Thread by @JasonILTG

After finishing a couple final papers, I'm back with my underrated cards threads! To ease myself back into it, I'm going to be talking about a few combat tricks for the next few days. First up: Big Play! ALSA 8.09 in Bo3, taken just a bit above Curate. 1/x

Here's the Card Evaluation Metagame graph for it; it's been relatively flat, but trending slightly downwards. 2/x

First off, a note about combat tricks: almost all the ones I'm planning to talk about are very replaceable effects. They all have their uses, but I hesitate to call them underrated, because you don't want too many. Doesn't stop me from talking about them though. 3/x

However, Big Play is one of the tricks that I think might *actually* be underrated, especially in Bo3. In fact, its stats are basically average, pretty comparable to Curate, but it's taken relatively low. 4/x

An interesting discussion that came up in @Chord_O_Call's Discord recently was whether you should maindeck Tangletrap in your Quandrix decks that are short on Drakes and Colonies. I wasn't convinced you should, but I think a much stronger argument can be made for Big Play. 5/x

First of all, Big Play as a baseline isn't actually that bad of a card. We've seen 2 mana +3/+3 tricks with small upside before, and they're generally poor but not unplayable. And getting both a +1/+1 counter and reach is one of the better upsides we've seen. 6/x

The reach is probably the most important part of the card. If you don't get Colonies or Drakes, your green decks can really struggle to deal with fliers, which is a death sentence against most white decks. In these spots, Big Play can serve as a more conditional Tangletrap. 7/x

The advantage you get from Big Play over Tangletrap is that, even though it's worse at killing fliers, it does more in other situations. And some green decks utilize the trick well; like with Infuse with Vitality, it plays well with Professor Bear and Witherbloom Pledgemage. 8/x

Conclusion: I am hesitant to call Big Play underrated, as not all decks want it, and it is relatively replaceable. But it can help sure up your deck against fliers, and does help green decks that aren't completely controlling fight on the ground enough to be a fine 23rd card. 9/9

I don't draft green very much, and when I do it usually involves several Scurrid Colonies, so I don't really have any example decks to show off. @threadreaderapp unroll.