Foundations (FDN) Limited Review — Black

Note: This article was translated from Chinese by AI and may contain errors. Read the original Chinese version.

Foundations (FDN) holds its Prerelease events on November 8, 2024, and officially releases a week later on November 15, 2024. Want to know more about how each card rates in Limited, along with some recommendations? Then check out this series of FDN Limited reviews!

Grading Scale

5.0: Unconditional first pick, gives you a nearly game-winning advantage
4.5: Unconditional first pick if you are in the right colors, gives you a huge advantage
4.0: Worth a first pick, synergizes extremely well with a color pair’s theme, and can be the deciding card for splashing/switching colors or settling into a color pair
3.5: Top uncommons and commons of the set and other sufficiently strong cards, synergize well with a color pair’s theme, and can be key cards for settling into a color pair
3.0: Important cards for a color pair’s theme, plus other above-average cards that you want in your final deck
2.5: Average, usually a decent curve filler
2.0 to 1.0: Below average, generally not played, can be used as filler if necessary but not too many
0.5 to 0.0: Unplayable, basically never play it, doing so only helps you lose

Ratings

Score: 3.5
Comment: A creature with good resource value. Besides letting other creatures act almost like they have two lives in combat trades and when removed, it can also pair with removal to copy your opponent’s bomb, so it is an effect with a very high ceiling.

Score: 2.5
Comment: The enters-the-battlefield ability is very strong: a two-card advantage plus a four-life swing is a huge edge, and it is still a flying creature itself. However, the cost of sacrificing a creature is large, especially in black, a color that is less likely to have small creatures or token creatures, and as a 6-mana creature with only 4 toughness it cannot gain that much of an edge in creature combat, so we can only give it an average score.

Score: 2.5
Comment: A 2/3 flier for 4 has a rather weak body, but in a blue-black deck built around the threshold theme it easily becomes a 4/4 flier, which is very strong in specific situations.

Score: 3.5
Comment: Basically a sweeper; it costs five, so it scores 0.5 lower than Day of Judgment.

Score: 4.5
Comment: A 5/5 flying deathtouch with a lifelink-like effect is undeniably strong. The only flaw is that it has no way to protect itself. In addition, with Marauding Blight-Priest, having both on the battlefield and then gaining any life yourself or making your opponent lose any life to set it off gives an infinite combo that wins the game outright. A very strong card.

A two-card infinite combo showing up in Limited is truly perverse. Imagine an EDH toy appearing in your sealed or draft… too strong!

Score: 2.5
Comment: A 4/3/4 menace, a fairly good body; even in a deck without threshold it is a decent curve creature, and with threshold it gets stronger.

Score: 2.5
Comment: A decent curve creature; remember that you only get the looting effect if you cast it after attacking.

Score: 4.5
Comment: The 5/5/3 flying body is above average, and mainly the third ability is very strong: whenever “anyone’s” nontoken creature dies you draw a card, so a single round of value-trading in creature combat can draw 3 or 4 cards or more; the second ability can also turn some early curve creatures into card resources in the late game. It is a strong card that is easily underestimated because of its body.

Score: 2.0
Comment: A filler card; there are almost no death triggers or sacrifice triggers in this set, so its ability has little room to shine.

Score: 2.5
Comment: A creature with two lives. At first it is a fairly bad 3/2/1, but after coming back it is a 4/3, which is pretty good.

Score: 2.0
Comment: The usual 1/1/1 that makes a 1/1 when it dies; the slightly stronger part is that the second one flies.

Score: 2.0
Comment: In the early to mid game it can make several Foods, but in a late-game stall it is a bit awkward; with a lifegain theme to work with, the score goes up slightly.

Score: 2.0
Comment: In Limited it can basically be treated as unable to die (only exile or graveyard hate handles it), so you can see it as an infinite blocker, but a 1/1 body is still not good enough.

Score: 2.5
Comment: As long as you can get creatures into the graveyard it is good; black-related themes naturally put more creatures in the graveyard, and this sorcery can easily make 3 or more, plus it has flashback, a good card worth playing in your deck.

Score: 2.0
Comment: A curve filler. It does a bit better in a lifegain theme, but a defensive 1/3 body paired with an attack-triggered ability is a little awkward.

Score: 2.5
Comment: This card prompted quite a few different opinions in our team’s internal discussion. First, every set’s Limited occasionally has a three-mana discard-two-cards type card (usually with an additional effect), but cards of this type are harder to pin down in power rating, and the user’s play style makes their performance fluctuate quite a bit.

Personally I lean toward giving it a score of around 3.0, because the awkward point of three-mana discard-two cards has always been that it is awkward in the mid-to-late game or when topdecked, but being able to do something very strong on time on turn 3 or 4 is a two-for-one. The second effect of this card gives it room to still be useful when drawn in the mid-to-late game, so I think it is a good card above average.

Some team members rated this card 2.5 or below, for several main reasons: Limited is a battlefield of creature fights, and discarding cards from hand is not as useful as in constructed, and sometimes it just makes the opponent throw away a land or something useless at the moment, uh; also, the second effect has very limited impact on the board situation in the late game, so they lean toward not playing it in the deck.

All in all, if you are good at using discard effects to control the tempo in your Limited style, this is a good card worth putting in your deck; conversely, if you are better at creature fights, or find the timing of discard hard to grasp, you can move this card’s pick order back a bit.

Score: 3.0
Comment: The 4/4/2 body is not outstanding, but an enters-the-battlefield ability that almost always drains two life is an excellent ability in Limited.

