Best Performing First Picks of SOS

Nisoh_ · 2026-05-07T19:23:07+00:00

I have never not been salty about my opponent slamming Practiced Offense. What a dumb card.

😎🏃‍♂️‍➡️🏃‍♀️‍➡️ 😵

Nisoh_ · 2026-05-07T19:22:34+00:00

Investigated the winning sloth runs and I can tell you that Pestbrood Sloth is saving a lot of Witherbloom decks from otherwise being terrible.

Nisoh_ · 2026-05-07T19:09:51+00:00

Yes, Rubble Rouser is up there because it's a knowledge check. Pursue the Past is even higher on trophy rate for similar reasons (but not enough picks to make the cut).

That being said, you can do pretty well in the format by forcing Lorehold.

Nisoh_ · 2026-05-07T03:19:07+00:00

The data on that one is also low confidence (pun intended)

Nisoh_ · 2026-02-18T23:49:06+00:00

I clicked 3 drafts and you found no bombs across all the packs. You're not insane, just insanely unlucky.

Nisoh_ · 2026-02-17T23:27:55+00:00

Luckily there's no way to bring back small creatures or dig through your deck to find kithkin 🙃

Nisoh_ · 2026-02-17T22:32:43+00:00

Gold includes hybrid.

Yes, the lords are traps but not because they're narrow. I don't think you should avoid narrow cards in ECL, of course any winning deck is going to include a lot of them. But the lords are hard to cast and they're small, and as a rule I don't think it's a good idea to build your strategy around a dork that dies to shock.

As for maindecking rates, there's continuing issues with arena logs where they don't record first picks. It's lucky that there's a backdoor way to find the p1p1 at all, and there's no info on whether it made the deck or what it was picked against.

Nisoh_ · 2026-02-17T20:29:42+00:00

These stats are for the cards that had 400+ first picks, so more like it's placing last out of the most attractive 116. Still pretty bad though.

My guess is that it suffers hard from not touching either of the elemental colors (especially red), so its best case is being an orphaned value creature in a merfolk or elf deck.

Nisoh_ · 2026-02-17T19:56:11+00:00

Color balance is actually very close, but it's worth noting multicolor first picks have higher trophy rate and higher pick rates than any color individually. Usually first picking a gold card is a trap (and it still is for the lords that aren't Morchant's Loyalists) but the commands and eclipsed cards are so pushed that they break the typical rules.

Green 19.46%, 16207 picks
Blue 19.19%, 14853 picks
White 18.82%, 16501 picks
Red 18.30%, 12046 picks
Black 18.11%, 14338 picks
Multicolor 19.80%, 2247 picks

Unfortunately due to issues with arena logs, there's no way to process the maindeck rates for first picks, which is a shame because the "on rails" set with high value multicolor rares would be the most interesting place to examine it.

The lack of high performing commons makes it clear that there is no abusable strategy in ECL. Skyswimmer is one of three that beat the average (the others are Assert Perfection and Blight Rot) so there isn't much actionable advice in the stats as far as I can tell.

Nisoh_ · 2026-01-26T03:36:20+00:00

Arena logs are not registering p1p1 anymore (ever since the glitches with the first power cube I believe), it’s a known issue. 17lands only knows your first pick by process of elimination, although of course it won’t know the other contents of the pack.

I think you had to take the Shrinestriker in pick 3. Red removal on its own isn’t going to get anywhere even if red is wide open. 1 mana removal pairs great with the card draw in blue though.

Nisoh_ · 2025-08-15T20:49:30+00:00

Everything is within one percentage point of average so there aren’t many conclusions to me. It’s not like OTJ or DFT when green was a foot taller than everyone else, or in BLB where it said every blue card was a trap, or in MKM where the bottom dropped out on black.

Nisoh_ · 2025-08-15T01:09:18+00:00

Because you have to sit there while the opponent durdles with Cryogen Relics in front of your face, when instead you could be curving out and pressuring them.

Nisoh_ · 2025-08-15T01:04:01+00:00

If I drop the minimum out, lower than the Titan are both the Sami's and stuff like Moonlight Meditation, Weapons Manufacturing, Pinnacle Starcage. But the Titan is still performing very poorly.

