transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:00] We feel like it uncommon, this sort of effect is fine. Like, give me a break.

Speaker 2:
[00:06] And you were like, wrong, you're fired.

Speaker 1:
[00:10] How? That just breaks everything they've ever done about this, like, hidden in the graveyard. Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of Lords of Limited. My name is Ben Warney, and joining me on the line is known bombard hater, Ethan, unsubtle mockery, Saks. We finally got him, boys. We got him.

Speaker 2:
[00:40] We got him. We got him. All you had to do is tack on surveil one to it. And I'm into it.

Speaker 1:
[00:46] I love to hear it. I love I love some unsubtle mockery.

Speaker 2:
[00:50] I don't know if your ears were burning on Thursday morning, I recorded our bonus episode of Lords Unlimited solo this week. I did just sort of a like post early access info dump. It was great because I was like, I know Ben will never listen to this. So I can say like, oh, he was right about this card. He was right about that card. But I don't have to say that to you today.

Speaker 1:
[01:08] Well, I can't much like LSV. I'm not subscribed to our Patreon, so I don't get it. I just literally I would listen to it. I was actually thinking, I wish I could listen to this. So if you want some Lords Unlimited in your life, get in that Patreon action.

Speaker 2:
[01:24] There it is. Ben, I miss you. You were just right here last week.

Speaker 1:
[01:29] It was nice. It was good.

Speaker 2:
[01:31] Wrap my arm around you. Get that Ben-Wernie Musk. No, no more. How's your week been? And more importantly, I mean, we'll get to it. But how was your early access slash pre-release this week?

Speaker 1:
[01:43] My week was absurd. So we had a beginning band registration. So like Tuesday and Wednesday, that went till nine o'clock Monday. We had a parent meeting. In the middle of all that, we were interviewing to hire for our new position, like having our top two candidates come in and teach the middle school classes, made an offer to one of those folks. Didn't hear back from them for over 24 hours, which was extremely stressful because I assumed they were just going to ghost us at that point. But then it turns out they had two different numbers on their resume and my principal picked the wrong one. So now, I've been extremely stressed about all of that. So Wednesday night, I did not start early accessing until 10.30 or 11:00 PM, because Catherine also got some bad news. Her bridal shower is this weekend and her family was unable to make it, so I was just being with her through all that. So it's been an extremely stressful week, and to the surprise of no one, I was exhausted when I started early accessing and promptly O6-ed my first two drafts and had literal nothing to bring to the podcast. This is unacceptable. I can't do this. So I took a half a personal day on Thursday and skipped school. So my ears weren't burning, but I was playing magic so that I could contribute meaningfully to the podcast. And I just did like four or five more drafts on Thursday morning. I got up and drafted and I've got some thoughts that are actually helpful now.

Speaker 2:
[03:09] Excellent. Well, I also did some losing and I have some thoughts that I think will be helpful because I have a perspective about why said losing was occurring. Let's do a little housekeeping before we dive in to the meat of the episode. Chat about the Patreon page, patreon.com/lords of Limited for folks and go to get back to the show if they so choose. A lot of sweet stuff happening over at the Lords Limited Patreon. You get access to our Discord, which is not only just a great community of like-minded limited individuals, but there's some additional perks happening over at the Discord. I did an early access stream to the Discord on Wednesday, which was really awesome to get to hang out with about a couple dozen of our Discord folks there. I will try and make those a bit more advanced scheduling so that people can know before, I'm about to go live, though I think there will also be some impromptu Discord stream. So doing some streams to Discord now, we're going to be throwing out a monthly gameplay review video on YouTube, which folks in the Discord will have access to submit gameplays situations to be reviewed. So excited for that. I'm going to be rolling out one of those videos this week. You get access to our podcast feed where you get not only this episode a day early ad free, but also access to the aforementioned bonus weekly episode of Lords Unlimited. We're going to be doing the bachelor party recap this week, in addition to talking about magic. So if any or all that sounds exciting to you, if you want to check out the podcast feed for a seven day free trial, you can do that. All of that's available at Patreon. And we want to shout out our new patrons the first week they join. So this week, we're welcoming Adam, Ira, Jason, Sam, Decimus, David, Brian, Ethan, Petter, Aubrey, Ben, Avery, Raging Goblin, and Mike. Thank you, thank you, thank you. We really appreciate your support.

Speaker 1:
[04:48] Truly cannot say thank you enough. When I looked at this, I saw the Ben first. And I immediately, my eyes went up to see if there was an Ethan. There was an Ethan. And then I heard Jeff Prope's voice in my head, one vote Ethan, one vote Ben. The votes are tied.

Speaker 2:
[05:03] The votes are tied. Yeah, it's true. It's nice. The balance is good in the forest this week. Updates after early access. I have a lot, you have a lot. Where do you want to start?

Speaker 1:
[05:14] I'll start at the top unless you've got some things. I didn't see much added to the old notes here. You're coming off the dome.

Speaker 2:
[05:20] You're my big picture guy. I just read through this. I was like, this is what he does. This is my big picture. Ben-Wernie King is like putting together the bird's eye view, the forest for the trees of the format. And I'll be in there with, yeah, but did you know this card does that?

Speaker 1:
[05:34] I think the thing that stood out to me the most about the format is that, again, this has been a fairly frequent occurrence lately that I don't love, is that there's a pretty sizable gap between the cards that determine the games and the cards that don't, in my opinion. Like, there's about maybe 10 commons that matter, truly, and then like just falls off a cliff as far as like card quality and the commons go. And just as far as what you, I think, should be thinking about when you're drafting the format. I think I got myself in a lot of trouble and I'm curious to see what you think happened to you. I think you're either supposed to draft a two-color college that's open, like if you wanna be the one in that college, whatever it is, I don't care which of the five, if it's open, you wanna be in it, and you wanna have a lot of redundant pieces for whatever that college is trying to do. I did not have a lot of success, nor did I see a lot of success from just loose synergies kinda coming together. Whatever, like let's say witherbloom, you want several two drops that let you gain life, you want a bunch of other ways to gain life, and you want a lot of redundant pieces of life gain payoff. If witherbloom's only kind of open and you have like a pocket of life gain synergy, the power that your pocket of life gain synergy provides just I don't think is anywhere near enough to compete with the entry level power that's required to compete in the format.

Speaker 2:
[07:02] And entry level power that you're seeing as required to compete is based on just individual card power level rather than synergies coming together. Like you're just saying, well, there's just some nutso uncommons and certainly some nuts, rares and mythics that you're going to have to contend with that like doing A plus B synergies at the common level isn't going to get there.

Speaker 1:
[07:21] I think the synergy can, but it's got to be redundant. Like it's got to happen every time, because if it doesn't happen every time and you're playing those synergy pieces, you do just get out card quality by the good card. If the thing that you're trying to do doesn't quite come together, I think you end up in an extremely bad spot as far as like at the end of the draft. There's not much you can do to salvage your deck. Your plan was to do this synergy thing, and you don't have tons of redundant pieces to do that synergy thing.

Speaker 2:
[07:49] Well, and to your point about finding the open college, like the way you get that redundancy is wheeling cards like Inkling Mascot when you're in Silverquill, the white-black 2-2 common with Repartee, it gets flying and you surveil one. The difference between fighting over that or not having enough 2s or having to put mediocre, non-college-appropriate 2-drops in your deck versus like I've got Scalding Administrator and I'm wheeling Inkling Mascots, that's the redundancy you need, and that's why being in an open college is so powerful.

Speaker 1:
[08:21] Correct. The other option, I think, which is if you're in a high-power draft, you can just draft a lot of good cards and a lot of interaction. You could still be a two-color college deck, just less focused on enacting a very specific style of game plan or a very specific style of synergy. From what I've seen so far, that would be my preference currently. Think if you're chasing a high-synergy deck, this is where I got myself in trouble. I think that can be really harmful. The drafts where I found myself thinking, well, it's pack three and I just need more of X and whatever X is, whether that's Bogwater Loomer or it's for Wither Bloom because that's such an easy example. Bogwater Loomer is the black-green two-two that whenever another creature enters, you gain one life. If I didn't get that in pack three, my deck just basically rolled over and didn't function. Not only did it not have a great curve, it also didn't have consistent ways to enable the life-gain synergy that I was trying to do. All of my cards that I thought were going to be above rate, were below rate.

