Modern Horizons 3 is around the corner, and the previews keep rolling out. So far the set looks a bit weak, but there are some interesting cards that may be diamonds in the rough. I will preface this by saying I'm only examining officially previewed cards as they are rolled out. Let's take a look. Medallions Medallions are an old favorite cycle of mine from back in Tempest block. We used Sapphire Medallion to make cards like Whispers of the Muse and Capsize cheaper, but these days Medallions have lost their luster. The Medallions shouldn't be slept on, because they still have room to make something broken. Generally, however, they'll be weak and won't see much play unless it enables some storm-type combo deck that was already possible with creatures like Baral, Chief of Compliance. It looks like a nod to Commander, but there are also potential applications in Modern. New Spell Lands! We have a new cycle of spells that can be played as lands untapped for three life. While the cards we've seen thus far are expensive to cast, the real value is in their lands that aren't lands. Goblin Charbelcher enjoyers will have tons of new options for untapped lands that don't count as lands in your deck and that could be a big deal. We've seen players exploit these lands time and time again for this purpose. I'm sure people will cook up ideas on taking advantage of this mechanic again. Grist, Voracious Larva In the entire set, I've seen the most excitement for this card, and I do not share that sentiment. Grist is probably not a playable Modern Magic card. It doesn't do much as a 1/2 deathtoucher when left to its own devices. It can block Ragavan or trade with something in the early game, but it gets weaker as the game develops unless you can flip it, in which case you still just get a weak planeswaker. I'm sure lots of people will try it in Yawgmoth, and I think they will be disappointed. It's a big downside to need excess mana to flip it. Grist the Plague Swarm is too low impact to use valuable deck space in a deck like Yawgmoth. I don't think we'll see this one played much in Modern outside of the initial burst trying to make it work. Tamiyo, Inquisitive Student Tamiyo looks awesome but not in a "good card in Modern" way. Modern is a fast-paced format. There are some matchups that can go on forever, so spending mana to crack clues is generally too punishing early. With The One Ring legal in Modern, Tamiyo, Inquisitive Student is easy to flip, but Tamiyo, Seasoned Scholar isn't much to write home about. A big issue I have with Tamiyo, Seasoned Scholar is it's at least one loyalty too low from immediately cashing it in for its Regrowth Effect. The one spot it feels like Tamiyo might have some room is in a deck with The One Ring and Time Warp, as it can be flipped easily, activated, and then bring Time Warp back the following turn. Tamiyo is awesome, but I'm not sure it will see much play. It is too mana-intensive for a one-drop that theoretically draws you an extra card every turn. Kappa Cannoneer It only takes playing with or against Kappa Cannoneer once or twice in Vintage Cube to know it's a messed-up card. This is on my shortlist for the most impactful card for Modern coming out of this set. Kappa Cannoneer has a shell to go into in any affinity-style deck. Cannoneer is difficult to interact with and can solo a game in two or three attack phases when fully supported. This card is intuitive to build and play with, so there's no trick to this Robot Turtle. You just play it in your decks with Thought Monitor and Urza's Sage and reap the rewards. Kappa Cannoneer and the printing of Simulacrum Synthesizer combined have me interested in playing Modern. Ulamog, the Defiler I would be amiss to not mention Ulamog, my all-time favorite Eldrazi, though I'm a fan of the entire species. Ulamog is a neat card since it has all the abilities an Eldrazi may want, including annihilator, ward, and an enormous size. However, Casting Ulamog isn't a realistic goal outside of Tron. It won't take the place of Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger in Tron because Ceaseless Hunger is more resilient and consistent. Ulamog, the Defiler can and will close the game in a single attack. Its annihilator could be massive regardless if you cast it, which is the angle of attack I'd recommend. You can exile cards in various ways to add counters and potentially bring this back with Goryo's Vengeance. I hear that Grief is a great and Modern-legal card. We already have Emrakul. Ulamog, the Defiler's only advantage in a Goryo's Vengance deck is that it can sit in your graveyard for a turn or two while you're setting up whereas Emrakul needs to be put into the graveyard and brought back at instant speed. Ulamog probably won't see any play in competitive Modern. If it does, it would likely be with Goryo's Vengeance, but it's a cool card otherwise. Brainsurge We'll finish with a cool card that pays homage to the best cantrip ever printed. Brainsurge falls short of being good. Sources of card advantage at three or more mana generally want to affect the battlefield. Brainsurge will do a tremendous job at smoothing out your draw. With fetch lands legal in Modern, shuffling is not a problem. However, in a deck that wants to play a three-mana instant, you're likely using almost all your cards. Brainstorm's biggest impact is that it lets you play a low-land count deck with a lean mana curve and bury your fourth or fifth land drops to replace them with spells. You'll need a higher land count with Brainsurge to make the effect less potent. One benefit of Brainsurge is having the ability to put cards like Temporal Mastery or other Miracle cards on top of your deck. While this is likely still too cute and not all that competitive, I won't be surprised if we see the two cards paired together at some point. It's an awesome callback and so close, but it's too similar to cards like Thirst for Knowledge that already don't see any Modern play. The official preview cards look interesting. I'm sure some will be powerful, but to the naked eye, everything seems like it would be great in Pioneer but not good enough for Modern, which is a nice line to walk. I've seen some of the leaked cards. I don't want to write about them yet, but I can't wait to talk about them when officially previewed.

Modern Horizons 3 is our next major set release. As Modern is one of the most popular formats and previous Modern Horizons sets have shaken up the format, it's a controversial release with many eyes on how it might break Modern. For that reason, I'd like to keep an eye out for that next Wrenn and Six, Ragavan, or Urza's Saga, and let's not forget a certain cycle of cards that don't cost mana. As someone who hasn't played Modern much in the past several years, it would be good if Modern Horizons shakes up the format enough so I can start with a clean slate like everybody else rather than playing catch-up with nearly a decade of missed intimate knowledge. Let's start with a couple of the alternate cost spells. Flare of Denial Flare of Denial is a Cancel with a simple alternate cost—sacrifice a non-token blue creature. Simple? Well, not quite. Many have speculated that this is custom-built for a deck like Merfolk—a fringe deck with a following of players who register the deck despite its problems. It's not the first deck that comes to mind for this card because I'm always looking for the most competitive decks. What's another deck that can put blue creatures in play quickly and reliably? A Dredge-style deck like Crab Vine can put Hedron Crab, Narcomoeba, and/or Prized Amalgam in play on turn one and perhaps hold up this free counterspell while pressuring the opponent. Is Flare of Denial able to push this deck into the top tier? Very unlikely. Decks like Dredge are soft to cards like Leyline of the Void or Endurance that can break up their synergies, and Flare doesn't reliably help against either. You can play a Hedron Crab and hold this up while filling your graveyard and counter Endurance for zero mana, but it won't always play out like that. Flare of Denial and this sacrifice-a-creature clause for a free spell is a solid way to continue this cycle of zero-mana spells in Modern. It doesn't create a guessing game regarding whether they have it or not at every stage of the game. They need to meet the condition of having a creature in play before it needs to be considered. Sacrificing board presence is more devastating than pitching a card in hand, so you must design your deck with the clause in mind, which is a fun way to continue the tradition of free spells. It's a cool card but unlikely it sees much play. If you're a Dredge enjoyer, I'd be surprised not to see this card make it into the 75 in some number. Flare of Cultivation Next up in the Flare Cycle, we have Flare of Cultivation. This one has a lot of cool ways to meet the condition, and if anything, this is a card built for a deck like Scapeshift. Get as many lands in play as fast as possible, and close the game when you meet the conditional amount of lands necessary. Why does Scapeshift come to mind? The two best ways to get this Flare online in turn one is with Fetch Dryad Arbor and, the even better way, Arboreal Grazer. Arboreal Grazer wants to be played with a lot of lands, and the body is mostly irrelevant. With these two cards, you can have three lands in play as early as turn one and continue the game from there. Scapeshift comes to mind because it can play an amount of basics for this to be realistic. A deck like Amulet Titan may work, but it wants to play as few basics as possible. Additionally, that deck isn't necessarily looking for a critical mass of lands like Scapeshift. Flare of Cultivation is a weak card I don't anticipate seeing much play, but bear in mind that sacrificing a creature for zero mana always has some potential in some crazy way, as do free spells in general. It's one of those cards that may not see a lot of play initially and then something changes and it breaks the card. Null Elemental Blast A cool callback to two of Magic's most iconic sideboard cards, the red and blue Elemental Blasts. While Null Elemental Blast is cool, flavorful, and maybe a solid card in a format like Commander, I don't think it will see much play in Modern. It's too narrow and doesn't answer many of the format's pillar cards. Null Elemental Blast will mostly have too few targets against any of the format's top-tier decks to be considered. This card may show up somewhere someday if a deck full of gold cards becomes the format's boogeyman, like a deck similar to Humans when that deck reigned supreme, but that's not the case right now. I'm still happy this card was printed since even as a throwaway it's a cool, little, niche option. Wight of the Reliquary Wight of the Reliquary is such a unique card that there's not currently a perfect home for it, but it's powerful enough to see play. It can attack and be activated and can become large in a deck like Crab Vine or any deck capable of loading its graveyard with creatures. Ideally, Wight of the Reliquary will be played in a deck that doesn't utilize the graveyard for much else, so the deck will be effective against graveyard hate and use to greater effect Wight's ability to sacrifice a creature and put a land into play while also becoming a scary, standalone threat. Because this card can sacrifice at instant speed, it can sacrifice cards like Grief or Endurance with the evoke trigger on the stack and give the cards additional value as the game develops. The only current top-tier deck that Wight of the Reliquary could sneak into is Yawgmoth, but even with Grist and Young Wolf around as free ways to ramp, it likely won't do enough in the deck. I wouldn't be surprised to see it land there, especially if it enables a land package with cards like Bokuja Bog that fit the format well when the dust settles. While this card is cool and potentially powerful, it needs to find a deck that's looking for specific lands and can turn this into a gigantic standalone threat. I don't know of any current decks that check both boxes. Chthonian Nightmare The first deck I ever played in a Grand Prix was Living Death in Rath Cycle Block Constructed. The best card in the deck? Recurring Nightmare. Fast forward over 25 years and I'm writing about a "fixed" version of my beloved Recurring Nightmare. Chthonian Nightmare is a cool and interesting card, as it allows you to set up loops, however, I'm not sure how to abuse this card because Chthonian Nightmare limits you with both energy and mana. This card would work with an old infinite mana loop played with Recurring Nightmare, Priest of Gix. Because that card is not legal in Modern, we need to find more ways to go infinite with Chtonian Nightmare because we can use it to put an Atraxa in play without doing much work. I don't like the prospects for Chtonian Nightmare without a concrete way to close the game immediately. It's weak to graveyard hate and merely there to generate value in