Marvel Super Heroes was fun for about a week but quickly became dull. I have high hopes for The Hobbit and am excited to take a peek at what has been revealed. The last Lord of the Rings set was quite fun, but it was straight to Modern. The new set should be less powerful, and I hope it's as interesting and deep. The Queen of Dale The Queen of Dale looks like she's trying to be a playable card in both 1v1 and Commander. This is a two-drop that punishes opponents for casting a removal spell, but the punishment isn't that harsh, allowing for a loot and potentially a 1/1 left behind. That, however, is the floor, which is pretty solid. Queen of Dale won't lock anyone out of a game. Being a Legend, it's hard to play a bunch of copies. This isn't so bad since you can discard redundant copies. I still think the Queen of Dale will be underwhelming. She's not part of a personal game plan, acts more as a hatebear that won't scale well into the game, and doesn't provide enough when she trades for a removal spell early. Of note is that when played against a deck like Izzet Prowess in Standard, she opens the door for more powerful creatures when she eats a removal. Because she is competing with cards like Voice of Victory, I expect that even white aggro decks will play only a small amount, or even no copies, of The Queen of Dale. If the format were smaller and there weren't decks like Mono Green Landfall where The Queen is a dead draw, then this card may fit into Standard. My Precious Don't be fooled by this version of The One Ring. It's not in the same ballpark of power level and is likely an unplayable card outside of Limited. While the Allure of Power is passable in some contexts, we have much better versions, such as Deadly Dispute in older formats. Without that extra treasure, it's generally not a playable effect unless the other half of the card is great. My Precious, however, is not so great. While hexproof and unblockable are a strong combination, paying five full mana and two life before you can attempt to equip may make My Precious downright unplayable in competitive constructed environments. I could see a world where it's part of a toolbox of equipment with Stoneforge Mystic, but I doubt it. Unfortunately, this card is not so precious. Bilbo, Thief in the Night Bilbo, the leading character of the set, is an interesting and potentially powerful card, but it likely falls just short of being a real player in Standard. Bilbo provides no value as it enters the battlefield. While there are a few ways to take advantage of its cost-reduction effect, it's asking a lot from you. It reminds me of a card like Caustic Bronco. It can take over the game if left unchecked, but is that enough these days for a two-drop that dies to most one-mana removal spells? It may have a home depending on the format. A creature like this against a deck like Mono Green Landfall could potentially do a lot of heavy lifting, allowing you to quickly take control of the game by attacking and removing all blockers. However, Bilbo will feel bad against those decks on the draw when they come out of the gate with multiple blockers in play on a turn you can attack. An even worse scenario is when you can't afford to play a creature on turn two because your back is already against the wall. I didn't like the look of Caustic Bronco and similar cards when they were released. Bilbo could be better because it's in a stronger color, but I'm hesitant to call it good. We'll likely see people try, and fail, to make this card work. It's the kind of card I could see coming out of sideboards in control matchups where players want to board out all their removal. Bilbo will probably see a bit of play, but I doubt it becomes a real staple. Thorin, Mountain-king This is Flametongue Kavu but with a little more work and upside. Thorin, Mountain-king is an interesting equipment payoff that leaves me with more questions than answers. This and other cards I've seen lead me to believe red and the dwarves will focus on equipment, which is thematically accurate. Regardless, I've yet to see "equipment matters" synergies pay off. Assuming we get some reasonable equipment in the set, and I'm sure we will, Thorin is powerful in the right context. Equipment with high upside but high equip costs seems like a natural fit since Thorin provides a free equip while killing a creature. I could see a world where that strategy pans out, but it would take a strong mythic rare equipment that's good enough on its own and a lot of passable supporting equipment. It's likely a card that gets relegated to commander decks and, of course, a Limited all-star. I hope they can make "equipment matters" work in this set because it usually falls flat. Riddles in the Dark Riddles in the Dark can be seen as a Divination, or Quick Study more accurately, with upside. It's awkward to let your opponent see a pile, but you get to fill your graveyard while drawing extra cards. It's not quite a staple card that we'll see in every blue deck. It will likely see play in decks that want both a card-draw spell and a way to fill the graveyard. Riddles in the Dark is fairly niche. It likely won't push any graveyard decks like a reanimator deck into the metagame, but it could be a piece of the puzzle that brings something like that into existence. This is the kind of card that doesn't cross the playability threshold due to Standard's large size and the competition with so many other cards. Riddles in the Dark looks like a lot of fun, and I hope I get to cast it in some constructed decks, but I'm doubtful. Gollum, Riddle Master This is an efficient two-drop that can draw a card when it gets hit with a removal spell. If left in play, it can accumulate more of an advantage. I thought this card was excellent upon the first reading until realizing you don't draw a card per turn. Instead, you only trigger the abilities once. Gollum is still efficient enough to see play, but it's not that impressive since it can't trade early to gain all its value. This seems like the best card previewed thus far, but I'm not overly impressed since it's not broken. It's serviceable and specific to black decks trying to attack, as it doesn't synergize with much and is a value card. Gollum will potentially see play if we have a black creature deck. Many creature decks are highly synergistic, such as Mardu Monument/Discard decks, where this card lacks a function. Gollum is a cool card but is mythic in name only. It's a solid overall card despite being nothing to write home about. The Hobbit looks underpowered so far. I'm concerned with having only seen mostly rares and mythics. As a Limited-only player, it seems like it will be a little fun. I hope it hooks me in more than Marvel did, but we will have to wait and see.

