For the TL;DR version you can skip to the TOP 20<\/a> list at the end!<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n GENERAL NOTES<\/strong><\/p>\n Prerelease pools<\/strong><\/p>\n Oath of the Gatewatch<\/strong><\/p>\n SURGE<\/strong><\/p>\n The mechanic\u00a0that’s most blatantly\u00a0made to work better in 2HG by explicitly mentioning “teammate”. Many of these cards are bonkers because the Surge condition is so easily met. This ability is in Blue and Red. Here are the mythics and rares to look out for:<\/p>\n Next up; the best commons and uncommons with Surge:<\/p>\n These are the surge cards that are merely okay or situational. Cuttable if they don’t line up with your strategy or curve.<\/p>\n Then we get to the Surge stinker:<\/p>\n COLORLESS MANA<\/strong><\/p>\n While you can add any number of the five regular basic lands to your deck, you only get to play the Wastes that you opened in limited. In normal sealed this limits how much\u00a0colorless sources you can run but with twice as many cards you’re much more likely to have as many as you want to play.<\/p>\n Next to that, you also get much more colorless payoff cards that incentivize you for playing colorless mana. It’s possible\u00a0that with the right pool one of the decks could be a “monocolor colorless deck” with all the strong colorless cards as the base, and enough cards in one normal\u00a0color to fill out the rest.<\/p>\n Black seems to benefit the most from a high amount of colorless sources. White doesn’t have any colorless requirements at all at common or uncommon. Here are the cards\u00a0that get significantly better with multiple\u00a0colorless sources:<\/p>\n SUPPORT<\/strong><\/p>\n Support was\u00a0also made to work better in 2HG, making it more likely that you can Support the maximum number of creatures\u00a0and\u00a0that the counters get on creatures where they matter. Support works especially well with evasive abilities such as flying and menace.<\/p>\n This ability is mainly in white and green with a guest appearance in blue and red. Here’s the rare:<\/p>\n As for the best of the\u00a0commons and uncommons with Support:<\/p>\n The rest of the Support cards are okay\u00a0or\u00a0situational. All of these\u00a0are better in 2HG but at the prerelease they’re cuttable depending on your strategy:<\/p>\n OTHER KINDS OF SUPPORT<\/strong><\/p>\n Besides\u00a0Support itself there are other ways to help your teammate in this set. There are some\u00a0cards that might normally only affect yourself\u00a0but target any player here.<\/p>\n Affects teammate<\/strong><\/p>\n Affects teammate’s creatures<\/strong><\/p>\n These target creatures\u00a0without mentioning “you control” and therefore can help your teammate. Note that auras and combat tricks (almost) always work this way so by default they won’t be listed.\u00a0Auras are generally even worse because you have two opponents who could have removal, but combat tricks usually get a little better if both of you are very aggressive; a trick on hand allows twice as many creatures to attack.<\/p>\n Here are the non-aura, non-trick cards that can target your teammate’s creatures:<\/p>\n The rares are\u00a0all great by themself with only a minor boost in 2HG.<\/p>\n Double Drain<\/strong><\/p>\n Cards that make each opponent lose 1 life or deal 1 damage to each opponent are normally a staple effect in each set. They work smoother on Magic Online than the version that targets a single opponent. In this set however we (almost) exclusively see the latter version. Meet the one member that still gets extra value in 2HG, and a rare that technically also fits this category:<\/p>\n Affects all your\u00a0opponents’ creatures<\/strong><\/p>\n BIGGER CARD POOL<\/strong><\/p>\n NOT IMPROVING<\/strong><\/p>\n This section is about cards that do not get better in 2HG. Their rating will be comparable to how they’re rated for a duel, with the additional caveat that filler often won’t\u00a0make the cut at the prerelease.<\/p>\n This section is bigger than usual because Wizards has been extra mindful of 2HG for this set and they didn’t want these cards to accidentally outshine the intended cards mentioned above.\u00a0The biggest category this time is cards that ping for only 1 even in 2HG.<\/p>\n NOT pinging double<\/strong><\/p>\n In any other set these cards would likely have “each opponent” lose life or take damage or mill cards rather than “target opponent”. (Fathom Feeder<\/a> mills each opponent for example.)<\/p>\n This is where Cliffhaven Vampire<\/a> should belong as well, don’t you think?<\/p>\n NOT\u00a0being supportive<\/strong><\/p>\n Here are the cards that do not allow you to target your teammate or a creature he or she controls, even though it seems they could easily be templated to work that way.<\/p>\n Void Grafter<\/em> and Prophet of Distortion<\/em> have the excuse that they’re Eldrazi-aligned while teamwork is a theme of the Zendikari. But that didn’t stop cards mentioned earlier like Gravity Negator<\/a> to subtly work better in 2HG. “Awaken”<\/strong><\/p>\n These cards do not mention Awaken but they all animate lands, either temporarily or permanently. It would’ve been nice to be able to animate your teammate’s land if he or she was the one being flooded, but Wizards understandably didn’t want to risk these cards\u00a0leading to nasty land destruction by being able to target any player’s lands.<\/p>\n TOP 20<\/strong><\/p>\n To summarize all of this here’s a list with the 15 commons and uncommons that show the biggest increase in power relative to their value\u00a0in a normal duel. (So these are NOT the 15\u00a0best commons\/uncommons to open at the prerelease overall, good removal is still good removal in 2HG, etc)<\/p>\n And here’s the top 5 for the rares and mythics, again for cards that will be much more powerful than at a regular prerelease.<\/p>\n As you can see, three of the four new mechanics promise to\u00a0play radically different in 2HG, so it looks like this 2HG prerelease is going to be\u00a0a unique experience!<\/p>\n Do you disagree with this list? Are you missing a card in this article? How was your experience at the prerelease? Comment below!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This guide shows which Oath cards become better\u00a0in Two-Headed Giant and which don’t. If you’re playing in a 2HG prerelease these are the cards to pay special attention to! This set is unique in that it has been made\u00a0with 2HG in mind, so there are a lot of gems,\u00a0including three of the new mechanics. Although […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":194,"featured_media":334,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[5,16,6],"language":[],"class_list":["post-365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-strategy","tag-2hg","tag-oath-of-the-gatewatch","tag-two-headed-giant"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/2hg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/2hg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/2hg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/2hg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/194"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/2hg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=365"}],"version-history":[{"count":59,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/2hg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":497,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/2hg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365\/revisions\/497"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/2hg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/2hg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/2hg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/2hg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=365"},{"taxonomy":"language","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/2hg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/language?post=365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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sacrifce theme, but 5 mana makes it tougher\u00a0to also have mana left for a sacrifice outlet.<\/li>\n
\nMake sure to play around this yourself as well. Don’t make two blocks that could be blown out by a surprise Support 2 (or a Tandem Tactics<\/a>) if you can avoid it!
\nUnity of Purpose could get added value from Cohort, but blue doesn’t have any Cohort and this card doesn’t untap your teammate’s creatures that you Support.<\/li>\n
\n![\"en_rBqSBYe83W\"](\"http:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/2hg\/files\/2016\/01\/en_rBqSBYe83W.png\")
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\nMalakir Soothsayer<\/em> would normally have the excuse of being black-aligned, which usually isn’t a team player. But she’s an ally! She’s supposed to work together with others. Would even be a cute pinger that way, like how Sign in Blood<\/a> is sometimes a cute burn spell.
\nMake a Stand<\/em> has no excuse whatsoever.<\/p>\n
\n![\"en_YNiNC6f3LI\"](\"http:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/2hg\/files\/2016\/01\/en_YNiNC6f3LI.png\")
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