Last weekend we watched the first Modern Pro Tour in what felt like a decade. We started by watching Nathan Steuer, the World and Pro Tour champion, navigate a tough seat in the LOTR booster draft, and we ended with watching a first-time Pro Tour player, Jake Beardsley, win the entire event. Nathan drafted well, but packs broke poorly for him. His pack two was dry, and he ended up getting three Reprieve, which is too many, but there was no escape unless he passed one for a worse card the first time he saw it. This is my first time in years caring about what Modern has looked like. The format looked rejuvenated and healthy. While there’s a lot of nonsense going on in the format, there are a lot of checks and balances in the form of free cards. Endurance, Grief, Fury, Subtlety, Solitude, and the cycle of Forces have all changed the format for the better. These cards make it difficult to play unfair strategies that dominated Modern in the past, and in a world of decks that lean to the fair side, it makes sense we saw such a spectacular showing from Tron. Tron wasn’t on my radar leading up to this event, even though I was a part of the Handshake Discord. The team worked on and decided to play the deck during in-house testing, which is refreshing to see that there’s still weight to getting together in person and discussing things. Discord testing is an incredible tool, especially for organizing thoughts, but there’s nothing like ironing out ideas in an in-person meeting and discussing the positives and negatives of each individual choice. Christian Calcano, one of the most well-liked people in the Magic community for his relentlessly positive energy, made it all the way to the finals in an inspiring moment for many, myself included. Christian went from basically out of the game, decided to pursue Magic again, and within a few months he’s within a game of winning the Pro Tour and qualified for Worlds. Calcano lost to first-time PT player Jake Beardsley in the finals, which is yet another inspiring story. Many of us, myself included, did poorly at our first Pro Tour, so it was heartwarming to see someone have immediate success, especially someone who appears incredibly passionate about the game. I was excited to watch one of my closest friends, Alexander Hayne, play a win and in. Hayne did virtually zero testing for the event. This is a classic Hayne maneuver that has made his stellar results far worse than they would be. He’s one of the most talented, if not the most talented, Magic players on the planet, and his motivation is all that holds him back. Watching him play a win and in for T8 was exciting, and it had the worst possible outcome as a spectator and friend with an unintentional draw after seven extra turns. One of the biggest downsides of paper Magic is that this outcome occurs far more often. This, along with some concessions in big moments, haunts the paper Pro Tour, while online we get bugs and crashes in its place. There’s no perfect system yet. We saw arguably the greatest player of all time, Kai Budde, step back onto the Sunday stage after a long hiatus from the game. Kai was always an idol of mine. I’ve gotten to know him in the past few years, and on top of his incredible, analytical brain for the game, he’s just a great person to boot. Kai’s story inspires me. He’s able to put the game down to live his life and do what he needs to, but then come back, put in some effort, and get things done. We all know I deserve all the credit though, right? Two players were in PT LOTR Top 8 who also were in the previous PT Top 8. Simon Nielsen and Javier Dominguez both having back-to-back T8s is incredible. While we will see more of this now because the Pro Tour size is smaller, until it ticks back up, it’s still an incredible accomplishment to have back-to-back PT T8s, as that rarely occurred in the past. Simon is another example of a person who is almost always in positive spirits and lifts up the people around him. He’s clearly one hell of a Magic player, and obviously his own talent and hard work are huge factors in his success, but Team Handshake has also played a part. Javier, also of Team Handshake, is arguably the best player of the current generation. He's a World Champion, Mythic Championship Champion, and he has tons of top finishes under his belt. Javier is the perfect example of what tilts me about the Hall of Fame not existing anymore. He’d be a slam dunk to be inducted. He's also one of the nicest people on the planet, and someone pointed out that this Top 8 might have been the nicest of all time. I’d be hard-pressed to disagree. Of the six who I know personally, they’d probably all be in my Top 10 nicest people on the Pro Tour. Maybe nice people don’t finish last? Personally, I was trying to take a little break from Magic. I’ve been focusing on my family and experiences with them this summer. As I finish writing this, I’m about to get ready for the Pink concert with my wife. However, despite having been comfortable playing whenever I can, the Pro Tour is so special that watching it from home for the first time in nearly a decade gives me the fire to pursue it. Maybe that fire will fade in a few days, weeks, or months, but right now I want to try and work my way back. I mostly blame Hayne for this, as he’s a close personal friend and I’d love to team back up with him. Unfortunately for me, I’m not a big fan of Pioneer and Modern and they're a big part of competitive MTG these days. I used to bite the bullet and play formats I didn’t enjoy much to get to play the others, but it was easier to travel and reliably reach my goals with tons of opportunities. Now, opportunities are few and far between, so even though the fire’s burning right now, there’s no place for me to grind toward a goal. I’ll always be a fan of the Pro Tour, regardless if I’m competing in them or not. I’ve often thought, more so recently, about channeling my desire to grind into more content, so maybe I’ll move more in that direction. For now, I’m going to finish the summer with my family and get back on the grind when the kids are back at school. We got a few peeks at cards from Wilds of Eldraine at the PT, and I’ll be looking over what’s available next week. See you then!

I mentioned last week that I’m taking a break from playing a lot of MTG. I’m still helping friends test for PT Barcelona, but I was reaching the point of burnout, and I’m enjoying this step back for the summer. One beautiful thing about this current system is that I don’t feel pressured to go out every weekend and play a tournament. If I want to play the next RC, I have a ton of time to qualify for it. I’m not a huge fan of how this RC system works for me. Many of my local friends have aged out. Having to requalify for the RC repeatedly would be fine if the RC felt special, but in my case, it's just another Grand Prix-type event. However, there are some good things going on with the system for a lot of players, which is awesome. For me though, it still feels like a little is missing. I came up with a list of five things I want to see moving forward. Keep in mind these are changes that would make my own engagement with Magic better and that wouldn't necessarily be best for everyone. 1. Limited Regional Championships Unfortunately, I assume at least day one would need to be Sealed Deck, and I know that means something like nine rounds presumably with the same deck. Years ago, they mitigated variance by giving us multiple sealed decks in events like Team Sealed. That would be ideal, but nonetheless, there are a lot of Limited players who want to play high-level Limited. Outside of the PT, which there are very few opportunities to qualify for, there have been no Limited RCs and no mention of any in the future. I enjoy Magic the most when I’m thinking on the fly and making decisions with incomplete information, like in the Booster draft or Limited. I don’t know many people who absolutely hate Limited, and if it was a Limited RC they’d try to not go if they otherwise would. I do know plenty of people who have these feelings about Modern or Pioneer. Moving forward, I’d like to see one Limited RC a year. 2. Bring Back the Hall of Fame The HoF may seem like a very small thing in the grand scheme of things but to a subset of players who have been playing competitive Magic for a decade or more, it’s a potential achievement or aspiration that costs very little. It stuck with me when years ago Sam Black said it was a motivator for him. It was one of the major ways that Pro Players could push themselves, and a carrot at the end of the stick that was a minimal cost to WotC. While the discussion ended up toxic at times, I’d like to find a way to remove that aspect. Since there’s no real cost to WotC these days with size given they’re not paying flights or appearance fees, there should just be a threshold at which you’re inducted. An agreeable number of top finishes or contributions or whatever. Obviously, this would be hard to determine, but the bias in the voting should be removed as much as possible. Either way, a return to the HoF would keep me engaged and would mean a lot to players as a way to discuss elite competitive Magic players, what they’ve accomplished, and how they’ve helped the community. The HoF would give me something as a long-time Pro player and something to aspire to that would keep me engaged. Right now, other than “win the tournament” there aren't many goals to use for aspiration. 3. A Return to Team Events I will be surprised if we don’t see team events return at some point because they’re popular and exciting. It’s been so long since we’ve had them between the MPL years and the Pandemic, that it’s time to bring them back. I would go far out of my way to participate in a team event with friends and I know others would too. Even the team series was incredible. I’ve talked to some of the younger players on the Pro Tour who didn’t get an opportunity to participate in the Team Series, and they thought it sounded amazing and wished they were playing the Pro Tour when it existed. Regardless, my favorite thing about Magic is playing with my friends. With Commander being so popular, I think I’m not alone in that. People just want to play a game they like with people they know and like. Team events were an awesome way to do that. 4. An Online Pro Level Tournament Series with Continuity But Siggy, we have the Arena Championships and the MOCS! These unfortunately are not something that motivates many people. They’re cool tournaments, but they miss a huge element that the fan base of competitive Magic has been requesting for years—a way to string together invites. Continuity. When I was a kid playing PTQs, my biggest goal was to “get on the train.” Playing in every event was something I aspired to, and while you can play some of these events, there’s no way to go from one to the next. In fact, as far as the Arena Championship goes, I’d rather see them invite back the top finishers that didn’t get the Worlds invites than some people who missed in the Arena Qualifiers with five wins. I’m a family man now, and traveling is very costly. Not just financially, but the stress it puts on myself, my kids, and my family. It would be awesome if I could fill my competitive void online in a system that is reliable. I’ve played the MOCS, and while it was fun, it didn’t mean much to me at the time. Just another tournament. It didn't feel much different than being invited to Twitch Rivals or something because it wasn’t leading me anywhere. You can get to Worlds that way, but Worlds at a bigger size also seems like another PT with a different title attached. While I have no gripes with bigger Worlds, it isn’t a prize I’d covet as much as when it was 24-person Worlds. I’d love to see a variation in competitive circuits that could fill the void for people who can’t travel or live too far from the Pro Tours they want to attend. 5. More Opportunities to Qualify Right now, one of the things I miss most was being able to play for my desired goal on any given weekend. I want to play in the Pro Tour? I find a GP or PTQ and go get it. Right now, it's one step removed. I want to play on the Pro Tour? Find a local RCQ, win one, and then I can play the PTQ at a (much) later date. That’s not as motivating as being able to accomplish my goal on any given weekend. We are seeing more of these Limited “GPs” being announced and hopefully they continue to have these regularly. I’d even attach some to RCs if possible. Something for RC players to do on day two of the RC if they didn’t make it but still are aiming to play the Pro Tour instead of just starting right back at the beginning. All in all, any of these changes would probably keep me motivated to keep grinding away. I have no doubt that we’ll see some things change as things move forward and am hopeful that at least one or two of these issues is addressed in the next year or two. For now, I’m going to take next week off and go camping with my family. It will be a good time to reflect on everything going on and light up the fire again.

