Five Predictions for Worlds (Limited)

This article is a little late to the punch, as I'm writing on the eve of the most prestigious Magic tournament of the year. Tomorrow, we start the hunt for a new Magic: The Gathering world champion.

Regardless of timing, while this article may be published a bit late, we can at least look back on my predictions to see how close I got.

The World Championship is my favorite event of the year, and the one that gives me FOMO. A strong finish has always eluded me despite having a lot of experience in the event. It's the one event that I'd love to play again, at least until the upcoming Limited Championship events start firing.

Today, I want to go over a few predictions for what Limited will look like at the World Championships relative to what we know from MTG Arena.

Blue is the best

My first prediction is that blue will be the most dominant color in Limited rounds. White is, or was, widely regarded as the strongest color in the set, but I've had almost no success with it due to a combination of it not being my style and a playerbase fighting to be in white. This is also in a best-of-one setting where white decks can leverage the hand smoother and curving out better than other colors, whereas Worlds is obviously best-of-three.

Blue, on the other hand, has been my color of choice. It's the deepest color with access to early defense, interaction, and the best color to grind out value in long games. Cards like Waterbending Scroll have been significantly better as I've learned to draft the format. I've leveraged blue to number one mythic yet again this month, and I suspect Worlds players testing in pod drafts will also find success with the color.

Without a hand smoother, all the sources of card advantage that blue offers should further facilitate a long, grindy game plan, given a lot more time to cast spells like Waterbending Lesson.

Blue will be the top dog.

Black is on the bottom

It's rare to see, but for the first time in a while, black is hands-down the worst color. Black's common creature base is as bad as it gets. It reminds me of Edge of Eternities Limited, where white had such a bad suite of common creatures that I avoided it at all costs.

One thing about black is that it has a lot of strong rares. Every time I play against or with black decks, there's a pile of mediocre creatures, a few solid but not too special removal spells, and two or three great rares.

While the rares do a lot of heavy lifting, I still predict black will be the worst performing color at Worlds, and players who draft black will struggle if they don't get rewarded with powerful uncommons and rares. Sometimes, when a color is known to be the worst, and people go out of their way to avoid it, it still performs well because of the avoidance. Black, however, has a lot of rares that will pull you in, which isn't discussed in this regard, unlike other colors on the bottom.

Avatar Limited focuses on hitting the board and adequately leveraging tempo in the early game so you can spend mana cracking clues and making plays that create value, rather than being forced to interact with the board and protect your life total. Black has a difficult time starting out fast because its two- and three-drops are weak across the board.

I expect players to avoid black some, but not as much as they may want.

Splish splash

When this set first came out, I was having fun taking mana fixing and the most powerful card out of every pack, which led me to drafting decks with Avatar Aang and tons of gold cards and rares. I had a lot of success with it in the early portions of the format and then steered away slightly. That is, until I recently realized the format isn't quite fast enough to punish splashes, and there's a bunch of playable fixing and enough card draw to facilitate some light splashing. I think players at Worlds are going to splash more than usual, effectively, and we won't see rares flying around the table like we sometimes do at high-stakes events where players draft more conservatively. Barrels of Blasting Jelly, Waterbender Skin, and Aang's Journey are all playable colorless sources of fixing in addition to green-specific fixing and, of course, the dual land cycle. We even get filter lands in a pinch, like Rumble Arena and White Lotus Hideout.

Deck power level is extremely important. Unless you can close quickly, players at Worlds are likely to splash the busted rares they open.

Two or more

For the first time in a long time, there's an incentive to draft mono-color decks in Avatar Limited. I can't say enough about how awesome it is to add a cycle of uncommons that reward you for being heavily into a single color. Cards like Cat-Gator want you to play as many Swamps as possible, and we often see this on MTG Arena. Usually, you pick one up early and start heading in that direction, likely not taking them over much. Often, you can wheel a Waterbending Scroll or a Cat-Gator. I play against nearly mono-color decks almost once a draft on Arena.

Worlds, however, is pod play. If these players are doing their homework, they won't be gifting players these powerful cards late and taking a barely playable on-color filler card over them. Hate-drafting will be relevant. If a player is sacrificing power upfront by taking a worse black card over a better blue card in hopes of getting a few Gators, you shouldn't be rewarding them at Worlds by taking that second copy of Flexible Waterbender and gifting them that second Gator. For almost no cost, you can severely weaken a potential opponent's deck. I hope and expect to see more players speculating on these mono-color cards and hate-drafting them early.

In addition, I expect players to wiggle around, pivoting in and out of colors, trying to extract maximum value from each pick rather than settling for subpar cards. If white is flowing, world-class players will recognize it, move in, and make it much tougher to get enough cards of a single color to play a mono-color or nearly mono-color deck.

No Shrines

My last prediction is that we won't see any Shrines decks. Avatar is an amazing Limited format. I'm still enjoying firing every draft weeks after its release. I don't think any player, regardless of the quality of the pool, will risk their tournament drafting Shrines. It may be a fun meme you can pull off on MTG Arena once in a blue moon, but at the World Champs, in a Bo3 setting where sideboarding exists, Shrines are not going to happen. Maybe I'm wrong, and there is a player or two crazy enough to make that bold leap, but I suspect if they do, they will get pummeled on the battlefield.

No one, and I mean no one, should draft Shrines, and I don't believe anyone will.

These are my five predictions for how Worlds Limited will shake out. I'm excited to watch the coverage and curious to see if anything new pops up in Standard. Will we see a fast Badgermole Cub ban, as the internet is clamoring for, when all is said and done? Only time will tell.

Editor's note: Magic World Championship 31 concluded on December 7, 2025. This article was written directly before the start of the championship, but posted after its conclusion. You can watch match and draft replays of the tournament here.