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

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

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

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

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

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

I enjoyed TMNT for a few days, but the set is too small to sink your teeth into for a long time. To boot, Arena recently put March of the Machines, my all-time favorite Limited format, on for a flashback week, so I stopped playing TMNT completely. Once the ACQ is over, it will most likely be my last experience with the set. I've always been a major fan of flashback drafts, and Arena is getting to the point where there are so many sets to look back fondly on. I had so much fun with MOM that I decided to look through all the sets to find ones I'd look forward to playing again. My taste is slightly different from the general population, as anything too simple would be dismissed. I don't mind losing to busted rares if it means I occasionally get to play with them. I also don't enjoy hyper-aggressive formats where games don't develop much past the first few turns. I want to draft a deck that does something cool, and I have enough time in games to watch it happen. Other lists would look much different because a lot of people like the typical Limited feel of curving out creatures, attacking, and casting a well-timed combat trick. That's not for me, at least not on repeat. NEO is an example of a set people loved, but my Arena experiences were just casting a bunch of above-the-curve one-drops, curving out, and attacking every turn. I won a lot, but it wasn't that appealing. My list is below. 8) Dominaria The OG Dominaria is a work of art. It brought new cards to fit into the oldest MTG world and paired them with some of the game's classics like Icy Manipulator. The format has Kicker, one of the all-time best Limited mechanics, combined with a flat power level. The rares weren't super-toxic, and a lot were build-around style cards that could play on their own or be pushed. The Mirari Conjecture is a perfect example of a card that was strong but required you to draft in an atypical way. Speaking of, the beloved Sagas were first introduced in Dominaria. I would bump this up a tier if I hadn't drafted it so much. Between this and number seven, it's basically a tie. 7) Innistrad: Midnight Hunt I played Innistrad Midnight Hunt mostly off Arena, but I won a ton and did so drafting a variety of decks based on how the meta shifted. This format had an evolving Limited metagame. Dimir was the out-of-the-gate best archetype. As it became more contested, people often pivoted to Azorious as the next best archetype, aggressively drafting cards like Luminarch Veteran, which I infamously called out as being overplayed. As the set developed, I started drafting more UG self-mill decks and any deck capitalizing on getting Rise of the Ants later than I should have. The set's biggest strength was how well it put cards into the graveyard and how well it utilized the cards it put there. 6) Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle Earth I had a love-hate relationship with LOTR. Izzet was the one archetype I found very fun. Green multicolor decks were also fun but not as strong as black decks. "The ring tempts you" is one of my all-time favorite Limited mechanics, as well as the Dungeon system from which it was derived. (Shout out to Alchemy: Baldur's Gate, which would be high on the list, but I chose not to include any Alchemy.) Lord of the Rings is much higher for more people. Admittedly, I didn't play as much of this set as others because it was the first released when I had taken a break from competitive MTG. I stopped playing the set because it lost my interest after a bit. LOTR had a solid power level, cool flavor, and an all-time great Limited mechanic, so it does enough to get onto the list. 5) Shadows Over Innistrad: Remastered This was hard to rate because of how one set function was implemented. There was a bonus sheet that changed weekly when it was released. Some were more compelling than others. Overall, this is a fantastic original set that was remastered to heighten the power level and made to feel more like a Masters set than a straight-to-Standard block. It also included a ton of cards from the original Innistrad, which is my number two all-time straight-to-Standard draft set. Shadows Over Innistrad had a variety of fun archetypes. Whether it be self-mill, spells matter, or Investigate, as well as occasional Manic Scribe mill decks. There were so many unique archetypes that involved using set-specific mechanics that it still feels new, even though the original set is nearing its 10-year anniversary. I'll always make time to do a few drafts with this set when it returns to Arena. 