Limited Resources 857 - Secrets of Strixhaven Sunset Show (and Arena Updates!)

Foreign. What is up everybody? Welcome to another episode of Limited resources. This episode, number 857. My name is Marshall. I'm one of your limited resources. And joining me on the line all the way from Denver, Colorado, it's Louis, Scott Vargas. Luis, how's Mile High City? Oh, it's great. We went to Red Rocks yesterday and saw that picture concert. I know, it was awesome. I. It's funny because like I got the tickets just because like a co worker had them. So it wasn't like. It was kind of out of nowhere. We didn't do much planning. We just kind of went and it was awesome. Red Rocks is just like the coolest venue. I should go there more. That's what that made me think actually. How far is it from. From Denver? Oh, it's like a 20 minute drive. It's really not far. What? It's only that far? Yeah, yeah. No, it's really. That's incredible. Yeah. I was telling you about the. We have a similar venue and it actually from the photo it really is a similar venue. In fact, ours kind of drops off behind into a gorge that looks like a mini version of the Grand Canyon with the river at the bottom. So like the view is even better maybe at Red Rocks. I don't know about the sound. I. I've heard Red Rocks is just unbelievable for that but. And it's called the Gorge and the city that it's in is called George Washington. Somebody, somebody thought they were funny. But. But anyway but. And it is one of the absolute best places as well to see like a concert outdoors. I've been there a bunch of times. But it's not close to Seattle. Like you have to. You gotta drive for, I don't know, it's an hour and a half or two hours or something like that. That to get over there. So it's more like people camp out. Yeah. Anyway, that's great, man. So what we're going to be doing today on the show is we're going to do the Secrets of Strix Haven Sunset show and we've got some arena adjacent or arena specific news items here regarding the Arena Limited Championship and the qualifiers that we just did over the weekend. We'll give you a recap on that. And also some interesting stuff about the championship itself has come out and then also seated packs on arena, huh? We're going to take a look at that as well. Before we do, we wanted to say thanks to everybody who supports us on Patreon. It's patreon.com limited resources. If you'd like to check it out. And we also want to say thank you to Ultimate Guard for their support of the show. If you need your cards, your decks and or your collection protected so that you can play your cards and know that they'll retain their value and you're not going to damage those cards that you've worked so hard for, you need to check out Ultimate Guard. They have great sleeves, playmats, deck boxes, long boxes, backpacks, all of the things that you need to make sure that you take care properly of your cards and you look good while doing it. They use premium materials and really well thought out designs that differentiate them from the rest of the business and you will not go wrong with Ultimate Guard. If you want to check out their full line of products, you can go to ultimate guard.com and if you want to buy them, you can go to your favorite online retailer or link local game store. Thank you Ultimate Guard. We do appreciate it. Patreon Question of the Week this is a generalized question because it didn't come from from a specific person, but apparently it's a question we needed an answer to. Do I get prizes for playing in the Arena Limited Championship? Well, there we go. Yeah. And so I'm just going to jump right in there. So here's for those of you who it's funny because I was going to say for those of you who didn't either don't play on arena or weren't didn't want to play in this whole qualifier or whatever thing, it, it actually is worth taking a look at here because it's a little complicated. But when you understand what was there before, it makes perfect sense. Basically, over the last weekend we had the Arena Limited Championship Qualifier events. These are what used to be called an Arena Open. These are the ones where like if you do really well, you can win 2000 or $1000. Before they were split into two days, day one was sealed. You could do it as many times as you want. And if you got to the magic number, then you would wake up early the next day, do a draft. If you got enough wins in that, then you would do one more draft. And if you got enough wins in that, that's where you became eligible to win the 2000, 1000 or less prizes. So that's how that used to go. We did that for a few years. It was successful format, but now they have changed it primarily in two ways. This one and the one earlier this year were both under this new format. And the new format is the same in the Sense that the top prizes are $2,001,000. But they're all booster drafts. There's no more sealed. So you do a draft, you have to do very well in it. If you do, that will qualify you for a second draft. And if you do really well in that, then you get the same thing, the 2000 and the $1000. But what they've also done is they've made it even more top heavy because if you do get to that last two spots, the 2000-1000 spot, you get the money and you also qualify for a thing that they call, and I think they should change the name, the Arena Limited Championship. And what this does is, is this is a tournament where everybody that made it across that line and got to that qualifier plays in the thing. The. And if they do well enough in that they get to qualify for the Real Life 2027 Limited Championship, the one that we are colloquially calling the Limited Pro Tour. It's technically not that, but for, you know, to kind of understand what it is, that is what it is, right? It has price, structure and everything, but it's all limited and it's happening in 2027. So. And that's in real life and you can qualify for that. So what they really did here is they took the Opens, they kept the prize money, prizes, the same 2,000, $1,000 like we were used to, but they tacked on this qualification for this big qualifier event. That's what it actually is because there are no prizes for it is what we've learned. What the tournament is for is to qualify people for the 2027 Limited Championship. So it's really like a big qualifier event to take the big group of people, however many that was, and put them into a tournament. And apparently it's going to put, I think they said, about 120 people in from these limited Arena Limited Championships. The problem is, Louise, it's called the Arena Limited Championship. Wouldn't you assume that there was prizes for winning that you would certainly think so. But Marshall, I have late breaking news. I actually have to read to you. This got sent to me while we were talking about this, which is really funny. So apparently Dave Finseth, the senior digital project manager for arena, posted on the Pro Tour Discord. Hey all, thanks for the feedback on the Arena Limited Championship event. We're actively developing this program to celebrate and promote competitive limited play. The qualifier events have been more successful than we expected, which is enabling us to grow beyond what originally planned. We'll have a larger announcement soon with all the info around the structure and prizing for the 2027 Arena Limited Championship. For now, I want to make clear that due to the success of the program, we are adding an additional cash prize pool to the 2027 Arena Limited Championship event. Oh, that's great. Breaking news, right? Look at that. Citizen journalists. No kidding. Luis is on the ground getting us the behind the scenes info. Well, that's great. You know, I, I honestly, I think that's amazing. And with the extra knowledge, Luis, that the Arena Championship qualifi. Arena Limited Championship qualifiers, in other words, the things we did last weekend were so successful that they've decided to say, hey, we've made enough off of these that we're going to throw some money into it. I also think that if all it was supposed to be was to clean up who actually gets to go to the live version of it, they should have just called it the Arena Limited qualifier or the 2027 arena blah, blah, blah, blah, blah qualifier. You don't call it a championship unless it has prizes associated with it. But all of it does seem just like an unforced error. Like there's just no real reason to do it that way. I even think this is what I told you before the show. They could have the same amount of money spend total and just distribute it a little bit differently so that, that people wouldn't complain. But yes, calling something a championship and then announcing, hey, there's no prizes for the championships, like, bizarre way to go about things, right? But here's the, here's the argument, right, Luis? And this does hold up. Like if I'm in Wizards, this is the argument I would make. I would say, okay, but when was the last time you qualified for a big tournament and got $2,000 alongside the qualification? Like normally you qualify and that's what you get, right? You don't get a big cash prize associated with it. Those are, as you said, expected to be in the prize pool of the big tournament that you actually qualified for. And instead they kept the old thing so that we can have these Arena Open like events, especially for people that aren't trying to, you know, move up the ladder and qualify for all these extra things and all that. And I like that. I actually, it just means it's like an ultra flat prize pool where you already got your prize of either two or $1,000, you know, that it, you know, for playing in this event. And then they're just sort of cleaning up the housekeeping on who actually gets to go to the 2027 Limited Championship, the IRL one. So it actually does all wash out. But when you set expectations of calling something in a real limit arena Limited championship, you are shooting yourself in the foot if you don't have any prizes for that. And don't just call it the big qualifier or whatever. That said, if it is monetarily such that a bunch of people entered, they paid out the $2,001,000 and thought, well, we got a lot of extra money out of this thing and they're to dump it into the prize pool of this limited championship. Heck yeah. I mean that's awesome. Yeah, I, I, I agree that when you qualify for a tournament, you're not usually handed $2,000 at the same time. But like do it that way then and skip the whole championship if that's what you're going to do. Obviously it sounds like they're, they're the message received. Wizards can move fast when the outcry isn't big enough, which has, which is unfortunate because the behavior it incentivizes is a lot of outcries. But in this particular case it was pretty warranted. Like it's just a, it's just a weird combination of things to do. You can do all the things they wanted to do and just structure them a little differently or call them a little differently things. Spend the same amount of money and people wouldn't have gotten up in arms. But like the way they did it was obviously not good. Right. And that's really cool. And you know, I think the big takeaway, Luis, from the, the thing that you read there was the emphasis on