The past two weeks have been a blur. The kids are out of school. I went to Canda for Alex Hayne's wedding, one of my best friends in Magic. It's been unbearably hot, especially at the wedding when we traveled to a cabin for the celebration, only to lose power and all utilities, meaning no running water and no electricity, thus no A/C. Alex was fresh off a finals appearance in the first Team Limited "GP" in years, losing to Tom Martell, another close friend of mine and who I traveled with to the wedding. Ondrej Strasky was also there, my "replacement" on Hayne and Steve Rubin's team. I've been watching a lot of Magic, more so than recent years. However, I can't get motivated to play this Marvel set, and I've been considering why. Marvel isn't a particularly bad set. It's a little better than your average cast-creatures-and-attack format, but that's about it. Some recent unpopular Limited sets, like Lorwyn and Bloomburrow, come to mind as comparisons. Yet, Marvel is worse than even the sets that I really didn't like. In my long lists of complaints about Magic sets, Marvel feels remarkably similar to Spider-Man. The set is all about getting creatures out, protecting them, and ensuring you don't lose to some really powerful creature. There are a lot of rares that are extremely tough to beat, such as Super-Hero Civil War and Doctor Doom. These cards are tough to interact with and usually end any game that's even a little close. But that's not my issue. My issue is the set stifles creativity. Comparing it to the criminally underrated Ninja Turtles, you can't do the cute four- and five-color stuff with a consistent payoff. Even if you can, it's tough to find a reason. I've done it when people are fighting over white cards and you get everything else, but the incentive is still not strong enough. Turtles had Everything Pizza. This set has, well, random bonus sheet cards. Marvel may not look like it, but it relies heavily on typal synergies, at least in some color pairs, making for boring drafting and gameplay. The big difference with other creature-heavy Universes Beyond sets, like Turtles and Spider-Man, is they were small releases, sitting at just under 200 cards. I defended their small size, believing they were fun for a week. Marvel was also fun for a week or two, but despite being a full set with almost 300 cards, it felt less diverse and interesting. Part of the diversity issue with Marvel is that the color balance is off. While I'd argue it's not as bad as many people think, it feels worse on Arena when rankings are involved. You have some people forcing white in pools with seven random players across all ranks who are focused on drafting their favorite colors or characters and don't care about winning and making the best plays. Pairing together all the tryhards leads to monotonous gameplay. It got me to thinking about why a set like Strixhaven, which also had poor balancing, didn't feel as bad as this set. I figured it out—when a set is balanced to have great mana and three- to five-color decks, you can pivot in several directions to draft a variety of archetypes, such as Sultai with a white splash, Sultai with a red splash, and so on. You could also draft those same four colors with a heavier emphasis on, say, Temur. Temur with a black splash isn't the same as Sultai with a red splash. While I drafted the same colors, my experience can be different because I'm playing different signpost uncommons, removal, and rares. In Marvel, we generally focus on two colors, sometimes splashing a busted rare. It feels like a generic core set where synergies apply but aren't crossing over much. It's hard to find a cross synergy for Villains and Heroes, similar to Goblins and Merfolk. When you force people in a direction, all the decks look and play the same, making it feel like fully exploring the set takes far fewer drafts. How would I go about fixing this? Well, I'm not a designer, and they have limitless restraints I couldn't begin to imagine. For instance, as a UB set, its simple design is inteded as a gateway to get players into the game. Making it too complicated, like Strixhaven, would turn people off. Personally, I'd love to see statistics on player retention for these sets. If I could throw out the need to keep it simple, I'd want players rewarded for having a variety of villains and heroes in different colors. An example would be that if Loki is in play then Thor gets +1/+1. This could be a global rule that applies whether Thor is under your or your opponent's control. The same kind of thing could be done for The Fantastic Four, Doctor Doom, and so forth. Rather than having to pick either heroes or villains, you could have the villains and heroes benefit each other when they're in each other's presence, like they're experiencing an adrenaline rush in anticipation for the fight. This doesn't always have to be onboard buffs and could be card advantage, life gain or loss, or anything else. There are just some quick examples of interlocking synergies rather than pushing players in a specific direction. It's also a way to enliven Marvel on your battlefield for a format like Commander where your opponent may not opt into that world. Regardless, I felt like I got Magic whiplash with Marvel. Strixhaven was a beautiful spell-focused set that allowed for long-term strategy and planning in the games and a lot of creativity in the drafts. Marvel feels nuts and bolts, just forcing you to find the open color. Hopefully it's blue or white, if not, then you figure it out. The awesome thing about current Magic is that I took a two-week break from playing because I didn't enjoy a set and I had life stuff to attend to, but the next set is around the corner. It's much easier to take a break these days and miss a set because there are so many new sets you can start fresh. Let's be honest, no one knows all the cards anyway since there are so many of them. Rant over.

Last week, I played Marvel for a short period during Early Access. I had some thoughts about the format, and while not much has changed, some things definitely have. My go-to archetype in Early Access was heavy blue decks with other colors support for removal. I utilized cheap blue creatures with equipment, bounce, and cheap counters to leverage a redundancy in solid aggressive blue one-drops. The latest development is that the secret's out, and it's no longer that easy to get the good one-drops. Aerial Doombot isn't tabling anymore, and you don't get the desired amount of one-drops to advance this strategy. The word is also out that white is likely going to be the format's dominant color, which makes a lot of sense. One of my biggest critiques of the set is that the common two-drops are lackluster. White has a few solid ones in Agent of Atlas and Brave Brawler, as well as Raft Security Officer, which improves as the game progresses. On top of this, there are a few solid white two-drops at uncommon and even some at rare. White has a premium piece of removal at common in Web Up. This card's interaction with non-creatures is important because of the diversity of other card types to interact with. Sometimes it can simply protect your creature from a Frozen in Ice, other times it's removing an enchantment like The Super Hero Civil War. Normally, I'm still drafting my decks with a good curve and plans on closing games early. However, there's been some decks where I've found people are avoiding red because it's perceived as the worst color. I'm happy to draft red when it's wide open. Lightning Strike is a premium common, so I'm happy to take what's open. Here's an example of how I was able to take a wide open red table to my best deck of the format thus far. 4c Red I managed to put together a pile of busted red rares, opening some and being passed others. This is the reward for finding the open colors. One person's trash is another's treasure. Red has some high quality uncommons. Even though the common creature suite isn't exciting, I'm happy to play Lightning Strike, as well as Repulsor Blast in a supporting role. Hawkeye's Bow is another red card that has impressed me. This isn't the deck for it since I'm trying to overpower my opponent and not do chip damage. However, Hawkeye's Bow can quickly close games alongside Hawkeye, Young Avenger. It's also nice equipment to throw on an Aerial Doombot on turn two, or to include in other aggressively slanted red decks. It's more punishing than it initially appears because it can move around and equip creatures with activated abilities. I intend to draft a lot more decks with this card in mind moving forward. Green is my top candidate for weakest color at the moment, despite stats saying otherwise. Green feels disorganized, and I don't like any of the strategies it's trying to push you into. Self-mill is ineffective and power-up is hardly a mechanic to build around. While you can definitely still win with green, I rarely find myself ending up there. Of note is that while the format is relatively fast, having mana sinks and access to card advantage, across the board, has been important in all my decks. Not spending mana, even on later turns, is often devastating. Power-up as a mechanic punishes you if you run out of gas because the creature gets large enough to make attacking or blocking impossible, so the game becomes quickly out of reach the instant you run out of cards. My current front runner for best archetype is blue-white. They're the format's best colors and both work well together. There are efficient creatures, some with evasion, and plenty of removal in white to allow you time to use blue to draw extra cards. Glorious Azorious Here's an example of a Trophy UW deck. While this deck is loaded with quality rares, the deck's strength was its ability to spend mana every turn. Between Bruce Banner, The Mindstone, and even Avengers Tower, I had access to mana sinks each turn and never ran out of gas. Speaking of rares, there are a few rares that are just over-the-top good, such as Doctor Doom, that they caused some of the fun games I played to become lopsided. While I'm all for powerful cards, the gap between the best and worst in this set is too wide. I wouldn't make those cards weaker, but I wish they had made some stuff more powerful. Overall, at common cards are relatively weak, and we see a power spike at higher rarities. However, even a lot of the uncommons are lackluster or undersupported. There's a strong correlation in my win rate to how many rares I have and how many rares I play against. This is normal, but it's more apparent in slightly more underpowered sets like this. A game can be proceeding normally, but then a rare hits the table, and I'm right-clicking concede as if what happened prior didn't matter. Regardless, we don't have this set for too long. I intend to grind it quite a bit to help teammates for the Pro Tour and with collector booster Arena Directs, which I'll also grind. I'll continue to share my thoughts and discoveries. Stay tuned.

