping your creature count healthy is also important for the Dimir mechanic who needs creatures to encode their Cipher spells on to gain value over time as their creatures deal combat damage to players. If you elect to cast this spell, you'll have to look out for Beckon Apparition out of your opponents' sideboards, but it's a marginal concern.
Wildwood Rebirth is a sweet opportunity card that I expect will be a blowout in many games because it's extremely flexible and is difficult for your opponent to prepare for because it can be cast at instant speed.
This card took a little bit of time to wrap my head around. It's very similar to Common Bond from Return to Ravnica limited that can produce some very easy 2-for-1 scenarios if played properly. Although you don't get a permanent buff from the +1/+1 counters off of Common Bond, you get an explosive 3 power and 3 toughness divided among up to two of your creatures. If you are attacking with at least two creatures and your opponent blocks, you can +3/+0 your smaller creature to trade up on one of your opponent's larger creatures and if your opponent presents a 'trade scenario' where a pair of creatures would kill each other in combat, giving an extra 3 toughness to your creature will more than keep yours alive. This can be really powerful for establishing board presence when you start falling behind in the creature race or your opponent's creatures are simply larger than yours. One important quality behind limited play is having the ability to 'trade-up' on creatures. Since the quality of cards in limited is generally low, trading your weaker creatures for your opponents higher-quality ones is really important in gaining incremental advantage as a game progresses. I like Martial Glory because it's a great way to apply this concept in both the early game when you're pushing for damage and in the late-game when each top decked creature needs to put in enough mileage to close out the game.
For Boros, the creatures are relatively small, but plentiful. Sometimes you'll need to swing with your smaller creatures to get Battalion triggers and your opponent will be tempted to make profitable blocks on your army. Luckily cards like Martial Glory are a huge deterrent and your opponent will have to play around this card if they expect any of their creatures to survive combat.
Although this 2 mana prism is just a reprint from Rise of the Eldrazi, I feel this card will be really important for Gatecrash Limited. Similar to Evolving Wilds in M13 Limited and Transguild Promenade in Return to Ravnica Limited, Prophetic Prism is a universal mana fixer that's flexible across any archetype you wish to sleeve up since it can produce any color of mana once you 'filter' the mana through the artifact. Cards like the prism allow you to splash many different colors in your deck and will largely make 4-5 colored decks possible in limited. This artifact is a huge role-player in constructing sealed mana bases and will be vital for sealed pools that can't seem to open any on color guildgates or shock lands.
This artifact also draws a card when it enters the battlefield and ends up replacing itself, so it provides no card advantage loss. However, the cost of laying this artifact on the battlefield requires 2 mana, which does provide a small tempo loss in the early game. If the Gatecrash Limited format ends up faster than Return to Ravnica Limited, this tempo loss could give your opponents a window to get ahead in the creature race in the early to mid game. It's difficult to assess now since the Boros and Simic guild mechanics intend on rewarding you for playing more creatures, so we could see games more focused on generating more Tempo than your opponent rather than focusing on card advantage or card quality (a format more along the lines of Avacyn Restored Limited); only time will tell.
Other than this card being blue, instant, and a removal spell.. Look at that adorable cyclopean DOOR KEEPER! Why is he so far away from his door?? The world of Ravnica may never know.. Poor Fblthp.
Mechanically, this card is pretty sweet. At instant speed, we can put a nonland permanent our opponent controls on top of his/her library. This is pretty useful if we're trying to remove our opponent's creatures and provide them a really significant tempo loss since our opponent's next draw step is already set in stone. This also gives us a small amount of 'perfect' information. If we are vastly ahead on board, we can use this card to guarantee that our opponent's next draw is a card that we can't lose to and probably scoop up an easy win.
As a removal spell, this card can setup some really nice 2-for-1s as well, since we can target a creature that was recently Bloodrushed or a creature our opponent encoded one of their Cipher spells on. Furthermore, this card is really flexible since it can answer any nonland permanent including Agoraphobia on our own creatures (if they don't have the mana open to return it back to their hand), our opponent's equipment like Riot Gear to get some nice kills in combat, or even Planeswalkers that we need to temporarily get off the field. Unfortunately, this card is a weak removal spell because it only 'temporarily' removes one of our opponent's cards. If you're facing down some of your opponent's permanents that you can't effectively deal with or their awesome bomb Primordial that has a sweet enter the battlefield trigger, we might be totally lost on how to actually get rid of it..
The idea behind this card that I really think pushes this card into a Top 5 common is it's ability to target one of your permanents if you need to protect it from an untimely death. If your opponent casts an Angelic Edict to exile the best creature in your deck, how satisfying is it to target your creature with Totally Lost to put it on top of your library and cast it against next turn? Pretty. Satisfying.
This card is really cool because it's really difficult to play around. One white mana? My word. Although it's conditional removal like Avenging Arrow in Return to Ravnica Limited and Smite the Monstrous in Innistrad Limited, this situation will come up more often than you think. How many times have you stared down the red zone with one of your creatures chump blocking that monstrosity of a creature your opponent laid down on the board and prayed to the heavens to draw into an answer? Smite allows you to kill any-sized creature that you are able to block. This card is pretty awesome because you don't have to actually take any damage before being able to kill your opponent's attacking creature like Avenging Arrow, so it gives your life total some wiggle room unlike Return to Ravnica Limited.
