Welcome to another week of modern flashback drafts. This week we have Shards of Alara, which marks a significant turning point in Magic’s limited environments. It was the first set to have Mythic rarity, and it also represents a major change in the philosophy of Magic set design. This was the set where R&D decided to start shifting sets towards what Mark Rosewater terms “New World Order.” They hadn’t quite figured out what that meant yet, but this block is where they really start pushing things in that direction. Also, I’ve got a major project about creature in limited coming down the pipe, and there is a major statistical difference in the creatures in this set as compared with the sets previously, and it is the place where creatures come much closer to the kinds of creatures we see in sets now. If I were to pick a set to represent the beginning of modern limited design, this would be it. On top of this, it’s also the set that I came back to the game with competitively, and I started writing articles during the year this was released. You might be able to tell that I’m personally very excited for this one.

1. Shards of Alara is a multi-color block. It is based around Shards which is a multi-color grouping centered around a main color and it’s two allies. You can see basically how this works here. The five shards are Bant (WUG), Esper (UWB), Grixis (BUR), Jund (RBG), and Naya (GWR). Of note, when the design team made this set, they broke up into five separate mini-design teams, and each team was in charge of designing their shard in isolation from the other groups before returning to try to make the set have a more holistic design. The idea was that Alara was one world that had been split into five worlds for millennia, so they wanted each to feel very different, and they do. These five shards dominate the block, and you really want to be able to draft a deck to fit your Shard specifically (unless you are drafting a 5 color deck).

2. Shards of Alara has one mechanic that goes through all the shards, and that is Cycling. When a card like Jungle Weaver has Cycling X, you can pay X and discard it from your hand to draw a card. This mechanic has been around for a while, and its main use is as a limited smoothing mechanic, by letting you get some velocity through your deck to find either lands or spells in the mid to early game. One of the huge benefits to cycling is that it allows you to include cards that are more narrow or expensive than you would normally include in your deck, because if you aren’t able to make use of the card, you can cycle it away. Jungle Weaver, for example, is actually a pretty decent creature card despite costing 7. If you draw it early and can use it, you can cycle it to try to find some land. If you draw it late, you have a 5/6 reach that’s going to be one of the strongest cards on the board. The major twist to Cycling in this block is that they included spells like Resounding Thunder which have an expensive and multi-color cycling cost, but they add an extra punch to the spell when you spend that much. Resounding Thunder is one of the strongest commons in the block, giving you a powerful removal spell at instant speed early, or a massive burn spell that cantrips in the late game (and can’t be countered).

3. Each of the five shards gets its own mechanic. Bant, which centered in white, blue, and green gets the Exalted ability. Akrasan Squire has this ability; it means that whenever a creature attacks alone, Exalted will give that creature +1/+1 until end of turn. So if you play Akrasan Squire on turn one, and then attack with it on turn two, it will attack as a 2/2. If you then play another exalted creature on turn three and attack with the squire, it will attack as a 3/3, getting a +1/+1 bonus from its own Exalted and a +1/+1 bonus from the other creature’s exalted. Exalted is an ability that plays much more strongly than it reads. One of the main benefits of Exalted is that you can fill up a board with mediocre exalted cards, but then attack with one creature and turn it into a potent threat that will trade for either a couple of creature or for your opponent’s best creature. This allows you to just keep throwing bad creatures and grinding down your opponent. Exalted is also especially powerful with evasive creatures, essentially allowing one flyer to attack with the strength of your entire team. This is especially strong since it means you’ll be able to leave the rest of your creatures back on defensive while still powering up your offense. The only card with Exalted in the set that isn’t particularly good is Outrider of Jhess, but even that one is a perfectly decent 23rd playable that fits in well with blue’s strategies. One card with exalted is Battlegrace Angel which is one of the strongest rares in the set.

