We finally got all, or almost all, of the changes we were hoping for. Vintage saw the restriction of Vexing Bauble and Urza's Saga, which isn't relevant to most people. Grief got the axe in both Legacy and Modern alongside Nadu, Winged Wisdom. In a rare transparent post, WotC disclosed they didn't test Nadu in its final form and missed interactions with Shuko and Lightning Greaves. Good on them for not beating around the bush so we know how it happened, which we all assumed, as it's doubtful they'd have tested that kind of combo deck and admitted it was good or fun gameplay they expected. Pioneer had bannings for Sorin, Imperious Bloodlord and Amalia Benavides Aguirre, which were also banned in Explorer for arena players. Treasure Cruise was noticeably absent from this list. Everyone expected it to go since Phoenix has overperformed for quite some time and Cruise is banned in every other format. A lot of the reasoning behind the bans is how fetch lands, which are banned in Pioneer, easily enable the card. However, as the card pool grows in Pioneer, it gets easier to cast Cruise. Pioneer is my current focus. We have RC DC coming up soon, and while I've been absent from tournament Magic for a long time, I have booked my travel to DC and plan to grind a few LCQs to hopefully get into the main event. I would have skipped the LCQs if Pioneer didn't have any changes. It looked stale, and the decks didn't look that fun. I also expected Amalia to make round timers more of a suggestion than reality because of how easy it was to go to extra games. Phoenix is immediately public enemy number one. If you're playing in the sweaty MTGO leagues or whatever else, I assume it's a lot of Rakdos Midrange, Phoenix, and Lotus Field. Rakdos can shut down Phoenix with hate cards and get an edge, but it will suffer in other matchups and likely end up an average choice if you can predict what slice of the metagame you're going to attack. Phoenix is a great deck, but the environment is going to be hostile. Think about how you'd build a non-Phoenix deck right now. The metagame hasn't evolved yet, and a lot of people will default to these easy choices. Lotus Field can attack this kind of metagame well. It's notorious for having a strong Phoenix matchup, and it will beat up on Rakdos if Rakdos isn't prepared. Lotus Field feels like a great choice in the immediate future. I anticipate many players moving to UW Control. With all these decks combined, we have a balanced and fair metagame. While not banning Cruise is a mistake in the long term, it may work okay in the short term until the metagame balances out, we see a more diverse set of decks, and nothing taking up a huge metagame share. That's when Phoenix starts to creep in as the best deck. It's adaptable, consistent, and powerful. It is easy to customize to attack specific metagames, and it has a solid post-board game plan against graveyard hate. Ultimately, Cruise won't last in the format, so I am curious why they chose not to pull the trigger now. They even said they will check back in on the format in December and called out Cruise and Fable of the Mirror breaker. For what it's worth, banning Fable would be foolish. It's a pillar of the format with fun gameplay. The format has combo and aggro, and Fable is the glue holding many midrange strategies together. Without it, the format would likely feel worse. This is not Standard. It's Pioneer, which has a wider range of strategies that don't involve extremely interactive gameplay. Fable is obnoxious in formats where interaction is the main focal point, but it's a great card in a format like Pioneer. Phoenix will likely be the most played deck in the short term, and then we may see Rakdos enter the conversation for most played deck. Rakdos will almost never be the best choice for a large open field event, however it won't be the worst choice either. For the LCQs and RC, I'm planning to test Phoenix, Lotus Field, and potentially Rakdos Sacrifice depending on how the metagame shakes up. If the floodgates open and we start to see more aggressive decks like Convoke or Mono White Aggro, Rakdos Sacrifice will be a good way to attack those decks much like Phoenix, but it will have a favorable matchup against normal Rakdos Midrange that targets decks like Phoenix. If I had to play a deck in a Pioneer tournament today, I'd choose Lotus Field, as most people won't have gone overboard with the hate yet. That will likely change quickly and the format, at least in theory, will be cyclical with these changes, until we get Duskmourn. Overall, the ban announcements were great. While it's more of a reactive approach since a lot of these bans were a bit overdue, they didn't let things fester too long, and they seem willing to go further if necessary in the future. In the coming weeks I'll focus mostly on Duskmourn and Pioneer as I get ready to play some paper Magic for the first time in a while. Hope to see you there!

Hello, fellow gamers! Next week we have a highly anticipated Banned and Restricted List announcement. As usual, there's a lot of speculation about massive changes in almost all formats. Here is my personal wish list, predictions, or whatever you want to call it. Modern/Legacy Let's start with Modern and Legacy. I don't play these formats, so my analysis on this is mostly based on my years of expertise in Magic and the Magic I watch in these two formats. Nadu, Winged Wisdom - Modern This is the elephant in the room. Nadu has to go. No one wants it in Modern anymore, and I'd say there's a 99% chance we'll see it go. I'll always wonder why Nadu even made it to print, but we let it marinate long enough. It's been too dominant, and to boot, the play patterns look pretty awful with the card. I'm confident Nadu will be banned in Modern next week. Grief - Modern and Legacy I don't play Modern or Legacy, but I know Magic, and this card isn't healthy in Legacy. If Nadu were to stay in Modern, then Grief would almost have to stay so there's some reason to play anything else. If we're going to ban Grief in Legacy, we should also rip that band-aid off in Modern. Grief is powerful when you're able to scam with it, and it's not a fun play pattern for anyone involved. Having your hand shredded on turn one while facing down a 4/3 menace creature isn't healthy for Magic. Grief should go. Pioneer Buckle in. Here's the meat and bones of this write-up. There's a lot that could happen, and we may see a big shakeup in the format. Pioneer is a format I've played ad nauseam and that I'm comfortable analyzing. I want to see Pioneer undergo a lot of change to shake things up. Here's my wishlist for Pioneer. Amalia, Benavides Aquirre There are so many reasons to ban Amalia that it's outrageous. First, the Amalia combo decks have been strong and among the highest win rates in the format since it's been printed. In many cases, that alone puts it on the radar for a ban, but Amalia's play patterns that lead to turn-three kills are too much. It pressures you to have interaction in the first two turns when on the draw. If you tap out to play something proactive and they respond with a combo piece, then you won't un-tap in many cases. It has a bit of Splinter Twin's problem from old Modern where you hope your opponent doesn't have the card, but the deck is so consistent with finding its pieces that you need a well-formulated game plan to handle it. We have a high win rate and poor play patterns. Let's add one of the biggest issues, which is that the game creates an infinite loop and ends in a draw if you pump their Amalia or if your opponent's Wildgrowth Walker is made indestructible. The higher chance of drawn games artificially lengthens round times, creates frustration, and just isn't fun. There should be no tied games in Magic, so it's not worth the trouble to create situations like this to keep one deck in the format. The deck checks all the boxes for reasons for banning, and I don't think many would argue in favor of Amalia. While I'm not 100% confident we'll see Amalia go, it's the right call and correct card to ban. If it's ever an issue again with some other card down the line similar to Wildgrowth Walker, then there's no reason to save this over anything else. Treasure Cruise Phoenix has intermittently been one of the top Pioneer decks for years now. Although Phoenix has been a problem in all formats at some point, it's always been a strong and consistent deck. Cruise is a card that will only get more powerful as the format grows and we get more ways to put cards into the graveyard efficiently. Should we wait for them to reprint Thought Scour in some Standard set and then remove Cruise, or should we just ban Cruise now? I'm for the complete Pioneer shakeup and axing Cruise now. Phoenix jumped to a new tier of good and consistent with the printing of Sleight of Hand into Pioneer, which gave it a critical mass of cantrips and made the deck run smooth as butter. While Phoenix is almost too good for the format, maybe it can remain untouched for now. I like when Phoenix is a deck to beat, but if the other bans I want happen, we need to take Phoenix with them. I'd be happy with a Cruise banning, but it's been so long that I'm not sure they will ban it yet. I could see it going either way with this one. Sorin, Imperious Bloodlord I went back and forth on this one. Something has to go from this deck, as it's dominant and has a similar frustrating play pattern to a deck like Amalia. If you're not interacting early, there's almost nothing you can do when your opponent has the card. If you're being too reactive, the deck is going to beat you in a fair game. It's an awful needle to thread and simply not fun Magic. You could also ban Vein Ripper, which would be a band-aid solution. The problem is if you print some busted vampire down the road, then you have to do it all over again. Sorin has the small upside of potentially being played in a fair vampire deck and used to put powerful five-drop vampires into play like Champion of Dusk. Unfortunately, the downside of keeping it in the format outweighs the upside. These are the most likely and most desired bans in the formats. There's a great case for all of it to happen. I'd love to see them experiment more with a few unbannings, but I understand the risk of unbanning something and having it break the format. It's just a horrible look for the company, so I'm fine with basically never unbanning anything. As for Standard, while I haven't played any yet, it looks amazing and healthy for the time being, so WotC did a great job on the current format. I'm anxious to see how Llanowar Elves will impact Standard. Maybe we will be clamoring for some bans in Standard soon. Who am I kidding? People will always be clamoring for bans in every format. These are my predictions and wish list. I prefer justified bannings, but I'm always down for shaking up formats. Let's check back next week to see how I did and if I missed anything.

