What Has Born of the Gods Bestowed Upon Us?

The full spoiler for Born of the Gods was released late last week, and as a result I am hard at work on my full review of the set for Standard Pauper. In the mean time, all this week, I will be bringing you previews from my article, which should be up first thing next week on PureMTGO.com.

Today, I want to talk about Bestow creatures. If you read my initial thoughts on Theros, you may remember that I was quite impressed with this Common cycle of Bestow creatures:

All of these ended up being quite playable in the format, although Cavern Lampad saw the least amount of play. Each of these were solid enough as creatures thanks to their keyword abilities. Further, as Auras they were also quite strong, particularly given the presence of Ethereal Armor in the same format.

Naturally, once I learned that another cycle of Common Bestow creatures was present in Born of the Gods, I had pretty high hopes. Let's take a look:

After a quick glance, it didn't take long for disappointment to set in. While their stats are solid enough, it is the lack of abilities that is the biggest difference between these two sets of cards. While there may be some marginal utility in a dedicated Aura deck, as a whole I doubt these will make nearly the impact their brethren from Theros made in the format. Nyxborn Shieldmate, at least, is cheap enough that it may find slots in the White Weenie Aura deck that has been popular as of late. Similarly, if a RDW-style deck built around Akroan Crusader continues to see play, Nyxborn Rollicker might be aggressive enough to warrant testing. But on the whole, these Bestow creatures probably aren't good enough to see serious play.

But hey, I'd love to be proven wrong. What do you think?