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It came fast, but I believe we have access to the previews of the entire Airbender set. At first glance, I'm excited to dive into a new Universes Beyond set, and I hope this one is more Final Fantasy than Spider-Man. It's a bad sign of things to come if this set were to flop like Spider-Man. However, I've already seen quite a few cards that have me excited. Let's take a look. Shared Roots That's right, Rampant Growth is back in Standard. Shared Roots is a functional reprint of Rampant Growth with the upside of being the Lesson card type. While there are no Learn cards in the set, there are plenty of cards that make Lessons matter. Ignoring that for now, Rampant Growth is long overdue for a Standard return. There were a lot of cards that, at one point, WotC decided were "too strong" for Standard, such as Rampant Growth and Mana Leak, but Magic has seen an insane amount of power creep since then, and it's time we bring these iconic cards back. Rampant Growth's existence allows for potential ramp strategies to exist, but it's difficult to build with because if your deck is too reliant on casting ramp on turn two, you'll suffer when you don't draw Shared Roots. While I'm excited to see Rampant Growth return, and I think it will see play, I'm not sure it will be as much of a staple as it has been in previous printings. Threats are stronger these days, so you don't have time to set up without ways to reset the board. I'm excited to see how this plays out. Accumulate Wisdom Hands down, Accumulate Wisdom is one of my favorite cards I've seen. I'm sad it's an uncommon, specifically because of how crazy it could be in Limited at common, much like its predecessor, Accumulated Knowledge. Accumulate Wisdom is a baseline Anticipate, which saw a small amount of Standard play. Accumulate Wisdom is an exciting tool because of its late-game upside of turning a two-mana draw into a three-card draw. Looking at this card, the first thought is about the number of playable Lessons. There is a smattering of them in this set, and I'd guess there are enough that are playable, especially if we end up in a format after the bans where Quench is a playable card, as there is a Lesson version of that in the set, and the cards should play well together. Maybe we can also include this in a deck with Shared Roots. Ideally, you can fill your graveyard quickly, chain a few copies of Accumulate Wisdom together, and the game will get easy from there. There's a lot of iterating that can be done to make this card reach its full potential. I'm also excited to see how these cards could play alongside Learn cards in a format like Pauper. It might be time to dust off those Divide by Zeroes in your bulk box. Great Divide Guide Great Divide Guide is a solid two-mana mana dork that taps for any color and turns all your lands into "Utopia" lands. Most importantly, Great Divide Guide signals Allies as a supported archetype in The Last Airbender. While I'm skeptical Allies will be a competitive deck, this is a two-drop mana creature with great stats that doesn't need other Allies. If there are other Allies that are also cards that can stand on their own, then perhaps there can be a deck with a small package of Allies rather than going all-in on the archetype. There does appear to be an abundance of Allies to choose from, which adds an upside to this little Guide. While I typically shy away from mana creatures that cost two mana, this one has the stats and upside to potentially see some Standard play, especially if we see more Allies and ways to sink mana that make for a reasonable game plan. Wan Shi Tong, Librarian Wan Shi Tong, Librarian is Hydroid Krasis with a twist, which was one of the most impactful cards in Standard. Krasis did a few important things that Wan Shi Tong is unable to do. It had a cast trigger that enabled it to play well against counterspells, putting you up cards even if you lost that exchange. Krasis gained life, and while it was often only a few life, chaining one into another would often lead to spots where you could stabilize at a healthy life total. Lastly, Hydroid Krasis was not a Legend, which is only a small downside, but nonetheless still a limitation. Wan Shi Tong may not do all of those things exactly, but it plays well against counters because it has flash, allowing you to sneak it into play whenever the opponent is tapped out. While Wan Shi Tong doesn't gain life, it has vigilance, allowing you to threaten your opponents' life total while defending your own. One massive upside to Wan Shi Tong, in comparison to Hydroid Krasis, is how much better it is to play alongside counterspells. Krasis forced you to commit your mana at sorcery speed and made it difficult to leave up a card like Negate. Flash goes a long way here, and may be the reason this card sees play in Standard. Standard has been in a place where big splashy plays like this rarely see play, but Wan Shi Tong might be good enough to break that mold because it doesn't force you to commit to spending mana on your own turn, allowing you to play a more reactive game plan and refilling your hand when the coast is clear. Mai, Sconful Striker I've seen a little buzz with Mai, Scornful Striker. It's reminiscent of Eidolon of the Great Revel, an all-format all-star for burn decks. Mai fits into that category, but it's meaningfully worse. Mai is a Legend, which prevents you from doubling up on the effect, and can be problematic if your plan is to overload your opponent and soft lock them out of the game. Most importantly, Eidolon had other burn spells to supplement its effect. Black does not have access to that much burn, meaning if your opponent can stabilize, then you won't necessarily have the reach to close the game out. Red decks could always hope to draw a Boros Charm or Lightning Strike to finish the game off, but Mai won't have that support to help in close games. Mai is a playable card, but it scales with how many non-creature spells your opponents plan to cast. If the format is dominated by creature decks, we won't see much of Mai. If people are trying to chain together cards like Accumulate Wisdom, then Mai seems more appealing. This is a solid card that will see play, potentially even in Eternal formats. There are a lot of cards to go over, so I will keep looking at cards that jump out at me until the set's release. I went over some of the simpler ones this week. Next week, I'll look into the wordier cards, of which there are quite a few. The set looks like what I'd expect from Constructed's lens, but it looks grindy and exciting for Limited. I'm hoping we get a lot of exciting tournaments to play, both online and offline, with this release, especially Arena Directs and Opens, so I can sink my teeth into the format. That was something that I missed with Spider-Man and that ruined the set's hype for many Arena players. See you next week.

It's no secret that my favorite way to play Magic has always been Limited. Cube, specifically powered Cube, mixes the best of both worlds — Limited Magic, but the goal is to draft a Constructed-power level deck. I haven't played a ton of the Cube yet since it's only been out a few days as of writing. I'm enjoying it more than I did the MTGO Cube because it feels more authentic. It's wild to think, but MTGO has included so many supplementary product cards that it no longer feels like a vintage Cube. Instead, it feels like a powered Cube with the most broken threats from Commander decks and other products not legal in the formats I play. While there's some of that in the Arena Power Cube, it's minimal, and I don't feel bogged down having to read three or four cards per pack. While many of us are familiar with Power Cube, a younger generation is just now learning it because it's finally available on the modern client. This will mean a lot of leaky drafts where you see many cards later than you should, and decks in the mythic ranks will be better on average than you may see on MTGO, which has a more experienced and smaller player base. You can take advantage of this by expecting new players to take archetypes you want to avoid. New players aren't going to draft Underworld Breach Storm, for instance. They will gravitate towards more permanent-based decks. I'll likely create a lot of Cube content, as we have access to the Power Cube. However, first and foremost, let me explain my current philosophy and offer advice on how to approach the Cube. The number one goal with Cube, especially currently, is to maximize fun. I am willing to disregard my win rate to increase my enjoyment. I get my dopamine from putting together nonsense combo decks and stumbling into something unique. Currently, Cube is not a highly competitive format, so it's not worth increasing my win rate by a small margin, such as from 62 to 64%. Admittedly, drafting in this manner will lead to some bad habits that could carry over if and when Cube becomes a more competitive endeavor. I hope we get to see it for some Arena Opens or maybe even Arena directs. My second goal is, of course, winning. I want to win but not by drafting white or red aggro decks. I enjoy playing combo and would like to give myself an opportunity to play all the power, so I'm almost always going to draft blue. One of these days I plan to write about a list of under- and overvalued cards in Cube, but with such a new player base, this is the time to actually embrace those cards. For example, Tolarian Academy is taken too aggressively on MTGO, likely because of LSV's content and his enthusiasm for the card. It's not like the card is bad. Its ceiling is ridiculously high. However, it's hard to get a deck together with it, especially when a lot of players are taking artifact mana and hoping to open it, or have it passed to them in later packs. There are dozens of examples of these cards popping in very good decks where their absence leads to a complete train wreck. If your goal is to have fun first, and you can withstand a few bad draft decks before a great deck, then by all means, slam Academy first pick. I would. If your goal is to win and mitigate expenditures, then you're better off taking Ragavan or Ocelot Pride, which have lower ceilings but higher floors. As far as color preference, I don't draft white or green cards early. Those colors don't facilitate the degenerate combo decks very well. I won't think twice about taking a card like Lion's Eye Diamond over Swords to Plowshares. Most people, however, just take Swords if they want to win. My general rule is don't play green creatures. Uro and other value cards like that are different, but I never want to have enough green in my deck to be able to cast a turn-one Birds of Paradise. Sometimes I will, but I'm usually fighting against it with my picks, and I only play that much green when I'm pushed into a corner. Green-ramp creatures' game plan is too fragile in 2025 Magic, and there's enough artifact mana that ramping, the one thing green is good at, is available to every color combo. Green is basically obsolete because the artifact mana is available to all colors, inherently more powerful because it's harder to interact with, and generally more efficient. If you're new to the Cube, I suggest starting out by drafting some easier-to-navigate decks like White Aggro, specifically Boros Aggro is strong and easy to draft and play. UB Reanimator is simple to play, deep, and fairly powerful, but it's not as good as it once was because there are so many ways to go over the top. I'd avoid drafting decks like Storm, as they can be tough to navigate and draft and, due to the Arena software's smaller timing windows, difficult to pilot. On MTGO, we play a 4-5 minute kill turn. On Arena, you must move quickly to avoid timing out. It has taken me some time to adjust. Every time I cast a cantrip or a draw spell and information changes, you have to recalibrate when playing a combo turn, and it's hard to adjust with the rope running. Another word of advice to less-experienced Cube drafters, especially those with a Limited background, is that mulligan decisions are more important, and the games themselves are extremely front-loaded. Your opening hand must either apply pressure, interact, or advance a game plan in a meaningful way. It's going to cost you if you're keeping a hand because it's a few lands and spells. In a format with Lotus and Moxen, you don't get much time to catch up. You need to make sure you're either developing your game plan or preventing your opponent from executing theirs. There's no middle ground. I'll be battling it out in Cube over the next few weeks, but we also have Avatar around the corner. This is an exciting time for Magic with a lot to look forward to. On top of that, I expect a Standard shakeup in the immediate future. When Final Fantasy was out, Magic's hype was extremely high, but an immediate whiplash occurred when Spider-Man hit the shelves. I'm hoping during the holiday season, we have more of the former and can sink our teeth into new formats, cards, and ways to play.