high level limited play. I mean, dude, we are entering like some serious golden era of this. I mean we, it's incredible. A pro tour with a draft top eight. We have a entire air quotes pro tour that is limited. We have something called the Arena Limited Championship that is now going to add additional prizes plus qualifications or cash prizes plus qualifications for the 2027 limited championship. I mean, dude, this is like, this is the time to be a high level limited player. We had four arena directs plus this qualifier thing on the weekend. I mean if you are wanting to grind, I mean I just covered the mocks on the weekend. That half of the mox is vintage Cube. Like look, bro, for, for all the, for all the complaints people get about Watsi, you know, kind of killing standard, which they kind of did, it did open the door for limited to be just the, the, you know, take the place it deserves at the forefront. Like I, I, I do think that that's actually Kind of a symptom of that, which is totally fine by me. Like, I didn't particularly love standard ever, so replacing it was more limited is fine. And yeah, I mean, obviously, like, a lot of that share also has to do with Commander. But when you're looking at the different parts of the magic ecosystem, I mean, it's probably not surprising we're a limited podcast talking to people who like limited. I think a lot of our audience is probably happier that like, the emphasis is less on standard, more unlimited. Even if I would also trade more Commander for more limited just because limited is the best. But yeah, that's, you know, that, that, that's just my objectively correct. Oh, we're playing for the end game, Louise. Once the command get board of Commander, they're going to start cubing and we're going to be here. Cuban Commander. Actually, I know this apart. I know it's still a fun group activity. Like, I think the only thing holding it back is that you need more people. You know, it is hard to get more and more people in the same room. Well, that, that's the, that's the. The. The pick two four player draft, right? Yeah. Of. Of. Of Cube. So the other news. This is weird, Luis, I'm really surprised to see this. So tell us what happened. Somebody was watching your stream while drafting and discovered this. Is that right? Not. Not my stream exactly. Someone was watching a video I posted. Oh, sorry, I meant your YouTube channel. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they noticed that some of the packs were basically the same like as the packs that they were drafting because they were drafting while watching the video and they. They were able to even tell what people around them were taking. So they said, for example, my opening pack was LSV's third pack. You know, he contemplated Deep Cavern bad, blah, blah, blah. I took Ang Swift Savior. My second pack was my first LS first pack. And the player in front of me opened it because I was watching this video. I knew that they took Kappa Cannoneer because it was the exact same pack minus that card. Whoa. And in. In the video, I took the one ring. And so they got past the one ring and where. Because the person passed them took Kappa Cannon here, which not usually going to be what happens there, but you know, it was. It was useful. It was illustrative for the purposes of the argument. I. I will say. Wait, well, does this mean the packs are like pre chosen and just presented to you? Yes. Your Kovitz did a pretty long deep dive on his Twitter. You can check it out. We'll link to it in the show. I love saying, well, linked to it in the show, because I don't do any of that. I just like to say I can just declare it and then it becomes reality. I will do it. I don't know who does it, but it just. It's done in my experience. And he dived into it, basically. Yes. They're using some amount of, like, packs, and we don't know the extent of it exactly. I don't think it's honestly that big of a deal. It's been going on for a while, and people mostly haven't noticed. And the other thing is, if you weren't watching that video, it kind of wouldn't have mattered to you, obviously, as media gets shared and people get to watch drafts like it does, if it happened more often and you were able to see it more often, it would be more of an issue. My guess is it doesn't really impact things, but it is just like a weird thing. I don't really know the reason for it. It doesn't really make that much sense to me. But, you know, wizards. Wizards doing their thing. This is really weird. Yeah. I mean, it is. This is not how I understand how collation works for online. I mean, look, as we experienced with the, like, no double power impacts, like, they. They're. They're willing to play, I would say, somewhat fast and loose with our expectations of collation. So. And which is fine. I mean, that is. That is an option available to them. And mostly I think people don't know or care, but I think it's definitely worth acknowledging. And like I said, I really. Tsukovit's a way better person to ask about this sort of thing. I don't really know exactly what the. Yeah. I have dealt with people I'm gonna be asking that definitely know and have done this for Magic the Gathering. So this is. Yeah. Yeah. Because I. On one hand, I. My. I'm kind of taking it to the natural extremes. On one hand, it's like, is every pack like this? Like, at some point, could I memorize these or. You know, because we have had. Not, like, in a logic. In a realistic way. Okay. I mean, just so many different combinations. Right. Well, I don't know. That's what I'm wondering is, like, how many could be if their pool was really small? Yeah. Yeah. You could. You could end up in a spot where. Like that. Or. Or like a good example. You know, we're human beings. We're really good at seeing patterns. And I don't need to know every card in every pack and every combination I need to know. Oh, that one pack that has two pieces of power, right? It's the one with the ruby and the. Right? And then I see that pack and I'm like, oh, this is that pack, right? Like this pack that you showed me. You know, what are the relevant cards that jump out, right? I'm like, oh, there's a sneak attack here. There's a one ring here, right? I'm like, okay, there's a booster tutor, you know, something like that. Where I'm like, okay, I might. Again, early in the pack, I might be able to go, oh, it's that pack, right? And it's like, that is not good, right? I mean, that's. That is not a. It's not ideal. No. So my. Anyway. But my brain goes, are all of them like this? Like, is every pack we see something that is a snapshotted pack that is being presented, or is that not the case? And you know, where my brain goes is like, maybe they're running a test or something, right? Maybe they, like have a couple of seated packs that are a specific subset of cards and they can use that for data. That's a lot more specific, right? Because it's not this card against every other card every other time, but it's like a subset of cars. I mean, this is. I have no idea. That's true. Yeah. There's just no shot they care about that. Like, they don't. They don't care about how often people pick a johnny or ancestral recall that. It really does. I don't think that changes. Well, I mean, we do know that they care. I mean, you know, like when we had. They looked at experiments. That's fine. That's fine. I'm just. That's my. That's my assumption. Yeah, I agree. I. I'm just saying, like, they do look into stuff. I don't know. I. I'm trying to come up with some justification why there would be that some packs like this, but not all. Yeah, right. Like, how. How would that system come into being, right? Where if it's all. It makes sense, right? It's like, okay, well, that's just how they chose to do it. I. I would be like, shocked if that's the case. But it is even more weird if only some of them are like that, right? Or maybe it's even a bug or something, you know, who knows? Maybe the thing's spitting out a pack. Like, I don't know. It's. It is weird though. It is definitely. There's a lot of weird stuff going on in Marina this, this month. You know, that's what we just kind of wanted to bring it up before hitting the sun. Yeah. So we'll put the link to Siritz's thing, and then we'll continue to. To do a little research. We'll also just see if they say anything. I mean, sometimes they're like, oh, hey, there was a bug, or, hey, this is what we did, you know, and we'll know. But I will say that is yet another. I, I, I think anytime you try to over. Or I shouldn't even say over. Engineer, anytime you try to engineer experiences on that level, I think it's a negative. Like, I think that it goes against the, the fun and the randomness that happens from these things. The thing is, even if it doesn't matter, because I really don't think it matters, like, that much. The expect it does divide your expectations and I think is kind of weird. Like, Right. It seems like there clearly has to be some upside that we're not aware of or we're not thinking about or whatever. But it's a little bit like, okay, but why are you doing it this way? Like, and I don't really. I don't really know the answer to that. Right. And Luis is like a game designer for years and years and years. I've been in this space forever, and there's nothing obvious. Like, there's no. Just like, oh, well, you would do that for this reason. Right. So that, that means that the. If there is a Y, it's, it's somewhat obfuscated. Anyway, really weird and interesting stuff there. And we'll see, we'll follow up on it if we get any information about it. Okay, let's get into. Oh, let's get into our last crack a pack. Yeah. For Secrets of Strix, haven't I played this set more than many. I mean, it was out forever. We had all. I played all that sealed. I'm like, Secrets of Strixhaven left its mark. No doubt about it. First card out of our last crack a pack for it is Rearing Embermare, which I don't think I ever actually cast a Rearing Ember Mare. No, I certainly didn't. Sneering Shade Rider. I, I cast that one every once in a while. That's a, that's, that's one that would make it in. Oh, my God. Luis. Right here, right now, Potioners Trove the Trove the goat. It's really ruined us for every mana rock For a long time. I feel like it really has. Like, it may. Like, here's the question, Louise. Up until potioners trove, with a few exceptions, but mostly, if you see the three mana mana rock with minor upside, you go, eh, yeah, I'll pass. I'll pass on it. Thanks. Is this gonna, like. If the next set has one, are we gonna be like, or do we just go back? Yeah, no, for sure. Like, I. I would imagine that next time we're gonna be like. But you remember the trope. Yeah. Like, it's just very. It's very natural to do that, you know, it really is. It's just human. Again, the pattern. Right. Recognition. Yes. They will sing songs about Potioners trove. Next up is a car that ends being pretty dang good, too. Cost of brilliance. That. That's a two. In a black sorcery tar player just draws two cards and loses two life. And you put a counter on a creature. Really? What did. What was the blue card, whatever, from two sets ago or whatever that was similar. Put a counter on your guy and draw two. Whatever. Combat tutorial. Combat