4. Esper is the shard that is focused in blue, white, and black. This shard doesn’t have a named mechanic, but it is focused on using artifacts. The mechanical innovation they used was the introduction of colored artifacts like Sanctum Gargoyle. There are not a ton of payoffs for drafting a ton of artifacts, but the ones that are there are quite powerful. The card that really makes the shard come together is Sanctum Gargoyle; having a bunch of those makes your deck awesome, being a 2/3 flying Gravedigger. You can even bring back removal with Executioner’s Capsule. Wingwright Mage is also quite strong in the deck, turning into a lifelinking flyer, and you will often have a few exalted creatures lying around from white and blue that allow you to attack with it for 3 or 4 damage and life. There’s also a version of the archetype that goes all in on artifacts with Glaze Fiend to kill your opponent very quickly and with evasion. One important card to note that got significantly worse in the deck is Etherium Astrolabe since you can no longer put combat damage on the stack.

5. Grixis is the shard that is focused in black, blue, and red. Its mechanic is Unearth. Creatures like Viscera Dragger have Unearth X, which lets you return the creature to play at sorcery speed. It gains haste, and you exile it at the end of the turn or if it would leave play. Every creature with Unearth allows you get a sudden one shot attack with the card later on in the game. The really neat thing about Grixis comes from the combination between the Grixis and Jund shards. Jund has a sacrifice theme; this becomes quite good with Unearth since you can bring your creature back, and then sacrifice that creature to the effect. An example of a card that becomes exceptional in Grixis is Bones Splinters. It’s also often useful to just save up your unearth abilities and then come in with a massive attack against your opponent.

6. Jund is the shard focused on red, black, and green. It gets the Devour mechanic, which is the most complicated to use of the shard mechanics. There is only one common devour creature, which is Thorn-Thrash Viashino. As you play a creature with Devour X, you can sacrifice any number of other creatures, and the Devour creature enters the battlefield with X +1/+1 counters times the number of creatures devoured. Devour isn’t a huge theme in the set, but the other sub theme of Jund is token creatures and creatures with death effects. A perfect example of this is Sprouting Thrinax at uncommon.

7. Naya is the shard focused on green, white, and red. It’s core mechanic is Five Power Matters. Basically, just imagine Ferocious from KTK block, but it’s for 5 power creatures. It plays very similarly. A great example is Rakeclaw Gargantuan which is a 5 mana 5/3 that can grant any five power creature first strike. Because five power creatures are expensive, the set also includes several mana creatures like Drumhunter that can ramp you into the bigger creature and then grant an extra ability once it is down.

8. Fixing is incredibly important in this block, and many of the most important first picks in the set are cards that fix your mana. For example, SavageLands is one of the Tri-Lands. They are all uncommon, they enter the battlefield tapped, and the tap for the three colors associated with that shard. These cards are exceptional because they are always good in three shards, but make your mana nearly perfect if you are in their correct shard. These are some of the top picks in the format, going above most things that aren’t top tier removal. The next best fixing available in each shard are the Panoramas, such as Naya Panorama. These tap for a colorless mana, but you can also sacrifice them to find a land with the basic land types associated with their shard. These aren’t as powerful as Trilands, but they still go very highly, just below the most efficient creatures in a color. They should generally go before the wheel. The least powerful fixers in each color are the Obelisks, like Obelisk of Esper. They aren’t ideal, but most decks will run one or possibly even two obelisks. They are generally a little bit too slow, and they should wheel most of the time, but you simply need fixing in the format, so you are often forced to play these.

9. After a few weeks in the format, the general consensus was that you had two main routes to draft the format. The first, which was very popular among some pro players was to draft a 5-color-control deck. Essentially, you took the fixing higher than everyone else, and then you grabbed all the best removal you could from what was left over. The problem with this strategy is that it falls apart really quickly when everyone else prioritizes the fixing just as highly. The second strategy was to focus on a shard, but to focus even more particularly on two colors in the shard, with the third color as sort of a heavy splash. So, if you were in Bant, you might draft WG splashing blue or WU splashing green. The benefit of this strategy is that it was less susceptible to bad mana draws, and it didn’t need to prioritize mana fixing so heavily, letting you settle into a color by picking great cards and then building around synergy. These decks also tended to be a bit faster than the five color control decks, so they could be a great metagame choice. Each person sort of had to find their own balance between these two main paths. I will note that one of my favorite strategies was more of a compromise between the two; I liked to focus on two colors, like WG, but then sort of splash from either of its neighbors. So I might be WG splashing red and blue for some removal and a gold card, or something like that. This strategy gives you more consistency than the five color deck, but more power than the two + one color deck.