This past week, we received news from William Jensen, director of organized play, hall of famer, and a personal friend of mine, that we will have a new Pro Tour-like event, the Limited Championships, in 2027. As you can see in the picture above, there are a few ways to qualify via the PT, but most of the event's slots will be filled by the public. This is also a Worlds Qualifier, in that the T8 drafters will be sent directly to Worlds, which also semi-connects it to the PT. This is amazing news. Limited has been an underrepresented part of competitive Magic for years. A $500k prize pool is a solid investment and gives players who mostly play Limited, such as myself, a great event to look forward to. This is a 99% positive announcement. I should probably not even mention the negative reaction I had to it, as it was a minor detail that irked me upon first reading it, but I do have a critique. It annoys me that the HoF is invited. That's not to say that I want to exclude my HoF friends and the players I've always admired. I'm annoyed that as we keep adding more to OP, and they keep including HoFs, it feels like we should also include high-level, HoF-worthy players who aren't in the HoF. For example, Javier Dominguez is an all-time top 5 player and has far surpassed the threshold of what it means to be a Hall of Famer. If players like him can't get in, it feels like these players are getting snubbed. For instance, I'm 100% certain that if Depraz wanted to Q for this event, and he likely will, he would Q. But I don't think he should have to if this is the only event he wants to play in the year. There's probably no active player I'd rather watch draft than Depraz, and Depraz would be a first-ballot HoFer if it still existed. I hope that the continued support of the Hall of Fame benefits means a return of the Hall of Fame in some capacity. I know they've discussed it at some point and have never followed up on whether they're going to continue adding players to it or not. Regardless, this event looks interesting. Had it existed ten or twelve years ago, I might never have taken Magic as seriously because I would have focused solely on Limited and used this as my competitive outlet. Now that I'm older with a family, I can't travel one or two times a month for Spotlights and RCs. As such, this is a great event to focus on, especially for someone who loves Limited and would love to play a Pro Level event about once a year. It would be nice if it were purely connected to the Pro Tour, but we'll have to see how that develops. Regardless, it's a brilliant addition. Big props to William Jensen because I'm confident this would never have happened without his leadership. Billy has always been a Limited lover first and foremost since I met him over 25 years ago. The $500k prize pool will attract many Limited-only players and encourage some of them to return to Constructed if they qualify and convert the Limited Championships into a World Champs slot. I'm waiting to see how the finer details shape up, but I will try and qualify via Arena at least. I'm also likely to pop my head out for some paper Magic from time to time. I even got a private message from a close personal friend who recently retired, Alexander Hayne, who wants to play in this event. As a content creator, this is a breath of fresh air. There's something to aim my content at and prepare people for, which I absolutely love. My engagement with Magic fluctuates depending on the end goal. It can be as simple as playing 100s of Final Fantasy drafts to prepare for a week of winning Collector Booster boxes, of which I converted just under 50% of my runs. If I play half as much, I probably convert half as much. If I'm going to invest my time, there needs to be a carrot to chase, or otherwise, my time would be better spent elsewhere. With this event, people will try to get better leading up to the event. I'm looking forward to trying to qualify and also helping my buddies, and of course, my readers and Twitch viewers, to qualify. I am worried about the event's coverage. I was underwhelmed with the slides and content they presented mid-draft at the last few PTs, as it appeared that slides like "cards they'd love to open" were a compilation of the highest win-rate cards in their colors, without including any contextual analysis about their deck. They often had cards I wouldn't put into the deck that I was drafting, or I wouldn't be happy if I did. Ideally, the way I'd handle that kind of slide, since they don't broadcast in real-time, is to have someone with a lot of experience sit down with a slide of the cards drafted and ask them which cards of each rarity they'd most want to open with their current pool. For example, if someone like TheHamTV is present, or any familiar face that people trust and who has had a lot of repetitions and success in the format, then that person should provide contextual analysis. This could be on or off air and would add more flavor and expertise to the segment. Right now, they cater the Pro Level Limited to players who rarely play Limited, which will not be the audience for an all-Limited event. I hope they find innovative ways to provide more detailed coverage that's focused on specifics rather than broad format information. Between this Limited Championship and a Pro Tour with a draft top 8, I can't wait to see how this shapes the Limited community. We have everything to look forward to, and I hope there's even more to come. The next step for WotC is to bring back the Hall of Fame, and all will (almost) be right in the world.

