Limited Resources 860 - Marvel Superheroes Format Overview (UW Too Good??)

Foreign. What is up, everybody? Welcome to another episode of Limited resources. This episode, number 860. 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 Luis Scott Vargas. Luis, did you get a chance to jam a bunch of Marvel superheroes? I see we already have the Arena Direct win a box up, by the way. It's only been a week since set came out, but here we are. One of three or four, I'm sure. Yeah, I've been playing a lot of Marvel. I've only been. I only played one win a box so far, but I've been playing Marvel pretty much all week. Yeah, okay. Yeah, I've been doing a bunch of drafts and then yesterday I jumped into a few of those. I did actually secure a box, so. So I'm happy about that. These ones, if you haven't played them before, are for the collector boxes. So you do have to get to the full seven wins before your second loss to get those prizes. That's. Those are tough. There's also ones for play boosters where if you get to six wins, you win one play booster box and if you get to seven, you get two. So it's a little bit more of a graduated payout structure, but these ones are kind of the top heavy ones. But I was able to get there with a crixus deck and hopefully I'll get a chance to play a few more. It's kind of interesting, Luis. Trying to prep for the pro tour means I'd rather be drafting, but I also just need to learn the cards, the interactions, the names and stuff like that. In which case it kind of just. As long as I'm playing with the cards, it doesn't really matter. So I can indulge in a few of these, but I don't think I'm going to be able to take a full run at the. At the Direct like I normally would like if it was just a normal week. But yeah, this is sort of leading up to some longer travel and stuff. So anyway, we will be talking about that. We're going to be giving you our format overview today for Marvel Superheroes, as the set has now been out for a week and we've got our hands on it and therefore we have solved it. It is all. It's all in the books, and we're going to give you all the information today. Before we do, we wanted to say thank you to everybody who supports us on Patreon. You can go to patreon.com LimitedResources it's basically a place where you can support your favorite content creators directly. That way it kind of takes out that the sponsorship and the ups and downs of being a content creator so that you know they can keep making the thing that you love. If we happen to be one of those things, that's where you can go. Patreon.com Limited resources Thank you to everybody who supports us there. And we also want to say thank you to Ultimate Guard for supporting the show. They make the best stuff in the business when it comes to protecting your cards, your decks, and even your whole entire collection. Magic cards are valuable and you want to make sure that they are protected so that they stay in good condition. And hey, you might as well look good while you're doing it. Ultimate Guard has you covered in that way. Playmats, sleeves, deck boxes, long boxes, binders, backpacks. That kind of stuff to protect your collection and your cards. You can find it all@ultimate guard.com and you can pick it up your favorite local game store or online retailer. They really do make the best stuff in the business. Premium materials and great design. I highly recommend them. If you are a Patreon supporter of ours, we put up numerous things for you actually, but one of them is that you get access to our Patreon Question of the Week thread. This one comes from Alex, who says, you know those moments when you're laying in bed, about to fall asleep and suddenly an unprompted memory of an embarrassing but extremely benign moment from your past creeps in and keeps you awake for an hour? I've been playing Magic long enough that when this happens to me, it's usually a very specific, avoidable misplace play from some random draft six years ago. What are the misplays that keep you up at night? Bonus points for Marshall if it's a watchmaking misplay. I mean I have a couple. One is certainly playing against Gabriel Nasif in the finals of PT Kyoto and it's not a specific misplay. More that like I think it was like Game four was a crazy game that I feel like I would have beaten almost anyone but Nasifin and I. There's got to be things I could have done differently there. So I have thought about that match a lot. Was that the negate in the the negate head games of Johnny were like I cast a Johnny, he didn't negate it. And I was trying to set up head games but like there was a lot of things I could have done differently that game I don't really even remember the specifics so much at this point, by the way. That is an absolute classic if you want to go back and watch it. That was one of the matches that got me into watching the PT and competitive magic and stuff. Yeah, it was. It was a sweet match. I had a game. This is a US Nationals 2006, playing against Antonino DeRosa in the quarterfinals of the top eight, where I really wanted to win because this was the Nationals where me and Paul Chian were on opposite, or not opposite sides of the bracket. We played around two, but we were in the same bracket. If we both won and we played each other and then. Then the loser won again, there's a third, fourth