This past week has been slow for me regarding Magic. I haven't enjoyed playing as much since I don't have any upcoming events. I went hard for the past few events and was reaching the point of burnout, so I’ve taken my foot off the gas and have enjoyed playing other games and spending time with my family this summer. However, a new Pioneer deck has popped up, and I wanted to take it for a spin to maintain my firm grasp on the Pioneer format. At RC Dallas, cftsoc made waves with a new deck they designed focusing on the two-card combo of Archfiend of Dross and Metamorphic Alteration. This deck has been invited on since their Grixis version, and I was drawn most to the Dimir-based version. I’ve since seen the deck pop up in various challenge Top 8s, which solidifies that, at least in part, it's the real deal and can compete. I was a huge Inverter fan, and this deck is an almost identical shell with a different combo. Here’s the list I was running: 3 Archfiend of the Dross 4 Jace, Vryn's Prodigy 3 Chrome Host Seedshark 4 Consider 4 Thoughtseize 3 Metamorphic Alteration 1 Duress 1 Negate 1 Drown in the Loch 1 Heartless Act 4 Fatal Push 4 Dig Through Time 4 Watery Grave 2 Hive of the Eye Tyrant 1 Hall of Storm Giants 2 Swamp 2 Island 4 Clearwater Pathway 1 Takenuma, Abandoned Mire 1 Otawara, Soaring City 2 Fabled Passage 4 Darkslick Shores 1 Power Word Kill 1 Shipwreck Marsh 1 Sheoldred's Edict 1 Make Disappear 1 Duress 2 Languish 1 The Scarab God 2 Ray of Enfeeblement 1 Necromentia 1 Pithing Needle 2 Disdainful Stroke 2 Reckoner Bankbuster 2 Mystical Dispute 1 Unlicensed Hearse It’s impossible to get a great grasp of a Pioneer deck without playing hundreds of matches because of the format's depth. For that reason, I’ll have to make some generalizations. I’ll start with what impressed me about the deck. I liked that the fair plan was solid. The Chrome Host Seedhsarks were excellent in most of the fair match-ups. They weren't easy to kill, blocked well against decks like Mono W Aggro, and provided something the deck needs in midrange match-ups, which is a way to generate value. Thoughtseize is potentially the best, or at least, the most important card in Pioneer at the moment. It solves tons of problems, allows you to interact with any deck in the format in a meaningful way, and goes nicely with Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy. Jace is one of the key ways this deck can generate value and additional cards. Back in Inverter days, Jace, Wielder of Mysteries did a lot of the heavy lifting in this regard. Because we currently aren’t playing a card like that, I liked the full four copies of Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy. The mana in this deck is vastly improved from Inverter days when I was playing Choked Estuary and Fetid Pools. The mana is smoother now, which used to be one of the weakest points of Inverter. That’s a big plus. One of the last things I loved about this deck was that Archfiend was a better fair card than Inverter. It’s essentially a three-turn clock on its own because you can usually get a single trigger out of it along the way, and it also has more fair game support with Chrome Host Seedshark. There are a few things that didn't impress me. I didn't like the combo itself. It wasn't as clean as Inverter’s combo. You could set it up, but there were a ton of ways to meaningfully interact with the combo. Almost every game I won was on the back of how good my interaction was between Push and Thoughtseize, and it was less about what I was actually doing to win. This made Metamorphic Alteration a terrible draw in most games. I wouldn’t say Thassa’s Oracle was an all-star in the old Inverter deck, but it did something whereas Alteration is basically a blank. Even when you draw the Archfiend with it, it requires dancing around some stuff. For this reason, it's crucial for Duress and Thoughtseize to provide information on the opponent’s hand. I didn't like how poor the options were for a transitional package against decks like control. You don’t want to try to combo against an all-instant speed, interactive, mostly creatureless deck. The sideboard doesn't have good options in those match-ups. The current plan is to use Jace, Duress effects and Counter to hopefully win on the back of Seedhark, but it’s too anemic. I’ve seen Hullbreaker Horror in this before, but the deck runs so few lands that it seems too expensive. The same would be true for Shark Typhoon. You’ll be missing land drops and that’s not the battle you want to fight in that case. I considered trying Liliana of the Veil to supplement the Duress and Thoughtseize package, especially because this deck can function on fewer resources. I didn't like that the engines were very poor. I ran out of gas in many games, which is unacceptable in today's era of Magic. You need to spend your mana productively or else you will get buried. You can get bailed out from this issue at times by putting the combo together to end the game immediately, but they’ll be able to interact in some way if you fall too far behind. I won a lot more than lost with this deck, but that was because of factors outside of the combo. The combo came together some, but mostly I won with Sharks and Archfiends, which is a good thing. However, it makes me question if the combo is even worth playing or if Chrome Host Seedshark is better than it looks. It’s always impressed me in every deck, so maybe it's worth experimenting more. Overall, the deck is solid, but I’d label it tier two. I wouldn't play it if I was going to an event this weekend. The deck needs a lot of tuning. While it’s likely good against linear decks that lack interaction, it feels like it will be weak against people trying to interact because its engines are much worse than the opposition. It’s harder to combo because it’s easy for them to break up by killing your Archfiend in response to a Metamorphosis or holding up a Boseiju. I was impressed enough with the UB shell that I may experiment more by tuning it, working on the sideboard plans, or removing the combo for a better fair plan. Regardless, if you’re like me, you may not have played with the deck and wondered about its strength. While it’s not top tier, it will likely be around for a bit, and I think the deck can shine in certain metagames. If you want to keep jamming the deck you’ve been playing, you can mostly ignore this deck's existence. If you’re looking for a project to work on in Pioneer and something new to learn and explore, this deck has some potential but likely involves a good transformational package that can remove the combo and sideboard into something more grindy and efficient.

While I’ve been on a bit of a Magic hiatus this summer, I’ve continued my journey exploring LOTR Limited and cracking MTGO packs in search of The One Ring. I haven’t yet had the experience of playing with it that I crave, but I’ve gotten some more reps in and have an idea of how I like to approach the Limited format. This set is very nuts and bolts. You want to find the open late and reap the rewards of doing so. However, some color combinations are better than others, and I’d like to take a minute to go through how I would rank them, which ones I'd like to play, and which ones I hope to avoid. Let’s start from the bottom. 10. Gruul While I’m sure Gruul can be serviceable, it’s hard to find a draw to the color combination. Green is well-known to be the worst color in the format. Even though red is hardly the second worst color, it’s challenging to get drawn into this color combination without seeing early gold cards after taking red cards. It’s rare I take a green card early, as I don’t think many are strong enough to take pick-one-pack-one. I generally try to avoid green early in drafts and settle into it later. Gruul lacks synergy payoffs since it wants big creatures, removal, and/or combat tricks. Without some payoff for going into the color combination, you want your cards to help each other in this format, and Gruul’s best synergy is big creature and a fight spell, which is hardly a good reason to move into Gruul. Despite not actively trying to avoid Gruul, I just never seem to end up here. 9. Azorious Weirdly, this color combination has two solid gold uncommons that are decent draws to the combination and also has one of the best rares in the set in Faramir, Prince of Ithilien. There aren't too many synergies at common to go with the “draw an extra card this turn” theme. The common payoffs are lackluster in Knights of Dol Amroth and Stalwarts of Osgiliath. This is a big issue and perhaps the biggest with the color pair. We don’t want to do the thing it wants us to with the commons it provides. Another big flaw with this archetype is that the two-drops in both colors are all bad. Blue has some good synergistic two-drops in Nimrodel Watcher and Pelargir Survivor, and neither play well in this deck. White has a lot of two-drops, none of which that are supported well by what Azorious is doing. They tend to play as vanilla creatures. Azorious has a difficult time being tempted by the Ring, which is what the color's payoffs want you to do. Getting tempted twice would make it easy to trigger the draw-and-extra-card clause, but the payoffs for doing so and the easiest way in the format to get there can be a challenge that’s not worth pursuing. In general, I’m not ending up in Azorious often. 8. Simic Simic is a color combination that makes sense landing in. You start with a good blue card or two, then get passed a Simic gold card like Galadriel, Elrond, or Arwen, and then you roll with it. You look for your scry payoffs and go from there. Simic's issue is it’s easy to disrupt what it's doing. A cheap removal spell or two early in the game prevents you from getting the ball rolling, and your synergies fall apart while you get beat up by more efficient creatures and spells. The combination is tied to its gold cards and one of the gold uncommons, Legolas, Counter of Kills, doesn’t fit into the combination. It’s a playable card, but it’s about, if not below, at rate with a common four-drop. The color combination always lacks removal, and this format is no different. If you don’t have a roaring start, Simic doesn’t have the staying power to compete. This is an archetype I try to avoid unless I have a lot of gold payoffs early, in which case I draft it reluctantly. 7. Selesnya This color combination looked cool and promising, but it often hasn’t come together for me. I’m not swearing it off, though. Hobbit’s Sting is an awesome late pick-up for a deck focused on putting creatures and food in play, and the creatures aren’t inefficient. An issue with this deck is the cards you want for it are unique to it and don’t play well elsewhere. For instance, Hobbit’s Sting is not a particularly great card, but it's amazing in this archetype. Eastfarthing Farmer is a late pick-up card that can play well in this archetype, but you don’t want it elsewhere. Since the food synergies only spill over into Golgari, you end up not taking many of the cards you want for this deck early enough. Since a lot of the cards you want are uncommons, the packs dry up quickly, and your deck is not completely focused. That said, I’m not unhappy to end up in GW if it comes. There’s an available playable deck in this archetype, but it's on the bottom of my list. 6. Golgari This may seem low on the list, but now we’re starting to get into the archetype I actually like. Golgari is solid and heavily fixed by how good black is as a color. The biggest draw to Golgari is that it has great gold uncommons. Both Rise of the Witch-King and Old Man Willow are strong cards and big draws to the color combination. You take a few great black cards early, pick three or four, and now you have a reason to be in Golgari. Golgari is one of the better color combos to splash in because it plays like a midrange deck and green’s fixing with Many Partings and Wose Pathfinder play nicely in the combination. There’s some minor food synergy going on, but mostly this is just a “play the good cards" archetype. It’s not my favorite color combination, but it's solid and I'm not unhappy to end up here. 5. Orzhov Orzhov is good at a few things, including putting a lot of creatures into play with various token makers and being tempted by the Ring due to the black cards. This deck can go wide and black, which gives it the best removal in the format. Between cards that give you value when they die and various token makers, it’s easy to make cards like Nasty End and Lash of the Balrog. White and black both have a good curve of creatures, and black’s removal makes this deck play out nicely. The easiest way to end up here, much like most color combinations, is by picking up a gold card in the middle of pack one. It’s easy to end up in black early and harder to branch into white, but the gold cards are strong enough to want to move in that direction. I’m fairly happy to end up in Orzhov. 