10. Jund and Grixis were generally considered the strongest shards, mainly because of their abundance of great removal. Naya and Bant sort of came in second; they also both got good removal, but tended to have amazing creatures on top of that. Esper was often ranked the worst, mainly because blue tended to be a little bit weak, but it was also the most synergy heavy deck, and if you went into a metagame where people were avoiding Esper, then you could often get your important cards late and put together a killer deck. I will not that Esper was regarded as the strongest shard by a lot of people in full block draft, so it’s quite possible that people will forget that it was weaker in triple Shards and go into that deck to heavily as the format starts out.

1. 5 Color Control – This was generally regarded as the strongest strategy in the format. The core idea behind this strategy was to draft color fixing as highly as possible, and then back that up with the most powerful removal and bombs from the other colors. The only things you really take higher are top tier removal spells and near bomb level creatures. This is also the deck that best makes use of mini-sweepers like Infest and Jund Charm. These allow the deck to maintain board position in the early game, making up some of the ground they lose in the first 1 to 3 turns while playing fixing, and then cleaning up the small creatures your opponents will have played early.

2. WGx – The WG deck is basically the opposite of the 5 Color Control deck. It’s an aggressive deck, though there is an even more heavily focused and aggressive version that is closer to just white creatures. This deck leans especially hard on Akrasan Squire, Excommunicate, Knight of the Skyward Eye, Court Archers, and Steward of Valeron, and even makes use of Wild Nacatl, especially if you are a Naya based deck rather than Bant based. The core of the deck is to have cheap WG exalted creatures, which allow you to keep attacking through any defense your opponent might build in the early game. Going the Naya route is probably the best direction since you get Resounding Thunder, Vithian Stinger, Branching Bolt, and to some extent Bloodpyre Elemental to function as removal, as well as Bull Cerodon, Naya Charm, and Woolly Thoctar in your powerhouse multicolor slots. This deck can also make good use out of the five power matters cards since exalted can often get a creature up above that count. The blue splash has less to add at common though Deft Duelist is one of the best creatures to Exalt onto, and Waveskimmer Aven is a powerful evasive and Exalted threat. At uncommon it can grab Fatestitcher, Jhessian Infiltrator, or Kiss of the Amesha which all fit very well into the archetype, but the biggest reason to be WGu is that you get to play Rhox War Monk, which is simply the best thing to use with Exalted at the common and uncommon level.

3. WUx – Next to the WG deck we have a WU version of the exalted deck. This one plays a bit differently because it leans more on the natural pairing of Exalted with evasive creatures. This deck uses several of the same core white cards, but makes a little bit better use of Guardians of Akrasa. Being white blue gives you access to Kathari Screecher, Cloudheath Drake, and Sanctum Gargoyle which all combine very well with Exalted creatures. Your goal will be to gum up the ground, which is easier when your ground creatures are still contributing to your offensive potential. If green is your third color, you get to add several great blockers, and Rhox War Monk is still the best of those. But pairing up with black is especially strong since you get Executioner’s Capsule which combines perfectly with Sanctum Gargoyle to take out multiple threats. This deck also gets Windwright Mage if you can pick up a decent number of artifacts to put in your graveyard, which combine with exalted to put the game away very easily, as well as Tidehollow Strix which can either be evasive or hold back giant creatures. At uncommon, this deck gets Tower Gargoyle which is a 4/4 flyer for 4cmc and fits perfectly into the strategy.