tutorial, right. That's what you brought up in the set review of. Like, hey, it's kind of like that with some downside in the loss of two life, but also kind of some upside in the sense that you can make your opponent either draw two if that killed them or lose two life if that killed them. And then, of course, there was the synergy with repartee where it targets your thing, you know, so there was enough. There ended up being a good card. Costa. Brilliant. Saw tons of play. Yeah. Yeah. Totally solid card. Yeah. Next is unsubtle mockery. This is, you know, one of the many very solid removal spells in this format, both a common and uncommon. Like, you had ways to deal with creatures if you wanted it outside of. Mockery is just another one of those, you know, very solid options for that. Yeah, I thought. I thought unsub mockery ended up playing out really smoothly. Like, it's just obviously a good card, but, like, it felt pretty good to cast. There's cards that feel good to cast. Like. Yeah, you know, heated rivalry. Right. The five mana deal six that just, like, it felt acceptable. Like, you had to do it sometimes. It didn't really feel good. Take medicine. Yeah, exactly. But unsub mockery. Yeah, that one was. That one was great. And by the way, I have to say, Luis, this is your anti card because your. Your specialty is subtle mockery. You are the. The king of. Of subtle mockery. And I don't think I've ever seen you go full unsubtle mockery. You're. You're on the other end. We need to get that card printed next. One very solid card that just missed because of its home, because of where it was supposed to go. And even then, it didn't miss, like, entirely. It just. It looked like it could have been a bit better, which is Mindful Biomancer. I mean, there's a lot to like on this card. Right. Only two mana. Two. Two. Gain a life to trigger that stuff. And then a reasonable pay for the pump ability of two in a green plus two plus two. That makes it difficult to deal with in combat legitimately. Threat of activation on this thing is real. That's a lot for a two mana common. And it just felt like Witherboom wasn't quite there enough to make the Biomancer, you know, a staple of the format. Yeah, Yeah. I. I don't. I don't think it ends up making the cut. I mean, certainly we haven't seen anything here that's even close to. To a card we'd want to take first. No, I think the only card of these little mockery is fine, obviously. Yeah. Is the Rearing Ember. Mare is the only one I wouldn't like. That's the last place. And then it's Mindful Biomancer. Next is Barag Barrage. Good. Little bites. Little fight spell. Yeah. And then Lewin, exchange student is our first Uncommon. That ended up being a solid card. A little army in a can. Yeah. That card, it ended up looking more threatening than I think it actually was, but it was solid. I. I think part of it was that the Witherbloom decks really couldn't go over the top of the soup decks very often. The five color decks. That's right. So, like, you're just not actually winning that way against those decks. At least against the. The more aggro decks it could do. It could do more for sure. No, that's totally true. And then in the soup decks that could often cast Lewin, they didn't have that many creatures, so this card ended up being a lot worse. But I do have many times where I was the one playing the soup deck, and my opponent goes, Lou. And make three things. And I'm like, man, yeah, I'm not losing to that. Yeah, yeah, you're really not, is the thing. Next up is Charging Strife Night. That's the two in a red three. Three Haste with Tap to Rummage. Solid. Yeah. I mean, this card Beat down pretty nicely, like it was just a completely solid card. Yeah. Next up is off our card off the bonus sheet, which we should mention that Luis at some. I don't know if you have it in the notes, but we should mention the Every pack has a bonus sheet thing again, because we tend to really like those, and I think I did here too, when they're done. Well, I think bonus sheets are incredible when. When they're not. They're obviously like. There are some times when I think it doesn't end up working out as well, but they kind of barge in. Yeah. This one's Bitter Triumph, by the way. The one in the black. Yeah. Bitter Triumph is a very solid card. Very good. Next card, again, didn't quite. This is one where they seem to have spread their design options out a little with the blue red core archetype. This one is the thunder drum soloist. So this one cares about you casting stuff, and then it kind of passively pings them versus there's, you know, multiple creatures, a common and uncommon that get bigger when you cast stuff, and you're meant to, like, beat down with them. And then there's the other direction with the spells deck, which is recursion, basically buying back your spells. That ended up being the preferred way to go, that last one. But you'd see a Thunderdrum soloist on the battlefield. I mean, it did add up. It did demand a removal spell at some point if were going to be sitting there firing off expensive spells. 3 damage does add up. Yeah. I. I think that one of the. The. The. The marks I have against Secrets of Strix Sa is that they. They. There's like, this tantalizing promise of a blue red aggro deck that really didn't materialize. That's right. I. I don't think I ever had a blue red aggro deck that I was like, this is great. And it did well. I had some that didn't do well. I played against ones that were mostly bad, and then I stopped drafting them. I. I think after the first week, I don't think I ever tried to make a blue red aggro deck, which means all the BL spells looking cards basically didn't work. You have, like, Colorstorm Salad, which was broken because it was just too good. But like, most of them, it's like, you know, like the. The mascot, the 14 flyer, like sky whale. Also a 14 flyer. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The virtuoso. The 22 with prowess. Fire Dancer or whatever it's called. Oh, the other Tutu. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So you just ended up in a spot where like, like all these cards didn't really function. Which is kind of a shame because, like, I think Blue Red Aggro is a cool deck. But yeah, I just. That I don't think that. That it was. It was particularly well supported, which is fine. I mean, it doesn't have to be, but. No, but those cards were there for a reason, and that reason never really became clear. The interesting thing to think about, Louise, is since many of those cards were, you know, more or less scrapped, they weren't like total garbage. They just weren't really what you wanted to be doing yet. The blue red just spells deck was still really quite strong. Imagine if those slots had been towards that deck. I mean, it would have gotten dumb, you know, so maybe we should be happy that they burned a few on these, you know, aggressive creatures. Next up, this one, I. I feel like wasn't that well thought through. Which is Daydream. This is the one that exiles a creature you control and then returns it to the battlefield with a plus one, plus one counter on it and then clash it back. That is an interesting card design, no doubt about it. But the problem is, is that a lot of the repartee creatures grew by getting repartee, and you didn't want to target them with it because it would reset their own counters or things that they had gotten. And having one of your precious non creature non removal slots in a. In a silver quill deck be. I'm going to target my creature and it's going to leave the battlefield. Sorcery speed is. Was too much to ask. Now maybe you could argue that this would be better in Lorehold because it has flashback and because it makes the creature a little bit bigger. But then I just felt like it was too low on power level to. To justify it. So it's like synergy on one hand, not really. And then power level in the other deck that it would go in also not really. So. So to me, Daydream just kind of fell off the map. It's actually one of the rare instances where I kind of feel like we got tricked because it was like this looked like a card that would do something, and it just didn't do anything. Yeah, dude. I mean, if I told you 1 mana uncommon targets your creature, you know, you're like, okay, yeah, this is probably going to be pretty dang good. And it's like, nah. And what is our rare Maelstrom Artisan? This is the 1. Red Red 3. To Haste and ETB's prepared with Rocket Volley, which was the one in a Red Sorcery Destroy Target Non Basic Land. I did terrorize people with this in Sealed because everybody's playing so many non basics that you almost always had a target for it. And if that was the case, it was like, yeah, you know, that actually is a fight worth fighting. I also had an opponent, by the way, he's against my Soup deck with a lot of non basics. They played the Blue paradigm and they started copying Maelstrom Artisan, and I lost real bad to that. But in Draft, I found it to be much less good. I. I actually was like kind of shrug on it. I had a couple games where it was good, but I think for the most part, yeah, no, it's. It's not particularly great. All right, so where are we going out here? I mean, I want to just take Potioners Trove, man. Just give me my trove and let's move on. You could take Bitter Triumph for Unsettled MOC Strife Night. Honestly, I would take Trove too. And I. I think that I would not take Bitter Triumph. I would take Mockery or Trove. The problem I have with taking Bitter Triumph is it puts you in either Silver Quill, Witherbloom or Five Color Soup. And it's actually not a good card for the five color deck because they can just get all they want out of Red removal pretty much. And that's more of a main color. And Bitter Triumphs like discard or Pay through Life. Like, they don't really want to do either of those things. Like, it's just like a lot worse in a, you know, controlling deck that's usually not even primarily black. So Unsolved Mockery is a pretty flexible card. But I would just take the trope. I mean, who are we kidding? Seriously? I. And, you know, getting a Trove knocked out early does. It can go into other decks, but, you know, it does open you up for all the different Soup decks. And those are the most fun decks to play in the format for sure. And they're also quite good. Okay, if you could summarize the set in one sentence, what would it be? I said five archetypes done. Right? I. I said dual decks. Five Color Soup versus White X Aggro. Yeah, because, yeah, it did feel like that was a. I would say. I mean, yes, sometimes you did play against Witherbloom deck, but Quandrix basically didn't exist. It was just part of the five color deck. Prismari Same. Kind of like, same. Yes. You're a little more likely to be straight Prismari. That could happen too. But for most part it's like most of my matches it's like involved a five color player and a white aggro player. And mostly I was on the five color side, but I did both. Not a lot of matches that involved a witherbloom deck. There were some, of course, but like it just was less frequent. Totally. And, and again, you know, Witherbloom even had that same issue that Quandrix has, which is like if you're going to