4. Izzet Now we’re getting into the territory of combos where I actively want to be. Izzet is the worst of the Grixis color combinations because it doesn’t play black cards, but it has strong gold uncommons. Gandalf’s Sanction is strong and can be an archetype in and of itself if you get a couple of them and enough amass cards acting as creatures. Bilbo, Retired Burglar has been nothing short of one of the best uncommons in the set. It’s basically an uncommon Fable of the Mirror Breaker. It immediately tempts itself by the Ring, and you will be tempted again if it dies. If not, you’re making free mana every turn. The color combination has removal, a good curve, and ways to provide raw card advantage. There’s not much to dislike about the archetype, but my biggest critique is that it doesn’t efficiently handle big creatures that have resolved. Also, people tend to take the good gold cards early and actively pursue this archetype, so there’s often someone fighting you for the archetype or taking cards like Gandalf’s Sanctions to splash in another deck. I love Izzet in this format and am happy when I end up here. 3. Boros It may be surprising, but this is my favorite non-Grixis color combination. Boros is powerful and generally has a human sub-theme. The gold cards in Boros are all incredibly strong, which is a big reason this archetype is top notch. Shadowfax, Lord of Horses is almost in broken-rare territory. It’s able to put so much power on the battlefield in a single turn, and I’m almost always putting an Eagles of the North into play with it. Theoden, King of Rohan is also one of the stronger gold uncommons. It plays into the archetype perfectly and pays you for drafting your deck full of low-curve-high-powered creatures like Westfold Rider. I like using Dunedain Blade and combat tricks to fight through big creatures. While Boros lacks true strong removal, it can make do with Fog on the Barrow-Downs for problematic big creatures, and its fast clock can handle everything else. One of the great things about Boros is that the two-drops are solid. You use tricks and equipment to push them through early, then usually win with an alpha strike later in the game or by grinding down your opponent with looting from the Ring. It's easy enough to get to stage two with dies triggers from Rohirrim Lancer and Took Reaper, which almost always end up trading off at some point. Aggro decks benefit the most from being tempted by the Ring. Aggro decks take the most advantage of the Ringbearer being unblockable by dealing damage in clogged board states. Aggressive decks can function off lower land counts than other decks making the looting the strongest here. Of course the last “room” of the Ring provides the ability to deal extra damage to close the game out entirely. Boros is the best aggro archetype in the format, no questions asked. While it's no secret drafting aggro isn’t my favorite, I do it when necessary, and if I pick up a Shadowfax, Theoden or Eowyn, Fearless Knight early, then I’m happy to go down this path. 2. Dimir Dimir has likely been my most successful archetype in the format. The Mouth of Sauron is an excellent uncommon. It's not at the same level as Shadowfax, but it’s strong and fits into what Dimir is trying to do. It can stabilize the game and provides card advantage with a little mill on top as a treat. Dimir wants to control the game with its removal and countermagic and use card advantage to bury and out-resource the opponent. The Mouth of Sauron plays well with that. The other Dimir uncommon, Ringsight, isn’t good and is rarely playable, so what makes Dimir so strong? The first is depth. Blue and black are both deep colors and consistently do the same thing, which is kill and counter creatures, draw cards, and win with anything. I’ve often used Surrounded by Orcs as my win condition by milling out the opponent and amassing a huge creature and beating down the opponents. The second reason is it’s easy to be tempted by the Ring. Between Birthday Escape and Uruk-Hai Berserker, it’s easy to get added value out of your cards. Dimir is a color combination I’m actively looking to get into, and I bias my picks somewhat to end up either here or in the best color combination. 1. Rakdos Rakdos has solid gold uncommons, but they aren’t in the same league as some of the better ones in the set. Ugluk of the White hand is fine. I play it, but it's not that much better than other four-drops, and Manuhur, Uruk-Hai Captain is an excellent two-drop, but it's not carrying games like other gold uncommons from the set. So what makes Rakdos so good? Removal! The best removal in the format is in black and red. This is a format about creatures, and Rakdos answers creatures efficiently and reliably while providing its own synergies with amass cards like Foray of Orcs and March from the Black Gate. Rakdos is consistent, deep, and flexible. You can play Rakdos as a control, aggro, or midrange deck. While many color combinations are being held together by the strength of their gold uncommons, because their commons are lacking, Rakdos and Dimir, are held together by their ability to answer opponents' strong creatures, break up synergies, and take advantage of the premiere mechanic of the format in being tempted by the Ring. This is my current power ranking of the archetypes of the format. While I think Rakdos is likely the best archetype, it's mostly held together by its depth and consistency. That does not mean you should actively avoid other archetypes and force Dimir and Rakdos. This is something we see more and more of in the 17lands era of Limited Magic. What people don’t realize is Limited is not Constructed. If you’re in the “worst colors” you’re not playing “the bad deck” like if you decide to play Elves in Pioneer. You don’t have control over what’s open. You can have the best deck in the room with any of these archetypes if you pick up the signals fast enough and move into the open archetype early enough. If everyone is drafting Grixis at your table, you should be thrilled to be the Selesnya drafter. Yes, there are some formats where some colors or color pairs are unplayable, and while green is pretty bad in this format, it's not quite there.

While some of you may have gone to the pre-release this past weekend, I got a quick look into LOTR Limited during the early-access event. I did a few drafts, and I enjoyed the format more than I thought I would. LOTR Limited hits the sweet spot between too complex and too simple nearly perfectly. Even though the format isn’t an all-time great based on the cards alone, it's solid, has a lot of cool characters you may recognize, and the mechanics are fun. While I’d consider Tempted by the Ring a flavor fail since it's all upside, it's actually a fun Limited mechanic. It focuses on combat entirely, which makes the Limited format exciting, and it centers around what we love most about Lord of the Rings, the characters and The One Ring. Being tempted the third time is weird and not much of a reward. I would have liked to see something more tangible by getting that deep in the “Dungeon,” but other than that I love the mechanic. In general, I like to have a cheap one-power creature as my Ring Bearer so it can continuously attack. You don’t flood much in this format because there’s a lot to spend mana on, and you get to loot every turn if you have a Ring Bearer and have been tempted twice by the Ring. The format is slower than I thought, and Food pads your life total to keep the game dragging, so the ability to loot every turn is massive. Removal has been premium. It’s important to have answers with Ring Bearers and other Legendary creatures running around everywhere. Being able to shut off their Ring Bearer is valuable. There’s not a huge shortage of removal, though players in early access were taking it too late. At least one of my decks was all in on having access to an early creature and those creatures surviving. Specifically this UG Scry deck: This deck was average, but it played out a little better than it looked. Nimrodel Watcher was far better both playing against it and with it than I thought it would be, as it’s easy to get a lot of scrys going to slowly deal damage to the opponent over the course of the game. This deck had few comeback mechanisms. If stopped early, it usually wouldn't get going later, as a lot of the deck's power focused on out-sizing and out-grinding the opponent in early turns. My actual first deck of the format was this BRu Deck featuring a splashed Gandalf the Grey. I liked this archetype because it gave me access to removal and the deck was able to grind into the late game. My biggest issue with this deck was few cards tempted me. Slower, grindier decks like this can take advantage of Tempted by the Ring, which is an incredible tool. The Nazguls drawn in multiples are amazing, and I wish I had more ways to take advantage of their ability to grow. Wizard’s Rockets is one of my favorite cards in the format already. While you don’t want to play it in every deck, I love how it enabled my splash while helping me cast Moria Marauder on two and was fodder to sacrifice to the Improvised Clubs. My last deck of the format was a UR Mill deck focused on Surrounded by Orcs. This archetype requires a lot to go right, and luckily it did for me in the event. Killing an Amass token can be a downside in theory, as they can make another, and you’d remove all that power and toughness from the battlefield if you saved your removal. However, with Surrounded by Orcs and Foray of Orcs in the format, it puts a tension point on whether you want to remove or trade with an early Amass token. This deck would have loved a Gandalf’s Sanction or two. A lot of people are likely going to draft around Gandalf’s Sanction early and make it a full plan rather than supplemental in their deck. It's possible to continue to loop Sanction with Treason of Isengard, but it’s still a card you’re likely going to want multiple copies of to commit to an all-in game plan. Surrounded by Orcs can also enable Gandalf’s Sanction, finding it for your Treason, and filling up the yard to make it hit harder. I’m interested in seeing how those UR Decks develop because I think this UR deck was mediocre, yet it played out better than I anticipated. Maybe it was the hand smoother? I’ll find out this week when I get my hands on the set on MTGO. I liked the Grixis Colors early on and am much less excited by green and white. Green and white have the worst removal in the format, but they have ways to interact. I am less excited about combat tricks because Ring Bearer being hard to block makes blocking happen less often. I have yet to draft any white cards, so I’ll reserve judgment until I do. Mostly, I haven’t been drawn in by any of the white commons yet, so I’ll see how that goes this week. Overall, the format isn’t as fast as I’d expect seeing, as it's focused on creatures. It’s deeper than I thought after reviewing the spoiler. Some color pairs will be deep enough to have multiple archetypes within them, and you can do sweet five-color stuff with an abundance of fixing, especially for Legendary spells. This is certainly no March of the Machines, one of my all-time favorite draft formats, but it is a fun set. It’s shelf life likely won’t be super long. I can see getting bored of this set after a couple of weeks, but for now, the mechanics are solid, the format is deep, and flavor is excellent. I’m looking forward to helping my friends test for the Pro Tour and looking forward to watching Lord of the Rings Limited at the Pro Tour. This won't be the last you hear from me about LOTR Limited though. I'm just getting warmed up.

