After looking at cards I underrated yesterday, I wanted to change it up for today with cards I overrated. I found a lot fewer cards that I overrated vs. underrated while looking through my views, which might be an indicator that my set review skewed too negative. Or that I'm a card evaluating genius; yes we'll go with that.
The Cauldron of Eternity
There's a lot going on here, but like its Blue Mirror shaped cousin you're not getting a whole lot unless you have at least 3 creatures in your graveyard, and I have to imagine you want quite a few more than that you maximize this. In order to be better than it's uncommon cousin, you need to get multiple creatures out of this, and that card isn't particularly exciting. In games where you have a totally stocked graveyard this card looks nearly unbeatable, but without getting there this is slow and expensive. There's enough power here that this earns high marks, but if there's one card I'm overrating in this review this is the one.
Rating: 4/5
I've had this in play in the absolute dream scenario, where I had limitless life, 7 creatures in my graveyard, and no pressure whatsoever from the opposing side. And I lost. While this is a great effect, it's only as good as the creatures you're able to buy back, and when this is reanimating 2 and 3 drop common creatures it just doesn't do enough for how long it takes. I was stoked to bring back my Clackbridge Troll, but after that I wasn't getting a whole lot for my 3 mana and 2 life per turn. While I'm complaining about the dream scenario not being good enough, I have a real point here; this card takes much more work than I realized and sometimes the pay-off just comes too slow. While I think this is still a card you can take highly if you're the adventurous type, I think this is more broken sideboard card than maindeck bomb mythic.
Amended Rating: 2/5
Edgewall Innkeeper
My current pick for best uncommon in the set, Edgewall Innkeeper couldn't possibly be cheaper and gets out of control once its draw two cards or more. One mana is so little here that you can save this until you're casting an Adventure creature on the same turn to ensure that you're getting that free card, although I doubt you'll need to play this that conservatively. There's no removal spell in the set that answers this effectively, as they all cost more than one mana, meaning that even when your opponent kills this instantly you're still generating a small advantage. To top off all of it's strengths, remember that Adventure is incredibly prevalent in this set, so you won't have to put in any work whatsoever to turn this into a card drawing machine, although it will reward you handsomely if you choose to build around it.
Rating: 4.5/5
While I would still consider this to be one of the best uncommons in Throne of Eldraine, it's no longer my best. I've found Green to be more aggressive than I expected, and as such the cards this pairs with best in Green, like Curious Pair, don't really cut it for me. I've played this as a literal 1 mana 1/1 in my most aggressive Green decks and been accepting, so I'd say my dreams of playing this on turn 1, and then just drawing an extra card every turn have not panned out.
Amended Rating: 4/5
Wicked Guardian
Combined with any creature that survives this ability Wicked Guardian is unbelievable, as this world's largest Elvish Visionary allegory. As there's numerous ways to recur this or bounce it for value as well, there's a lot of mileage to get out of this one. Whenever this doesn't draw a card it's downright awful, as it either has virtual Defender or trades with a 2/2, not interesting at all for 4 whole mana. Triggering this without downside won't be too tough, but make sure to include a nice number of 3 toughness cheap creatures to insure your value. Wicked awesome dude.
Rating: 3.5/5
Wicked Guardian looks similar to the above two cards, as it generates value based off a condition that's a bit harder than I expected. In this case, however, the problem lies more with my rating system in general, rather than just a strict misevaluation, which also took place. This loses a half point for both reasons, as although I believe I intended to give this a 3/5 as a reasonably strong value creature, I think it's also less strong than I expected. Competition at the 4 slot is fearsome this time around, maybe to the highest degree I've ever seen, as cards like this are embarrassing when compared to cards like Covetous Urge or even Loch Dragon. If the condition was totally trivial I think this is still worse than Bake into a Pie, and as such it definitely deserved a worse rating.
Amended Rating: 2.5/5
Glass Casket
Cheap removal that exiles is always great in Limited, although the condition on this one will restrict it from killing the things you really want. At 2 mana you can't ask for too much, and you should still play this readily, just be aware if you have a bunch of these that you'll have a blindspot for big things.
Rating: 3.5/5
As many players do, it's easy to overrate cards that are only capable of killing cheap creatures. Unless I'm exiling something that costs 3 this is pretty weak, and the ceiling is just never very high. In this set in particular I think this being an Artifact is pretty nice upside, which stops me from nuking the rating entirely, but cheap creatures just aren't important enough to kill for me to want cards like this in all of my White decks. Compared to Reave Soul and Scorching Dragonfire, this card looks even worse, as this "is an artifact" vs. Scorching Dragonfires ability to blow out a combat or take down a big creature with help, or Reave Souls ability to kill even the biggest defensively slanted creatures. Don't pick this highly, don't get sucked into White for it either, but be reasonably happy to play 1 or 2 in your White decks, especially those that want to max out on Artifacts.
Amended Rating: 3/5
Tournament Grounds
If you're lucky enough to see a few of these drafting a three color
aggressive Knight decks starts to look real, and as there's a lot of
powerful but difficult to cast cards in the Mardu Wedge this land gives
you a massive boost. This doesn't help cast Instants/Sorceries at all
so keep in mind that you'll have to keep your interactive spells to the
color you have an adequate amount of regular sources for.
Rating 3.5/5
Tapping for Red and Black is great and all, but White is weak enough that I've never seen this used effectively as a triland. 3 color aggro decks certainly appeal to me, but you'd need 3+ of these before you'd actually have sound mana, and even then the pay-off isn't much better than playing Red and Black together. My big miss here was that I expected the first copy to work miracles, and while that'll be true if you draw it in your deck with heinous mana, you'll need a bunch of these to actually build those decks and succeed. I've left this in my sideboard as Red Black Knights before, as my Black was only a splash and half the cards were removal spells this couldn't help with.
Amended Rating: 1.5/5
This weeks lesson is to not get tricked with dreams of how great cards could be when you rate them, try to get your most objective view of how they'll play in real games.
Until next time,
Kevin
@sealedawaymtg on Twitter