Speaker 2:
[09:16] Well, not all of the colleges, and maybe this is actually a boon to something like Quandrix, which I think we still both have questions about, but the increment mechanic can't really fall flat. Maybe if you could go too hard in the I care about plus-and-plus-one counters synergy area and not get there, but increment itself is just going to happen. Repartee kind of can just happen depending on the amount. There's a lot of tricks, but then there's also a good number of prepared creatures where the spell will trigger your repartee. You certainly can have an issue there. Something like Lorehold, I think, has a real problem, depending on how much you're trying to lean into the Leave the Graveyard thing, is like, you can really have a, I just need more of X problem, and then you also have that same problem in the games of, I have to draw X and Y in the right ratio together.

Speaker 1:
[10:10] Yeah, when there are people who are just going like premium two-drop, into three-drop rare, into good four-drop uncommon, into removal spell, removal spell, kill. Like that, I think, is my preferred way to play, play games in the format currently.

Speaker 2:
[10:24] I also want to say that to your point about this draft, a lot of good cards and interaction, it has to start with good cards. This is an evergreen sentiment, but I got myself into this trouble too, because I drafted a couple uncommons that were pointing me towards doing converge slash differently named lands. I had Snarlsong, which is the two fractals and gain life equal to converge. And I had this Emile, which is a two and a green, three, three uncommon, that lets you poop out fractals equal to the number of differently named lands you control. And I had two of those early, and I was like, oh, cool, I can draft a converge slash different named lands, multicolor stoop deck. But if I don't see rares that are good after that, my deck is terrible. And that's what happened.

Speaker 1:
[11:11] I do think Snarlsong meets the power level bar of the format. Emile, I don't think does at all.

Speaker 2:
[11:17] I agree. So yeah, the whole, but to your point, that whole draft, I was like, I really, I could just use another Snarlsong, really like another Snarlsong, and then it never showed up. So yes, I agree.

Speaker 1:
[11:27] That's how the draft looks. Big picture to me. Like either identify an open college, go hard after whatever that college is trying to do, reap the rewards of wheeling consistent pieces for your deck and making sure your deck's really redundant, or high power level, a lot of good cards, a lot of interaction.

Speaker 2:
[11:43] I'm thinking I'm much more in the camp of I'll take Eclipsed Elf into Eclipsed Merfolk into whatever. Like I just want to take most powerful cards out of each pack, color commitment be darned, because something will present itself and I want to make sure I am as open to either most powerful stuff tied together or finding what the open college is.

Speaker 1:
[12:05] I do think this format is significantly different than Lorwen Eclipsed in terms of density of gold cards.

Speaker 2:
[12:13] No, it's crazy. I was thinking on Wednesday, I was like, I really want to try out this Rakdos deck that I've been scheming and dreaming about.

Speaker 1:
[12:21] There's no chance.

Speaker 2:
[12:23] It's impossible to imagine there being a sixth college in this set with there being 10 multicolor cards for each college at non-rare. You're just so, so incentivized to find the open one or fight over one with someone else at the table. It's just really hard to imagine having a deck that can compete on power level that's not a supported college.

Speaker 1:
[12:44] That's where I'm at as well. But one of the things that we did a lot when we had Guilds of Ravnica and Ravnica Allegiance back to back is, when are the gold cards signals and can you jump ship for them? I think a lot of that stuff holds true here. Just trying to remind yourself that the powerful late gold cards, and I'm not talking about the mediocre commons or the middling uncommons. If you see a card that is one of the better gold cards for a college, I think starting pick, maybe even pick four if it's a premium one, but certainly picks five through eight. Or if you're starting to see one of the other things we talked about a lot back in those days was just a density of gold cards, and maybe the premium ones didn't get open. Think about jumping ship for that open colleges, especially if you don't have a high power level start to the draft.

Speaker 2:
[13:29] Yes, I definitely agree with that.

Speaker 1:
[13:31] And then another huge takeaway for me, I think, from early access was, I did have a pretty rigid view of what I thought the decks were going to look like, because we do so much studying during leading up to early access for the Crash Course, that sort of thing. I think, oh, OK, I can build a deck that looks like this. And would, for example, I in my brain think Bogwater Lumarette is very important to Wither Bloom as far as comes down on turn two, gains you a life, and then it's going to be repeated life gain triggers to help your synergy for the rest of the game. It's really tough, I think, to go into a college for the common gold cards, even as key as Bogwater Lumarette is to Wither Bloom, because you don't know if people ahead of you have picked Wither Bloom rares, Wither Bloom uncommons. So I've made a resolution for myself that I'm no longer choosing a college based on common gold cards.

Speaker 2:
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Speaker 2:
[16:04] What about what about density? Like density pick seven, pick eight? Would that do it for you or does it have to basically wheel?

Speaker 1:
[16:12] I think it has to almost wheel.

Speaker 2:
[16:14] Well, because you're not guaranteed, especially if you're I would assume witherbloom is going to be witherbloom. Spoiler is still stocked up for me. I think it's still one of the best colleges. You can fight over witherbloom with someone at the table and you both could have good decks, but you want to make sure you're not on the side of that where someone's getting all the good payoffs and you're taking all the bog water loom rats and you're not doing anything with them.

Speaker 1:
[16:36] That's the risk about going into the redundant synergy things early, because you don't know if you're going to get all the pieces. And if you don't get all the pieces to have a redundant synergistic plan, I think your deck largely falls flat.

Speaker 2:
[16:49] Yes, I agree.

Speaker 1:
[16:50] Okay, let's dive into the prepared of it all. We were we were hot and bothered about this mechanic. I am less hot and bothered about it.

Speaker 2:
[17:01] Say more.

Speaker 1:
[17:02] So I just think it is, I think I was viewing it as, and I do still think it's a cool, interesting mechanic. The thing that I have cooled about it on as just as a mechanic in general, is that I think the prepared cards are way better when you're ahead or at parity than they are when you're behind. I think the mechanic intrinsically rewards being in a better position in the game, and there's already a lot of things in the format that do that. Like a lot of the, once the college synergies start coming together, they snowball pretty hard and they make it difficult to catch up. And I think prepared also then continues to reward the player that's ahead or if the game's at parity.

Speaker 2:
[17:41] Yeah, that's fair. I think there were two takeaways for me. One was gameplay felt pretty complex because of all of the options. Like prepared just adds a level of, now I have nine spells I can cast and a lot of them are cheap. So like there's usually it's like just be the most mana efficient. I have five mana. I'll do a three plus a two, but it's like you could do three plus two. You could do two plus two plus one. You could do, you know, like I felt myself thinking a lot about how I could maneuver my hand the best because of prepared cards and flashback cards. Honestly, being in the mix as well, there's just a lot of zones where you have access to spells. But the other thing that I really feel like I need to internalize for myself is that the creature just has to be good up front. You just have to like be OK with the creature and not just like. But if I get the creature and then get to cast the spell and everything goes right, then I'll be really ahead or then I'm going to be really happy with this as a card. If you're not happy with the creature up front, I think the card falls flat a little bit. That's my take on prepared.

Speaker 1:
[18:45] Yeah, I think Landscape Painter illustrates that very well. This is the one in a blue 2-1 that enters prepared. It's prepared spell is Vibrant Idea, four in a blue for a sorcery to draw two cards. That ranges from literally Goblin Piker, two mana, two one, two, maybe an actual three for one, if you can trade that off after you've prepared it. But that's magical Christmas land. Like once you've prepared it, a two one largely isn't relevant. But if you're ahead, like Landscape Painter is really good for you. But if you're behind, it is atrocious.

Speaker 2:
[19:18] Well, the other thing that Landscape Painter does is that its Prepared spell interacts very favorably with both of its colleges. You get a five drop for increment, you get a five mana play for opus as well. That's pretty good. But if like if we're playing Greater Garbage today with Landscape Painter, I'm giving Landscape Painter garbage.

Speaker 1:
[19:37] I'm also giving Landscape Painter garbage.

Speaker 2:
[19:39] It's filler.