I went to my first Regional Championship this weekend, and testing for it was a rollercoaster. I was in a few different discords amongst my large group of friends, and the vibe everywhere was “play what you want.” This is difficult for me to accept. It’s rarely happened over my career that something didn’t stand out as the best deck or the one I liked to play the most. Early in testing, I wanted to try Hulk Creativity again. We tried it before Pro Tour Philly and came to the conclusion that the Xenagos Wurm version was better. For some reason unbeknownst to me, the Gearhulk version took its place in the meta almost entirely. I can only assume the reason is that sideboards and players were prepared for the Big Score into Creativity package and the Hulk deck had a better fair game plan. Unfortunately in my testing, I could not beat a good player playing Rakdos. I tested a bunch against Zach Kiihne, and he completely rinsed me. He kept me low on resources, meaning it was impossible to hit land drops. Cards like Magma Opus were a liability to draw early, and I’d always end up with four or five lands in play and one or two clunky spells in hand while he was activating Liliana or putting me in an unwinnable spot with a Sheoldred in play. One innovation that Jacob Nagro gave me, which I tested and liked for Hulk Creativity, was adding a single copy of Collective Outburst as a sort of fifth Opus that could function as an answer to Sheoldred. It’s worth a copy if you’re considering that deck. I tested a lot and considered Hulk Creativity, Lotus, Rakdos Midrange, and Rakdos Sacrifice. With a few days left of testing, my friend Rob Pisano said a friend of his, Chris Higashi, won an RCQ with a twist on the Xenagos Wurm version of the deck. I looked it over, played a league with it, and went 4-1. It felt reasonable, but the big test was how it would perform against Rakdos Midrange. I played five matches against my friend Chase Kovac, whom you may not know, but he was the highest-performing Rakdos Midrange finisher at the RC this past weekend, and he knows his stuff. The results were promising. I played against Rakdos three or four more times in leagues and only dropped a single game over that stretch. I still don’t know if it's a good match-up. In the past, I’ve had similar results against Rakdos, and it can be difficult to tell in a small sample under 10 matches. Despite not yet losing to it, I’d say it's close to 50-50. The sample size is just too small to tell. One reason it's better than other versions is you can put a Wurm into play and Creativity for one, and Rakdos Mid can’t easily answer. In other match-ups, you bleed the points you gain against Rakdos with this list. However, I still find your good match-up to be good. Decks like Rakdos Sacrifice, one of my losses in the tournament, can bring in Furnace Reigns and steal your Wurm and one-shot you. Here’s the list I played and ended up going 7-4 before I dropped to hang out with friends. All my losses were likely favorable match-ups except maybe Rakdos Sacrifice, which is now potentially a worse match-up than Rakdos Midrange. Deck 4 Fiery Impulse 2 Spikefield Hazard 1 Volcanic Spite 4 Make Disappear 4 Bitter Reunion 1 Roast 1 Secrets of the Key 4 Fable of the Mirror-Breaker 4 Stern Lesson 4 Indomitable Creativity 2 Worldspine Wurm 1 Dig Through Time 2 Shark Typhoon 4 Steam Vents 3 Stormcarved Coast 3 Spirebluff Canal 1 Hall of Storm Giants 1 Otawara, Soaring City 2 Sokenzan, Crucible of Defiance 4 Riverglide Pathway 2 Shivan Reef 2 Mountain 2 Mutavault 1 Prismari Command 1 Abrade Sideboard 2 Brotherhood's End 2 Shark Typhoon 2 Hullbreaker Horror 2 Rending Volley 2 Mystical Dispute 2 Disdainful Stroke 1 Negate 2 Leyline of Sanctity I’m not sure what I’d change at this point, maybe some minor tweaks. I’d cut a Bitter Reunion if possible. I was hoping to trim a Bitter Reunion for a land like a Den of the Bugbear. Bitter Reunion is important in specific match-ups, but three is likely enough and you rarely want to play it early. The ideal start against some decks that can’t punish you is Bitter Reunion into Stern Lesson into Creativity for one attack for 15. This almost never happens, but Stern Lesson does a lot of work in this deck helping you pay for Reflection of Kiki-Jiki, Mutavault and Channel Lands, but it occasionally pays for stuff like Make Disappear and Spell Pierce. Most importantly, with this version of the deck you don’t get Wurm caught in your hand because of all the ways you have to discard. Sideboard Notes Rakdos Midrange -2 Fiery Impulse +2 Leyline of Sanctity This is a good Leyline deck because of all the ways to loot and it's very resource intensive. It even feels bad discarding the sixth and seventh lands, so the downside of Leyline doesn’t punish you nearly as much as it does in other decks where it’s a dead draw. It helps you set up wins if your opponent can’t rip Creativity out of your hand. I played against Rakdos zero times in 11 rounds, so I don’t have much more to go on other than my testing in leagues in a closed decklist. Additionally, you can cut a Bitter Reunion for a Shark Typhoon if you want more threats out of your sideboard. Vs Mono Green Devotion - 1 Fiery Impulse -1 Bitter Reunion -1 Stern Lesson -2 Fable of the Mirror Breaker (On the Draw Only) -1 Stern Lesson (On the play) -1 Fiery Impulse (On the Play) -1 Stern +2 Disdainful Stroke +2 Mystical Dispute +1 Negate I sideboarded differently on the play and on the draw. Fable is tough to cast on the draw until later turns, so you don’t want to flood out with them. They’re also much worse when you do cast them because they’re more likely to be set up well against your Goblin token. This is a close match-up, but I’ve won much more than I’ve lost. Green is one of those decks that is good against almost anything when drawn well. Vs UW Control The TLDR is cut the red cards and add the blue cards, but more specifically: -4 Fiery Impulse -1 Abrade -1 Roast -2 Worldspine Wurm -1 Prismari Command +2 Hullbreaker Horror +2 Mystical Dispute +2 Disdainful Stroke +2 Shark Typhoon +1 Negate If you see Chrome Hose Seedshark you’ll want your 2 Rending Volleys instead of Volcanic Spite and a Bitter Reunion. Vs Greasefang -1 Roast -1 Bitter Reunion +2 Rending Volley I'm not entirely sold on how to sideboard here. I’ve been going on vibes. I like to bring in a Brotherhood’s End sometimes or the Negate if they have 3 or 4 Liliana. Negate on the play is much better to counter a Grisly Salvage. I bring in Leyline of Sanctity when they have 6 or 7 Duress/Thoughtseize. I’d trim down the Bitter Reunions to make room for anything additional you bring in. Vs Lotus -4 Fiery Impulse -1 Abrade -1 Roast -2 Worldspine Wurm -1 Volcanic Spite +2 Hullbreaker Horror +2 Mystical Dispute +2 Disdainful Stroke +2 Shark Typhoon +1 Negate This is nearly identical to how you sideboard against UW. The difference is you can leave in either creature package, on the play, on the draw I prefer the horrors because the games end up much grindier, and they’re more likely to disrupt your Wurm. If you think they’ll bring in Voyaging Satyr against you, you can leave in a spot removal or two max, likely Volcanic Spite. Vs Mono W Humans -3 Bitter Reunion -2 Stern Lesson +2 Brotherhood’s End +2 Rending Volley +1 Shark Typhoon This match-up is more about keeping their board empty rather than getting yourself on the board. You can win even if you never cast Creativity. You might want the fourth Shark over the last Bitter Reunion. Vs Spirits +2 Shark Typhoon +2 Hullbreaker Horror +2 Rending Volley +2 Mystical Dispute +1 Brotherhood’s End - 1 Roast -2 Worldspine Wurm -4 Bitter Reunion -1 Stern Lesson -1 Indomitable Creativity Again the goal is to keep the battlefield clean and let your win cons overpower them. Vs 5c Decks There are too many versions to do specifics, but it's almost identical to how you’d board against UW except you want to keep the Wurm package in. Try to set up spots where you can Make Disappear the Wurm away, but you can win here with Fables and Shark Tokens if you can keep them low on resources. Vs Hulk Creativity -3 Fiery Impulse -1 Roast -2 Worldspine Wurm -3 Bitter Reunion +2 Mystical Dispute +2 Disdainful Stroke +1 Negate +2 Hullbreaker Horror +2 Shark Typhoon The following are a few tricks you may miss. First, you may want to use Bitter Reunion to attack with a Shaman rather than hold it for a combo. Sometimes you’re able to put a Wurm into play against aggro decks, but they can go too wide on you for you to attack. This is a bad spot you can get out of occasionally by attacking and casting your own spell and casting Make Disappear with casualty to sacrifice it to make three blockers, sometimes at instant speed. Sacrifice redundant Bitter Reunions to fuel Dig Through Time. Use Otawara and Hullbreaker Horror to bounce your own Bitter Reunion. Overall, I liked the deck, but I’m not sure I’d run it back. My other choice was Rakdos Sacrifice, and I like that deck a lot with how the format is shaping up. The only thing I’d consider changing at this point is potentially cutting a Bitter Reunion for another land. I’d probably add a Den of the Bugbear. I’m not sure how good this deck is, but other players are reporting success with it, so maybe it's better than I give it credit for. This is the hardest version of the deck to play because it requires some finesse at times. That said, if you’re a Creativity fanatic like myself, this deck is definitely worth a try.

The time for Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle Earth is upon us. Soon we’ll be able to see and play with a set that many are eager to get their hands on. As someone who hasn’t played Modern since the last time it was supported at a professional level, I’ve taken a look at the set and found some interesting cards. There are a lot of cool cards that look fun to play, but I’m underwhelmed with the set's power level for Modern. I expected this to be more like a Modern Horizons set that brought a bunch of new staples and decks, however, what I’m looking at is a set that has a watered-down power level but also a lot of cool and complex designs. We’ll likely see many of these cards break into Historic and Alchemy. This set looks more like a player-acquisition tool, specifically an acquisition tool focused on bringing players to Commander and potentially Arena. The power level may be a bit pushed for Standard, and it's going directly to Modern so the cards aren't boring and can be played somewhere. Here’s a list of cards I found somewhat interesting. Frodo, Determined Hero Frodo is powerful and plays nicely with a lot of equipment in this set. A classic play pattern with Frodo would be to curve it into something like a Sword, perhaps one from this set like Anduril, Flame of the West. Frodo can’t die to damage while attacking since it will always be your turn. This is a powerful creature in a deck filled with equipment, but any such deck would be too clunky in Modern. Notice the inelegant wording that says you can’t attach Colossal Hammer to this creature. I don’t think this will see much play in Modern any time soon. Maybe it would if they design some powerful equipment that costs two or three mana with high equip costs. Delighted Halfling This is a cool card that I wish was a Legend itself. We already have Cavern of Souls in Modern, and while in many ways this is a mana creature version of that, it's mostly just a mana dork for a deck playing a high quantity of Legends. This card looks worse than Noble and Ignoble Hierarchs, but it's second point of toughness is a huge deal when cards like Wrenn and Six are so prolific in the format. While there’s no deck I’d slide this into now, I could see a world where we get a powerful “Legends" deck where this is a key one-drop in the future. Though not a huge deal, it's also worth noting that it casts Eldrazi with its colorless mana. I don’t think Delighted Halfling is super-strong or anything, but it may be a piece of something we see in the future. I also think this is a card we may see a lot of in Alchemy and potentially Historic. Last March of the Ents This is a powerful and cool card that is far too expensive for Modern without some serious work, but I could see this as a nice Cube payoff for Mono Green. It's nice in formats like Commander and Cube due to being uncounterable and putting creatures into play through counter Magic. I’d love to see it with something like a Tree of Redemption. However, as cool as this "fixed" Eureka is, it’s a lot of set-up that is unlikely to be worth the squeeze in Modern, but I love it for casual and fun formats. Mines of Moria There’s a full cycle of these lands, but I picked the most interesting one. Mines of Moria plays nicely with Indomitable Creativity, one of the more powerful Modern cards at the moment. Unfortunately, it'll almost always come into play tapped given the restriction on that deck to not play creatures other than its creativity targets. This card is unlikely to see play, but it's a cool utility land in a format that has Ragavan and Urza’s Saga as key cards. It plays nicely with both for a land slot, but I’m not sure we’ll see any copies in those decks outside of people trying a copy and then not being able to cast Ragavan on turn one, so they remove it from their deck immediately. Stern Scolding Another one-mana counter that would be much better on the play than on the draw in its format. If the opponent casts a Ragavan on one, it would be punishing to include Stern Scolding in your deck. It’s not a bad card in theory, but it requires hitting a large part of the format to have this single interaction prevent the card from being too weak to include. I don’t think Stern Scolding does that. Magic is too fast for reactive cards like this one to be what you want. You want reactive cards to be good on the draw as well. Magic is too punishing these days to not have your cards line up well, so I’m not nearly as excited about Stern Scolding as I’ve seen from others. Many Partings There's nothing too fancy here, but we’ve seen what one-mana cards that provide a blank game piece can do with cards like Thraben Inspector and even Hard Evidence saw some play. While it's not that likely Many Partins sees play, it's not out of the realm of possibility either. Doors of Durin This is a fairly powerful card that could be used as an engine in an aggro deck or a way to cheat big creatures into play. It’s not that exciting, but it looks like a fun card to try and abuse. I love sneak attack effects, and while this isn’t a great one, I’m glad to see a new take that’s much less abusable. Flame of Anor As far as I know, Wizards is a deck still seen in Historic, and this set will be legal in Historic. Flames of Anor seems like an excellent supplemental card for the Wizards deck that already existed. Draw two and kill a creature for three mana is powerful. On top of that, we also get a Shatter when needed. This is one of the most obvious inclusions into an existing deck in this set. While that format is underplayed, the Arena Championships are the best events left if you're competitive-minded. Sauron’s Ransom Sauron’s Ransom is another instant-speed Divination that isn't promising, but its ability to quickly put cards in the graveyard may have it see some play outside of Modern. Mostly it's just a role player. Improvised Club Here is another Shrapnel Blast variant. This could potentially see some play in Historic in a UR Ensoul-style deck, but it's unlikely. It’s worth keeping an eye on these types of effects, as they get stronger with redundancy. Unfortunately, the difference between four and five is large. It's likely not quite strong enough to see four copies. Spiteful Banditry One of the more powerful cards in the set for casual formats, this is a Commander home run and has serious potential to see play in formats like Alchemy and Historic. I love how this card could work in a deck like Creativity as both a sweeper and enabler rolled into one. It's a cool twist on The Meathook Massacre, but it's not strong enough to see Modern play. Phial of Galadriel My first thought when I read this card was, “Is this good enough with Ensnaring Bridge?” I doubt it, but it has a lot of text, and I could see a world where a Lantern deck would want this as a bullet for Whir of Invention. Arwen, Mortal Queen A three-mana indestructible creature is unique and that it can also act as a Selfless Savior is powerful. I think Arwen has potential in formats like Alchemy and potentially Historic, but it’s not quite what the current Modern format is about, especially with midrange decks playing cards like Solitude. This set looks fun, and I’m excited to get my hands on it for Limited. It looks too underpowered for Modern since the Modern Horizons sets have kicked up the power level and it’s hard to compete. The One Ring is still the only card I’d be looking to test thoroughly if I was preparing for Modern in Barcelona right now. However, the set will make an impact on the Arena formats, and that's exciting for a player who considered himself a mostly online player these days. This is the coolest crossover we’ve seen yet, and it’s one that fits Magic. In my early Magic playing years, I often drew the comparison to the two worlds, and it's great to finally see them entwine.