Recently at GenCon, a player named Julian Jakobovits was given a match loss with four players for, in his words, considering an equity chop with a friend outside of the event. When an incident gets this much buzz in the Magic community, it's important we observe it to figure out what happened and what should happen moving forward. An equity chop means a friend of this player asked if they could buy a piece of that person's action. The prize was a Promo Dark Ritual, which is one of four in the entire world. That scarcity creates a large price tag, and most people will end up selling the card. Let's say this friend wanted to own 20% of what the player would sell the Dark Ritual for, and the rumors I heard were the Dark Ritual's price tag was solid at $50K USD. For 20%, the player would likely pay their friend $10K divided by their chances of winning the two matches left and an additional compensation based on how likely the person playing the match was to win their matches. If the player was going to win their match 50% of the time both times, it would be $2500, but a strong player will usually win more than 50% of the time, so the price would be negotiated higher. This comes up from time to time in random events, not generally at the Pro Tour, but sometimes people want a rooting interest. It's not to gamble and is often just for camaraderie. Regardless, Julian said he briefly considered the offer but ultimately declined. However, the damage had been done because an outside entity, perhaps a judge, overheard the conversation, questioned the player, and reported their findings. As someone who's been on the inside and in the know, I've done my fair share of splitting. In fact, multiple times I've watched Pro Tour finals where healthy splits were in place with both final-match players. These splits were almost always negotiated quickly and days before the tournament took place. You wouldn't be surprised to learn that in almost every event you watch, deep in the tournament, splits are discussed and occur. The big difference here is the prize, a single Dark Ritual, can't be split without the Dark Ritual being classified as having monetary value. There is so much money on the line at PTs. While the top-heavy prize structure looks good for advertising an event, most players, especially a decade or so ago when I began my professional career, would prefer less variance in their volatile income stream. Friends who knew and trusted each other would often restructure prize pools so there was less hard cash being played for, as winning an event is also worth more on top of just the cash. The trophy, the prestige, and often the Pro Points back then were worth a lot, and in many cases more than the cash purse. It wasn't like you'd win a Pro Tour and win the $50K, and if you lost you got $25K. If you lost, you got $25K, and if you won, the win would give you a Worlds slot, Platinum, and the notoriety that landed many of us content opportunities. Pro Tour Champion is an incredible way to sell and build your brand. This event, however, didn't have much prestige. I still don't even know who won the event. I have gathered that the players in the finals ended up splitting the prize that was one card, as in one player scooped regardless of what had already occurred. Unless that's just hearsay, but I have no way of following it up, as I don't even know who won. I thought a lot about this situation over the last week. It's a bad look to have a tournament end on this note, and I would assume no tournament wants this kind of press. It was supposed to be a fun event with a cool prize, but the issue is when you create this kind of scarcity, we all know what's going to happen. The card will hit the secondary market, and many people will want an original WotC promo that is designed to be so scarce that it's a desirable prize for collectors, speculators, and grinders who are playing tournaments for profit. If you produce a prize that will have secondary market value, and they know they are doing just that, there will be people seeking what the prize is worth rather than the prize itself. I'd wager a massive percentage of people in that event were in the tournament specifically to sell the card, and few would keep it for the price tag it was fetching. My recommendation for WotC would be to stop making prizes of individual cards and start giving out full playsets. A single copy of 16 Dark Ritual cards won't feel as valuable to players, but the whole playset will still be scarce and easily accrue the single copy's value on the secondary market, something they care about whether they'll admit it or not. I harbor no ill will toward any judges and think we should all learn to respect that they spend their time and, in many cases, money to be part of this community. Judges aren't there for just a paycheck. Judging takes commitment, dedication, and a skillset like being a professional player. You have to know an insane amount of complicated rules most professional players don't know and make quick decisions about challenging situations. Judges are human beings and will make mistakes. I do believe this was a mistake, though. Much like not calling a picky foul in game seven of the NBA Finals, I'd hope for some understanding when there is a massive prize on the line. While I say that, I couldn't imagine being in that situation with the training the judge staff had and understand what I'd do. Judges and players have completely different perspectives in many cases. It's best to use a situation like this to find common ground rather than create a divide where players are demonizing judges because of what we consider a mistake, just like we wouldn't want to be judged based on a mistake we made in a game. Should you be ridiculed and shamed in a public setting because of that time you forgot to reset your sideboard? Absolutely not, so give judges the same respect. If you have an issue with how something was handled, let's have a community discussion on how we should approach these situations moving forward. There was a lot of useful discussion on X regarding this situation, but also a lot of vitriol aimed at the people who show up to events to make sure we play a fair tournament. In this situation, my intuition is that the judges may have done what the rules dictated, but I would prefer to focus on the rules' intent. Why do these rules exist? Is it to prevent some young kid playing for a ton of money from becoming less exposed to variance? If this kid doesn't take insurance, isn't he just gambling? If he takes it, is he gambling? Entering a tournament at all is a form of gambling. You're paying a fee to try to win a larger prize. With all the jargon and hearsay involved, it's easy to misinterpret a situation like this. I'd prefer if the rules allowed for more personal judgment and leniency. Many have pointed out that the people who get hurt here are the people who don't know what they can and can't say. In fact, I recall many times watching judges help players negotiate splits in a legal way. My recommendation is whenever a split is to occur, or any conversation of it at all during the event, you should speak to a judge first and ask about the legality and proper approach. Julian's biggest mistake was not discussing what happened well enough. I suspect had he talked about the situation as detailed as possible, clarifying exactly what happened and the conversation's result, he could have battled for the prize. Instead, things were left unclear or unsaid, and he paid the price, which sucks and was too harsh. You can look at it in a lot of different ways. The letter of the law may state that any talks of a split or equity share are disallowed, with my best guess being that it's because this card isn't supposed to have secondary market value in the eyes of WotC. However, that's generally to prevent collusion and situations where a player bets against themself or prevents a match from being played. Neither was the case in this situation. Julian not only didn't arrange a split, but he was punished in a harsh way for merely considering some kind of split with a large sum, or as he described it, "life-changing money." I don't think anyone wanted this, including the judging staff. This should teach us all that our communication needs to be clear, specific, and without jargon that may be misinterpreted. We should seek confirmation that splits are allowed at specific events. If you ever split with someone in the middle of a tournament, run it by the judging staff before you agree and make sure it's legal. If not, it's best to not split. I'm well aware, and as you should be too, that judges are mostly judging at events. They see the rules and enforce them. Don't blame judges for the rules. Try to get the rules to adapt to what is desired and acceptable in the community. Hopefully, we will continue to see more of these unique, exciting events, but the more negative energy they generate, the less likely we will have these valuable events in the future. I feel for every person involved in this awful situation — the judging staff for having to deal with the fallout of a tough call and the player for facing the harshest penalty for what could have been resolved if things had been handled differently. It's a tough spot, and hopefully, we all can learn from it and move forward.