I've talked about the Spider-Man Pick-Two Draft the past few weeks. I have shared my opinions and a few tips. This week, I want to dive deeper into actionable, how-to advice. Pick-Two Draft is a format that's easy to solve for a variety of reasons, the most of which is the set's size and what archetypes it supports. I have a high degree of confidence about the colors' pecking order. However, you can't "force" an archetype in this format. You will get buried if you do. Bear in mind that I will use Omenpath names for this article, as that is what the majority of people interested in this topic will be familiar with, myself included, but the advice applies to Spider-Man all the same. Here's my rank order for the color pairs: 1) Azorious Wonderweave Aerialist is one of the strongest commons we've ever seen in Limited, flat out. I'm not sure if it's in the top 10 or 20, but it's in that range. You can play it in other archetypes, but white supports it best, and it's much worse in Selesnya than a Dimir deck. I take Aerialist aggressively and try to pick up a second copy if possible to draft around it. Generally, with Azorious, you want to get on board and play an up-tempo game, dumping counters onto small fliers. 2) Dimir It may be surprising to see Dimir over Selesnya, but I'm confident that it's the overall better deck. Dimir is the only real deck you can draft as control, but it can also play a self-mill midrange package. Both of these deck versions are good. Dimir can break up synergies with key commons like Scorpion's Sting, Damning Caress, and Snatch Back. 3) Selesnya Selesnya was the talk of the town through week one. It's since fallen off hard for me. It's a combination of being more heavily contested than other color pairs, as well as its reliance on opening hands and a lack of good late-game options. Sometimes you can Enweb chain as an engine, which is powerful, but you likely won't have time to do this because people are mostly trying to get you dead ASAP in this format. The Enweb chains are great when you come out fast, run out of gas, and need to generate some value to pull ahead to close. Enwebbing early is powerful with City Pigeon, which is one of the key commons in the format. Leyline Weaver also plays nicely in this deck. 4) Gruul Red is just bad. The cards don't line up well, they're awkwardly designed, and Mayhem doesn't work as smoothly as Madness did. Green, however, is quite good, and there are some nice supplements in red for green, such as Shock. Shock breaking up Aerialist and City Pigeon synergies is a reasonable draw to a bunch of green fatties taking over the game later. Leyline Weaver plays nicely in this archetype, but a lot of the Mayhem stuff has no green support, making the color combination awkward. 5) Rakdos I could be convinced that Gruul is worse than Rakdos, but in general, the black cards don't supplement the red cards well. This is the color combination I tend to avoid the most; however, if I receive a strong signal and/or a strong rare, I'll follow the flow of the draft. Rakdos' biggest issue is its underwhelming signpost gold cards. While the two-drop is a fine card, it's worse than two-drop commons like Aerialist and Leyline Weaver. Nu and Sumi, Career Criminals are playable, but they're inefficient in a set full of efficient plays. It's a serviceable five-drop at best. At worst, it can die for a single mana to a card like Knife Trick. Here are some general tips for drafting this format. 1) Don't rule out anything, and follow the draft. Your first picks have never been less important. Because the format supports several archetypes, the idea of this Pick-Two Draft is to communicate what you're doing with your table. You need to be flexible and adaptable. Sometimes you'll bounce between two or three archetypes because a color combination is so open. Other times, it's because you're fighting for colors with someone else, and you're both bobbing and weaving. When you get clear opportunities to cut colors you're playing, do it. It's more important not to open the door to people you're passing to than it is to take a card with a win rate that is one or two percentage points higher. In this pack, for example, I open Neach, a powerful mythic that is extremely splashable but is best in straight Dimir. Along with it, I have a choice to take either a Scorpion's Sting or Carlo. While I'd prefer the Sting in a good Neach deck, I take the Dimir gold card in order not to open the door for a fight with my neighbor. Sting will lead to a more prolonged game, giving my seven-drop more chances to show up and impact the game. However, it will be easier for them to end up in Rakdos if I give them a mono black card than if they already have a black card and take a Dimir gold card. If that happens, then we have to dance around each other to figure out who's going to lose the game of chicken. This is less important the later in the draft it happens. If early in the draft, it dictates the rest of their picks. Once players are settled, you should be doing almost the opposite and trying to wheel the gold cards on close picks, rather than cut off signals. I go into drafts avoiding Rakdos, but sometimes I take a Dimir gold card and a Scorpion's Sting with my first two picks. If I get passed two good reasons to be in Rakdos, then I'm diving in. Identifying the first open lane and closing the door on it is the best way to end up with a higher-powered deck. Use your first pick to cater to biases when it's close. After that, you don't get to force a deck. If you want to win, listen to what the other players are communicating with the packs they pass you. 2) The person on your left matters A LOT. In a typical eight-person draft, you don't need to worry about the person on your left so much. They're drafting behind you for two-thirds of the draft, and the colors can settle in a weird distribution next to each other. For example, if you're playing a traditional format and green is the best color, even if two players are drafting it side by side, and they're the table's only green drafters, both decks will likely end up very strong. A big reason for that is you're opening 24 packs. In Pick-Two Draft, we're opening 12 and distributing evenly among four players. When we halve the player pool, we're also halving the card pool, making it more important not to share a color combination or, ideally, a color with a neighbor. 3) Tracking a single color can tell you everything. Let's say you notice that all the black cards are missing from the packs early in a draft. Normally, that means that black isn't open. In Pick-Two Draft, it can tell you exactly what lane you should take. If black is overrepresented at the table and there are two drafters, then it means one of three things: two people are sharing Rakdos, they're sharing Dimir, or there's one of each. By realizing this as early as possible, we can position ourselves to be in the other decks and use the gold signposts to tell us where we should be. If black is overrepresented, I want to be in Selesnya or Azorious. I do not want to share red with anyone. If there is no red drafter at the table, I'm happy to take all of it, but I do not want to share. If black is overrepresented, then there's a good chance one of the players will eventually dip their toes into red. For typical draft formats, staying open can be a detriment because the good rares are much better than the commons, and the power level is so flat that it's hard to get pushed out of a deck. In Pick-Two Draft, we need to adjust to account for the lack of cards in the card pool. There are not enough cards to support two of the same archetype well. Sometimes there is, of course, but that's an outlier. Since that is true, I'd rather focus on white decks, which can support more players at the table. Because Orzhov and Golgari aren't supported, you will rarely find yourself being forced out of your color pair. Let's pretend I wasn't in the perfect color pair in this spot. Instead, assume I was waffling and had a few different color cards. Looking at how this pack is broken down, I know that every other player at the table is eyeing Grixis colors. It's more important to identify this and pivot into a white or green deck before it's too late. In this specific spot, it may have been wise to take the Pastry and the Darval because they fit better into other color pairs with the missing cards, further digging my opponents in for a fight while I reap the rewards. Spider-Man/Omenpath Limited is getting a bad reputation, but a majority of the issues could have been solved with a bit of tweaking to the card design and a larger set. Pick-Two Draft is fun, and I hope the myriad of variables they introduced with this set doesn't scare them off from trying stuff like it again. I'm still enjoying it, but I am pacing myself more than usual because I know the set's shallowness will make it go stale faster. This is not the set to hunker down and play ad nauseam until the next one is out. Rather, it's an appetizer of what I hope is a banger set in The Last Airbender coming out next month. Regardless, I started out "doing what I wanted" and got punished for it. I did poorly in my first few days of this set until I decided to take a more disciplined approach and not force anything, especially cool-looking rares that I opened. This may be the last time I discuss this Limited set, but it's worth playing if you haven't and are interested, as I know many people skipped it due to the new stuff that was introduced simultaneously. Regardless, I'll be streaming frequently and preparing for the next time we see Pick-Two Draft.