Fable of the Mirror Breaker, Reckoner Bankbuster, and Invoke Despair were all banned in Standard. This is part of a new Standard philosophy where cards will be banned more aggressively given a three-year rotation time. Fable was too powerful for Standard and changed the format's entire dynamic. A three-drop that provided card selection, a big mana advantage, and card advantage was too pushed for the format. Fable is an excellent card for Pioneer, as the format is much faster and more punishing. No one was surprised to see Fable go. No one. Invoke Despair is the weirdest banning to me. It’s a powerful card, and it shapes the format by weakening planeswalkers, but there were ways around it. I like this ban. While it's not the most powerful card in the format, it wasn’t a fun card to game plan and deck build with in mind. With Invoke Despair gone, the stock of cards like Ao the Dawn Sky drops. This was a proactive play to make Invoke Despair difficult to cast. We may now see more Gix Command in that space. This was a card some people started playing in place of copies of Invoke Despair, and now it’s a natural-value card that can affect the battlefield in a variety of ways. Reckoner Bankbuster was a great and colorless card. It punished planeswalkers since it had a ton of power ready to attack at any point. Liliana of the Veil was mostly held in check because it’s impossible to cast into a turn-two bankbuster. Liliana of the Veil's stock goes up with these cards all banned. The fact that Bankbuster was seeing play in a ton of decks was always great. It makes sense to ban. Cards like this have been banned in the past, and pushed colorless cards always have the risk of being played in every deck like Smuggler’s Copter, Hangarback Walker, and Walking Ballista. I’m comfortable with the Bankbuster ban since it doesn’t hit any deck specifically. It just makes decks find more interesting ways within their color pie to generate value and board presence. This was a good start to Standard bannings, but we may need to see more down the road. I started playing this format heavily while preparing for Worlds about eight to nine months ago. The decks are mostly still the same. Grixis and Esper were dominant and not much could be done about it. I actually found Grixis, Rakdos, and Jund easier to beat than Esper. Esper was a small underdog to the Rakdos-based midrange decks but by so little that I was comfortable playing against them. The sole reason many players registered Esper for Worlds was that the rest of the field outside of Rakdos got thrashed by Esper. Esper kept a lot of brews in check, and not enough has changed since then for that not to be the case moving forward. Esper Legends is a new and improved version of that deck, and I’d have liked to see Raffine go on top of that. Raffine is the glue that holds that shell together, and we’d see a lot more innovative deck building without it. While anticipating the bannings before Worlds, we expected to see Fable banned and eventually it was. I thought that banning Raffine would have been wise because of how strong Esper was before Skrelv and the best Plaza of Heroes shells were created. I expect to see a lot of innovation in the short term. People will try stuff, and it will be fun for a bit. However, if you’re planning to win a Standard tournament this weekend? Just play Esper Legends and make them beat you. Esper has a fast clock, access to counterspells, and is resilient. Skrelv gets a lot better now with Bloodtithe Harvester all but removed from the format. We’ll likely still see some Harvesters to enable stuff like Atraxa reanimation, but it’s not going to be as ubiquitous as before. While Go for the Throat is still the most efficient removal spell, Skrelv carries a ton of weight. Various midrange control shells may have the tools to compete with Esper Legends, but it will have to start packing some sweepers. Sunfall has gotten a ton of Limited hype but no love in Constructed, which may be about to change. Sunfall will play through Plaza of Heroes, but it’s more easily disrupted. Esper is adaptable enough to compete with anything gunning for it, so it will be interesting to see what happens. As the card pool gets bigger, more decks will break through, and we may have a reasonable metagame. We saw Jeskai Dragons, a deck that carried Ondrej Strasky to a Worlds invitation this past weekend, pop up from Team Handshake at the Arena Championships. While Fable is gone from that deck, the core pieces of Invasion of Gobakan and Zurgo and Ojutai remain, and it will be interesting to see if that shell continues to grow. While it loses Fable, there may be something there if that combination of cards is as strong as advertised. I’d love to see more Big Score into Breach the Multiverse shenanigans, and it may be the new direction for Rakdos. The faster curve-out game plan isn’t there without Fable. Chandra and Breach are still strong cards, so I’d like to see where that can be taken. I’m curious to see how many Make Disappears we see moving forward. It was mostly utilized to make an even exchange with Fable of the Mirror Breaker. In modern-day Magic, Quench is a fine card, especially one that has the casualty mode to make it useful as the game drags on. It will still be a prolific card in the format since permanents snowball like crazy. The last card to discuss is Sheoldred. Sheoldred was, and still is, one of the strongest cards in Standard. I’m a Sheoldred lover. I always leave it in my deck and play four copies. While it’s an all-star in Esper Legends, Raffine is the more reasonable target, as it homogenizes decks to playing Esper colors, and Sheoldred is a fun card that is easy to interact with and punishes opponents who don’t put removal in their deck. It’s a classic 2022 power-level Siege Rhino that is good for the format. I’m not surprised by anything from the bannings. I expected Bankbuster and Fable, but Invoke wasn’t on my radar. I like it because of how restrictive it was for deck building. We may see more cards that played poorly into it, like Nissa, Ascended Animist, and maybe a resurgence of Wrenn and Seven. There’s a whole new world to explore in Standard. If you’re looking to brew, there are tons of options on the table. I would suggest any brew you make, you focus test against Esper Legends since Esper Legends is a holdover that lost the least and gained the most from Rakdos being expunged from the format.

