by Ryan Spring

When it comes to draft time, how familiar are you with the newest set, Planar Chaos? Drafting Time Spiral/Time Spiral/Planar Chaos is hard sometimes. Do you know the cream of the crop commons from the ones better off as toilet tissue? You will after reading this article. Even if you already do, a second opinion never hurt anybody.

In this article I'll take you color by color and list out the top commons from the new set in my eyes. Then I’ll point out some noteworthy uncommons and rares for each color. Lastly, I’ll mix and match colors to give you a look at how cards stack up overall against the rest of the field. If you're ready to take your drafting skills to the next level, read on.

1. Rathi Trapper
2. Melancholy
3. Midnight Charm
4. Brain Gorgers
5. Cradle to Grave

Ew, ew, ew, ew, ew. Black is far and away the worst color for commons, and overall, the weakest color in Planar Chaos limited. Rathi Trapper is much better than any other card on that list. Melancholy is good, but not at all exciting. And all three of the others are average at best, assuming I'm being generous. Blightspeaker is actually the second best card besides the Rathi Trapper if you happen to be in black/white rebels, but any other time it's an unexciting card. If you're in black going into Planar Chaos, your best bet is to hope you're getting hooked up in whatever your other color is, as there's very little to offer here.

The black uncommons - while you obviously can't count on opening them frequently - are quite good. Enslave is, in my opinion, the second best uncommon in the entire set, and Kor Dirge often wins games all by itself. Both are far better than any common in black, if not in the set, and are first pick bombs. Big Game Hunter is noteworthy as a solid pick. Treacherous Urge, to me, is highly overrated. Stick to opening Enslave and Kor Dirge.

The second best card of any kind you can open is Damnation. Best rare in the set by a fairly large gap, auto first pick no matter what. If you're lucky at opening packs, when you're in black, this is what will appear. Null Profusion, a Recycle reprint, is also very good, but you need to be careful and play it correctly. Any card like Mindstab or Wistful Thinking that forces you to discard will make the Profusion backfire and instantly lock you out of the game.

Blue

1. Shaper Parasite
2. Erratic Mutation
3. Aquamorph Entity
4. Primal Plasma
5. Gossamer Phantasm

Shaper Parasite is the best common in the set, Mutation is a good card, but not great, as is Entity, and the others are just average. Blue is the second weakest color in the set for common quality, beating out only black, but because it has the best commons in Time Spiral, the average cards given to you here balance things out. It also helps for skilled players that there are a large number of morphs for blue between the two sets, so it's easier to use certain ones that aren't as good as bait to allow your good ones to come down without any problems.

The best blue uncommon is Jodah's Avenger, but that's pretty much the only good one, and as good as it is, it's not nearly as good as the uncommons offered in other colors. Also, because of how good the Parasite is, I'd still take Shaper Parasite over Jodah's Avenger.

A former black card from back in the day, Serendib Sorcerer is near the top of the blue rares, as is the extremely powerful Aeon Chronicler. The Chronicler is a skill intensive card, and should never be suspended for a large amount, as tempting as it is. Try suspending him for one or two, three at the most, and watching him go to work. There's also several tricks with him, like flipping over a Fathom Seer mid-combat and making him that much larger. Typically, this card wins the game on its own, and is the best overall blue card you can open.

1. Mire Boa
2. Giant Dustwasp
3. Uktabi Drake
4. Utopia Vow
5. Citanul Woodreaders

Green is at the middle of the pack, as the third most powerful color for Planar Chaos limited. Mire Boa and Giant Duskwasp are both powerful, first-pickable commons that are extremely helpful to an aggressive deck, and often deal half the damage in the game on their own. The Mire Boa is a black deck's worst nightmare. Feebleness from Time Spiral has gone up a very large amount in value because of this card alone, but if they don't have one, this card is a game winning problem. Even when you're not against black, a two power regenerating creature is difficult for any deck to deal with, and he's a solid offensive and defensive option, though it's clear the green in this set wants to be aggressive.

If you happen to be green/white Hedge Troll is ridiculously good, and if not, the uncommons you're looking for are still very deep. Again, pending you can kicker it with the appropriate colors, Ana Battlemage is very good, and Deadwood Treefolk is good in every deck. I don't like Harmonize nearly as much as most players do, as I feel like this format is far too much about tempo and you never want to cast it on turn four. I'd almost always rather play a creature for the large majority of the early turns, and wouldn't have a turn where I want to cast it until much later in the game. None the less, the card always makes the deck and is still above average, therefore worth considering if you're green.

