So, Amonkhet has delivered to us a new riff on an old mechanic:
This is an upgrade to an old card that no one even remembers existed except those who drafted Vintage Masters online:
And it seems like a slightly different version of a card that we considered potentially playable, but that never really took off:
Seems like Drake Haven has some things going for it. It works well with Dack Fayden, a card which sees play, and a bunch of other draw spells like Thirst for Knowledge, Frantic Search, Careful Study, Faithless Looting, and so on, which do not. It makes 2/2 fliers, which while not as explosive as Mentor monks can be, potentially trumps the monks if you're making them at the same rate because they cannot be blocked.
Ultimately, I'm thinking this still isn't going to unseat our White Monk-y Overlords because the Monk breeds when you're drawing cards, which is something you want to do anyway. Drakes arrive when you are discarding cards, which can happen, but typically only as a cost of doing something else special and not just as an incident to the deck chugging along. The final nail in the coffin is that, unlike Monk or Talrand, this thing doesn't do anything when you cast it. Not even attack for 2.
Interesting, though.
