Disciple of Phenax vs. Returned Centaur

Continuing in the theme - these are two "2.0" creatures and they have very similar casting cost.
Both these cards have synergies that you could exploit (devotion and 'yard).

I actually like to run returned centaur with griptide but that's basically a magical x-mas land combo just to kill something.
I have not played much with or against D.o. Phenax, BUT it's obviously best when opponents' cards in hand <= black devotion.

So a couple of scenarios:
1) it's mid/late pack 1 and you have some black and something other than green. Which do you take?

2) it's mid pack 3 and you have neither heavy black nor any graveyard synergy, but you need another playable dude. Which do you take?

I don't think I'll ever bring myself to play that centaur unless I have a graveyard strategy going on. I wasn't a huge fan of the disciple before either but I was low on playable last Thursday and ended up playing two. I was pleasantly surprised by them. They weren't always great, and I wouldn't pick them too highly, but I'd pick it over the centaur any day (barring graveyard strategy as said before).

Given that I'm playing blue, I take the centaur. It's nice to mess up a scry draw or to griptide then car this as a permanentanswer. If I'm having mana problems, I take the centaur, as it's easier to cast and has a not entirely irrelevant body. Otherwise, I take the disciple. It's better in a vacuum.

I think that the best way to answer this question is to look at how many playable, common creatures have exactly 3 power or 2 toughness. The more there are, the better centaur is.

EDIT: it's also worth noting that the BB in disciple's cost boosts grey merchants.

I think this discussion helps shine a light on the difficulty of evaluating this set.

The above arguments all seem reasonable, but actually the disciple in practice is a much better card than the centaur, mostly because of gray merchant, but the card advantage is also pretty strong and I think anyone voting centaur over disciple is seriously underrating its ability.

I guess the irrelvant body and and tricky casting cost turn me off disciple of ph.

I think early on with any black it's better but if you have no black devotion synergy I think the 2/4 is marginally better.

Whew...if I'm not far enough in black to pick the disciple, I'm probably not picking the centaur, either. It's not something I would splash for. Gosh, I mean, is there a time ever when I would pick the centaur over the disciple? Probably? But that window is so narrow. I'd be evaluating the centaur against everything else in the pack at that point.

I like the card advantage from the Phenax, but the 1/3 body on a 4-drop is so meh. Although, by turn 4 your opponent probably has to reveal something decent in those 2+ cards. I do like the Centaur for the 2/4 body; he's a Pillarfield Ox with upside, but I don't see splashing black a real viable option in Theros: too many BB casting cost creatures and spells so Phenax wins.

Exactly. Unless you want some self mill, you either want the disciple, or you want neither. The pack has to be dreadful for me to pick the centaur and unless it's like pick 12 of pack three and I'm black, but not enough to support disciple, and the draft went so bad that I need a 22nd playable card, I can't see myself picking centaur over disciple.

Edit: this was me agreeing with planeshaper.

I guess my point was even in a 50-50 UB deck you will have 3 island 1 swamp sometimes. And the only thing worse than a CMC 4 1/3 is one that's rotting in your hand.

Or maybe I am just justifying a poor decision (the was a decision to pick Centaur over DoPhenax but play it in a 60/40 BU deck. In 8 games I never drew the centaur, so weird.

Probably I was just underestimating the discard power... DoPhenax would have been my only BB card. I did have a griptide!