Having just moved into a new house, I came a few days late to Bloomburrow Limited. My initial reaction to drafting was, well, not good. This may have been the set I had the least desire to fire up my second draft of in Magic's history. Generally, I don't like formats focused on creature synergies. They often become about picking the right creature types, smashing them together in a tight curve, and trying to run over your opponent before they run over you. However, as I forced myself to do a second, third, and fourth draft, it steadily got more enjoyable. My initial ranking after a draft or two would likely have had Bloomburrow in my all-time bottom-three draft formats. To add some context, I've drafted every draft format in the game's history. Bloomburrow's cute animal theme is all well and good, but I found it hard to track what pumps rabbits and mice, but not rats and the like, at the start of the set. The cards are wordy and, at times, unintuitive. For instance, this little rat: I read this card and assumed I needed a threshold to loot. I passed it maybe five times before I figured out that it turns off rather than on when you have a threshold. Regardless, the format has some depth. Once you learn the cards, you can navigate your way through the creature types and perhaps pivot from GW Rabbits into RW Mice or UG Frogs. You need to understand what's happening and what the cards do. It's not a great set to go into unprepared and read as you go like I did with some of the commons. The format is about creature combat and either outsizing your opponent, going over your opponent with flying creatures, or going wide with tons of tokens. It's a simple play style. While the games favor people who play combat well, there are a lot of cheap, powerful rares that fit into some typal decks. If you're unable to interact with, say, a Valley Questcaller early, then you're going to be in trouble. After a few drafts, I figured out that you want to take what you're given. With the new draft structure, there are a lot of rares to go around these days. As we delve more into this new world of Play Boosters, you want to be flexible, pay attention to signals, and be ready to pounce at the first flag post you identify as a clear signal that an archetype is underdrafted at your table. Powerful gold uncommons are the easiest way in most sets to identify that, but there are other indicators in Bloomburrow since it's a typal set. Perhaps green seems a bit shallow, but the frog cards are moving around the table and blue seems wide open; that generally means there are a bunch of rabbit and squirrel drafters going BG and WG at your table. Despite green being overrepresented, the cards you want for your frog deck won't work as well in those other archetypes, so you can ignore that green is in demand and focus on the fact that your cards will likely still be there. Removal is important, but this is not a set for expensive removal. Five-mana removal has never been so bad; the games in this set are all about mana efficiency. Spending five mana to kill a powerful two-drop that has already produced value over several turns is not a winning method. This makes the cheap good removal premium and irreplaceable. Speaking of mana efficiency, I like to keep a low curve in this format since there are plenty of ways to sink mana with mechanics like offspring and class enchantments. While I played exclusively Arena thus far, you can get away with playing one or two extra expensive spells in Bo3. Mana is not great in this format, as we have no true dual lands. I like to always play Uncharted Haven unless my deck is high on one-drops, which is possible but even some of those have offspring and play more like three-drops. Let's take a look at a couple of my trophy decks. This deck tried to ignore what my opponent was doing and ensure I started off on the right foot then keep it on the gas pedal. Having both Seasons was a major reason I was successful with this deck. I was passed Season of Weaving in the middle of pack two, but by keeping myself predominantly in white, I was able to pick and splash any broken rare I got, and there were a lot. Having played more now, I like to change my build by a single card and add the Finch Formation over a Brave-Kin Duo, but the Duo was fine. Intrepid Rabbit is the MVP outside of the Seasons, and it's my pick for the set's best white common. I learned from this draft that you want to find some rares in this format since the commons are tame. This is a strong frog deck, not because of how strong frog is, but because I had a few rares. Blue seemed to be the only underrepresented color in all of the drafts I did in the aggregate. Blue is solid, and while it may be the weakest color, or one of the weakest, the format is well-balanced. If you see an open lane, take it and get rewarded. I mostly played Kitnap like a copy of Dehydration, as I never want to give cards to my opponents. In most close games, you're not going to want to give your opponent an extra card. During the times you're far ahead or far behind, you may want to give them the extra card, but keep in mind one of the huge reasons a card like Mind Control is so good is taking a card for a single card, making it an on-board two for one. Once you give your opponent the extra card, you're not coming out ahead on cards, mostly just mana. This was a complete deck. It was able to play interactive Magic and had solid rares, synergies, and a reasonably good curve. I'm not sure how much more of Bloomburrow Limited I'll play. It's not my cup of tea, and while I'm starting to enjoy it more as I unlock the nuances of the format, the format isn't that deep and there aren't any decks I'm that excited to draft. Generally, I'll have a bias for one or more archetypes that suit my play style. I don't have preferences with Bloomburrow, which may be a good thing for the win rate, as I'll look to draft the open archetype, but it doesn't excite me when it comes to having fun. When I finished my first and second drafts, I thought I was going to strongly recommend not bothering with this set, but this is a solid format for playing ten or so drafts. I'd stop drafting when you stop enjoying the set. The new pack structure kept me playing. The juiced-up play boosters allowed me to play with new rares every draft, which made it more interesting for me. Without Play Boosters, I may have quit this set after two or three drafts. While Play Boosters may make Sealed worse, they continue to make my draft experience more enjoyable. I'm not sure how many more drafts I'll do of Bloomburrow. If you enjoy typal stuff, this will be a pleasant experience. Bloomburrow is a polarizing format, which is fine given how many sets are hitting the shelves these days, and not every set will be for everybody. Until next time!

Bloomburrow just had its full release. While I'm not looking forward to Limited this go-around, as I'm not a big fan of formats that focus solely on creature types and creature synergies, Limited is much like pizza in that even at its worst it's never actually bad. Bloomburrow seems to be shaping up nicely for Constructed lovers and could shake up some formats. Creature-focused sets generally lead to more aggressive gameplay, which has been missing in Standard. Let's take a peek at some more potential Constructed bangers. Darkstar Augur Darkstar Augur is a juiced-up Dark Confidant. A huge selling point of Dark Confidant is that it's a two-mana creature, which pressures the opponent to have access to removal early or they're unable to keep up with the extra cards, creatures, and threats that follow Dark Confidant. A three-mana Dark Confidant isn't quite as scary. However, Darkstar Augur is unique in that for an additional mana, we can get a second, smaller copy threatening to give the controller three cards per turn. You want to be at the top of your curve with this card since the first copy you draw will start digging you to more cards, which means more copies of itself, essentially allowing you as many cards as life you can afford to pay. This is a powerful effect and, coupled with a nice low-curve Darkstar Augur, may be one of the most powerful cards in the set. Fortunately, Bloomburrow's focus on creatures and even the offspring mechanic gives lots of cards a lower effective CMC even though you're able to spend mana. I'm interested to see where Darkstar Augur lands, but I'm confident it's going to be a great Standard card and potentially even beyond. Keen-Eyed Curator It's no question that Keen-Eyed Curator is a Constructed-playable card. The only downside is that double-pipped casting cost. Keen-Eyed Curator has a sizable body for a two-drop and threatens to get out of control while digging through the trash and devouring different card types. Its ability to keep the opponent's graveyard in order and threaten their life total makes it an absolute banger for any deck that can consistently cast it and wants creatures in play. While I hate how graveyard hate has been tacked onto tons of cards over the past five or so years, this is a great design for that effect. The graveyard removal is on point with flavor and because it costs mana the effect comes at a price to progress your board unlike, say, Graveyard Trespasser which was at a serviceable power level and costs no mana to make sure graveyards were empty. Green-focused aggressive decks will replace Scavenging Ooze in all formats with this raccoon. If functional decks can consistently cast Keen-Eyed Curator on turn two, we'll definitely see it in Standard. Mistbreath Elder Mistbreath Elder is an aggressive, slanted one-drop that is difficult to parse. While it plays well with enters-the-battlefield triggers and the new offspring mechanic, I want to punish my opponent's life total with a creature like this, and as long as this creature is on the battlefield it's nearly impossible to keep others there too unless you're playing a particularly dense amount of one-drops. The upkeep trigger forces you to bounce another creature on the battlefield you control, so it won't play well curving itself into, say, Keen-Eyed Curator. You'll be forced to lose tempo on the early turns, which can end in disaster if your opponent is holds removal to two-for-one you after you bounce something. When I first read the card, I thought it was fantastic, but after thinking about the kinds of decks I'd want to play it in and what they're trying to accomplish, I now think Mistbreath Elder may end up being a bad card. I'm curious to see if anyone can make this card work effectively, but I'm skeptical. Pawpatch Recruit Bloomburrow keeps providing one-mana, rare, green creatures, and unlike Mistbreath Elder, I'm interested in Pawpatch Recruit. Pawpatch Recruit provides a two-powered cheap creature that scales into the game because of its offspring mechanic. On turn one or three, this is going to be a potent play that pressures the opponent to interact with it while it's still alone on the battlefield. Pawpatch Recruit will punish interactive decks by providing more counters as the opponent tries to pick apart your threats with targeted removal. The best way to play against Pawpatch Recruit will be with sweepers and having a battlefield presence of your own. I can imagine putting down a Llanowar Elves on the play and following it with Pawpatch Recruit on your second turn with offspring, quickly getting an advantage over opponents who led with a tapped dual land only to find themselves staring down three creatures that need removing. I'm excited about Pawpatch Recruit in lower-curve aggressive decks. While Llanowar Elves will almost always be the best play on turn one, it's nice to see a one-drop that synergizes with it rather than competing for that turn one play. Dragonhawk, Fate's Tempest Dragonhawk, Fate's Tempest is one of my favorite card designs from Bloomburrow. I don't think it's as powerful in the format's context as previous five-mana dragons, but I do like that it doesn't snowball you to a big battlefield and instead provides value in the form of cards we have to spend mana on. Despite that, Dragonhawk still provides value when it enters, so you don't have to worry about removal making the card unplayable. If left unchecked, it will likely run away with the game. When you have powerful five-drops that leave behind on-the-board threats, it makes it more difficult to interact with, since you have to spend extra mana and cards cleaning them up. When you kill Dragonhawk though, you'll be up mana in the exchange, even if you're down a card and some life. Because Dragonhawk isn't difficult to interact with, it likely won't be good enough for Standard outside of grindier, slower match-ups. We'll probably see it in small numbers in Standard at the top of the curve or in the sideboard for midrange mirrors when you want to go bigger. It's a solid card, and I love this kind of design, but nothing to write home about. Ygra, Eater of All As I'm combing through Bloomburrow, I keep coming back to Ygra, Eater of All. I first read the card as a way to shut down opposing creatures. If you want to kill Ygra, the ward cost will likely make you sacrifice one of those creatures, but you can avoid that if you have food of your own lying around. Ygra likely plays best against interactive decks that don't have creatures in play. It will be essentially hexproof if your opponent is unable to create a food token to sacrifice. In addition, you can grow Ygra with food of your own. This is a neat design that will play well against creature decks and even better against a control deck. While I'm not sure what five-drops will be at the top of the food chain moving forward, Ygra can throw its hat in the ring as a creature that has the potential to cause some serious problems. It's also an excellent tutorable creature target for various cards like Traverse the Uvenwald because it can sweep the battlefield of creatures. I'm certain we'll see Ygra played in Standard. It's too unique and powerful to sit on the sidelines. Three Tree City Last but not least, we have Three Tree City. Three Tree City's closest resemblance is Nykthos, but in many cases, Nykthos will be a superior choice since the mana pips will likely outnumber the creatures. However, Three Tree City can use multiple creature colors to add to its total, but it's hard to find a reason to put Three Tree City in your multicolor creature-type decks and have enough mana to support a colorless land. While the comparisons to Nykthos aren't completely unfounded, this card is overhyped in that regard. We may see a copy here and there, but this is mostly lands-in-EDH-staple territory rather than an exploitable, 60-card all-star. I'm sure someone will prove me wrong, as this can be utilized with specific tokens, but I don't see myself ever registering this card in a competitive Constructed environment. Bloomburrow is a cute set with lots of interesting cards. I'm most excited to play Kitsa, Otterball Elite. Darkstar Augur is also an exciting card to try and build around. While Bloomburrow looks exciting to explore for Constructed, I'm less enthusiastic about it for Limited. However, I'll dip my toes in the Limited format this week and follow up with a review of the format and how to approach it. See you next time!