Speaker 1:
[19:40] Just to kind of put a bow on Prepared or this discussion, I think the common Prepared creatures largely outside of the white, one-drop, one-two, which I think you're down on, that comes in with the one-and-a-white Prepared spell to tap or untap something at Sorcery Speed draw card. That one is excellent. But largely the common creatures outside of that with Prepared have not been particularly impressive to me. Your Gravedigger situationally can be extremely oppressive also.

Speaker 2:
[20:07] I'm not down on it. I don't know what makes you say I'm down on it. I just think it's...

Speaker 1:
[20:11] I thought you put a note there in the show notes that you weren't very impressed by.

Speaker 2:
[20:14] I'm not impressed by the 3 in a white 3-3 that makes a 1-1.

Speaker 1:
[20:18] I had the names mixed up. Excuse me for slandering your position.

Speaker 2:
[20:22] Elite Interceptor, I will say, Interceptor played worse than I expected. The one drop with the prepared tap run tap draw card. Just like Sorcery Speed on that is much worse than our usual Inspector that 1-2 that makes a clue. But if you get a little bit of repartee upside with that trigger, it helps balance that out a little bit. But Elite Interceptor is still, I agree, it's a common that matters for sure.

Speaker 1:
[20:49] Gameplay, I don't know how it felt to you. Games felt pretty snowball-y for me when someone popped off with a college's designated synergistic plan. Witherbloom can do some truly stupid things if it curves out with a true drop lifegainer into three drop, or a four drop that care about the lifegain synergy. You can do some ridiculous things. Similarly, Prismari plays the whale, like the uncommon whale, the two blue red, one four, and you don't kill it on sight, and then it turns into a four seven, maybe a seven seven if they're double spelling, have some treasures around. That card is also extremely stupid.

Speaker 2:
[21:21] And all five colleges can do that. They all have snowball-y mechanics because the opus stuff either threatens to activate or actually does and pops off. Increment just sort of is snowball the mechanic. Repartee, if you can do the early aggressive thing and get your repartee benefits, like they all have the possibility to snowball from jump. But I also found games being pretty grindy. Like the life gain of it all does make you have to grind, I think, in this format. And then that sort of tips the scales away from some colors and towards some other colors, because I do think some colors can grind into the late game a lot better than others.

Speaker 1:
[22:06] You're talking in a lot of a lot of pronouns. Can we can we get some colors that you think grind better than some other colors?

Speaker 2:
[22:12] I'm pretty down on white after this week, and I played a lot of Silver Quill and Lorehold, even after wanting like trying to not like white just kept being open. Those colleges were open in early access for me. And I felt like I you kind of just have to draft the open colors or color pairs format and I did not find a lot of success with the white aggro decks.

Speaker 1:
[22:33] That's interesting because that's the only thing I found success with.

Speaker 2:
[22:37] I mean, I could have been doing it wrong or whatever. There's a lot of caveats here or don't want to overindex on early access, blah, blah, blah. But the white decks felt underpowered to me based on what I was seeing from blue, red, certainly, and black, green.

Speaker 1:
[22:50] The thing that I felt about white was one of the things we talked about in the crash course was well, it seems kind of split between silver quill and lore hold and the cards go half and half. I think white's best cards all want to attack. I think white is pointed in more of a one-direction route than we thought, go ahead and into the crash course.

Speaker 2:
[23:14] As a result, Ajani's response is a pretty big mover down for me. That's the four and a white destroy a creature, but costs three less to cast if it targets a tapped creature. I just didn't find that card to be that important. If there's a four-color white control deck out there that we're going to find in a few weeks, awesome, Ajani's response will be back on the menu, but for now, I think it's pretty filler interaction.

Speaker 1:
[23:37] I did have some white lower hold aggressive decks that went quite well for me and that had just good cards, good aggressive game plan and was able to close out the game before some of the Prismari can play like a very impressive late game or I was able to get underneath witherbloom before it got its juices flowing.

Speaker 2:
[23:56] Yeah, and which feels like a throwback to original Strixhaven. We're like, lower hold is doing this cute graveyard thing, but what you actually are going to find success with is just curving out and beating down.

Speaker 1:
[24:06] Yeah, I think you're largely supposed to ignore lower holds thing.

Speaker 2:
[24:12] So annoying.

Speaker 1:
[24:14] You're supposed to play flashback spells that are good, but you don't think you're not supposed to try to get any sort of leave the graveyard stuff going.

Speaker 2:
[24:22] Yeah, because I think when you get into that spot, you're like, I would like to play in the late game, and blue decks are just like, good luck. Witherbloom decks are like, good luck. What are you going to do in the late game when I'm gaining a bunch of life and playing 6-6 beaters? Lower hold just can't really compete.

Speaker 1:
[24:39] And Silver Quill, I think, again, if repartee happens, great. If it doesn't, fine. You're again just playing largely good cards, aggressive game plan, interaction, trying to keep your opponent off balance. I think when repartee is really dumb is when you're triggering it with removal spells more than trying to target your stuff.

Speaker 2:
[25:00] Prismari I think is my number one college, despite not really getting to play with it, but playing against it, I found it very impressive.

Speaker 1:
[25:08] I was most impressed by the Prismari decks that had a play pattern of like turns one and two. Let me play some of the good cheap interaction that Prismari has and not play the clunky small creatures. Play relevant three and four drop creatures, and then just back that up with spells.

Speaker 2:
[25:27] Yeah. And Quandrix is still a question mark for us, unfortunately. I played against it a little bit. I played a bad version of it, that I'm not going to give any sort of impressions of. But I still like a lot of the green cards I like, and now I like a lot of the blue cards. So I'm going to imagine that Quandrix is good as long as you're not trying to do the fractal stuff.

Speaker 1:
[25:53] Yeah, I could certainly see that.

Speaker 2:
[25:54] Increment is just going to happen in something like Cube Colony is just going to be a good card. Like Cube Colony was also just a good top deck thanks to Parrot Spells being incidentally tacked on to things. I think any of the other stuff like, what's the fractal tender, the three green blue, three three ward two at the beginning of your end step, if a counter was put on it, then you get to make a three three fractal. Like, no, thank you, that card is atrocious.

Speaker 1:
[26:19] The cards that need several things to fall into place, I think generally just are not worth it.

Speaker 2:
[26:26] Yes, I agree.

Speaker 1:
[26:27] Okay, let's get into a revised Notable Commons list to just kind of touch base with where the colors are. I think white, two cards are relevant. Elite Interceptor, that's the one mana one, two, and has the repartee rejoinder, one on a white. You can tap run, tap target creature at sorcery speed, draw a card. Card was extremely impressive, held up. I loved eager glyph mage, so I'm surprised to hear that you were down on the card. It's three and a white, three, three, when it enters, create a one, one, black and white, including creature token flying. I also, though, had a lot of cool rares. Like I was popping off with the, there's a rare that's red, white for a two, two. And when you cast an instant or sorcery spell, if you tap three untapped creatures, you can copy it. I had that in several of my boros traps.

Speaker 2:
[27:12] I do think eager glyph mage is more a secret lorehold card than it is. I don't think you want it in Silverquill. Lorehold has quite a bit of go wide stuff, whether it's caring about tokens, whether it's tapping three things to flash something back, or if you've got the rare you talked about. Lorehold charm gives your team plus, umbles, one and trample as a mode. Like Lorehold has a lot of ways to use multiple bodies. I just found that the four drop slot was a dime a dozen, and I would much prefer to have a college specific four drop in there if I could. Like if I can get the sloth, the two red, white four, four trample lifelink, exile something every turn, in my four drop slot instead, I'm gonna want that. In Silverquill, if I can get the four mana exile removal bell, I'm gonna want that. I don't think Eager Glyph Mage belongs on the Commons that Matter list, if that's how I feel about it.

Speaker 1:
[28:03] Despite loving blue, I still only have the one blue card on this list, which is run behind. Do you think Essence Scatter should be on this list? I just didn't see an Essence Scatter from Early Access.

Speaker 2:
[28:12] Essence Scatter seemed great. Not only did I, but it's not that I saw it a lot, but it was in my mind a lot. Anytime I cast a four or five drop, I was like, they have Essence Scatter, game's over.

Speaker 1:
[28:24] Game's over.