4) Outlaws of Thunder Junction Many, myself included, hated calling a new set OTJ, given that the original "OTJ", called Odyssey, Torment, Judgement, was a fan favorite Limited format over 20 years ago. However, after playing the new OTJ, I was proud to call this the masterpiece OTJ. I will note that this is a controversial take. OTJ gets a lot of flak from the general public because of how overpowered a lot of the rares were, especially some of the bonus sheet rares. The reason I like this set so much is because of its high power level. At times, some decks felt close to Cube's strength when you managed to get a Bonny Pall and an Overwhelming Forces in the same deck. Between Breaking News and The Big Score, there were several powerful cards in the set. Crimes was also an awesome mechanic to try and draft around. Bonus sheets are one of the best things to happen to Limited Magic. The ability to replay goes through the roof when they're present, and OTJ did bonus sheets well. Strixhaven is going back to the every-pack bonus sheet model. I hope it continues doing that for quite some time. 3) Modern Horizons 3 This is kind of cheating, as it's technically a Masters set, which are some of the best Limited experiences you'll ever have. Nonetheless, it's a playable Arena format they occasionally revisit. Modern Horizons 3 mostly gets to the top three of my list because it's a higher power level and recycles Magic's best Limited mechanics, such as kicker, cycling, energy, and the list goes on. Energy decks were by far my favorite to draft. The format tempo was faster than I'd like, but it was manageable. Normally, I still felt like my chances were good when I could try to get my deck to do a cool thing. This is a really fun set that I'm happy to play whenever it's available. I couldn't play it forever, though. 2) Final Fantasy This is an all-time banger that is likely in my top five sets ever. Final Fantasy had a bunch of fun archetypes to draft. I even enjoyed drafting a specific type of aggro deck, Orzhov Phantom Train. Izzet was everyone's best deck, but my best decks were often Towns decks, just not a replicable strategy. My all-time favorite draft deck comes from this format (pictured below), so it's immediately moving up on my list. FF Random Encounter The set had tons of playables, the power level was fairly flat, and almost every card had a use case. Also, the flavor was on point and fun, not that I'm too big on that, but it certainly doesn't hurt. This set was so popular that they flashed it back only a month or two after it was taken off Arena. It was too fresh for me to jump back into over a new set, but it's one I'll happily revisit when it's next available. 1) March of the Machines MOM is the best all-time Limited format and not just on Arena. The whole reason I'm writing about this topic is how much fun I had playing MOM the past week. There are a number of reasons why MOM is great, but I'll point out a few I noticed. While blue was clearly the best color, it wasn't so far out of whack that you couldn't win if you didn't play blue. Dimir was widely considered the best color combination, but it corrected itself easily. You could win by drafting soup decks and scooping up all the powerful cards. Battles are an all-time great Limited mechanic because they made it imperative to play to the board early, either to attack or defend. Attacking battles later in the game could sometimes not be worth the effort because you'd essentially be giving your opponent a large amount of life for a card. You had to use judgment to determine when it was and wasn't worth it. The bonus sheet was spot-on, with few complete misses. It was all Legendary creatures, but this cycle also included Companions, which is one of the best Limited mechanics to ever be introduced. However, since it's only on rares, it's not a mechanic you get to utilize often. MOM also had an almost perfect amount of mana sinks. I never felt like I lost because I ran out of things to do. Instead, if I lost, I felt it was because I made a bad choice or spent my mana incorrectly. Incubator Tokens and the transform ability were the perfect additions, making it feel like I always had an option. Removal was plentiful and often led to extremely interactive games. Most importantly, I felt like every draft pick and decision mattered. It's rare that either of those things is true in Limited sets, yet MOM managed to make the drafts and gameplay tough, intense, and rewarding. This is my list of the top eight Arena Limited formats. My criteria are based on how eager I would be to redraft them at this point in time. With some Strixhaven leaks showing up, it's only a matter of time before I have to get more serious for the PT, so it was nice to take a week to enjoy what I love most about this game.

