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Certain reprint
raised RB player's hopes of
bringing their favorite deck
back to tier 1 in constructed.
It also gave a clear signal
on what might be worth
playing in limited.
RB has been an archetype
for Shards of Alara draft
that kinda died off
when Conflux came out,
but Reborn
is bringing it back to glory.
Obviously, our main interest here
is Terminate
which is the best removal in the format,
with only Path to Exile
being it's equal.
Red and Black offers us
loads of ways to kill our enemy
without even tapping
our creatures to attack
and removal good enough
to make us consider it
at the very beginning of the draft.
Slave of Bolas
is another interesting card
which allows us
to steal opponent's creature,
swing with it
and then send it straight to grave
all in one card.
Sangrite Backlash
can make our aggressive creatures
even more aggressive,
or deal with
creatures on the other side of the board.
Giant Ambush Beetle
can exchange with opponent's bombs
or creatures that they are
reluctant to attack/block with
or it can open up a way
for a larger creature to swing unblocked.
Kathari Bomber,
which despite it's unearth
is a great support for Jund builds,
thanks to it's token generation ablity
it can deal
up to 4 damage and create
4 1/1 goblins when doing so.
At first, Singe Mind Ogre
seemed to me
like a mediocre creature,
it's 3/2 body for four mana
being rather unimpressive.
The amount of damage
he can deal coming into play
can however easily compensate
for this average body, giving us both knowledge of
what's waiting in opponent's hand and allowing to maintain pressure.
I've already mentioned Bitominous Blast,
but it cannot go unmentioned
when talking about RB
removal, and a chance of
popping Singe-Mind Ogre
or something even better
makes it one of the most notable
cards of Reborn.
Oftentimes you won't be able
to get into RB straight away
or you'll draft more than
those two colors.
Picking something green,
something blue
or something that doesn't match
the archetype completely.
This shouldn't however discourage you
from pursuing the archetype
as most of it's power cards
are in the last pack
and I assure you,
there are plenty of them
everything you manage
to grab earlier is a bonus.
If you manage to get your hands
on some blue cards such as
Agony Warp or Ogre Fire Fiend
or green ones such as
Necrogenesis or Sprouting Thrinax
you may find some worth
in splashing third color.
Obviously,
you might expect other players
to pick the juciest cards,
but the amount
of good red-black cards in Reborn
should allow you to draft
what you want,
just as it was with esper
in Shards-Shards-Conflux
the most quality cards
could be found in the last pack.
New bunch of creatures
with cycling has also joined the fray,
and it's time to talk about them.
It seems to me
that cycling is playing a crucial role
in a multicolored environment
as it allows us to dig
for the mana we're lacking,
or just draw more fuel.
Shards gave us some generic mana
cyclers that weren't always
good spells themselves,
Conflux gave us some basic landcycling
and Reborn gave us
two cycles of cycling creatures
with some interesting abilities,
examples of which you see before me.
Let's take a look
at the Architects of Will
they cycle for hybrid black
and blue mana and, if played,
allows limited library manipulation
either on your library or
your opponent's.
The 3/3 artifact creature
for four is something
one shouldn't ignore.
Deadshot minotaur is even beter,
as it allows red-green decks
to deal with fliers
while sporting a 3/4 body.
Another cycle are the Sojourners,
one for each of the shards,
whose ability triggers either
when they leave play
or they're cycled.
Naya and Jund Sojourners
should be the most sought of
as they allow us to put
a +1/+1 counter on our creature
and ping the target.
The least impressive
are the Grixis Sojourners,
whose ability to remove cards from graveyard
won't be often used.
4/3 body for four mana with the option of changing
into something even better through cycling
shouldn't bepassed up to easily though.
Describing whole of Reborn draft
would take way more time
than anyone would like to
devote listening to me,
so I focused on the two
most interesting archetypes.
This doesn't mean,
that there aren't other
viable archetypes for SCA draft,
I just feel that those two
are the best ones.
Good luck in your drafts and,
hopefully see you again!