Speaker 2:
[28:26] That's how I felt. Not that it often got got by it, but it made me think that Essence Scatter was quite good. But similarly, I did not see Run Behind. Run Behind was good?

Speaker 1:
[28:36] Run Behind was impressive. Especially for Prismari, because red doesn't have ways to get big things off the battlefield as easily. So a copy or two of Run Behind goes a fair way.

Speaker 2:
[28:49] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[28:50] Okay. Last Gasp was extremely impressive. That's the one in a black instant. Target creature gets minus three, minus three until end of turn. Just being able to interact with your opponent's two drop or three drop or trade up on mana with their three drop was extremely impressive.

Speaker 2:
[29:02] You got Wander off on here as well. The three in a black instant exile target creature. Loved that card.

Speaker 1:
[29:09] I think this next one is my pick for the best common in the format, which is Toneblast, one in a red, Sorcery deals two damage to any target. It's got Flashback, four in a red. If your opponent kills your two drop with Toneblast, like it's so oppressive. Like you just feel like, especially if you're trying to be aggressive, like if you play a two drop and you're trying to be aggressive in your opponent Toneblast, it's so deflating. And it feels like there's a line to me in the format of creatures that die to Toneblast and creatures that don't die to Toneblast.

Speaker 2:
[29:41] Yeah, I think that's fair. Toneblast is awesome. And especially that you get to have the two removal spells, but also that it interacts so favorably in a synergistic way without asking you to jump through any hoops. It's like, oh, you want something to leave the graveyard? I can do that. Or you want something to cost five mana? I got you. But I'm doing it because I'm a good card, not because I'm some trinkety thing.

Speaker 1:
[30:05] And then Unsaddle Mockery, the titular card of the episode, the Bombard variant, Tuna Red instant deals four damage to our creature, and you Surveil One.

Speaker 2:
[30:14] This is just a great card. Like the library manipulation was very good.

Speaker 1:
[30:17] But also louder for the kids in the back.

Speaker 2:
[30:20] No, I'm not going to say it. They can rewind if they want to get one. But the Surveil One in Lorehold was actually pretty helpful in terms of there's not a lot of ways to fill your graveyard. Like if you're looking to do the leave the graveyard stuff, getting stuff in the graveyard wasn't trivial.

Speaker 1:
[30:35] Well, you almost have to do it via looting, but the looting cards are all so finicky.

Speaker 2:
[30:40] Well, I'll be dead in the cold, cold ground before I put that tormenting voice variant in my deck, but I feel like I have to.

Speaker 1:
[30:49] Barak Baraj up next. This is moving in to the list for me. This is one in green for the instant, target creature control gets plus one plus one until end of turn if you've cast another instant or sorcery spell and then it deals damage equal to its power up to one target creature and opponent controls. This is moving in largely on the back of me being very impressed by the two drop, the one in a green, one to death touch, the taps to add a green. Those two cards just play so nicely together.

Speaker 2:
[31:11] Yeah, I did like that card.

Speaker 1:
[31:12] Grapple with Death, that's the wither bloom, one black, green sorcery destroy an artifact or creature gain a life. And then insanely impressed by Wilt in the Heat from Lorehold 2, red, white instant cost two less to cast if one or more cards left your graveyard this turn. And it deals five damage to a creature if the creature would die, exile it instead. You're fine casting this for four mana. And when you do get to randomly do it for two mana, it is broken.

Speaker 2:
[31:36] And looking at this list now, let's say we swap Essence Scatter for Eager Glyph Mage. That's nine interactive spells.

Speaker 1:
[31:43] It's all interaction and white is creatures, which I think checks out with my experience.

Speaker 2:
[31:48] And that's been a lot of what we've seen in the PlayBooster era, like outside of maybe, I don't know, Final Fantasy, like commons mattering outside of interaction. Like this is where you get your interaction and then you're getting your synergy pieces, your glue pieces, your, I need to fill in the gap pieces.

Speaker 1:
[32:08] It's sad though, like how bad so many of the commons are. Like after these 10, like there's just a gaping wide gap between these cards. And there's like a small subset of others that you're like fine to play. But if you're having to find your direction in a draft via commons, it's so difficult to find where you're supposed to be.

Speaker 2:
[32:30] Cards, we have questions about embrace the paradox. This is three green blue for an instant. Draw three cards. You may put a land card from your hand onto the battlefield tapped. I played a lot of white decks and it felt very bad seeing this card cast if I wasn't closing the door next turn.

Speaker 1:
[32:48] I think with a good white deck, you ideally would be wanting to see your opponent turn five play embrace the paradox, right?

Speaker 2:
[32:55] If you're killing them next turn, you're not guaranteed. I don't know, man. Like it's hard with the amount of incidental life gain that green gets access to. And certainly black green. It just felt hard. I mean, I guess it'll remain to be seen. Maybe it's my bad aggro user error. But I did not feel like the white decks could close the door that quickly before the green decks pulled ahead.

Speaker 1:
[33:21] So the other question I have about this card is it's obviously a powerful magic. The Gathering card, right? If you're ahead or parity cards, excellent. It felt like one of the things we talked about was prepared was that you just don't run out of things to do. I definitely did not feel like I generally ran out of things to do. What I felt like was that my plays weren't powerful enough. That was more the issue that I was having when I was losing. Wasn't like, well, I can't cast any spells. It was just like, well, the spells I'm casting aren't impactful enough. And taking turn five off, I'm very curious to see how embrace the paradox ends up. I just have no baseline for it right now.

Speaker 2:
[33:58] I would be surprised if it ended up mattering, but I don't think like, I think that's filler plus is how I would categorize it. Like it's never a pull into Quandrix. You're gonna want burst card draw in some way, some way to get a big chunk of resources, but it doesn't have to be from embrace the paradox.

Speaker 1:
[34:16] One of the things that we didn't really talk about with gameplay as far as ways to lose games, there was this weird thing that happened to me in quite a lot of games where my opponents, I don't know if they just played way better cards than me, but with some cards that I thought weren't even that good, they would go two drop that one, two death toucher, play a four drop, play a five drop, play a six drop, and then they were just doing way bigger things to me. Maybe that's what you're talking about with white not being able to compete in the late game. I just felt like sometimes I just got way outclassed by how big or impactful of spells my opponent was playing. But then when I tried to do that, I got punished for not having a bottom end of my curve consistently. You know what I mean?

Speaker 2:
[35:07] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[35:08] I don't know if that is helpful information or at all, but it just felt like I was randomly losing games in weird ways sometimes.

Speaker 2:
[35:14] Yeah. No, I never got to do it from the other side, but I definitely felt the thing you're talking about as playing Loreholder Silverquill, which was that opponent goes, starts ramping and does the bigger things quicker. Felt very hard to go through. Like if I even had a plan of like, I'm going to get some inkling tokens and I'll just pack away in the air, then they're like, I have a big flying fractal or I have a big reach sloth that's going to die into pests. And you're like, all right, I don't know what to do about that.

Speaker 1:
[35:43] Right. That or even even the four or five vigilance, like the common that has warred the Cacturantula. That card was hard, hard to get through at times.

Speaker 2:
[35:52] I agree.

Speaker 1:
[35:53] Green.

Speaker 2:
[35:53] Green is good. What else will you learn on this podcast from us? You will learn that Studious first year was not good. This is the single green one, one with rampant growth prepared spell. Yeah. You say feels like more of a converge enabler. I don't even know if it does enough as a converge enabler for you. And it made me think about like comparing this to say, it's not maybe a fair comparison because it's an uncommon, the three mana vehicle. So the three two flyer that when it enters, you search for a basic and put it into your hand and has crew two. Like two for ones up front like that are just so much better than when you're trying to do the two for ones tacked on to prepared creatures.

Speaker 1:
[36:36] Well, it's just more reliable. But for example, to compare Studious first year to the one in a green one, two death touch at a green, the death toucher is significantly better than Studious first year, I think.

Speaker 2:
[36:48] I agree. That's my take currently as well.

Speaker 1:
[36:50] Because it's just more of a relevant card. It does a similar thing while being a relevant card.

Speaker 2:
[36:55] Well, and I also think like nine times out of 10, you should just be Quandrix or Witherbloom. Maybe it's more, maybe it's 19 out of 20 or something. And so if we're saying, well, Studious First Year is a good enabler for the Converge decks or whatever, I don't think you should be drafting that deck very often.