If you live under a rock, you may not know about the new Boros Convoke deck that’s taking Pioneer by storm. This past week, the deck hit the ground running, and we saw an MTGO Pioneer challenge that featured two copies of the deck in the finals. Here’s Sodeq’s challenge-winning list. Sodeq’s Boros Convoke Companion 1 Jegantha, the Wellspring Deck 3 Mountain 4 Sacred Foundry 2 Mana Confluence 4 Battlefield Forge 4 Reckless Bushwhacker 4 Thraben Inspector 4 Inspiring Vantage 4 Ornithopter 4 Venerated Loxodon 2 Giant Killer 2 Castle Embereth 4 Forbidden Friendship 1 Needleverge Pathway 3 Clarion Spirit 4 Voldaren Epicure 3 Resolute Reinforcements 4 Gleeful Demolition 4 Knight-Errant of Eos Sideboard 1 Tormod's Crypt 1 Pithing Needle 4 Rending Volley 1 Giant Killer 1 Light of Hope 1 Regal Leosaur 1 Jegantha, the Wellspring 2 Wedding Announcement 3 Invasion of Gobakhan I was immediately intrigued watching Kanister stream the deck. The deck is powerful, fast, and exploits a weakness in the Pioneer format where people were shaving on cost-efficient sweepers and playing more linear decks and spot removal. Enjoy your Doom Blades and Stomps, if you want, but this deck is going to go right under that and punish you quickly. Is this deck the real deal? My initial intuition is that I’m skeptical, but it does something the format needs by adding a new element of attack that needs to be addressed. You'll be mistaken in the current moment if you don’t prepare for or think you can dodge the deck. Mono White Humans occupied this slot in the metagame for a while as a small creature deck that could clock fast and had some disruption in the form of Thalia. It’s about a full turn slower than Boros Convoke, but it's more resilient to sweepers. In general, I liked picking white apart with spot removal chaining up the curve and then going over the top of them rather than relying on sweepers. Because of cards like Dauntless Bodyguard, Brave the Elements, and the Thalia tax, it can be hard to line up a sweeper effectively. Sweepers are a must with Boros Convoke. I was reluctant to include Brotherhood’s End in the Hulk Creativity deck I’ve been testing, but I now think two copies are a slam dunk. I’d even consider as many as three or another similar card like Cinderclasm. In fact, it may be correct to main deck some sweepers in decks that weren’t playing them before. They provide so much equity when drawn against this deck that it’s not unreasonable given the deck's popularity. I couldn’t find the commons and uncommons for the deck on MTGO recently because so many people were trying Boros. Instead, I had to settle for watching friends play the deck. Without a true Pyroclasm in the format, this Boros Convoke deck is capable of killing on turn three. It’s not easy, but it's easier than it should be. The deck does have serious flaws. It’s not going to win from behind, so you need to aggressively mulligan for good starts. Decks that are often mulling and resource intensive can be easy to disrupt with a turn-one Thoughtseize. A mistake I see many players making against aggressive decks like Boros Convoke is cutting Thoughtseize, which is one of the best cards in the format against this deck. If you take them off curve or take their payoff, especially after a mulligan or two, you will force them on the back foot. Boros Convoke has no breaks and has to close before things get out of control. The deck’s best cards are the five-mana convoke payoffs and Gleeful Demolition. Gleeful Demolition is the card you want to see most in your opener along with a Bushwhacker or any Convoke creature. Without any of those key cards, you should probably be taking a mulligan even if your hand curves out well. A bunch of 1/1s and 1/2s aren’t enough. You need to have a huge turn two or three for this deck to win. The emergence of this deck has me a little flustered. I was leaning toward playing Lotus Field. While I’ve only played against the deck a few times with Lotus, and it felt close, I would be surprised if Boros isn’t favored. I think I’ve won my matches, but I likely drew well. Boros Convoke is the kind of deck that people will need reps with to understand how fast their clock is and how to mulligan. Anemic draws won’t get there. This deck may be popular, and the pilots will have experience by then. So am I considering playing the deck? It's not out of the question, but I will be surprised if I end up playing Boros. It has some inherent flaws, including lacking resiliency. It can’t take turns off to protect itself from sweepers and such. Cards like Invasion of Gobakhan are fine, but a deck with a mixture of spot removal, hand disruption, and sweepers should be able to easily dismantle the deck. I’m only describing the format's most popular deck Rakdos Midrange. Rakdos Midrange was everywhere before this deck took off, and with a small tweak to the sideboard you can hammer this match-up down. So many cards exist in the Rakdos colors that give this deck nightmares. Cards like Illness in the Ranks, The Meathook Massacre, Languish, and Hidetsugu Consumes are easy adjustments to make that will improve the match-up dramatically. Boros Convoke isn't going to be great at coming back without a good coherent plan, which is the next evolution of the deck. I’m strongly considering Gearhulk Creativity, my runner-up deck. The deck has access to excellent tools to combat Convoke with cheap removal like Fiery Impulse and Spikefield Hazard to slow them down, and setting up Opus with no disruption is easy. You can use spot removal early to slow down their big payoff. If you’re able to Gearhulk an Opus before you’re actually at 0 life, it's easy to stabilize and take over and turn the corner quickly. The big question I have isn't if people will react to Boros Convoke, but what are they willing to give up to do so? Will they cut all their graveyard hate and leave a window open for a deck like Greasefang, a deck that also has a great Convoke match-up? Will they shave on their Counterspells and Duress-type cards to make room? Midrange good-stuff decks like Rakdos are best suited to combat Boros Convoke, but they will be stretching themselves thin and lose points in other match-ups. Maybe Extinction events become Languishes and that leaves the door open for Mono Green Devotion to pick up some win percentage in the meta. There are a lot of ways Boros Convoke throws the metagame into whack. The best we can do is analyze the trends to try to stay a step ahead of the metagame and submit the correct deck and be comfortable with our choices. As of a few days ago, I had one simple tool for RC Dallas. Don't submit a deck that's unfavored against Rakdos Midrange. Any deck I feel comfortable with in that match-up was acceptable. Now, I’m adding Boros Convoke to that list. I still have plenty of time to let things shake out, but I plan on spending a good chunk of my time solving that problem while also being comfortable with my deck. Boros Convoke is strong enough to hang around in the metagame for a while. If you’re not playing it, make sure that you’re prepared to play against the deck. It’s a powerful, fun, new deck that’s also cheap and easy to build. All of this adds up to a deck that could take a huge chunk of the metagame moving forward. As for the deck’s future? It’s likely it can't stand up to the metagame shake-up it’s about to create, but the Pioneer metagame is about to change because of its existence. It’s the fastest goldfish deck with no interaction in the format pushing back other goldfish decks like Mono Green and Lotus Field, which will lead to more interactive decks like Rakdos. This can come full circle, and once decks like Green and Lotus are ignored, they’ll be well-positioned if Boros is pushed back enough. Ultimately, I think Boros is going to get that pushback quickly, so enjoy it while you can.

I had a great time going to Pro Tour Minneapolis despite not being qualified. I focused my energy on Limited, only to end up opening two bottom-tier sealed pools that left me feeling frustrated and hungering for more. I booked a flight to Dallas when I got home, as I’ve decided to finally attend a Regional Championships. Dallas is closer to home and a lot more conducive to my schedule than San Diego. While the goal would be to qualify for the Pro Tour, I'm just enjoying preparing for events. There’s something fun about solving complex problems with friends. These days I'm enjoying it less when the camaraderie ends and the tournament begins. However, I’m going full tilt until the tournament’s over, as I want to give myself a chance to qualify for the Pro Tour again. I’m a bit lost in Pioneer, but I’ve been paying attention and know that Rakdos and Mono Green are back on top of the metagame. The Pro Tour metagame has slowly shifted to where we left things a year ago, as almost every deck in the format has a problem with one or both of these decks. Logic would dictate playing one of these decks, but historically neither has done well in big events. Merely, these decks are very good at punishing greedy, unpolished decks. I will not play Mono Green despite it being the deck that's winning the most at the RCQ level. It will pick up in popularity in the RC and potentially have a bigger share of the metagame than previously. I'm predicting about 23% Mono Green. Mono Green is my deck to beat, not my deck to play. The deck looks to be near impossible to get a mirror edge. You can’t adjust your sideboard or main deck very much at this point, and there are guides everywhere to teach everyone how to play somewhat optimally. I consider myself a strong player, and if this deck was unbeatable I’d roll with it, but that’s never been the case in the past. The deck consistently finishes with an overall losing record. It merely warps the metagame around it and is strong enough to keep people playing it, but when push comes to shove, it’s always just falling short. My ultimate fallback currently is Rakdos Midrange. Rakdos will give me room to play and adjust my deck to my liking. Don’t be fooled though, I’ll consider it somewhat of a failure if I end up playing Rakdos. It's a solid deck but still not quite what I’d want since everyone will have tons of reps against it and a solidified plan. So what else should I play? Well, Siggy’s been cooking a bit. I got to test pilot a brew of mine in a league, and this is what I’m currently working on. Timewalked Timewalks 4 Strategic Planning 4 Big Score 4 Consider 1 Volcanic Spite 3 Spikefield Hazard 4 Fiery Impulse 1 Galvanic Iteration 1 Unexpected Windfall 3 Temporal Trespass 4 Steam Vents 2 Divide by Zero 4 Chandra, Hope's Beacon 2 Hall of Storm Giants 1 Make Disappear 4 Fable of the Mirror-Breaker 1 Otawara, Soaring City 1 Sokenzan, Crucible of Defiance 4 Riverglide Pathway 3 Stormcarved Coast 4 Spirebluff Canal 2 Shivan Reef 1 Mountain 2 Island 2 Chrome Host Seedshark 2 Hullbreaker Horror 2 Negate 3 Rending Volley 1 Disdainful Stroke 2 Mystical Dispute 1 Aether Gust 1 Environmental Sciences 1 Mascot Exhibition This is a rough draft, and I wanted to see if the deck had legs. Ever since Chandra, Hope’s Beacon was printed I’ve been fascinated with its high power level, and we got to see how powerful it was in Standard at Pro Tour Minneapolis. Pioneer has some cooler tools to work with in the form of Delve Spells that you can play immediately upon casting if sequenced right, the most powerful of which is time walk effects. Initially, I was impressed with a deck Marcio Carvalho posted on Twitter featuring Baraal and Kari Zev in traditional Izzet Phoenix. You’re able to cast a Pieces of the Puzzle on three, then follow up with a Baraal, Cruise and Alrund’s Epiphany in the same turn, which should nearly end the game on the spot if it lines up well. I plan to try that deck since it sounds quite powerful. The deck I designed has an equally explosive finish but plays much more like Izzet Creativity, a deck I’m incredibly comfortable playing. Chandra being an answer for Sheoldred on its own or combined with any removal is the big draw to me here. Rakdos was always a struggle for Creativity, and I’m hoping that since this deck plays less “dead cards” and all the combo pieces are individually useful on their own, that it can play a fair game with Rakdos and keep the battlefield clean and clean up with the planeswalker they’re not equipped to defeat. With Creativity, you could be left rotting with combo pieces in hand or stranded. Ideally, you’re able to play Chandra with 7 total mana in play and immediately plus it to copy a Temporal Trespass. This is easy after a turn-four Big Score if your yard is filled. Strategic Planning was great other than the fact it’s a sorcery. Moment of Truth is another option I’m considering and potentially even cutting Stormcarved Coasts for Fabled Passages to get volume in the graveyard. You want to aggressively put cards in your graveyard with cheap interaction and cantrips and then ultimately untap with Chandra. Chandra does a great job digging deeper for more Timewalks, and its static effect copying Big Scores and more cantrips can make it easy to keep the ball rolling. My first league went okay with a 3-2 record, but the deck felt like it had potential though it needed a lot of tuning. Divide by Zero was too clunky and was a last-second addition to the deck as a way to get a win con that was also a versatile answer card. I’d like to fit an Abrade or two into the mix to answer Pithing Needles, so Chandra can do its thing. Chandra is so good at winning that you don’t need other win cons as long as you have something. You can dig for more Timewalks, and copy all your draw spells to find them. It becomes trivial once you untap with Chandra. The deck’s plan against blue decks is to board into the same configuration I was with Creativity. Horrors and Sharks, except this time, it's Chrome Host Seedshark over Shark Typhoon. It’s not to say that Shark Typhoon shouldn’t be here in some numbers, but I was impressed with the Seedshark post-board everywhere. It’s a good blocker and generates tons of value as the game goes on, and I often found myself winning, yet never casting Chandra and only sequencing Seedshark into Trespass on the same turn and untapping with 13 power in play ready to attack. While I think it's low probability that this deck is better than Izzet Creativity, Chandra has proven to me over one league that it's strong enough in current Pioneer to see play. I will keep iterating and improving on this archetype in the short term. Pioneer does require intimate knowledge of your deck, so I plan to choose a deck no less than a week before the event and jam about 50 matches with my chosen deck to tweak and learn. Even if the deck does show promise, I may need to cut it short for this event and continue later because I need to focus on what's best for the tournament, not a pet project that may not work out. I’m almost interested in exploring Rona decks, but the hive mind has failed to find a good version of Rona combo, as it’s virtually nowhere to be seen. I will keep an eye out, but I find it unlikely that I end up registering Rona. I’ll let Matt Nass cook on that one and see if he can break it open. My last hope? Maybe I just learn Lotus Field well and get tons of reps in with the deck. I’m still a bit skeptical of Lotus and I think a lot could go wrong. It seems to be strong and better positioned now than it has been in a while. If hate picks back up at the RC itself, it’s the kind of deck I’d rather not be wrong about since you lose to prepared opponents, tons of mulligans, and nearly un-winnable match-ups rather than losing close games you can control. I want some agency, and while RC players are good, not all of them are the world’s best that I’ve been playing in Rivals league. I want to find something that fits into my skillset of reading a metagame and taking advantage rather than settling on the best goldfish deck and hoping my opponents mess up in deck registration or in playing their games. I was ready to trash this deck after one league, but it showed enough promise that I figured I’d put it out there and continue to work on it. Ultimately, I’m excited to get a chance to play a worthwhile tournament and spend another weekend with great friends. See you in Dallas.