Sets are flying onto the shelves these days. It feels like yesterday I was looking at MH3 previews, and as of today, almost the entire Bloomburrow set is available. Let's go over some standout cards. Sunspine Lynx Sunspine Lynx is like a mash-up of Siege Rhino and Sulfuric Vortex rolled into one giant package. I absolutely love this card. It's not broken, but it's not bad; it's a perfectly solid creature that will give red aggressive decks proactive game plans against life gain while also giving us damage as it enters, meaning it doesn't suffer from the dies-to-Doom-Blade issue. The thing I love most about Sunspine Lynx is that it creates that Price-of-Progress problem that we've seen in Legacy where you'll be punished if you decide to play all non-basic lands. Sunspine Lynx will make you second guess the usefulness of "free" value lands. This effect pushes back on double-faced lands, the cycle of neon dynasty channel lands, and anything in this category. I've long criticized making lands too good and too free, so it's good to have more pushback on that front with excellent designs like Sunspine Lynx. Sunspine Lynx will see play if a mono-red aggressive deck is present in the meta. Despite being punished for playing non-basic lands, any two-color aggressive deck may want to play the card. Hugs, Grisly Guardian Everyone loves Hugs. Hugs is an interesting card. It's comparable to a Hydroid Krasis in that it's more punishing the longer the game. Krasis stabilized better with lifegain and actual card draw, but this combination of colors isn't trying to stabilize. Generally, it's trying to close the game. Gruul-based decks will be looking to close the door in the mid-to-late game and be built more proactively. This makes exiling the cards less punishing, since you'll want to play to the board rather than draw more reactive spells and hold them in your hand like the Sultai decks that Krasis helped enable. I don't think Hugs is good enough on its own to see play everywhere or be specifically built around, but one of the major problems with aggressive Gruul was running out of gas. Decks like Gruul Adventures would use Edgewall Inkeeper and The Great Henge to keep cards flowing, but Hugs can do this on its own while being a reasonable four-mana play. Hugs will see play if Gruul is a thing, but it will be difficult to splash, so you'll want to be committed to Gruul-proactive actions. Kitsa, Otterball Elite I have an affinity for Merfolk Looter, and this is easily my favorite card in a while. Kitsa will fit into basically any Prowess deck, which will likely be paired with red. Kitsa may be played in a Reanimator deck since it's a discard outlet that can do stuff like copy Thoughtsieze or a reanimation card, making it effectively uncounterable. Remember that the prowess trigger will resolve before the spell, so you can always copy your second spell of the turn. If you want to copy your first spell, you can respond with another spell and let both prowess triggers resolve. This will come up in spots where you lead with a spell, your opponent interacts, and you counter their spell allowing you a window to copy your original spell. On the other side, make sure you interact with the prowess trigger on the stack so that the opponent controlling Kitsa can't copy the second spell in their hand. Kitsa seems like a nice fit into a deck like Phoenix, as it's a proactive threat that can discard the Phoenixes. However, it's not perfectly synergistic: you can't use it to discard an Arclight Phoenix and attack with both of them in the same turn. That's a big downside to the card in this archetype, but it's individually powerful enough that it may fit in despite that awkward interaction. Its standalone upside is too high. This is an absolute slam-dunk card that will see play potentially in all formats because of its mana efficiency. Ral, Crackling Wit I don't follow Magic lore, but I'm loving Ral as an Otter. Ral is a unique planeswalker that fits into the same decks as Kitsa — low-curve decks with lots of cantrips to fuel its loyalty and juice up the ultimate. It has the ability to protect itself by making an otter if you slam it on turn four, which will be especially effective on an empty battlefield. Ral wants you to keep the battlefield clean regardless, so lots of one-mana removal will be mandatory. Ral has a real shot at seeing play in some form of UR Prowess deck and potentially a deck like Phoenix as an alternate win condition that's resilient to some interaction. I've played Chandra in Phoenix before, and while they function differently, this will be better on an empty board because it provides an individual prowess threat and allows us to draw more gas if needed. This is a sweet card that doesn't have much mystery for how you should build with it, but it's strong enough to see play. I'll be excited to see some Otter Prowess decks popping up in Standard and beyond. Season of Weaving Season of Weaving is an interesting card I'd like to look at to highlight the new mechanic. I'm unsure if it has a name, so I'll refer to it as bear claw. (Maybe it's counting claws?) Season of Weaving has a ton of modes that look awesome. You can draw five at a baseline. You can draw one and make two copies of artifacts/creatures if you're being proactive. Season of Weaving is difficult to parse because it requires you to have permanents worth copying but not ones you want to pick up, and it can't prevent you from being swarmed by tokens. This bear-claw mechanic is interesting and will likely be fun to play. However, I'm not sure Season of Weaving will see much play outside of Commander, as it's too expensive and a difficult card to set up. Salvation Swan Salvation Swan is a callback to Restoration Angel. Not much is different than the beloved Angel, but it provides a little value in leaving a flying counter behind. It doesn't instantly flicker the creature and instead brings it back in the end step. Salvation Swan also gives this Flickerwisp ability to all your birds, but I don't see that playing too much of a role because birds practically always have flying and you can't flicker creatures with flying. You likely want just a few birds in your deck with Salvation Swan to protect your creatures with flicker or to squeeze extra value out of the non-flyers. I'm not that excited about a Resto Angel with less toughness in modern-day Magic. There's no doubt people will attempt to play this in some flash-style decks. It's nice to have threats to play at instant speed, but cards like Salvation Swan and Restoration Angel have likely been power-crept out of Magic at this point. This is a cool twist on Resto Angel, but I'm not holding my breath that we'll see it in top-tier Standard or Pioneer decks. That's it for this week. There are a lot of cards to cover, so I'll be back at it next week after the set drops. I've been a bit down about the power level of recent cards in Standard sets, but this set seems to be loaded with powerful cards. I'm excited to see the rest and dig deeper.

