Today, I'm going to talk about my favorite underrated cards in STX: Reconstruct History. ALSA 7.94, taken just above Spell Satchel. This is another one that I already talked a lot about on Limited Levelups last week (
First off, to explain what this card does, since it has a lot of words: it rebuys up to one each of an instant, a sorcery, an artifact, and enchantment, and a planeswalker. You don't have to have all five; most commonly this will just be two spells, and maybe an artifact. 2/x
On its surface, this looks like it's just a clunky draw spell that needs setup. And I don't generally likes clunky draw spells; I was low on Behold the Multiverse in Kaldheim, and I'm low on effects like Mentor's Guidance in Strixhaven. So why do I like Reconstruct? 3/x
Well, first of all, the setup cost is very minimal. With learn/lesson being such an important mechanic, you'll almost always at least have a sorcery, so all you need to ensure is an instant to make it a draw two. And there's plenty of good instants, especially cheap removal. 4/x
Plus, the comparison to draw spells like Behold the Multiverse isn't that accurate; with how important and powerful spells are in STX, it's honestly more akin to Soul Salvage. And likewise, its recursion is much more powerful, though less flexible, than a simple draw 2. 5/x
One of the reasons I'm relatively low on the pure draw spells in STX (like Mentor's Guidance) is because of learn/lesson. Part of the value of a Divination is casting it early. But I've found learn/lesson just fills that role much better, as they often affect the board. 6/x
So when I do cast a pure card advantage spell, it's often as the one of last cards in my hand, after I've run out of learn/lesson. Reconstruct History fits perfectly into this role: it's the best at lategame grinding, and I don't care about its early game at all. 7/x
I will note that I don't really want to pay 4 mana just to get back an Inkling and a Study Break; that can be fine sometimes but is pretty slow. So you do want to make sure that your Reconstruct can get back more impactful spells, like Rise of Extus or Elemental Masterpiece. 8/x
Now, you might be wondering why I like such a durdly Lorehold card, when I'm also a fan of assertive Lorehold decks. I do think Reconstruct is best as a splash in Prismari. But also, my assertive Lorehold decks often aren't hyperaggressive, and want tools to grind as well. 9/x
So far I've been treating Reconstruct as only recurring two spells. But the artifact clause does come up frequently. Decks that want Reconstruct might also want Biblioplex Assistant to recur bombs, or Campus Guide and Letter of Acceptance to splash. A free 2/1 isn't bad. 10/x
I have used the enchantment clause once, after my opponent killed my Sparring Regimen. I have yet to try Reconstruct with Detention Vortexes; I suspect they're still bad, but maybe there's something there. More realistically, you get Regimen in the gy with cantrips. 11/x
Conclusion: Reconstruct History is a powerful lategame grinding tool, best splashed in Prismari but good even in some assertive decks. I like it more than most draw spells because of its lategame power, and I don't care about early game flexibility when I can just learn. 12/12
Recent trophy decks with Reconstruct History in them:
Was talking on Discord a bit about why I think the UW tap deck failed design-wise this format, and figured I'd translate my points here.
So, here's a thread: 1/x
It's pretty clear by now that the UW tap archetype just isn't working in WOE.
UW is the worst color pair in WOE on 17lands - just barely above 50% winrate, which is atrocious, same as LTR scry elves.
I think the reasons for this are actually quite interesting. 2/x
1. The simplest reason is just that blue and white are the two worst colors in WOE.
Every set has color imbalances, this set happens to have those converge on UW being weak. The card quality just isn't there, the commons just not as deep as Jund. 3/x
Bit of a different kind of "underrated card" thread today. I usually don't do rares, and one could reasonably argue that this card is actually mostly *overrated*.
But today, I want to focus on why and how 17lands stats dramatically underrate the card Invasion of Kaldheim.
1/x
As a rare that gets picked a lot higher than I take it (3.14 ALSA in Bo3!), I don't have that much experience actually playing with the card. But it reads pretty strong to me, and has seemed impressive when I've cast it.
So why does it have a whopping *48.8%* GIH WR in Bo1?
2/x
Having a GIH WR below 50% is really bad - by this metric, Invasion of Kaldheim is the 19th worst card in the set, in the vicinity of unsupported buildarounds like Kaheera, Dina, Theros, and Arcavios. If you were drafting purely based on GIH WR, you would never pick it.
As promised, underrated card threads! First up: Urn of Godfire.
I expected this card to be completely unplayable, but recently I've been trying it a lot, and have honestly been impressed.
It's not great overall, but I hope to show where and how to use it in this thread. 1/15
Urn is currently the 10th least-picked card on 17lands in Bo1 (12th in Bo3), with ALSA 8.62 (8.35 in Bo3). Its pick rate seems to be staying roughly even in both Bo1 and Bo3.
So where is Urn good? Well, one of the more obvious use cases is as a bad hard removal spell.
1+6 mana is a lot to remove something, but with a lot of bombs in the set, it can sometimes be quite important to have actual hard removal in your deck.
Thinking of doing underrated card threads again for this set, probably going to try for 2-3 times a week for a bit, and see how it goes?
But first I figure I should talk about Seed of Hope, which was very underrated, but is likely moving towards overrated as people hype it. 1/7
At some point Seed of Hope was the least-picked green common by ALSA, while having something like a 60ish% GIH WR in Bo1.
But after a bunch of content creators have been talking it up, this is no longer the case - it's quickly trending up in ALSA, and down to 56% GIH WR. 2/7
So how good is Seed of Hope? Well, if it didn't have the clause about permanents, it would be like a Consider that gains 2 life (with small differences like being able to bin the second card), which is great! Consider is solid but unexciting in limited, and 2 life is huge. 3/7
Okay I should be asleep right now but instead I did a bit more digging, and it's possible I'm missing something, but it seems that 17lands data contains an exhaustive list of all possible sets of commons in Arena packs of DMU, and that this list is surprisingly small. 1/7
So basically I took the 17lands DMU draft dataset I've been using (which is a bit old, but still has 251,574 drafts), and looked at, for each common, how many different sets of commons it appeared with. And it turns out that the answer is always between 2998 and 3000. 2/7
With about 100 commons, and 10 commons per pack, we can expect each common to show up 25k times, so if the possible sets of commons each show up equally, we'd expect to see each one about 8-9 times. 3/7