be in green, like you probably end up with, you know, a studious first year or an environmental scientist or what's the bonus sheet? Rampant growth called, you know, whatever. Yeah, Shared roots. Shared roots. You know, like, are you not going to splash your mind over matter? Totally. Right. You, you of course are. So it's like a soup ish direction as well. So it. I, yeah, your, your description sums it up quite nicely. You know what I was thinking when I said five archetypes done. Right. There's actually a sixth. Right. This soup deck isn't one of the five. But the main thing that I'm thinking about is just we have had three sets out of the last, like five, I think four or five that have been five color or five color pairs focused and the rest are basically not on the radar at all. And this is how you do it. A, you really do benefit from having the size of a full set to play with that really matters. It gives you some wiggle room to miss and still have archetypes come together. And that's extra important because when you're only doing five, if you miss one or two, you really have a huge impact on the format. Double that, you know, that you would have had if you missed one or two in a 10 archetype normal setup. So this to me is a great way to do it with the full size set. And then I also appreciate that it was magic ip, you know, mostly. I mean it's kind of Harry Potter inspired, but like, you know, this is all magicky stuff and you know, this is the best of those, of those sets. You know, in my mind, I think this is better than Laura when Eclipse and it's obviously better than Spider Man. Yeah, not a high bar there, but yeah, I totally agree. Ninja Turtles. So yeah, the bar continues to not be high. What turned out to be the best archetypes? Well, as you might have guessed, the White Black, White Red, those were actually the best performing. Like if you were only thinking about winning and the table was relatively open for you to draft either white black or white red. That's where you should be. Those did outperform. They were just more consistent than the soup decks. That said blue soup in all of its different flavors was very strong. It did very well. And to me, as you outlined in in your summary, Luis, those were the decks that I was looking at. The non color pair decks like zeros. Like nobody ever played off pair only that those two colors. Like that just wasn't a thing. Nobody's like, I've got blue white, let's go. You know that. That just never ever happened. This one's always difficult. Which. Which cards were you most wrong about during the set reviews or maybe just surprised this one way or the other. It's hard to go back in time, but I mean. Oh, I thought you meant it was difficult because we just were so rarely wrong. Finding examples was really tricky. Potioners Trove, we talked about it in the crack a pack but you know, these are the type of cars that we're kind of conditioned to set aside, ignore, not really pay that much attention to and ended up being an all star. Yeah, no Potion Trove is a good example. I think that we were pretty up on News Seeker. That one. That one did not ended up heading out the one two the looter that if you play a five mana spell you draw a card. Well, part of it is like I would also put Deluge virtuoso in this regard. It's the frost links basically just the blue red aggro stuff just didn't work. So all the cards that look like that you could probably shift down by like a full grade almost. Yeah. And like Musicer is an interesting one in that vein because you would think that that would go well in the archetype. That did end up being good there, which is blue red. All spells. But it has two major down. Well, one major downside. It's a creature, so it's not a spell. You can't buy it back. You can't do all the things that you can do with the others. And also you're putting out a two toughness creature that your opponent remember. This format has really good removal across the board. Every color, every rarity there is removal available. And if you're trying to be the almost all spells deck and you're running a random 2 toughness creature that's going to get picked off literally every time it hits the battlefield, you would be better off having that be any other spell. Just anything that's not A creature. And. And then like you said, the. The aggro version never came together at all. So. So that wasn't there. One I did want to bring up was Exhibition Tight Caller, the mill guy. You were high on it, and I kind of chided you for always being high on the mill cards, but I don't know. Broken clock is right twice a day or whatever, but, like, you nailed it, dude. That card's really good. You were totally right about it. And it overperformed in sealed by a lot. Like, it was one of the best cards you can open. And if you were willing to build around it a little bit in draft, it was an all star. So yeah, I mean, that honestly was one of the cards I wanted to have the most out of any cards in the set every time I played, like Tide Caller, you know, the. The. The lesson that I need to take away from it. It is. It's because of the number. Is that I'm usually right. 10. 10 cards for casting one spell. Like, there are matchups where that just went through the game on its own. And then I would build around these cards. I mean, I. I would put the. The blue protection spell and the royal treatment in there and just wait. I would just hold on it. And then I learned over the course of the format that it was like, it was almost never too late, you know, like you. Every time I ran out to Tide Caller even a little bit early, I'm like, why did I do that? Like, I could have just waited. And even though I have the protection spell, if they just have another instant speed removal spell I get, you know, and I'm just like, why did I do that? I could have just. So I just started waiting longer and longer and longer and longer. It costs one mana. You're not really getting anything out of, like, out of saving that mana. It's a little bit like this happens in Cube a lot. Sylvan Safekeeper, right? The one mana, one. One sack of land to give a creature shroud. It's really good with your, like Titania or your Nadu. You basically shouldn't cast that card on turn one. If you cast that card on turn one and they go Land burst lightning or something, well, you're not going to sack your land, so it's just going to die. You're giving up a mana and the ability to attack them for one or two points of damage. Almost nothing. Wait till turn four to cast it. Well, they're probably less inclined to put a removal spell on it when you have a bunch of lands in play and it's really integral to your deck. If you're playing that card. You don't really play that card unless it's good in your deck deck like it's a specific card. So yeah, I think people cast their engine pieces a little bit too often and just in general. Yeah totally. And then brush off. Brush off was interesting. So that's the two blue blue counter target spell. But if you want to cast as negate it only costs one and a blue. It's mostly that the. The format had a lot more kind of control mirrors than obviously we would look at like looking at the site review and initially. So brush off ended up being I think pretty important like in a. Certainly a very reasonable card. Whereas like it didn't really look like it. That was where it was going to land initially. Totally. And that ended up being yeah format specific. Just because those are the exact type of cards you wanted to hit. Another one that I'll. We'll just. I'll dovetail it into the next one which is what were the most underrated cards and one that we liked but I don't think we would have predicted predicted it being the best common or one of the best commons in the set which was pursue the past. Yeah that one came out of nowhere for me. Like kind of don't get it but I. I just. It. Yeah I feel like that I. I just think that the red white decks are really good at putting enough on the board that they can convert mana into cards without falling behind. Whereas like the. The five color decks can't really spend a bunch of time casting too many card draw spells against aggro. Whereas the aggro deck kind of has a little more wiggle room. But yeah that card was definitely underrated initially. Like it. It. It would certainly I think surprised a lot of people myself included. Yeah. And then of course Potioners Trove was there one that maybe continues to be under. I feel like we are on it and maybe some people aren't. Is render speechless the the two black white hand disruption spell. But it also triggers repartee and it's also two plus one plus one counters which is kind of a big game changer. This card ended up being one that like I would splash it every once in a while like if. Because you face so many soup mirrors and it's so good in that matchup just to be able to look at their hand and take you know their big payoff card out or whatever. That one still I feel is a little underrated early on but not for long. Was like cards like Wisdom of the Ages, Divergent Equation math, and magics like the big blue spells, the ones that cost, you know, call it seven, eight. All of those were excellent. They were just excellent. That's one of my favorite things about the format. Usually those kinds of cards just aren't that good, which, you know, is, is fine. Like, they don't, it's like they had, like, they have to be. But it was cool seeing those kind of get a little bit more of their due. It felt like. Yeah. And then another one early. But then it has its following now is Arcane Omens. You know, that just looked too slow and clunky to be worth it early on. Like, I, I, I'm still kind of surprised at how well that card actually performs, like, how good it actually is, but it is no longer underrated. What were some of the most controversial cards? One that's kind of interesting is Library of Alexandria at a surprisingly high win rate. And that that card is in, in Cube is also very controversial. So it's kind of interesting. Yeah, you know, see, seeing how that one performed, I love having that. I, I got it once, maybe twice. I can't remember. I never, I never had it, dude. It seemed pretty cool. It's so sweet. And you know how, like, you know how Library has a little bit of a learning curve to it, right? Like, you know, when you first played in Cube, you might make a mistake and go, oh, I accidentally just took myself off of Library. I should have just waited a turn and you can't really get it back in most cases. It's so nice having that in regular limit where, like, it's slower anyway and you already know, you know, kind of what you're doing with it. I mean, I played that thing like a fiddle, man. It is. It was an absolute beating. I don't know if you call them controversial, but, but definitely. Some cards that generated a lot of discussion were the emeritus cards. I mean, you know, you and I being old school magic players, we'll use a lot of slang to describe cards, right? We'll, we'll often say, oh, I'm gonna. Is this broken, stupid or busted or even or even with other cards, right? We'll be like, I'm gonna Ancestral. But it's not, it's like, I'm gonna draw two or three or whatever. Well, these cards literally have