playoff. We'd both be on the national team together. But I had to win round one, and I'm playing ant, and we're in game five, and I have the game and I. Oh, no one knows this because, like, you couldn't really see it there. I almost just tapped my mana wrong to not be able to play the game winning card and just straight up lose. Like, I came so close for it. Like, I know in my heart I did because I almost did that. And I was like. And I still think about it, even though nothing bad even happened. But I would have been so unbelievably frustrated if that happened, you know? Oh, God. And that was a time where that kind of stuff was like, policed and punished a lot harder. Oh, yeah. Yeah. No, you weren't getting away with it. Like, if you. If you tap your mana wrong, you tap your mana wrong. That. That is. That is it, you know, so there's no asking a judge to fix it for you at that point. Wow. But. But you dodged the bullet. You look down. I did dodge the bullet. It was close, but I. I did manage to. Wow. Yeah. It was just crazy, though. Yeah. That's a great. What if I actually do have a watchmaking one that still keeps me up at night? It's so funny because Alex described it perfectly where it's not. I've made mistakes with it for sure, but this is like a non catastrophic one. But it just bothers the hell out of me forever, which is. It's actually on a watch that I bought. And the hands on the watch have this glow in the dark material. We call it lume. It's like short for luminous material. And over the years, it's a loom, you know, no big deal then. So, you know, and you can replace lume on old watches if it's fallen out or if it's damaged. But what happens with, in most cases on older watches is it starts out bright white when it comes out of the factory, but depending on what it's made of, it ages and it turns kind of like a creamy, kind of a orangish, you know, yellowish. It's a really nice, kind of pleasant, warm color over time. And that's very sought after by people like me who like stuff that looks kind of old and has a older aesthetic to it. But I had a watch and it had hands that looked really nice, and that. That's pretty rare for that model. But there was. It had been exposed to a little bit of moisture, so there was like a little bit of rust on the edge of the hands. And I. And it wasn't. It didn't look like they were going to fall apart or anything, but I wanted to try my best to remove a little bit of that rust. But, you know, I mean, watch hands are, you know, they're tiny, right? They're little thin metal things, and they're very finicky. And I took a little tool that I have, and I was very carefully, or at least I thought rubbing the, the edge of the hands to try to get some of that debris off of it, and I accidentally pushed down on the loom. And it's. I mean, it's just super thin. You know, it's been there for 50, 60, 70 years. And it broke the loom out of the hand, and it's like just a little bit of it came out. But, like, I still have the watch, and literally every time I look down at the watch, that's all I can see. And it's one of the most beautiful watches I have, too. So. Yes, Alex, thank you for bringing that up. Now I won't be able to sleep again tonight. And that was, like, four years ago. Great question, though, and we really appreciate it. And again, if you're a Patreon supporter, I periodically put up a new Patreon Question of the Week thread, and you can put your question there. And then we also do it for our Q and A episodes that we do once per set. And then if we have a guest on or if we have a topic that we want to reach out to our audience for, we'll do that, too. Luis, do you want to talk broad strokes before we do the crack a packs? Yeah, I think that generally works out better for this, for this kind of episode. So, I mean, the story of the format, this is what it's going to be remembered for. This is the story right now, this may change a little, is that blue white is by far the best archetype and heroes specifically. So green white is also kind of picking up some of that, but mostly it's that, like, the white heroes are just really good, and like, the cards rounding them, and blue white, you know, as a result, is. It is dominating. I would say, like, you know, we dug into the. To the numbers a little bit. It's not just that the win rate is higher than the other decks. It is, but not by, like, a completely crazy amount. But if you then look at the play rates, you said it was something like almost three times as much as the next deck. Yeah. So right now, for example, the. At the time of recording, Blue White is winning at 60%, and the next is green white, which is 57 and a half. That's a big gap like that. That already is like a wow. Like, blue white's way better than everything else. And then it gradually goes down through all of them to 53.1% with one outlier, which is black. Red is at 51.3, which is way below. Remember, 17 lands filters for people who have installed 17 lands on their computer. And that means that those are people that take the game more seriously than people that don't. So the average win rate usually ends up being between 54 and a half and 55%. So if you're at 51, you're. You're 3 and a half, 4% below the average. That means it's easily the worst. But everything else is pretty well bunched up, except for Azorius is out in the