4. UBx – Where the WUx deck was more of an aggro-control deck that wanted to close out with evasion and exalted, the UBx deck is definitely a control deck centered around holding the ground with a few creatures, killing all their big threats, and then hopefully closing out the game with bomby creatures or card advantage. This deck will get down creatures like Dregscape Zombie, Viscera Dragger, or Kathari Screecher and then trade those creatures off somewhat aggressively. Then it will unearth those creatures and use either Bone Splinters or Fleshbag Marauder to take out your opoonent’s creatures. The biggest reason to build a UBx control deck is Agony Warp which rangers from killing a great creature at instant speed to netting a mid-combat two-for-one. Red gives you even more removal and more ways to take advantage of sacrifice effects, while white gives you Oblivion Ring and Artifact shenanigans like with Sanctum Gargoyle.

5. BRx – This deck can either be an aggressive deck or a midrange deck. The aggressive deck leans on Goblin Deathraiders, Dragon Fodder and Hissing Iguanar out of red, all of which work together to create a very fast attack that can be impossible for your opponent to come back from. Throwing in Dregscape Zombies and Viscera Draggers along with the Bone Splinters and Fleshbag Marauder shenanigans gives you ways to remove good blockers. And then, in the late game, you can close things out with an unearth burst. The aggressive version of this deck also gets Blightning which closes games out really well if you get a bit ahead, and is a nightmare for the 5 color control decks. The Grixis version of the deck gets approximately one million removal spells, which can be good in the aggro deck to clear the way, but also great in a more controlling version that tries to grind out card advantage. The Jund version of the deck gets some phenomenal creatures, which can allow the deck to perform more of a midrange role.

6. RGx – This is the midrangiest of all midrangey decks. It is a deck based around big creatures and grindy trades on stalled out boards. The common that really makes this deck shine is Branching Bolt which is in competition with Oblivion Ring as the best common in the set. The potential to take out multiple key creatures at instant speed is tremendous, and can turn flying into a real downside in this set. This deck also gets multiple fantastic uncommons including the near bomb Jund Battlemage and either Woolly Thoctar or Sprouting Thrinax. The Naya version of this deck leans on its really big creatures, and a card like Drumhunter really shines here by giving you a long term card advantage engine that threatens to take over the game. On top of this, you also get the exalted bonuses which allow you to really turn up the midrange strategy by just attacking in with your big creature over and over until they are ground down in defeat. The Jund version of the deck has access to more removal, and also gets to splash in some of those powerful sacrifice effects from black.

0. To answer a couple of questions, the card section is specifically where I cover cards that are either better or worse than you might think on first glance. This is not a list of the best commons or anything like that. Obviously Oblivion Ring is great (probably the best common) but you don’t need me to explain that. Also, I’ve covered most of the really important cards in the other sections of the primer, and I don’t see a ton of need to go over all of them again individually. Instead, I’m picking cards here because I have specific things to say about it. If you want more discussion about other cards, please see the other sources or leave/read the comments.

1. Akrasan Squire – This card is significantly stronger than it appears at first glance. 1/1s for 1 are one of the big no-nos in limited, but this one is great, and is probably one of the top three commons in white. It is a key piece of every white deck, allowing the WG deck to have an early attacker that adds value in the late game while also giving the evasion deck a way to power up its flyers.

2. Excommunicate – This card was kind of ignored when it was out in this set. It would often wheel, though it rarely stayed in the sideboard. However, about a year later, some people in MTGO ran the numbers on the winningest cards in various archetypes in response to one Marshall Sutcliffe’s campaign against Overrun. They found that Mind Control was absurd, as was Overrun, and they stopped printing those kind of cards. But an important little side story is that Excommunicate showed up as the second best performing white common in Magic 2010, just behind Blinding Mage, and it was in the top five commons in the set, which was a huge surprise. When this information came out, I gave Excommunicate a second look in Shards of Alara block, and I really think the Magic community at large misevaluated this card when it was in Shards of Alara. Time Ebb is a great card and it was a great card then, especially against a deck with expensive multicolor creatures.