longer games. It's mostly used like Ephemerate to get triggers from your creatures without keeping a Grief in play on turn one. I'm not high on this card despite it being a callback to one of my favorite cards of all time. Even if we find the pieces to make this card tick, it likely won't play out better than similar creature-combo-style decks like Yawgmoth. Nethergoyf I had to read this card at least three times before realizing it doesn't grow in size for each graveyard, just your own, so it's not a strictly better Tarmogoyf. This is a tricky card to evaluate because it looks solid but only if you're playing a proactive Thoughtseize deck that is not vulnerable to graveyard hate. You don't want your threats being shut off entirely by a Leyline of the Void or Rest in Peace, but in a deck like Modern Jund, you're not too concerned with your graveyard. You play enough card types to have Netherghoyf become sizeable quickly and will often play longer, grindier, low-resource games where bringing back your threat could be a big benefit. Netherghoyf is not the kind of card you want in multiples because paying the escape cost is nearly impossible unless you get deep into your deck. If you're good at creating a large Netherghoyf, maybe you want the full playset, but I could see black midrange decks looking for an additional one or two threats to play a singular copy or pair of Netherghoyfs to round out threat density. Netherghoyf is bound to see play, as it's an efficient threat in a format with Thoughtseize, Fatal Push, and Fetch Lands to have it grow quickly. I don't expect to see it in a top-tier deck like Scam since there's not much room and Netherghoyf would have to overperform to get a spot. I wouldn't be surprised to occasionally see a copy or two like Kroxa, however. I'm excited to see how Nethergoyf pans out. It's well-designed for a card that's supposed to feel like Tarmogoyf but with tradeoffs. Winter Moon What do you get when you mix a Winter Orb and a Blood Moon? Winter Moon makes sure you put basic lands in your decks and fetch them. This is a bad replacement for a card like Blood Moon because it doesn't cut anyone out completely, which is what you want out of a card like this. If you're putting this card in your sideboard, you want it to be effective. Blood Moon isn't always perfect, but Winter Moon is only limiting, and not completely restricting, your opponent's mana. Winter Moon will never color-screw your opponent. While it's a cool twist on Blood Moon and Winter Orb, I doubt it will see much play. Modern decks have lower-casting cost cards, and Blood Moon has the upside of shutting off the opponent's, say, green mana, so they can't channel Boseiju or cast Nature's Claim. Winter Moon looks cool, but I'd bet against this seeing any real play outside of Commander, in which it will probably be a contentious card since I'm sure it will cause more opponents to be annoyed than serve any real purpose. Ugin's Labyrinth Ugin's Labyrinth is by far the most intriguing card in the set thus far. This land is reminiscent of past broken cards like Ancient Tomb, City of Traitors, Chrome Mox, Mox Diamond, and Gemstone Cavern. In many ways this card is similar, but it has a unique clause that you need to exile a seven-mana card to turn on its true potential. Later in the game, after getting a lot of additional mana from your land, you can get your seven-drop back and use it when you've developed your mana. This card will see play in all legal formats at some point because that's how cards that generate extra mana at almost no cost work. Will it be good in Modern from the get-go? That remains to be seen. Ugin's Labyrinth seems most effective when paired with cards like Myr Enforcer and used in an artifact shell, perhaps with Simulacrum Synthesizer. This is a simple, day-one home for the card where it could be used as a way to get on the board quickly and unload on the opponent. The worst case is you don't have a Myr Enforcer or Sojourner's Companion and it's just a land that taps for colorless in a mostly colorless deck. No harm, no foul. I could see Ugin's Labyrinth paired with Eldrazi, potentially even the lean version with Thought-Knot Seer, Eldrazi Mimic, and Reality Smasher, but what seven-mana cards would we use to exile? I'm sure we'll see more cards that function with it, maybe more Eldrazi with Emerge. There's no way it's more efficient to cast cards like Karn, Ugin, or Ulamog with Ugin's Labyrinth than it will be with Tron, so there needs to be a strong reason to play this card with seven-mana cards you're not trying to cast for less mana. Not of this World comes to mind as a card that could be exiled with this and that may have a few cards from MH3 that can support it, but it's unlikely. There's no doubt this card will be heavily explored, but I'm skeptical it finds a reasonable home in a competitive Modern deck. It's a hard ask to put seven-mana cards in your Modern deck while not playing Tron. Ancient Tomb required no work, Chrome Mox was good with cheap spells, and Mox Diamond just wanted lands. Ugin's Labryinth has high potential, but it's difficult to turn it into a broken card given its biggest restriction. Ugin's Labyrinth is an elegant way to create a card people want to exploit, but it's difficult to create a deck where the card's powers are fully realized. This is my favorite card I've seen from the set thus far. I don't think we've seen anything in Modern Horizons 3 that breaks the mold like some cards in MH1 and MH2. I'm sure it's coming, and I'll continue to keep my eye out.

Last week, we had the pleasure of watching the best of the best battle at Pro Tour Outlaws of Thunder Junction. This week, we took a crack at high-level Limited with the Arena Open. I wouldn't normally continue with Limited content this late into a release, but we have another Open in a couple of weeks, so it's good to keep fresh. I'm looking forward to battling in the Open again. I went into this weekend excited to return to a competitive atmosphere. I enjoy competition and have been mostly absent for a few months due to a busy home life. I was not looking forward to OTJ sealed. It is a recipe for disaster. There is a ton of variance in how many rares you can end up with, you're often restricted by your fixing, and there's more variance if you choose to play best-of-one. As much as I like OTJ draft, the sealed experience was not much better than I expected. Rares were important, and it was difficult to compete if you didn't have them. You don't need the crazy pools like some people had with multiple Bonny Pall, Clearcutter, but commons and uncommons can't keep up with someone casting multiple bombs in a game. Maybe you can beat one or, if you're in a great position, two, but any more and you find yourself too far behind. Regardless, I managed to battle my way through on my fourth or fifth attempt with this deck: This wasn't my best pool, but it felt good. I was forced to play white because it had the only mana-efficient removal in my pool with the two Mystical Tethers and Vanishing Verse. It's not the best Ruthless Lawbringer deck, but it's a necessary evil. I splashed Roxanne off two Conduit Pylons, a few ways to find the Pylons, and a Hardbristle Bandit. It may have been a greedy splash, but it worked out well. Roxanne at six mana is still good, and I'd rather be greedy and play my best cards than conservative, especially given I had enough cheap creatures to prolong the game. Frontline Seeker found two of my bombs while The Gitrog, Ravenous Ride, and Ornery Tumblewagg tied the room together. I went into the draft portion expecting Grixis Colors to be highly contested. I tend to bounce around streams these days, paying attention to trends, and it seemed like aggressive decks were on the downtrend while people tried to draft around crime synergies. My one rule going into the draft was to bias myself away from white cards. I never win with white outside of blue-white. White is mostly for uncommons, removal, and a few curve fillers, while I play blue uncommons and rares. It's not an easy archetype to play, so I avoid white as much as possible. Fortunately, my first draft was easy: I opened one of my favorite rares in "Roxanne, Starfall Savant", Gruul was wide open, and deserts kept falling into my lap. Most of my picks in the early parts of packs were easy, and it was only filler picks where I had some close spots, such as deciding between the second Discerning Peddler or the niche sideboard splash Decisive Denial. I took something vanilla, like a Sterling Hound, over a Failed Fording because I didn't anticipate I'd want to splash the bounce spell, but I think the correct pick was the bounce spell. I went 3-0 to start, then lost to a mediocre UG deck with multiple Dance of the Tumbleweeds. Large creatures are the bane of any Gruul deck's existence. Had I thought about it, I would have found a spot for the bounce spell and potentially had a clean answer to push through. A large token held off my board until I got ground out by blue card advantage. I ended up 3-1 and thought my deck was solid. Plan the Heist is still a criminally underrated card, possibly because it plays out better in Bo3 than Bo1, and people are misusing stats from 17lands.com. I'm happy to take it in the first few picks, and yet I often get them wheeled back to me anyways. Maybe it's people avoiding blue or the card itself, but it's a good grab at basically any point in the draft. Draft two was awkward. I didn't see any good rares the entire draft. From memory, the best rare I saw was a Primal Command. You know rares are not that rare if you've played this set. Most, if not all, of my decks up to this point have at least one rare, and I'd guess two or three on average. This deck had zero. Intimidation Campaign was my first draft pick in a weak pack over a Trained Arynx. It's a funny pick because both cards are overrated. They're good cards, but neither is a reason to dive into any archetype. Intimidation Campaign in long, grindy games gives you inevitability, but it's too slow and clunky against cards like the Arynx. I followed my rule to bias myself away from white cards and took the stronger uncommon in archetypes I prefer. After that, there were a lot of close picks between commons and uncommons. I didn't see any strong rares to pull me out of the blue-black uncommon I opened. Generally, you want your blue-black decks to be more controlling and have a higher power level, but this approach also works: low to the ground, push tempo, use Ravens and Intimidation Campaign along with a few fliers to get ahead, and chip away at the opponent's life total. This is far from a good version of that deck, but the card quality at my table was uniquely bad. I never felt I passed a card better than anything I had in my pool and was often taking the all-around best card in the pack or at least something comparable. I only played one match, but it was a great one, going up against Limited legend Elias Watsfeldt. Elias won the draft master award in 2018, which qualified him for the exclusive World Championships. We had back-and-forth games that could have gone either way. I won the first game but lost to Crackle in Power in games two and three when it was cast twice with a Lockpicker. This ended my run, but I enjoyed our match so much that I wasn't annoyed. I thought to myself after, "Wow, that was fun." This weekend taught me that I need to focus on drafting white more before the next Open. This format will churn quite a bit. Whatever the hive mind thinks is best changes from week to week. I need to take my advice to stay open, take the best card, and find my lane. It's important to have rares, but part of that is also finding the open lane so you don't need to open those rares. If you avoid any single archetype in this format, you're handicapping yourself because there are a lot of great rares that are narrow, either being too hard to cast or only fitting into one specific archetype that you need to support. I am looking forward to getting back into the Arena and trying again. I hope we continue to see Limited formats as deep as this in the future, as I feel I'm still learning a lot about this format after 30 drafts. I feel I can solve the format in the first few drafts because the cards are similar to how they were in the past. If I have one critique of this format, it's that the commons' power level needs to be pushed higher so they can compete with uncommons and rares. While it may end up that formats like this are harder to sustain high win rates, it's also going to be more enjoyable for those of us who have been drafting for over 20 years. I've cast enough Wind Drakes and Lowland Giants, so I'd like to see the commons level up like uncommons and rares have in the past decade. Speaking of higher power sets, I'm looking forward to Modern Horizons 3 Limited. I'll start my review of the set next week. Until then, I'll be in the lab continuing to learn OTJ, one of my all-time favorite draft formats.

