Like many of you, I'm very busy this time of year. I celebrate Christmas, have a December wedding anniversary, and many close family and friends have birthdays near Christmas Day. Additionally, we gifted our daughters four guinea pigs from a shelter, which has been a change of pace. Despite being busy, I recently made time to play in an Arena Championship Qualifier with the format being Avatar Sealed. Because I had spent a lot of time streaming the format, I opted to play in the event, thinking I had a good chance of making a run. Sealed is a volatile format. Sometimes you open a pool, and it's almost impossible to convert a bad deck into a reasonable record. Fortunately, I opened two solid decks. With a 7-2 record, I managed to wiggle my way into day two and went undefeated to lock up an invite to the Arena Champs. Let's review my decks, and I can walk you through my choices to highlight teachable moments about the process. Day one ACQ Unfortunately, I didn't keep the screenshot I took of the deck via the Arena client, but I have this nice one from 17lands. Cards I didn't play On day one, I played this Bant deck that had a light green splash for Aang, at the Crossorads and Katara, the Fearless. There wasn't anything I desperately wanted to include that didn't have a spot, and I wasn't struggling for playables. The only card I would have happily played from my sideboard was the two copies of It'll Quench Ya! I didn't play Quench because it was harder on my mana to cast early, as you need to have the land when you want to cast it. Additionally, I already had a pair of Octopus Forms to protect my strong creatures, and I didn't want too many dead draws in my deck after the first few turns of the game. On top of that, I'm playing almost exclusively at sorcery speed in this deck. This deck was extremely powerful, and it almost felt like playing a Constructed deck when it gained momentum. The one problem with the deck, despite being filled with creatures, was that it wasn't that aggressive. My curve and the interaction work well, but the creatures were mostly underwhelming. Even though I won one or two games over nine rounds by playing nuts-and-bolts Magic, a majority of my games were won with my powerful engine of Aang, Katara, Hakoda, and Water Tribe Rallier, a combination that made my deck consistent. Hakoda, Rallier, and Aang could all find each other, and when combined with Katara, they could make things get out of hand quickly. Aang was my MVP of the day, and Airbender Ascension was my runner-up. Airbender Ascension created a bunch of soft locks with Invasion Submersible, where I could bounce an opponent's permanent, waterbend the vehicle back into a creature on their end step, and bounce again on my end step. This happened semi-regularly, and if it wasn't the sub, it was Jet Freedom Fighter loops that usually forced my opponent to concede. The presence of Aang and Water Tribe Rallier made it easy to set up these loops. During the event, I noticed how powerful the engines I could set up were, but my deck had some glaring holes, as well. First, my deck relied on maintaining a battlefield presence, so sweepers were a significant problem. I was fortunate enough to only play against a few decks with sweepers, and while I lost to one, I managed to do just enough to beat the others. My deck was good at setting up board stalls and grinding out the opponent, but this is successful only when you're doing something more powerful than your opponent. This was true for me in most cases; however, my powerful thing required a few pieces to be in play while setting up a board stall, which sweepers absolutely destroyed. Incredibly powerful creatures were another weakness. While my deck had a reasonable amount of interaction, I played against Katara so often that it felt like it was a door prize, and I showed up late and didn't receive mine. I ended up putting in Rocky Rebuke as a mediocre piece of removal that could get the job done against Katara. While I beat it on a few occasions, I either got lucky that it only showed up in one game, or I had the removal at the right time. I managed to squeak out my final round with under a minute on my clock against an opponent who played very well and had a strong Rakdos deck. This brings us to day two, with my deck below. Day two I opened a great Naya deck that was full of allies, had a white base, and used a different game plan. I tried to do the exact opposite with this deck compared to my last. I wanted to out-tempo my opponent, curve out, and win more traditional Limited games with my Glider Staffs. When I first built the deck, I included a Lightning Strike, Firebending Lesson, and A Rumbling Arena, which is not pictured. I realized this stretched my mana a lot for the Firebending Lesson and Lightning Strike only. Rather than destroy my mana for a slight upgrade in card quality, I decided on a lighter splash of just Bumi and Toph. This was easier to facilitate with Jasmine Dragon Tea Shop in my deck. Between this land and Seismic