like, like, I can authentically say that I got to cast Ancestral Recall in this format multiple times, right? And I, I actually did. And, you know, I think that was it generated a ton of discussion. I think it was mostly excitement rather than controversy. But yeah, I mean, printing these ultra powerful demonic tutor ancestral stuff, lightning bolt, although they kind of made that one impossible to get to. But anyway, yeah, the emeritus cycle definitely created a big buzz, I think in the community. Yeah, I think the emeritus cycle is pretty cool. And they're cool too. Yeah. What card had your favorite artwork? Oh, it was actually brain free. Fair warning, I'm going to mention Brain Freeze a lot in the sunset show. It's just a card that occupies a big part of my brain. Brain Freeze by Benjamin EE it was just capital E, lowercase E. So I guess Benjamin E. Okay. He's a little Benjamin E for my tastes, I would say. And that was on the bonus sheet version of it or whatever? Yeah, yeah. The only one that was in. In the, in the set. Right. Would you, would you like. Do you like the artwork enough to track down one of these things and replace it in your cube or have a copy of it or something or. Because I know you're an old school art kind of guy. Yeah, I like the art more than the original art actually, as. Even though that's not always the case. But I don't know that I'd want to necessarily swap those out. Fair enough. Mine was Terra Fractal by Andrew Marr. I love dinosaurs and this looks like a happy terrafractal just flying, flying along and I love that. And then also this is kind of a combo because this is like the funniest name. Like I just, I just have to know who it was that was sitting there and it was like lol, Terrafractal. And then they actually made it. You know, this is clearly like a top down design kind of thing. Terrafractal is a really good name. It is a great name. Build around cards in this set. This actually was a strength of the set. It. Depending on how hard you blur the lines on. Yeah, yeah, I was gonna say, I, I think that I, I agree that the set had a ton of build around cards, but I also think you can kind of compress them. Like how different is wisdom of the ages. Divergent equation mathematics and like, you know, cards of that ilk mind into matter. Like they are builder ends, but they're all like kind of the same build around. Which isn't a complaint in the sense that I like that thing, but it' diverse as you might expect looking at the list of builder. That's true. Yeah. And you know, and it's also like on one hand, like a Good example would be if. If we're talking about the absolute best, it would be together as one. And if you first pick together as one, you did have to make picks that were not normal picks in order to make together as one really good. So that is kind of the definition of a build around, but it's a little looser, you know, than something like, you know, one that I didn't put on the set because it was absolutely horrible. But the green one, you know, the one that give. Got a counter on it for every time you gained life. And then your creatures got plus three. Plus three if it had five counters on it. Yeah, yeah, I know. Comforting counsel. It was really bad. But, like, that's very pure build around. You can't just draft a normal deck and have that. Have that work. But there was others Crackle with power. There was Graduation Day, which was bad, but was built around tragedy Feaster. Like, I don't know where you put that on the spectrum. Like, you need to be able to gain life realistically to put it in your deck. But it also could, like, close out a game pretty quickly if you didn't black loafing past. The first time I saw that card, it completely demolished me. And then nothing after that. What about resonating loot? I love this. This is one of my favorite cards in the set. I had it on Early Access, like, the first day, and I played it, and it just. Like I had a game against Reed where it just looked completely ridiculous. It looked like, like I was playing a cube deck. That's actually what he said when I talked to him about it. Like, I went, like into the rapturous moment and to draw this card into wisdom of the ages, get 15 cards back, like, you know, blah, blah, blah, and it was a lot of fun. And Brain Freeze, do you consider that a build around? Oh, yeah. Brain Freeze is definitely a build around. I think that you brain Freeze basically anything that makes your deck, you know, you have to draft your deck very differently. Kind of feels like a build around to me. And Brain Freeze was just a lot of fun because one of the aspects it adds to games of Limited, which I really enjoy, is me and you are having. And Brain Freeze actually does this in cube too. It's actually really high on the list of cards that do this. We're having a game, and then all of a sudden you do. You didn't know this, but the game is about a completely different thing than you actually thought. Totally. I mean, I. I remember one of the most tilted times recently in Cube Was like I was playing as like an esper mid range deck of some kind. Like Blade Splicer and Duress and some counters and whatnot. And I'm a control deck and I just like get them in the vice grip, I kill all their stuff, I'm just gonna win. And then they go like spell, spell. I counter one of them, they brain freeze me for 12 and I just die. It was just a brain freeze in the deck. Absolutely should not have had brain freeze. That's part of why I was tilted about it. Right. Like I maybe the last couple cards in their deck. Deck had an underworld breach, a Lion's eye diamond and a volcanic on because they also didn't have red mana. So it was not, it wasn't that deck, I don't think. But brain freeze would do that. I had, I've had a couple brain freeze decks in the, in the trick saving format where it was like the way it always plays is your opponent's beating you down. They're you're killing their stuff, you're dealing with it, but you're not making any forward progress. And they sometimes eventually get to the point where it looks like an untenable board state for you. Because of course when you're playing brain Freeze, you kind of want to wait till the last minute to give yourself the most ammunition and then you go like, like cast a spell. Cast a spell. Brain freeze Diversion equation to get back brain freeze. Brain freeze. And they just die in one turn. Right. And it's like that. That is awesome. I just love that stuff. Yeah. And that is a hard card type to create the one where it just comes out of nowhere with, oh, this is what we're actually dealing with. I think for me, if we're going to give the award for the best build around card in the set or cards in this case, I would say it goes to Wisdom of the Wisdom of Ages and Divergent Equation. They, they, they both went to the exact same place, which was as many spells as you can get and get them into your graveyard and then buy them all back and do it all over again. And I love that play pattern. It made for tense, interesting games that didn't have an obvious outcome and then they sort of tipped over in the middle of the game when you played your big spell. But you usually had to tap out for it and kind of left the door open. And then if you got to untap land. I've got nine cards in my hand, they're all spells and I can just go completely nuts. That's a really fun, interesting, and kind of risky, dynamic way to play out a game. So even though there's some better cards, like together as one's just a better card. Etc, I would give it to Wisdom of Ages and Divergent Equation. Those. Those are. Yeah. I think wisdom is kind of like the perfect encapsulation of this strategy, which is do nothing. Do nothing. Do nothing. Cast the spell with. Yes. Like, kill yourself. Kill yourself. Kill your stuff. Cast this. Get back 10 ruble spells of counter spell and three card draw spells. And. Right. I would say it's one of the cards that my opponent's conceded against the most. Definitely. Definitely. For sure. So I love that one. Which card still looks good when you read it, but it just doesn't see that much play. It's brutal because, like, you know, we filled these out like, what would we do the show notes? Like, not necessarily at the exact same time. And in this case, you got there first and you. The answer you put was just so good. Mar. Put harmonized Trio down. And like that one just. It seems so sweet. I'm actually running into this in cube where I'm gonna cut it for my cube. I think even though, like, it's. Oh, really? It has some cool stuff to it, but it's just not. It's not good enough, I don't think. No. I guess it's just the problem of having that many creatures on the battlefield. But man, like, free brainstorms. Like, you know, even if it was just, you know, blue instant draw card, I'd be kind of stoked on it. And it's better than that somehow. But yeah. Harmonized Trio did not deliver. Probably a victim once again of being in blue and having low toughness and being a creature. It's just like that. That is just such a natural target and it's. And you know, literally in a removal spell kills it. This one's kind of interesting. I had. Oh for My answer was Rabbit Attack. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The black. That was the one in a black instant. Give as many creatures plus one plus zone when they die, draw a card. I just thought that between repartee and pests and just like black aggro in general, this could be a card that maybe Silver Cool or Witherboom would want. And it turned out none of them wanted it. It wasn't good. Yeah. It just. It didn't. It did not get there. Yeah. Interesting. I guess it was just more about having removal and just getting the blocker out of the way. Plus the triggers was This a prince or a popper set in your mind? I. I think popper you could. You could construct a great deck without any rares. The. The five color decks needed the rares more than the aggro decks, which is nice. Not, you know, unsurprising that that is typically the case. Yeah, I think the rares did matter a lot. Like this was definitely not one where the rares were kind of whatever. They did matter. But I think the tipping point is the removal. Like most of the rares could be killed with common removal and there was a lot. And counter spells were actually good in the format, so that. That helped too. The. It's a bad card, but I love it. Anyway. Award winner. I One that came to mind for me was Orisa Tide chore. The the four and a blue two two draw two cards and it gets cheaper if you have 10 toughness on the board. Yeah. I'm just like, why are you bad? I guess it's just, you know, there's better card draw spells basically and ones that you can buy back with the cards that we mentioned earlier, etc, and this just didn't fit the bill. Yeah. It's funny because there's a lot of limited formats that we've played with that where that would have just been an excellent card. Yeah. It was not. Right. I would not say that. I mean it looks mole Drifter ish, but it's not. What did you have for. It's bad, but I love it anyway. Zafi and the Tempests was. Was. I think my. My favorite. That was the 7 mana 57 red. I was really disappointed with the blue red Rares. Prismari and And. And