TMNT Limited came out a few weeks ago, but I've been catching up on everything else since the AC. TMNT faces an uphill battle as a small set with the pick two option due to Spider-Man's resounding failure. One of the most asked questions in my stream is "How are you liking TMNT Draft?" I always answer roughly the same way: I think it's fun but ultimately not a format where I'd want to play 100 drafts. TMNT draft is about as good as it could be for what it is: a small set that will limit options while drafting. There are only five supported archetypes, making it harder to continue having new experiences. That said, I do enjoy the set. It's well balanced, and while there are some archetypes I prefer to others, ultimately they all have potential. I strongly prefer pick one to pick two, as it's eight players, and you can adjust to signals at a slower pace. Pick two is easier to read and send signals, but it's not my preference. White decks are my least favorite, mostly because I don't enjoy aggressive play styles, and I'm always looking to draft a Pizza deck. We'll get into that shortly. Izzet Artifacts is my favorite normal archetype. It has synergy, access to removal, and can be drafted as a slower deck or an aggressive shell. It's very flexible. I lose to Orzhov Sneak the most. The sneak deck is extremely punishing. If you miss plays early, your opponent will destroy you with tempo. These low-to-the-ground decks' biggest flaw is the tendency to flood out or run out of gas. There are plenty of ways to reload, such as Oroku Saki, Shredder Rising. I draft Boros the least because I like to start in green decks, and it's hard to pivot into Boros. Simic and Golgari are similar. While they have themes, that's not how you draft them. Mutagen and Disappear are what you're supposed to do, but in both archetypes, I'm almost never in just two colors. I'm mostly looking to play as many colors as I can, hopefully supporting Everything Pizza. The mana in the format is really good with Duals and Escape Tunnel at common. Additionally, the format is somewhat slow if you can weather the storm against the aggro decks on the first couple of turns. The set is full of strong rares and uncommons. Getting to play any number of strong cards is an easy way to gain a massive deck advantage. Even some of the cards with the best win rates aren't strong in a vacuum. An example is Dream Beavers. It's a solid card but not one you want on turns other than turn one. It facilitates all the sneak effects and grants continued value as you bounce it back with sneak. It's not winning the game on its own. Others may be fighting for this card, and I can ignore it and draft slower, more powerful decks. I aim to win games the easy way: by playing more powerful cards than my opponent, turn after turn. The format is punishing, so it's important to make plays early and be mindful of your curve. You can't take a turn or two off. The cards are too powerful to recover from, and there aren't many sweepers or catch-up cards. For this reason, I'm low on cards that require a board presence, like Tenderize. Let's take a look at some successful decks I drafted. Izzet Artifacts More than ever, gold cards are a strong signpost for open archetypes. Almost all of the uncommon signposts are strong, and all of them are at least good, with some being great. While some are better than others, their presence in a pack tends to indicate that the archetype is open. In this deck, I picked up quite a few Baxter Stockman. I could have two more, but as Legends, I took other strong cards over them. Getting into any deck often requires identifying whether the cards are in a pack picks three or four pack one, which is an indication to dive right in. In this specific draft, it wasn't until pack two when there were tons of Izzet that I could dive in safely. I had a couple of strong rares, which is necessary in small formats. Uncommons are powerful enough in this set that if you get a bunch, you won't necessarily need rares. In that event, you'll also usually end up with rares. Two-color decks, when open, tend to be solid and strong, but you can go deeper if you embrace the pizza. 5c Pizza My favorite archetype in the format is green-based multicolor decks. I prefer Golgari because of one very strong interaction. Anchovy & Banana Pizza combined with Ragamuffin Raptor is an interaction that does it all: interaction, value, and a board presence, all with a two-card combo of easy-to-pick-up commons. Anchovy Pizza is not a card BW decks take aggressively. They take it, but this is where it shines. This archetype also lets you branch into any splash you want because of Frog Butler, the common land fixing, and Everything Pizza, which goes criminally late. Everything Pizza is not the kind of card the new drafters take. They stick more to two-color decks. Those decks are fine, but Everything Pizza fixes your mana, gives you a game piece to sacrifice to various effects, and gives you a powerful late-game effect that is good enough to win the game with its activation cost. Black offers efficient removal with Stomped by the Foot and unconditional removal with Anchovy & Banana Pizza. Pizza also provides life gain to get out of reach of various burn effects. This archetype allows you to gobble up any of the powerful rares or uncommons you come across. If this deck needed or wanted it, I could have easily played Baxter, but my deck was strong enough that I didn't need to bother. The best uncommon to get in this archetype, outside of Everything Pizza, is Courier of Comestibles. This specific deck didn't have powerful splashes; however, the mana allowed me to play some good cards like Donatello and Karai's Technique. While these aren't cards I'd typically splash, they were both excellent, providing a value creature and a way to sneak back my Courier for value. These five-color decks have given a lot of life to the format for me. I'll continue playing it up until the ACQ in a few weeks to try and earn my way back into the ACs since I had such a positive experience last time. If you're less experienced drafting five-color decks, I'd advise you to keep an eye out for the signpost uncommons. If some are coming, then by pick four or five of pack one, that's the archetype you should probably pivot to. Sometimes it's even worth abandoning good rares if the signal is strong enough. If you like Limited, I'd give this set a chance. It has tons of mixed reviews, but I think most people who don't like it weren't willing to give it a chance after Spider-Man.