Sense, my deck ran as smoothly as butter. District Guide also did a lot of work fixing. Seismic Sense is criminally underrated by most players I know, as it's able to fix mana and find bombs at an efficient rate. This deck originally started with Yip Yip in the mainboard, but I ended up siding it out in every game two and three. Yip Yip is an efficient combat trick, especially in a deck with all allies, but Sealed often isn't about winning combats. Usually, it comes down to presenting threats and winning, or losing to, bombs. I ended up changing it to Origin of Metalbending for the last match. Origin played nicely in combat, but mostly I wanted a disenchant effect for a variety of enchantments, vehicles, and equipment. There are many strong enchantment cards that are important to kill, especially against winning records. I was vulnerable to Katara and other powerful creatures, so depending on the situation, I used this slot to board in either the Lightning Strike or Sandbender's Storm. I ended up going 4-0 on day two. I had a lot of close matches, and my final was the least close. My opponent, who I know from Rivals League, played well to get to 3-0, as he had a low-power deck compared to my other opponents. It was nice to have an easy, stress-free fourth match. As for the Arena Championship, I'm excited to have a high-level event to play in again. It's been a while since I've played an event with such high stakes and a possibility of qualifying for the World Championships. As of right now, I'll be testing for the event with newly crowned two-time World Champion Seth Manfield and my favorite Limited streamer, Kyle "TheHamTV" Rose, among others. The event's format is Standard, so expect more Standard content out of me in the near future. Until then, I'm happy to be back in the saddle. Wish me luck, because I'm sure I'll need it.

For the second year running, we have a repeat World Champion in Seth Manfield. Seth made an incredible comeback from 0-2 in Limited to completely run the table. Not only did he go from 10-0 to secure a slot in the Top 8, but he also had a flawless victory, winning all nine games. The deck Seth and other players from Team TCG Player wielded was this Izzet Lessons deck. Accumulate Wisdom was the first card I noticed when reading the spoiler, and WotC made it happen by adding playable lessons like Firebending Lesson, Boomerang Basics, and Combustion Technique. While Izzet Lessons was a known quantity, the big innovation, and the part that broke the deck completely, was the addition of Artist's Talent and Monument to Endurance. This two-card combo fits into the deck as smooth as butter and gives the deck both card selection and advantage, as well as a win condition with difficult interaction. This is one of the more broken decks I've seen in Standard. It's a great deck, but it remains to be seen how it can compete in an environment where it's a target for attack. I played some games with the deck, and it immediately felt like one of the most powerful Standard decks I've ever played. However, it will likely start to struggle as more players adopt cards that can interact with Monument to Endurance and Artist's Talent. We watched a game where Seth won with zero cards in the library, against very little interaction. His Monuments were in awkward positions in his deck, and even though he fully churned through his deck, winning is tough when you have that much velocity and can't get chunks of damage in during your churn. Well-timed Naturalize effects with a solid game plan may be able to favorably attack this deck. If I were to play a tournament this weekend I'd likely play the deck; however, I would pre-board for the mirror and add some Price of Freedom and a counterspell or two to the main deck in place of some of the spot removal. You can win with Otters and Gran-Gran, but it's much less reliable. It will be interesting to see how this list iterates over time because the core of the deck is incredibly strong. The win condition was perfect for this event, yet a sideboard pivot or pre-board could make this deck dangerous on any given weekend. This deck is completely absurd. I had a great time initially playing it on ladder, but it got monotonous playing against a turn-one Gran-Gran basically every round. Matt Nass really did it again. I streamed the entirety of the Top 8 and all Limited rounds, which were a bit boring because over two days they showed only two decks that weren't that exciting being drafted. The games were fairly interesting, yet there's not much to report on what we saw. What was interesting was a situation in the Top 8 where Seth asked to take back a play. This situation was the talk of the town for a full two days, and Twitch chat went nuts. People came into my stream all week to ask me what I thought. Here's my breakdown of what happened. Seth played carefully by managing triggers and stumbling around slightly. From my understanding, Seth doesn't play nearly as much Magic these days as he has in the past, especially in