The pre-release is upon us! Obviously we’ve done our homework with the LR commons & uncommons review and such, so I’m not going to try and duplicate that. But I will try and make a prognostication on some high-level questions like removal, tricks, ramping. All guesses guaranteed to hold up until your second draw step in the first round.

Removal

“Removal” is obviously a very sweeping category. Everything from efficient but conditional, unconditional but expensive, efficient & unconditional but difficult to cast; it’s almost impossible to do an apples-to-apples comparison. What I like to do is count the total amount of “playable removal” (and bounce) and compare it to previous sets. So let’s flashback briefly to Ravnica Allegiance.

So that’s 10 pieces of common playable removal, three uncommon. For reference, here is what I considered unplayable or sideboard.

Obviously those five all occasionally have good homes, but by-and-large, you’re not excited to draft them or play with them. They played as D+ or sideboard, at best. So where are we at with War of the Spark? Let’s take a look!

Wow! So there is 12 pieces of uncommon removal and 10 pieces of common removal that look to be at least decent. Four of them are planeswalkers! So, yes, there WILL be removal, and lots of it. Half of it is at instant speed! So be *very cautious* playing into open mana.

Combat Tricks

By contrast, the combat tricks look to be extremely thin.

Okay, so we have OG Giant Growth. And I think Battlefield Promotion will do some serious work as well. Storm Strike taught us that +1 power and first strike is usually enough. Throw in getting the Proliferate train rolling and incidental lifegain, you have a card. I’m more dubious about Lazotep Plating (sweet art aside) since it looks to be a subpar Dive Down for an extra mana. Unlikely Aid is also unlikely to find a home, but it’s not unplayable on its face. So yes, combat tricks. Not that many. Also nothing in red. Technically there are two tricks, but boy-howdy they look terrible. I’m not even going to link them. That’s how little faith I have.

Ramp/Splash

There aren’t gates, but we have Gateway Plaza at common. There is also the Centaur Nurturer, which is drawing very justified comparisons to the Naga Vitalist from Hour. It’s a single card fulfilling two roles: it stabilizes as a 2/4 blocker and it provides mana fixing. All at common. The uncommon ones look very good too, though keep in mind that the planeswalker does need to be alive to provide the splashing.

In conclusion, this looks to be a high power set. Lots of removal, pretty good splashing tools raises the ceiling. Few combat tricks makes me think that aggro decks are going to be hard to put togethe

First, I learned to reliably spell “Allegiance” without relying on the spellchecker. Two e’s, one a. Got it. Beyond that I had a pretty good run I’d say! Let’s look at the tape:

I’m honestly pretty happy with a 64% win-rate. Kind of funny that I barely draft Rakdos and a full third of my drafts ended up in Gruul.

Card advantage in aggro

I definitely got most comfortable drafting the Gruul deck. It is known that the flexible 2-drops, “good on turn 2; good on turn 10” are solid gold. Sauroform Hybrid is the absolute gold standard here. However I think everyone initially undervalued aggro cards that provide a little bit of card advantage.

The Burning-Tree Vandal did not look great in theory. Three mana for 2/1 haste or 3/2 rarely lines up well (especially with 1/1 Spirits assumed to be floating about). But 2/1 was shockingly good in this format. The lack of 1/3s & 2/3s meant that the 2/1s were every bit as good as the generic 2/2, plus you get to rummage! Having BTVs as built in flood insurance really helped aggro decks prevent one of their surest paths to defeat.

Similar story with Storm Strike. The +1/+0 and first strike was enough to reliably win most combats in this set (real lack of 4 toughness) and the scry 1 was just solid gravy. Add in the flexibility of a 1-mana trick and you had a card that I loved running multiples of.

PS: 1-mana tricks remain the gold standard

Drafting is hard

This was probably the most I’ve played a single set in a long time. I put a lot of time in! And I still only really learned how to draft one deck! It’s hard to learn decks. Only really got good at Gruul. As much as I like to theorycraft and listen to how to build good decks, there’s really no replacement for playing with the cards, getting a feel, and then getting a feel for what will wheel. Magic is hard.

Most Drafted: Greeeeeen!

Three-way tie for most drafted card. Aren’t they pretty? Sauroform Hybrid is a testament to how early I’ll take a card that will go into any deck with forests and be a reliable C+. Savage Smash is a solid removal spell that only really asks that you have a 2/2 in play: pretty manageable. The Axebane Beast is a funny third choice, since I would just scoop them up with my 13th-15th pick and occasionally play them! Obviously there were many better 4-drops in the set, but if the Frenzied Arynx’s never made it, you could throw in ol Axey and not feel too much shame.

Mulligan

So, I added a heuristic: never keep a hand that needs to draw particular color of mana to work. Assuming you have 8 sources, our friendly calculator puts us at 43% to draw one within two draw steps. It goes up to 57% percent with a third draw step added, but that can be dangerously deep into the game, especially if you’re on the play. Keep in mind I define “work” as “get something onto the battlefield”.

The second lesson is for me to aggressively mull hands in an aggro deck that are not exerting pressure. Once I had a hand that had four lands, a 4-drop, and two spells. In a Gruul deck. If this was a control deck, it’s a snap-keep. But I had an aggressive curve and doing nothing for three turns was almost a sure loss for me. Aggro decks often function best with virtual card advantage: killing your opponent while they still have cards left in their hand is the same as if they never drew them. Again, most decks are shades of midrange so don’t get carried away mulling TOO much. But the more you’re hoping to get work out of your 2-drops, the more you should mulligan hands without them.