Speaker 1:
[37:13] I don't know. I think there's room in high-powered drafts to play three, four color, here's all my great cards that are way better than yours decks.

Speaker 2:
[37:24] I guess. I mean, I guess that's going to happen in best of one, but that's not ever going to happen at the PT or in a single LM, right?

Speaker 1:
[37:34] Maybe Snarlsong is enough to get you there. I just played against some decks, like Amaz totally smashed me with a four color Snarlsong deck and I watched Lola draft. I mean, granted his first four picks were better than every card I saw in six drafts when he did that. But I think, don't want to close the door to, well, 19 out of 20 times, you should be Quandrix. I think there is stuff there in high powered drafts.

Speaker 2:
[38:04] I think unless if you are a two color deck, I don't think Studious first year should ever be in your deck. That's my take.

Speaker 1:
[38:11] RubbleRouser, I'm curious about this is your boy, the two in a red one for when enters, you can discard a card if you do draw a card, tapped exile a card from your graveyard out of red. When you do this creature deals one damage to each opponent. This kind of does everything for you, right? It gets you a card in the yard. It lets you exile a card from the yard. It ramps you. I still kind of feel like this doesn't do enough somehow, which feels crazy to say out loud because the card does so much. But all of the stuff it does still doesn't feel like it meets the barrier to entry for, I can compete on power level in this format.

Speaker 2:
[38:47] The one choke point I felt with this card was that it was weirdly hard to get stuff into the yard. Like this wasn't a consistent mana dork. And sometimes the thing about the leaves, the graveyard stuff, is there's a timing aspect of it. Like I had situations where I had my rubble rouser, and I'm like, I'm gonna discard the three drop that I want to reanimate with your five mana enchantment. The five mana enchantment that like returns a three mana thing. And then if you've, if something's left your yard at the end of your turn, you draw a card. But then I'm like, but I need another thing in the yard so that I can ramp that on turn four and still have the thing that I pitched with RubbleRouser. Like it was just a little fight, just could. And if maybe that, and if that happened, you're in a bad spot because your opponent is going to be doing, working less hard to kill you than that. But I think RubbleRouser is still, it's not a common that matters. I still think it's it's going to be a good player in both Prismari and Lorehold decks.

Speaker 1:
[39:49] I don't think it's any good at all in the world. I think Lorehold has to get the game over. Stats. I think it's a Prismari card if it's anything. I don't think it's a card in Lorehold. Send in the Pest, this is the Virus Beetle variant. This is one in a black for Sorcery. Each opponent discards a card and you make a 1-1 Pest that whenever it attacks, you gain a life. I think this gets a knock because of Flashback. And similar to what I was talking about with Bogwater Lumarette, you can't go into Wither Bloom because of Send in the Pest. You need to get Send in the Pest because Wither Bloom's open because Silver Quill has zero interest in Send in the Pest, I think.

Speaker 2:
[40:28] I agree with that. Yeah, it's not like it just doesn't do anything in that deck. Lewin Exchange Student. This is the Wither Bloom prepared uncommon. 2 Black Green for a 3, 4 enters prepared. The prepared spell is Pest Friend, which is a black-green hybrid to make a Pest. And you can exile a creature from your graveyard to have Lewin become prepared at sorcery speed. I'm not as high on this. I saw it once, but again, the choke point is there is not a lot of ways to get stuff into your graveyard incidentally. And Black has a ton of recursion. And so you have a bit of tension of like, am I really going to exile this creature now to make a Pest when I could draw my double raise dead or get a raise dead prepared spell or the uncommon that reanimates things with Rep Arte, like there's just a lot of ways that Black has to get creatures out of the yard that there's tension with Luin.

Speaker 1:
[41:22] Last card on this list is Mind Roots. This is one black green for the sorcery, target player discard two cards, put up to one land card, discarded this way onto the battlefield, tapped under your control. I beat it with Oro Sagra the one time it was cast against me, but I did not enjoy having it cast against me at all. Like it felt very bad having it cast against me.

Speaker 2:
[41:44] I had this cast against me quite a few times, and I never liked it. I even had it cast against me when I got to discard two copies of, gosh, where is it? The Achillean's Confidence, which is the silver quill spell that you can get back with a silver quill hybrid to connect with your opponents. I was like, I can pitch two of these and I'll get them back later. Still didn't love having to discard those two to get them back later instead of being able to cast them to Cantrip and grow my creatures.

Speaker 1:
[42:11] So where does this land? Is this a pull into witherbloom for you currently? Is it B-, is it B-, is it a C+.

Speaker 2:
[42:19] I'm going to start with it there. Yeah, I'm going to start with it at B-.

Speaker 1:
[42:22] Pulling you into witherbloom. I would buy it. I don't think that's crazy. I think we're landing on a spot for mind roots, I think will give me a lot of information about the format. Because right now, I do think there's decks that can play either like a last gasp into mind roots or a relevant 2-drop into mind roots into just good, chonky, donkers. That's really hard for some decks to beat. All right, some specific cards that we have less questions on, just movers up. Rehearsed debater, I was extremely impressed by out of white decks. This is 2-and-a-white for 3-3 vigilance when you cast an instant or sorcery spell that targets a creature. This creature gets plus 1 plus 1 until end of turn. It basically attacks as a 4-4 vigilance for 3, because your opponent has to be worried about either you playing a trick or you firing off a removal spell on one of their creatures and then growing this into a 4-4. I think it's a way above average 3-drop, and the vigilance making it play offense and defense also felt excellent.

Speaker 2:
[43:22] I was similarly impressed by expressive fire dancer, the one on a red 2-2, common with opus whenever you cast an instance or source for a spell, it gets plus or minus one until end of turn, and if five or more mana was spent to cast it, it gains double strike until end of turn. Felt very hard to block this on the first few turns of the game. Like I play a 2-3, my opponent goes cool, untapped, attacked with expressive fire dancer. Like what am I supposed to do? Snap block and you play quick study and you just eat my creature for free? Like puts you in a pretty bad spot, I found.

Speaker 1:
[43:56] Yeah. And along with that, we kind of poo-pooed Deluge Virtuoso, which is the two in a blue, two-two Frostlings that tap something down, Opus plus one, and five mana gets plus two plus two. I was really impressed in a very similar way with Deluge Virtuoso from Prismaria. Like it just punched above its weight class.

Speaker 2:
[44:16] Because of prowess? Yeah. It's basically prowess. Okay. Okay. Quillblade Laureate, point for Ben, one on a white, one-one double strike, enters prepared. Prepared spell is twofold intent. Target creature gets plus one plus o and gains double strike until end of turn. This is definitely a top three white uncommon. I think I was very impressed by this. For all the reasons you said, it just where it gets targeted very well, it comes with a way to target. And the way to target often plays out like, oops, now my 3-3 is a 4-3 double striker and you don't want to...

Speaker 1:
[44:50] You can either take 8 and I'm happy or you can chump block and I'm happy.

Speaker 2:
[44:53] Exactly. And that was a pretty common play pattern for this.

Speaker 1:
[44:58] Well, and a very similar card that is a mover down for me is Ennis Debate Moderator, which is one on a white for the one one uncommon, enters exile up to one of the target creature you control, return that card to the battlefield under the control at the beginning of the next end step. At the beginning of your end step, if one or more cards were put into exile this turn, put a plus one plus one counter on Ennis. These two cards are a very good litmus test to think about white. Quillblade Laureate comes down on turn two, it pressures, it has a spell that lets you target, and it helps other creatures pressure. Ennis does not come down on turn two, unless you curve into it with the one mana one two prepared spell. But even then, you have to play the prepared spell first. Ennis never comes down on turn two.

Speaker 2:
[45:39] As you were reading all the text of Ennis, I just saw the buffering circle where I'm like, just give me a minute, just let me do the thing, and then I'll be right there with you. And it's like, no, Ennis, no one has time for you.