paper. I'm not making excuses, still I can see how and why it happened. The rules state players are allowed to rescind a play if no new information is gained. This is for situations like fetching the wrong land with a fetch land or casting a removal spell and deciding another creature would be better as you start to cast the spell. No relevant information was gained despite there being a single removal spell Ken could have cast in response. It wasn't a reasonable response to what was going on, and the timing would have been dubious. One relevant factor is Seth asking the judge about the withdrawal's validity. He didn't demand it or act entitled, instead he looked to the judge for guidance about retracting his play. During every tournament I attend, I have one friend tell me a story where they were surprised an opponent was allowed a full withdrawal. Rules, for better or worse, have become more lenient over time. While I view it as a good thing, I respect the opinion of those who would rather have stricter rules at a higher level, at least to a degree. Seth received a lot of hate for this, as did the judging staff, but neither should receive blame. It's a fine catalyst to discuss the rule itself, which is what should take the heat. I'd love for WotC to comment on what happened and why, as well as prompt discussion around better ways to resolve similar situations. A person in my chat said they once used this rule to select their turn-one land with a fetch because they forgot to put a land in play when the opponent asked them an unrelated game detail. Things like that are much worse for the game. The language of the rules can be tricky, but they allow for situations like Seth realizing he wanted to make a different play as a trigger of his own card went on the stack. This is in contrast to brain slips, such as my stream's chatter where they clearly meant to fetch a land and got distracted in the midst of resolving it. Perhaps if all opponents were more reasonable and lenient with those types of spots, then situations like Seth's could be more stringent without punishing some players. It's a shame that a momentous weekend was tarnished because of a silly ruling that was unlikely to affect the match's outcome, as Seth was firmly in control of the game at the time of the take back. Although that can't be factored into the ruling, we can at least acknowledge that even if the rule was different, it likely wouldn't have affected the winner of the match and event. Worlds always has a way to instill some fire in me. I have that feeling once again after watching a player I've played alongside of win their second Worlds. This is the same person who won my first Worlds, which was also the same year I won Player of the Year. With all the Limited events on the horizon, I'm extremely excited to fall in love with tournament Magic again, even if it's just for a little while.

This article is a little late to the punch, as I'm writing on the eve of the most prestigious Magic tournament of the year. Tomorrow, we start the hunt for a new Magic: The Gathering world champion. Regardless of timing, while this article may be published a bit late, we can at least look back on my predictions to see how close I got. The World Championship is my favorite event of the year, and the one that gives me FOMO. A strong finish has always eluded me despite having a lot of experience in the event. It's the one event that I'd love to play again, at least until the upcoming Limited Championship events start firing. Today, I want to go over a few predictions for what Limited will look like at the World Championships relative to what we know from MTG Arena. Blue is the best My first prediction is that blue will be the most dominant color in Limited rounds. White is, or was, widely regarded as the strongest color in the set, but I've had almost no success with it due to a combination of it not being my style and a playerbase fighting to be in white. This is also in a best-of-one setting where white decks can leverage the hand smoother and curving out better than other colors, whereas Worlds is obviously best-of-three. Blue, on the other hand, has been my color of choice. It's the deepest color with access to early defense, interaction, and the best color to grind out value in long games. Cards like Waterbending Scroll have been significantly better as I've learned to draft the format. I've leveraged blue to number one mythic yet again this month, and I suspect Worlds players testing in pod drafts will also find success with the color. Without a hand smoother, all the sources of card advantage that blue offers should further facilitate a long, grindy game plan, given a lot more time to cast spells like Waterbending Lesson. Blue will be the top dog. Black is on the bottom It's rare to see, but for the first time in a while, black is hands-down the worst color. Black's common creature base is as bad as it gets. It reminds me of Edge of Eternities Limited, where white had such a bad suite of common creatures