3. Knight of the Skyward Eye – Limited players from now should understand how great of a card this Knight is, but people at the time period just didn’t quite get it. You’d wheel Knights pretty easily, and it’s one of the best creatures in the set, basically acting as a 2/2 unblockable in the early game and a 5/5 in the late game. This is the thing that makes the WG deck work, which is also my personal favorite deck in the format.

4. Etherium Sculptor – Blue doesn’t get many commons worth talking about that I haven’t already covered earlier, but Etherium Sculptor is an important one. This is the kind of card that is either unplayable or fantastic. If you have 8 or more artifacts then it is going to be a really valuable part of your game plan, but otherwise you should just avoid it. You’d think this would mean that it goes around really late, but it turns out that people value Etherium Sculptor much too highly so it tends to get picked up sooner than it should.

5. Bone Splinters this card has been printed in a lot of sets and was even printed in Battle for Zendikar where it was just okay. But in Shards of Alara, it’s actually pretty good. There are plenty of extra tokens or unearth creatures running around that you can mitigate the cost of this card pretty easily, and there are even some valuable creatures with death effects that get turned on by the Bone Splinters. Basically, this card performs better here than it ever has since, and it would be easy for current MTG players to overlook the strength of this card in this set specifically.

6. Executioner’s Capsule – This is another competitor for best common in the set, though it is probably edged out by Oblivion Ring, Branching Bolt, Resounding Thunder, and possibly Agony Warp. The power of Executioner’s Capsule is in the interaction with Sanctum Gargoyle and Windwright Mage. Alongside those cards, this is a removal spell that comes with significant upside, and I’m willing to take it a little bit early to speculate on the combos, since it will still be a top tier card in a Grixis control deck or a Jund midrange deck.

7. Viscera Dragger This is one of my favorite cards never, not because of its incredible power level, but because of its flexibility. The cycling + unearth combo turns this into a swiss army knife that fulfills a lot of different jobs depending on what you currently need. It’s just a staple creature that is going to form the backbone of any black deck.

8. Hissing Iguanar – Remember Nettle Drone? This is the Shards of Alara version, though I think it might even be better. There are more ways to deal 1 damage in this set, which makes this a little bit weaker, but you’ll often get more triggers off of Hissing Igunar than you ever would off of Nettle Drone, and you don’t even have to tap it for the effect. It will often even get a trigger when it dies by trading with another creature, so that’s pretty cool.

9. Resounding Thunder – There’s not much to say about this card except that it is awesome. It is very splashable, but at its best in a Jund deck, where it can turn into a cantripping Fireball in the late game. This card is a real game winner, taking out important creatures early, and taking out bombs or just killing your opponent in the late game. Once you have a few of these, it’s important to play to your outs. I once lost a game because I didn’t play all my lands in case of the out of Cycling Resounding Thunder into a cycle Resounding Thunder to deal 12 and close out the game, so just remember to keep this card in mind!

10. Vithian Stinger – This card is an incredible pinger. You get it down on T3 and power up all your removal and creatures while also picking off small evasive creatures, exalted creatures, and tokens. You can even ping something and then sacrifice this and unearth it to get the second point of damage if you really need it, or if you just need to deal the last two points of damage directly to your opponent. One of the things I love best about stinger is that it’s a pinger that’s great against other pingers; if your opponent already has a stinger, you can just play it out, let it die, and then unearth it to take out their pinger, which gives you a use for the card rather than just having it be a dead card.

11. Volcanic Submersion – I decided to go a little above my quota of red cards to talk about this one in particular. Normally these cards are just awful, but Volcanic Submersion plays an important sideboard role in this format since it can take out Esper bombs. It can even take out a splash color in a pinch. And if you find it completely dead because they didn’t draw their Tower Gargoyle, you can just cycle it away. It’s not a top tier card, but it’s great sideboard material, and not even a complete donk in the maindeck.