This past weekend we saw the smallest Pro Tour in recent memory. I was looking forward to this PT as a spectator since I've been fascinated with how great the Limited format feels. We started by watching Seth Manfield draft. I consider myself as having a bond with Seth because we both began to have success at similar times, had children at the same time, and have battled a bunch along the way. Seth is an all-time top-five talent, so I was excited to watch his draft approach. I would have drafted his seat differently. His first pick was a Stingerback Terror, a solid rare in red, which many consider the worst color. The next pick is where his bias showed. He took a Trained Arynx over Explosive Derailment. I don't know if Seth wanted an off-ramp to red because he didn't like the color or if he just likes white, specifically white aggressive decks. I had the privilege before the event to talk with two of his teammates, Martin Juza and Sam Pardee, about Limited. They both seemed interested in white aggressive strategies that may have been brought up at the Limited meeting and throughout their testing. I was more shocked by that exact pick with that context. Seth had the opportunity to lock in a single color with a solid removal spell and take what's coming to him or branch out into a color his teammates prefer. It may be a good decision at a typical table to take or avoid the preferred color, but I like staying flexible. At this table, Seth may not have processed that his teammate was two seats away feeding his direction. It's no secret that Martin Juza loves his low-to-the-ground aggro decks that curve out and cast combat tricks. With only one other player between us, and someone I knew was going to be biased towards white and away from red, I would be happy to stay in the lane the packs were giving me, identify what's open, and hopefully get spoon-fed some red and open or get passed more rares. The way the pack went down, Seth could have stayed in mostly red, opened a Bristly Bill, and potentially moved into RG scooping up the cut green in pack two and mostly red cards in pack three. RG is not my ideal color combination, especially with heavy red, but Seth set himself up for the worst-case scenario by waffling around a bit, opening the door for players on the left to move into red, and having to fight for it in pack two. Seth is an all-time great drafter and managed to end up with a reasonable Boros deck, but even the best players in the past few years have fallen into this trap of focusing on what they want or don't want to be doing instead of letting the draft come to them. In this format, it's more powerful to find a lane or commit to your first strong rare, rather than force something. There are more rares and good uncommons than usual, so trying to force an archetype won't work well because you need solid cards to have a solid deck. Decks made of commons won't cut it in most cases. With the Arena Open this weekend, I'd recommend not forcing anything and working to identify what's coming to reap some rewards. Seth had a rough start but rallied back with a solid finish, since he's one of the best. After we had the pleasure of watching OTJ Limited, we moved to a Standard format that looked interesting. Esper represented over 30% of the field. Many attribute this to the short testing window between the set release and PT, but it was almost identical to how PTs were run in the mid-2010s when we'd have about two weeks between the prerelease and PT. Everyone on a testing team would gather as many prize packs or product boxes as they could and work non-stop during that short time. While it's certainly a change to how it has been, this formula is by far the best as it makes viewing the PT more interesting when someone comes up with something spicy. There's nothing more exciting than watching a PT where a testing team or player breaks the format with an unknown list and demolishes the field, which a shorter window will make more common. As a player, it provides the most opportunity to find a real edge. If you're playing a format for a month before the event and create something, then it almost always gets found elsewhere as well. While Standard wasn't that special since many of the decks were known quantities, the gameplay was excellent with a lot of tight decisions. As someone who played the deck years ago, Esper Midrange makes for interesting games, and it looks almost identical with some solid upgrades. I recommended a Raffine ban along with Fable to some WotC employees nearly two years ago because I believed Esper had the recipe of being a strong deck that pushes out other interesting archetypes. It's possible that time has come and passed, as there are more competitive decks these days. It would be interesting to see how different things could be. The story of the weekend was Yoshihiko Ikawa destroying the competition and losing only a single match the entire weekend. It was a legendary run and one of the cleanest and technically flawless players we've seen. Ikawa had been one of the most underrated players consistently doing well on the tour, and I'm glad he got his opportunity to shine. Ikawa playing Domain, a deck known to have a good Esper match-up, nailed the metagame prediction and played near-perfect Magic all weekend by making some incredibly tight plays and showing off how well-practiced he was with his deck. Sanctum of All had a breakout weekend. Two players were in the Top 8, both of whom it was only a matter of time. I have admired them for a while, and I learned what cftsoc stands for this weekend, combo for the sake of combo. Rei Zhang has had brilliant deck-building skills. It reminds me of a decade ago when everyone was so excited to see what a player like Sam Black or Matt Nass brought to the table. Rei definitely belongs in that category. Jason Ye, who's been on an absolute tear recently, had a first PT Top 8 performance this weekend by playing the same archetype as teammate Rei, both with Slogurk, my current favorite card in Standard. If you've followed my writing, I've been gushing about how broken a card Slogurk is since Worlds 2022, and it was only a matter of time before the pieces were printed and a team of strong deck builders like Sanctum of All put the pieces together. Slogurk is difficult to pilot and build well, so having success with it at the highest levels is remarkable and a testament to these players' talent. On top of those two in the Top 8 was Nicole Tipple who also tested with Sanctum of All and played the same deck. She earned 11th place at her first Pro Tour. It was an incredible run. If I had a big tournament coming up, I'd look at Slogurk if I had the time to learn to pilot it optimally. This is not a deck you can pick up and play, as there are a lot of key decision points. Watching Ikawa defeat his long-time friend Yuta Takahashi in the finals was heartwarming. While the Pro Tour was small this time, it's going to get bigger with new changes. I hope we see more special moments like this with great players who have long, successful careers battling and creating epic storylines. For the first time in months, I've been excited to play Magic, specifically OTJ Limited. I'm looking forward to battling in my first event in a while at the Draft Open this weekend. I hope to see you there! Remember to stay open and take what's coming.