that I avoided it at all costs. One thing about black is that it has a lot of strong rares. Every time I play against or with black decks, there's a pile of mediocre creatures, a few solid but not too special removal spells, and two or three great rares. While the rares do a lot of heavy lifting, I still predict black will be the worst performing color at Worlds, and players who draft black will struggle if they don't get rewarded with powerful uncommons and rares. Sometimes, when a color is known to be the worst, and people go out of their way to avoid it, it still performs well because of the avoidance. Black, however, has a lot of rares that will pull you in, which isn't discussed in this regard, unlike other colors on the bottom. Avatar Limited focuses on hitting the board and adequately leveraging tempo in the early game so you can spend mana cracking clues and making plays that create value, rather than being forced to interact with the board and protect your life total. Black has a difficult time starting out fast because its two- and three-drops are weak across the board. I expect players to avoid black some, but not as much as they may want. Splish splash When this set first came out, I was having fun taking mana fixing and the most powerful card out of every pack, which led me to drafting decks with Avatar Aang and tons of gold cards and rares. I had a lot of success with it in the early portions of the format and then steered away slightly. That is, until I recently realized the format isn't quite fast enough to punish splashes, and there's a bunch of playable fixing and enough card draw to facilitate some light splashing. I think players at Worlds are going to splash more than usual, effectively, and we won't see rares flying around the table like we sometimes do at high-stakes events where players draft more conservatively. Barrels of Blasting Jelly, Waterbender Skin, and Aang's Journey are all playable colorless sources of fixing in addition to green-specific fixing and, of course, the dual land cycle. We even get filter lands in a pinch, like Rumble Arena and White Lotus Hideout. Deck power level is extremely important. Unless you can close quickly, players at Worlds are likely to splash the busted rares they open. Two or more For the first time in a long time, there's an incentive to draft mono-color decks in Avatar Limited. I can't say enough about how awesome it is to add a cycle of uncommons that reward you for being heavily into a single color. Cards like Cat-Gator want you to play as many Swamps as possible, and we often see this on MTG Arena. Usually, you pick one up early and start heading in that direction, likely not taking them over much. Often, you can wheel a Waterbending Scroll or a Cat-Gator. I play against nearly mono-color decks almost once a draft on Arena. Worlds, however, is pod play. If these players are doing their homework, they won't be gifting players these powerful cards late and taking a barely playable on-color filler card over them. Hate-drafting will be relevant. If a player is sacrificing power upfront by taking a worse black card over a better blue card in hopes of getting a few Gators, you shouldn't be rewarding them at Worlds by taking that second copy of Flexible Waterbender and gifting them that second Gator. For almost no cost, you can severely weaken a potential opponent's deck. I hope and expect to see more players speculating on these mono-color cards and hate-drafting them early. In addition, I expect players to wiggle around, pivoting in and out of colors, trying to extract maximum value from each pick rather than settling for subpar cards. If white is flowing, world-class players will recognize it, move in, and make it much tougher to get enough cards of a single color to play a mono-color or nearly mono-color deck. No Shrines My last prediction is that we won't see any Shrines decks. Avatar is an amazing Limited format. I'm still enjoying firing every draft weeks after its release. I don't think any player, regardless of the quality of the pool, will risk their tournament drafting Shrines. It may be a fun meme you can pull off on MTG Arena once in a blue moon, but at the World Champs, in a Bo3 setting where sideboarding exists, Shrines are not going to happen. Maybe I'm wrong, and there is a player or two crazy enough to make that bold leap, but I suspect if they do, they will get pummeled on the battlefield. No one, and I mean no one , should draft Shrines, and I don't believe anyone will. These are my five predictions for how Worlds Limited will shake out. I'm excited to watch the coverage and curious to see if anything new pops up in Standard. Will we see a fast Badgermole Cub ban, as the internet is clamoring for, when all is said and done? Only time will tell. Editor's note: Magic World Championship 31 concluded on December 7, 2025. This article was written directly before the start of the championship, but posted after its conclusion. You can watch match and draft replays of the tournament here .