This past weekend, we watched a Pro Tour that felt almost like a changing of the guard. While there were some familiar faces, it was mostly players making their first Pro Tour top 8, including eventual winner Michael Debenedetto-Plummer, who took it down with Belcher. I watched Michael play Limited live on stream. From what I saw, he played nearly flawless Magic, so I'm not surprised he took it down. I intentionally skipped watching all the Modern coverage, as it's not a format I've been known to enjoy. That said, seeing this Pro Tour top 8 of mostly newer, younger faces, I found myself thinking a lot about Magic and where it's going. Things seem to be rapidly changing in Magic these days, and there is a lot of discourse about the direction of the game with seven Standard releases next year, a majority of which are Universes Beyond. While I'm not quite in the doomer stage of Magic, which is that it's going to be ruined forever and no one will be playing soon, I am also legitimately worried about its direction . This isn't because of what the current philosophy will do to the game. Quite the opposite, I'm worried that WotC's design philosophy is to maximize profits because it may not have a future. It's possible they think the future looks bleak, so they need to focus on generating profits now. It reminds me of an Eminem lyric, "This is your moment and every single moment you spend / Tryna hold onto it, 'cause you may never get it again / So while you're in it, try to get as much s*** you can / And when your run is over, just admit when it's at its end." By pumping out sets and products now, they're striking while the iron's hot and not necessarily worrying about the future because it may not last. Short-term profit seems to be more important than long-term health. We can see this in balancing issues (i.e., Vivi) and the pace of set releases. Magic players are an aging population. Younger generations aren't as drawn to it, and many people's love for Magic is held together by nostalgia. While nostalgia sells, the reserve list makes it significantly harder for WotC to monetize the nostalgia. They tried with "reprinting" Beta with a ridiculously high price tag, and it earned them far more negative PR than it was worth. Brand crossovers have worked for other games and popular brands, and this is their primary tool right now for new player acquisition. Arena's monetization model isn't very inviting for new players, as it can be prohibitively expensive to log on and test a bunch of finished Standard decks. Instead, you can learn the rules of the game on Arena, but you will need to invest to take it seriously. Young kids have a billion choices of games to play. Many of them will try to milk you with microtransactions, but a lot of those games do that for cosmetics rather than paying to play at an optimal level. Universes Beyond finally gets game lovers to check out the game because they love Final Fantasy or Spider-Man so much that they're willing to buy some cards and give it a try. People point at Universes Beyond and Spider-Man for flopping and think, "Well, this is the problem." In my eyes, the problem is deeper than Universes Beyond. When I first started playing Magic, I quickly became immersed in the game. I wanted to play with my friends every day after school and go to the store to buy a few packs when I got my allowance from Mom. But what hooked me, and I mean really hooked me, was the competition at my LGS. I was able to play tournaments, get better, put time into something I enjoyed, and see tangible results. To me, Magic has always been about tournaments. Currently, I feel like tournaments are slowly diminishing. Organized play took such a beating during COVID that we applaud things like a recently announced "Draft Top 8" as if it were some great gift. New players are mostly playing Commander casually, which doesn't necessarily lead to someone who will play long-term. Once they get bored, they'll likely move on to the next thing. You should be applauding and cheering on Universes Beyond and promos at tournaments if you care about the game's health. I'm worried about product fatigue, but these are injections of outside players. They bring their disposable income, which will help our LGS's, and even as a player, our wallets. I don't know about you, but Final Fantasy Arena Directs was my favorite event that I've played outside of a handful of Pro Tours and Worlds. They were Limited events with somewhat high stakes and direct to your house. Those boxes didn't triple their value because people hate Universes Beyond. I wish they'd focus more on OP and cool tournaments rather than shiny things for players to buy. Now, Spider-Man is definitely a strike against Universes Beyond. While Spider-Man has almost every issue you could possibly imagine as a UB set, the franchise is not to blame, but it's part of the reason. Spider-Man isn't a game. It's a character. Final Fantasy was a game that also created its own diehard fanbase and culture. These fans enjoy games, so it's a much smoother transition. Not all Spider-Man fans play games. My uncle is a massive Spider-Man fan. I've never seen him play a game in my life outside of an actual sport. Spider-Man also came out in the fall, coinciding with the start of school and other activities. College kids are back in school, and parents have less time because they're getting their kids to school, among other caretaking responsibilities. The timing was not conducive to a massive release like Final Fantasy, which got released in late spring or early summer. Additionally, there may even be some Marvel fatigue. It's no secret that Marvel movies have been churned out rapidly and have dominated the movie industry. However, their movie sales have plummeted, and I'm left wondering if the franchise itself has taken brand damage. Lastly, with Spider-Man, they introduced as many variables as possible all at once. Limited is completely different, and draft is much closer to Sealed or even uncooperative Team Sealed, where you open the same amount of packs, but everyone is selfish and fights over the best cards. Spider-Man had different names on Arena. This makes creating or consuming content about the set annoying and tedious. Unfortunately, we have confirmation that Omenpath sets will continue to exist and replace the Marvel franchises on Arena. I can only imagine that's going to be a disaster and fuel the fire that diehard MTG players will use to blame UB in general. Personally, I want to see more UB sets, promos, and Arena Directs for high-ticket prizes. This is all unimaginably good for us as players, especially if you can uphold a reasonable win rate to capitalize on the additional prizes. Avatar is around the corner, and I'm curious how that will hold up. It's not a franchise I know much about, so it will feel like a normal Magic set to me, but I know it's incredibly popular. As far as I know, there will be no different names on Arena. It will be coming out at the most popular shopping time of the year, just before Christmas. I'm expecting a massive release, and if that flops like Spider-Man, then we may have something to be worried about. Until then, I'm not super worried about the current game, but I do worry about it a decade from now. If anything, just looking at the Pro Tour top 8, the Pro Tour in general, and seeing so many great younger players, I have hope that, like me, people will still end up loving the competition that Magic provides, and maybe we have nothing to worry about. I guess we'll have to wait and see.

While I was privy to the early access event last week, this week we all got access to play Spiderman Limited. Err, I mean, Omenpath. Whatever they want to call it, the set's reviews have been, to put it politely, mixed. I love the idea of pick-two and a new way to draft, but I think WotC did themselves no favors with the set design, which only supports five archetypes of allied color pairs. This creates mini-games of chicken inside the draft, where if you and another player start in a color pair, you will have a difficult time trying to navigate the draft. Ideally, you can pivot out of your color pair and into an adjacent color pair, but that can be difficult if you start in certain archetypes. For example, it's easier to pivot out of UW Modified into GW Enweb than it is to pivot out of Rakdos Mayem into a Gruul deck. The cards don't overlap as well from one archetype to the next. Ideally, you want to identify the open archetypes as fast as possible. With experienced drafters, this gets exceptionally difficult because some people are more adaptable than others. If all players are constantly adapting, and no one stays in a lane, then it becomes quite difficult to read the draft. One thing that bothers me about the set is how inelegantly some of the cards are designed, so they don't work together in a fluid manner. Spider-Gwen is the source of constant frustration for me. We have Mayhem haste creatures and Mayhem sorcery speed removal, both of which make this design of a discard outlet obnoxious to use. Tapping her to attack and being unable to cast the removal spell has single-handedly downgraded this card so that it's not a solid enabler for Rakdos, and this looks like a signpost common for that archetype. Red, in general, has underperformed for me, and this is definitely a contributing factor. A more elegant design would allow for the sorcery stuff to be cast to clear the way, or for Gwen to help us put our haste Mayhem creatures into play before our combat step. If we were ignoring possible flavor concerns or were not concerned with the number of words on the card, I'd have it trigger at the beginning of the first main phase, and if a card was discarded, force Spider-Gwen to attack when the ability was used, if able. It would play out much better and be functionally the same otherwise. As far as strategy is concerned, red has underperformed for me overall. There are a lot of powerful creatures in this set, most of which have high toughness, and red has a limited amount of removal that can interact with these creatures. While Shock can be one of the best cards in your opening hand at times, it's almost always a terrible top deck because the games often come down to getting on board quickly and pressing your advantage. Modify, enweb, and connive are all keywords that mean you need creatures in play. This often means someone is just winning with the largest unchecked threat rather than having grindy, interactive back-and-forth games. Often, this is a rare, which can make it feel like rares are overtuned at times, but it's more so that a lot of larger creatures are must-answer threats, and there are limited tools to answer the large creatures because a lot of the set's removal gets blanked by larger toughness. My early pick for best common is Skyward Spider/Wonderweave Aerialist. This card, when modified early, always trades up on mana and deals a significant amount of damage when unchecked. White has been the best color in my early estimation. Between this and Web Up/Mothwing Shroud at common, it's easy to have a complete deck. Both Selesnya and Azorious are overperformers, while Gruul and Rakdos are underperformers. It is wise to stay in the open colors regardless of what it is, as you can't fight for specific archetypes because there's such a limited amount of cards available. When we draft with eight players, we open 24 packs. You only open half the packs with this set. With only five archetypes and four players, one archetype should be undrafted, and there should be exactly one player per other archetype. Once you start fighting for Rakdos cards with another Rakdos player and no real way to pivot out, you're going to have a low-quality deck. It's more important to identify the open colors in this pick-two format, but it's also much harder because you only get several data points throughout the draft. Once you've selected too many cards, especially with 14-card packs with lands in them, it's too late to pivot. Since we're taking two cards per pack, you're also seeing packs half as often in total to analyze the draft. Because of all this, reading the signals is extremely important, and it's crucial to send good signals. Making small "speculation picks" early in the draft can have massive consequences because when you take that off-color great uncommon that you want the option to pivot into, you're sending a card from your archetype into the pool of another drafter who's, at most, two seats away from you. Overall, the experience has been solid so far; however, it's fading quickly. While I form my own opinions on sets, even routinely on the record, the community has spoken about Spider-Man Limited. From what I can see, it's almost all negative feedback. The set would be fantastic if they made it bigger and supported all the archetypes. Instead of multiple Gruul gold uncommons, make one signpost Gruul uncommon and add an Izzet uncommon. These kinds of adjustments would make a smaller set more replayable and approachable. As it stands, this feels like we've only received one-third of a full block of sets, and there are no more sets forthcoming. Additionally, there are no major events involving Spiderman pick two, even on Arena. This has taken the wind out of the sails of the Limited community at large, leaving avid Limited players like myself lost with what to do with themselves for the time being. With a limited amount of cards, paper cards having different names than Arena cards, no major events, and a new draft format, it's no surprise that Spiderman's set release has been a massive flop compared to a few short months ago with Final Fantasy. I'm still enjoying the set, but I'm unsure how long I'll continue to find it enjoyable. It doesn't help that the format is basic and lacks flexibility beyond "stay in your lane." Regardless, I'll continue playing and learning the format as best I can, at least to get reps in a pick-two draft. This won't be the last time we see it, and it's the only way to practice for now. This weekend, we have the Pro Tour coming up, and I'll be interested in watching EoE Limited in its final form with participants having months to prepare. See you soon!