-- Mike Sigrist With the Pro Tour coming up, I’ve been asked a lot of questions about various archetypes and cards. I’ll be playing PTQs in Minn, and the Arena Championship Qualifier is next weekend, so there’s plenty of MOM Limited left to be played. This week, I’m going to go over more MOM Limited, including archetypes, key cards, and how I end up in these spots. Boros Backup Boros is designed to back up creatures in the set. The key uncommon of the archetype is the two-drop gold creature, Mirror-Shield Hoplite. Boros isn’t a popular archetype for good reason. Red and white are two of the weakest, if not the weakest, colors in MOM Limited. For this reason, people bias themselves away from the colors and often don’t start early in Boros. I typically find myself here after taking a strong rare or uncommon in one of the colors first and taking a few cards of that color. White or red is so underdrafted I get pushed in, or I get past a late-pack-one Mirror-Shield Hoplite, which I’m more than willing to speculate on and dive right in if it’s open. Ideally, I get at least two two-drops that pay off for being in backup, which is either two Mirror-Shield Hoplites, or one of those and the rare Dusk Legion Duelist, a card that goes around fairly late because it doesn’t fit well into many decks. Boros typically doesn’t want to splash or play expensive bombs like Etali. I’ll take it if I get a dry pack with an Etali, but I’d rather take a card like Sigiled Sentinel or Realmbreaker’s Grasp instead. Speaking of Realm Breaker’s Grasp, Boros isn’t a deck that needs much removal. It's nice to get two or three pieces of good removal, but it's not necessary. The goal of the deck is to win fast and outsize your opponent’s creatures and make blocking difficult to impossible. As a side note, Boros’s theme can be “equipment matters,” but it's based off the unreliable Multiverse Legends. The equipment is generally weak in the set, and while I’ve seen the deck come together, you want to focus on backup unless you’re able to wheel a late Reyav, Master Smith, or Valduk, and then find more copies of them in pack two to focus on that strategy. I’ve never accomplished this myself, but some of the better decks I’ve seen in the format have had three Reyav and two Valduk amongst equipment like Kor Halberd and Mirran Banespliter. Key commons: Sigiled Veteran, Angelic Intervention, Bolas Slinger, Volcanic Spite, Realmbreaker’s Grasp Sleepers: Kite Sail, Golden-Scale Aeronaut Azorius Knights Azorious Knight is one of the best archetypes in the format, but I’ve had a tough time getting into this lane because it requires an early commitment to the archetype. Knights make great use of cards other decks can’t use, like Swordsword Cavalier and Protocol Knight. I typically end up here after taking white cards early rather than blue and filling my deck with the blue cards I can get. It’s no secret that blue cards have been in high demand, so when I start in blue I tend to stay there rather than speculate on white with a Knight theme. Knight archetype cards are unique to the archetype, and the cards that play well in blue in Knights don’t play well in other archetypes like Dimir. You want to be permanent heavy in this archetype, be able to curve Swordsworn Cavalier into a Knight every turn to make blocking difficult early, and close by either going so wide your opponent can’t keep up, or close with fliers like Preening Knight and Xerex Strobe-Knight. This deck plays battles well, as it’s easy to get on board early and use cards like Invasion of Kamigawa or Invasion of Xerex to push the tempo and get more threats on board. Interaction for Knights is much like Boros in that it doesn’t need too much and the interaction type doesn’t matter. Realmbreaker’s Grasp, Temporal Cleansing, and Ephara’s Dispersal are great in the deck, and you only need a couple of ways to interact thanks to how fast the deck i and the built-in version in Protocol-Knight. Azorius, much like Boros, doesn't want to splash, as it’s focused on getting ahead and staying there. It’s not looking to play a long game and get stuck with a spell it can’t cast. You can splash cards like Zurgo and Ojutai if you get enough lands, but you typically don’t want to play a card like Skittering Surveyor. You need an onboard advantage early. Key commons: Swordsworn Cavalier, Preening Knight, Sigiled Sentinel, Knight of the New Coalition, Realmbreaker’s Grasp, Ephara’s Dispersal Sleeper: Status Field Orzhov Phyrexians There are a lot of ways to draft Orzhov in this set. You can draft a focused Phyrexian theme with the themed uncommons, like Sculpted Perfection, Phyrexian Awakening, and Gift of Completion. Additionally, you can play a good-stuff deck. Black is deep and has tons of removal, Phyrexians, and bombs. White can be your support color for it’s solid creatures like Norn’s Inquisitor, Tiller of Flesh, and Alabaster Host Intercessor. This is likely the best home for all of those creatures. Unlike other white archetypes, combat tricks like Angelic Intervention are at their weakest regardless of how the Orzhov build because you’re generally able to get a lot of removal in this archetype from both black and white, as both colors have a lot of removal. Even white has some good uncommons like Seal from Existence and Elspeth’s Smite. Generally, this deck wants to play a grindy game and finish with powerful cards, so splashing is quite alright here. Skittering Surveyor even fits in fine in addition to duals you may get because the crappy body can be sacrificed to a Final Flourish or Invasion of New Capenna. Overall, this is an archetype that’s common and one I like quite a bit. This deck gets much more from the rare and uncommon slot than it does from the common slot, as a lot of the white commons don’t suit it well but a majority of the uncommons do suit the deck. Key commons: Deadly Derision, Final Flourish, Alabaster Host Intercessor Realmbreaker’s Grasp Sleeper: Traumatic Revelation Selesnya Counters By far this is the most difficult archetype in the format for me to get into. The support isn’t very deep. This is mostly supposed to be a backup deck, but the payoffs aren’t plentiful, so it's just a deck to me. You can just play a go-wide, curve-out strategy and use cards like Invasion of Moag and Shanna, Sissy’s Legacy to great use, but mostly it’s hard to get into this archetype unless starting with a card like The Ozolith and finding a Botanical Brawler early. These colors tend to not have the best two-drops that can take advantage of the backup counters as both Wary Thespian and Swordswon Cavalier won’t be able to push through many blocks with only one more toughness. Much like Boros and Azorious, this archetype doesn’t need tons of removal but does want some. You generally want removal that stops blocks, so not cards like Cut Short, but Tandem Takedown, Seal from Existence, Cosmic Hunger, and Realmbreaker’s Grasp all play well here. Key commons: Sigiled Sentinel, Angelic Intervention, Bolas Slinger, Realmbreaker’s Grasp Sleepers: Golden-Scale Aeronaut, Kite Sail Dimir Control Dimir is my favorite archetype in the format, but it’s also one of the hardest to get into. Dimir has the two deepest colors at common and can play most of the cards from both colors quite well. I get into Dimir regularly, and if I’m not first picking a rare or uncommon, I’m almost always looking to take Preening Knight, Deadly Derision, Final Flourish, or Ephara’s Dispersal out of my pack. These are four of the best commons in the set, and I often get them early. While Dimir is incredibly deep at common, it's also very rich in gold cards at uncommon and higher rarity, which makes it irresistible sometimes. Halo Forager and Invasion of Amonkhet are two of the best uncommons in the set. Dimir is one of the rare archetypes that can compete with even the best rares because of the archetype’s availability of tools. Between Traumatic Revelation and Assimilate Essence amongst all the archetype’s removal, you can handle almost any bomb or amount of bombs an opponent could reasonably possess. Additionally, Assimilate Essence is a crucial card given the bomb-heavy format, and people are too low on this card. While there are many bombs to be had in this color combination, it doesn’t need anything more than commons and uncommons to be a fantastic deck, which is incredibly rare in this format since the power level is very high. I’ll spoil my sleepers because I believe Expedition Lookout and Disturbing Conversion are underrated and almost always wheel. They have great synergy together and are excellent to fill holes in your deck. Milling opponents out is often an underlooked win con in this archetype and can be done fairly easily with the commons and uncommons that mill both players. You just need to time the last of the spells correctly. One of my Favorite Splinter Twin combos of the format is Breach the Multiverse and Halo-Charged Skaab. Key commons: Final Flourish, Deadly Derision, Ephara’s Dispersal, Assimilate Essence, Preening Knight Sleepers: Disturbing Conversion, Expedition Lookout, Traumatic Revelation, Unseal the Necropolis Izzet Convoke Izzet Convoke is one of those archetypes where I’ve had polarized results. This deck became worse since the word got out that Preening Knight is the best common in the format. This deck needs cheap bodies and cards that produce multiple bodies. Ral’s Reinforcements is one of the best cards in the archetype but never seems to get enough bodies to make the deck tick. There’s plenty of payoff for convoke, but the bodies that get you there are too underpowered. We end up playing cards like Omen Hawker with few ways to spend mana or Akki Scrapchomper. Without enough payoff, these cards are way too bad on their own. There’s plenty of convoke, though some much better than others. Ideally, you can curve Ral’s Reinforcements into Preening Knight and immediately cast a Meeting of the Minds, Stoke the Flames, or in desperate times, a Halo Hopper. I get into Izzet when I take Preening Knights early, find a dry pack with a Ral’s Reinforcements or Volcanic Spite, and continuously get fed Red. All of the niche convoke stuff like Ramosian Greatsword, Transcendent Message, Shivan Branch-Burner, and especially City on Fire have looked great in good versions of this deck. While Joyful Stormsculptor is excellent in focused versions, a lot of the gold uncommons are mediocre and prevent the archetype from being a huge draw early. Key commons: Preening Knight, Volcanic Spite, Ral’s Reinforcements, Ephara’s Dispersal Sleepers: Shatter the Source Simic Transform Simic is an underrated archetype that gets value from the abundance of good rares in the set. Simic gets to play a lot of smoothing and fixing and splash tons of bombs. While it's supposed to be a transform theme with cards like Invasion of Pyrulea and Mutagen Connoisseur at uncommon, I mostly play it planning to splash either black or red for some other powerful mythics, rares, or uncommons. I generally get into Simic taking blue cards early and then in packs without quality removal getting passed green’s best common, Portent Tracker, early and can build on that. Blue’s ability to control creatures and green’s ability to fix mana and ramp makes it a prime spot to play a rampy control-style deck that wins by out-powering the opponent. This archetype can also play into the Incubate theme with cards like Converter Beast, Covenant of Towashi, and Tangled Skyline. Alternatively, I get into Simic when I take blue or green cards early, pick up a bomb of another color that’s clearly not open or a gold card, and want to find an open lane that will also allow me to play Glissa or Borborygmos and Fblthp. Blighting Burgeoning is one of the highest value late pickups for this deck, as it fits into the theme with transforming matters and the theme of wanting to splash. Mutagen Connoisseur is sneaky good in that it slows the game down a lot early and eventually turns into a real threat with transforms. It also carries counters well with 5 toughness and flying and vigilance. It threatens to flip battles once it gets any amount of power, then it continues to grow itself. A couple of Mutagen Connoisseurs makes Fertilid’s Favor an attractive card for a deck. Key commons: Portant Tracker, Preening Knight, Ephara’s Dispersal, Converter Beast, Overgrown Pest Sleepers: Blighted Burgeoning, Fertild’s' Favor Rakdos Sacrifice Rakdos has a small Sacrifice theme with cards like Stormclaw Rager and Juri, Master of the Revue, but there aren’t much payoffs for sacrificing. This deck benefits from