For the past few days, I've been putting in the work playing Avatar: The Last Airbender Limited. It's been a rollercoaster, but I feel like I've finally gotten the hang of it. My first impression was that it feels and plays a bit like Spider-Man Limited, except it's deeper and overall better. We have various synergies that play directly onto the board, and the game we play is mostly on the battlefield and less about extracting every ounce of value from each card or ability. Why is that? Well, we have some solid one-drops at common and uncommon, but none more powerful than Fire Nation Cadets, a one-drop that, with a little support, can provide an additional 2 mana per turn to cast various instants or activate abilities in combat. If things are going well, you can gain a massive mana advantage early, causing things to snowball out of control. Right on the heels of Boros being a dominant deck in Power Cube, it's again very strong because it's the best at getting on board and snowballing with a pile of activated abilities. In normal Limited sets, cards with expensive activated abilities, such as Water Tribe Captain, could mostly be ignored. With firebending, stalemate games where you have a low life total, lack resources to close the door, and can start to slowly mount a comeback, cards like Water Tribe Captain can take over in the endgame because firebending allows for a ton of mana to sink into these types of abilities. TLDR: Firebending is stronger than it looked to me on paper, with the same being true for all the bending mechanics. I will say, you can take it too far — presenting my Fire Nation Cadet deck. This deck is one of my only 0-3s in a long time, as it was comically underpowered. I managed to bring my three opponents' life totals to low levels, but I had no ability to close the door. Fire Nation Cadets have diminishing returns. While you could likely get away with four in a deck that's flush with good lessons, the average deck will want to cap out at two, maybe three. This draft was interesting because I started pack one with four copies. I knew red wasn't open because I wasn't seeing other red cards, especially the removal to support them, like Firebending Lesson. Lessons is my favorite archetype thus far, and the only one I'm excited to draft. Lesson-matters cards are mostly found at uncommon and rare, but they are quite powerful. None so more powerful than my favorite rare in the set, Iroh, Grand Lotus. If you open Iroh, take it and run with it. It's obscenely powerful and feels like playing Vintage Cube once you stick it. Here's a look at one of my many Iroh decks. I could have played Mai over Vindictive Warden, but for whatever reason, chat wanted me to play the Warden. The deck plays out fairly controlling, and eventually I'd close the door with one of my rares, usually Iroh. This leads me to my next lesson. I hate to sound cliché, but as of right now, which is still early, rares are extremely important in this format. There's a lot of filler commons, and the rares are worth so much more than most commons. That's not to say the format is durdly and you need to play soup, but my 4c, rare, heavy decks, like this one, have overperformed my expectations. While the format can be fast, generally, your pool's power level is important. While my initial inclination was that red is the best color, white is quite strong as well. I've struggled with black decks, and I've mostly only had success with green in soup decks, including the deck above and this one. Every deck just wants a decent curve and rares up top, but it's crucial to have ways to interact with strong rares when they're present. Mono-color decks are another archetype I'm excited about. We have a small amount of support for mono-color decks at uncommon with a cycle of cards that scale with your basic lands, but it's just enough to make the archetype worth pursuing at times. The strongest in that cycle is the Gator, a functional Corrupt on a stick. Here's the first deck I drafted when the format became live. I got two early Gather the White Lotus and leaned into the archetype. This deck played out well, and I've been overly impressed with Earth Kingdom Protectors. Most of the relevant creatures in white decks are also allies, so it saves them from a lot of removal and makes combat easy for the controller and a nightmare for the opponent. Mono Red is also strong, though it probably has the worst card in the basic lands-matter cycle. My dream is to open a Valakut, which is on the bonus sheet, and get to draft a Mono Red deck, much like I did in Zendikar draft back in the day. One of the more disappointing aspects of the format is that the shrines are mostly unplayable. I have seen them pop off at times, but it's not an archetype worth pursuing unless you see a ton of them in pack one. Even then, I'd avoid the shrines. You don't want to play two or three of them in your deck, though I have seen the white one individually do some work as a singular anthem effect in linear, go-wide strategies. Ultimately, I'm ignoring shrines as blanks in packs for the time being. Overall, this feels like an intuitive format, but I still feel like I have a lot to learn. The bending mechanics are all new and make the cards play out much better than they felt. There's plenty I need to explore further to gain a full understanding. With the Collector Booster Arena Direct Thanksgiving weekend, I'll focus on improving in the format and be sure to share my findings.

