There are many resources that do a much better job of breaking down the new mechanics of a set, card grades, and such like. This will not be any of those things. Instead, I like to focus on a high-level summary of what direct this set will be going. Are there build-arounds? Is ramp a thing? What are the splashing tools? What does the removal suite look like? How should your assumptions from baseline Magic shift for the first few drafts?
Gold Card Review: Core 2019
A while back, I came up with a heuristic of categorizing gold cards. Not all power levels are the same, not carry the same message as a signal, not all are worth compromising your deck’s mana base to try and cast. To review:
Bombs: the best of the best, these cards combine a win-condition with being able to stabilize a losing board. Planeswalkers are often Bombs.
Accelerator: A subset of Bomb, these cards make a good deck a lot better but don’t always help a weak deck.
Core 2019 Preview
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
Additional Case Studies
Apparently the people love theorycraft! They might not love it quite as much if they knew my MTGO rating but we can keep that a secret. Let’s use the taxonomy (Bomb, Accelerator, Splash, Signal, Payoff) and look at a few more fun ones and do some analysis.
Tiana, Ship’s Caretaker
Everyone widely agrees that Tiana just doesn’t quite get there. But why? You can see the tension right there in the card design. A 5-mana gold card usually resides in the Splash territory, just due to its high casting cost. This is fine; there are other 5-mana 3/3s that pull their weight just fine (Tatyova, Arvad, etc.). But the problem is that her ability is most effective early, not late. You want to be able to cast Tiana then play your Auras so they’re protected. The Auras in Dominaria are medium at best and they’re all cheap. Are you really holding on to crappy Auras in an aggressive deck to wait for Tiana? The question answers itself.
A Golden Taxonomy
Let’s discuss the gold cards here in Dominaria. Some of powerful, some are narrowly powerful (“build-around”), and some are efficient but not game breaking. The rarity of tools to splash I think highlights small differences between the gold cards. If one extreme is Khans of Tarkir, where you jam anything and everything that comes to mind, we are at the other in Dominaria. The format is slow enough where card quality really matters but sufficiently demanding where you can’t get too greedy with the splashes. I’ve created a framework of multi-color, roughly sorted by how strong and how hard you’ll work to make them fit.
The Bombs
M25 Theorycraft
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.
Benalish Dad 