Furnace Reigns, an Act of Treason variant that you can pick up late and make great use of in a format where an Act of Treason can affect enormous creatures like Yargle and Multani, Ghalta and Mavren, or Ancient Imperiosaur. I got into Rakdos a lot by taking the good removal spells in both colors early, and/or getting a card like Stormclaw Rager or even Rankle and Torban later in pack one. Rankle is underrated likely because of it’s very committing and unsplashable. Rakdos makes use of leftover artifacts and creatures well with Stormclaw Rager and Compleated Huntmaster, so cards like Ral’s Reinforcements also get value. It’s worth noting that Rakdos gets great uncommon two-drops between Khenra Spellspear, which is one of the best uncommons in the whole set, and Blightreaper Thallid, which are potentially the two best creatures of that transform cycle. Juri works well with some niche cards like Beamtown Beatstick and Captain Lannery Storm, but it’s often hard to get too big, so it’s not a high pick. It can be strong when you pick it up late. Typically, I try and wheel, but I don’t worry if I’m not able. Key commons: Volcanic Spite, Deadly Derision, Final Flourish Sleepers: Dreg Recycler, Ichor Drinker Golgari Incubate I get into Golari somewhat regularly but not as much as Dimir, Orzhov, or Rakdos. Golgari has a strong gold uncommon in Elvish Vatkeeper. Elvish Vatkeeper is how I mostly get into this archetype, but it could be starting with black cards and getting a late Portent tracker or Blighting Burgeoning that sets me up to go more rampy and bomb heavy with black’s efficient removal. Golgari has an incubate theme, but it's largely ancillary to just playing the good cards and splashing your rares. It’s a green archetype that’s not trying to win fast, so splashing is reasonable. Usually, you’ll see a blue splash for cards like Invasion of Amonkhet, Halo Forager, or Yarok, The Desecrated. You want to generate value and play to the board as much as possible and avoid getting overrun since the deck can be slow. Trying to flip incubate tokens can leave you out tempoed. Glissa, Herald of Predation is one of the best rares in the entire set. I’m keen to lock into green to ensure I can play it early if I pick it up, but that usually leads me into black since it’s the deepest color for high-pick commons. Key commons: Deadly Derision Portent Tracker, Final Flourish Overgrown Pest Sleepers: Traumatic Revelation, Blighting Burgeoning Gruul Battles The last archetype, and one I actually like more than most, is Gruul Battles. Fundamentally, the deck can play a lot of cards that interact favorably with battles. Rampaging Geoderm is the primary reason I get into this archetype, and I’ve got the beast as late as last pick. Yes, the actual last pick. For some reason, 4/4 haste trample isn’t a desirable draw to the archetype. Many people think red and green are the weakest colors in the set, so maybe that’s why the archetype seems open. It’s important to get battles in this archetype because it makes a lot of cards you’re going to want to play much better. Cards like War Historian, Trashing Frontliner, and the Geoderm benefit greatly if you have a battle in play to overwhelm in combat to get a tempo advantage. It’s easy to pick up some of the battles, but battles like Invasion of Zendikar and Invasion of Mercadia can be hard to pick up. The on-color rare battles are also nice for this archetype but hard to pick up. The easier battles to get, Invasion of Ergamon, Invasion of Muraganda, and Invasion of Regatha are playable but not quite as nice to set up and flip early, which is a big benefit to this deck. You can still play this deck with few or no battles, but ideally you’d like to get three or four to focus on the creature base that gets better with battles. Either way, Rampaging Geoderm is going much later than it should in my drafts, as it’s a gold card that needs little to no support to be above rate. Four-drops are a dime a dozen in this archetype between Ramping Geoderm, Converter Beast, Chomping Kavu, and War-Trained Slasher, so it’s best not to prioritize any but the best of them, Rampaging Geoderm, because you can pick up the others late. Key commons: Volcanic Spite, Portent Tracker Sleepers: Trashing Frontliner, War Historian, This is the archetypes and a few notes on how to get into them and their quality. I’ll power rank them based on just the decks and their base colors. There are a lot of splashes, so I’ll assume the slower decks can splash a card or two, but the faster ones aren’t able. Dimir Control Azorious Knights Orzhov Phyrexians SImic Transform (almost always splashing) Boros Backup Golgari Incubate Izzet Convoke Rakdos Sacrifice Gruul Battles Selesnya Counters While these are my approximate power rankings, the set is very well-balanced and only green white is a clear archetype I never play. I have the most success with Dimir when it's open by a substantial amount, but it gets trickier when it's not. I have no problem getting into another of the other nine archetypes. That’ll be it for this week. See you next time.

-- Mike Sigrist March of the Machine has finally arrived. I’ve heard a variety of opinions about the Limited format, most of which have been negative. I was ready to call it after my first three drafts, but after getting some more time with the set, now I can’t stop playing. My current stance is it’s the single most enjoyable straight-to-Standard format I’ve ever drafted. Maybe there’s a bit of a recency bias and ONE Limited rebound effects making me feel much better about it, but the format is so dynamic, and every draft feels different. Between battles, the bonus sheet, and tons of pushed rares, the format feels high powered, fun, dynamic, and I enjoy both the games and drafting experience. I did a lot of losing in my first few drafts, as I was still figuring out cards and mana bases, and I basically started stretching my deck out as much as possible. Since then, I’ve done a lot of winning and feel like I have it figured out. However, I would like to state that from my understanding, MTGO and Arena are very different formats. Arena and MTGO handle the variety of rarities, bonus sheet cards, and battles differently. I’ve played exclusively on MTGO at this point. From my understanding, Arena has decreased the format’s power level. As far as I know, if you open a rare battle on Arena, there’ll be no normal rares. On MTGO, I’ve seen plenty of packs with three rares. This is my first MOM draft deck. I went 1-2 with this deck with some of the most obscene rares in the format. Where did I go wrong? I played a lot of bad creatures like Kithkin Billyrider, but mostly I played a lot of close games with good opponents who were able to handle my Glissas. I didn’t go into the draft planning to draft a deck like this, but the more I play I tend to mush all the rares I can reasonably play into my decks. Even though it’s been less than a week, this deck feels like ages ago, but many of my choices made a lot of sense. Cards like the Urn, which is a bad card, did a bunch of small things. It played well with Lurrus and fixed mana, but also I could easily cycle it off the Stormclaw Ragers. However, this deck had too many below-rate creatures and didn’t play all that well together. Next up, I believe this is my first trophy deck. This was a streamlined BW Phyrexians deck. I took advantage of the open archetype. Looking back, I wish I played less Swordsword Cavaliers and added an Unseal the Necropolis. At this point in the format I was still worried about getting run over, which doesn’t happen that often in my Bo3 experience. Boon-Bringer Valkyrie seems to appear in all my decks, and I think the card is overhyped. There are a lot of ways to halt aggression in this format and several clean answers to the Baneslayer. While the card is great, it’s probably the worst a Baneslayer has ever been because it can be cleanly answered by tons of commons, and it gets overpowered by the many rares. This is later in the format, but this deck was pristine. Sometimes an archetype is wide open, and your deck will be busted if you find an under looked archetype in a pod and the packs cooperate. One thing I’ve noticed is that you want to make your bad cards do the most they can. Here, there aren’t many bad cards, but two-mana 3/1s are not very good in this format. However, all my two-drops can one-shot connect with my Invasion of Zendikars and play nicely with Cosmic Hungers to do the same. You may look at this and see I have less commons than other rarities in this deck, and that’s honestly what you’re looking to accomplish. They load the pack up with added rarity cards, including uncommons, so you want to hold yourself to playing premium cards and find and take your lane. The crème de la crème. I started this draft with a Jegantha and moved in after immediately getting passed an Omnath. Some might think this is memeing, but it’s great to be ambitious. This is not the only time this came up for me. This is the best of my 5c Jegantha Companion decks, but it’s come up three times in just over 20 drafts, as you can see here. All these decks played out quite well, and I was surprised they were competitive. I managed to make the finals in all three, but lost two to higher-powered decks. Companions are great, and it’s worth going out of your way to try and play them. I’ll keep enjoying being passed Lutri, but you should probably stop doing it. Here are a couple of Trophy Lutri decks: I started out with a Jegantha in his deck but got a Lutri pack two, changed companions, and got paid. Lutri is obscene with the convoke removal spells, as it’s much easier to have an early huge blowout. Lutri might be the best card in the set because it’s very high impact and has the lowest companion cost. Next is a Lutri deck where it’s not great as a companion, but it’s a free card nonetheless. It’s much harder to set up Lutri with combat tricks, which was most of what this deck could use it for, however the deck’s power level is wild. In general, this format is not about beat-down and combat tricks, but it’s not a bad strategy when your top end is this strong. Lutri mostly had no impact, but I was able to close a game I was going to lose by copying a Stoke the Flames. Either way, I got Lutri this draft pick-four-pack-one, which should certainly never happen. Let’s look at more companion trophies: Yes, you can companion Lurrus and win. I like Lurrus, but you’re almost always going to need to start with it to get there. There are a lot of ways to get around its clause with incubate, so looking for those or a nice low-curve, spell-heavy deck like this one can suffice. Having a free card, especially a free two-for-one every game, is a huge upside and worth taking advantage. Next we have a Yorion deck. It barely got there on playables, and you’ll have to play some filler, but Yorion is such a strong card that it’s worth it if you can start with it and identify an open lane. You have to avoid taking dual lands and speculating, and you’ll likely have to stay in exactly two colors, but the upside is just so high. Yorion is especially good with battles, so it slides into this format perfectly. Speaking of battles, and I’ll admit that I didn’t like the concept, but they have played out much better and are more fun than I originally thought possible. I absolutely love how they affect combat. Often I want to only attack them with one creature because flipping them at the cost of a lot of life and overkilling them may not be worth it, but sometimes it’s worth the effort. Overall this is one of my favorite Limited formats. Companions coming up so frequently is fun, but also drafting with so many different rares can change how you evaluate cards in each draft. There’s a lot to be gained in sideboarding and making sure your cards line up well. I’ve seen a lot of people who dislike the format after minimal play and losing to some busted rare, and then they swear it off. You can beat most of the bombs in the format by overpowering them, getting under them, or having the right interaction. If you play more of this format and enjoy formats like Tinkerer’s Cube, then it plays a lot more like the aforementioned than a low-powered draft format. Either way I have an Arena Open this weekend, and the Pro Tour is the following weekend, which I will be battling in Limited PTQs. After that? A MOM Limited Arena Champs Qualifier. If you’re a competitive-minded player, MOM Limited is everywhere for the next few weeks and practicing will be necessary, but also in my opinion, extremely enjoyable.