Avatar Limited has been quite the joy to play, but oh boy has it felt tough to get an edge in. One draft I struggle to get even a couple of wins and another draft it feels like my deck is unbeatable. I've learned a lot over the last week in how to approach the format, but, I still feel like I have a lot more to learn. Let's talk a bit about what I'm finding success in, and what isn't working anymore or at all. I really enjoyed drafting Red decks the first few days of the format, but, it's simply not working as well for me these days. Why is that? Well it's a common trope that draft is self-correcting and I think this may be the case. I'm no longer getting cards like Firebending and Lightning Strike as late as I'd like, and stocks on Fire Nation Cadets have come way down for me. I thought Fire Nation Cadets has potential to be one of the best commons, but with the support cards (lessons) not readily available, I rarely want to play any copies of the card let alone spend picks aggressively on them. Red is down in my book. Whatever I do, I really can't win with black cards if I make it a main color. The common creatures are just so bad and undersized in black I'd rather play as few of them as possible and hopefully none at all outside of Messenger Hawk which I basically only like in Blue decks anyways. That said, Black has some of the best rares and best removal in the format so my strategy from here on out is only get into black for those rares, and only play the removal - as much as I can help it anyways. White is a color I almost always avoid in Limited. Generally, it's balanced fairly poorly because it's kind of the worst at everything it does. It rarely has the best removal or the best creatures, and a lot of the time it's super focused on creatures only, and then the best rares tend to be too gimicky or sweepers you don't really want to play anyways. A card like Glider Kids looks like a 23rd playable at best in recent formats but its actually quite solid because of its sizing relative to the removal in the format, and because flying is as strong as it's been in a while. White in this set is just good, and likely the best color. It's very consistent, and not too gimicky and that is its strength. Sometimes you draft a synergy deck and things fall apart because the support simply isn't there. This is partially a symptom of play boosters where you will not reliably see any given common in a draft because there's both less cards and commons per pack. This deck here I started out Mono Black with the Cat-Gator and pivoted for a pick 6 Aang dropping all of my cards but a Messenger Hawk knowing I'd wheel both Air Nomad Legacy because of how the draft was shaping up. Surely enough I got there and while the curve looks rough in this deck it played out much better than I anticipated thanks to the strength of the aforementioned Glider Kids. White isn't my favorite color to draft though. Despite it being the best, it's usually one of the more highly sought after colors. Blue is my go-to color. I started out with red, but now, I'm embracing blue decks like the one you see above. My favorite late pick up also happens to be my daughter's favorite card, Otter-Penguin. Otter-Penguin doesn't like like much but they're often easy to pick up and can single handedly close out stalled games. As you can see in the above nearly mono blue deck, the penguin serves as a way to close out the game. While this deck may appear to be a bit aggressive because of their presence, it played out quite to the contrary. Every game dragged on and I had to play a control style game often leveraging all my card draw to just overwhelm the opponent before I put the penguin's hooks in them. Waterbending Scroll was obviously quite absurd here with the ability to play so many islands. My sweeper saga only won me a single game of the 7 I managed to win while the Serpent's did a ton of heavy lifting in catching me back up. My favorite archetype is Lessons of course, and this deck right here is my favorite version of it unless I have to pion up Iroh, the Grand Lotus. A version that's low to the ground with card draw, interaction, and tempo plays that can leverage drawing extra cards for damage. A lot like a Phoenix deck with no Arclight Phoenix in it. While I had the minimum amount of removal in the deck I'd like it was plenty enough to not play the Watery Grasps which may be servicable but I want my creatures attacking not forced to be used for Waterbend. Otter-Penguin is crucial to this archetype as a way to close the game once the board inevitably stalls out. The Reason I like blue so much in this format though is simply because of it's ability to draw cards. The format's best cards are so much better than the average card that finding your good cards is just incredibly valuable, and Blue has the ability to both speed up or slow down the game making it my go to. Green Decks have not been great for me, but I will say the biggest strength of Green is it's ability to play any rares that come your way in a format where there is both a lot of powerful rares, and a lot of filler cards. An example from my Stream today where I opened The Legend of Yangchen and got passed Iroh, Grand Lotus and knew I was just going to play both of them immediately in a UG shell. I did happen to get a ton of rares but that's the benefit of taking a couple of Cycle of Renewal and a Couple of Shared Roots. Turtle Duck actually plays a huge roll in both prolonging the game and closing the game out, in these kinds of decks, and I'm always happen to play a copy or two. Outside of this style of deck, I really have only found that I like Green paired with White in aggressive Allies decks, and generally only for some good uncommons and rares. I will note that I have a heavily skewed vision of the format because I've had Iroh, The Grand Lotus an obscene amount of times. Something like one of out three drafts I'm getting the card and it may be biasing my pick orders a bit unknowingly because I'm drafting lessons decks aggressively. As I said before I'm still really enjoying the format and still excited at the start of each draft whether I'm watching on Twitch or playing myself. I still have a lot to learn and while the format feels quite swingy to me right now, it's likely because I have to adjust a bit to what's working for me, and what's not. Still a lot of lessons to learn, and of course, draft.