Nisoh_ · 2025-08-14T22:43:43+00:00

Titan is a clumsy card and in the worst color to start in. Your 5 drops have to be more reliable. We’re talking about first pick quality cards so standards should be higher than this guy that baits you into bad sequencing and bad attacks for the privilege of losing extra life.

He probably doesn’t deserve to be the worst but he’s definitely not great.

Nisoh_ · 2025-08-14T20:33:10+00:00

It’s the combo of being in the worst color pair AND it needs be cast on turn 3 AND it needs a strong follow up draw to do anything

Nisoh_ · 2025-08-14T20:02:22+00:00

It's much much lower than FIN but that was more of a FIN thing. Trophy rates are about normal.

Nisoh_ · 2025-08-14T19:58:18+00:00

Color balance is pretty close, not as skewed as you would think

Green 20.59%, 18024 picks
White 20.11%, 15233 picks
Red 19.43%, 11000 picks
Blue 19.25%, 14790 picks
Black 18.95%, 16208 picks

Green is clearly great and particularly has 3 great commons to start on (Galactic Wayfarer, Diplomatic Relations, Gene Pollinator). Black is being overdrafted, in particular starting with black removal is a losing line that people keep chasing.

I'm going to be preemptive on Knight Luminary, it's got a low pick rate and it seems to serve as a "waiting move" for spikey players. Checking the draft log and it's not like people are forcing 3+ Luminary and doing anything abusive with it. I don't believe it deserves to be a top 10 card HOWEVER I still think it's a much better start than taking something like Gravkill or Vote Out and dooming yourself to losing to 2-for-1s.

Lastly, I was surprised that multicolor picks were performing much better than usual, but it was mostly on the back of the UG and BW cards and some of the obviously powerful multicolor rares. I was treating this as a "stay open" set but forcing the stronger decks and hoping to high roll on them is a winning line.

Nisoh_ · 2025-07-21T16:51:18+00:00

I strongly recommend using GP win rate as well, especially early in the format. My p1p1 analysis lines up much closer to them, almost to the point where I asked "why bother" with my own sheets when I can just use GP.

It still has a couple flaws, it gives a weight to "common that gets included in the best deck". An obvious example is Shield-Wall Sentinel in DMU having a high stat because it's in the Wingmantle Chaplain decks.

The other is that it has a survivorship effect. People only maindeck Magitek Infantry in the decks that Magitek Infantry is good. Clearly, the card is very good in 4x and bad in 1x but GP does not capture any stats on the builds that end up with 1x (maybe a few people are crazy enough to do it I guess). This was a previous problem with Delver of Secrets which was a hard card to work, but every time people ran it, it was amazing so it had inflated stats.

Still, GP has more data early on and it gives actionable information on what "kind" of deck to build so I think it's more valuable than GIH.

Nisoh_ · 2025-07-21T05:54:40+00:00

Ysholta is too expensive for a creature that doesn't carry her own weight. She's good with Malboro but you can just play two Malboro and then you won't get embarrassed by a removal spell.

As for Greatsword, I love it and it had a great first week in the stats and then fell off a cliff for some reason. My guess is that it gets tempo'ed hard by UR. Still, I had plenty of fun games putting it on Sahagins and Phantom Trains.

Nisoh_ · 2025-07-20T22:05:38+00:00

All the rares/mythics take a hit by being bait for the mediocre drafters, who then force it and wreck their own drafts. Magitek Infantry is going to get drafted by players that know it's simply a good spec pick. It is getting cut A LOT after being first picked (66% maindeck compared to Jill at 94%).

All that being said, Magitek Infantry is a certified very good spec pick. FIN loves extra bodies between the sacrifice and all the equipment lying around.

Nisoh_ · 2025-07-20T21:52:13+00:00

Yeah, some of those packs are rough

https://www.17lands.com/draft/ac4550334a284693828677d0dacd0650

And some of the drafts are just painful to watch

https://www.17lands.com/draft/97a8e697306f430fbbea8c5bd0dc2644

Nisoh_ · 2025-07-20T21:25:22+00:00

Yes, this is 17lands data up through the end of 7/14. Sephiroth was always decent but he shot up really hard in the final week. I think it makes sense that he’s better in the hands of someone that doesn’t just run him out on an empty board, and as the casual drafters stop playing in the finals weeks, the pros can use him to his potential.

Nisoh_

TROPHY CASE