Yesterday, OTJ Limited was finally available. I hit the ground running firing up some drafts, but unfortunately, they briefly shut it down on MTGO for some bugs during the first game of my second draft. Most cards were fixed when it came back online, though some are still a bit bugged. However, the experience wasn't too tainted, and I'm enjoying OTJ Limited thus far. It's high-powered but not overly fast-paced. Removal is important because there are a lot of high-powered rares. Interacting with them is mandatory, but there are many ways to blank removal with cards like Snakeskin Veil and Take Up the Shield at common, or ones like Fleeting Reflection and Smuggler's Surprise at higher rarities. Hard counterspells are better than usual because of the high-powered nature of the format, but soft counters are at their worst due to the plot mechanic. Plot makes it so you can play a high-impact spell's mana cost before it hits the stack, which makes it easy to play around soft counters. Plot is an all-timer mechanic. I love how it allows for explosive turns and the decision to either play your spells for plot costs for potential bonuses or cast your spells to get them on the battlefield immediately. Two-drops aren't as important as they've been in recent sets and there are lots of powerful cards and cards that scale with mana to bring you back into a game where you've fallen behind. Bear in mind that I've played almost exclusively on MTGO, so the experience on Arena may be different with the handsmoother. The common desert dual lands smooth out the crime mechanics perfectly. Without them the crime cards would be meaningfully worse, so adding those to the set is a huge win, and it's a chef's kiss when combined with desert synergies. What currently draws me to this set is that I think it will be incredibly re-playable. The draft experience feels different every time because of the high-power nature of the packs. I don't feel forced to draft a curve and a few removal and combat tricks. I can draft a deck that has a theme or synergy, play a longer game, and watch my deck operate how I want. If you design a Limited set with a fantasy to pursue, it's important that the fantasy is worth pursuing and will be fun and competitive when you're able to finally draft that perfect Izzet Plot deck or that great BG Self Mill deck. While I love the format and think it's fun, it may be more high variance as a result of how unpredictable the games can be due to the amount of rares. I'm fine with adding variance if it includes adding fun, and in true Dave Humphreys fashion, OTJ hit the mark perfectly. Let's take a look at a couple of the decks I've drafted so far. While I've been winning more than losing, I'm not yet getting trophies every draft. If I keep it, maybe I can find some holes in the drafting meta and get an exceptionally high win rate. Deck 1 Izzet Plot Here's a run-of-the-mill Izzet Plot deck. This deck almost felt like playing Pioneer Phoenix since it was equipped to spend mana every turn, interact often, and I never flooded or missed land drops due to the Highway Robbery. Stoic Sphinx is insane and carried me for a couple of games, but Malcom also did a lot of work when I was able to prolong games. Red removal spells will likely be this archetype's key commons. You'll want to take Razzle-Dazzler fairly high, as you can often get gridlocked by various green-reach creatures without great ways to interact. Expensive plot cards like Loan Shark and Djinn of Fool's Fall are sitting at about replacement level because there are a lot of options. The early part of your curve is more important for this archetype because it needs to play a tempo-positive game vs. larger creatures. This was a 2-1 deck losing to lots of Cactarantulas. Deck 2 Orzhov Sacrifice This deck looked great while drafting it, but ultimately it was not very good. The curve was nice and tight, and I had removal to push through my smaller creatures, but the creatures were too underwhelming. There's a lot of value in this set, so making small positive exchanges like curving a Nezumi Linkbreaker into a Ruthless Lawbringer isn't enough to keep pushing damage. My deck would often flood out in long games while my opponent had 10 or so life. Orzhov decks have been bad in recent Limited sets with the new Limited design approach because the archetype tends to lack traction in most formats. Its cards are mostly low impact and the synergies are too soft and understated for modern-day Magic. I'm sure I'll try drafting Orzhov again, but my hunch is it's a lane you actively want to avoid, and I sort of feel like that about white in general. White needs to be aggressive in formats like this that are high powered and I don't think it's quite there. This deck went 1-2 and was by far my worst deck. Deck 3 RGu Ramp Multicolor green is one of my current favorite decks to draft and this was my first go at it. I picked up a lot of lands to help facilitate splashing some solid blue uncommons and round the deck out so it wouldn't run out of gas. Roxanne, Starfall Savant is strong and absolutely busted when paired with Cactusfolk Sureshot. I was able to play Roxanne many times and attack in the same turn to kill a four-toughness creature with both of my Meteorites. That sequence is good enough that I'm curious to find other potential playable ways of giving Roxanne haste in the future, perhaps having Roxanne push a card like Lavaspur Boots into the playable category. These green decks want a bit of removal, but you can also be confident casting huge creatures every turn. Snakeskin Veil makes plotting big creatures like Freestrider Commando safe and effective and can punish opponents when they spend four or more mana to try and interact with your large creatures. Also, Snakeskin Veil protects the creatures you're trying to fight, so I like to play at least one Snakeskin Veil. I'm coming around to thinking that's the correct amount, as when the game develops if you don't have a lot of ways to generate card advantage Snakeskin Veil can rot in your hand, especially if you have multiples. I was surprised at how solid Primal Command was in this deck. If I didn't have any truly busted creatures like Roxanne I likely wouldn't play it, but its versatility made it one of my better draws. This was another solid 2:1 deck. Deck 4 More Multicolor Green This was close to my best deck and it showed. I started with a pick-one-pack-one Oko and took Doc Aurlock to follow it up and lock in. Someone else was in my colors despite all Simic gold cards, and none of the cards came back that I thought would. I ended up much lower on plot cards than I wanted to with my two Doc Aurlocks. Endless Detour and Kellan both fell into my lap, Endless Detour was a tenth or eleventh pick, and I took Kellan fairly early pack three in a pack that was otherwise empty. I didn't anticipate playing the splash, but my alternative cards were too weak and I wanted more interaction. Kellan was fine when I drew it but not a high-powered mythic you should take early to build around. Oko was disgusting. It hits hard, always left me in the game protecting itself, and ran away with at least two games on its own. Pest Infestation is strong but not a massive bomb. You should take it over every common and likely uncommon, but it's not at the same level as Oko since it only shines deep in the game or when your opponent has some targets. Fblthp, Lost on the Range was better than I had hoped, but that's likely a matchup thing. It is a three-mana future sight with the caveat you don't get to play a land off of it like future sight, but there are ways to manipulate the top of your deck. I'd almost always play it because it's a cheap enough spell that you can cast deep in a game and get immediate value. It won't get buried if you cast it on the play against basically any deck if you follow up with interaction on later turns. Solid deck that got an easy 3-0 trophy. Oko did a lot of the heavy lifting, and I'm starting to believe green could be one of the best colors, if not the best. Deck 5 BGuw Self-Mill I haven't had a chance to play a real match with my last deck. This is something of a self-mill deck with Rise of the Varmints as a payoff, but it's mostly just a 4c-green-value deck that can play creatures on curve and hit hard, as well as bog down the board with creatures and removal while taking over with value cards. This is not the best deck for Intimidation Campaign, but it's too good to not play with all these deserts and removal. Villainous Wealth can end any slow game on the spot, or win a game out of nowhere. I had a lot of tough picks this draft, as my archetype was very open. I'm missing a key common in Desperate Bloodseeker, which I saw twice and opted to take one of my first deserts over and an Honest Rutstein the second time. I expect a 2:1 on average with this deck because it has a lot of ways to generate value, a solid curve, and decent removal, though I wish I had one or two copies of Desperate Bloodseeker and/or Desert's Due to Round it out. So far OTJ is an extremely fun Limited format. It's high-powered, there are a lot of actions and decisions in the draft and gameplay. I didn't think I'd enjoy plot as a mechanic nearly as much as I have, but unlike recent sets, I'm always excited to get right back in the queue when I finish my draft.

Outlaws of Thunder Junction (OTJ) has its full release around the corner and, for what I believe is the first time, the OTJ packs will have a secondary set inserted into them, The Big Score. The Big Score is comprised of 30 cards that were added from what would have been the Aftermath-equivalent set. You can conclude that these are cards that are part of the main set as they will be legal in all formats, including Standard. Let's take a look at some of the most interesting inclusions. Lost Jitte This has been quite the controversial preview. Many have said it's super strong and maybe stronger than the original Jitte. Others say it's unplayable. It's funny that our community can be hyperbolic, but in many cases, one of the things can be true, and this card fits that case. This is either a card that warrants a slot in decks with cards like Urza'a Saga or Stoneforge Mystic, or it simply isn't. My stance is this card is too weak to include in every deck playing Urza's Saga, but it will be a potential tool in creature-heavy decks playing Saga, as it won't be a poor draw on its own. This card will shine the most when Saga is still in play, and you can use it to create an additional construct by untapping Urza's Saga. Umezawa's Jitte got multiple counters a turn making it more difficult to come back from. The Lost Jitte can ramp your mana some or make a creature not block, but its snowball effect is not that big. Lost Jitte is strong but also beatable in Limited. In Constructed, it will be another tool to add to the Saga toolbox, but I'm skeptical that Lost Jitte sees any long-term play in even those decks. I'm not a big believer in Lost Jitte, but I can see situations where certain decks might want a one-of in their Saga toolbox. Bristlebud Farmer Four-mana creatures have come a long way since Ernham Djinn. Bristlebud Farmer has a sizeable body as a four-mana 5/5 trample and a solid enters-the-battlefield effect providing two food immediately, and if you can start attacking with the Farmer, you can sacrifice food to get real cardboard into your hand. This is a tough card to evaluate. It's strong on its face, but four-mana cards have to be so good to see play because there are so many options and you can only play so many due to the steep mana cost. While this card looks great, you have to compare it to Standard's best four-drops such as Sheoldred, the Apocalypyse. While Bristlebud Farmer is nice, it's worse than Sheoldred. Without a mana dork that costs one-mana, cards that look strong on their face aren't good enough in Standard since they need to compete with several years of other four-drops and years of synergies. Bristlebud Farmer doesn't have much synergy at the moment. Bristlebud Farmer would be an excellent card against an aggressive field of red decks, as it's tough to kill with damage-based removal and the extra food tokens will be relevant if it dies before it gets the opportunity to get into combat. I like Bristlebud Farmer, but not being one of the best four-drops in the format means I don't think it will see much play unless its ability to make two food tokens plays a role in it being included in a deck. Harvester of Misery This is probably my favorite card from The Big Score. Harvester of Misery has a modal ability where it can act as a cheap removal spell early and a sweeper on a stick later. Harvester of Misery punishes small-creature decks early and late. This card will be prolific if there's a standout deck with lots of small creatures. If the Standard format shapes into more of a midrange grindfest, Harvester of Misery will sit on the sideboard or perhaps not be seen at all. I suspect we'll see this card plenty, potentially even outside of Standard, because it's so flexible with a high upside. While discarding it isn't the most efficient removal, it's good enough in many scenarios. Harvester of Misery is like a better or fixed Massacre Wurm. It won't hit as hard, but you don't mind seeing it in your opening hand, and you can get it into your graveyard, which makes it an excellent tool for decks reanimating creatures from the graveyard, whether that be from a card like Cruelty of Gix or as a card to add to your cube. Nexus of Becoming While Harvester of Misery is potentially my favorite card, Nexus of Becoming is next, if not top, on the list. Nexus of Becoming is so powerful if you're able to fit in enough high-end cards to cheat into play for big effects. My first thought was cheating Atraxas into play and starting a chain, but even putting redundant copies of itself into play is powerful since it draws you additional cards and you can find a big hit. Portal to Phyrexia is another juicy play with this, and even Harvester of Misery would play nicely in