Speaker 1:
[45:52] But I think for people who might not have played with the cards yet, or maybe you've only pre-released, those two cards, like white decks, I think almost don't want to put Ennis in their deck ever. And the Quillblade Laureate is absolutely premium. And it's the thing I was talking about, if Ennis is asking you to, well, if I just get a way to bounce something paired with this, then that can live and I can just play my Ennis and do this thing, and then boom, I got some synergy and I got to bounce your creature twice, which is just below, you did all this stuff to be below the barrier to entry power level interaction for the format.

Speaker 2:
[46:26] Storing Stone Glider impressed me. This is the two and a white, four, three flying, Vigi uncommon as an additional cost to cast it. You exile two cards from your yard or pay one on a white. It's really easy to double spell with this on later turns. If you could even just pay five mana, you might just want to exile stuff to trigger graveyard leaves. And it works really well. The Wombo combo is primary research, the four and a white enchantment that gets back a three drop and draws a card every time something leaves the yard. Primary research, getting back Stone Glider is big game.

Speaker 1:
[46:56] I think I'm a little down on primary research after playing with white. Like what you're describing there doesn't sound like what white wants to do to me. I agree.

Speaker 2:
[47:09] I think primary research is a cool, fun thing to do and like a tier two competitive thing to do. I think soaring Stone Glider is good enough, was what I found. I found a four, three flyer for five or sometimes when you get to double spell and play it, that it's very impactful. I think Stone Glider was good.

Speaker 1:
[47:32] Tackle Artists, it's three in red for a four, three trample whenever you cast an instant or sorcery spell, put a plus one counter on it and five or more man who has spent a cast spell, put two plus one plus one counters on it instead. This isn't a class of cards that like, if you untap with it is a gigantic problem. It is, it's like the whale, the two blue red one for whale, but a toned down version of it, but still a relevant common, I think, for Prismaridex. So if you need stuff in the four drop slot, which you probably won't, but I was impressed with Tackle Artists that survived.

Speaker 2:
[48:06] Filler plus is what Tackle Artists has to be. Yeah. Terafractal is here. That's X green blue for a one zero flyer, comes in with X plus one plus one counters on it. And when this creature enters, you gain two life. Scales nicely with the game. And again, interacts like really favorably with increment, like as a bonus, the fact that the scales like that. I think you're you're much more happy with this as a top deck than you are with this as a three man, a two one flyer that gained you life. But you'll take it.

Speaker 1:
[48:36] It's not embarrassing. Like the fact that now playable everywhere, like it's playable on three. It's playable on four and then just gets kind of ridiculous later in the game. Was impressive.

Speaker 2:
[48:48] Encouraging Aviator is on the list for me. This is two and a blue for a two three flyer. When it attacks, it becomes prepared. It's prepared spell is jump, which is an instant target creature gains flying into a lot of turn. I had basically short cut this in my head to like, well, isn't this similar to, you know, white always gets these three mana one, three flyers when it attacks, give some something else can attack as a flyer. What I didn't realize that this card lets you do is you can bank the one jump. So you attack, it becomes prepared. You bank that jump, then next turn, like a tapper, next turn, you jump a creature attack with this, you get another creature, you jump another thing and you can attack with three flyers in that turn, which is pretty explosive. Plus this has two power and usually this kind of effect is a one power flyer. The aviator was impressive to me.

Speaker 1:
[49:41] So in Prismaridex, in Quandrixx, in both?

Speaker 2:
[49:45] I mean, I would assume still Quandrixx likes it because getting your big green creatures in the air is good, but it doesn't interact like a one-mana play is not interacting with your increment stuff that well. But the one-mana repeatable opus trigger that Encouraging Aviator gives your Prismaridex is really good.

Speaker 1:
[50:06] Just compare Encouraging Aviator again to Ennis. Encouraging Aviator asks nothing of you and gives you a lot. There's no hoops needed to jump through there. Did you find that Prismaridex that you played against were lower curve and more aggressive? Because I played against bigger Prismaridex quite a bit.

Speaker 2:
[50:25] I don't know. It's all a blur of losing to Prismaridex. Whether it happened on turn six or turn 10, I can't tell you, but it definitely happened.

Speaker 1:
[50:35] Fair enough. Melancholic Poet. This is one in a black for a 2-2 repartee. Whenever you cast an instant or sorcery spell that targets a creature, each opponent loses one life and you gain one life. I was kind of impressed with this card from an opponent, and I would have thought it was nothing, and now I'm kind of on the filler plus life for this, I think, because it works in both black decks. Witherbloom wants it, and I think it does enough in Silver Quill.

Speaker 2:
[50:59] Interesting. I would have thought the reverse, that this would be better in Silver Quill and Witherbloom wouldn't want it.

Speaker 1:
[51:04] I guess you're saying it basically gives you a Witherbloom. It's like a removal spell, the bogwater lumerite text.

Speaker 2:
[51:12] Yeah, that can't be good enough. I hear you being impressed by it. I was impressed by it in a package of with that, like the bloodletting prepared spell. Like Black just had a lot of little bits of ways to drain stuff. Sort of what I was envisioning with Raktos seemed to just inherently exist in Black and Melancholic Poet was a part of that.

Speaker 1:
[51:36] Dissection practice is up next. As a single Black instant, target opponent loses one life and you gain one life. Up to one target creature gets plus one plus one and up to one other target creature gets minus one minus one until end of turn. Talk to me about this card.

Speaker 2:
[51:47] Single mana that interacts with both of Black things like triggers repartee, triggers your life gain matter stuff can be a big combat blowout and all for one mana. This card was impressive to me.

Speaker 1:
[51:59] Impressive enough that it's a pull into Black or just a very, very good C plus.

Speaker 2:
[52:04] No, but I give it a C plus. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1:
[52:07] Summoned Dramadary, your boy. Three and a white for a four, three vigilance. You can pay one and a white to return this card from your graveyard to your hand. Activate only as a sorcery. This was pretty impressive in Jeskai. Late game deck for my opponent as a looting slash rummaging engine. Like just never casting it, but pitching it to the rummage, one and a white buy it back, pitch it to rummage, one and a white buy it back, pitch it to rummage, one and a white buy it back. It was a very nice late game engine card for a Jeskai deck.

Speaker 2:
[52:37] Okay. It seems like I'm seeing another wheel spinning buffering thing happening, but maybe Jeskai does it better than the white decks.

Speaker 1:
[52:47] Fractalize. This was something that surprised me that I had not thought about, which I probably should have, I guess, as a use case for this card, but Fractalize is blue X uncommon instant. Until end of turn, target creature becomes a green and blue fractal with base power and toughness, each equal to X plus one. And I was only viewing this as an offensive trick for your creatures, but I think almost a better use case for it is that if you just play it for blue, it shrinks your opponent's creatures into a 1-1. And I was only thinking about this as growing my own creatures. I think it's a much more versatile card than I thought it was.

Speaker 2:
[53:20] Next up, we have Eternal Student. That's three in a black for a 4-2. You can pay one in a black to exile it from your yard to make two 1-1 white and black inkling creature tokens with flying at instant speed.

Speaker 1:
[53:31] Like this card is beyond dumb. Like this card is broken in half.

Speaker 2:
[53:37] I kept expecting I read this card over and over again. I kept expecting to see the word tapped. I kept expecting them to enter taps like, nope, instant speed, two 1-1 flyers.

Speaker 1:
[53:48] Did you know that they came in at instant speed when we were evaluating this card?

Speaker 2:
[53:51] I did. I did.

Speaker 1:
[53:52] I did not.

Speaker 2:
[53:54] But similarly kept reading, like, where does it say activate only as a sorcery? Where does it say they enter tapped? And it just didn't.

Speaker 1:
[54:00] Like, I tweeted about this. And somebody from Wizards commented on the tweet that was like, we feel like it uncommon. This sort of effect is fine. No, no, no, no, no. Give me a break.

Speaker 2:
[54:11] And you were like, wrong. You're fired.

Speaker 1:
[54:14] What is like?

Speaker 2:
[54:15] What? How?

Speaker 1:
[54:16] That just breaks everything they've ever done about this. Like hidden in the graveyard, you could be like tucking this down underneath three other cards or whatever, and just boom, flashing those 2-1-1 flyer. Like the complexity level for paper for this, like having to remember that it's there and can be instant speed. It's not a song we've talked a lot about. I think it's the real deal for the Converge payoffs. This is the five and a green, create two fractals equal to the Converge mana, different numbers of mana spent. And then you put X plus plus one counters on them and gain X life.