Like most of the commons on this Top 8 list, Smite can also set you up for some 2-for-1 scenarios too. If your opponent tries to get cute by using Bloodrush on one of their attacking creatures or use a combat trick out of the Boros or Simic arsenal, you can Smite that creature with holy justice and send it back to the shadow realm or other metaphysical hell hole.
Although, blocking in limited is really common, Gatecrash Limited might be the one exception. In a format full flying creatures and evasion creatures from the Dimir guild to take advantage of the Cipher mechanic, Smite might fall by the wayside because there are a good amount of creatures in the format that are difficult to block. Smite could just be a weak removal spell that warrants the late pick in draft or might be as good as a Pack 1 Pick 1 worthy common. As the metagame unfolds, we'll see where Smite sits on the totem pole.
This common is really powerful. Any card that can generate 'multiple cards' can't be overlooked. When I first saw this card, I initially thought of Talrand's Invocation from M13 Limited and that card was a pure powerhouse in the format. Although Knight Watch doesn't produce 2/2 evasion creatures, it does produce some Vigilant Knight tokens that can be offensive and defensive at the same time, which really helped make Knightly Valor the powerhouse enchantment that it was in Return to Ravnica Limited. This card is also really useful at keeping your creature count high if you start to fall behind or need more dudes to keep your Battalion triggers active.
For Gatecrash Limited, I like this card a lot because it's easy to splash since it only has one White mana symbol in its cost and the format has a few anthems at uncommon level like Hold the Gates and Righteous Charge that keep your Knight tokens very relevant going into the mid to late game.
The one downside to this card is its mana cost. 5 mana for 4 power worth of creatures is on the weaker side of power level, but separating that power across 2 creatures might be powerful enough to make this card a high pick in draft. I think this card is great in sealed and should see a slot in your White-based Sealed deck.
Ok, Grisly Spectacle. Whatttttt? Other than a really gory picture, this card is a piece of unconditional removal that we haven't seen since the powerhouse card, Murder was printed for M13 Limited. The power level behind this card is pretty straightforward; it can kill almost any creature in the format besides those pesky Millennial Gargoyles. The second part of this card mills your opponent for cards equal to that creature's power. I don't imagine that mill aspect playing a huge role in limited, unless the mill archetype is popular and effective. If not, the mill clause does help decrease the size of your opponent's library and consequentially decreases the amount of turns they have in a true late game stalemate. It also turns on your copies of Death's Approach to kill even bigger creatures. Relevant? I think so.
One downside to this card is the double Black in its mana cost. The same case with Murder in M13 Limited and Annihilating Fire in Return to Ravnica Limited, this removal spell is a bit of a heavy commitment into just one color; a commitment into the Orzhov or Dimir guilds for this example. In a format where 5 color is a real possibility and is actually quite a strong archetype, this card is a bit difficult to cast. If the format is fast, then this will be a problem in decks running few guildgates or keyrunes to fix their mana.
I might be a little biased on this one, but how awesome was Prey Upon in Innistrad and M13 Limited? Right? I REALLY like the Fight mechanic because it creates interesting stack scenarios. Although there aren't many creatures with Deathtouch in this format to brutally Fight against your opponent's creatures, the ability to pump your creatures then fight them with your opponent's presumably now weaker creatures is a great way to trade-up (a concept we took a small look at with Martial Glory). Luckily in this set, there are a plethora of combat tricks due to the Bloodrush ability from Gruul. We also have the Evolve ability from Simic that intends on making really giant creatures on the battlefield that will fuel many a Pit Fight. Although the Fight mechanic isn't as powerful as straight up destroying a creature, it's really important for Green decks that typically have beefy creatures and little to no removal. The instant speed clause on this removal spell is really sweet because we can respond to our opponent's combat tricks and again set up really sick 2-for-1 scenarios that the traditional Prey Upon could only dream of setting up.
Pit Fight is also a really effective tool for playing around the stack. Since you need a creature to Fight with an opponent's creature, using the stack becomes vital for using this card successfully.
In the first scenario:
1) Opponent casts a pump spell on their creature (including Bloodrush or using buff enchantments)
2) You cast Pit Fight to have one of your larger creatures fight theirs.
3) With no other responses, their creature dies and is no longer a legal target for the pump spell, so their pump spell fizzles and is put in the graveyard.
4) Profit from awesome 2-for-1.
In the second scenario:
1) Opponent casts a removal spell on one of your creatures.
2) You cast Pit Fight to have your targetted creature Fight with one of your opponent's creatures. Your creature either lives or dies and their creature ideally is knocked out.
3) Their removal spell resolves or fizzles depending on if your creature lived or died. Either way..
4) Profit from not-so-terrible 2-for-2.
You can even use your creatures holding lock enchantments like Agoraphobia to still give those creatures some mileage. I chose Pit Fight as the number 1 slot because it's really difficult to play around since it's only 2 mana and it's really flexible since it's hybrid Red and Green mana so you can play this in any Simic, Gruul, Orzhov/R, Dimir/G, or any 5 color deck with ease. It's also a great card for teaching players how the stack works and is elegantly complicated to use in combat that really gets those neurons firing. Yay for brain power!
It's a bit unavoidable but most of the Top 8 commons were removal spells or combat tricks since the power level of most cards at common level is pretty low. I decided not to place the guildgates in the rating because we've already seen them in Return to Ravnica and a plethora of writers have written about how awesome they are. If I were to place them, they'd probably be around 3-4th in the Top 8 commons. What commons would you have chosen to be the best in Gatecrash? After the Prerelease, let me know which commons were all stars in your sealed decks. Until Gatecrash, Magic players!
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-David J.
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