Going into
Battle for Zendikar (which I probably won't draft until it's online), I'm planning on taking
Evolving Wilds over everything except bombs. It's somewhat of an experiment, but here are the points I feel that give it potential:
- Taking spell-lands gives you "more" cards than your opponent. If you're both playing 23 spells, but your lands do other things, you're naturally up a card. Now, Wilds isn't actually a spell land, but that brings me to...
- Landfall! Wilds is likely fine in both aggressive and defensive landfall decks, and there are 27 cards (19 commons/uncommons) sporting the keyword in this set, a lot of which I expect to come late. Evolving Wilds increases the value of these cards immensely and doesn't cost you a spell slot. It also allows you to splash some of the interesting landfall cards that don't fit the main colors. Which brings us to...
- Converge! I expect converge to be very underrated, and I anticipate being able to build mutli-colored decks that abuse the converge cards nobody else wants. Wilds isn't the best fixer, but it's a helping part to the overall structure and makes converge much, much better.
That's what I'm gonna try out. I'll tell you how it goes. Tell me what you think of the idea and share any outlandish draft strategies you've tried before. (I always forced Grixis in full block Alara. Sometimes that ended up Esper-or-Jund-colored Grixis, but I always did it and always loved it.)