TMNT is a small set, which may not have as much impact as a set like Lorwyn, but there are a few cards that could have the juice to impact Standard. Here's a list of cards that may immediately impact Standard. Cool but Rude If I've learned anything over the past few years about Magic, it's that Sagas almost always overperform in Standard. Fable of the Mirror Breaker, Artist's Talent, and Stormchaser's Talent are a few examples of cards that flew under the radar before becoming painfully obvious that they're broken. Cool but Rude, might be the opposite of that. This is a card that many people have their eyes on, and it plays nicely with Monument to Endurance. The most compelling home for the card is Rakdos Monument, which I tested thoroughly before the Arena Champs and decided was underpowered for the format. The deck's major issue was how it constantly ran out of gas, and your hand size mattered a lot. Discard outlets in the deck mostly put you down cards, so without a Monument, you struggled to produce enough threats compared to the interaction. Cool but Rude helps by allowing you to play a one-drop, attack, and discard a card without being down additional cards. This lets you pump your one-drops and put cards like Bloodghast into the graveyard. No doubt this is the perfect home for this card; however, I'm still skeptical that this doesn't play right into the issues I had with the deck, which were that you needed your one-drop to stick or you were constantly falling behind. There are several ways to utilize Cool but Rude, but I suspect Rakdos Monument will gain popularity now with new tools like Cool but Rude. This card looks good, and Sagas have always ended up better than they look, so I'm confident this card will find a home. If not now, then in Standard's future. Leatherhead, Swamp Stalker I played Simic Rhythm at the Arena Championship, and a struggle we had when building our list was finding a way to include cards that could interact with artifacts and enchantments against Lessons, such as Wistfulness and Reclamation Sage. Unfortunately, they often didn't line up well. Rec Sage would frequently be dead when they hadn't developed a Monument or Artist's Talent. Wistfulness, the better option, wasn't a card you could effectively Rhythm for, but did pack a punch when it lined up. Leatherhead is a nightmare for Lessons decks because it can take out their Monuments and has hexproof to make it immune to Lessons' incredible creature removal suite. If you happen to get counters onto it with, say, an Ouroboroid, then you can remove those counters and let it keep hexproof. Leatherhead seems like an incredible addition to a wide variety of green decks. It may be one of the best Standard cards in the set in terms of its potential immediate impact. Krang, Master Mind Krang looks flat-out broken in a traditional affinity-style deck. It may be difficult in Standard to get your desired quantity of artifacts; however, Krang pays you for dumping a bunch of cheap artifacts into play. Ideally, it's the last card out of your hand, but Krang is your deck's focal point if you can build a deck in that manner. It's a potent threat that draws four cards at an obscene rate. While there's currently no home for the card, Krang is a build-around that may be worth building around. I plan to look at this card more, which will force me to examine artifacts from older sets to see if there is a way to take advantage of them. With a five-year Standard on the menu, cards like Krang can have an immediate impact but also can line up well as more artifacts get rolled out with additional sets. Krang needs support to be viable, but if that support arrives, then Krang could be one of the more important cards from TMNT. Agent Bishop, Man in Black I was so focused on the Arena Champs recently that I didn't bother looking over the TMNT previews. I first saw this card in play in the Limited early-access streamer event. Unless you have an immediate answer, it felt nearly unbeatable. While it's easy to interact with, you can often play it on turns your opponent doesn't have removal up. You'd want this card near the top of your curve, but if you're able to slam it and it goes unchecked, it's going to quickly run away with the game. We've had cards like this before at lower mana costs, Luminarch Aspirant for example, but the difference is this card is double the effect for only a single mana more. I'd equate Agent Bishop as a more narrow Goblin Rabblemaster. You need to play cheap creatures so that at least one other creature is in play when you cast it, but it has a similar effect in that it will quickly close the game if left unchecked. Agent Bishop is more of a maybe than other cards on this list. Creatures like this seem to be better than they look on their face, so I think Agent Bishop has a chance to have a big impact, especially in a format like Standard when a card like Voice of Victory exists. Death in the Family Black got the short end of the stick in this set, so the best, most reliable pick would just be this simple, solid removal spell, Death in the Family. Standard has no shortage of removal options these days since it has so many sets to choose from, but Death in the Family's restriction to a three-mana value will make it a good option against some of the format's threats because of the ability to exile. It's not an exciting card, but it will see some play and is another tool in black's removal suite. North Wind Avatar North Wind Avatar is by far my favorite TMNT card. Do I think this is the best card in the set? No. It's just simply my favorite. North Wind Avatar is a five-mana, 5/5 dragon that Demonic Tutors when it enters the battlefield. The cost is having those cards in your sideboard that you want to tutor for, which makes deck and sideboard building more challenging and rewarding. North Wind Avatar's rate isn't fantastic but not too bad. It has an immediate impact on the board and will usually dominate. By the nature of the "wish" effect, it can find cards in any situation. If you're ahead on board, then it can help search for a counterspell to lock the game up. If you're behind, then it can find a sweeper to reset the board. If you're setting up a combo? This card can locate the combo piece you're missing. Maybe your opponent's deck is heavily focused on using the graveyard? Get that Soul-Guide Lantern or whatever other graveyard hate you need. Large Standard will give us a high amount of narrow but efficient interaction that North Wind Avatar gives you access to without the cost of putting them into your main deck. I'm skeptical of a five-mana, 5/5 that doesn't affect the board immediately in other ways can see play in five-year Standard. If any could, North Wind Avatar is the one. I'm hoping North Wind Avatar has some function because it's almost there. TMNT looks solid so far. It's small, so it doesn't have a massive impact yet. I would look at these cards immediately if I were building Standard decks for a tournament in the next few weeks. Next week, I'll dive into TMNT Limited, a format that's been surprisingly fun.

