Fifth Dawn: Impact of the New Mechanics
I certainly won't be dragging out a long series of articles as I think it's important to get some initial thoughts out there early. Fifth Dawn will only be around in the Limited formats until Champions of Kamigawa takes over in October. Although four months sounds like a long time it'll soon pass and I think it's better to get some Fifth Dawn opinions out there now, even if they may turn out not to be 100% correct once we have more time to get used to the set. It's always difficult to predict exactly how a set like Fifth Dawn will affect things so soon after it's introduction but I definitely feel that there are some obvious things we can discuss even at this early stage.
Also, a quick apology for last week. I'm currently on vacation and we ran into email trouble trying to get the article to Scott in time for the holiday on his side. It looks like we've got that problem fixed now, plus a good work-around for next time if there is one. Thanks for your patience and understanding. On with the show!
Sunburst and Scry
The best place to start when looking at a new set is with the new mechanics it brings to the table.
Scry is the simplest one by far as it's basically just an additional ability that's been tacked on to a few useful cards. Almost any form of deck manipulation is as welcome in limited as it is in constructed. In some cases it is even more useful in limited as there is rarely anything you can do if you're short on mana or if you've drawn too much. Let's have a quick peak at the cards that have Scry built it. Click on any of the links to have a look at them:
Black –
Black –
Green –
Green –
Red –
Blue –
Blue –
White –
Pretty much all of those cards are playable;
The second major mechanic in Fifth Dawn will have a much, much bigger impact on the Limited formats. I am, of course, talking about Sunburst.
Sunburst is a mechanic that has the potential to change the way you draft throughout the Mirrodin and Darksteel packs. It's a mechanic that is found exclusively on artifacts and as a result it's a mechanic that affects all colours equally. You don't usually care about Affinity for Artifacts if you're the green or white drafter, but you will care about Sunburst cards. There are a lot of Sunburst cards amongst the common artifacts in Fifth Dawn and if none of them are useful to you then you'll be picking from a much smaller pool of cards than everyone else.
Once again here's a useful list of the Sunburst cards you can expect to see in your packs over the coming months:
Commons:
Uncommons:
Rares:
The commons are the main ones to consider here, as they are the ones you'll be seeing with much more regularity. In order to evaluate the Sunburst cards individually it's worth establishing some sort of level from which they can be measured.
3 Is The Magic Number
When drafting with Mirrodin and Darksteel it was always preferable to try and stick to two colours where possible. Sometimes you had powerful cards that warranted splashing but in general if you could play two colours, you did. Fifth Dawn changes all of that. If your deck is strictly two colours then there are a good number of Fifth Dawn cards that just aren't very good for you. Drafting within Mirrodin and Darksteel with a view to splashing a colour is positively encouraged due to the addition of the Sunburst mechanic in Fifth Dawn.
As a result of this cards that provide multiple colours of mana or simply off-colour mana become far more desirable than they used to be. If you are Blue-Red than that
I'd actually go as far as to say that off-colour Myr may be preferable to on-colour ones from now on. If you have enough lands in your main colours then you often don't need the coloured mana a Myr provides. The acceleration is the important thing. An off colour Myr still gives the same acceleration but it too will also improve Sunburst cards.
Cards that have the potential to provide more than one colour of mana will also increase in value.
Whilst three is definitely the number that should be used to evaluate the Sunburst cards, it's easy to see how ridiculous some of them are if you can up that number to four.
By using three as the 'average' for Sunburst you can also see quickly which cards don't make the cut.
The last Sunburst card that's worth looking at is one that is actually a Sunburst enabler.
Take a look at last week's article by Brian David-Marshall to see how well
The last interesting thing to note about the Prism is that it does still stay in play after you've used up its charge counters. This means it will still make your Affinity spells cheaper, it will still pump up your Nim cards and it can be sacrificed for a useful effect, e.g. to an
I'm not normally a fan of one-off mana accelerators in limited - certainly I don't think
There are plenty of commons in Mirrodin and Darksteel that provide coloured mana. Mana Myrs, Talismans,
That's it for the Fifth Dawn mechanics. I'll start covering the rest of the set and how it will change Limited over the coming weeks.
Thanks for reading,
Scott.