CardsplainThe Queen of Dale
Whenever an opponent casts their first noncreature spell each turn, you . (Draw a card, then discard a card. If you discarded a nonland card, create a 1/1 white Human Soldier creature .)
Grade B+ Grade from the win rate
Win rate when drawn 59.5% +3.3 vs average 3,858 games
Win rates and picks
- 56.2% 8,206 games
- Average pick ()
- 2.2
By deck
- Draw Two 59.8% 2,172 games
- Dwarves & Equipment 59.7% 1,135 games
Win rates from , 323,114 games. This card is compared with the set average (56.2%).
Reviews
A general rule of thumb is that if a card is looking for your opponent to do a thing, then it's probably not very good. For the most part, if you play The Queen of Dale, your opponent can probably just ignore it and run out their creatures on . Even worse, as a vanilla 2/1, this noble doesn't even brawl very well when they do that. This is definitely a card that was designed more with Commander or Constructed in mind, and I don't think it'll be that impactful in Limited.
However, white has the best rares of any color by a substantial degree.An Unexpected Party, Fíli, Kíli, The Eagles Are Coming!, The Queen of Dale, Bard's Company, Dáin's Company… need I go on?
These will mostly come up to punish you for playing colors other than black.Good cards like Attercop, The Queen of Dale, and Long-lake Nuisance will randomly find themselves dying en masse, which of course frees up the rest of your board to die to Crude Bent Blade. Ouch!
How to draft it
Roles in each deck
Dwarves & Equipment Early play
Your opponent's first noncreature spell each turn makes The Queen of Dale . Most decks in the set cast , or every turn, so the 2-mana 2/1 recruits often, and she is , so she is a piece as well.
How to play it
Learn the Dwarves & Equipment deckDiscard spare spells to her for the , and keep lands while you still need them.
Draw Two Early play
Their first noncreature spell each turn makes you , so their and hand you a card and maybe a Soldier. Mostly that happens on their turn, where it feeds no payoff, but a trick they cast during your combat gives you card two.
How to play it
Learn the Draw Two deckTreat it as an ordinary and keep the 2/1 out of fights with bigger creatures. The longer the game goes, the more spells they cast into it.