lead. And then I was talking to Luis about it because this is a phenomenon that we see every once in a while, which is that, you know, it has an incredible number of games played at 58,000. The second place is 28,000, third place is 23, and everything else is below 20. So, you know, it's roughly triple the average, yet it has the highest win percentage by a lot, like by 2 1/2% over the next competitor. And as you mentioned, Luis, the next competitor, it borrows a lot of the cards from it as well. So that is a potent combo. Right. I mean, if I was talking to Luis before the show, and I'm like, aren't these things supposed to act against each other? Right. Like, isn't it extra hard to be the best and also the most played? And Luis is like, yes, that's the problem. So that's the. That's the game designer side coming in there. Yeah. And you know, my experience, it was funny coming into the format. I just kind of randomly. The first couple videos I did, I just had opened like mostly black red villains cards and every time I tried to build those decks, I just got completely smashed. Obviously I draft blue, white and just, you know, win easily. There's more to talk about in the format for sure, but that is the headline and I, I do think we got to let our listeners know, like, if you haven't, if you didn't already know that that is really what's going on with this format, or at least a big part of it. Yeah, Heroes are great. Villains are not. Kind of flavorful, I guess I was going to say. Is that on purpose? Wait a minute, do they get a. Like, are they like ha, ha ha. Well, they certainly did not want this spread that there's no shot. Right. The format is fast. It's not like crazy fast. I would say, like, it's comparable to like it's about average or even slightly slower than a lot of the formats we've seen over the last couple years. It feels like a medium fast but creature based format. Right. Like that's kind of the. Yeah, you don't really want to be like messing around too much, but. Right. And certainly you can get curved out and like the bounce spells are really good, but it's also like. And this actually wrote a really interesting thread on Twitter, as surprising as that sounds, and part of his. It's actually really interesting, he's talking about how they, they've gone a little away from the set skill. You know how we always talked about how like every set has its six drop creature that gains life and it's, you know, bounce spell that puts you second to the top. And like I always pictured a matrix of checkboxes. Yeah, it's actually pretty, pretty accurate as to how these things pan out. But even though that I think is still like, you can, you can see that fairly present here that they're, they're making more departures from that than they normally do. Like Strixhaven, for example, had tons of spells in it. Right. That was like, it's its whole theme. And this format, it has weaker two drops in terms of quality and weaker removal than a lot of other formats. So that's, that's a kind of interesting thing to keep in mind. I think that, that does, that does impact how like the format plays out. But the format is. Yeah, it's pretty extreme. I mean, I would say like in terms of what you play against and how, and how it Seems to play out, but it isn't crazy, crazy fast. Even though curves are a big part of that. The Land Cyclers are all pretty good. I mean obviously the blue and white ones are better because blue and white are better than the other colors. But all of them are solid. I think that the combination of being colorless to get any land so they're just straight up fixing being relatively powerful cards on their own and it not being like game over if you don't have a 2 drop has meant that I'm pretty happy playing those Land Cyclers all the time. I. I find myself using them on two pretty often where that seems to have been the death knell for them in the past where if you did that on turn two, you were putting yourself pretty far behind. But I found that I often don't have a better play on turn two. I feel that the weaker two drops that you mentioned, Luis, I'm really feeling that. Yeah. And I like that. I mean I, I really like that they're trying different things and it's not all like kind of feeling the same or whatever. Like I, I certainly support that. You know, I, I obviously like the color balance here is going to be an issue and we're going to kind of continue to be revisiting that as we go through but to see if the format can correct itself. Right. Yeah. I mean it. That, that is where I think drafting on not arena might be in some ways more profitable in terms of like enjoying the format. Not, not literally profitable. I don't mean that. I just mean like if you. I think you might see more of that effect because an arena you often are gonna just play whatever the best deck is. You play against it a lot. It's not quite as self correcting because it's not pod play. So. Right. And I think that does matter. You know, like that is the sort of thing that you, you are going to feel. But the lands, to go back to the specific cards, the lands that draw cards like Avengers Tower, Baxter Building, that sort of thing, Villainous Lair, they're all really good. Like again, speaking to this format being like a little bit slower, I have been enjoying playing those cards and have. Have found