This week, I got my hands on Marvel for the Early Access event and learned more about the set and what it offers. My first impression is that we're not in Strixhaven anymore. Let's expand on that sentiment. Strix was a format where we often saw polarizing strategies. Midrange was beaten out of the format by various control soup decks and decks like Prismari Control. Aggressive decks wanted to be built linearly, with few removal spells, a high creature count, and cards that protected those creatures. Strix, however, was an outlier to what we normally see in 2026 Limited Magic. Marvel is more of the typical, but has some twists. One thing I felt during early access is that removal was incredibly scarce. It wasn't easy to come by efficient removal and expensive spells that were four or more mana, but I always felt like I wanted more than what I had. The creatures in the format are incredibly powerful. I guess that's why they call them superheroes and supervillains. Needless to say, even one-drops are scaling into the game to become must-answer threats at some point, so a lot of the games came down to races, or a single creature dominating the board. Even though the games were not very grindy relative to a format like Strix, you do need to spend your mana in productive ways each turn. The format doesn't feel overly aggressive, but you want to build decks that can flood the board and interact with the most meaningful creatures in your way. That's to say, I like aggressive strategies far more than slower ones thus far. I found an archetype I really enjoy and felt was under-drafted in Early Access. Many people dubbed blue as the best, and while I agree for the time being, it's far too early to tell. Blue has a bevy of cheap, efficient threats that scale into the game. Notably, blue has a ton of good one-drop creatures at common and uncommon. Aerial Doombot is my current favorite common in the set. It can come down on turn one, wear equipment to deal damage early, and, as you get deeper into the game, it turns into an air elemental when you have free mana. It's a villain to boot, so it plays well with those synergies, especially Villainous Hideout, which has been fantastic for triggering effects that require you to have drawn two cards. Here's a look at a couple of these types of decks. Dimir Villains This deck used the cheap curve to enable Rewrite History, allowing me to filter a bunch of cards while picking up value when it cracked, bringing back cards like Hour of Defeat and I am Iron Man. It's still a work in progress, but while Rewrite History looks fairly bad, it's near the top of your curve, and you can flood the board. It can smooth out your draws, trigger your Kid Loki and other draw-two effects, and give you two extra cards eventually. More Bad Guys What I learned so far, at least for the best-of-one Arena meta, is that you want to be the aggressor. This means you need to focus on your one- and two-drops. Good two-drops are hard to come by in this format. In fact, it feels like there are a lot more good one-drops than two-drops. Good two-drops will be at a premium, as will the cheap removal like Lightning Strike, which will likely be the best common in the set. It may not have the highest win rate unless red ends up being the color with the highest win rate, as the two always correlate. Power-Up is a punishing ability that plays out exactly like Monstrous, where the threat of activation makes blocking difficult and heightens the feeling of always being in a footrace against the opponent. Cards that fit into that paradigm, like Justice, Vance Astrovik, are simply outstanding. We just had a set where there was a Man'O'War that wasn't a high pick because the format was not tempo-reliant. Because Marvel is a tempo-heavy format, cards like this shoot up in value. The rares didn't feel overpowered, which is kind of great. I like having powerful rares in sets, and this set has strong and fun rares, but because the overall power level is high they mostly didn't feel too bad to play against. Given how light interaction felt, I'm grateful that not every game will center on who cast the first rare. Overall, I'm having a lot of fun with the format. I have the hunch that it's not going to have nearly the staying power of a set like Strix. It may even end up in the far less replayable camp that Lorwyn fell into, despite being an objectively better set. It's still mostly just creatures attacking every turn, and anything cool and interesting is likely going to be too slow. For instance, splashing is supported just fine, but I don't want to draft decks that splash because I want to be on the front foot as much as possible, so drafting four- and five-color soup decks is not on the menu right now. Regarding the format being removal-light, I have some theories as to why it felt that way, and it may not actually be that true. The player base is overall used to Strixhaven, where every card was either a removal spell, a creature, or a way to draw a bunch of cards. The average player was likely conditioned to take removal more aggressively in Strixhaven, which I believe should have happened a long time ago. The average player in early access is far better than the one in Arena queues because it's filled with full-time content creators and Pro Tour players. As such, the removal was picked more aggressively, whereas on Arena, I'm sure we'll see Lightning Strike wheel on occasion. That kind of stuff always happens during the first week or so when newer, less experienced players are added to the mix. Regardless, I'm looking forward to playing more with Marvel and will play quite a bit, as I plan to help my testing team prepare for the Pro Tour despite not going myself. I'll have more to say next week. See you then.

We started Marvel previews last time, and we'll continue this week. I'll soon play the early access event and finally get my hands on the cards. Then, I'll pivot to more Limited-focused content, as we have an exciting series of upcoming Team Limited events, and I'll make Limited contributions to my testing team for the last PT of this PT. Let's take a peek. M.O.D.O.K M.O.D.O.K. is a fascinating card that I overlooked at first glance. I looked at it like a clunky Night of Soul's Betrayal with a small body that can interact easily with all kinds of removal. However, this card is interesting when it's played alongside Superior Spider-Man. If you play it a turn ahead of schedule, you put it into play on a more critical turn four. At that point in the game, we can kill off LLanowar Elves, Otter tokens, Earthbent lands, and more. On top of that, we get a healthier stat line as a 4/4 flying lifelink that can grow with its connive ability, which you can do at instant speed in your own turn. I like the idea of adding this to the Demon deck. It could also be used to get rid of the Doomsday part of the deck to make it a midrange strategy that can bury its opponent in card draw, efficient interaction, and creatures that must be answered. Connive will also let you put cards in your graveyard for future Superior Spider-Men, potentially building a deck more like Reanimator, except with castable creatures that can resist Rest in Peace. This is a cooler card than I gave it credit for on my initial read. I'm excited to put it into play. Loki, God of Mischief I did an initial write-up of Loki after misreading it as a spell or ability and thinking it was completely absurd. Now, I think it's solid. Loki plays nicely with various equipment, much like Nadu used to, though it's not nearly as broken with a once-a-turn limit cap. Cards Relic of Progenitus and other graveyard hate cards can make it trigger on your and your opponent's turn. When combined with Mishra's or Urza's Bauble, you have a nice two-drop engine creature. While Loki has a variety of applications, you will likely want to slot it into decks and only soft-build around it rather than go all the way. We can also play Loki alongside various creatures with effects like Luminarch Aspirant that trigger and target every turn. There are many ways to make Loki pop, and I expect it to find a home. If the card said "spell or ability you control," rather than just "ability you control," it would be the clear-cut best card in the set. Right now, it's a lot more work for the same payoff, but that payoff is certainly there. This is a solid card that will be fun to tune. Black Widow, Super Spy Black Widow is a solid, efficient two-drop with snowball potential. She reminds me a lot of Caustic Bronco or Glint-Sleeve Siphoner in overall rate. While those were fairly solid cards, Magic, especially Standard, is at a much higher power level these days. This card may potentially find a home, but I doubt we will see her much. The aforementioned cards were also not Legendary, so there wasn't as big a risk in running a full play set to increase your chances of having your snowball two-drop on turn two. However, Black Widow is, and that makes her more difficult to play four in confidence, given it's already at the borderline of playability. It's also worth noting that playing your opponent's cards in many cases, especially in a Standard format like this, will often be a downside, not an upside. Let's say I'm a Dimir Midrange-style deck and I connect with Black Widow, then I "may play" an Eddymurk Crab or a Sapling Nursery. It's a cool card. I love that evasion makes it connect more, but I don't think we'll see much from Black Widow, unfortunately. Monica, Rambeau / Photon of Living Light Monica Rambeau's front side is nothing to write home about. A three-mana 3/3 flying prowess creature is a below-rate three-drop creature. I think of that side as just an added upside of maybe I don't have a way to spend mana on turn three and this will give me that. Photon is the part that interests me, as it's a five-mana hexproof creature with Prowess, which can punish some decks that are trying to play a slower game. The word hexproof is scary for some decks, and we haven't seen many creatures with those keywords. In addition to hexproof, we can cycle some cantrips and put counters on our team, giving it an almost Ouroboroid feel in some spots, except it has hexproof. You want to play this in a shell where Photon is the top of the curve and in a deck with a bunch of token-producing non-creature spells that take advantage of the ability to spread counters, both triggering it and producing more. This is a cool and very powerful card, but it's more of a build-around than a staple. I'm not sure it's worth building around because the strategy of white decks flooding the board isn't appealing in a world with Mono Green Landfall and Various Cub decks doing the same kind of thing, but much better. Hawkeye, Master Marksman I absolutely love the flavor design for Hawkeye. While the card is likely not good enough for Standard these days, it wasn't too far off. Hawkeye's biggest weakness is basically dying to Burst Lightning and other cheap removal while providing no value. Regardless, if Hawkeye were to remain unchecked by removal, it would be a nightmare for the opponent. It can flexibly attack all game stats. In a close grindy game, you get to spend two mana to deal an extra two on attack and rummage to find more gas. An all-out race? Remove a blocker and deal an extra two if you have the mana. This card wants to play in a deck that can make full use of its abilities. An aggressive red deck would be the place, but Standard is far too powerful these days for a card like Hawkeye. Mono Green Landfall is threatening to kill you a turn after this attacks once, and Izzet decks kill this for one mana while throwing a card in their graveyard to work towards their endgame of putting Eddymurk Crab into play. Hawkeye, unfortunately, like many other efficient creatures from this set, would be quite strong in formats of old. In 2026, there are only a few cards that can break into Standard, and I don't think Hawkeye will be one of them unless things drastically slow down. That will wrap up my previews for Marvel. The set overall looks relatively weak for Standard, with a few standout cards that I'll have to see in action. I'm excited to see things develop. Who knows — maybe, like last year, there will be a massive ban wave this summer that shakes things up for some of these potentially playable cards.