This past weekend, I took my team's cub deck that I wrote about last week to a top 8 finish at AC11. This landed me a cool $7,000 and an invitation to the Pro Tour. I've said before and I'll say again that I'm not actively pursuing the Pro Tour, but if I can earn an invite from my computer chair to play in one of my favorite cities, Las Vegas, then I guess I'll do just that. As a reminder, here's the 75 I registered last weekend: Going into the event, we were confident that the top two represented decks would be Mono Green Landfall and Izzet Lessons. Simic Cub plays Lessons close, and a majority of the team believed Simic was a firm favorite while I'm more on the side of it being a coin toss. Landfall, however, is an easy matchup. Leading up to the event, Dimir Midrange was also a popular deck, though a risky choice because Landfall was represented by one in four players. Dimir Midrange is also a good matchup for Simic Cub decks. Because we weren't sure on the decks beyond the top two, Cub seemed like a great choice for the event. We were all happy when we saw the meta breakdown and cautiously optimistic moving into the event. As the event progressed, we noticed that none of our six pilots in the first three rounds had played against a single copy of Landfall, the deck we came to beat. Overall, we were doing poorly on the Cub side of things. Inevitably, we started to hit our good matchups, and our remaining teammates finally played the matchups we expected rather than being paired against decks like Izzet Elementals, which was only piloted by a few players in the whole field. I managed to only play against three different decks the entire event. I played against Landfall twice at the tail end of day one and against Dimir Midrange at the start of day one and in a feature match where I beat it to advance to day two and into the top 16. That leaves six more total rounds left, all against the same deck, Izzet Lessons. The six matches felt like coin flips to me, and sure enough, I went 3-3 overall. We didn't keep track of the team records in total, but I'm confident we had a noticeably better win rate against Lessons than I anticipated. One deck stood out to the team as an extremely difficult matchup, which we did not prepare for, and that was Izzet Prowess. Some players used and dismissed it early in testing. We didn't anticipate it being a large part of the metagame, so it wasn't worth the time to test the matchup because it wouldn't change any card choices or considerations of what we'd play. In reality, it seems like Izzet Prowess is a great deck that has a lot more opportunity in this newly open and revolving meta than we anticipated. Moving forward, I wouldn't recommend Cub, but I also wouldn't say it's a bad choice. It was a good metagame call for just one tournament. Moving forward, it's probably an average call, but there's no reason to play it without Landfall dominating the metagame. The format is a revolving door. If you're playing online, it's easy enough to change decks week to week or day to day. In paper, cards are expensive and tournaments are few and far between, so the metagame stays more stagnant, which also makes changing your deck more difficult and less relevant. If you wanted a deck that is good in any metagame? It's Izzet Lessons or a deck like Dimir Excruciator. Lessons plays everything close, has some of the best high-roll draws in the format, and is adaptable from metagame to metagame. Excruciator is similar in that it's not overly powerful, but it plays everything close, has a chance to beat anything, and doesn't have a matchup that you have to avoid. While I was going to write up a sideboard guide for Cub, and we had planned to in house, it was impossible. The adjustments you make with Cub will be so list dependent for both you and your opponent, and some changes so marginal, that it's difficult to pin down how you want to change your deck. Ideally, you will have a good mix of mana creatures and payoffs. While the payoffs matter, trimming mana creatures and such is a tough thing to pin down. I could play thousands of matchups with Cub and still not know if I'm supposed to trim 3 Leyline Weavers or 2 of them and a Pollinator. What I can do is show you the visual sideboarding notes I had for the tournament that I shared with my team. Cards on the right of the land are mostly in the "unclear" category and I'll explain them with each matchup. vs. Landfall This is the exact configuration of our list I wanted against Landfall. Wistfullness is not exciting, but the only games you lose against Landfall involve the trample ability. Whether it's Hydra or Ascension that get you, you're trying to avoid dying to those things. Otherwise you can goldfish much faster and more consistently than them. Spell Pierce over a Wistfulness is also reasonable to snipe the Ascension on the stack, which is a massive tempo positive way that can swing a game. It's