a deck with Nexus of Becoming because both are cheap removal spells that can double as a powerful play off Nexus. On top of Nexus, we discussed Make Your Own Luck, which could act as a redundant way to cheat a bunch of expensive, high-impact plays into play. Boseiju being legal is a big problem for Nexus, and this idea may be a bit too clunky. However, there are a lot of neat ways to build with this card and the potential is high. I'm a big fan of Nexus of Becoming, and this is the card I'm most excited about building around in Outlaws of Thunder Junction or The Big Score. Fomori Vault Fomori Vault looked cool to me at first glance. It's a value land that can let you dig deep into your deck if you're able to support it well enough with a plethora of artifacts in play. There are tons of options for value lands, and while this may be a card you want a copy of in a deck like that, those decks are uncommon or creature-heavy and want the value lands to put pressure on the opponent. While Fomori Vault can act as a discard outlet, it's just a Desolate Lighthouse with added steps. It reads like it could be strong, but it's not that easy to have a bunch of artifacts in play. If I want a colorless value land, I have many choices, and this isn't the top of the list. Fomori Vault is probably a cool Commander card, as people tend to play lots of artifact mana, and you're limited to one copy of lands per deck. It's mostly a miss, but you may occasionally see a copy in 60-card formats. Legion Extruder I've seen some compare Legion Extruder to Bonecrusher Giant, and I can say without question this is not even close. Stomp was an instant, which was and is an important part of its play pattern and power level. Being able to pass on turn two with Stomp mana up, kill the opponent's creature, and immediately slam a 4/3 on an empty board was incredible. With Legion Extruder, you get to play at sorcery speed and at best kill something. Even though it lets you turn food and treasure into 3/3 golems, it's going to require that effect to be outstanding for this card to be playable in your deck. That effect may have some corner-case situations, however Legion Extruder is mostly too weak for any real consideration. A much closer comparison for Legion Extruder would be Omen of the Forge. I'd expect it to see the little play that Omen has, but rather in specific situations where you're building an artifact deck that wants to keep artifacts in play and wants a cheap removal effect or some way to sacrifice artifacts. I'm not a big fan of this one and while I won't be surprised to see a few copies here and there it is far from a format staple like Bonecrusher Giant. Tarnation Vista Speaking of wanting random cardboard cards with colors sitting in play, Tarnation Vista wants just that. We've seen many versions of lands that enter tapped, and you choose a color they can produce, so we need to focus on its second ability to evaluate this card. Tarnation Vista's biggest upside is producing more than one mana when it's tapped. To get to that point, you need three different colored mono-colored permanents in play to produce one additional mana. That's not a tough nut to crack. It's possible to build your deck in a way to make that easier, as you can have mono-colored permanents with low value sitting in play with cards like Legion Extruder. Tarnation Vista comes into play tapped, meaning its upside would have to outweigh that downside for this to be a strong land choice. My initial inclination is that it will be too inconsistent to consider this land in any 60-card format. This is more of a Commander card that any deck can and will want to play because it will be useful more often in a typical EDH game-state. The cost of lands coming into play tapped is too high these days to only produce a single color of mana and with such an inconsistent additional upside. Memory Vessel This is a fixed Memory Jar that doesn't force opponents to discard. If you activate this and don't win on that turn, your opponent will get to play with their fresh seven cards. Memory Vessel gets exiled on use, so there's no recurring it repeatedly to deck the opponent. One of my favorite use cases is in sloppy Vintage Cube games. Memory Jar was a broken card because of all the small pieces of the card, including how it forced the opponent to discard, so cards like Megrim were the win condition or casting an Upheaval in the middle of a Jar activation left the opponent with no resources. Memory Vessel is powerful and worth trying as a redundant Jar for a cube. You don't have to worry as much about your opponent drawing cards like Force of Will or Force of Negation because the cards don't go into their actual hand and they'll need something already in it to pitch to cast those. While I love the callback to one of my all-time favorite cards, I don't understand this card since it will never be used fairly. Perhaps this is an effect desired for Commander players, but in 60-card formats this will never show up, and if it does it will be in a deck using it to piece together a combo. I doubt we'll see much from Memory Vessel. The Big Score is a nice added twist to booster packs that you'll commonly see in drafts. With all these extra potentially strong cards being Standard-legal, I wonder if we see something break. Outlaws of Thunder Junction and The Big Score are just around the corner with an April 19 release date. I'm most excited to get into the draft queues, but I also want to put together a nice Nexus of Becoming deck. OTJ is the most excited I've been for a set in a couple of years, and I'm hoping it's as fun as it looks.

I don't usually sing praises of Magic sets before I play them, but for the first time in years, I'm getting excited reading through the previews. Limited is my favorite way to play Magic, and this set looks fantastic in that regard. Desert synergies, powerful gold cards, cool mechanics, and creatures that can block efficiently are all reasons why I'm looking forward to the set. Regarding Constructed, I've highlighted a few cards with some potential. Bristly Bill, Spine Sower Bristly Bill, Spine Sower is a generically powerful creature in lots of contexts. Something most recent Standard decks have been missing is two-drops with the ability to snowball. Bristly Bill can do that, but while the mana in Standard is close to its best, we don't have fetch lands to really abuse Landfall. Where I'm most excited about this card's potential is alongside Slogurk. Bristly Bill can put counters on Slogurk allowing it to be returned easier, double its counters in the late game, and work in any versions with Splendid Reclamation or the like. Bill is also legendary to reduce the cost of channeling lands like Otawara and Takenuma. Slogurk decks also typically play high land counts, so you'll never miss a land drop that is beneficial for Bill. It seems to fit in nicely and synergize so well with my favorite card in Standard, and it's a powerful threat that can stand on its own as the game develops. Bristly Bill has other potential uses. I can see it as a nice "curve topper" in an aggressive shell. You can plan to cast Bill on turn three after curving out and following up with a fetch land, whether it be a card like Evolving Wilds in Standard or a true fetch land in Modern for a deck like Hardened Scales. Bristly Bill looks like an all-around solid two-drop that can also have a big impact later in the game. I like this card a lot. Caustic Bronco Speaking of two-drops with snowball potential, Caustic Bronco is the latest Dark Confidant variant. This card looks like it could see some play if the Standard format allows it to attack regularly, which if paired with a lot of removal and/or Raffine, it very well could. I love the idea of curving this into Raffine and opening the door to draw extra cards and filter through them. Later, you can saddle it to start draining the opponent's life and the game should end quickly. Outside of a deck like Esper, it could potentially see some play in a deck like Golgari Midrange. One of the big issues with two-drops recently has been they don't leave behind value, which leads to three-drops dominating the format. Cards like Fable of the Mirror Breaker, Wedding Announcement, and Raffine dominated Standard for so long and we didn't have many ways to get extra cards at two mana. Caustic Bronco isn't a broken card, as its design is similar to a card like Glint-Sleeve Siphoner, but it is an option at three mana that will help you play through mulligans and other powerful cards that generate tons of value. I think Caustic Bronco makes sense to try in decks like Golgari Mid, Esper, and potentially Dimir Midrange. Slick Sequence Slick Sequence is easily my favorite design of the set, which is why I'm highlighting it here. It's so simple but beautifully designed. Slick Sequence allows for one-for-one early interaction, and it becomes more powerful as the game develops. It leaves you up a card when you sequence it with another spell and kill something. Additionally, it's designed to work well with plot, a key set mechanic. I'm not sure this card will see any Constructed play. It's almost there, and I could see it in something like an Izzet Prowess deck with a card like Slickshot Show-Off. I love this card and hope there are enough two-toughness creatures in Standard for this to see play. Make Your Own Luck This is a cool design with potentially powerful applications. Obviously, my mind is immediately drawn to Eldrazi with cast triggers that can take advantage of Make Your Own Luck or perhaps Atraxa. Its obvious home in Standard would be Domain, as you could high roll an early 0 mana Atraxa into play. The problem with pure card draw cards is that you fall too far behind on the board to a point you can't recover. When permanents are providing value and threatening your life total, spending a turn not adding to the board can be devastating. Make Your Own Luck makes up for it by giving you back tempo and hopefully recouping at least the amount of mana you spent on it on the following turn, giving you an opportunity for an incredible follow-up turn. A Pioneer Marvel deck is the first deck that comes to mind after reading Make Your Own Luck. Aetherworks Marvel had issues with redundancy and hitting the correct pieces when you spun the Marvel and looked. Make Your Own Luck is a solid plan B. It's likely not good enough, but I'm interested in trying to build and test it out. Make Your Own Luck's biggest issue is that it's a five-mana card that incentivizes you to play lots of other expensive cards, and we all know you don't have a bunch of time to dawdle these days. Brainstorm effects could potentially fix this issue some, but they're few and far between. Make Your Own Luck is a cool card, and I'd like to try it out, but I think it will be too clunky. I definitely want to see how it plays in Vintage Cube, though. Aven Interrupter Aven Interrupter is a new and flashy white three-drop reminiscent of Spell Queller. The Interrupter will chew up a ton of the opponent's mana by exiling their spell and forcing them to spend two extra mana to cast it on a later turn. It works against cards like Supreme Verdict and can be used to protect your spell from a counterspell. It looks solid on its face and likely will see a lot of play, but the taxing effect is attached to the creature, so you can shock the Interrupter and freely cast your spell. This isn't necessarily a big problem, but Aven Interrupter will play best at the top of the curve in a white aggressive deck, and there are already many options for that at three mana. At the very least, I expect white aggro decks to play some of these in their sideboards against slower controlling decks since it will be a nightmare to lose so much mana and tempo to this card. Aven Interrupter is all-around solid, cleverly uses the set's new mechanic, and provides a lot of utility. We will see a decent amount of this card in the future. Seraphic Steed Here's another powerful two-drop that can snowball like crazy. A Seraphic Steed on turn two into a four-powered three-drop on three is going to end a lot of games before they get a chance to start. This two-drop also has first strike that makes blocking it exceptionally hard. After it's saddled and connected once, it will be easier to saddle and make another 3/3. It will be hard to lose a game when this creature makes two tokens. While I think this card is good, it forces you to play out creatures to saddle it. Instead of your spent mana interacting with your opponent's blockers, it will be providing new jockeys to ride this steed, making it vulnerable to a few blockers. Seraphic Steed is powerful if unchecked, but it's less exciting if it can't create an Angel and live through it. It's a solid card that might see some play if a deck can support it, but it's not worth building around too much. Assimilation Aegis Assimilation Aegis is a weird card but in a good way. It's not the most powerful removal spell since it's relatively mana-inefficient, but it provides us with the ability to clone what it exiles, which adds a lot of upside. I can see a world where the opponent cheats an Atraxa into play and we're able to exile and clone it for a huge hit. However, if an opponent puts an Atraxa into play, they're going to have a bunch of extra cards, such as a Leyline Binding to exile this. I like how this card overlaps into the Commander world as a cool card for that style of gameplay but also a card with practical uses in 60-card formats. One of the most potentially useful applications is as a one-of to tutor up with Stoneforge Mythic in eternal formats as a removal spell for the midgame. I like that this card exists, and I love how it was designed, except for the lack of ward 1. An Aegis is a powerful magical shield, and adding ward 1 to this mythic rare seems reasonable. Other than that, I'm glad we have another potential tool in Stoneforge Mystic's toolbox. I love what I'm seeing so far, and I'm excited to play with Outlaws of Thunder Junction, especially in Limited.