Speaker 2:
[54:48] Yeah, similarly, I heard Scuttle did not see cast, but heard Scuttle about Arcane Omens being the real deal. This is the foreign that Scuttle is for. I don't know with how much I liked Mind Roots. I think Arcane Omens could be the real deal. The foreign of Black Sorcery converge, target player discards X cards equal to the number of colors of mana spent to cast the spell. You can poo poo that take. I'm just saying what I heard. I'm gathering the information.

Speaker 1:
[55:14] Gathering the information. I love it.

Speaker 2:
[55:16] Additive Evolution was impressive to me. Three green green for the enchantment. This makes a three three fractal and the beginning of combat on your turn. You put a counter on a creature you control, it gains vigilance until end of turn. Snowball-y, enables attacks, attacks and blocks. Additive Evolution, I think, played out much less clunky than I thought it would on reading this.

Speaker 1:
[55:38] Yeah. It's a five mana four four with upside.

Speaker 2:
[55:41] Yes. Significant upside.

Speaker 1:
[55:42] Infirmary Healer up next. This is one and a green for two three enters prepared and has the prepared spell Stream of Life. Green X Sorcery Target Player gains X life. I love Stream of Life as a magic card from when I was a child.

Speaker 2:
[55:56] You're lucky because you're going to get the cast at a lot this format because this is a good card. This is just a good rate to drop that then randomly is like. It's probably going to stick around. And so you're probably going to get to cast Stream of Life for four or five later on in the game, which is a huge chunk of life that is going to trigger your life, gain matter stuff that's going to trigger your increment. However, you want it to could trigger Opus as a random five mana spell like. And again, just compare this to poor Ennis getting just kicked this whole episode. This card asks this card asks nothing of you and does a lot.

Speaker 1:
[56:35] Yeah, I think that, yeah, that's that's that's the take. The biggest takeaway from early access for me is I want my cards to not ask stuff of me, unless I'm very sure I can always do the things that they are asking of me.

Speaker 2:
[56:48] Doesn't mean I don't want synergy because something like Infirmary Healer or something like the Flyer, the encouraging those are synergistic. Yeah, they're they're they have the potential to be extremely synergistic, but their floor is like, no, this is just good. Like, yeah, and that's what I want for my cards.

Speaker 1:
[57:04] Yeah, tenured Concocter up next is card we referenced earlier. This is foreign agreeing for a four or five common with Vigilance when it becomes the target of a spell or ability and opponent controls, you may draw a card and it's got infusion. This creature gets plus two plus. Oh, as long as you gained life this turn. So you were also impressed with this.

Speaker 2:
[57:19] I might put this might make its way to commons that matter. What was really annoying to deal with?

Speaker 1:
[57:27] I agree. I did not cast it, but I was very unhappy every time it was on the other side of the battlefield. So is that is that another takeaway from this episode that green is good? That we blew it in.

Speaker 2:
[57:37] Green is good. Which is why I'm sort of like, I don't feel like I know enough. Like if I had to give my college power rankings right now, I would say Prismari 1, Wither Bloom 2, Quandrix 3, Silver Quill 4, Lorehold 5.

Speaker 1:
[57:56] Wow. I, it's so hard for me to put Quandrix that high.

Speaker 2:
[58:02] I like green cards and I like blue cards. I don't like Quandrix's gold cards that much, but that can't be enough to knock it because I think Quandrix has, or green and blue have a good density of the kinds of cards we're talking about. The, I don't ask a lot of you, but I have a high ceiling. The thing about, like we were getting some pushback of like, can't believe you guys are from the Crash Course, can't believe you guys are so high on witherbloom, feels like there's A plus B synergies that have to come together. Like, they're so incidental a lot of the time. Your common kill spell says oops, gain a life. Like you don't have to compare it to some lorehold stuff where you're like, and then if I just get this in the yard and then I remove it and I do it at this time, then I get a three three for two mana. Like you're not doing that with witherbloom.

Speaker 1:
[58:50] But I but I also think in loreholds defense, like you're just like same as last time.

Speaker 2:
[58:56] Yeah, you just said, yeah, ignore it.

Speaker 1:
[58:58] Absolutely. Or all that and play all the cards that are like, kill your opponent now, please.

Speaker 2:
[59:03] But like loreholds common to drop is like, I'm a bear. But if you do the thing, I can grow. And you're like, OK, I guess I'm like not really supposed to do the thing unless it's flashback.

Speaker 1:
[59:15] Yeah, that card's not good for sure.

Speaker 2:
[59:17] Right. But so that's a pretty it's just like when when loreholds to drop is not good, like even silver curls to drop the repartee flyers surveil one. That's pretty darn good.

Speaker 1:
[59:27] That's pretty good. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[59:28] Logwater Lumerit pretty darn good. Does Quandrix get a to drop? I forget. But like there's just comparisons of like, does this ask you to do anything?

Speaker 1:
[59:37] Nope.

Speaker 2:
[59:38] And it's still good.

Speaker 1:
[59:39] Great.

Speaker 2:
[59:39] I want that in my deck. And I feel like Quandrix has a density of those cards.

Speaker 1:
[59:43] Heard. Heard. Yes. OK. Spectacular Skywell we referenced a couple of times. This is two blue, red, one four flyer. Opus, it gets plus three plus O. Magnum Opus, it gets three plus one plus one counters. That has to be killed on site. I agree.

Speaker 2:
[59:56] Similarly, Forum Necro Scribe, five and a black for a five four uncommon ward. Discard a card. Reparte trigger, return target creature card from your graveyard to the battlefield.

Speaker 1:
[60:07] Was this on your radar as a good card? It was not. It was not for me.

Speaker 2:
[60:11] It was on my radar, for sure.

Speaker 1:
[60:12] It is six mana, but it does a lot when it is on the battlefield. Right.

Speaker 2:
[60:16] I mean, it demands to be answered. And even if they answer it, you're two for wanting them because they have to discard a card. Killian's Confidence. I was very impressed by white black for the sorcery. Target creature gets plus and plus one until end of turn. Draw a card. And then if a creature you control connects with your opponent, you can pay a silver quill hybrid to return it from your graveyard to your hand. I think this just like does everything silver quill is trying to do. Helps push damage, helps the gas flow.

Speaker 1:
[60:42] You said sneaky on arena. Why is this sneaky on arena?

Speaker 2:
[60:45] Sneaky on arena because it doesn't like pop out as like a thing they can do from the graveyard. So if it sits in the graveyard for like three turns, you're going to forget it's there. And then you're like, I can let that pest hit me. And then it hits you and that pops up and you're like, no. Oh, remember that it's there if you see it.

Speaker 1:
[61:07] Last one on this list is Diary of Dreams. This is too man of the artifact book. When you cast an insinuation or sorcery spell, put a page counter on this artifact and you can pay five tap draw card. It costs one less to activate for each page counter on this artifact. I think this might be a sort of scheme style build around for like lots of removal style control deck. And part of me just wants that to be true. But from the games I played, I'm like higher on Diary of Dreams.

Speaker 2:
[61:33] Well, to that point, I will say that I was pretty darn impressed with the Year of the Manoleth continues with Potioners Trove, the three mana artifact that taps for a man of any color or taps to gain to life. But you only activate if you've cast an instant or sorcery spell this turn. Those two probably are going to go hand in hand if there is a like, oops, all removal control deck, because again, if you're trying to aggro someone out and they're like, oops, like I had a couple of games where I was like, I almost got you dead. And they were like, to life, to life. And then you're like, well, now the game's out of reach. I don't know what I'm supposed to do.

Speaker 1:
[62:14] I watched one of your games where you had your opponent at one and they clawed back with this card at three to five to seven and I eventually conceded. It was very depressing.

Speaker 2:
[62:22] It's very depressing.

Speaker 1:
[62:23] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[62:23] I thought Potionist Trove was good.

Speaker 1:
[62:26] One of the other things that coming from the Lords of Limited Discord, I think it was Mike in the Lords of Limited Discord with Potionist Trove from the pre-release is that if you have spells that have infusion, you can cast the spell, hold priority, gain the life with the artifact, and then your spell will resolve with the infusion trigger.