I'm still loving Strixhaven, but we have another epic-looking set just around the corner. We are just a few short days away from the next arrival: Marvel Super Heroes. I've loved Marvel Comics since I was a kid, though mostly just the aesthetics. I collected the books but never read them. Regardless, I love the world and characters, so I'm interested in digging in and immersing myself in my favorite game. Let's take a quick look at a few of the cards that seem intriguing. Namor the Sub-Mariner This is the first card that jumped out at me. I was never the biggest Namor fan, and I know almost nothing about his character, yet the card kept getting better as I read it. At first, Namor looked like another silly Merfolk payoff, but as I kept reading, I realized it's actually another juiced-up Young Pyromancer. Namor has four critical points of toughness to dodge removal, like Lightning Bolt early. It will also scale into the game and allow you to play it, cast your cantrips, and create tokens while hitting for a ton of damage if left unchecked. Namor is not the kind of card you can leave in play. It looks well-suited for a deck like Izzet Prowess with Opt and Sleight of Hand, as well as cards like Octopus Form, potentially. Namor reminds me a lot of Tempest Djinn. It could allow for a mono-blue tempo deck where we play "protect the king" and try to solo the opponent with it, protecting it with various tricks and counterspells. This is a strong card that I expect will see play, potentially outside of Standard as well. I'm interested in whether we can leverage a deck that can play Namor and Practiced Offense, as they seem like a great pairing. Captain Marvel is a juiced-up Baneslayer Angel that threatens to punish creature decks if they tap out into an opponent with five open mana and seven total mana sources. Despite the days of expensive, game-ending, five-mana, five-power creatures being mostly over, Captain Marvel brings a unique squeeze capability in a white control deck. When playing against control, you're often tiptoeing around their countermagic and card draw to deny them good spots to use their mana. For instance, when UW Teferi was one of the most popular decks, its card draw outside of Teferi was just a few Glimmer of Genius. You'd often want them to cast a spell when they had four mana up, forcing them to interact through an Absorb or something else that makes their mana usage awkward. With Captain Marvel around, if you tap too low and can't answer at instant speed, then by the time you're untapping, you may be facing a 6/5 flying indestructible flier. Not many people are beating that. This card design is excellent for modern Magic. It's not too powerful, you can potentially interact with it with removal capable of exiling, and it will have its moments as the best thing you could have. Captain Marvel is mostly a Standard card. However, I'd expect it to show up sometimes and ensure that red aggressive decks and similar stay honest. Doctor Doom Doctor Doom, one of my favorite villains in the Marvel Universe, will hopefully replace Grave Titan in cubes everywhere. This card is reminiscent of that iconic six-drop, coming into play with nine power spread across three bodies. Doctor Doom is indestructible as long as his bots are around. He will trigger on entry, so there's a brief window you could interact if there are no other plans or artifact creatures in play. Doctor Doom will also refill your hand as it sits in play, rather than produce more on-board value like Grave Titan. Regardless, it will still be able to snowball games if left unchecked. This type of creature doesn't usually see much play, but it has specific matchups in which it could be good. It's powerful, but it may be too clunky in large Standard sets where people are goldfishing wins on turn four routinely. However, it's possible we see Doctor Doom in a deck alongside Superior Spider-Man. If any deck can play a midrange game plan, then it's a strong six-drop creature. Thor, God of Thunder Mjolnir, Hammer of Thor Let's take a look at Thor, God of Thunder. This is one of the coolest designs I've seen in Magic. I have to give credit where it's due. Thor would be nothing without his trusty Hammer, Mjolnir, and the flavor is just fantastic. Thor is unique as a five-mana 5/5 flier that functions as a Snapcaster effect. It can recycle cheap removal like a Lightning Bolt or set up for the following turn to literally drop the Hammer. While five-mana 5/5s are not what they used to be, you can tap out for this one and recoup the value on the next turn by casting the spell that it exiled. If you're lucky enough to keep it in play, its static effect of dealing damage equal to the spell's cost will take over the game. I'd love to pair this card with Traumatic Technique, as it's an X spell that will scale doubly with your mana when Thor is in play, while also being a cheap piece of selection. Mjolnir sweeping up the little creature early, then Thor coming down to drop the Hammer is just such a sweet design. It is easily my favorite pair of cards in the set. While I'm skeptical they'll actually be competitive, it's not out of the realm of possibility, but it's very unlikely. World War Hulk I wanted to cover at least one card of every color. There are some interesting green cards, but none of them really pop. World War Hulk has an effect I've always adored—putting large creatures into play for free. While Atraxa is no more in Standard, we still have Cubs, Gearhulks, and of course, Craterhoof. Likely, there's only a narrow chance this plays out well. It is a powerful effect that can win games on its own, and as Standard grows, there will only be more things to cheat into play. The flavor of this set looks great so far. I love the alternate art comic cards, and the cards seem interesting. At the time of this writing, I'm playing my last weekend of Strixhaven in the Arena Limited Champs Qualifier. However, I'm looking forward to early-access Marvel.