Preview season is back, and Outlaws of Thunder Junction has showed some interesting designs and put a spin on a few old ideas. Let's take a peek, starting with Oko. Oko, The Ringleader I love the design of this card. I'm worried it's not quite good enough in any format, but its play patterns are strong on open battlefields. Typically, we'll play this on turn four, make a 3/3 Elk, and pass the turn hoping to untap intact. At that point, we can attack for six damage copying the Elk and even making another. This reminds me of a pushed Garruk Wildspeaker, and it has a higher ceiling since it can copy tons of relevant creatures, however a lot of the stronger creatures are legendary, and Oko will legend rule in that case. In a highly interactive deck, Oko works as a card engine to get an extra card if you commit a crime, otherwise it can filter cards if you need more gas or want to fill up your graveyard. I'm interested to see how this will play alongside a card like Slogurk, the Overslime since they have the potential to synergize. I like Oko, and while it may not be nearly as strong as it would have been in prior years, it will likely see some play in Standard and maybe Pioneer. Jace Reawakened Jace is back, and this one is interesting. Many people have pointed out its synergy with Valki, God of Lies, as it's a clean way to cheat Tibalt, Cosmic Impostor into play. We also could cast zero mana suspend cards like Crashing Footfalls. While this is a nice bonus for Jace, that would likely be your plan B. You'd want to play Jace because of how much mana it functionally produces. We can cast three or less mana spells for zero throughout the game, which seems strong if it's sitting in play. It makes sense that Jace isn't castable until turn four because it would be broken if castable on turn two. You could start storing away spells to cast on a later turn while piling up a huge mana advantage. Having Jace come out on turn four means the game will have settled, and your opponent has an opportunity to get on board first before this can take over the game. I could see Jace being a bigger role player in a format like Legacy where the average converted mana cost is lower. Allowing Jace to cast every spell in your deck would be a nice boon. Ultimately, Jace is likely an overall miss because of the inability to cast on the first three turns, which are the most relevant turns in modern Magic. Insatiable Avarice We have a Spree card, which seems the same as a split card with fuse, but it's cleaner and on a single image with more than two modes. Insatiable Avarice is a nice tool for the Mono Black toolbox since it can be used as card advantage in the form of a three-mana draw, but it's also a way to give a deck like Mono B Aggro a little reach with the ability to target the opponent. The Vampiric Tutor mode will mostly be used in the late game on top of the draw three or in cases where you're so low on life that you can't afford to draw three but have no other use for the card. This is a cool card to exist, as it will give these Mono Black decks a tool in their tool belt, but it pushes any Mono B deck into contention because of its existence. The mechanic isn't revolutionary because it's an expansion of past mechanics, but hopefully it's fun to use. The Gitrog, Ravenous Ride We get our first look at the saddle mechanic. Saddle is effectively crewing but for creatures. Creatures that are mounts function as normal creatures, but they'll get an additional ability when saddled. The Gitrog monster looks cool as a five-mana 6/5 trample haste, but that's where it ends. In some cases, you can cash in a three-powered creature to draw a few cards, but if the Gitrog is connecting then you're probably in a good spot. It's worth noting that this saddled ability won't function if it connects to a planeswalker, which is significant since I could see back-and-forth games as ones you'd want to sacrifice damage and board presence for cards in hand. Overall, I evaluate the Gitrog as a 6/5 trample haste creature for five mana, which may be playable in some decks in a small number, but it's likely not good enough in modern Magic. Rakdos, the Muscle Rakdos, the Muscle is another five-mana 6/5 creature, but this one looks better than the Gitrog. While it's missing haste, it makes up for it with its ability to protect itself. You can simply cast Rakdos with any other creature in play, and they're forced to use multiple removal spells or risk you being able to get tons of cards sacrificing three- or four-mana creatures for value. Ultimately, this card is clunky and will likely want you to have a relevant synergy, whether that's part of a sacrifice deck or a deck with threaten effects to steal opponents' creatures as food. Rakdos provides versions of Cat/Oven Sacrifice decks with a tool like Korvold without having to add an additional color. While it's not quite the Magic ecosystem where we build around five-mana sorcery-speed creatures, Rakdos has a huge body with flying and trample, the ability to protect itself, and a way to generate a ton of card advantage. Rakdos will likely see play as a one- or two-of in Standard decks and, if not for Jegantha, maybe Pioneer. Colossal Rattlewurm Yet another 6/5 creature, but this one is for four mana and has flash in ideal circumstances. We haven't seen how many Deserts there will be, but this leads me to believe that we'll have a common cycle of lands and newer versions of the older Deserts like Ramunap Ruins. This is a sick creature if we get a bunch of playable Constructed Deserts to go with Rattlewurm. If not, it's solid but unspectacular. The ability to play this alongside counterspells or instant-speed interaction will make or break this card. If we get a strong enough cycle of lands to combine with Rattlewurm, it's essentially a flash 6/5 trample for four mana that gives you a Rampant Growth to boot if or when it dies. In the last few sets, they haven't been shy about pushing creature sizing on creatures with no downsides. While vanilla creatures are usually not good enough for Constructed, Colossal Rattlewurm will have legs if there's support. Return of Fast Lands I like having a solid dual land that gives functional mana in early turns for Standard decks. It feels bad losing Standard games because you played a tapped land on the wrong turn. While that will happen with fast lands, at least you develop or interact on the most important turns with these. Since fast lands are Pioneer staples, I'd expect to see them printed more. It will be awesome to have all ten fast lands in Standard. Outlaws of Thunder Junction looks interesting so far, but a lot of the newer mechanics feel like older mechanics that went through the washing machine and came out slightly different. I'm not excited yet, but from a Limited player's perspective, the return of Desert mechanics is excellent. I loved Hour of Devastation Limited, and it's usually good to have Limited sets where there's tension between drafting lands and spells. I'm excited to see how the rest of the set pans out.