Last week we were made aware of a new highly controversial Magic product that will be released before the end of the year. There are so many Magic sets on the horizon, and while we'll certainly get into those upcoming sets, the one I want to talk about today is MTG Foundations. We don't know much about MTG Foundations yet, but we do know it's a Standard set that is going to be legal in Standard for at least five years. So why is MTG Foundations controversial? Well, "controversial" may be a strong word, but one of the pillars of Standard was that it constantly rotated, and MTG Foundations changes that dramatically. Five years is a long time to anchor it around a specific set. As a person who's played Magic for more than 25 years now, my relationship with Magic has waxed and waned. I've always played in some form, at least a little bit, but I wasn't always focused on the competitive scene. Booster draft kept me playing even when not truly competitive, but Standard was always the Constructed format I felt comfortable dipping my toes back into. If I got that competitive itch to play some tournaments, I'd be able to start fresh in a new Standard format and not feel like I was so far behind other competitors. They would know the cards better than me, but I wouldn't have to play years of catch-up with interactions. It can be daunting to cross that threshold, and anything that takes away from that fresh start goes against the grain. We now have a three-year rotation and an additional set that doesn't rotate for approximately five years. While this won't be too hard to parse, it's also unintuitive and strange. I prefer that we preserve at least one Constructed format that is constantly changing to prevent staleness. Foundations could work in a faster churning world so long as the card pool is curated well. A well-curated non-rotating Foundations set has some nice Standard staples you can always use. This would be some cycle of dual lands like we used to have with Glacial Fortress, Rootbound Crag, and that entire cycle. I would also like to see some generic cards like Lightning Strike, some version of Doom Blade, and these kinds of reactive cards that we are used to having printed in Standard sets. We saw some cards like Omniscience and Day of Judgement, which are fine, though I don't understand having Omniscience included. Day of Judgement is the perfect card type to have in this set because we see a version of it in most sets and it's a nice tool to have. I wouldn't like to see proactive cards that are always going to be the best thing at their slot on the mana curve. This will take away from design space in other sets and make more new cards less playable. I don't like to see Llanowar Elves. I'm fine with Llanowar Elves in Standard with a shelf life. I love strong proactive Magic. It's fun and swingy. However, I don't want to play with the same card forever and always. Almost every green deck will play Llanowar Elves, and it will change how we build every green deck in Standard. Additionally, it's going to change how we build every other deck to keep up with this card. It's going to be difficult to top Llanowar Elves as a one-drop in a five-year span and leads to awkward opening-hand decisions. One reason I disliked Pioneer during the dominant run of Mono-Green Devotions is how pressured you were to put one-mana removal in your deck and have a piece of one-mana interaction in your opening hand. If you didn't bolt the bird, you fell too far behind and were playing several turns behind. Llanowar Elves punishes players for losing the die roll. Imagine a world where you're playing Standard, you played a Triome on turn one, you untap, and you're looking down at an opponent with a Llanowar Elves and a Fable of the Mirror Breaker in play. What range of Standard decks can keep up with that start? Fable isn't legal anymore, but more cards like Fable will inevitably see print. Every time it happens, Llanowar Elves will pressure you to build your deck a certain way, regardless if you're playing with or against the card. While it's fine when its an experiment and it comes and goes in Standard, Llanowar Elves will always be a pillar of the format. Some will be happy about that, and others will loathe it. I would have printed Llanowar Elves somewhere else, which would give a safety valve to remove it on a shorter lease. Call me crazy, but I'd almost rather see Sol Ring in the set so every color is on the same playing field. Obviously, that's an insane take, but I don't like how Llanowar Elves will be a staple in every green deck, and we can't escape it for five years. This is also the problem with three-year rotation, and it seems WotC wants people to feel they're getting value with their purchases. People will be more willing to buy cards if they know they can play with them for a long time. I'm certainly sympathetic to that, but it's the opposite for me. I prefer an evolving Standard, and I'm willing to spend more to enjoy a different experience. A stale Constructed format is a big deterrent for me to even enter the player pool. If I see the enfranchised player base is calling a format stale and know that's not going to change, I'll be more reluctant to buy cards and test the waters. MTG Foundations is a reasonable product and idea, but it needs to be carefully examined. Llanowar Elves is the exact kind of card I don't want in the set, so it worries me it's one of the first handful of cards we see. I'd rather see a card like Lightning Bolt, a strong reactive card that is iconic and would draw in more players. Who knows? Maybe they'll add that one, too. Foundations doesn't seem like a product you should take chances on, as its design is for new players to have a product they know they can purchase and be safe to play with for a long time. Banning something from Foundations is basically off the table, so taking any chances with cards that might be format-warping should be off the table. I am happy to see WotC experimenting with new ideas. Foundations is an excellent concept. If done right, it can help with player acquisition at a low cost. My worry is that it will fail in doing that and also hurt player retention when players get bored after three years of playing against turn-one Llanowar Elves in Standard and see there are two more years to go. Regardless, I'm excited to see what other cards they have in the pool so that I can better understand their goals.

At the end of June we saw Pro Tour Modern Horizons 3. It's no secret Modern is one of my least favorite formats despite having one of the highest win rates at the Grand Prix level. Past Pro Tours have been very match-up dependent. With no one making mistakes, it comes down to what deck is across the table from you, rather than having room to outplay the opponent. However, at this Pro Tour, we had something special. Nadu was by far the best deck in the format, and everyone knew it going into the tournament. It still managed to put up an exceptional nearly 60% win rate despite being the boogeyman of the format. This is nearly unprecedented. I had many friends and old teammates with strong finishes. Sam Pardee, one of my closest friends from my years on the circuit, made it to the finals and lost to the nigh-unbeatable Simon Nielsen. The question on everyone's mind is will Nadu be banned? If so, will it be emergency banned? I think it's unlikely to be banned in the next week or two, and WotC will stick to the normal banning schedule. This will give WotC an opportunity to gather more data on the format and watch how it churns. There are decks capable of beating Nadu, and things may turn around with a little more time. Like many, I think if Nadu goes then Grief will go with it. Grief is still the single best card in the format at the moment. Nadu is the most exploitable card, but Grief is the 2024 version of Thoughtseize. You feel obligated to play it in every black deck and add the Scam elements almost for free. We've spent enough time protecting Grief. I like the card and think it's one of the cards I'd most like to play in Modern, but it's time for it to go. Nadu creates a bunch of problems. It's not easily hated, and it's an awful play pattern to track. Nadu requires explaining loops to players. In many cases, players not playing Nadu will not understand what's going on. As someone pointed out, it has the KCI problem of hard-to-understand loops, the Eggs problem of taking too long to win, and a win-percentage issue where it's the best thing to be doing and it's not close. Storm had an awful weekend. I talked with friends leading into the tournament where I expressed this would be the case. Storm has a history of underperforming in strong fields in Modern. It's been tried and tested for years, and sometimes it sees a little rise in popularity until people respect it and then it's beaten down. The argument against Storm having issues was the strength of Ral, Monsoon Mage. Ral is an exceptionally strong storm enabler and payoff, but it still doesn't fight the hate. Damping Sphere, Trinisphere, and a large amount of hate bear-type cards still provide big issues for Storm. While I made my assertions without playing games and a full understanding of the format, I have a lot of Pro Tour experience, and many would say deck selection is one of my biggest strengths. I understand how Pro players react to trends. I noticed no one in the community was touting Storm as a deck that needed to be banned, but many people commented that it was a solid deck. Generally in this instance, that means people are well-prepared for it, understand how to beat it, and will take those steps. If people are clamoring for a ban then it's a tougher nut to crack. Storm has a chance to be a sleeper deck for upcoming tournaments as more decks scale back on hate because of its poor performance at the PT. If you could come up with a solid postboard plan that beats the hate in a proactive way, then that deck could be S-tier. It's an insane game-one deck and suffers when opponents can take out all the bad cards. If you make it so storming off is not your primary plan postboard, there's a chance the deck could have legs. Storm will be off people's radars as they adapt to Nadu, Necro, and maybe Esper Goryo's, another deck that got some shine this weekend. This Esper Goryo's list had a perfect record at the Pro Tour in the hands of Matt Sperling. Matt is a seasoned world-class player who always quietly performs well. Matt might be the most underrated player on the planet, and his performance with this deck is no fluke. This is where a lot of players will be looking right now. Not only did Matt have a perfect record with the deck, he left it with Magic legend Kai Budde when he left the tournament, so Kai could play it in the Second Chance PTQ, a PTQ held for players from the Pro Tour who failed to secure an invite to the next event. This is an exceptionally challenging field for a PTQ, yet Kai also managed to lose no matches with the deck. Esper Goryo's would be the first place I look for a non-Nadu deck after the PT. It may fly under the radar for a week or two before people go hard at work to attack the deck itself. I suspect we will see a massive rise in the metagame share that's given to Esper in the coming week or two. Speaking of Kai, if you missed it, please watch this touching tribute to the game's most successful player. Growing up, Kai was more than the best Magic player to me and my peers. Kai was a legend, a god. Kai's success is unrivaled. When you watch how impressive a player like Simon or Javier is in the modern day, recognize this kind of performance is what Kai was accomplishing. He was winning every tournament, not just Top 8ing, and it lasted years. Kai won the Player of the Year Title four times. FOUR. Player of the Year isn't an easy title to win. Trust me. When I won the title nearly a decade ago, I felt unworthy of it at the time. Some call it impostor syndrome, and maybe that's what it was, but that's only because I grew up watching how dominant players like Kai and Jon were and thinking I could never get to their level. Jon, to my knowledge, has only won the title once. Being at that level feels impossible. Almost every year, Kai won the title, and it looked like it was an unattainable goal. It's fitting to have Kai's name on the award moving forward, and I couldn't think of a better way to honor the most decorated player in the history of the game. Magic would not be the same without Kai. He inspired so many players who have played for years to become better versions of themselves on and off the battlefield. Seeing Kai with another undefeated run on a Sunday was nothing short of poetic. He is the best of us and deserves all the praise. Moving forward, I think Nadu will certainly be banned, and it's a matter of when not if. I hope WotC is forward-thinking enough to take Grief with it. Modern Horizons 3 had a massive impact on the format, and there are a lot of awesome cards waiting to make an appearance. If I was WotC, I would wait for the normal schedule rather than issue an emergency ban. I'd let the dust settle, let people who invested in decks get to play with them a little, and then no one could blame them for a ban unless there's a massive turnaround in Nadu's success. I'm curious to see just how swiftly WotC reacts to Nadu, and it will give us an idea of how they may handle similar, future situations with tons of sets on the horizon.