There was a highly anticipated B&R announcement this past week. If you haven't seen it yet, take a look here! At the Pro Tour, several friends and colleagues were discussing what they think would, or should, happen in Standard. While that's the only format I'm fresh enough in at the moment, I certainly had my opinions as well. Let's start with the only format that was really altered, Modern. I don't have strong opinions on the decisions, but I'm glad they removed some banned cards to mix things up, especially with a Pro Tour on the horizon. While the unbanning of Violent Outburst is a head-scratcher, it makes a lot of sense when you realize Mox Opal is once again legal. Right? Regardless, I know Pro Tour players are excited about the shake-up, and it should make for some interesting new brews in the format, which is great. Speaking of interesting new brews, let's get into Standard and why things should have changed. Right now, there's a two-deck squeeze with Landfall and Izzet decks and their many iterations. Both decks are resilient and punishing. They threaten fast kills, and in both cases, we now see ultra-efficient interaction. We had to throw out decks that were too bad against either when testing for the Pro Tour. Guess what? They all were, and we tried a lot. Landfall is easier to beat than Prowess, and Prowess plays the boogeyman role of scaring away everything interesting that people are brewing. The combination of a fast clock and interaction like Spell Pierce makes four- and five-mana non-creature spells too expensive. The ability to play a cheap crab to tap down big creatures and clock the opponent makes it hard to win with creatures as well. For well over a year, I've said Stormchaser's Talent is the main culprit behind a lot of Izzet's punishing starts. I still believe that but currently more in theory than practice. Let me explain. Talent into Boomerang Basics is an obscenely powerful start, which I won't knock. Despite this, Stormchaser's Talent is too clunky on its level costs for the way the format is moving. Our plan at the Pro Tour against Landfall was to cut them from our deck and win with Sunderflocks. However, midrange and control decks struggle to keep up with the value of Stormchaser's Talent. The card offers a sense of inevitability that's challenging to contend with. It pushes players to shorter games, meaning decks like Landfall, Cub, and Izzet Prowess, rather than slower Lessons decks, end up eating a larger slice of the metagame pie than is reasonable. Stormchaser's Talent should have been banned a while ago, and it definitely should be now. I sympathize that there are upcoming RCs in the next few weeks and not wanting to meddle much. I'm hoping this causes a forced rotation over the summer, which they've done before. It's difficult to perfectly balance a large Standard, as we have now, without occasionally pulling levers. As a company, they should want me to play with new cards, and as a player, I want to play with new cards. It's boring to play with the same 73 out of 75 cards every year. If we want a longer rotation time, it would behoove the community to have a heavier hand on the scale to tip things. If we banned Stormchaser's Talent, would that make Landfall the best deck that needs fixing, too? That's a tougher question to answer. I believe the answer is yes, but then we have to determine what to eliminate. A friend of mine at the Pro Tour suggested Earthbending Ascension, which is a good callout. It would destroy Landfall but leave other decks alone. The most busted card in the deck, outside of arguably Badger Mole Cub, is Mightform Harmonizer. Even so, Harmonizer with Full Bore was a cool deck that should be available as a potential metagame option. The most obvious answer is Badgermole Cub, but that card, while powerful, is more exploitable. It would hurt Landfall more than people give it credit for, as it juices the deck's consistency. While it's not there to produce mana, the cheap Earthbend trigger on a Fabled Passage is a massive reason the deck performs so well. Making any single thing harder for Landfall would weaken the deck a lot since alternative options are extremely weak. I'm on board with any of these three cards getting the axe, but Earthbending Ascension is a good option because it won't bother other decks while shaking up the format. My primary priority would be banning Stormchaser's Talent and pigeonholing Izzet decks into a more homogenized deck. Then, when building your deck, you won't need to account for unlimited iterations of a similar deck that can all punish you in different ways. Looking forward, I hope Marvel can stir up Standard, as I've become a bit of a fan of the format ever since playing the AC and would love to dabble again. Regardless, I won't be touching it as long as it's just dual-deck Badgermole Cub against Stormchaser's Talent. That's my take on how the banning should go down. If not now, then at the next announcement, if Marvel can't shake things up enough.

Secrets of Strixhaven Limited is one of my favorite formats of all time. Despite its flaws, it restored a place where spells are more powerful than threats. We haven't played Magic like that in a long time. With Arena Limited Champs Qualifiers around the bend, it's a good time to brush up on Strix's dominant strategy. As someone who currently plays mostly Limited, my team trusted me with running parts of the Limited meeting. I focused on the soup archetype, which is any deck that's more than just a single school, often four or five colors, and generally very controlling. I will tell you what I told my team going into the Pro Tour: I'm not necessarily looking to draft soup at the PT, largely because realistic expectations for Arena and PT drafts have never been further apart. Strixhaven is a powerful format with a lot of heavy hitters, yet everyone at the PT knows how to draft multi-color decks. Because of that, it's hard to get the same kind of late pickups that you would on Arena. Admittedly, I was off, but not by much. I noticed many friends were timid. They drafted conservatively, almost as if they were scared. This isn't uncommon at this level. It usually happens because of nerves, inexperience, and a lack of confidence. People are scared to 0-3, so they stick to their comfort zone of two-color combinations, maybe with a light splash. I like to approach the format by drafting the best card from the first few packs and see what opens up. I'm generally biased towards Lorehold or Prismari as a base, even though Quandrix is the most reliably open. From there, I pick a two-color base and slightly branch off depending on what's allowed by the mana I'm picking up. If I start with two colors and lightly splash others for some removal, bombs, and converge cards, then I don't need as many lands compared to taking the best card each time and hoping the mana works out. Let's say I start with a Quandrix, UG base of cards. I can then branch into both Prismari and Witherbloom splashes, providing access to cards like Grapple with Death and Prismari cards like Stress Dream. This enables the converge outlets that I want to play. Arcane Omens, Sundering Archaic, and Snarl Song are examples of premium uncommon pickups in these spots. Bear in mind that Potioner's Trove is the format's best common for this strategy. Nothing else comes close. However, I don't want to start my draft with a Trove because it will bias my picks, and I may not end up with a powerful enough deck to play soup, in which case I'd rather have a linear aggressive deck that can punish slow starts. Since a cash-prize Limited Qualifier is coming up, we will play most remaining drafts on Arena. The pods will be tricky. Some will be tough, others soft, and you can draft as you would in a normal Arena Bo1 draft. I'm using my normal approach of identifying an open school and picking up powerful cards when they leak through. It's massive to play converge cards because they account for so much of the set's power level outside of rares. It's a huge win to play them when others aren't. Since soup is such a massive part of the format, there's a lot of value in playing cards like Spell Pierce, Disdainful Stroke, other counterspells, and even cards that protect creatures in an aggro deck. Because many soup decks play few creatures, you don't want to load your deck with removal if you're in an aggressive deck. I'd try to hard cap it around four, maybe a fifth if it's attached to a creature, such as Poisoner's Apprentice/Sundering Archaic. Generally, it's better to have some hand disruption, like Render Speechless, try to push damage in combat, and move through your opponent's creatures rather than having to kill them all. This format has several polarizing matchups. Some soup decks will have wildly different power levels and pieces of important interaction for each other, so it's difficult to build your deck to beat aggro and have a heavy advantage in mirrors. In Bo1, you have to do your best to build a balanced deck because you can't fix it for game two and three. Arcane Omens is by far the best card to have in these soup mirrors because it will still be good against aggro decks if you play it on curve or a turn ahead while destroying the opponent's ability to play a long game. You empty their hand and limit them to what's directly on top of their deck for the next few turns. You want to have enough win conditions, though you don't need a ton, and you don't really need creatures. You can get away with a few copies of Visionary's Dance and a Divergent Equation to bring them back. If you play a low amount of win cons, you have to be comfortable playing long games that require planning and, at times, precise play, so you have enough left in the tank to close the game out. I wouldn't be afraid to play some creatures. People believe it's like Constructed, in that if they have almost no win cons yet build a controlling deck, then they can blank their opponent's removal in hand and win a long game of card advantage. In reality, if you can't close, and they don't concede, then you may not have enough win cons to fight through their stocked-up removal. If you draw extra cards and they don't, then you'll get decked with a handful of spells because you can't get them to zero. Ideally, you want a punishing bomb that closes the game on its own or a loop with Zealous Lorecaster, for example. This could be some Pull from the Grave nonsense, or even better, just enough Visionary's Dances and ways to bring them back to overwhelm your opponent. It usually doesn't take more than three casts, with two usually being enough. To wrap this quick synopsis, I'd caution against drafting five colors, taking a bunch of cards with no overlapping colors, and expecting the mana to work out. It just doesn't work like that when people are competing for the Troves, Lands, and other fixing. Try to stick to four colors across three schools and expand from there as your mana allows. Good luck!