This week, I finally got to play Spider-Man Limited in the streamer event. Unfortunately, because of a copyright issue, Arena and the set's cards have different names, though they are functionally the same. The name change on Arena is Through the Omenpaths. Regardless of the cards' names, I had a good time with the set, especially with the new draft format. With this set, we'll be opening packs with three other players at the table, taking two cards per pack, and drafting as such. This solves a few logistical problems with the set's implementation. First, they wanted to attract Commander players to Limited and thought this would help. Also, while you get the same number of cards, you are opening a smaller number of packs. With many legendary creatures at common, this is an important change because you'd often end up with tons of legends at common if we were drafting with eight players. Additionally, there's no support for enemy color pairs in this set. You can easily splash cards and play multiple colors, but don't expect too many gold cards for your Boros or Izzet deck. There are some at rare and mythic rare for enemy colors, but not signpost uncommons. With so much mana fixing in the set, it's easy to facilitate some splashes if you focus on having allied color pairs as your main colors. The set's speed is average. It can be fast, but a lot of the games get bogged down. The creatures don't attack for a ton of damage off the bat, but they can start to snowball. Modified is a supported archetype in Azorius, so it often plays a bunch of small fliers like City Pigeon and loads them up with auras and counters. I don't enjoy drafting linear aggro much. I also like to explore the depths of the format, so I prefer to splash and draft cards with raw power. A deck I drafted many times over the course of the event was five-color spiders. Here's an example of a trophy deck. 5c Spiders I only recommend drafting this deck if you get Scions of the Ur-Spider/Cosmic Spiderman (paper). It's a mythic, so it won't happen that often. The set is small, and the card is hard to fit into any old deck, so you will get them out of almost any pack that's opened. I imagine more so on Arena, where there are fewer rare drafters, but regardless, it's a solid build-around. Scooping up powerful rare creatures, some removal, and Hot Dog Stand/Treat Trolley copies is a strategy that has merit. In this draft, I played against some strong players with good decks and still managed to get a trophy, which was carried by my rares. The two-color strategies that have looked the best to me so far are UW Modified and Dimir. Dimir has a couple of plausible strategies in self-mill and control, and both seem solid. Blue has access to counterspells and black to efficient removal. Outside of fast starts, rares and strong uncommons are of the utmost importance. It's not hard to get good rares and uncommons; however, you have to be flexible in four-player draft and willing to abandon more cards than normal. You need to be able to pivot to an open color and take advantage of what the other three players are leaving for you. Remember that these smaller draft pods make it much easier to figure out what is happening at the table and how to adjust to maximize the value of each pick. If you noticed there are no red cards left in packs early, and you happen to have a couple of red cards, abandon them and pivot into what's open. For this reason, colorless cards and good lands like Multiversal Passage are higher picks than usual because they always end up in your deck and allow you to read the table before committing to a color. Here are a few more decks I liked from the streamer event. Rakdos Mayhem This deck's core strength is that it gets value out of all of its cards. Excess lands turn into food for connive or get discarded to Romantic Rendezvous or Spider-Gwen, Free Spirit/ Wardens of Silverweb Summit. This archetype is solid but a bit worse than Dimir and Azorius. Rakdos has sufficient removal and makes good use of its resources, but the creatures are under-statted and rely on synergy to get the job done. It could be my small sample, but I felt more comfortable playing against Rakdos than a deck like Dimir or Azorius. The last deck I'll highlight may be my favorite, though I had a couple of bad draws in a row during best-of-one. You're out after two losses in the new system, so I only managed 1-2 with what I thought was a fantastic deck. Esper This Esper deck was super fun and would have been more enjoyable had I found a copy of Prison Break for my reanimator package. I had Knife Trick/Pumpkin Bombardment to discard my bomb seven-drops and Superior Spider-Man/Kavaero, Mind Bitten to turbo out my seven-drops effectively, which came up in multiple games. Sadly, in one of the games, I stumbled on blue mana, so my opponent was ready with the answer at instant speed when I copied Neach Pinnacle Pariah/Doctor Octopus, Master Planner. Overall, this is an archetype I'd like to explore more, but it won't come up often, as you do need some overpowered high-end creatures to reanimate to make a deck like this tick. This deck desperately wanted some Hot Dog Carts/Treat Trolleys, but none were available in the draft. Overall, while the set and new way to draft are fairly fun, I suspect the set will get stale faster than normal because it's so small. The cards will feel too repetitive quickly, and with bonus sheet cards being distributed more rarely in this set, we don't get much of that to add to the variety of packs. The fact that the cards are different in paper and online isn't a huge deal to me, but it craters the enthusiasm for many people, which has muddied what would otherwise be a highly anticipated release. As of right now, I'm eager to play the format when it opens on Arena. Part of me, for the first time in a while, has the urge to check out a pre-release. I won't do it because I have stuff to do, but I will feel FOMO for the first time in a long time. If you're wondering if this set is worth it and you're hesitant about drafting a new way, my honest opinion is that you'll barely notice a difference after a bit, and it's not any less fun than what we're used to. It's worth playing until you get bored, which I admit may happen sooner, but only because of the set size and not because it's poorly designed or the new draft style is an issue.

