Hosting an M25 draft on Sunday (there may also be freshly baked cookies, recipe to follow) so it’s time to do a little theorycraft in case LR can’t come to my rescue fast enough. As per usual, I like to look to the gold cards for guidance.

Okay, a classic of the genre! Also a pretty good indicator of some blink shenanigans, so let’s see what enablers (and other quality ETBs) we have in UW.

Okay, so there are some decent mechanics but only one flicker effect? What the hell? This does not looks like a ‘major theme’ to me. Let’s try another.

Okay, well, that’s… super vanilla. A perfectly decent card with absolutely no guiding abilities. Let’s break down the pieces we have in each other. Being green we have ramp (not pictured: decent morphs and 6-drops worth ramping into)

We have some go-wide stuff

The golds are… not helpful actually. Hmmm, let’s jump to red. Hey look, more go-wide!

Some traditional blue-pairing with instants-and-sorceries-matter

Okay, okay, this feels a little more helpful. Blue?

This is actually a pretty fair representation of what blue has to offer: card draw, evasive threats, and tappers. Frequently they combine two of three! I think this is starting to be what M25 is trying to do: pushing less clear-cut tribal synergies and more a pure manifestation of what each color does. Green: ramp, big creatures. Blue: control. Red: lots of direct damage and little creatures. Let’s take a look at black

Murder, sacrifice shenanigans, and graveyard stuff. All the black classics!

So here’s my TLDR, and whoa hey look, LR just came out with their m25 preview so I better mash publish quickly before this turns into (even more) of a thinly veiled regurgitation of their insights. A deck will need A Plan, either go wide, go big, or go long. Spew out a bunch of 1/1s and pump your whole team. Ramp out a monstrously huge creature that demands answers. Or play UBER-style, control, gain some card advantage and kill your opponent with an evasive creature. Combine the colors with the building blocks that work. So black/red will could use a bunch of small creatures to fuel some Atog-ish win conditions. Red/green has really great go-wide pieces. Green/black ramps to something big. Just about anything with blue uses card advantage (with a *possible* exception for UR spells) to push a long-game plan.

Red: Direct damage removal, go-wide, spells-matter
Blue: card draw, evasive threats, counterspelling
Black: sacrifice, “Aristocrats”, hard removal, graveyard
White: small creatures, defense, enchantments
Green: ramp, big creatures, small creature fuel

There is very little splash enabling.

Ash Barren is uncommon, PP is at common (which is something I guess) and Myriad landscape is more of a ramping card than a splash enabler. So find your open seat and draft heavy on value with an eye to the synergies mentioned above. Oh, I guess there is ONE combo deck.

Assembly Workers! They are at common so you WILL see them. Not sure if the table can support two of these guys but it could be potentially hilarious if there’s no compelling first pick.