This weekend, the Pro Tour will feature Modern Horizons 3 Limited, and the Modern format will be broadcast worldwide. I've heard almost nothing but complaints about Modern Horizons 3 as a Limited format. I stopped playing Modern Horizons 3 Limited due to life events and a lack of interest. Generally, I can grind a Limited format until the cows come home, but I just couldn't this time. I don't think MH3 Limited was too bad. It was average, but a few things bugged me. I was bothered that it tried too hard to be an homage to older sets while shoehorning in a bunch of rares that had minimal value in Limited to get them into packs, such as fetchlands, medallions, threshold uncommon lands, and rares that only have abilities when cast from the command zone. Collectively, this made for a chaotic experience and not in a good way. Even though almost everyone disagrees, I thought Writhing Chrysalis was great for the format. This is a mythic common, if you will, that holds one of the highest win rates of any card in the set. It reminds me of the good ol' days when you'd sit down to draft and weren't anticipating opening a busted rare but hoping to open Pestilence, Wild Mongrel, Troubled Healer, or maybe Sprout Swarm. Busted commons have a rich history in Limited, and they've been absent for a while. Is it because commons have become weaker? Somewhat, but it's mostly because of how strong the cards around them have gotten. Murder has been a great Limited common since it was printed (in all its iterations), but it's a simple one-for-one removal spell. It's not driving your deck in any direction and is just filling a necessary role in any Limited deck. This is not my idea of what the best commons should look like. In today's Limited environments, we get a lot of busted rares, especially with play boosters increasing the amount of rares in a draft. I've heard many complaints about how bomb-heavy certain formats are, especially Sealed. You open a Sealed deck on MTG Arena, see your rares fly onto the screen, and get a good initial idea about how well you'll do from looking at the six or so cards shown on your screen. I bet you didn't do that with MH3. You saw your rares but also immediately looked for how many, if any, Writhing Chrysalis were in your pool. If you had more than one, you immediately felt in the game regardless of what your rares looked like. These high-win-percentage commons are great for Limited but should have found a better set to land in. With power level creeping up at uncommon and rare, it's time to power creep the commons, as well. It will make for more exciting Limited games and allow players to push back against the over-performing, over-tuned rares of the format. MH3 is not that busted at rare, though. There are many really strong rares, but they are held in check by the strength of some uncommons and commons such as Writhing Chrysalis itself. I loved the game a lot before power creep had taken hold of it, but power creep is here to stay. While Writhing Chrysalis is a broken common for limited, I don't see anyone rushing to play it in any form of Constructed. It still likely wouldn't see play if it was Pioneer legal, though I could see a world where it's playable in Standard. That is the sweet spot for how strong we'd want some of the best commons to be. If we continue to push back against power creep at common, we will continue to have Limited sets with an imbalance in power level across the board. It will create this helpless feeling where you think, "I played a sweet game, then some rare I can't beat got cast, and everything before it didn't matter." That happens when the cards cast before it are too weak to compete. If we pushed the power level, and not just in a way that puts people's life totals to zero on turn four or five, we may have some awesome back-and-forth games between rares and commons. Some people want Limited overall to be scaled down in power, but I've played far too much Core Set Limited in my life to enjoy it anymore. I want high-powered decks, cool synergies, and experiences that push closer towards Vintage Cube than towards 4th Edition Booster Draft. To get to where games are fun, interesting, unique, and flashy, we need higher strength commons that give you the same excitement as when you open one of the best rares. Writhing Chrysalis did just this, you felt like your draft was starting out well, even after starting with a common. Let's not forget that Limited is self-correcting. When there is an imbalance at common like we have with Writhing Chrysalis, players will adjust and start drafting those colors more. This leaves weaker color combinations open, so a lot of rares in other colors are ripe for the picking because people are fighting over red and green playables. MH3 did a lot of things wrong. It tried to do a little too much, including making the product desirable to buy rather than focusing on how some inclusions would impact Limited play. Despite this, the format's overall philosophy and desire to push the envelope of power level outside of rares is a great thing. It will create a dynamic experience, and we need more busted commons in a set so there's not just one everyone's fighting over. We want a few more spread out across all colors so you can compete with any deck. Balancing out power level at Limited shouldn't only mean cutting back on broken rares but also pushing other rarities up to that level so that the format is more balanced. I'm excited to see how the players at the Pro Tour draft and to hear their thoughts on the format as a whole.