completely dead other times that it's drawn. The number one thing you can do to increase your win rate in this matchup is mulligan to hands that get on board quickly with a payoff. You can comfortably win games with five cards in this matchup, so don't keep hands without mana creatures and hopefully a Rhythm, Ouroboroid, or at the bare minimum a Riddler, however that's only to find Rhythms and Ouroboroids quickly. vs. Lessons I was bringing in two Unable to Scream on the draw and bounced around from having zero to two copies on the play. Detect Intrusion is a card that can have a high impact, but it can also be tough to weave in. This is a matchup where your opponent will almost always win the longer games, and you will win the shorter and mid-sized games. You are asked to get and stay on board early. You can survive a sweeper if your follow-up is great. Playing around sweepers often leads to falling behind, so I tend to play into them with a backup plan when they have it. With no Screams in deck, I filled out with Leyline Weavers. As you can see, there are 61 cards. I'd go up and down on the number of Weavers based on how many Screams I wanted. In retrospect, I'd probably cut a Wistfulness for a Reclamation Sage in the sideboard. Despite drawing it in testing several times where it was an almost dead card, it's only good if your opponent gets going and you have an overwhelming board presence prior to that, thus having a purely reactive card feels bad. vs. Mirror This is a full-on race. Mull aggressively. Riddler always allows for that and getting on board fast is the key. vs. Excruciator Sadly, I didn't take a snap of my sideboard for this one, but the general gist is this matchup isn't that bad. You want to get some pressure on the battlefield, and it usually comes down to them resolving a Demon Trigger early or a sweeper in the midgame. If you can stop those things, you can usually win. This is a 50-50 matchup, maybe slightly worse. Your opponent can build their deck in a way that's harder to beat, but it's at the cost of winning many other matchups. Trim something on the right of the lands. You want to come out fast, but you need cards with impact. Most importantly, get a bunch of counter magic in and lean on it when you get an overwhelming board. vs. Dimir Mid Nothing is exciting in the pile to the right. The matchup is great, and the ways you lose are almost always on the draw against a good Kaito start when your hand isn't that explosive. Maw is good for resetting the Kaito while also developing on board. Your opponent doesn't have many sweepers in their list, usually one max in the sideboard, so you can build your deck as normal. Hoof was contentious in my testing team. I left it in because it seemed better than a card like Curator, which sizes up fine against them as a two-mana 3/3 with little upside, but it's not part of your core plan against your opponent. The best way to beat Kaito is to just get on board so that it's difficult for your opponent to spend their turn putting it onto the battlefield. This is an extremely good matchup. vs. 4c Elementals This isn't a matchup we expected much from, which is why we played the deck. It's fairly bad, as is any Sunderflock deck, but not unwinnable. It's possible you want Into the Flood Maw. You could trim a Wistfulness and a mana creature or something. Wistfulness is mostly here to interact with Roaming Throne, while allowing you to have an elemental in play if they manage to stick a Sunderflock. It's a bad matchup that you don't want to see on the pairings sheet. vs. SpellEmentals This is probably the most unsure we were about sideboarding, I'd approach this matchup by finding holes in their draws. Ideally, you play to the board as fast as possible to counter and keep elementals off the battlefield while setting up a win. There's 64 here. I would cut a few Rhythms, the Wistfulness, and a mana creature, probably Weaver. Maws can keep them off Flocks in theory, especially if you whittle their graveyard down with curators and keep their creatures more expensive to cast. Cub is an easy deck to play. The only hard part was figuring out mana on big Rhythm turns, which mostly only come up in mirrors and against Landfall. In both instances, I found if I couldn't beat the Arena rope to count properly, then I could often find a Marang River Regent and reset their board to a spot I could almost always win. Moving forward, there are a few things I'd change about the deck if i had to play it, but I'm looking forward to seeing how things evolve if Cub goes back into hibernation. With my top 8, I'll once again head to the Pro Tour, testing with my old teammates. I also squeezed in a few attempts at the Arena Championships Limited Qualifier and managed to spike, so I have that to look forward to, as well. Overall, it was just a weekend of Siggy winning again. Next week, we'll talk all about Ninja Turtles. See you then.

