This is a conversation piece!

Can I get a show of hands – How many people just snap up Show and Tell and get freaky? Show and Tell is a lot of fun and I find that it just gets better and better, the earlier you can commit to the Show and Tell deck. Personally, i like to play cards like show and tell (that cheat fatties in) with other ways to cheat in the fatties. This improves the consistency of the deck and increases the chance that I will end up with both, a big dude, and a way to pop in said big dude, at a discount. Cards like Sneak Attack or Eureka are sweet in Show and Tell decks and Show and Tell is sweet in Reanimator decks.

Speaking of Reanimator,  Living Death is showing its beautiful face in this pack, too. So obviously, Show and Tell isn’t the only build-around card in the pack and it might not be the most fun or versatile either.

Living Death is such a good time. Sometimes it’s a wrath, sometimes it’s a one-sided wrath, others it just barely does enough for a win, and on a very rare occasion it sits in you hand for the whole game. If it sits in your hand the whole game, it is probably because you are too busy winning. With a pack like this, Living Death is easily a first pick. Getting it first means that you have the rest of the draft to hone in on the combo pieces that make it an absolute bomb (e.g. oona’s prowlers, survival of the fittest, liliana of the veil, etc.).

But the build-around cards don’t stop there! This pack also has a Venser, the Sojourner.

Venser takes a lot of crap for a planeswalker of his quality. Many cube drafters see him as frivolous or unnecessary but this, simply, is not true. While it is true that IF you have a deck with a lot of ETB creatures that create added value, then you’re already in good shape, it does not mean that you are going to win. The fact of the matter is, a deck that has a bunch of ETB creatures is going to be better with Venser.

For more on Venser the planeswalker, read this article. 

The final card that really gets my juices flowing is Spellskite.

For any of you who have cubed extensively with Spellskite, skip over this next part because you already know how good it is.

Spellskite is the unassuming son of a bitch that EVERYONE hates to play against. It eats great removal for breakfast and leaves opponents in really tough positions. Spellskite nullifies the red-X-spell-FTW plan and does so while blocking aggro pansies all day.

Is spellskite first pickable? I think so.

Is this the pack where that would be the case? Possibly.

In this pack, Spellskite is certainly in the same category as the fetch land – safe and reliable.

The rest of the litter is a little less impressive so I won’t get into them.

My Picks

1. Living Death
2. Venser, the Sojourner
3. Spellskite
4. Show and Tell
5. Windswept Heath

What would you take?