12. Druid of the Anima – Both the fixing and the ramp are vitally important for a Naya deck, so this is probably green’s best common. There are so many big creatures in Naya and Jund that you really need this in order to hit them. Being able to play a Resounding Thunder, Oblivion Ring, or the last mana for a Woolly Thoctar is amazing.

13. Mosstodon – This guy is pretty useful for a 5 power matters deck. Most of the creatures don’t have trample, so having this on the board usually means punching through for all the additional damage you need to win the game. It’s an easily playable 4G in a multicolor deck, and it can give itself trample as well, which is a key thing to remember with all the cards with this mechanic.

14. Obelisks – The obelisks are necessary evils in the format. The ramp is useful and the fixing is useful, but they are still a last resort. You’d rather have Panoramas and Tri-Lands any time. With that said, the best of the Obelisks is Obelisk of Esper, since that deck wants a lot of artifacts anyway.

15. Panoramas – These are some of the best commons in their shards. Also, remember that it’s very useful to pick up an off color panorama if it has a couple of your colors. Jund Panorama and Bant Panorama are both great in a Naya deck. You don’t usually want to first pick these, but you’ll take them over most things that aren’t top tier removal.

16. Agony Warp – This is the biggest reason to be in blue, but UB even more specifically. It is an incredible removal spell that fits perfectly both into control decks where it can kill something and gain a virtual three life, or in tempo decks where it can be a two for one. It’s easy to underestimate how powerful it is to split up these two abilities, but it really is fabulous.

17. Branching Bolt – This is the biggest reason to be in RG. This card will get a two-for-one about 50% of the time, and if it isn’t, it’s still a top tier removal spell for 3 mana. This is a card that’s easily worth splashing for if you have the fixing.

18. Windwright Mage – This card is pretty mediocre unless you are in heavy Esper, at which point it becomes one of the best creatures in your deck. It combines well with exalted and you can get it back with Sanctum Gargoyle. It’s easy to be underwhelmed by this card, but remember that when it has flying it’s a premium card.

19. Sigiled Paladin – This is one of the best reasons to be in an aggressive white/green or white/blue deck. It attacks as a 3/3 first striker by itself, and can also help your other creatures get in while you hold the ground. Picking this up is a pretty good incentive to go into white heavily as well since that WW mana cost can be pretty harsh in the format.

20. Fatestitcher – This is one of my favorite cards in the set. Fatestitcher is a tapper that doesn’t cost any mana to activate, and it can also allow you to hold back an entire team with the threat to untap one of your big creatures. The U for the unearth is really good, especially since it often allows you to throw it down, clear out a blocker, and then sacrifice the Fatestitcher to a Bone Splinters or something like that.

21. Corpse Connoisseur – This is like a 2.3 for one. Putting any creature into your graveyard doesn’t seem fabulous, but since you’re already going to have unearth creatures, you’re just putting a creature that has a free effect into the yard, and sometimes that card will even be great. Using the unearth ability to put something else into your yard is also fabulous.

22. Jund Battlemage – This is a near bomb level uncommon, but only if you are in RG. It pumps out a bunch of tokens, which is pretty strong, but this set happens to have a ton of extra uses for tokens. And even if you don’t have those uses, it’s the kind of card that just takes over a game if left alone for even just a little bit.

23. Rhox Charger – This is another card that’s easy to underestimate, but is actually incredibly strong when you see it in play. It comes down and gives a sort of hasty exalted trigger, letting your two or three drop attack onto their board. The next turn, you’re attacking with at least a 4/4 trampler. Trample is one of the best abilities to put on an Exalted creature, and this also has a very easy mana cost and a very reasonable blocking body if you want to attack with other exalted creatures.

24. Tri-Lands – These are among the best uncommons in any particular color combination, and they are some of the best first picks in the format. If you drafted Khans of Tarkir, then you have a good idea of how strong Tri-Lands are, but remember that they are even more essential in this format since you have less fixing and higher color demands here than Khans of Tarkir did.