Speaker 2:
[62:47] Yes. Very, very sneaky. A few movers down. You don't like the mana dork, hydro channelers on here, one on a blue, one, three taps for blue for an instant or sorcery spell or can filter mana of any color for an instant or sorcery spell.

Speaker 1:
[63:03] I still think it's a relevant piece of cardboard. The green one ramps you and has death touch.

Speaker 2:
[63:10] It has death touch.

Speaker 1:
[63:10] Once this is done ramping you, it just gets to be completely ignored and it is not as consistently good at ramping. I just don't think it meets the power level bar for the format.

Speaker 2:
[63:19] I think that's true. Also, it's not like it plays defense that well on turn two because so many things...

Speaker 1:
[63:26] Things are huge in this format.

Speaker 2:
[63:28] Or they threaten to be big. Like what I'm saying, if you attack your 2-2 that can grow into this, what are you going to do when you're like, I really need to ramp into my 4-mana spell? You're just not going to block.

Speaker 1:
[63:42] Orisa Tide, choreographer. This is four and a blue for a 2-2, and it costs 3 less to cast if creatures you control have total toughness 10 or greater. And when it enters, you draw 2 cards. This wasn't great for me. And it's very weirdly at the intersection of not relevant enough on board, not really synergistic because you're never getting 10 total toughness, or if you are, you don't need to draw more cards. And it's also just not quite powerful enough for 5 mana somehow, despite looking a lot like Moldrifter. I was just very underwhelmed.

Speaker 2:
[64:14] Does Landscape Painter do it better than Orisa? Because at least the draw 2 part of this is a spell also. And it's an actual 2 drop.

Speaker 1:
[64:25] That's a wild comparison because Orisa was way higher in my head than Landscape Painter, and I don't even like Landscape Painter.

Speaker 2:
[64:32] How different are they?

Speaker 1:
[64:34] They're not that different. You're very rarely playing Orisa for 2 mana.

Speaker 2:
[64:38] Okay, that's a good shot. I didn't see that card. I still had it on my top 3 blue uncommons, but it makes sense that it's not good enough because it's on a flyer. So the 2-2 body just isn't relevant once you draw 2 cards. Like would you almost you just rather have quick study probably.

Speaker 1:
[64:56] Probably. Yeah, but I'm not confident I'm right, but it just wasn't great and I was trying to figure out why. So those are my musings.

Speaker 2:
[65:06] Okay.

Speaker 1:
[65:07] Okay. Pigment Wrangler, I do feel pretty confident about. Just foreign red for a 4-4 flyer enters prepared and it's prepared spell is striking palette, which is single red for sorcery when you next cast in a sorcery spells this turn, copy that spell, you can choose new targets for the copy. This also weirdly doesn't feel good enough because it's like what we keep talking about. You need several things to come together. You need to play Pigment Wrangler. You need to untap with it. You need to have saved an instant or sorcery spell to copy it with. And then you also need to have your opponent to have two things that you want to kill with that instant or sorcery. It's just a lot to come together. And it feels that feels insane to say about Pigment Wrangler was that it didn't feel good enough, but it really didn't.

Speaker 2:
[65:52] Were you not, again, to my litmus test of these prepared creatures, which is you have to be happy with the creature up front. So you were not happy with a five mana four, four flyer up front.

Speaker 1:
[66:03] I don't think so. Or I didn't have the right cards around it to make me happy with a five mana four, four flyer. I just I just kept ending up behind with prepared creatures. And that feels horrible.

Speaker 2:
[66:14] Yeah. The last card on this list for me as a movers down is Molten Note. This is X Red White for a sorcery deals damage to target creature equal to the amount of mana spent to cast the spell. Untap all creatures you control and as flashback for six red white is a lot of mana. You're just like never casting that in Lorehold.

Speaker 1:
[66:36] I mean, but I don't know. I'm going to push back against that. I really like Molten Note. I play with it.

Speaker 2:
[66:42] Can you tell me how that fits in your picture of Laurel has to get the game over with and how the heck are you casting this for flashback? I'm fine if you're like, hey, the first half of this card is good.

Speaker 1:
[66:52] The first time is good enough. Yeah. And it's like 5% of the time, 10% of the time.

Speaker 2:
[66:58] The first half of this card is fine. Like this is on power with the list. This does not feel markedly different than the list of nine removal spells we rattled off as commons that matter.

Speaker 1:
[67:10] Correct. I think worse than Wilt in the Heat, which is the two red white deal five.

Speaker 2:
[67:15] Hence, this is a mover down for me.

Speaker 1:
[67:17] Mover down.

Speaker 2:
[67:17] We had a question around, does a flashback six red white on this card is real, then this is going to be awesome. It's not real.

Speaker 1:
[67:25] And loose Jess guy maybe, but yeah.

Speaker 2:
[67:28] Okay. All right, Alice, good to talk to you. Final thoughts before we get into the week of drafts, before this goes live on Tuesday.

Speaker 1:
[67:38] I think the draft matters a lot in this format in a way that other formats haven't, which is like, I felt like when I was done with some drafts, I knew it hadn't gone well. And it was just completely unsalvageable from that point. You know what I mean? Usually you can cobble together a deck that can do some stuff and get you to three wins. I had some truly deflating feelings after the draft of like, I know this is bad and I cannot do anything to save it. So I think that there's a lot of ways to get yourself in unrecoverable spots in the draft.

Speaker 2:
[68:13] Yes, so I want to just sort of say that you didn't feel like, at the end of the draft, I knew it didn't go well and there was nothing I could do. You mean there's nothing you could do to salvage the deck from that point, but there were definitely things you could have done in the draft to not end up in that spot. Yes.

Speaker 1:
[68:29] Correct. But once I ended up in that spot, it was like, well, usually when there's a draft that goes off the rails, you can like, well, I'll curve out and play some tricks and maybe get some wins that way. If you're going after the redundant synergy type stuff from the colleges and it doesn't come together, you just have a poop sandwich. It's really bad. Yeah, so I think there's that aspect of it. I think knowing what the good cards are and asking your good cards to do stuff up front and not ask much else of you while the things you were talking about, like the stream of life card that is a good magic card, it's going to maybe provide you some incidental synergy. I think green being a big mover up like that four or five vigilance just playing with big bodies and being able to bully your opponents with big bodies.

Speaker 2:
[69:17] I think I need to do some digging and searching in the trophy channel of our Discord and looking at 17 lands trophies to see what do those good lorehold and silverquill decks look like, so that when I am pushed into those colleges as my seats, I know what the correct build is. I think it's probably going to be about marrying that other idea of just, I just want my cards to do their things on their own and to not overindex on any synergies.

Speaker 1:
[69:46] The other thing is once we have a better idea of where the cards are, for example, what's the name of the four or five? Cacturangelo, Tenured Concocter. If Tenured Concocter is great, that's not on my radar as a Magic the Gathering card at all, or at least wasn't when I was drafting during Early Access. It wasn't until the end of Early Access where I was like, I think that card's better than I thought it was. You know what I mean? If that's good, then all of a sudden you have more roots or more options to get into Green Dex or pivot off of, do you know what I mean? I'm sure there are just paths through drafts that I was not seeing, but I don't think the format is large enough that you can just steer towards stuff and ignore portions of the format. I think you are going to need all of the tools in your tool belt.

Speaker 2:
[70:36] I agree. I agree with that. It did not feel like you could force your way into things very easily.

Speaker 1:
[70:44] All right. That's what I got. Those are my takes.

Speaker 2:
[70:46] Let's do it.

Speaker 1:
[70:46] On that note, we're going to wrap it up. Thank you, as always, to Salty Pretzels for our intro and outro music. Make sure you give it a listen.

Speaker 2:
[70:52] You can find all of our content at lordsoflimited.com. There is links to our episode backlog, our YouTube channel, our Twitch streams, respectively, our merch, our Patreon page. If you want to check that out, all available at lordsoflimited.com.

Speaker 1:
[71:04] If you have any feedback about the show or any questions, shoot us an email at LordsOfLimited at gmail.com.

Speaker 2:
[71:09] Thanks so much for listening, and we'll catch you next week for another episode of Lords of Limited.

Speaker 1:
[71:12] Thanks, everybody. See you later.