Defy in the Tempest, like Blue Rare and Mythic actually were just not particularly good. They were fun. Yeah. Yeah. But that's a great answer. I. I basically had a couple games where I would like. Like I. I got to do the thing. You. You play it and then you immediately cast like moment of reckoning. I did once and that was awesome. That's gross. But you know, it. It really, really did not deliver, unfortunately. No. What about the. I literally never win with it, but it always seems to beat me card for me specifically those Magma Blood Archaic. That's the red one. Yeah. I never had any real desire to put this card in my deck, but. Oh man, that card. That card definitely could. Could. Could. Could clock you if you. If you got the right combination of stuff. Totally. Sometimes they untap and play a five mana spell and you're like, oh wait, what? And all of a Sudden you're just getting slammed on for a billion. That was a good one. One card that got me a couple of times. I never even tried. It was fix what's broken. That's the. The black, white. Buy stuff back of a certain cost or whatever from your yard. My God. I actually had a sweeper. Like, I. I swept the board and they got back five things with that or something. And I'm like, are you kidding me? Like, I lost the game because of it. I'm like, well, I'm not going to be the one to do that. And then Lorehold Charm also got me a few times where I just tended not to play it that much. I just felt like it was one of the weaker charms. But, you know, in the right position. You also played Lore Holder. I think probably a decent amount less than like the average drafter. I mean, I played. I. That might be true, but I played a lot of Silver Quill. That's true. That's true. I know you played a lot of the format, so you played all the decks. But like, I would just say for both of us, we. We were just in the five killer deck a pretty. Pretty large amount of the time, kind of a lot. What was the. My opponent played this. So now I must win or quit magic forever card. So I. I have a kind of bad answer, but it. It actually does track, which is Deflecting Palm. The only reason I say it's a bad answer is that when they cast the Deflecting palm, usually it's like the game is over one way or the other. Yeah. But I. The card just drives me nuts. Like, it really does. I don't know why. It just. It's just because I think it's just really bad. But it's also really effective when it's good. Yes. And just not like to say that, you know, you're. You're dumb for playing it or whatever, but it is just like, oh, man, you're. I mean, I don't know if you're a dumb person for playing it, but it's a dumb card to play. Yeah. Your win percentage is definitely going to go down if you play Deflecting Pump for me. And this did happen to me, by the way. Luis Skycoach Waypoint. This is the land that prepares. My opponent played this in a three color deck against me. And once that thing hit the battlefield, I sat up straight in my chair and I said, all right. Magic career on the line. Thank God I was able to get over the finish. Is this the last episode of the podcast. No, we're okay. We, we got there. What was the biggest grown test? The overrun of the set. Man, this is so funny. We have two completely different and your answer was amazingly good. But I think they both play Marshalls was practiced offense which obviously is just fantastic. That's the literal overrun. Put a plus plus one counter on all your creatures. You know I, I had arcane omens which is kind of like the, the five color overrun it was when someone hits hits with an arcane omens like that. You know the game is done like that. That is right. Arcane omens for four or five in the soup mirror was the exact same thing as practice offense with any board state. I think the, the thing that stood out over time about practice offense though is that when I, when we first saw it we knew it was powerful. But I viewed it as a go wide card. You know, I view I want three or four creatures and it turns out you just really needed like two and even one sometimes was enough. But two creatures, if, if one of them had any type of evasion was you were probably dead. Especially if they did both. Both or just cast it attack with lifelink Next turn cast it attack with lifelink or double strike. Whichever one, you know. But like stupid card. There's just a lot of ways that yeah that that card is ridiculous. Arcane omens was also pretty ridiculous ridiculous too especially by the way a turn 401 off of a trove was just so devastating because it could often be for four or five. What cards do you have your eye on for Cube? I, I mean this set's been out for a while. Do you, you know some of these are in your cube maybe already? Yeah, I've, I, I've already got played this plenty. So I, I kind of have a good idea of what. So basically I, I think, I think we're going to change this question not what do I have my eye on for Cuber? How is the set done in C Cube? Like what have been the standouts? I will pitch that. Yeah, Erode is great. I mean that's basically it's I think a little better than Path to Exile because hitting Planeswalkers I think is more important than exiling. But it's not a, it's not a like strictly better situation. But it's just, it's a card. It's going to stand for a long time there. There's a lot of cards worse than it harmonized Trio did not make the cut. I mean it's in the cube right now. But it's not going to be when I update the cube. Okay. I have. I think that the emeritus of abundance, conflict and ideation. So the teamer ones, blue, green and red are all great. I don't think the black Whoa. And whatever diplomacy or whatever the white one is are. Are good enough. Those are currently in the arena cube and I don't think they're good enough. So the red one is good enough though in cube like you can actually trigger it. Oh yeah. I mean it's not like an amazing card. But a. The bar for inclusion as a red card. A particularly a red creature is not that high. Like red red. Red does need that. So a 22 first strike for two that threatens to lightning bolt. This card has been consistently getting put in people's decks and casting lightning bolts. So that's good. That's cool. It's not going to be one of the better cards, but that's cool. I'm glad I found a home because I, I. You know, I think in the actual format it's just kind of bad. Like you just can never. Yeah. I mean like it's just in cubic cast like this on turn two and turn three. It's not that hard to go like land zero drop two one drops and then. And then have bolt up and then if you. If you're in a position to not use the bolt, they don't kill it. The bolt then spots you one of the cards to. To get to three. So like it can. It can chain off pretty nicely. Can. Can you do three, get a bolt, play it and then do three more right after. That's when you cast your third spell of the turn. Not every three spells flow state is totally fine. It's not amazing, but it's fine. Traumatic critique has been great. I like that. Even for a very. A very competitive slot which is the one of the Izzet slots, the blue red slots. I like dramatic critique because blue red draw two, discard a card is like a card Reanimator decks could sometimes play the academy decks can make a lot of mana and then just fireball you for 54. Color control decks are usually playing this card. Like it's just been a good card. It's cool. And then another really good one together as one. I've actually been really impressed with this card. It's. It's been a secret boost to green decks because they can like ramp it out and get all the colors. If you cast it with four colors, it's totally fine. Fine. Draw four, deal four, gain four Excellent. If you cast it for three colors, it's, it's a little lackluster. Obviously. Five is very good. So I, I, I've liked it. And this has been a pretty good set for Cube, honestly. Yeah, pretty good. What was the most frustrating quote, bad card to lose to? Or maybe just a card that you, that you'll not miss playing against or that really annoyed you? For me, duty beyond death. That's the all your creatures get a plus, plus one counter and indestructible card. And the, the reason that I, I really didn't like that card is that I don't think it's a very good card. But when cast, it can be really, really strong. So it's like, kind of annoying because it's like, I would never put this card in my deck, but my opponents are twice would beat me with it. For me, it's a one that I actually did see on the battlefield quite a bit, but I was just like, almost every time I saw it, I was happy to see it on the other side. And so losing to it felt bad. Which is spectacular. Sky whale. Like, that card is four freaking mana and requires you to play a bunch of stuff to do anything relevant. And it is susceptible to basically all the removal and all the bounce spells in the format that make it. They just kind of clown it, you know, like even just bouncing a sky whale after they cast their five drop and are like, I'm gonna attack you for four and my sky whale is going to stay big. And you're just like, return it to your hand or put on top of your library. And like, the most telltale sign is when you do run behind on it. And then they're like, should I just put this thing on the bottom of my library? Like, I don't want to have to redraw this and then replay it and then cast another thing. But, you know, every once in a while you get nabbed by the stupid sky whale. And I was like, I was always. It felt like injustice because I'm like, normally I never lose to that card, and when I did it, it felt bad. Bad. What was the bombiest bomb? The card you hoping to open, pack one, pick one, or in your sealed pool, I mean, together as one is a great answer that you put because it's just like, yeah, if you, if you have this card, like, you just know you're gonna get to play it in the even in. Even if it's just like, I'm Silver Coil with a couple dual lands or something. But most likely in this five color deck you're playing it and it's just going to be excellent one. It's just gonna be so good. Yeah. And it's also just a green light to just go for all the colors. Other cards that came up that I was really, really stoked as if you needed a green light. I feel like, I feel like you're colorblind. The light's always green and you're. Yeah. I can't even tell if it's on or off. It's just, I'm going forward emeritus of ideation. One of the most powerful fun, like just unbelievably awesome cards that they've printed in a while and then you know, practice offense. I mean dude, that card can win games any old board state. And you didn't have to have, you know, amazing creatures. You didn't have to have a lot of creatures. It just could steal games. And so that was another one I really wanted. There was a lot of really good cards in the set. Definitely every set has a bunch. But this set in particular I feel like. But together as one was the goat. All right. There's a couple of these cards that have some that we have to choose. But the best common for each color. White definitely. Elite Interceptor. Really impressive. Did that make it in your cube by the way? You didn't have it on your list, but is that a cub? It's not in my, my cube right now. It's