them to be quite strong. I have two and I've been surprised by it. I. I was, you know, I mean those have been traditionally too slow. And then we get what looks to be a creature based format that looks, you know, on board and quick. Not, not super fast. Not like bloomborrow or something like that, but you know, fast. Ish. Yet I'VE still felt like I've had time to activate those cards, draw cards, or look at my library or whatever. Even the Connive, you know, I've been doing that too. Yeah, I think that, I mean, I, I, I think that I, I think that the form that is a strong point of the format. I think it is a lot more fun to, to be able to do stuff like that. So having lands that help mitigate flood is awesome, you know. Oh, for sure. Yeah. I mean, plays out really nicely. Yeah, I, you know, and I, and I have to say that that was an adjustment that I had to make because I did not. Because I've had a hard time finding early drops. I, I just, I feel like I get halfway through every draft and I have a lot of threes and a lot of fours and I have almost no ones and twos. And I have to like, consciously make myself grab two drops that are like cards that don't catch my eye or not are like, ooh, you know, I got this. I'm gonna, I'm gonna grab it. It's more like, yeah, I guess I need this. You know, it's more like I feel myself kind of fighting a little bit with checking the box. And it really long time since I felt that way. And it, like I said, to the point, it's to the point that I move my land cyclers over to the 2 drop now because I'm like, well, that, that will, that could be an important part of how my curve plays out is that I spend my two man on a cycler. So. Yeah, and I think that that overall is, it is nice to have that be an element. And I think you can get a lot of value out of the land cyclers and a special lens which is especially worth noting because most sets a land that's like three tap or four tap draw card effectively is just. You never use it. That's too slow. Too slow. But in this set, I found myself using it a lot. It doesn't help hurt that Avengers Tower, for example, is also just straight up color fixing your blue white heroes deck and splash an off color hero or just tap for blue or white mana for your heroes. So it's just like a great land too. But the bad news, well, more bad news because the blue, the color balance isn't ideal. I have not found the build arounds to be very good. And looking at win rates, they're not like, at least not right now. Maybe things change, you know, in a little bit or something. But right as of right now, the build arounds are looking pretty grim. Yeah. I mean that's probably just because of the way that blue like the white based decks play out. Right. Which is on board creature based get you dead like it just. Again, they're not ultra quick or anything but they are consistent, powerful creature based attacking decks that you know they do. They punish spend 4 mana. Nothing happens like they do. Yeah. And. And, and the build arounds are some combo of. Yeah. Not effective enough and some combo of you know, too slow. I don't know. Whatever. Whatever it ends up being, it's. It's going to be some amount of all that. And I really haven't been too impressed by like. Like if you look at the plans, for example, there's one plan that's head and shoulders above the rest. Can you guess what it is? Is it the white one drop. Huh? Political triumph. Great. Above 60 win rate. Is it? Wow. Okay. Yeah. I didn't think it was that high, but I have. Yeah. I've been. I mean it's funny. I had the similar experience win rate. Oh my God. What human training has a higher win rate than the mythic Thor? And that's not to say the hero in training is better than Thor. It's just saying white is better than red. It's saying white's dragon, but it's saying both white is white better than red. And that here in trading is a good card. But if you Look. Holy smokes. 62.3. What? Yeah. And so that's one of the best cards in the set. Somehow. I guess not. Well, yeah, it's still on the list. Holy crap. Yeah, I mean, I mean these things like they, they really. There are some. Yeah. We can do a cards it's currently better than. But there's so many it wouldn't even be a point to do it. Yeah. And before circuits, you know, arises from the grave to kill us better then is not what we're saying. We're saying it like again, it's not that here in training is better than you know any of like the, the like dark deed, the two mana minus four minus four or Thor or whatever. It's just that these cards like are in worse colors. And here in training also is you know, a good card for the best deck. Like it is a good card. It is a very bad card. Yeah. But head to head. Yeah. Like you, you know like heroin training and King t' Challa should not be read on the same win rate. But they just are. They are. Yeah. You know, so yeah, we'll. We'll do some crackbacks, we'll talk through it. But at least as of right now, especially on Arena, I, I or I, I haven't seen the drafts adjust quite as much. I don't know. I haven't. Well, sorry, I have not drafted on Magic Online. I've only been drafting on Arena. But in historically, when there's like a really unbalanced format, color wise, it, the balance does happen when you draft in paper or online a little more than on Arena. Especially with arena matchmaking, you