Spoiler season is finished! Now it’s time to take a look at some of the broad strokes of what’s in the set for Limited. I will only focus on commons and uncommons, since that’s the bread and butter of drafting.

Removal

Good gravy that’s a lot of instant speed removal! Red has two at common, one at uncommon. Black has one at common and one at uncommon. Be veeeery careful casting tricks or Auras into open mana. Rabid Bite is very good conditional removal. If you have a 3/3 or better out, it’s very solid. Since it’s a “punch” and not a “fight” card, it does much better than the Pounce/Ancient Animus junk we’ve been forced to work with.

Blue also looks very light on the removal department. Dwindle seems fine–better than Deep Freeze for sure–but not that great, especially against creatures with passive abilities. But removal will be plentiful and present.

Combat Tricks

Blue has some very blue-ish things: bounce, -2/-0 draw-a-card, tapping, etc. but not the pure combat tricks that you would want to use in an aggressive deck. Each of these looks serviceable. Adding two power is usually enough to get your aggressive 2-drop/3-drop through a defensive 4-drop/5-drop, which is the baseline ask of a combat trick. As mentioned above, there is a lot of instant removal and interaction so be wary of using these into open mana.

Interesting side note: there appears to be go-wide tricks, but not go-wide support.

Trumpet Blast and Inspired Charge would imply support for a “go-wide” strategy, but the Gallant Calvary and Goblin Instigator are the only two (that I could find) cards that make multiple bodies in one card. Verdict: not a thing without some serious luck with rares or uncommons.

Splashing

Hey, this looks pretty good! Common tapped dual-lands, Manalith, and interesting twist on Evolving Wilds in Rupture Spire as well as Gift of Paradise rare-shifted up to uncommon. Looks like splashing will be easier than in Dominaria (not getting in knife fights over Skittering Surveyors), though green doesn’t have quite the same density of tools as it has had in previous sets.

Creatures

Behold the only 2/3s for three mana in the set!

(this is a slight exaggeration, as there are a few others at uncommon) Compare that scarcity to all the common x/2s, where x is greater or equal to three.

There’s not a lot of 2/3s and not a lot of 1/1 tokens (a la Saporlings). So there’s going to be an interesting rock/paper/scissors game. 1/3s are good against 2/2s and the 2/1s. But those bears/pikers trump the 3/2s, which in turn match up better against the 3/3s. By shifting away from the 1/3s & 2/3s that dominate Dominaria, I predict that we’re going to see bears (and 2/1 pikers) return to relevancy here in Core 2019 because of the 3/2s.

To summarize, this set looks to be a little more CABS (cards that affect the board state) than Dominaria, with more aggressively built creatures and stronger combat tricks. Removal looks plentiful, so be wary of 2-for-1ing yourself (either with tricks into open mana or too many Auras, etc.). Looks to be some spicy support for some build-arounds: BW lifegain deck, UW artifacts-matter, UR spells-matter. It’s not going to be as bad as Ixalan or Amonkhet, where it was impossible to block opposing 2/3-drops with your early drops, but not as passive as Dominaria where you can happily wait until turn four to cast a creature. So not PURE curving out and bashing face, but I think we’ll have to remember to draft 2-drops more in this format.