in the arena cube and it's fine. I, I, I don't, I don't know that it's like, I mean it's certainly like pretty close to being cut at any given moment just looking at the card. But it seems fine. It is a lot worse than three minutes. It is worse, right? Like kind of. Well yeah, because if the, you can't just jump with it or sack it. If the guy dies, you don't get to cast like the clues done totally like that. That's a pretty, pretty substantial drawback definitely. Blue was run behind. Black was interesting. Are you a last gasp or a cost of brilliance kind of guy? I'm Alaska. I think last gasp just because I, I think that there's a lot of, there's a lot of control decks that could you like really value the two mana card and versus removal. Like there's just, I just feel like you don't, you don't usually end up with a lot of trouble again finding ways to draw cards or use your man know. Right. Red. This is the one that actually had like a lot of Cards that were really close to the top. Rubble Rouser, Mockery and Tone Blast were all just excellent Red Commons. I think of the three, I think I'm a Rebel Rouser player the most. And then probably Tone Blast and Unsubtle Mockery. But I don't know at. You know, if I had to rank them, how do you. How do you see them? I think that Roboser is the best card, but not every deck can use it. I think that Unsold Mockery is the card I selected most often when I had the opportunity. Okay. And then Green was studious first year, which was awesome. My favorite. Yeah, that was just great. Pretty much every deck that. That you could. You could imagine. Any deck that had early green was just really happy to see the card. It's just a really powerful card. Totally. What was a mythic uncommon for this set? I was thinking Snarl Song. Yeah, definitely. I don't think. I don't think that's Arcane Omen's up there too. That's too close. Oh, you have a good one here though, dude. That. I. I mean, maybe bonus sheet asterisk or whatever, but Stock Up. I. I don't. Yeah, I have Stock Up. I don't know. The bonus sheets even need an asterisk. Like it's. Yeah, fair enough. Stock Up. There's one in every pack, you know, so. Yeah, I was talking to people about the difference between the types of card draw spells we have, and it's just like, it's so dumb how much better Stock up is than just any of the others. Like, that card is really dumb or is it sweet? It is both. What's the worst card in the set? The biggest Blank. The most Last picked. I picked Pox Plague. Yeah. There's really no reason to ever put that card in your deck for sure. Right? So that's a good one. What. What did you think? I. I said Biblioplex. Tome Keeper. It wasn't literally the worst card. That's the one that lets you like prepare or. Or unprepared. My. My problem with it is that it kind of teased, hey, this works with the set mechanic. It could be something powerful. And it just never did anything. Never did. It was just horrible car to put in your deck. Imagine getting zinged by the Tome Keeper and like having it actually matter. Like they take away your preparedness or something. Which card was the most? My bread and butter. Begrudgingly playable. Oh, man. I have a couple entries. Rankers Archaic. And the reason I even say that one. That's the five mana converge. Like two, two reach. Right. It might have trample too. Actually. It has both. Yeah. Yeah. I think three times I put this in as my last card when it was like, oh, I ended up short of playable. Yeah, yeah, it's fine. Like, I'm not gonna, like, complain about it exactly. But it's not amazing. Certainly Goblin Glass, right? The one that lets you cast a treasure. That's such a good one. Yeah, that one's just. That one's just classic. Like, slight signs of desperation, but it's not that bad. Yeah. Yep. And then stadium title mage frequent, like, dude, all right. I guess I'm trying to be the, you know, like the five Killer soup, no Creatures deck. But I guess I fell short. And it's like, oh, look who's here to save the day. Yeah, that's right. You know, and I'll. I'll say that especially for sealed, Stadium title mage was definitely Mr. You know, had number 23 on the back of his jersey every time he came in. Is there a cardial misdrafting? Yeah, there's a couple resonating loot. Brain freeze. Wisdom of ages. I just had a really good time with this set. There's just a lot of stuff. It was like a little bit of ice cream for dinner esque, you know, when you kind of did end up with, like, a lot of the same experience, but, like, it was a really fun experience. So I'm not. I'm not really complaining. Yeah, I. You know, the. The. The one that was the most exciting, like, the card that. And. And difficult to replace, I will say, is resonating loot. You know, for all the reasons you said earlier, just explosive. Felt like you were playing a different format. It still asked something of you. Right. It wasn't like you just, you know, you're playing four mana on the board that doesn't do anything thing. It was rare that you got to draw extra cards from it. I did do that a few times, but it was rare, you know, so you kind of did need to build around it and have a decent setup. But when you were humming along with that loot, it was stupid. I mean, so much more powerful and crazy than we ever get, you know, in a normal limited set. And I will miss that because you just don't see that all the time. What was the LSV is card in the Martialist card Card? I mean, for me, it was definitely wisdom of the ages because it. That game plan is like how I want to play a lot of games of magic without Wisdom of the ages. It just happened to reward you greatly for doing so. Yeah, totally. That is, that is a very Luis card, that game plan and everything. I went right down the middle because I did love playing this card and I did think it was strong. It was matter bending mage. I mean, it's a, it's a manowar. So it's kind of right up my alley. But legitimately I loved playing it and it's obviously, you know, my type of card. What was my soapboxiest card? Probably Exhibition Tide Collar. It's a positive soapbox because it was like more of a correction. Also, I don't know is, did that make the format better or worse? I don't know. This one's kind of funny. What card do you still have to read every time it's cast against you? Or in my case, even when I'm casting it. And that is mathematics. Magic. Man, you beat me there too, because, yeah, like I even know what the card does pretty well at this point. Yeah, certainly whenever, whenever I had it in my hand and I was, I was gonna try to, to kill them with it, it was like, okay, I gotta triple check. X equals 5, that's 32. X equals 4, that's 16, right? Right? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's how many mana. Okay. Did I get there? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, that works every time. I'm like, I. It was funny because it was one of those field cards where you're like, I think I got it. But you're like, I want to make sure. Math and magic. The thing is, if you got it wrong, you would lose. You would definitely lose. It would be. That would be it. So, yeah, it made sense that that was a, that was a card. You're going to want to be especially diligent about double checking. So let's go big picture here. From a design and development aspect. How did this set fair? How did the mechanics do? What were some of the wins and the losses? I would say that the, you know, we, we have our issues, our qualms with the five archetype sets, but I think this deck or the set did a pretty good job of that. I think it would have been nicer to, to see a little bit more variety. And again, Witherbloom was a little, little behind. And I actually, almost even more than that, I kind of wish Quandrix had its own identity, basically. I wish. I, I think that. And then I'm not saying there's an easy way to do this because set development is very hard. It would be Nice if Quandrix and Prismari both had like a kind of legit aggro deck. Like though they, they didn't and that meant that Quandrix basically always got folded into 5 color. I had one quandrix like 70 tempo deck and I was like chasing that dragon for a while and I never got it again. Like it, it was just really fun to do that. But I do think that the five color decks were pretty fun. Like again it was ice cream, ice cream for dinner where it was like, like here's wizard of the Ages and Divergent Equation and Resonating Loop and Mathematics and Stock up and it's just like, okay, that's a lot. I mean and now I'm not even naming like five more cards in that vein. But overall, I mean we'll take a look at the mechanics in a second here, but I think that the set did a pretty good job of delivering on a bunch of different experiences and archetypes and good gameplay and a lot of fun cards and a great bonus sheet. So looking at the mechanics, prepare is fine. I, I would say it's a bit of a like look. Magic is a 30 year old game at this point. Everything is kicker. They have all these mechanics. I'm not gonna like dock them a lot of points from being too much of a retread, but it was just like a different take on adventure. Now it's like the creature cast the spell instead of you cast the spell, then cast the creature. And I don't think that there was, I didn't, I don't, I don't feel like there was like a ton of gameplay with like, ooh, how do I get this guy prepared? It wasn't really about, about that so much like there were extra value in a different way. I think the most notable one is the grave researcher, the one that cast reanimate and you have to have three creatures. That one. It felt like, okay, I'm going to do some work, I'm going to get the thing and it's cool. And I think I like that experience. Most of the prepared creatures felt like pseudo ETBs. It's like okay, studious first year. It's like can you kill it in one turn? No, I'm going to cast the spell. Or you know, emeritus of ideation, the ancestral one. People would cast that with 6 Mana I would imagine most of the time just because that's just how the card played. But prepare was fine. Repartee I think was like a little bit disappointing. It just, it I just Feel like they're, you know, kind of like one of the things is like graduation day or whatever. The enchantment that you gave a plus, plus one counter on repartee. That card being horrible kind of speaks a little to that experience of like, this was just a throwaway line of text that, like, yeah, you would play a good creature with repartee and it would be good, but you're not really building your deck that much around this. This. This element of it. Like, you're gonna play removal spells. Yeah. You would play like a dig site inventory in your silver cool deck. Maybe when you wouldn't have otherwise. But I. I don't think it was jamming all the combat tricks. It just wasn't a very loud mechanic. Yeah. In three years, you're like, hey, what about repartee? Be like, huh, what was that one again? Right. Whereas like. Like Opus at least was pretty loud. I think Opus also was. Suffered a little from the Prismari deck not being too legit in terms of aggro. A lot of the cards that had Opus on them, you would not put in your deck. And that's unfortunate because, like, it was a. I think