Score: 2.5
Comment: A renamed Disfigure. -2/-2 has limited range in Limited, but this set has many creatures with toughness 2 or less, so it will perform slightly better than in other sets.

Score: 3.0
Comment: A very good curve creature, somewhat like a weakened Dauthi Voidwalker, but this set has quite a few usable cards that make the opponent discard, so if you see multiple discard cards in Limited, building around it is also an approach worth considering.

Score: 3.0
Comment: As long as it kills a creature when it enters, it is a two-for-one, and -13/-13 can basically kill anything. Remember to bring it in after creature combat trades.

Score: 2.5
Comment: In the mid-to-late game you can use it to turn a useless early small creature into a card in hand, which is a rather nice ability among curve creatures.

Score: 2.5
Comment: A 5/3/2 flier with a below-average body; being able to earn a card on entering makes it a decent mid-game value creature, but being unable to block limits its performance in creature combat, so it can only be an average-scoring creature.

Score: 2.0
Comment: A curve filler, a weaker Blood Artist, if the game has lots of creature value trades

Score: 3.0
Comment: A 2/2/2 with ward that needs 2 life paid, a very good curve creature. Although this set has only 5 Zombies, they are all in black, and apart from itself they are all common or uncommon cards, so there is still a good chance of earning value from its ability.

Score: 2.5
Comment: A very good removal spell: besides being a flat-out kill, it also brings a Food, which has no small value in Limited. Only the fact that it costs four docks it a bit.

Score: 2.0
Comment: A curve filler. Small creatures that make you discard on entering are very strong in Limited if you can have several in a row early, but otherwise it is just an ordinary creature.

Score: 2.0
Comment: A curve filler. It is a bit awkward when it enters tapped, but casting it on time on turn one is very good.

Score: 2.5
Comment: Usually it is a 5-mana sorcery-speed kill, but when there is an overpowered threat on the board, you can choose to eat a small creature for a one-mana kill, making it a rather flexible removal spell.

Score: 2.0
Comment: I personally am rather bullish on this card, but after team discussion we settled its average score at 2.0.

The reason I like it is that the life swing advantage it brings is very good, and it can pair with a lifegain theme or be used as a finisher. But its disadvantage is also easy to imagine: Limited is still essentially an environment of creature clashes, so it is hard to give a higher rating to an expensive card that cannot bring a board advantage.

Score: 2.5
Comment: Reanimation + trick; paired with cards that have enters-the-battlefield abilities, like Tragic Banshee, it is a big win.

Score: 3.0
Comment: A flat-out kill with just slightly wider range than Murder, but only slightly; in Limited planeswalkers are still a scarce resource and not common.

Score: 5.0
Comment: I honestly am not quite sure how to say why she is strong, but I am very sure that when I see the opponent play this card in Limited, my face will look like the zombie in the art, and then I will start ordering delivery.

Score: 2.5
Comment: Seeing it as two mana to dig a creature back to hand is already decent, and when there are enough good creatures in the graveyard, it can also swap a dead card in your hand for a better one.

Score: 2.5
Comment: A passable 3/3/2 body; it performs very well in a lifegain theme, especially paired with Bloodthirsty Conqueror, where it is an infinite combo that wins the game outright.

Score: 4.0
Comment: A fairly strong mid-to-late-game bomb. Although it cannot bring a board advantage, once it lands everything your opponent does becomes a blowout loss, and you can easily win in two or three turns.

Score: 3.5
Comment: The benchmark of benchmarks among resource cards. Although life is an important resource in Limited, it does not hurt too fast like Dark Confidant; losing only one life each turn in exchange for card advantage easily steers the game quickly toward a win, and black is itself a color that can gain life fairly well, so it is quite good.

Score: 1.5
Comment: Looking at the hand is as always limited in power in Limited. Although there is a chance of seeing a bomb, betting on probability plus the strictness of tempo means it is basically hard to perform very well.

Score: 2.0
Comment: A curve filler. But if you have enough mana it can recur infinitely, and paired with some death and sacrifice payoffs like High-Society Hunterthere is a chance to pull off some small combos and earn a large amount of resources.

Score: 3.5
Comment: A very strong expensive bomb. However, it costs so much that in non-ramp, non-big-mana builds you will easily go the whole game without a chance to use it; but at the same time, in a big-cost deck, successfully casting this card brings an almost winning board advantage.

Score: 3.5
Comment: A 7/6/6 flier, a good body, but 7 mana is also a very high cost. Still, in builds with a steadily larger number of lands it is a very strong creature by itself, and on entering it can find another powerful bomb, making it a very good payoff.

Score: 3.0
Comment: The end-step trigger can be seen as putting a counter on itself; whenever the opponent loses any life, this guy grows each turn, a very good three-drop when life totals trade frequently.

Score: 3.5
Comment: A 3/2/3 flying deathtouch lifelink, a decent body. All three evergreen abilities are very good effects in Limited: when ahead it can push damage through and gain life, when behind it can defend, and it is only an uncommon. A good card.

Score: 2.5
Comment: 4-mana graveyard digging is basically fine as long as you dig up a creature with mana value 4 or more; considering black has more self-mill options, if you can dig up something above four mana it will be very strong, but likewise, if you meet a situation where the graveyard has no creature worth pulling, this card gets stuck in your hand. It is a card with a high ceiling and a low floor.

Conclusion

Overall, the card strength of Foundations (FDN) is generally a bit higher this time, and most black creatures are not bad. At the same time, many small synergies that can be found within black alone give black more to look at in Limited. Taken together, compared with the generally weak black of the past several sets, this time black should be a color very much worth considering.