I recently had the pleasure of playing my first Pro Tour in quite a while. Ever since the change to organized play, I have made minimal effort in playing Pro Tours. Instead, I have focused my energy in Magic on my writing, streaming, and an overall more casual approach. They always rope you back in somehow, though. I qualified directly through Arena, and while the chances to play PTs will likely be few and far between, it's enough for me if that's my sole source of invites. I tested with TCGPlayer, the team I've always played with, for this event. While I couldn't mention a team that didn't approach me in some way, Matt Nass and Sam Pardee are two players I've tested with for as long as I was a mainstay on the PT, and my loyalty lies with them completely. It still feels good to be asked. That never changes. Testing for this event was tumultuous. We had a tight turnaround with about seven or eight days from set release to deck submission. A lot needed to be done in that window. Standard is large, meaning a new set will usually have less impact, but it's still evolving, which has become a hang-up for many teams. Izzet Prowess was our deck to beat. It ended up being 30% of the field, which we more or less predicted, especially as our frontrunners during testing tended to be variants of the deck. We all knew that Izzet Prowess was the best deck regarding how much it punished specific brews. Cards like Resonating Lute, Professor Dellian Fel, and even Together as One seemed like promising new cards to play with, but alas, they all folded to a deck with a few copies of Spell Pierce. Even though Izzet Prowess punished all of our brews and warped the format entirely, we recognized that Prowess beating Landfall in the past didn't hold up in testing. Partway through the process, we added some Sunderflocks to our sideboard. We felt we had flipped the Landfall matchup from close to solidly favorable, which held up in the tournament, at least against the Mono Green version. The version that the team of the eventual champion, Nathan Steuer, brought to the event was tough for us. We tested a white splash with Erode, but it didn't get past phase one. That was almost certainly a hole in our testing. We had two players planning to play Landfall, but they mostly played the villain for us rather than having us improve the deck, since most believed that Prowess would be favored. David Rood was one of these players. Twenty-four hours before submission, he was 99% sure he was playing Landfall, then two hours later, he was sleeving up and tracking down his Prowess cards because of the Sunderflock package. He, like the rest of us, felt that it flipped the matchup in a meaningful way. Here's the list I ultimately registered: I was nervous registering this deck, as I didn't feel entirely confident with it, especially after getting slapped around by Edgar Magalhaes in mirrors the night before submission. However, I felt the most comfortable in the event in mirrors, though I lost more than I won, with every game going to the person on the play. The games were often long and close, generally coming down to that last bit of tempo. One thing that made us fairly excited to play this deck version was that most people online were moving to Colorstorm Stallion. In our testing, the Stallion was not only a serious liability against Landfall, but it seemed to make the deck clunky in mirrors. Simply plotting a Slickshot before a Stallion hit the table made the Stallion much less castable without a big punishment waiting in the wings. I've been asked a few times why I didn't play the deck Matt Nass and Noah Mah played. While Matt didn't win, I believe his was the best deck in the room. Matt's brain chose a poor time to stop working, something I'm very sympathetic to, as I had similar things happen at the event. His deck was a massive favorite against the Landfall deck, which Nathan even agreed with at a post-event lunch. In fact, if I were looking to RCs in the next two weeks, I'd heavily test Matt's deck and look back to Izzet Prowess with Elusive Otters and no crabs, with the goal of trying to attack what is sure to be a Selesnya takeover. I didn't play the deck because we barely played any games with it and weren't confident it was good against Prowess. To be clear, I still am unsure it's actually good against a practiced and knowledgeable Prowess pilot. However, seeing Matt's deck for the first time, I told him with confidence that he would be a solid favorite against Prowess in the event and that he may lose some Top 8 equity with his deck choice if Prowess players can formulate plans and workarounds in the matchup. Ultimately, there were no Top 8 Prowess decks, so Matt's lane looked very good for a repeat PT win. However, as said before, his brain stopped functioning during a key spot, and he threw away a game or two against arguably the best player in the world right now, Nathan Steuer. Players like that will punish your mistakes. I finished 9-7, which is a finish I'm happy with. I lost my last three rounds in Constructed and felt guilty playing them with intrusive thoughts of scooping and even having conversations with my opponents, none who I knew and all very pleasant opponents. I have no interest in going to Europe for Modern and coming home with Covid, as being laid out an extra few days made that even clearer. I had an absolute blast at the event. There was only one damper, which was a self-inflicted issue against a teammate. I played Edgar Magalhaes in the second draft finals. I was 5-0 in Limited and had a strong Silverquill aggro deck. I had played a Concilator's Duelist on a cluttered board and drew an Adventurous Eater. Casting the Adventurous Eater, I realized I had a loop with the two cards. However, I only had the Duelist in play once before in the match prior and only killed Snarl Song tokens with it, so the only initial shortcuts I had in my head were from when I read the card in Early Access. Long story short, I tried to instantly flicker Adventurous Eater when I untapped with it several times. On the last use of black mana spent, I remembered an Arena opponent killing me by removing a blocker. While my plan was to kill his token with it (thankfully, I didn't because then neither of us may have noticed), I chose to remove a 3/3 blocker instead, which immediately clicked with him. He picked up my card, read it, and said we needed to call a judge. He was right, of course. While not much damage was done, and we were able to rewind to the beginning of the turn, it looked awful. The judges reasonably questioned me as to why I'd have processed it that way. It was simply a case of me creating mental shortcuts and relying only on Arena experiences, which created an awkward situation I still think about and feel guilty about days later. I was a massive favorite at that point in the game, but if I had been allowed to make that play, then it would have been worse than the available legal play of just keeping my Eater in combat. Not only was the play weird and looked bad, but it also would have been wrong. I ended up losing a tough-to-lose game, which relieves some of the guilt, but I still don't like that the situation happened at all. Overall, I was happy with how I drafted. While my seats were relatively easy to draft, I navigated them well and ended up with likely the best deck at my table both times. My opponents' decks in the finals were very good, but mine were excellent. The number one thing I wanted out of this was spending time with my friends and seeing everyone again. I got that. My number two was drafting in the big leagues and proving to myself I still have it, and I definitely did that, too. Moving forward, I plan to help my teammates with Limited, as some of them are younger and not as confident. Being part of the process is my favorite part. The tournament is just where we get to display the work we put in, but the part I enjoy the most is figuring out the puzzle, not necessarily putting it together at the end. There are still a lot of Strixhaven Limited events on the horizon, so I'll share some more specific thoughts on the format next time. For now, I'm going to rest up, kick this illness, and get back into fighting shape. Congrats to everyone who met their goals at the event. There were so many people who were happy to win their final matches, and those smiles and that passion are just awesome. I was glad to see it in person again. Hopefully, I'll be back when I want to be and can experience it again, but I won't pressure myself to play a bunch of PTs in a row like in the past. There are so many important things in life, and while I absolutely love Magic, there are several ways to engage with it, which is enough for me.