I'm writing this just before AC11. The Arena Championship is the closest thing you'll get these days to a Pro Tour held on MTG Arena, and for that reason I tested for it quite extensively. While we tried a bunch of off-meta decks and new brews, nothing stood out above the best decks of the format. This is a format where judging the metagame is extremely important, and if you can't do that accurately, just play the deck you know best. What was my weapon of choice? Well, it's the one deck that going into testing I said I will outright not want to play: Simic Cub. It was decimated at the Pro Tour, and I thought there was no chance the metagame would flip enough to make it viable again so soon. The decks at the Pro Tour trounced Simic Cub and forced it into hibernation. So what changed? Well, one deck started to stand out as the clear winner of how the metagame broke down — Izzet Lessons. It was favorable against a lot of the non-Cub decks, and it even closely played decks it was weak against. For the weekend after the PT Lessons, and even Dimir Midrange, were the big winners at events like the ACQ. What deck has a good matchup against both of those decks? Well, this other Cub deck that's been hibernating, Mono-Green Landfall, destroys Dimir Midrange and has a strong Lessons matchup. It's a strong proactive deck that can go toe to toe with most decks in the format. This isn't a deck that came from nowhere either. When Lessons was dominant prior to Lorwyn's release, the deck was in its preliminary form and was built to attack Lessons. Mono-Green Landfall got pushed out of the format originally because of its rancid matchup against Simic Cub. As you can see, the wheel keeps spinning. Mono-Green is still an incredible deck and has tools to beat anything in the format. However depending on lists, Simic Cub is as good as it gets in the matchup. Landfall's scariest cards for Cub is Mossborn Hydra, Earthbender Ascension, and Mightform Harmonizer, but everything else is negligible. It's almost a deterministic win from Simic Cub's side if you draw a Nature's Rhythm and a couple of mana-producing creatures on the play. Simic Cub got smashed at the Pro Tour by decks like Spellementals and other hateful decks, but those decks don't perform as well as once Cub was pushed out of the metagame and not as well against Mono-Green Landfall either. Decks featuring the card Sunderflock are almost non-existent. Before any event, an exercise I do with my teammates, who are almost always a different group of great players depending on the event, is to make predictions on what we expect the metagame to be. Here was my prediction for this event: Actual metagame: "Not including us" doing some heavy lifting here as we account for 6 of the 14 players playing Simic, and as you can see with Excruciator that brings us to 6.7% of the field with my team withstanding. I overestimated Demons and Dimir Mid, but Demons is closer than it looks given various similar Dimir Control decks represented in the "other" category. More people than we expected realized just how bad Dimir Midrange is in this metagame. It could come back to being a fine choice if Cub starts to overperform putting a bunch more Elemental and Control decks into the metagame. I'm proud of my ability to read a metagame, and this is one of the tougher metagames to call because of the high number of ebbs and flows. Not only did I predict the metagame, pen to paper, I put my money where my mouth was and played the deck I felt was best suited for the metagame, or at least the best deck we had access to. It's possible someone has broken it in that other category and maybe the meta gets shaken up once again. The largest chunk of the metagame (Landfall, Lessons, and Demons) is exactly what we want to see. I won't claim the Demons matchup is great, but it's winnable and not too bad. Lessons and Landfall range from solidly good in Lessons to overwhelmingly favorable in Landfall, depending on how many Mossborn Hydra your opponent has in their main deck. It's a much stronger card in game one than game two when we can bring in some interaction. If we did anything wrong testing for this event, it's not prepping against versions with four main deck Hydra, which would be the best way to build the deck for this breakdown, as it also would be quite good in mirrors to build your deck this way. Before we play this event, this is the exact reasonable breakdown we could expect. While the card choices of opponents remain to be seen, I'm extremely happy with our process and where we ended up. Hopefully, we can execute and one of us can take it down. While most of my team played this archetype, none of us played the exact 75, but only some very minor deviations. Here's my list: AC 11 Simic Cub I'm excited to get back in the ring in a high-level event, and there's still the first Arena Champs Qualifier this weekend even if I'm unable to convert. I'll be participating in both either way. This was an amazing Standard for a deep dive. I'm happy to get back in the ring again, as it's been low on my priority list, and arena tournaments are the only way I'm getting back into the competitive circuit. Next week, I'll go over my weekend of Magic, discuss my deck, and outline any changes I would have made. Wish me luck!

