Thread by @JasonILTG

Thread today on Secret Door! You could say that I'm going to... break down the Door, and reveal its Secrets ;) 1/x

ALSA of 7.71 in Bo3, the 18th least drafted card. There's 3 blue commons that are drafted less than it, but I don't have much to say about those, and blue is drafted pretty low in general anyways. Metagame graph shows it dropping a bit since the start of the set. 2/x

I went into the set thinking that I wouldn't like Secret Door. 0/4s haven't typically been great, it looked like Pack Tactics would punish blocking with no power, and the venture ability looked way too expensive. But now, I'm pretty happy to play one in my slow U decks. 3/x

It turns out that 0/4 just blocks well enough early; Hobgoblin Captain is pretty important. Sure, you can get punished by Pack Tactis, but usually by the time your opponent has assembled 6 power, you'll have other, better blockers for those. Door just soaks early damage. 4/x

The venture ability has also been much better than I thought it'd be. I've been having issues with flood and screw this format due to lack of smoothing mechanics like cycling, MDFCs, or learn, and one way I've been mitigating that is by playing more lands and more mana sinks. 5/x

The best home for Door is UG venture, where you generally want to play 20+ mana sources, ramp into 5s and 6s that stabilize the board, and then dump all your mana every turn into venturing. Door helps both for stabilizing early, and as repeated venture late. 6/x

I still don't generally want to play more than one Door in UG, though. There's also Dungeon Map and 50 ft of Rope at uncommon that serve as better venture sinks (and are also repeatable thanks to Clever Conjurer), and Gretchen and Investigator for card draw sinks. 7/x

Conclusion: Secret Door is a fine card that plays well with a defensive venture gameplan, helping both with stabilizing the board and repeated venture late. You shouldn't play too many as your only early defense, but I'm happy with a copy in most U decks. 8/8

Here's a couple decks I had Door in:
UG: 17lands.com/deck/1a1cf6e50…
UW: 17lands.com/deck/1a1cf6e50…

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