Early Access recently ended for Secrets of Strixhaven on MTG Arena. For the first time in a while, I can't wait to get back to playing it. Some of the latest Limited sets have been a bit tame, or I knew I'd quickly burn out on them after playing a few times. Strixhaven, however, is an absolute banger. We once again have our bonus sheet fully intact, and on top of that, we also have a set that's as soupy as you can get— good fixing, good card draw, solid creatures, and a solid suite of removal. Converge is present in almost every deck, and I've been very happy with the converge cards I've come across. Because of treasures, various green ramp, and a plethora of lands, the fixing is great. The set feels deep. I was often struggling to find cuts rather than playables, unlike a set like Lorwyn, where you'd often have to play a few stinkers because the commons were very weak. This isn't the case with Strixhaven. While I only had a few drafts under my belt, my early assessment is that there's only one strong aggro deck—Orzhov. Orzhov's game plan is to snowball effects that trigger when you target a creature with a spell. This means removal or any random combat trick will generate more value on its face. I often tried to draft streamlined two-color decks, but they always turned into multicolor super decks. Let's take a look at a handful of my decks from Early Access. Prismari Converge As you can see, this was a normal Prismari deck until I opened a Together as One, which made me want to splash more cards, and I picked up a Snarl Song and a Quandrix. Because of my access to powerful converge spells, I played a Fields of Strife instead of a mountain to support larger convergence. Colorstorm Stallion was impressive. I thought it would be weaker than the common removal I passed up, but I realized its strength the first time I drew it with Rapturous Moment. I triggered it multiple times in the same turn, creating an entire battlefield of massive horses and one-shotting my opponent. This sequence will likely be common and is one to watch for. Prismari is one of the frontrunners for my favorite archetype. It has access to a lot of card advantage, and nearly all gold uncommons are premium. Additionally, it supports converge incredibly well, with access to card draw to find mana sources, as well as Seize the Spoils and Goblin Glasswright providing treasures to juice up converge costs. Quandrix Converge Quandrix may be the archetype best suited to converge. It has access to Shared Roots out of the bonus sheet and to Studious First-Year, one of the best commons in the set. Most converge cards are strong if supported, even though they are not all equal. This deck had the option of playing three Transcendent Archaic. I could have reasonably gotten away with it, which is a wild thing to say about a seven-drop. Regardless, I was getting the card during the last pick. I'd prefer not to play more than one copy, but in the absence of other good card draw and top end, it does the trick if you can reliably ramp to it. Noxious Newt is solid but not as good as Frog Butler. Providing only one color of mana is a worse starting point in a set like this, where you want to splash around. Archaic's Agony is one of the worst converge spells, and one you want to hit all five mana colors on or else its playability drops off a cliff. You can play it for four but not happily. One card that surprised me was Fractalize, the last card I included. Fractalize plays well as a combat trick that can make their creature into a 1/1 in combat for a single blue mana, but it also scales into the game and can be used as a Fireball, making an unblocked creature deal damage equal to the amount you can spend on it. While I hate combat tricks, I feel like I'll lose to Fractalize out of nowhere in spots or use it to steal games. This deck was propped up heavily by its rares. Even though it was good, I would have liked it much less if I lacked a couple of the rares, like Quandrix. It's worth noting that both green dragons I played have anti-synergy with converge, and it comes up more than I'd like. While I did not cascade into Archaic's Agony with Quandrix, my opponent did, and it likely cost them the game. Witherbloom Converge Most of the decks I drafted touched on converge in at least some manner. Here's another example of that. I finished this draft in its entirety because it was the last deck I drafted in early access and managed to get all seven wins. Studious First-Year is a stellar common. When you get a few, you can go crazy with how you want to approach the draft. This deck started as Quandrix, but Witherbloom ended up so open that I was pushed into it after tabling a lot of cards. This draft was very informative, as I learned how strong a few cards were. First, the deck's MVP was Arcane Omens. It was obscene in every game, even against aggro, because I ramped it out early for a large amount with Studious First-Year. I ramped on turn two, made a meaningful play on three, and then boom, they had no hand. My cheap creatures, like Postmortem Professor and Teacher's Pest, were cheap plays that got me on the board and triggered infusion for my Follow the Lumarets or Old-Growth, Educator, though my deck wasn't fully focused on infusion. I thought Professor might end up being pretty bad in this deck, but I convinced myself to play it because it could be used on defense in conjunction with Strixhaven Skycoach. Professor and Skycoach overperformed. My previous experiences with Skycoach were that I had too few creatures to crew it, but it wasn't an issue. A solid interaction I discovered was Applied Geometry on Strixhaven Skycoach. Skycoach finds you the mana to cast Geometry initially, and then you get another land to continue making land drops. The best part is you don't usually have to worry about them having removal for Skycoach since it's a vehicle when you target it, but you get a permanent 6/6 flyer that draws you a land. You can always target a land with Geometry to avoid these things, but having the flying and the extra land in hand has a lot of value. Witherbloom, the Balancer has been a big disappointment. It's playable, not that exciting, and the affinity effect was a downside because it ruined converge on multiple occasions. I will play it if I can cast it, but I'm not going to take it over a good common removal or anything. I was impressed with Follow the Lumarets in this archetype. I worried that it'll be tough to trigger infusion reliably in a soupier deck, but its fail case isn't bad. I'm happy to play two copies in a deck like this if I can trigger infusion occasionally. Strixhaven is my favorite Limited set that's come out since Final Fantasy. Some of the formats that have come out since have been fun, Strixhaven is incredibly deep. While decks will often look similar and soupy, there are so many cards to explore that it makes every draft feel different. I suspect I'll like this set even more than Final Fantasy when all is said and done. I'm prepping hard for the Pro Tour, so I plan to dive deep into every archetype and Standard deck, and I will update on all that as soon as I can. If you were on the fence about playing Strixhaven because Lorwyn and TMNT weren't your thing, Strixhaven is the polar opposite of Lorwyn, so you should enjoy it quite a bit.

Last week, I had some thoughts on some of the newly revealed cards. While the full spoiler isn't out as I'm writing this, it will be by the time you're reading it. Regardless, I found some more spicy cards to talk about. Let's dig in. Emeritus of Abundance Emeritus of Abundance is yet another prepared creature with an iconic spell attached. While I've loved Regrowth since I first started playing Magic, this card doesn't give me that Regrowth feeling. It feels more like Den Protector, but it's substantially worse in most cases. Den Protector's evasive ability wasn't irrelevant, but its most important part was the ability to unmorph at instant speed. This allowed for sequences like playing it on five mana, passing the turn with a removal spell or counterspell, and using unspent mana at the end step, then spending it during the following turn if necessary. We lose this line with Emeritus. Contextually, Standard's green decks are far from interactive, and this kind of card is better with cheap interaction and in grinding-focused games. The best green decks in Standard at the moment are Landfall and Cub decks, both of which are more about explosive starts. For all these reasons, I'm lower on Emeritus of Abundance, but it still has a nice-sized body for turn three or to play off of an Elf, so you don't immediately die to removal. It also attacks and blocks, which is fairly big. I'll test this card and think it has potential, even if we only see it in Nature's Rhythm decks. Emeritus of Conflict Before the set's release, I made a prediction on which iconic spells we were going to see, which Mark Rosewater spoiled. I nailed every one of them, including this Lightning Bolt. This creature is interesting because it becomes prepared. It's not easy to cast three spells in a turn, and it likely won't happen often. However, if I understand this correctly, prepared spells will count towards this number, including the spell itself. While it's not easy to get rolling, once you get it prepared, you may be able to do something like cast Lightning Bolt, two more spells, then cast a second Lightning Bolt when it becomes prepared again, even on the same turn. The downside is that this is a mediocre creature to start the game. It's likely best in a deck like Prowess with multiple cantrips, such as Opt and Sleight of Hand, to keep the spells flowing. I suspect this card is too much work for the payoff and that it will have no life in Standard. This is the kind of card that will likely get most of its shine in Cube or something as a filler two-drop that has some cool, albeit unspectacular, moments. Germination Practicum Here is another cycle of mythic rares with the new mechanic paradigm. We get to cast this spell every turn as long as it resolves initially. This is a massive payoff for decks with a lot of mana creatures and Cubs, but it's also slow. The current Cub deck can consistently put a Craterhoof in play by turn four or, at the least, an Ouroboroid on turn three, and this is worse than both of those plays. Paradigm is