just play against blue light five times in a row or whatever. Whatever. Right. Okay. Well, I have two. I see how I have two. Two things to say. One is, so would you predict at the pro tour draft tables then that blue white is contested but also fought for in the sense of you can't just get it. It'll still be, it'll still be the best deck. It is the best deck. But yeah, it will be more contested. And then the other one. I had an observation that I wanted to see what your thoughts were, Luis. It's a little early perhaps, but to me, the archetypes don't have a really strong distinct feel between them. You know, like, if you go to like Secrets of Strix Haven like you, you really kind of knew what deck you were in. Like you were doing very different things when they were siloed off in those color pairs like that. But here, you know, the difference between the Heroes deck and the Villains deck to me feels a lot more like just a win rate difference than like a how it feels when you play them. It's just like checking a different creature type. And the only deck that's kind of stood out has been artifacts, because there's a lot of cards that feel almost a little bit siloed off in the sense of like wanting either to be or to see other artifacts around. And then if, but if you're not doing that, you just sort of go, eh, you know, and you just ignore it. But with that one exception, you know, when I'm playing out these games so far, they all just kind of feel like creature decks to me. They're just like putting stuff on the board and doing it. And I'm not even really complaining about that because that is my preferred stance. I, I like those. But I will say my perspective, it feels like they played it a little safe with this set. Like they didn't really try for like a bunch of diverse, different archetypes that really feel different. You know, where you're like, I'm grabbing up all the Spells, or I'm all artifacts or, you know, I'm trying to do some very narrow, you know, graveyard is all that matters to me. I just dump stuff in the yard and. And then I'm going to win and, you know, that kind of thing. It, it doesn't feel like that to me. How, how has your experience been as far as differentiating between the archetypes? Well, you know, I, I. The games. I haven't minded how some of the games have played out there. There are some. Definitely some interesting games. Um, but, yeah, they're pretty straightforward. It's mostly just we're both playing creatures and plays to pump those creatures and, and how good is your creature versus mine? Yeah, there's not a lot of, like, combos, except for when it comes alongside of a strong creature. Yeah. I mean, so, yeah, and I think that's okay. I don't mind. You know, I don't mean that as a, as a major complaint, though. You know, you talk to me in a month and I might be like, you know, the build arounds didn't quite pan out, and the decks kind of feel similar to each other. Those are knocks against longevity. But, but also, if I'm in Wizards of the coast seat, I'm like, this is Marvel superheroes, bro. Like, you can't, you can't take these big risks and have multiple archetypes just completely flop and then have this set just kind of be a big stinker, you know, you just kind of need to hit a solid double with a set like this, I think. And right now they have, with the exception of this color imbalance like white beans. So, so good is. Is a big problem. Yeah. I would not say it's the most ambitious game plan as we've seen. The, the builder owns not really working out so well is, you know, certainly part of that. Yeah. An unforgivable crime against the player base. Okay, let's crack some packs, Lis. What do you say? Yeah, let's do it. All right, first card up is Burrow Backup. This is the White Land Cycler. So this is four and a white for a sorcery that gives you two, three. Two white hero creature tokens with vigilance. And it has basic land cycling for two. Yeah, these have been good, man. Like, I'm. Yeah, we, we liked them in the set review, but you and I are always just a little apprehensive because we have, like, multiple cycles of these and then gotten into the set and been like, they still just somehow aren't performing. These ones. Finally Got over the line. Whether it's because of the two drop thing that I mentioned or maybe they're just straight up good enough now, but I mean, good God. Five mana for two, three two Vigilance. And they're both heroes is like, that's a good card. Right? It's like, that's hard to argue with that. Yeah. You know what? That's as good with a political triumph. Yeah, it's a very strong combo. Next up is Wakandan Royal Guard. This is the 4 in a green 44 human soldier hero with Vigilance. And when it enters, you put a plus and plus one counter on target creature. And if that creature is a hero, you to put two plus one plus one counters on it instead. Yeah, this, this card is playable but not particularly exciting. It's funny because it feels like it's about on the same power level as a basic Land Cyclers, but it doesn't basic land Cycle. So it feels kind of oppressive being locked into the four mana or the five mana slot. You're like, I have to actually pay five for this. When you do though, it is good. Yeah. Next up is Ninja of the Hand. This is the two in a Black two two Death Touch with power up four and a black. Each