We officially have the full preview of the highly anticipated Spider-Man set. While the set is on the smaller side, let's see if it will leave a big impact in Constructed, after they finally rid the world of the scourge of Vivi and its consistent dominance in Standard. Let's take a peek at some more interesting cards. Spider-Man 2099 Spider-Man 2099 looks fairly solid. While you can't play this two-drop on turn two or three, it works well with the new Mayhem mechanic, allowing it to deal damage the turn it is put into play, and it attacks for four damage on subsequent turns. Clearly designed with Mayhem in mind, there are other ways to utilize its conditional triggers, such as plot and numerous red cards that play things from exile, including Gwen Stacy. Most notably, it seems like it would pair really well with Expressive Iteration in any format where it's still legal. The spell's cost efficiency makes it interesting, but it's not a card I'd expect to see tons of play due to its prohibitive trigger. It's an interesting card that isn't worth building around, but it's worth considering if your deck can consistently use its conditional trigger. Jackal, Genius Geneticist Jackal, Genius Geneticist is one of the set's most interesting cards. It's a two-mana 1/1 that can leave a devastating effect on the battlefield almost immediately. Ideally, we can play a mana dork on turn one, follow up with Jackal on turn two, and possibly an additional mana dork, creating a copy allowing us to play a two-drop on the following turn and a three-drop on top of that. In the meantime, we're copying all of it and have a massive battlefield presence. Jackal asks you to play a low curve of creatures and a lot of them for redundancy, but the payoff is massive. Inherently, Jackal and any deck fully utilizing it will be weak to sweepers. Hopefully, you can close the game out quickly before that occurs. Since we're playing blue, we can play some cheaper soft counters to protect the battlefield presence. Keep in mind that this is at odds with what a Jackal deck wants you to do, so it will be a delicate situation. Jackal will often want you to build a deck similar to Collected Company, which is tons of low-curve creatures that leave a lasting effect. Maybe we'll see these two cards in action together in eternal formats. Jackal is the kind of card I hate to play with, but also a card I'll be terrified of facing down. It's an extremely cool card that has the potential to see play in a variety of formats because of its powerful effect and low-mana cost. Symbiote Spider-Man Symbiote Spider-Man is disappointing because it's my personal favorite Spider-Man version. The card looks great artistically, but it lacks an evasive ability that a radioactive Spider-Man abducted by an alien symbiote would possess. Spider-Man can fly above the buildings, so at least give it a jump ability, and I can connect to trigger the ability. Find New Host is an interesting flavor win, but ultimately, Symbiote Spider-Man will have a difficult time connecting because of its low power for a three-drop. I'd love if this card saw play, but with no deathtouch or flying, it will likely sit in play and not connect. If I were to play with this card, it would be with the play style of a deck like Dimir Midrange already seen in Standard. It has a lot of creature interaction to clear the way and small evasive fliers that it can host to start drawing more cards. It's possible we see Symbiote Spider-Man in this deck style, but there's a high barrier of entry for three-mana creatures, and I'm not sure Symbiote Spider-Man makes the cut. Hydro-Man, Fluid Felon Hydro-Man, Fluid Felon is a new and unique design that nails the character's flavor while being mechanically sound. I don't know Hydro-Man's character well, but I've seen enough to know it's a villain that draws power from water and manipulates water to cause terror among everyday citizens. If you play this card with a bunch of cantrips, you can attack for chunks of damage. When your turn ends, Hydro-Man will disappear into the water and become the land itself. It will protect itself from sorcery-speed removal while giving you more mana on the opponent's turn, or in niche cases, your end step. This card is difficult to evaluate because it's a potentially potent creature and somewhat of a Rampant Growth, as it lets you cast instant-speed four-drops on turn three and makes it easier to hold up counter-magic for the game's duration. The design is amazing. I'm not sure it's good enough to see a lot of play, but it has a good amount of potential in a well-built deck. I'm excited to see what happens with this one. Spider-Woman, Stunning Savior Spider-Woman, Stunning Savior is a hate bear that I think has some longevity to her because of her hybrid-mana cost and ability to play across all formats. Spider-Woman could even see vintage play as a card that can be used to discard to Force of Will while having a profound impact on the early turns against Moxes and Black Lotus. While I doubt it breaks into Vintage, we've seen this effect before on smaller ground creatures at two mana. However, Spider-Woman is also a flying creature, meaning it won't only prevent creatures from blocking the turn they enter, it can maneuver around a lot of opponents' creatures in combat and leave a lasting threat on the game. Spider-Woman is likely to be included in white and blue aggressive decks because its effect is instrumental in stopping potential combos. While this effect has been done before, we rarely see this type of thing from blue, which is the most interesting part of the card. Blue hate bears are scary because blue is the best at playing a tempo-focused game. It's not an all-star card, but I bet Spider-Woman, Stunning Savior will move in and out of decks of all formats for years to come. The Spot, Living Portal We've seen a million versions of Fiend Hunter, but this one is different, as the card's wording makes it very interesting. It's designed so that you exile your opponent's best permanent and a card from your own graveyard. If it dies, both cards go back to their owners' hands, so you get your best card from your graveyard back and your opponent gets their best permanent back. However, if The Spot were to die, the opponent's permanent doesn't go right back into play. Instead, it goes back to their hand, so they must recast it before it can start attacking or blocking or any of that stuff that might come up if The Spot died at instant speed. Where it gets more interesting is that The Spot has to die for these cards to be returned. If The Spot is exiled, returned to your hand, or if you happen to have a way to blink it, those cards are gone forever. This makes the card extremely interesting and potentially powerful. Where it has obvious Commander implications with the ability to exile cards as a favor to an opponent, these applications also make it a useful tool in a competitive environment. The Spot has a legitimate chance to see play in Standard because it's more than just a Fiend Hunter. It's only held back by its mana cost, but even then, it will likely find a home somewhere because it's too easy to exploit, and it's hard for it to backfire because it sends permanents back to players' hands. This is a cool card, and while I don't know anything about the character, I'm suspecting it's flavorfully brilliant, as well. This will likely wrap up my Spider-Man set review. Spider-Man is a uniquely smaller set that feels a bit underpowered. It's hard to get an exact feel for a set this new and creative. It feels like many cards have a lot of text on them, but that text isn't translating to raw power to the naked eye. I've heard criticisms that the set feels too weak to impact Standard, especially with Vivi lurking around every corner. Those are valid criticisms, but we'll need to play with this set first before making that determination because cards like the transform creatures will play out differently than they look on paper. I can vouch for this because I evaluate transform cards differently since we could never cast their backside and had to meet a specific condition to flip them. This is a new ballgame, and I'm excited to participate. We'll get our first look at the set in the Omenpath Early Access Streamer event, which I'll participate in. Omenpath is the Arena name for The Spider-Man set because they didn't get the rights to the digital assets, so while the cards have different names, they will functionally be the same. I'll dive into the new pick-two draft format and try to learn it well because it will be an entirely different way of drafting that may take a while to master. I'm always up for the challenge and can't wait to start.

Spider-Man is just two weeks away. I was a massive Spider-Man fan growing up, so this set hits home for me. Venom is my favorite Marvel character, and I can't wait to get my hands on some sweet Magic cards featuring my favorite symbiotic alien. Unfortunately, as rumor has it, WotC was unable to procure the IP for Arena, so that will be played with different card names, but the cards will remain the same. I'm hoping that doesn't take away from any potential Arena events, specifically the Collector Booster box events where I've done quite well in the past. Spider-Man will be a Standard-legal Universes Beyond set, though it's much smaller than usual, so it will be drafted in a new and unique way — four-player pods where you take two cards per pack. I'll certainly delve into some strategy on this when the time comes, but for now, let's take a look at some of the more interesting cards. Multiversal Passage Multiversal Passage is an insanely versatile new land that can facilitate any kind of multi-color deck. While it's not fetchable like a shock land, it will act as additional shock lands in Standard and potentially Pioneer where we don't have fetch lands. This card is one of the safer picks for a top card in the format, and much like Starting Town, it's too versatile not to see a good amount of play in formats without shock lands. Oscorp Industries Let's get the strong lands out of the way first. Oscorp Industries is another very strong land and is something of a Grixis Triome. Discarding this to your Fable is pure upside, as you'll get to play it straight from the graveyard for the small cost of two life. There are many ways to discard Oscorp Industries for value, however it's a big issue in 2025 Magic that it always comes in tapped. It will be interesting to see how this card is exploited with the plethora of loot and rummage effects. This card is bound to show up somewhere. It's a solid tri-colored land, but it would play better in a deck that can put in the graveyard freely and not fall too far behind on board by playing too many tap lands. Gwen Stacy Once upon a time, Abbot of Keral Keep was one of the most impactful cards printed in Standard. As someone who lost in the finals of a Pro Tour to it, I'm well qualified to speak on this card type's potential. Gwen Stacy works differently from Abbot. You can play the card as long as Gwen's in play, allowing you to play it on turn two freely and still get value if it's there when you play the exiled card. This is a different kind of transform card, as for the first time in standard, you can cast the back of a transforming card. This is a super cool new twist, and especially with Gwen, it's going to lead to some tough decisions of whether to cast her for two mana and transform her for full value, or to cast her flip-side outright for potentially less long-term value. Removing two counters seems difficult, but with connive in the set and the ability to put counters when playing from exile, it will likely come up here and there. Gwen Stacy seems solid but not broken. I expect Gwen to find a home somewhere in competitive environments, especially after we see Vivi hit the ban list and things become more tame. Gwen is both a cheap value creature, and a flying haste creature, so she plays on multiple spots on the curve, allowing for flexibility and a bit of power. I love this new mechanic and can't wait to play with these new, unique transform cards. Black Cat, Cunning Thief Black Cat is an interesting spin on Gonti, Lord of Luxury. It does not have deathtouch and costs one more mana, but it lets you look deeper into the opponent's deck and take an extra card. It would be super cool to see this steal an entire two-card combo from an opponent and beat them with their own tools. Mulldrifter is not what it used to be these days, but Black Cat has potential in some formats like Cube and Commander. It's not exactly a high-powered Standard card, but it may see play in small numbers as a grindy one-of for some midrange mirror matchups where a mulldrifter that always hits two spells is solid enough. This is a fun card, but it's not quite there for competitive play. Spectacular Spider-Man While there are many versions of Spider-Man in this set, this is the easiest to place, and if I do say so myself, has the best art. Spectacular Spider-Man is the perfect card for a white aggressive Standard deck that wants to apply pressure early but not overcommit into a sweeper. Flash allows you to dodge your opponent's sorcery-speed sweepers, and as the game develops, you have protection for potential sweepers later on with its ability to give your creatures indestructible. It's a solid little creature but nothing groundbreaking. It will see play if a Mono-White aggressive deck is viable. Even if Mono-White decks aren't viable, it can see play in a UW Flash Deck or any two-color white aggro deck. This is a cool card with even cooler art, but it's nothing too flashy. The Soul Stone The Soul Stone is an extremely interesting card. It's an indestructible and legendary mana rock in Standard. We don't get cards like this too often anymore, and when we do, they usually tap for colorless mana. The Soul Stone has a built-in top-end mana sink, though you can't tap it to pay the mana cost, as it taps to harness its power. The Soul Stone has some potential in Standard. Ultimately, I think it will fall flat as a legendary permanent. Generally, with this kind of effect, you'd want to play a full playset, but redundant copies of this card have virtually no use because it's indestructible and likely going to sit in play throughout the game. We may see some lists with one or two copies of The Soul Stone, especially in black decks that have a reasonable amount of creatures and a higher curve. It's always surprised me how little we see mana rocks played in Standard, even if it's just a single copy or two. I'm hoping we see The Soul Stone in play and doing its thing since it's playable if certain conditions are met. I do not think it's a card that should be built around because harnessing is too expensive. Spider-Man looks more fun than strong so far. It's a smaller set than usual, but there's still plenty more to see, and we'll get more into it next week.

