Blake Rasmussen’s recent feature spoiling the five Intro Pack rares was a bittersweet read. This is always one of my favorite times of the year. Not just the spoiling of a new set and the chance to see new mechanics, but specifically the five cards that are going to march under the preconstructed banner for the set.

Sometimes they’re great, cards you can’t wait to tear into and see how they play in real life. Pia and Kiran Nalaar were a terrific feature in Magic Origins’ Assemble Victory, for instance.

Other times . . .  well, they can’t all be winners, like Nephalia Moondrakes from Shadows over Innistrad’s Unearthed Secrets or Take to the Sky’s Alhammarret, High Arbiter, from Magic Origins.

But the bittersweet part was in author Blake Rasmussen’s choice of words. Eldritch Moon will “be your last opportunity to pick up Intro Packs with any release . . . If you enjoy Intro Packs, this will be your last chance to grab them.”

Ahh, parting is such sweet sorrow. But, as Dr. Seuss wrote, don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened. There’re still loads of fun to be had with just the teaser!

One of the things I enjoy doing when we get to see the Intro Pack rares is try and glean what information I can about the decks from them. It’s a bit like a riddle, since we can infer some things based upon what we know. Here are a few things to consider from the Intro Pack Era (2008-2016) as well as what we already know about Eldritch Moon.

• No two Intro Packs have ever shared the same colors.
• Mono-chromatic decks are exceedingly rare. We most recently saw Twisted Reality from Oath of the Gatewatch as technically Mono-Blue, but in reality the ‘color’ it was paired with was colorlessness. For a true single-color deck, we need to go back to 2010’s Scars of Mirrodin, which featured the Mono-White Myr of Mirrodin. In the previous block, Zendikar and Worldwake each had one Mono-Black Vampires deck (Rise of the Vampires and Fangs of the Bloodchief respectively).
• Unless the set is built around the concept of three-mana decks (Shards of Alara block, Khans of Tarkir Block), the Intro Packs will be two colors.
• Mark Rosewater has already confirmed that double-faced cards are unlikely to see print n a supplemental product, and indeed none were found in any of the decks of Innistrad block. Not only does that mean no transform, but meld will be excluded as well.
• Escalate is the kind of mechanic that adds functionality to the cards that bear it, but it isn’t the kind of mechanic you build a deck around. Chances are good we may see some escalate sprinkled in the decks, but not as a central theme
• That leaves deck possibilities for madness, delirium, and emerge

So what can we discern from the five cards? Just as with games like Sudoku, often it is wise to pluck the lower-hanging fruit. Let’s start there.

In general, you don’t typically see a lot of duplication in color distribution across consecutive decks in a block. There are some exceptions where theme forces the hand. For example, nobody won any money betting that there would be a change in color between Shards of Alara’s Bant Exalted and Conflux’s Bant on the March. Both decks- surprise- were White, Blue, and Green.

But look at the decks of Innistrad, which is more the norm. None of the five color pairings in that set’s decks were repeated in Dark Ascension, which is particularly interesting considering the tribal nature of the block. Although not as rigid a structure as Guilds, which prohibited Wizards from doing overlap even if they wanted to between Return to Ravnica and Gatecrash, tribal design tends to lead you down the same paths. Dark Ascension had some clever designs, however, breaking away from Innistrad’s B/R Vampires to feature decks in those colors that dealt with different strategic paths.

What does this mean for Eldritch Moon and our friend Niblis of Frost here? This card leans toward either U/R or U/W, despite the fact we just had a U/W deck in Shadows over Innistrad. That’s not unprecedented even in recent times, as Oath of the Gatewatch’s Desperate Stand was largely a retuning of Call of Blood from Battle for Zendikar, W/B colors and all.

Shadows over Innistrad brought us Ghostly Tide, a U/W Spirit and Skies deck featuring the Drogskol Cavalry. It’s certainly possible we’ll see a return of that deck in Eldritch Moon, under this much more exciting card. By the same token, the focus on instants and sorceries is something we often see in U/R decks. Oath of the Gatewatch brought us Surge of Resistance based around the surge mechanic, while Fate Reforged showcased prowess in a deck that had nearly as many spells as creatures (Cunning Plan). One of the best Intro Packs of all time, Innistrad’s Eldritch Onslaught, built around flashback and Burning Vengeance. So it’s certainly possible that this is a Spirit champion for a spell-heavy deck.

Prediction: U/W or U/R

Hungry like the wolf! Assembled Alphas is about on par with cards like Nephalia Moondrakes and Flameblade Angel, being big fat creatures designed to act as closers for Intro Packs. At 6 mana, you won’t be seeing these fellows come out quickly, but if there’s one positive to come out of the land bloat baked-in to the modern day Intro Pack, it’s that you usually don’t have much trouble finding land. And since the Intro Pack environment tends to have the pacing of a Limited environment rather than Constructed, even big-ticket closers like the Alphas aren’t hard to play.

But what sort of deck will this pack call home? Well, we can probably rule out White. We just had Angelic Fury in Shadows over Innistrad, and it was easily the worst of the five. Little synergy, some bad card choices, and little flavor did the deck in, and there’s no compelling reason to go back.

It also seems unlikely to partner with Blue. Here’s where some of that Sudoku puzzling comes into play. If there was going to be a U/R Intro Pack in Eldritch Horror, which makes more sense to lead it: Assembled Alphas or Niblis of Frost?