This week, I got to play a few drafts with the Avatar cards from last week's post. While the Limited set is fun, I'll dive deeper into that next time. Now, let's look at a few more Avatar cards that have a shot in 60-card formats. Raven Eagle Raven Eagle is an interesting, aggressive three-drop that does just enough to see play in Standard and potentially beyond. Raven Eagle can nibble graveyards, making it difficult for opponents to utilize their graveyard as a resource, but also, if you happen to pick up creatures this way, you'll gain value. We also have a static ability that drains the opponent for a life if you're drawing multiple cards per turn. This resembles Graveyard Trespasser, which saw a lot of play in the past. Raven Eagle, however, is much worse than Trespasser because it lacks two key elements: the ability to flip into a larger threat and, most importantly, no ward. While I believe the eagle is still a potentially competitive card, I'd prefer the ward to the ability to make clues. It will be interesting to see if the Eagle has enough juice to push into playability. It's almost there, but in a much larger Standard, it may fall short. Firebending Student At first glance, Firebending Student looked like a mediocre two-drop. That is, until I played it in Limited. While I still think there's a good chance Firebending Student doesn't see much play because it requires you to build around it, it's still extremely powerful when left unchecked. The firebending mechanic can cast an entire handful of spells once you enter combat, such as unloading all the burn in your hand in a single turn or a bunch of red cantrips and draw spells. In turn, Firebending Student will hit for huge chunks of damage in the process. Firebending Student, along with various pump spells like Monstrous Rage (if it were still legal) and cards that can give it double strike, can end the game as early as turn three in Standard. This is a must-answer two-drop and can single-handedly punish any slow draw from the opponent. While Firebending Student is explosive, this deck-build type is also glass cannon in nature. Firebending Student has the opportunity to be one of the set's better cards if there's a solid enough shell to build around it, but also the deck will need to be resilient for when we don't draw the student or the opponent is able to interact with it. This is an extremely strong card that I expect many people to work on in the near future. Spirit Water Revival Spirit Water Revival is the best divination we've seen. A three-mana-draw-two with an unbelievable upside to draw seven. This is not a card we're going to see in a deck like Prowess, Phoenix, or even a control deck. Spirit Water Revival will likely see no play at all, but the decks it would potentially see play in are decks that put a ton of tokens into play and can pay the waterbend cost, essentially, for free. A card like Chromehost that leaves these trinket artifact tokens in play can fuel Spirit Water Revival and turn it into a three-mana-draw-seven, and then perhaps continue to chain off and potentially cast another. While I think it's unlikely we see much of Spirit Water Revival, it has some high upsides and is powerful enough to keep an eye on. Aang, Swift Savior I read this card for the first time while drafting, took it, put it in my deck, and realized afterwards that it's playable in Constructed. At instant speed, Aang can interact with spells on the stack or clear creatures. It also leaves you with a 2/3 flying body to use for attack. Additionally, Aang can transform into Aang and La, Ocean's Fury to close the game even faster. This is a cheap, disruptive tempo creature with the ability to turn itself into a giant creature to close the game. There's almost no chance this card doesn't see play, as it's too efficient and versatile. While the backside isn't overly powerful, it's still strong enough to make a small battlefield of creatures into a lethal attack. I love this card, and it's the first card I'd find a home for in Standard. Tiger Seal Tiger Seal is another cheap, efficient threat that requires you to build around it. However, it asks you to build around it in a similar way to Firebending Student. As long as we're drawing extra cards every turn, we get a one-mana 3/3 vigilance. Filling our decks with cards like Opt, we can trigger the seal every turn. You won't need many turns before the opponent has either lost or completely taken over the game. While Tiger Seal's downside can be painful, that is, wasting a card and never getting to attack with it, decks filled with cantrips like this can play low-land counts, so this happens less frequently. It remains to be seen if Tiger Seal has what it takes, but with all the low-curve, aggressive threats I'm seeing in this set, and a huge Standard format, Standard might be turning into a lean format where four- and five-mana spells may not have a significant place. So far, Avatar has been a lot of fun to play with in Limited. By playing Limited, I gained a much better understanding of how certain cards will play out in Constructed. I originally thought this set was weak for Constructed, but I now see there are a few extremely powerful cards just waiting to find a home. As for me, I'll be focusing on playing Limited for the time being, but seeing the cards, I may get the itch to play Standard too. We'll have to see, but I'll be back next week to talk about all things Avatar Limited. See you then.

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!