Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty Picks and Packets
NEO Draft Arena Open winner and Mythic #1 Limited player Scuffle D. Lux shares their top picks and packets of cards in Neon Dynasty.
Packets!
These are little packages of cards that are strong in any deck or any deck of a certain color. Grabbing a couple of these cards drastically moves up the others in your pick order:
Imperial Oath + Sunblade Samurai + Any Colorless Fixing + Plains
Imperial Oath is almost always worth a splash as a late-game threat that stabilizes the board and ensures drawing more gas. Sunblade Samurai will alway have one of its two modes available, and a single piece of colorless fixing and one or more Plains means you always have three white sources at a very low cost. This is a great package for any non-red deck in the format.
Containment Construct + Network Terminal
This two card combo lets you draw an extra card each turn, and fits into just about any deck! The construct is the harder card to acquire and the Network Terminal has replacements available in The Modern Age in Blue and Akki Ronin in Red.
Shrine Steward + Harmonious Emergence + Grafted Growth + Bomb
Shrine Steward is fine as a five-mana 3/2 that draws a card, but you really want options to take full advantage of it. These three commons let Shrine Steward grab a mana source or a threat, and allow for the splashing of even double-pipped threats. Blue, Green, and Black also have aura-based removal to add to the package.
Colossal Skyturtle + Season of Renewal + Fang of Shigeki
The first 2 cards together create an “infinite” loop and let you pick up any creature or enchantment from your graveyard for the low, low cost of six mana. Fang is great in this package as a threat that can be deployed as a blocker, and replayed every time you have to block with it until you can take the time to put out something bigger.
Anchor to Reality + Thundersteel Colossus
This is not Plan A for any blue deck, but if you find yourself without a late game plan or Imperial Oaths, this is a great way to create a massive threat out of cards that nobody else at the table wants.
Imperial Recovery Unit + Selfless Samurai + Spirited Companion
These cards are all good on their own, so this combination is harder to draft. However, you’ll often find yourself with two of them in your deck, and its worth taking the third or additional copies of the other two in order to assemble this protected value machine.
Sokenzan Smelter/Oni Cult Anvil + Undercity Scrounger
Top Picks
These are the best cards in each color without taking any rares into consideration. This is most helpful for your early picks due to the contextual nature of the set, but you won’t be too unhappy with any of these:
Green Commons
These were the closest, with only .1% winrate difference between nine common cards
Green Uncommons
White Commons
White Uncommons
Black Commons
Black Uncommons
Blue Commons
Blue Uncommons
Blue uncommons are quite weak, so you get both halves of Behold the Unspeakable. Take it over most rares!
Red Commons
Red Uncommons