a pretty cool mechanic. Infusion was fine. I wither it again suffered because Witherbloom just wasn't quite up to snuff, I felt like. But Infusion is a pretty basic mechanic. It's totally fine. And flashback slash the Lorehold, like cards leaving your graveyard. Mechanic was also fine. Like, hey, they nailed it this time. We got to give them props because they didn't last time. Remember, it was the worst archetype. And this time, I. I do have to. To give them credit for that working out. So that was, I would think say, a win increment was. Yeah. Increment, I think, is actually a good mechanic. I just think it suffers from the Quandrix deck not really feeling like its own thing. Yeah, just. And there wasn't that much of it. No. Paradigm was great. That was the way you cast a spell. You cast every turn. Great mythic, you know, effect fixed. Epic did a really good job. Converge also played really nicely too. And then you put book on here, but it's not really a mechanic. Come on. You know that. You put Lowell also. So, like, I know that, but I would say overall, the. The wins for this set was like, it gave spell fiends a lot of. A lot of court to play with. A lot of room. Right. Like, we got to sink or swim on convergent equations. And that was fun. That was. That experience was really Good. It was a little bit like the Tarkir dragonstorm experience of like too much 5 color. But I think it played out a lot better because there was a lot of different ways it played out between Converge. And was your deck a play all spells try to win with diversion equation deck, or is it an arcane omens and then cast a bunch of snarl songs deck? And those did feel different when they, when you played them, you know. And I think my, my favorite experience in this format was probably the no win condition five color deck that really had to cobble it together. That, that, that I always found fun to do. That is core to the Luis experience. What did this format teach you? You know, did it make you better at limited or your understanding? What are some takeaways of it? I mean, I know for me it was the rededication or the, the confirmation about the Converge deck, because in my mind they did a good job with this. Right? Like four of the five schools were very strong and they had their own identity for the most part. Or at least you knew what you were doing when you started off in those two colors, even if it spread out into other colors or whatever. So that's fine. The fifth one, wither bloom. Okay, it missed a little bit, but that's probably to be expected there. It's very difficult to get everything on the same level. Fair enough. So everything's good there. But how long do I want to draft that format? It's like those are the type of formats that fall off for me after a month and a half. And I'm like, well, is cube up? Like, what else can I do? Except for the Converge stuff that made it so that these soup decks, you know, which were there was all different types of them. You could get to them from all different ways. You didn't know what deck you were going to be in. If you first picked a blue or green card, for example, or even a red card, you know, these were very open things. And that to me is what made this a format that went the distance for me. And I want them to commit to that. If you're gonna aim at only five archetypes, a sixth one that's more wide open. Like they've done the Gates deck and this, that Converge, these type of, you know, multi colored decks. What was the one that, that, that didn't quite get there from the, from two sets ago, the one with the, you know, like with the, the blue guy that drew cards for it. Was it called Prismatic or Vivid or something? Vivid, right. Vivid. You're Talking about like the Lorwin eclipsed. Yeah. Cards of each color in, in, in place. Yeah. You know, that type of thing. I want that. I, I feel like that seems really desirable, particularly in these sets that are only going for the five colors or five color pairs. I mean. Yeah, I, I agree. What grade would you give this set? I gave it an A minus. I would also give this an A minus. I, I thought that this set was quite enjoyable. Me too. I think they did a really good job with it. I, you know, I think it's an interesting space to design the five things. I think it's risky. I think when they nail it, it still just checks the box. It's not, not better than it would have been if it was, if it wasn't a full 10 archetype style format. So I've never quite understood that from a limited perspective. There's of course a whole bunch of other things that going. Go into making a set besides limited. So that's fine. But to me, they nailed it. I mean, this was good. It held up, it was interesting. I never got bored of it. I played tons of, I played all the high level tournaments that they came out with for it and I drafted the crap out of it. It covered at the PT and it just checked every single box. So that's, that is a great set and they did a really good job. No, no, no. No real complaints there. What's your favorite card of the format? It's Brain Freeze. Brain Freeze. Brain Freeze just. It hits my neurons the right way. When I see Brain Freeze, I'm just like, you know, that's what it's all about. Okay, here's a, Here's a follow up question. What is the brain freeze of spices? What's the, what's the food additive, whatever you want to call it, the garnish, the spice that you look at and go, ah, cardamom. For me, I think you really can't put it in every deck. It's, it's extremely distinctive and changes the profile of the deck quite a bit when you play it. But it can be really, it has its place. It can be really, really good. Jesus. You know, when I used to interview Luis when we were at the PTU and at GPS and stuff, he would always say, don't tell me the que. I don't want to know the questions. I don't even want to know the setup. Just turn on the camera and let's go. And that is why you got such a great answer. And I ambush him with that question. He didn't know I was going to ask that. Oh, man, that's great. My favorite card was Proctor's gaze. Oh, my God. This does it all. It bounces and fixes pseudo card advantage. It's like one and a half for one, you know, like, get it. Oh, yeah, it's. And it's not too good. You. You. You really can't have your favorite card. That's right. That's just. That's just too much of a cop out, you know, like, oh, yeah, my favorite cards emeritus of ideation. Because I win when I cast it right. It's. It's exactly you. You summed it up perfectly. And I hope that we see a card like that again in the future because a. A gold card that does this is really cool. It is a. A simple but really effective card that ends up playing out interesting and isn't. Isn't over the top. Good, good. Okay. Secrets District sa. You did good. You did really good. And it also kind of serves as the, you know, stamp after a run of two color sets here where you're like, all right, this is how you're supposed to do it. Like the, The. These are the ones that really hold up over. Is it better to have the. If you're going to have a run of three two color sets and one's going to be a lot better than the other two. Would you want it to be first or last or in the middle? I guess, Yes, I think I'd want it to be last. Man, if you set the bar that high. First. Oh, yeah, that's tough. That's tough. Yeah. And then the next one comes out and you're like, well, this is way worse. That is a much rougher experience than if you're like, well, this isn't that good and I don't like it, but let's see what happens next. And then by the end, you're like, hey, they came out with a really good one. You know, I kind of knew you were going to say that because of how the co host went on the show, but yeah, no, I like your answer. All right, let's call it a show there with Louise still being the co host, thankfully. If. If you want to find us on social media, I am Marshall Underscore LR and Luis Salesv. You can find everything related to our show@lrcast.com I want to say thank you to everybody who supports us over on Patreon as well as Ultimate Guard for their support of the show. Make sure you check them out atultimateguard.com if you need anything that is going to do it for this episode of the show. But we will be back next week. We'll see you then. So it got me thinking what you just said about how I don't want the interview questions ahead of time. I think that I feel like a lot of truth gets revealed with snap answers and it's actually pretty informative or it can be, it's almost tricky when you're trying to do like analysis of what other people are thinking or feeling or whether they're telling the truth or any of those things. And especially since people who are maybe good at getting around that will very confidently quickly answer. A good example would be you have a counter spell in your hand and what you should do, especially in constructed is figure out what spells am I going to counter and not. So when they put one of those spells in the stack, you don't sit there for a bunch of time thinking and if you snap like okay, resolves or online, you snap, click. Yes, often I've made my opponent think I don't have a counter because I really quickly didn't counter a spell. Maybe one that looks like it could be appealing to counter or you think about it and that is a way to like deceive someone while doing that. But in general I found if you ask someone a question and they instantly answer it, like that's usually like a pretty truthful answer because like it takes more time to think of a lie than to tell the truth, right? Oh for sure. Yeah. It doesn't mean if someone thinks for a while they're lying. I'm not saying that either. But I, I always, I, I, I like answering quickly or doing things in that rev vein quickly because I think it can be revealing in some cases. Like you've heard of the flip a coin test? You're deciding between two things. Let's say you're deciding. Well, a very low stakes decision, right? Do you want to get sushi or tacos for dinner tonight? That's where I'm going to go out, right. I'm going to have night on the town. But you can't decide. What you can do is flip a coin. And while the coin is flipping you think, oh man, I hope it lands on head so I can get sushi. And it's like, well, you have your answer. There you go. You don't even need to look at the coin. Right. That can be really informative. And I think think people, I think people overthink things too much. I think I probably underthink things too much. But, you know, that is, that's part of the charm. So I, I just think it's funny. Everyone also operates differently. Some people, some people ponder every question. You're like, you know, how are you doing today? And they ponder, do you want coffee or iced tea yesterday? And yeah, you know, as you can imagine, I, I can, I can. That's not my favorite form of being to interact with, let's just say. But, you know, it is what it is. People, people are who they are. And. Yeah, I don't know. I don't really have a point here except that I think practicing answering really quickly can be good. If you're someone like me, practicing taking your time can be really good. There's a lot of things I could improve myself if I took a little bit more time. Sam.