As of yesterday (from the time of writing), Modern Horizons 3 Booster draft was available on both of Magic's digital clients. Unlike my usual approach where I draft mostly MTGO, I've moved over to Arena for faster, cleaner games. MTGO is generally my platform of choice, but with higher pack prices, I decided to take my business to Arena for the time being. Regardless, I've learned a lot about the format already and came up with my primary rule—stay in your lane. I said this last week, and it remains true. The days of drafting conservatively and trying to lean on play skill in close games is in the distant horizon. There are a few notably powerful archetypes in the format, and I normally stick to those. I mostly don't like aggro, but best-of-one gameplay is going to make it better as lower-curve-beatdown decks spend tons of mana in the first five turns of the game almost never missing a beat. It's no different in this format. I said last week that you want to follow the synergies of your color combination and avoid drafting good-stuff decks. I still believe that to be true. My pick for top decks in the format currently, and it's still too early to know for sure, are RG Devoid and UR Energy. It took playing against Writhing Chrysalis once to know that it's one of the best commons that's been printed in a set - maybe ever. If it's not blasting away at your life total, it's holding down the format threatening to block anything from menace to flying. While I'm still high on Galvanic Discharge, Chrysalis is the best common in the set by leaps and bounds. A frequent question I see is how to balance spells that can be played as lands into spell count. While there's no easy heuristic for this, generally I'm getting about two spells that can be played as lands per draft and playing about 16 lands. They're normally worth about half a land, but the more you have then the less lands I'm willing to cut. You don't want to go lower than around 15 actual lands in your deck because you don't want a painful mana base or a mana base consisting of lands that come into play tapped. My drafts tend to go as follows. I take the best card out of the pack until about pick three or four. After that point, I'm paying close attention to sign postcards and willing to completely abandon my first few picks depending on whether huge bombs are present or not. If not, I have no problem taking a UR Energy card even if my first three picks were black and green cards. I want to be in the open lane and having as linear a deck as possible is paramount to success. You need your cards to work together in this format. There are some rares that can carry you, but mostly you're relying on your cards working well together, which you can say for any format, but this one especially. Your energy deck wants very few spells not producing energy, and your BG Modify/Adapt deck wants very few, if any, creatures that don't benefit from being modified. Because of how this set functions, I tend to take gold cards aggressively. If I have two or three red cards to start the draft that benefit from energy, and I'm faced with a choice of a Cyclops Superconductor and a Fanged Flames, I'm taking the gold card. I don't want to open the door for the table to get into my archetype. I want to prohibit them from moving into my lane altogether. Staying flexible is just not a luxury we're afforded in this set. Cheap removal is important. There are so many powerful creatures that hit the table on the early turns that you need it to make sure you're not just dead on the spot to the plethora of rare creatures that can snowball, on top of needing to break up a lot of creature synergies. It's also important to not end up too reactive. The devoid archetype will punish you if you're sitting there with a hand full of removal and no way to close the game out while they set up for massive turn after massive turn. Let's take a peek at some of my decks I drafted on day one. This was an easy trophy with a powerful UR Energy deck. The deck leaned heavily on Invert Polarity to close games. Luckily, I got two of them. Phyrexian Ironworks is the type of card you only want in your very synergistic energy decks. It barely crossed the line for me in this deck, but I need a way to close the door in longer grindier games, and it did a fantastic job doing just that. This deck had some close calls and tight games against various Eldrazi decks, but it ended up getting the job done. Normally, I would never cut Arena of Glory since it's mostly "free" to play, but in this deck I didn't want to fetch mountains early or play two red sources in the early turns with multiple Invert Polarity in my deck. This is what a nearly ideal energy deck looks like. Next up, UG Devoid. This deck is one of the worst decks I've drafted thus far. It lacks interaction and powerful top-end payoffs. It's a bunch of slightly big creatures and, because it's easy, splashing Horrid Shadowspinners. I ran out of playables spending so many extra picks on colorless lands. I have not been impressed with this archetype, as it feels mostly helpless when it falls behind, and it basically always does unless your opponent's deck is too reactive. Depth Defiler did a lot of work filling the big hole where I needed more interaction, but I still only managed a 5-3 record or so with this deck. Horrific Assault felt important in this archetype as a way to catch up on tempo in the midgame. I will be moving Horrific Assault way up in my pick order specifically for this deck and RG Devoid where it's an all-star. I tend to end up in this deck when I open some big Eldrazi rare in a weak pack and get passed a signpost uncommon like Path of Annihilation. Next up, the outlier. Despite titling this article around the notion to stay in your lane and follow your color pairs synergies, I had some soft synergies in this deck and did not end up BR Affinity. In fact, I ended up Rakdos Sacrifice with a small energy package. This deck had a high power level but no synergies outside of my Infernal Captor Package, which only came up in one of my eight games. I managed to go 7-1 breaking my own rule, but this deck leaned a lot on my rares, Sorin of House Markov and Shilgengar, Sire of Famine. Outside of that, this is an example of a deck that was too reactive and a mess. Glimpse the Impossible and Amped Raptor were my card advantage, but both cards played poorly with all my top end. This deck had some play. I stole multiple games with Infernal Captor against what I'd normally think is a bad match-up for this deck in Devoid. Generally, the Devoid decks can grind better than a typical RB deck, so I had to change roles in that match-up and push as much damage as I could early and close with the Captor stealing a six- or seven-drop to close the game out. I think the 7-1 record of this deck was an overperformance, and I had some lucky pairings against decks trying to modify in response to my instant-speed removal. Last up is a deck I'm currently 2-0 with, and it's played out nicely so far. It's lean and synergistic. This is a draft where I first picked Cursed Wombat in a bad pack and never looked back. I went blinders-on to take a black or green card every pick. I like that this deck is low to the ground but also won't get outsized given my amount of adapt and wombats. Nesting Grounds has surprised me a lot. You should be actively tracking and trying to pick this card up with a later pick in this archetype, as it gives you the ability to constantly trigger your wombats and Basking Broodscales. Gift of the Viper is the exact type of card I'd normally advise you to stay far away from, and I'm only willing to try it because of the wombat package. The same is true for Fowl Strike. This deck needed a rare or two to take it over the top, but any deck where you get three signpost gold cards of your archetype is going to be solid. I expect to get a trophy with this one despite having to round out my last few slots with filler cards. Overall, I'm currently enjoying this format, but I don't think it will last long. The format feels linear and without much room for experimentation. I probably won't draft it 100 times like I would with a set like OTJ that was deeper. This is a 20- or 30-draft format for me, but who knows, it's still early, and I may get some inspiration while drafting or watching others. I'd evaluate this set as an average drafting experience. I recommend playing on Arena over MTGO since the 20-ticket price to enter the draft on MTGO is too high relative to the low prices of the cards you get from completing the draft. Regardless, I'll keep enjoying this format. I'll likely break my advice and play a bit on MTGO to get a feel of a true Bo3 format as I expect it to slow down. I want to get an idea of what the format will be like for the upcoming Pro Tour. I'm eager to study the drafts from the best of the best and challenge myself to learn from them and find any mistakes they're making to hone my skills.

Many of you will be playing Modern Horizons 3 by the time this is published. It may be your local pre-release, release weekend, or like me, on MTGO or MTG Arena the day it's released. While it's impossible to play with the set as of writing, I drafted some decks on a draft simulator, which I do almost every time a new set is released. Bot-only draft simulations are not great tools to practice drafting. The bots' pick orders are questionable, but that is not the point of the exercise. When I use a draft simulator this early, I focus on understanding how cards go together, what a good deck could look like, and a general idea of what resources are in abundance and which are scarce. For instance, if a set lacks two-drops, you'll feel that as you're drafting and may begin your first real drafts prioritizing them, putting you slightly ahead of the pack. You can study a spoiler set and list things if that's how you operate, but my ADHD wants me to be hands-on when learning, so I dive right in, however imperfect. Draft simulation showed me that there's not much fixing with this format. The cycle of lands that fetch for basic lands and the cycle for three colors of mana are often clunky. They will be contested by people only playing one color because they make colorless mana for various effects or spells they need to pay to use. There's also the dual land cycle of spell lands. The dual-land spells are high picks since they're both fixing and usually solid spells. This is the most pushed I've seen these types of cards. They can be played in single-color decks, and you'll always play them if you're touching either color, making them harder to pick up and more valuable. Overall, splashing seems difficult. Because of this, a card I am high on is Solar Transformer. A gemstone mine on a mana rock feels like it will play well in almost any deck. It has energy synergies, artifact synergies, and a way to produce colorless mana. This is a card you should value highly. The decks seem to draft themselves. You are pushed into your lanes and penalized for deviation. Energy decks want to focus on energy cards, and you may find it necessary to take cards that are above rate. There are some miscellaneous cards you might grab, but archetypes are hard to steer out of because the synergies don't overlap well. It's tough to bounce from energy into devoid or devoid into artifacts. Sealed decks will likely be a mess. Highly synergistic formats aren't well-balanced for Sealed, as you're left up to the whims of your packs, and and you can't properly support cards that would be all-stars in a booster draft. Sealed will likely be about building around your most powerful cards, avoiding trap cards that need a lot of support, and understanding how little support something needs to work. For instance, how many colorless mana pips do you need for a card that needs colorless mana to be cast? It depends on where that curve is on your mana curve. If it's a card like Eldrazi Ravager, you don't need many sources. Maybe two lands and one or two ways to make an Eldrazi spawn. Eldrazi Ravager cycles, so you have a buyout option. A card like It That Heralds the End is a card that has to support your entire deck, acting as a mid- to late-game anthem effect for all your creatures, or it's a card that's best left on the sidelines, as it's nearly impossible to play on curve. There's a massive disparity between some of the rares against the average common. I'm surprised, but this feels a lot like a Standard draft rather than a Modern Horizons one, power-level wise, though there are some excellent commons that wouldn't be printed straight to Standard such as Galvanic Discharge. There's a lot of value and card draw, so I expect the games to be grindy. There's a lot of efficient removal, various creature tokens, and powerful top-end, so aggro decks will struggle in this setting. This isn't to say aggro is unplayable, as it's hard to determine before getting any games in, but these formats are about adding to the battlefield as much as possible. If you spend time drawing extra cards rather than adding to the battlefield, you need some catch-up cards or synergies in your deck. There's a lot of fun drafting around rares. I suspect much of my early play will be exploring these rares rather than specific archetypes. The format looks well-balanced at first glance with tons of ways for all colors to spend mana, the presence of efficient removal, and potent threats. There are many filler rares you'll never get to play, which makes me worried the set will get dull more quickly. Filling packs with Medallions and Fetches may prop up the value of the packs, but it's not doing favors for the Limited format. Regarding color preference, my initial thought is that I want to learn red first. I've no idea if it's best, but there are two commons I'm excited about at common in red in Galvanic Discharge and Fanged Flames. Cranial Ram in gold looks absolutely cracked. As I do in almost every draft format, I start with a heavy bias towards blue. Blue is secretly always the safest or best color in Limited these days because it's capable of interacting with the stack and drawing extra cards. Card advantage isn't king these days but finding your most powerful cards is. You will draw your busted cards more if you're seeing a larger portion of your library. Serum Visionary looked absurd before the full set release. While it still seems good, it does miss out on not having any synergy, which puts it in a weird place but also makes it a perfect fit into the set. If you want this powerful common, you will have to give up on an archetype-boosting slot in your deck. The TLDR is that I'm going to try and find my lane for my first drafts in the first three or four picks, try and stay in that lane, focus on just two colors, and draft for synergy, so my whole deck is a complete one rather than a pile of good cards. There are some sets that have soft synergies and some where the synergy is important. This set seems to be close to the latter. Next week, I'll dive into drafts and keep you all updated. I generally go into the first few drafts with a loose plan and change based on how games play and how things feel. If people don't value the same cards you do, it doesn't mean you're wrong, but it does mean you can find value later in packs and should account for it by adjusting your pick orders. Your goal as a drafter is to gain as much deck advantage as you can in the drafting portion and make playing the games as easy as possible. This means you need to exploit others' weak points in the draft and have a fluid pick order. It's never been easier to find that value since 17 Lands has proliferated through the community. You can look at drafting habits of top players in real time, find where there's something being left behind, and grab cards that are performing better than you'd think. It's an excellent tool to use for a variety of reasons, just don't be blind to the win rates of best-of-one. They're often different if you're playing other formats. I hope you have a great time playing a new Limited format. I know I will!