I have to dip my toes into an Alchemy Limited set every time one comes out. Edge of Eternities was a format people either hated or hated to love. While I fall into the second category, I understood people's issues. Alchemy is another format that Limited players find problematic, which I don't understand. I get why people are turned off from playing casual formats that aren't supported by any kind of organized play system, as they'd rather keep their eye on the prize and pursue higher-level tournaments. Generally, Limited has long been forgotten in organized play, so the players who love and play mostly Limited are doing it for the love of the game. Alchemy is a remix of an existing format and has made it more fun every time. Adding a midseason twist to a format that I have drafted 100 or more times can only be an upside, but some old dogs don't want to learn the new tricks. Alchemy fixed one of the bigger problems I had with EoE, which is that the set is too underpowered for all the cool mechanics. If you've ever played Alchemy before, you know the cards are not what anyone would call underpowered. There are a few Constructed plants in there that don't translate into draft, but mostly, the cards are busted. I started the format off as I always do. I read the cards, drafted a mediocre deck, and got destroyed. I went 0-3 in my first attempt and felt like all I learned was that the Alchemy cards are indeed busted. That took me to a place where I realized that green, a color well known as the best color in EoE Limited, just got better. I've talked about green before as being a color I'm not willing to fight over. The format's power level is too low to fight for fixing, only to wind up with a multicolor underpowered deck. Once good cards started getting gobbled up early in drafts, I was done fighting over green. The format developed into a place where that was the case with a lot of people. Now, green is considered a solid color and not over-the-top busted. But then Alchemy came out. Green shot up in power level if you can believe it, and that's because you can reasonably play three-color green decks to scoop up even more powerful Alchemy cards. Red will largely be the same because of the various Lander cards, allowing you to support splashes of the format's new most powerful cards. After my epiphany that green will get even stronger, I've been on a green kick and am doing quite well. I started 6-0 in my next two attempts. I couldn't get the clean sweep in either, but I trophied the next two drafts with some interesting green decks. 4c Planets This deck was an absolute masterpiece. Brood Astronomer, Eumidian Lifeseed, and Volatile Orbit all came to play nearly every long game, and I got to do cool things with planets in every game, including copying Volatile Orbit with Adagia, Windswept Bastion to burn my opponent out slowly. The various green Alchemy cards not only provided win conditions, but they also provided mana fixing, allowing me to play removal of any color, pick up this Zero Point Ballad pack three, and play it in my deck with no fear. Games played out more slowly when I had ways to remove the true problematic threats. I realized that some cards, specifically the cheap removal spells, gained a little value because of a few powerful Alchemy cards you'll see more regularly. Typically, this is the case in all Alchemy sets, where the Alchemy cards tend to mostly be threats. Removal becomes more important because the threats are the most powerful cards in the format. Plasma Bolt, Depressurize, Bombard, all gain a little bit of value, and the mediocre curve-filler creatures should be knocked down a peg. For instance, that Ice Cave Crasher in my sideboard was a card I didn't play at all in EoE because I was getting a higher card quality early in the set's release. As people learned more about the set and my decks became less powerful, I eventually became happy to play Ice Cave Crasher. With Alchemy's release, it's back on my "let's hope I don't have to play this" list. In fact, having new cards pumped into the set makes you reevaluate each card, especially cards that were on the bottom tier of playable in your decks. Every color will have to make adjustments to this, and in some cases, the way you build your decks will change a good bit. But let's also talk about how much more power you can get in general because the packs are juiced up. Here's another draft deck where I didn't necessarily have all the Alchemy goods, but I got a lot of rares late because people were taking the more powerful Alchemy cards. Jund Rares This deck is more in line with a normal deck, but it was full of sweepers and powerful top-end. I only took one rare I opened, the Battleship, and the rest were passed to me. You can say "how did you get passed The Endstone" or even Thrumming Hivepool, but those cards are tame compared to the best Alchemy cards. Look at Mine Security in my deck. That's a two-mana 3/1 trample, which is not great but playable on its own. However, it puts a zero-mana Flametongue Kavu on top of your deck. Mine Security is an uncommon, the most common Alchemy rarity you can find. You'll be playing against it probably every draft. With this deck, I learned how strong that card can be with Volatile Orbit because Orbit can find Kavaron, Memorial World with eight counters on it, and the FTK for zero mana can finish crewing it on the same turn. After that, you're off to the races. This deck also started 6-0 and couldn't get the clean sweep, but we did close out with the trophy. An awesome thing about Alchemy is how many games you get to play with and against the planets. In the normal EoE format, I often had to decide whether to spend time stationing my spacecraft. In Alchemy, I've been deciding how to station my spacecraft or planets, as I've often had multiple in play. Overall, as I suspected, Alchemy has only improved the format. If you're sick of EoE Limited but love Limited, I highly recommend the experience. If you hated Edge Limited and couldn't pinpoint why, maybe it was because it felt like a core set power level but with spaceships, and you wanted more meat in the packs. If so, you may like Alchemy. Regardless, I'll be playing Alchemy on stream while it's available and enjoying every minute.