25. Bull Cerodon – I was trying to figure out which multicolor uncommons to talk about specifically, but the truth is that they are all fabulous except for Esper Charm, Sangrite Surge, Swerve, and Thoughtcutter Agent. Pretty much all the other multicolor uncommons are legitimate first picks, though Jhessian Infiltrator and Tidehollow Sculler need fairly specific decks. But we’re talking about Bull Cerodon because it has a much bigger impact on the game than you might expect. 5/5 haste is just okay; 5/5 vigilance is just okay. But the combination is surprisingly good. It means you can drop a creature with a surprise attack, but that creature is still going to be available for defense, which is a huge swing to make. It’s also pretty easy to cast since it only needs two colors of mana, and it gets powered up by all the 5 power matters cards, being able to pick up things like Indestructible and Frist Strike. It’s also a card that works really well in the 5 color control deck since it is a big creature that can end the game quickly but that can still pull its weight on defense.

26. Battlegrace Angel – This card is nigh unbeatable. One of the incredible things about this angel is that you basically get the lifelink and exalted bonus with haste since you play it before combat and then immediately attack. This can often produce such a huge swing that you immediately stabilize on a board you might have been losing. Having flying on top of all this means that when it gets to be your turn, you’re going to attack for a 10, 12, or 14 point life swing. It’s one of the top rares in the set.

27. Scourglass – You need to have a pretty dedicated artifact deck for this card to be good, and the ability does delay until your next turn, but if you are in a heavy artifact deck, this thing will answer pretty much all of your problems and wipe your opponents board while leaving yours alone. And then you can get it back with Sanctum Gargoyle. Sometimes you even win with this card on the threat of activation along. Becareful of Naturalize before you get a chance to activate this.

28. Sharding Sphinx – This is another card that just takes over the game when you play it. You’ll often be able to play it out and immediately get in with one or two creatures, in which case you then have multiple creatures getting in the next turn to create an army out of nowhere. Even by itself it is a 4/4 flyer that starts creating 1/1 flyers at an exponential rate as soon as it gets in once.

29. Vein Drinker – This card is obviously good, but it’s even stronger in this set since the set is not incredibly fast. Having the instant speed fight ability is awesome too since you can leave it back on your turn and then threaten to take down their creatures mid combat. Sometimes you just use it to trade with something big and something small, sometimes it takes over the game all by itself.

30. Flameblast Dragon – Another competitor for strongest rare in the set. This thing is just absolutely absurd. Usually you just attack with it once and they die, but sometimes you use it to blaze some of their creatures out while they chump. In any case, it’s hard to lose if you untap with this.

31. The Ultimatums – I have bad news… the Ultimatums aren’t very good. Cruel Ultimatum is pretty strong, and Violent Ultimatum does a lot, but even those are so much weaker than they look. The problem is that they require such specific mana costs to cast. In my last match of Shards the other day, my opponent cast Cruel Ultimatum when they finally drew their second red source, but they were so far behind by holding it in their hand for about 12 turns that it didn’t even matter and I easily won anyway. If you are in a dedicated shard deck with a lot of mana fixing, then the red ultimatums are great; otherwise they’re not very playable.

32. There are more rares to talk about. Talk about them in the comments! Talk about the other commons and uncommons that are really important for particular archetypes as well!.

Shards of Alara Price Index – by MTG Goldfish

[Discussing Draft #1: Esper, Grixis, and Jund in Shards[(http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/shardslimited/17397_Reflecting-Ruel-Discussing-Draft-1-Esper-Grixis-and-Jund-in-Shards-of-Alara.html) – by Olivier Ruel and Manuel Bucher

Discussing Draft #2: Naya, Bant, White Aggro, and 5 Color Control – by Olivier Ruel and Manuel Bucher

Drafting Five Color Control by Conley Woods

WARNING: Sigil of Distinction is bugged. It currently only gives +1/+1 regardless of how many counters are on it. Don't draft it, even though it used to be one of the best cards in the set :( :(