We just had a scheduled banned and restricted announcement, and it was different than I expected. First we have the unrestriction of Ponder in Vintage. Vintage has tried to regulate power levels in the past, but recently there have been so many supplementary products with pushed power levels that it's hard to keep cards like Ponder restricted. The big change we see is the banning of Violent Outburst. There's been some criticism of this banning, but most people agree it's a necessary change. Violent Outburst was the only instant-speed-cascade effect for decks like Rhinos and Living End. The worst part is the deck could protect its combo with Force of Negation for 0 mana by using it on the opponent's turn. I haven't played much with Living End, but having the ability to use your combo to disrupt other creature combo decks, like killing a Primeval Titan or a Yawgmoth at instant speed, is a problematic play pattern. Ultimately, Modern is a busted format with more going on than just this cascade stuff, so I can't be confident this will make the format any better. It may slightly change the dynamic, but we still have decks like Yawgmoth and Amulet Titan that are in the running for being dominant. My biggest takeaway from this announcement was not what was there but what wasn't there. Pioneer had no changes to the format. While I haven't played Pioneer in a while, I have watched it a lot, including this past Pro Tour, and the format looked more fun and robust than in the past. However, Phoenix was the most played deck going into the Pro Tour, and the players knew that would be the case, yet it still finished with a nearly 60% win percentage. It's exceptionally rare for a deck that is the most played to have that high of a win rate because the Pro Tour players often know what the most-played deck will be and choose their decks with that knowledge, yet Phoenix still managed to crush the Pro Tour. If we saw Seth Manfield and Team CFB bring Phoenix to the event rather than Vampires and we had no new deck to talk about and distract us, there may be many more voices pushing for a banning in Pioneer. That said, what exactly should be banned from Pioneer to weaken Phoenix? I'm less confident in that. Most people say it's time for Treasure Cruise to kick the bucket, but Cruise is a fun card for the format that people enjoy casting. With checks and balances, such as Fetches being banned in Pioneer, you can look in another direction. Banning Cruise is functionally the same as banning Arclight Phoenix. The deck simply won't exist. Phoenix can't use Dig Through Time because mana efficiency is important in that deck, and Dig will still be available for other decks and is often the preferred card for other archetypes. Cruise also gets hurt by the counterplay to Phoenix from cards like Rest in Peace and Leyline of the Void. There are some approaches to weaken the Phoenix deck, such as banning a cantrip like Consider, which they've done in the past to weaken decks like Storm in Modern and the aforementioned restriction of Ponder in Vintage, but you could also do something crazy like ban Lightning Axe to make the deck weaker against creature decks and to cards like Vein Ripper and Sheoldred. Let's remember it wasn't too long ago that Phoenix was only an average deck in the format. The deck has gotten two new cards, Picklock Prankster and Sleight of Hand. If those weren't printed, the deck's power level may have remained where it needed to be. Phoenix is a tight deck, and the absence of any of its pieces outside of Cruise and Phoenix will weaken, but not break, the deck. You can hit those if they want to destroy the deck, and if not, then it's the dealer's choice. We can wait a bit to see how Pioneer shakes out. Let the Metagame react, and if action needs to be taken do it before the next major Pioneer event like a Regional Championship or Pro Tour. It's good to not immediately ban something that overperforms. Keep in mind this is a game that people like to play. When a deck is the best, people will play and learn that deck. Giving the metagame time to adapt allows players to find answers and gives them space to play a deck they just acquired after watching it at the Pro Tour. Some people like playing overpowered decks, and some like to fight against them. There was no outcry for a banning of Phoenix before the Pro Tour, so let it sit and see how it settles. If nothing can compete, then it's time to reconsider things. We should let it play out right now and think about what cards could be banned to make the deck the appropriate power level. Phoenix is a popular deck and it’s easy to adjust, rather than nuke, the deck. Ultimately, I liked how they handled this banned and restricted announcement. They did an excellent job pulling the trigger in Modern but keeping Pioneer untouched. I got excited about a Constructed format for the first time in a while when I watched Pioneer at the Pro Tour. To me, that is a big enough sign to let things be for a bit.

While the Pro Tour was fun to watch, we also got a peek at some upcoming cards. First, we saw Nathan Steuer's world championship card, which you can see in his X post here: Duelist of the Mind is a sweet, fun design that seems like it could see a lot of play. We see a new game mechanic called crime, which means casting a spell or activating an ability that targets an opponent or their stuff. Duelist of the Mind seems nice as a powerful threat in eternal formats, especially Legacy combined with Brainstorm, though it will suffer from the existence of Lightning Bolt. There's been speculation about adding this to Phoenix in Pioneer. While that seems on the surface like a good home, committing a crime isn't always going to be easy to use as a functional discard outlet for Arclight Phoenix. Ledger Shredder will lead to smoother games since it functions with Phoenix better. Duelist of the Mind will hit harder on Phoenix turns when you string it together with cards like Consider and Treasure Cruise. Overall, that damage is more negligible. A big strike against Duelist of the Mind out of Phoenix concerns the post-board games where the opponent brings in cards like Leyline of the Void and Rest In Peace. Duelist will be less explosive without access to Treasure Cruise. Duelist also suffers from not having growing toughness, so it can never get out of range of a card like Lightning Helix or Fiery Impulse. We could add more threats to Phoenix, but we still need to be careful about our spell rations for bringing back Phoenix. Phoenix got better when Sleight of Hand was added to the Pioneer format, which made the deck more consistent. Picklock Prankster didn't hurt either. Regardless, Duelist of the Mind is a fantastic addition to Standard and will play nicely with Raffine. The synergy is amazing, and Duelist of the Mind is similar to what I want from a solid two-drop in Standard. It's not too snowbally, is resilient to two-damage removal like Shock or Play with Fire, and has a powerful enough ability to close games. It won't close the game if unchecked in two turns and won't spiral into an out-of-control advantage for the player, but if left alone it creates a threat that must be dealt with. I love the design and can't wait to give it a try. While there were a bunch of Modern Horizons 3 reveals, I'm going to focus on the most flashy—Emrakul, the World Anew. Emrakul is a madness Eldrazi that requires colorless pips to cast off of madness, but it can be cast for 12 mana of any variety if cast fairly. Of course, no one wants to do anything with this but cast it for its madness cost. This is one of the most unique cards I've seen in a long time, and it has a lot of new concepts. For instance, "protection from spells and from permanents that were cast this turn" means you can't get rid of it by using spell-based removal or cards like Brutal Cathar. However, you could use a card like Seal of Doom to kill it, as you can cast it past the turn and kill it on the opponent's turn. This is an interesting line of text. If Emrakul does see play, maybe we'll see some clever ways to work around this ability. Cheating it into play is the ultimate goal. We will see cards like Eldrazi Temple come back from old Eldrazi decks to work around that steep six colorless mana cost. You don't want too much of any one-color card because it's difficult to play Eldrazi Temple in a typical two-color deck. Instead, you need light splashes and cards that aren't too color-intensive. Regardless, pain lands are your best friend in building these mana bases, which means you want light splashes that aren't super color-intensive. If you want red as a base color, Battlefield Forge and Ramunap Ruins are your new Mountain. When looking at what shell to start with, Underworld Cookbook is the most obvious card that can easily madness out Emrakul, and it saw a lot of play at one point in Modern. Underworld Cookbook and Asmoranomardicadaistinaculdacar have seen play in and out of Modern since the release of MH2, mostly in tier-two decks. We may be in a decent spot to put these cards and supporting ones in a deck with Emrakul. If a deck like this were to exist, we would see a lot of creature decks cease to exist. Emrakul punishes creature decks far more than any kind of combo or control deck, so it puts the tension on creature decks to close quickly. If not, Emrakul will make short work of them. Asmo and Cookbook make that difficult since this combo attacks creature decks cleanly and efficiently and suffers in other matchups. While almost every Modern deck is winning with creatures, they're not really winning by attacking consistently over several turns. It’s usually one or two attack phases. Violent Outburst was probably the most broken card remaining in the format before its ban. Without a fundamental change to how cascade works, a deck like this will always exist unless you ban all of the no-cost suspend cards that can create giant boards. I doubt that's happening, so this is where the format is currently. I'm not sure Emrakul can fight its way through the Footfalls, Living End, Amulet Titan metagame. I suspect people will test it for a bit, and it will end up in Commander decks. Emrakul looks powerful, but Modern seems to be too streamlined and fast, as a deck would need to consistently put together great starts that can compete with the top tiers. Ultimately, Emrakul likely can't be your main game plan and is more likely a supplemental plan in a deck that doesn't exist yet. Maybe we can go back to playing Thought-Knot Seers or maybe there is more unseen support for the archetype in Modern Horizons 3. I have seen a lot of hype around Emrakul, and while it looks powerful and cool, I'm skeptical because it requires too many hoops and will be too slow in many games. Six mana is a lot in Modern unless you're winning the game on the spot with a lot of redundancy like Amulet Titan can accomplish. Emrakul can come into play, but you still lose on the opponent's combo against some decks, and other decks will be too fast. You can play Emrakul at instant speed with madness. That means once you get to the six mana threshold, you have counterplay to a deck like Living End or in some spots against Titan, but that's a lot to ask to set up that board state while having access to your discard outlet, your mana, and your Emrakul. There are a few more exciting cards from MH3. While I don't know how much of them we'll be seeing soon since the set doesn't release until June, I'll likely take a better look at those in the future. Until then, I'm looking forward to trying out both of these cards previewed at the Pro Tour.