The time has come. We now have a final list of all the cards Modern Horizons 3 has in store, and I wasn't too impressed until now. There were some cool cards but nothing truly format-warping. This week we got quite a few bangers though. Let's get into it. Harbinger of the Seas This is a simple, time-shifted version of Magus of the Moon. The obvious home is Merfolk. Merfolk is far from tier 1, though this will help push it in the right direction. Harbinger of the Seas feels more like Blood Moon than Magus of the Moon, as Magus could at least be Lightning Bolted or removed with other red removals. Harbinger of the Seas will have to be attacked differently. This card will see play somewhere, but it shouldn't change the format since it was already easy to splash Blood Moon. This gives a time-shifted option of one of the more frustrating cards to play against in Magic's history. It's a solid card but not a necessary printing. I'm sure a lot of players will use it to avoid putting red in their decks and still have the option of playing a Blood Moon effect. Wrath of Skies There's not much hype around this card, but it looks interesting. Wrath of Skies looks great at combatting low-to-the-ground decks that put tons of cards in play in the first few game turns, say, a deck like Affinity. The reason I want to take a peek at Wrath of Skies, however, is its interaction with Urza's Saga, one of the most played cards in the format. Wrath of Skies can clean up everything Urza's Saga is capable of doing for two to three mana. It's backbreaking to lose all the permanents you put into play in the early game turns, even more so when you lose a land in the process. While Wrath of Skies is better suited for the rare reactive deck in Modern, the format might slow down for a reason I'll get to next. Wrath of the Skies has a lot of sleeper potential, especially in decks with Teferi, Time Raveler. I won't be surprised if it makes its way into some control decks that may break into the format soon if the format slows down enough. Vexing Bauble I'm happy Vexing Bauble is an uncommon. Everyone is going to need a playset. Vexing Bauble could flip Modern on its head and completely change the format. I could probably write a book on the potential applications and trajectories this card could send Modern into, but I'll keep it brief. Vexing Bauble's design is meant to combat the free spells printed into Modern. Bauble is close to free to include in your deck as it cycles and has a potentially huge gameplay impact in the early turns of games. As the game develops, the impact isn't felt as much because both players can develop their mana and cast their Grief or Solitude. Vexing Bauble could end up being played in every deck, even decks with free spells because you can get rid of it once it's in play. The impact Bauble will have on the format is not known because it creates quite the prison's dilemma for deck builders. You can either accept that free spells are much worse with this in existence, and thus remove them from your deck entirely, or fight through the fact that these Baubles exist. At some point, if people remove cards like Grief and Solitude from their decks entirely, it will behoove you to remove these from your deck as well, which could create a cyclical effect benefitting players who adjust quickest to the churn. I'm still not sure everyone will play the Bauble, but many decks will at least initially try the card. What could end up happening is scam still exists and be tier 1. Players may scam on the play to win and sometimes lose to this card on the draw. Vexing Bauble makes it feel like play-draw will matter even more. Players who put their free spells into play before a Bauble hits the table will benefit most. Urza's Saga is one of the surefire reasons you'll see this card in a lot of places, even as a singleton. It's free to put a copy into your deck as a card that will have value when drawn but also to be cashed in for a new card or used to set up a key turn. Vexing Bauble is the defining card of this set, It has the most potential to shake up the format. Almost every good deck in Modern is trying to cast spells for zero mana, and Vexing Bauble will completely impact how we build our decks. Regardless if you're a serious or casual Modern player, you'll need a playset of these Baubles because they can slot into just about any deck. It may wax and wane when you want these in your main deck and when you won't play them at all. Warren Soultrader Warren Soultrader likely won't have a huge impact on Modern, but it's worth noting that a three-card creature combo does exist and that you could technically build around it, perhaps even in a shell with Collected Company. Warren Soultrader is a template we've had before in the form of cards like Ashnod's Alter or Phyrexian Altar. Warren Soultrader is a Phyrexian Alter on a body and that body is a zombie, so you could play it along with Gravecrawler and any Blood Artist effect, which is an infinite combo draining opponents for infinite life. Warren Soultrader has the potential to pop off, but my guess is it will strictly be a tier 2 or 3 meme deck with a powerful but fragile three-card combo. Nadu, Winged Wisdom Nadu Winged Wisdom is a complete boom or bust, but it has the highest potential of any card in the set outside of Vexing Bauble. Nadu looks like a meme card meant to be thrown into some fun decks, but it's incredibly pushed. It didn't take the internet more than a few minutes to figure out how powerful this is with equipment like Shuko or Lightning Greaves that equips for zero mana, giving you nearly infinite triggers. While Nadu's ability says creatures targeted only trigger twice a turn, that's for each creature. When combined with cards like Delighting Halfling or Dryad Arbor, you can get tons of triggers and put lands into play to cast additional cheap creatures, essentially churning through your deck. You'll want a low-curve deck so every card with Nadu is either a one-mana creature or a land to cast them. I could see Nadu being played alongside Stoneforge Mystic so you can find Shuko or Lightning Greaves while providing a solid plan in games where your opponent can keep your combo potential in check. Nadu appears to be busted. It will be difficult to iterate on a deck that needs such a high density of cheap spells, specifically cheap creatures. I'm curious to see what the best version of a Nadu combo deck will be and what people close the game out with once they've drawn their whole deck. While I think Nadu has the potential to be the best card in the set, it also may not be good if the shell itself isn't strong enough. Time will tell, but Nadu is the card I'm most excited about in Modern Horizons 3. Shifting Woodland Last but not least, let's take a look at the cycle of lands we have coming to Modern with Shifting Woodland. While each color has its own version, Shifting Woodland is one of the more interesting ones with the ability to turn into anything in a graveyard for four mana. This could be a Griselbrand, an Archon of Cruelty, or in Legacy a Dark Depths. Shifting Woodland is powerful, and its biggest hurdle is turning on the delirium mechanic. As we've seen in the past with decks like Jund Death's Shadow, it's simple in a deck with interaction to play a card like Mishra's Bauble, or maybe Vexing Bauble now, along with fetch lands to turn on delirium easily. It's worth noting that this should likely be an ancillary plan and not a main plan since it's slow on its own and the graveyard provides easy interaction. At the cost of including a copy or two of this in your deck, it can find its home in almost any green deck, especially one with expensive, powerful permanents to copy. Decks like Amulet Titan might want a copy, as in interactive games you can turn this into a Titan and start the combo. While all these lands are interesting options for Modern, we are kind of overloaded on options for what value lands to play, especially with the new cycle of spell lands, many of which are playable. I don't think this cycle of lands will have a big impact on Modern because they're mostly tame and worse than the creature lands in Adventures in the Forgotten Realms. This will wrap up my analysis of Modern Horizons 3. I thought the set looked weak until this week's cards and now I think the set will have quite the impact overall. It's hard for a card to break into a format like Modern. The developers did a great job creating interesting cards that we'll need to explore thoroughly. Nadu is one of the coolest cards we've seen in a while. I like when a combo is organically created and not forced, and the community works together to find the best version of that particular combo or interaction. Modern players will have quite the puzzle to solve when MH3 is released, and I can't wait to see what the Pro Tour players develop. As great as those players are, I think it will take months to fully determine this set's capabilities.