The Pro Tour was a few weeks ago and with it came various new archetypes to explore, creating an entirely new metagame. For the first time in a while, there is no discussion of banning cards in Standard. I think Standard is in one of the best places it's been. The PT Top 8 featured six unique decks. More decks that just missed, like Spellementals, had breakout performances. You would expect these decks to get narrowed down a couple of weeks later, but that has not been the case. The metagame is completely open. With that said, we had one meaningful event on Arena over the last week, which was an ACQ. While they don't release official accounts of the decks that qualified, plenty of players posted their winning lists to X. Dimir Midrange and Lessons were the new top decks that emerged. We also saw the PT Champ himself win with an updated Demons list. Other than that, Demons has been quiet elsewhere. After the Pro Tour, nearly all Pro Tour players agreed that Spellementals was the deck of the tournament, as it had an impressive performance. Despite this, I told other players that I thought it was fine for an event with an overrepresentation of Cub decks. Since then, it's fallen almost completely out of the metagame after its beating at the Pro Tour. This has decimated Sunderflock deck's edge. Now, both Spellementals and 4c Elementals, which had a Top 8 berth, seem like they're solidly in the tier 2 category. 4c Elementals plays nicely against Lessons with its bevy of Wistfullness, so it can attack Monuments and Artist's Talents. Cub decks haven't completely disappeared. A new deck has emerged as a top contender — Mono-Green. Landfall looks like a meme, but it's actually strong. Ross Merriam has been working a lot on the deck and playing it in several tournaments. Ross's Latest List Landfall has explosive starts with Cubs and Llanowar Elves, and it can play a grindy game with Greenshell and cards like Icetill Explorer and Saproling Nursery. With the rise of decks like Lessons and Dimir Midrange, Cub decks are having a resurgence, so the format has become cyclical. So, how can we get an edge in this format? Well, it's difficult to tell in a cyclical format which deck will surge each week. As I prepare for AC11, it's been hard to predict the metagame. The selection of players was odd because the qualifier events were a Historic event and two Sealed Deck events, so there were many Limited-only players. As a Limited enjoyer, I would never underestimate Limited players' skills. Regardless, my edge comes in if they're unfamiliar with testing for events like this. This format's best edges mostly come with one of the top decks and having plans for the top four or five decks. Make sure your plans are solid, tested, and able to maximize your win rate in each matchup regardless of whether it's good or bad. You should not try to play a deck that you think beats the best deck. There is truly no best deck at the moment. Every deck has a few good and bad matchups, some more than others. Your edge is knowing your deck, the format, and its interactions. This is unlikely to be a format where you just pick a deck that you kind of know and surprise the field. It's also not going to be won by picking a sideboard hate card that shuts down a deck. Everyone is actively solving the puzzle, so you're not going to surprise anyone. We have a legitimately fun and healthy Standard format with a lot of cool options. When some decks fall out of favor like Cubs, then decks will rise up that are weak to Cubs and beat other decks, which in turn triggers Cubs' comeback, like Ross suggests in this post. I don't know yet what I will play in AC11, and I have an important 72 hours in front of me. While I have a general idea of the decks I like and don't like, I have only eliminated some decks that I absolutely will not play, one of which is 4c Elementals. I don't think its matchups are good enough to warrant playing. With Badgermole Cub in hibernation for a short time, I would need to see PT levels of Cub to even consider it. We are more likely to see a more evenly spread metagame, which means you don't want to play decks like 4c Elementals that were initially brought to attack the best deck. Everything else mostly remains on the table. However, a lot of the work will get done this weekend, and I hope I can sleep well when I finally make my choice. For now, I want to focus on learning all the decks' strengths and weaknesses and report back when I find them all. Next week, I'll write about my deck choice. It's been a long time since I've been grinding for a tournament. I'm enjoying it somewhat, but there are many downsides to devoting tons of time for minimal edge in a tournament that ultimately won't change my life much. I'm just trying to enjoy the occasional high-level event and not put too much pressure on myself to perform. Let's see if this old dog can learn some new tricks.