Last weekend, we had the privilege of playing Sealed for steaks, I mean, stakes. Edge of Eternities Sealed is a lot different in a best-of-one setting than I expected, at least, what I thought might be successful. My record in the Arena Direct was a 71% win percentage, converting three of the 11 attempts I made into boxes. Relative to others, it was a successful campaign. With a couple of more opportunities to play Sealed with the Arena Open this weekend and the Arena Champs Qualifier the following weekend, I thought it might be a good idea to go over what I found to be GTO (Game Theory Optimal). I went into my first couple of Sealed events thinking landers would make for some nice splashing opportunities, and everyone would have a bunch of multicolor soup decks. In reality, Sealed was a lot different. In fact, I found the exact opposite to be true. While the format has a lot of powerful cards, almost none of the cards carry games on their own outside of some of the mythic rares like Ouroboroid and Quantum Riddler. Normally in Sealed, you're looking to play your best rares and build your deck in a reasonable way so that you can play all of them, including splashing them. This would make sense with landers, however, as I said, I found that you want the most consistent deck from top to bottom. I found the decks easy to build once I understood the baseline power level of potential opponents' decks. It wasn't just all bombs all the time. While there are a lot of sweepers in the format to be careful of, I didn't find them that difficult to finagle around. It takes a delicate balance of figuring out when you can beat a sweeper and when you have to unload your hand. Generally, it was obvious when the opponent had them, and you could easily not overcommit on the board. The way I found to optimally build my decks was to focus on my best two colors and try to build a strictly two-color deck. Many of my pools would have zero or one total land, and it wasn't enough for splashing a third color. Green decks were more flexible, and while green was still the best color in Sealed, it wasn't for that reason. I'd occasionally splash a removal spell or two in my green decks, but I wasn't going too deep on splashes because the early mana was too crucial to board development. Green overperformed for me for one simple reason: the green creatures are extremely large, hit very hard, and there's redundancy of them at common. Between Icecave Crasher, Fungal Colossus, Germinating Wurm, and Drix Fatemaker, your four- and five-drops pack a huge punch, and any hiccup from the opponent would leave them buried. One thing I found is that my typical Sealed deck had less removal than my average draft deck. This meant that unchecked large creatures were a nice strategy. This is exactly what green was capable of. Take, for example, this deck: My mana was concerning with so many double-pipped creatures, but I had a good curve, some removal, and combat tricks. No overly broken rares. No sweepers. Just curving out and attacking. When my opponents stumbled on mana, I was able to bury them in combat. This deck went 7-1 for a box, and my only loss was to an easily top 1% pool with eight rares, six or seven of which were blue. Not really a strike against the deck. It's worth noting that Timeline Culler was absolutely fantastic in this deck and made my deck more resilient to sweepers. Here's another trophy deck. Again, black, green, and a nice curve of creatures. I'd be lying if I said my Elegy Acolyte didn't win me a game or two, but the deck won plenty of games without it as well. I curved out with creatures, used my mana efficiently, and made sure I was always winning on the board without overdeveloping into sweepers. I really liked Wurmwall Sweeper in all of these decks because one issue with this format is that the lack of dual lands doesn't only punish splashing bombs, it punishes two-color mana bases. Many more games than usual come down to players having smooth mana, so a cheap colorless surveil card that turns into an evasive threat on turn three or four is perfect for this kind of strategy. Typically in Sealed Deck, I hate combat tricks, but in this format, I usually want at least one, if not two. As you can see, I played Dark Endurance for the first time, and it was excellent. While Biosynthic Burst would have been better, I was able to protect creatures, win combat, and develop my board into potential sweepers because I had a flexible card. Since you're often left with less removal than you'd like, combat tricks in this style of deck felt more potent than usual. I disliked expensive cards. Cards like Mouth of the Storm and Pinnacle Kill-Ship felt underwhelming. Games weren't dragging on like they did in draft. A lack of interaction led to more curving out and "sweeper checking" the opponent. While you can certainly play these cards, understand that without interaction to bridge you to them, the game may not last long enough for them to have an impact. To start the format, I was all about playing my counterspells, even Temporal Intervention. By the end of the format, I was only playing these things when I ran out of cards I deemed playable. Fundamentally, all the rules of Sealed Deck, where you build your deck to go slower, try to out-bomb your opponent, and interact with their bombs, got thrown out the window. Both because there are few truly broken rares and the best-of-one hand smoother. I expect to have to adapt to best-of-three some, but regardless, I will likely build my decks in a similar fashion. I'm excited to try playing more competitive Limited in the next couple of weeks. Hopefully, some of these tips will help you out as well.

I've been streaming a lot of MTG lately, and surprisingly, my community is growing faster than expected, which has motivated me to play more Limited. I've played Edge of Eternities Limited so much that, at the time of this writing, I'm ranked first on the Mythic Ladder. That's right, this fella got his groove back. For the first time, I'm on 17lands.com utilizing their excellent analytics. The most valuable to me is tracking my trophy and win rates, as well as giving me an idea of where to pick rares I haven't used much. In these analytics, I noticed I have a higher win percentage than most of the top players on the leaderboard. So, maybe I'm doing something right? I've talked and theorized a lot about this frustrating format. While many I talk to are struggling, there are a few things I think I'm doing differently than others. I avoid white: My first rule, that I'm always touting, is that I almost always avoid playing white. Why is that? Is white THAT bad? Well, no, white is actually pretty deep at higher rarities, and in a weak pack, taking a white rare or uncommon is probably fine. At common, white is abysmal outside of its premium removal spells in Banishing Light and Focus Fire. The creatures at common are so weak that I avoid the color because it's losing combats early in the game, and white does the worst job at prolonging the game and winning in longer, grindier games. I'm sure you can supplement your main color with white's removal and a couple of creatures at common, but you don't want your deck to be a majority white commons like you can with red, blue, or, of course, green. I try to avoid spacecraft: Spacecraft is supposed to be the cool draw to the set, but unfortunately, they're mostly too mediocre. The rare spacecraft is playable, but I tend to avoid the commons, uncommons, and even the rares regardless of whether they're solid enough. While I love Pinnacle Kill-Ship at the top of my curve, I try to avoid most of the spacecraft because they're tempo negative, and the rest of the format pushes you to play to the board. Larval Scoutlander is an exception, as it's one of the better ways to fix mana and help support the "unique lands" strategy. Spacecraft also have diminishing returns because they're sharing the same resource, your creature's power, amongst each other. You'll often be in a position you can't crew because you're playing defense, and multiple spacecraft in these spots is often game-losing. Even though I'll play them, I won't prioritize most of the uncommon spacecraft over other good cards. If one that is solid enough, like Fellgravship, falls in my lap? Sure, I'll take and play it, but I can't rationalize taking it over other good cards because I try to cap my deck's spacecraft count. If I have a Pinnacle Kill-Ship as my top end, then I'm not usually looking to play more than one other spacecraft. I'm prioritizing red: My Most Drafted Cards from 17Lands.com Green is the go-to color for most, but for me, it's red. The reason I prefer red is in this picture of my most drafted commons. Red's removal suite at common can cover all your bases. Bolts for small creatures, Bombards for medium creatures, and Orbital Plunge covers almost everything else. To me, Orbital Plunge is the best common in the set. It's a way to put a lander in play to fix your mana or ramp while also killing their best creature. Plunge is ideal for my game plan of almost every deck for controlling the board and winning games through small decisions. Red is the new green. Looking at mana curve differently: In most formats you can look at your mana curve based on converted mana cost. In this format, you have to approach it differently. There are warp costs, landers, and a bevy of other activated abilities that can fill slots on your curve. For instance, when you have a couple of Kav Landseekers in your deck, ideally your deck has a few more three-mana spells than four, so you can crack the lander the following turn, and hopefully ramp up to a six- or seven-drop from there. With Galactic Wayfarer, focus on more two-drops because you're likely to want to crack a lander on four and follow it up with a five- or six-drop the following turn. The format, at least in the early game, is about tempo and trying to squeeze yourself into an onboard advantage early, but also, not overextending into the plethora of sweepers in the format. It's important during deck building to look at your deck like this, but also during the drafting portion while you're painting your Picasso. Focus on the small things: This format is swingy. The games you play tend to be close, involve trading resources, and have back-and-forth Magic. Because of this, all the small decisions add up to be a lot more. Much of this is figuring out when to sacrifice landers and how long to hold onto sacrifice outlets like Nutrient Block. Cryogen Relic is a big one as well. There are dozens of small decisions per game. Taking time to think about how the game is likely to play out and plan a few turns a head is critical to increase your win rate. You want to spend your mana productively, and be mindful of opponent's counter-plays and what you may need to do in following turns. That's true in all Magic games, but in this Limited format, all the small things can make the difference between a win and a loss. This is counter to Final Fantasy where it was more important to focus on playing out your hand. Games were often won in the early game with a variety of strong legends that were either unanswered and won the game, or you answered them and were able to play on for a more stereotypical Limited Magic game. I find it weird that the more I play EoE Limited, the more I seem to be enjoying it. EoE is a tough nut to crack and that makes the puzzle more satisfying to solve. This month is full of EoE Limited events, so it's a good format to master and show off your skills in a tournament setting. We have an Arena Direct, Arena Open, and Arena Champs qualifier in back-to-back weekends. While a lot of the gameplay will be sealed, it will be fun to put this knowledge to use.