awesome conceptually, and this may not be the best showcase for it. That it's a lesson means this or another one from the cycle may see some play in a format like Pioneer with the learn mechanic. Regardless, this card is too slow for modern Standard, while it would have been strong in the past. The paradigm mechanic looks like a lot of fun. Even if nothing jumps out as notably strong, they will likely have places as sideboard bullets in any deck that plays learn cards. It's also important to keep these kinds of bullets in mind if they ever revisit the learn mechanic. Erode There was a time when this card would have been printed in Standard, and people would have gone nuts about reprinting Path to Exile. While that may no longer be the case, I suspect this card will see some play. The biggest issue with a card like this, compared to a card like Get Lost, is that it's horrible to play in the early game. Spending mana early to crack map tokens is not advancing the state of your board in a meaningful way, so the maps sit there for a bit. Erode, however, will let your opponents develop mana too early and pull ahead on the board. Mana spent in 2026 is more powerful than mana spent in 2010, so the downside is more massive. That doesn't mean we won't see a few copies of Erode in white decks, but we likely won't see full play sets of Erode. I like having cards like this in rotation to keep deck building in check and force people to play some basic lands. Despite that, we won't see much of this card because of its brutal cost to cast it early, and Standard is faster than ever, making it important to cast cards like this early, especially if you're playing a control deck. It's cool to see an homage to Path to Exile that can also hit planeswalkers, but the secret is out that Path to Exile is not what it used to be. Flow State Flow State is interesting, reminiscent of Explosive Iteration, and with a little work, it will net you a two-mana Divination. I've seen a lot of people high on this card, but I'm not as convinced yet. We already have Accumulate Wisdom in Standard. At full capacity, this card is not as good, but you get to play it in other decks. Specifically, I could see it in Spellementals or Izzet Prowess. As far as Izzet Prowess is concerned, this has a shot at replacing Stock Up. It doesn't mean that you're casting spells on the first few turns rather than creatures, so I'm not so sure. It looks better in a deck like Spellementals, but it could likely find a home in either. One thing about Flow State is that you need a nice mix of sorceries and instants. Redundant copies of Flow State help fuel each other, so you can go lighter on sorceries. Regardless, this card should see a good amount of play as a piece of advantage and selection, with a fail state of being a sorcery-speed Anticipate. Impractical Joke Impractical Joke is a new, cheap removal spell that should work well in Izzet decks along with Flow State. Playable cheap sorceries are harder to come by, so this one does the trick. This is an awesome, efficient removal spell for hitting that third point of toughness to kill something like a Surrak or Ashling for a single mana. I'm hesitant to play a card like this in a format where Slickshot Show-Off is in the most popular deck. It's also inconvenient when you're on the play to have this in your hand against a mana elf if you plan to spend two mana on turn two. There's a downside to having too many sorceries in place of instants, but I still suspect we'll see many copies of Impractical Joke in red decks moving forward, in both the main deck and sideboard. I'll be back next week with some more previews. So far, it looks like Izzet gets even more goodies. I already have my Steam Vents playset packed in my suitcase for the PT. Hopefully, the team and I find something even better to play, though. See you next week when the full set is available.

Strixhaven previews have arrived, and they look quite spicy. I'm more invested in this set release than I have been in years, as I stumbled from the comfort of my desk into a PT invite on Magic Arena. Let's start with an iconic preview: Ancestral Recall. Emeritus of Ideation That's right, we have the chance to literally cast Ancestral Recall in Standard. Emeritus of Ideation showcases the new ability prepare. A prepared creature can cast the spell in its textbox. Emeritus of Ideation comes onto the battlefield prepared, so if you have a spare blue mana in play when it enters, you can immediately cast Ancestral. On top of that, we have a five-mana 5/5 flyer with ward 2. We can internalize this as a UUU3 5/5 flying that draws three cards when it enters, essentially. On top of that, it can cast again with some work. Basically, it starts with an Ancestral, and if you can attack, then cast a Delved Treasure Cruise. Is this card strong enough for Standard? Five-mana cards are few and far between these days in top decks. In most top decks, the most expensive cards we see cost about four mana, and games can end before this card hits the battlefield. Additionally, there's another broken five-drop in the format that does a similar thing, Quantum Riddler. Emeritus is the kind of card we'll see in decks initially, but it's too expensive for Standard to have lasting power. As far as competitive play, if it can't make it in Standard, it's unlikely to make it anywhere else. If Riddler didn't exist, I'd expect this card to see some play. There's also a chance we see both in a deck, especially in a Momo deck of some kind. Prepare is a sick ability that I absolutely love. I love getting to play a lot of lands in my decks and having ways to spend mana when I draw too many. Prepare should serve that purpose, and in a format like Limited, I expect to want to play more lands than usual because of this ability.   I'm pessimistic about how often we'll actually get to play Ancestral Recall in Standard, unless of course we mean Accumulate Wisdom. Mana Sculpt Mana Sculpt is a Mana Drain callback, and a card I hope to play consistently. It is a Cancel at its floor, and at its ceiling, it can ramp you from three to six mana when you counter their three-drop if you have a Wizard in play. I suspect people will try to make this work, and we'll see more cheap Wizards in decks to facilitate. I think this is a card we'll want to find a home for, rather than make one. It would work insanely well with Emeritus of Ideation. You could use the extra mana to cast the giant 5/5 before your opponent's mana is developed, giving you both an instant Ancestral early in the game and a tough to answer 5/5 while your opponent has so few lands in play. We'll need to flesh out exactly which cheap Wizards are available and an overall plan A for a deck like that, but it does sound interesting. This is a self-explanatory card I expect to get tested repeatedly. As more Wizards are printed, the likelihood improves that we see this in Standard and potentially beyond. I like its ceiling, but I wouldn't play a bunch of bad Wizards to make this work without other strong incentives to play only that creature type. Traumatic Critique I'm most excited about Traumatic Critique so far. This might be the set's best card when all is said and done. X can equal 0, meaning you can fire this off on turn two as a discard outlet or as card selection. As the game progresses, this only gets stronger. Casting it on turn three, killing a small creature allows you to fight a card advantage battle while also sculpting your hand, and this intensifies as the game goes on. We used to play Control decks that would chain Sphinx's Revelations to close out games. The same thing can happen with Traumatic Critique, a few of these to the face to end the game, perhaps with a couple of hits from a small creature or two. Traumatic Critique is incredibly strong. I expect to see it in Standard and eternal formats. This is an X spell that is reasonably efficient at any casting cost. Studious First-Year Rampant Growth is back, and it's cuter than ever. This little bear is an excellent creature that would likely see play if Llanowar Elves wasn't present. It may see play alongside it, especially alongside a card like Gene Pollinator. Gene Pollinator on turn one, into this on turn two, and cast a Rampant Growth. If we need that much ramp, this is a great spot to be in. You could follow up with an Ouroboroid, with this first-year student being another body to get counters from the snake. This is essentially a Wood Elves where you can split up the mana costs. The downside is that if you blink it, you'll have to cast the spell again. Regardless, this is an excellent creature that will see play in Standard, potentially even in Mono Green Landfall. What's nice about this card is that once you've cast your Rampant Growth, you no longer need to worry about losing a mana source on future turns when it dies, allowing it to trade with a small creature or just apply a little extra pressure to your opponent. This is a cool card, and I'm mostly excited about drafting soup decks in Limited with it as the core. Withering Curse Withering Curse is an Infest that you can work for to get it to turn into a Damnation. Gaining life isn't difficult; however, this is a time-sensitive card, so you need to have a good amount of life gain for it to be reliable. While there are usually plenty of infest-type cards in Standard these days, the top decks have a lot of small creatures at the moment, making this more intriguing. Lifelink is a nice way to trigger the infusion on this card, but that indicates you have a creature in play, which will also get picked up. Ideally, something like your lands would trigger this. While the common cycles of gain lands exist, tap lands are not where you want to be these days, so a card like Adventurer's Inn would be more appealing. While this is a potentially strong card, it's mostly just another infest clone that you'll likely see in sideboards with occasional upside of a Damnation when you're able to combine it with a Requitting Hex or perhaps a food token. Strixhaven looks incredible so far, and I'm excited for the early access event in a few weeks so I can learn the cards in and out. This set looks to hit all the marks I look for, including nostalgia, sweet buildarounds, and lots of mana sinks for Limited. I'll be back with a few more cards next week. See you then.