Not gonna lie to you, the rares are unexciting. The reprint of Glorious Anthem, Gaea's Anthem, is obviously good in limited, but there's little else. I mean to be fair, there are plenty of green rares that are fine and perfectly playable, but none that stick out and are overpowered. Most of the green uncommons are better than the green rares.

1. Dead/Gone
2. Prodigal Pyromancer
3. Stingscourger
4. Brute Force
5. Skirk Shaman

Wow, what a nice group of commons! It kinda seemed for a while like I was going in order from worst to best, but actually, I was going in alphabetical order, and it just happened to go that way. Red has the best commons, and the best uncommon for that matter, in Planar Chaos, and is extremely deep. Good cards actually didn't make that list, like Needlepeak Spider, which kills solid first picks like Errant Ephemeron or hits for a lot when you clear a path for it. Dead/Gone, Prodigal Pyromancer, and Stingscourger are all cards you can and should first pick, and the red in this set can do pretty much everything. It has burn, it has tempo, is has aggressive creatures, and it has tricks. Without a doubt, this is one of the strongest common runs for a single color in recent history.

The best uncommon in the set also happens to be the single best card in the set, and it happens to be in red, which really didn't need any help. Pyrohemia, a completely overpowered and unfair reprint of the old black version, Pestilence, is the single best card probably in the entire format you can hope to open. What's to be said about it? Not that it isn't ridiculous as it is, but to add insult to injury, I'll inform you all that in a Geneva side draft I had Pyrohemia and Stuffy Doll both out together, which is probably the most unfair thing I've ever seen in this format. Would you newer players believe me if I told you the older version of this card used to be a common?!?! I got so wrapped up in Pyrohemia I forgot to talk about other nasty uncommons like Rough/Tumble, Reckless Wurm, and Shivan Meteor, all of which are very, very good. But come on now, it used to be a common!!!

Red isn't missing bomb rares either. There's this card called Torchling, and it's a lot like this card called Morphling, and this card called Morphling happens to be the second most powerful creature ever printed in the history of magic. Keeping this information in mind, it's safe to say that first picking Torchling is probably a good idea. You also get a new version of Akroma in red, and while she's not as good as the original, she's still a bomb. I'll throw out Magus of the Arena too while I'm at it, just to add icing on an already overpowered cake.

1. Whitemane Lion
2. Shade of Trokair
3. Saltfield Recluse
4. Sunlance
5. Sinew Sliver

This is an extremely deep group of commons, all of which are very good, and as sad as it is, they're very close to the power level of the red commons I was just raving about. Lion requires correct play to be good, but when used correctly he's a game winner. Shade is one of the most aggressive creatures in the format and is extremely hard to block because of the pump ability, not to mention white has several tricks to mess up the combat math. Recluse is insane in black/white rebels but still very good on its own, and it's just another card to mess with combat. Sunlance is white removal believe it or not, and the Sinew Sliver, another reprint of an older card, is fine on its own when you have a couple random slivers in your deck, but when you happen to have a sliver deck it's one of the best cards you can open. White, as usual, is very deep.

it's hard to put all the uncommons in order, mainly because there are so many really good ones. Take your pick based on preference between Stonecloaker, Calciderm, Stormfront Riders, and Riftmark Knight. Those are just the extremely good cards, leaving out perfectly reasonable cards like Malach of the Dawn, a Ghost Ship reprint. Personally, being an aggressive drafter, I really like Calciderm and Stonecloaker over the others, but I have a lot of respect for each card I listed and would say that white in Planar Chaos without a doubt has the deepest and possibly strongest uncommons.

So all in all, whether you actually read the above or not, here's where I'd put the commons in the set based on power level overall, bearing in mind that these picks like any are never always correct and that a very important part of drafting is adjusting your pick order based on what specifically your deck needs. Take that lesson more than anything else I've mentioned in this article, and make good picks, and you will be successful.

1. Shaper Parasite
2. Dead/Gone
3. Whitemane Lion
4. Mire Boa
5. Prodigal Pyromancer
6. Giant Duskwasp
7. Rathi Trapper
8. Shade of Trokair
9. Stingscourger
10. Saltfield Recluse

Uncommons are probably even harder to decide, but after lots of thinking about it and triple checking, this is what I came up with:

1. Pyrohemia
2. Enslave
3. Stonecloaker
4. Rough/Tumble
5. Calciderm
6. Kor Dirge
7. Stormfront Riders
8. Jodah's Avenger
9. Riftmark Knight
10. Reckless Wurm

I didn't make a rare list as i feel like it's kinda pointless. Bomb rares are bomb rares, and Planar Chaos is the third pack of your draft, so at that time, a lot of it depends on what it is your deck needs.

As always if you'd like to tell me how bad my lists are or if you have questions and comments, I'm a super geek and always up to talk magic.

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