This past weekend was the first Pro Tour in a long time. The large gap made this one extra exciting, at least from where I was sitting. We saw the world champion Jean-Emmanuel Depraz draft a tough seat, start 0-2, and finish in the Top 8. Former world champion Seth Manfield won the Pro Tour against current Player of the Year Simon Nielsen on an incredible run with his fourth Top 8 finish in a row. If the star-studded cast of finalists wasn't enough, Seth and teammate Sam Pardee both made Top 8 with a new Pioneer archetype, BR Vampires featuring Sorin, Imperious Bloodlord cheating into play the exciting new mythic rare Vein Ripper. This is the Pro Tour-winning deck, and while there were a couple of different choices with Seth's deck, all the decks were functionally the same with some small deviation. The deck looks like a mess at first glance, and it might even be one. This was a testing team trying to iterate on a new archetype that was completely unknown or, at the very least, not taken seriously by other Pro Tour competitors. I can imagine it wasn't the only deck this team worked on. Having been part of that testing team for many years, I know how big of a time crunch you're under with multiple formats and a new archetype to work on while ironing out and getting reps with stock decks like Phoenix. I had to cancel my trip to Chicago because of extenuating circumstances, but I watched every minute of the Pro Tour. There were things I loved about this deck and things I didn't like so much. For one, Smuggler's Copter looked mediocre, especially in Seth's version of the deck with fewer Dusk Legion Zealots sitting around to crew it. Every creature wanted to spend the turn attacking, not crewing. While Smuggler's Copter is fine in games where you curve into creatures and put more of them on the battlefield, the creature count seemed too low in this version to make it work. This Vampire deck looks like a typical Rakdos Midrange deck, except you can draw into a combo that can quickly kill and puts a ton of pressure on the opponent. I love that aspect of the deck. I've not been shy in voicing my disdain for Rakdos Midrange ever since I played Explorer at Worlds a couple of years ago. It contained a smaller card pool, was the same as the Rakdos deck, but it was unplayable. J-E-D, my pick for the best player and current world champion, played Rakdos and went 0-6 with the deck. Rakdos is good at picking apart certain decks and can be tuned to beat a lot of stuff, but it can't beat everything. If you try, you'll be pulled in too many directions and suffer. This Vampires deck has its own proactive game plan that is powerful and resilient. Will it stand the test of time? I usually have a good opinion about this, but I could see it going either way. With the deck being new I don't know its entire Pioneer matchup chart, but from the looks of the games, it didn't seem particularly good against Lotus Field and was close with Phoenix. Now that the element of surprise is gone, I suspect those decks will react in kind and make it even tougher. However, we haven't had the Magic community hive mind working on this archetype yet, and I'm sure there's tons of work to be done. Red may not even be the best splash. We could see white added with its many Vampire cards that may make the deck attack from a completely different angle. This combination of Sorin into Vein Ripper is a nice game plan that will likely be around for a bit until we start seeing the game plan become weaker than the metagame. You can't just add a couple of clean answers to a Vein Ripper into your deck and think you're going to fair well against this archetype. This is a Thoughtseize and Duress deck, so you can't simply plan to answer their threat and go on with your life. You need a proactive game plan that punishes when they mulligan for a fast start, as they won't have all the pieces all the time. We'll see tons of iterations of this Vein Ripper deck, and we'll see the usual suspects trying to react. If I were going to play a Pioneer event tomorrow, I'd likely register Izzet Phoenix and try to find a nice plan for this Rakdos deck since the post-board Leyline seemed like the biggest issue. Vein Ripper is a pain for Phoenix, but if you can get your game plan going, it should be easy enough to rip through your deck, get a Phoenix in play, and Lighting Axe the Vein Ripper. Lastly, I'd like to talk about the deck that went under the radar and is registered by a long-time friend of mine, Ben Stark. Ben has a reputation as being a great Limited player, but his approach to Constructed is often overlooked. People meme about not "netdecking," but Ben takes that philosophy to another level. He's always looking for a new archetype and exploring a new idea. Here's Ben's Boros Burn deck that we'd be talking more about if BR Vampires didn't win the Pro Tour. Ben saw that Lightning Helix is a strong Magic card and brought an old favorite archetype of many, Burn, to the Pro Tour. He may not think so, but he seems to have fallen in love with Burn over the past few years. It fits his strengths as a Limited player since games with Burn can get scrappy. They often involve setting yourself up to maximize damage and draw key cards according to your game plan. Combat plays a bigger role in a deck like this than it does in other archetypes, which Ben is world class at figuring out. What I love about this archetype for this Pro Tour was that the top decks in the room, Lotus Field and Phoenix, had to have been strong matchups. Phoenix cannot gain life, so you can race them with creatures and Lightning Helix to swing races. This deck should often win on the play against Lotus and will almost always beat Lotus when it stumbles without a turn-four win. I prefer this approach to a deck like Simon Nielsen's runner-up Boros Heroic. Heroic is the type of deck you need to play perfectly at all times. There is no room for error because timing a spell wrong is devastating. My advice is to not play that deck if you're not Simon. In his own words, it has all bad matchups, and he's playing too well and running too hot to lose. Ben's deck will give you wiggle room. It's easy to play and attacks the metagame from a nice angle. Ben went 7-3 with the deck and, much like the BR Vampires deck, there may be some tuning to do here. However, a deck like this is easier to build than an optimized BR Vampire deck. I won't be surprised to see this deck do well in the coming weeks on MTGO. While there were obvious cuts to the production quality of this Pro Tour, the players are what makes Magic—Simon's friendly banter, J-E-D's calm composure, and Seth's nervousness, though he still plays as close to perfect Magic as you can expect out of a human being. As long as we can, I'll watch and cheer for my friends and peers. For now, Pioneer got a whole lot more exciting, and I'm anxious to see where it goes from here.

Commander as a format is all about the efficiency of your removal. Unlike a one-on-one format like Modern, you've gotta get the most out of each card your play. Thoughtseize, for instance, is an extremely powerful card in just about every 60-card format, but completely unplayable in EDH. This is because in Commander, spending a card to remove a card is a net negative for you. To go truly even, you need to spend a card to remove three cards, since that's how many opponents you're up against. Thus, the board wipe, aka sweeper, remains a necessity in even the most casual of decks. Usually the downside of casting a card like Wrath of God or Farewell is that you have to take your turn off to reset the battlefield, theoretically putting you last in the order to begin rebuilding your boardstate. That's why the best sweepers are the most efficient, they either cost less mana, give you some benefit, or deal with multiple types of card. Now, we all know about the cards Blasphemous Act, Damn, and my personal favorite: Vanquish the Horde, but I'm here to tell you about some of the less-popular wipes and why you should consider including them. Doomskar Probably the most popular of the sweepers here, Doomskar is still an often-overlooked piece from 2021's Kaldheim. Though foretell is a rarely-revived mechanic, meaning you're not likely to be bluffing very hard with the face-down part of it, paying two mana to let it sit in a zone that's practically uninteractable is nice. The fact it turns into a three-mana creature sweeper later on grants you the chance to follow it up with some other spells on that turn. Hour of Revelation In the same vein as Vanquish the Horde, Hour of Revelation gets cheaper when you want it, and is only really six mana before the board has hit critical mass. Instant-include in mono-white decks, but a little harder to justify the more colors you add due to the irreducible triple white in its cost. Sunfall A five mana exile-all-creatures spell is not terribly overcosted, and it has the upside of making a big-ol' token that becomes a creature for two mana whenever you want. A favorite of control players in Standard, I would expect the cash price on this card to come down when it rotates out of the format. Out of Time Enchantment removal isn't quite as common as it probably should be in Commander, which means that the likelihood of this getting dealt with is pretty low. Even if it does get removed, you're forcing an opponent to spend resources taking it out for what only cost you three mana. Small bonus: This card doesn't allow commanders to go back to the command zone when they're phased out, meaning you don't have to worry about someone recasting it on their turn. Last One Standing The "wider" the board is, the better Last One Standing is. Chances are, if there's 20 1/1 Goblins on the board, and 10 other big scary creatures, you'll only be leaving a puny gobbo on the battlefield. Since you're already running at least black and red, you probably have efficient single-target removal to handle that last creature if it does happen to be worth taking out. Terisiare's Devastation I'm not gonna act like this one should see more general-use play, but looking at EDHRec makes me think this card is just not being used outside of the precon it was included in. Any black+ artifact deck should at least be considering this card. Gets around indestructible, ramps you with artifact tokens, and you can choose whether to clear the board or keep the heavy-hitters around. Oversimplify Oversimplify might be five whole mana with a drawback, but it does exile, and it's in two colors that don't have many options for sweepers anyways. If your local Simic player ever complains about not being able to deal with a big boardstate, show them this card. Depopulate/Shatter the Sky/No Witnesses These are all the same card: Day of Judgement with a semi-symmetrical card draw effect. If you're going for a truly budget deck these are good options that aren't overcosted. Terror Tide Terror Tide is, frankly, a hilarious card in graveyard decks. It beats indestructible due to giving -X/-X instead of destroying, and your wallet will thank you for running it over Damnation. Planar Collapse I know what you're thinking, "who wants to wait a turn to wipe the board?" That's fair in some situations, but you gotta consider just how efficient a two-mana board wipe is. Waiting a turn sucks, sure, but there have to be more than 2,000 decks that want this. Nobody's gonna play a creature until this thing resolves anyways, and it means you get first dibs on casting creatures after it fires. P.S. You could probably find a fun janky way to abuse it such as putting Shielded by Faith on a Sun Titan. Anzrag's Rampage One-sided artifact sweeper that cheats out a creature for a turn is pretty great for five mana. It's too new to actually call it underrated, but I recommend it all the same. Fade From History This card should be in every single mono-green and gruul deck that doesn't consist of over 50% enchantments. Four mana to clear the mana rocks, the artifact creatures, and value pieces like Rhystic Study or Smothering Tithe is great. Everything Comes to Dust This card is a slam-dunk include in any white+ deck that wants to go wide, especially if it's focused around a particular creature type. Magic has so many creature types that you rarely have to worry about this not hitting your opponent's biggest threats, and in the very worst case scenario, it's gonna be a convokable sweeper that exiles artifacts and enchantments. One More Thing... This list isn't gospel, you shouldn't run all of these cards in all of your decks, but you should be looking at them to take up those slots in the 99 that aren't just Wrath of God, Damnation, or any other yawn-inducing card that is generically good, but might not actually be the right fit for you.