Green seems a natural pairing here, perhaps because it’s natural to see ‘Alphas’ and wonder where is the pack. There aren’t a lot of non-Werewolf Wolves in the current block, but the ones that aren’t Red are all in Green. You could also see it potentially in a more aggressive B/R deck, but while we just had a R/B Vampires-n-madness deck in Shadows over Innistrad, we haven’t seen a R/G pairing since Zendikar’s Rage in Battle for Zendikar.

Prediction: R/G

On the day this was spoiled, someone on Reddit registered their disappointment that the five Intro Pack rares depicted significant Innistrad creatures (Wolf, Spirit, Human, Zombie) aaaand . . .  A Treefolk? Sure, you don’t see a lot of Treefolk running around Innistrad. Only one saw print this time around (and it, the flip side of the enchantment Autumnal Gloom), and there were but a handful in the original Innistrad. But it’s worth pointing out that there’s a bit of precedent here. Another of Magic’s better Intro Packs was the exceptional graveyard-themed Grave Power from Dark Ascension. That deck’s premium rare?

Ghoultree.

Take that, hylophobes!

So what sort of deck would like something like this? Well, this clearly would not look out of place next to cards like Garruk's Packleader or on Naya, the Alaran shard which exulted in playing ‘gargantuans.’ But given how little ‘toughness 4 or greater’ matters in Shadows over Innistrad, I think we’ll need to look ahead, not behind, to unravel this mystery.

Clearly, the Ulvenwald Observer wants us to go big. Not only that, but you could be forgiven for thinking that perhaps the reward end of this deal seems a bit thin. After all, if you’re playing beefy creatures and attacking your opponent, you might lose one or two in the red zone but is that really enough to make this card seem splashy and fun?

No, you probably need a more reliable loss engine, not just red zone attrition. This feels like a mechanic there to not only give you a bonus when combat goes badly, but also to ameliorate the pain of self-inflicted wounds. In other words, it will help offset the inherent card disadvantage of a mechanic like this:

Now, that only triggers if the creature you sacrificed to emerge the Wretched Gryff had a toughness of 4 or greater, but it’s not hard to envisage a deck where you have a lot of high-toughness defensive creatures intended to congest the red zone, before they are offered up to bring out larger and larger Eldrazi monstrosities and horrors. And while it’s impossible to determine by looking at one card how much of this mechanic is in Blue, that seems as good a guess as any.

Prediction: U/G, with emerge

A toughie! I mean, this is a card that loves to be around a lot of other creatures, and what color doesn’t like to play lots of creatures?

Okay, besides Blue. Any of the other three colors would be perfectly happy to run a swarm of creatures alongside the Sanctifier, but again we need to see what makes the most sense. We discounted the option of W/R above when looking at the Alphas, since we’ve just seen a W/R deck and it lacks a thematic cohesion. Speaking of the Alphas, it does seem to be more likely that they’d be pairing up with Green rather than this guy. So, that leaves . . . Black?

It just might work. There’s a thematic tie here as evidenced by the card Haunted Dead, which brings along a Spirit to go with it. It’s an uncommon, and has nice synergy with the Sanctifier since it pumps him twice for one card. And that’s important, too.

This isn’t Champion of the Parish, where those bonuses stack up to something dangerously large because they’re permanent. This is, basically, creature prowess, but with less subtlety (though you can almost certainly expect to see a card with flash as a ‘combat trick’). The Sanctifier is not a holy man of peace. Rather, he’s at his best when he’s allowed to race into the red zone each turn and smite skulls.

To do that effectively, the Sanctifier has to grow frequently and reliably. Not only that, but he has to do it no earlier than turn five, since it costs four to play him. Two-for-ones like the Haunted Dead will go a long way toward making him a threat. So will having creatures in your graveyard, which likely means the deck expects you to take some combat casualties, which again speaks to a deck filled with cheaper and midrange creatures. Black can hang just fine.

Prediction: W/B

Coincidentally enough, this guy synergizes quite well with the Sanctifier. Cast a spell, pop off a Zombie, make the Sanctifier bigger for the turn. Of course, the only way you’re going to live that particular dream is to jam both Intro Packs together. So what sort of non-Sanctifier deck would the Mob call home?

For one thing, this card can both go large and go broad in the red zone to help close out a game, depending on how many spells get cast once it touches down. A 5/5 is no slouch, nor is five 2/2’s (there’s a George Carlin joke in there somewhere). Because it triggers a Zombie spawning on any casting, though, it is somewhat at your opponent’s mercy.

I’m going to pair this with Red. Red has two characteristics that would link up well with the Mob. First, Red enjoys playing a swarm-style approach, and a bunch of smaller creatures could remain relevant later in the game through sheer numbers of them. The Mob, in that sense, is something like a token factory to keep a critical mass of weenies.

Second, Red employs a lot of spells, especially those well-suited to keeping the attack lanes uncluttered. A few burn spells can both help the surge get through and replenish the inevitable losses through triggering more Zombies.

Prediction: B/R

Of course, these predictions are based on little more than the spoiled rares from the mothership and a few preview cards, but it’s always fun to speculate. What do you think? What decks would you expect to see from these rares? Which deck looks like the most fun for you?