Give me your Zendikar Rising draft tips! It runs for a week starting tomorrow and I've saved up some gold to play it. I've never drafted it before but I've been practicing a bit on Draftsim, and what I've got so far is that W/G landfall and U/B Rogues seem good. What about Wizards, is that a viable archetype?

So the opportunity cost of including, say, Floodfarm Verge in a slot where you would otherwise be running a Plains is low but not nil. Considerations:

• Are you running fetchlands such as Fabled Passage, and if so, is this dropping your basic land count low enough that you might run out?
• Are you running enough basic lands that you can reasonably expect to turn these on in most games?
• Are nonbasic hate cards like Furnace Punisher or Sunspine Lynx common in your meta and/or particularly good against your deck?

Overall I think I probably like these better than most of the rare duals that are currently in Standard, although that's "like" in the sense of "want to play with"; I'm not necessarily saying they're stronger in the abstract.

Interesting to note that the cycle depicted here is only allied colors and only goes clockwise (on the color wheel) when adding the second color. There is potential for three more cycles like this one if Wizards wants to make them.

As is tradition, this B&R announcement begins by saying that they will be changing the frequency of B&R announcements.

And then there's this:

It is worth noting that we don't plan on changing the current Standard B&R philosophy, meaning we still only want one window per year, barring an emergency, where we consider taking action in Standard.

I'm not sure I get the concept of non-emergency bans. If a card needs to be banned, ban it immediately; if it doesn't, don't ban it at all. This once-a-year interval makes even less sense for Standard than for other formats, since a year is proportionally longer for Standard.

I understand that they want people to feel confident that their chosen deck won't disappear at a moment's notice, I just don't think that's worth the trade-off of making everyone put up with an unbalanced format for months.

Not pictured: the twenty toes.

The level 2 ability sounded like a lot to ask until I realized that it triggers on things like treasures and maps and clues.

October 2023: "Having too many types of booster is hurting sales, so we're consolidating them."

July 2024: "Hey check out this new type of booster we came up with."

I've been playing Magic long enough to remember when a 3/4 for 3 mana would need a pretty significant drawback to even be printable. So I'm still surprised when they come out with broken nonsense like Nadu, even though I shouldn't be by now.

This Pro Tour had lopsided numbers and non-interactive games and just wasn't much fun to watch. Wizards should consider it a disaster, but whether they will probably depends a lot on MH3 sales numbers.

I love that it has flashback. "Did you guys learn anything from the first time? I'm betting you didn't."

Is this seriously an 8/4 with no drawbacks (being legendary doesn't count) for four mana? What the fuck is happening to this game?

Hard to disagree with any of the points he makes, but Standard accounts for most of my playtime right now, and I'd feel pretty lost if it went away.

It's not actually that I like Standard in particular so much as that I prefer formats with lower power levels. I like games to last longer and involve more back-and-forth. I would actually prefer a power level much lower than Standard, but Standard is the best I can get, so I take it. I would rather have seen them change Standard rotation to one year than three years -- but they'd have to accompany that by making it much, much easier to obtain new cards quickly, and it's hard to imagine that happening.

I would probably quit the game rather than move to Modern. Modern combines the worst aspects of Legacy/Vintage (high power level, short games, high monetary cost) with the worst aspect of Standard (you don't get to play all your cards). Pioneer/Explorer are a little better I guess, but give them time, they'll become "Second Modern" eventually.

I'll play Commander with friends, but not with strangers. It's alright but it's not really the same game. Too swingy, too flashy for my tastes. No opportunity to gain small advantages over time. It's nothing for the entire battlefield to be wiped and refilled twice before it even comes around to your turn again. And no sense of personal achievement, even when you win. Commander is about doing cool things, and all winning means is that you did the last cool thing. It doesn't necessarily reflect on good strategic decisions you made. Sometimes things just happen to line up for you due to decisions that other people made while you were tapped out and in the kitchen getting a soda. And Commander seems to be filling up more and more with Universes Beyond cards, which are a real turn-off for me.

I like Draft and Sealed plenty, but I can't afford to play them every day. How many of us can? Plus, without Standard, how much do I care about the cards I acquire in Limited? Is there room to make free or very low-cost phantom drafts available on a permanent basis? I'd consider making that my primary format, but I doubt Wizards can justify it financially.

So yeah, it's pretty much Standard or Pauper for me, and Pauper isn't available on Arena.

Surprised to see mono-red aggro with the second largest share; I guess Goddric must have helped it more than I realized. Mono-red is maybe the one archetype that will never be absent from any metagame, but prior to WOE I would not have said it was in a good place in Standard.

I'd welcome the return of blocks from a lore perspective, and Block Constructed as a format, but I have to say I don't miss drafting blocks. When you're opening packs from three different sets, every common might as well be a rare, in the sense that you'd better take it now or risk not seeing it again. At that point I'd rather just do a chaos draft.