opponent discards a card and you put a plus one plus one counter on this. This card hasn't been spectacular for me either. Can I nab their draw step with this thing? Yeah, yeah. I mean it's a lot of mana and they'd have to have no cards in hand. But. But sure, sure is a card you can do. It is a reason that you should play out your last card. Like sometimes you, you, you, you. You hold a card to bluff. Ninja of the Hand is just going to snipe it. So you play against black. I think it's reasonable to. Yeah, yeah. This is a good example though of when you compare this to the blue and white cards. You know, this one's just a step down. Right. It's fine. Right. Like you're not, you know, ashamed of yourself for playing Ninja of the Hand. But it is not great. And so many of the commons in, in blue, white, green are. Are just great. And it's a problem that you see over and over again. Next up is Futurist Forge. This is the one in a blue artifact when it ETBS you draw a card and you can pay 33 in a blue and sack it to draw two cards. Good example of what I was talking about, Luis, where it feels a little siloed off like I haven't found a blue deck that isn't artifacts that wants futurist forged. Like, it's not price to move for just drawing cards. It's more like I'm either desperate for a 2 drop or I'm in Artifacts. Yeah, I. There. There are some cool things you can do with it, but you know, like blinking it with like Wiccan, for example, the. The 44 flyer. But. And. And I. In theory, like, you could use a hide. The hydraulic mech, the hydraulic helper, the 2:3 to like make that a little faster. But it's Artifacts hasn't seemed quite good enough. But I have drafted. And I want to talk about it today because I've actually drafted it a bunch of times. Oh, okay. I haven't yet at all. Like, only played against. Yeah, it's. I mean, it's got. It's got some cool stuff going on definitely. But I think that futurist Forge is a little bit homeless as a result though. Next up is Brave Brawler. This is the one in a white two one LifeLink Hero with power up four and a white. It gets two counters. Yeah, I mean it's any. Any white hero that costs like four or less mana is good. Yes. That is. If not. That is the bar first. For real? Yeah. And this is a card that is definitely in my mind being pulled up by the others. It's totally fine. But this. This fine. But if white was. I've never been unhappy when they cast this card. Exactly, exactly. But it checks the boxes. It's two mana, it's a hero, and it has extra place to put some mana. Next up is Hulk Smash one in a red. With teamwork four, you can choose one or both if you teamwork. A destroy target, non creature artifact, and then it's a bite spell. This is actually a speed totally fine card. Yep. Like, it's. There's a decent amount of artifacts laying around and. And it's a good fight spell. Yeah, it just plays out fine. It does. And. But. But again, you know, we have to note that the red removal, you know, lightning strike's been quite strong, but it falls off like it's. It's. You know, they didn't push that for the black and red removal. And I think that's why we see black and red together falling so far behind the rest of the pack. The villains aren't quite up to snuff, but normally you'd be able to fall back on like, you know, say a one mana removal spell that could kill a one or two Drop. And then it would scale up from there. And while there is removal around, it doesn't quite hit as hard as you need it to hit. You know, I keep. Every time I see. What's it called? The one in a black minus two, minus two and. And. Or Death Touch. You know, I always think of what. What. I can't remember what it's called from like Dominaria, but it's one in a black minus two minus two. And then you can do something else and it gets minus five, minus five instead. Yeah, they've played this card a few times. It's like the two mana and then you kick it. Like sacking a creature in this case, or. Yeah, it was kind of like they had that in March of the Machines as well. Exactly. And I. I think, oh, now that would be business. But giving some random thing. Death Touch is nice. Like, it does matter sometimes, but it's not the same thing as a removal spell that scales up perfectly with the game. Next up is Raft security officer. This is the one in a white one. Three human soldier of note. Not a hero. And you can pay 2 mana. Tap it to tap a creature, but it only costs one mana if it targets a creature with power three or less. And three is actually kind of a lot. This. This plays as a one mana tapper for like a good chunk of the game. And then, you know, as the game scales, a bigger creature comes on, you have more mana. It can scale up there too. It's been fine. Pretty. Pretty decent card. Yeah. This card has played out really well for me and my opponents. It basically, you end up in a spot where, like, most of the time it just costs one to do the thing, and sometimes it costs two, and that's still fine. The biggest knock on this, obviously, is that it's not a hero. It's not a hero. Yeah, I found out. I found that out, I guess, the hard way. I played in the arena direct, and my first match of the entire, like, my first sealed first match was against Sam Pardee. And he played usually a good thing, you know, dude, not good. Not good. Bad. I'm like, really? And he played. What's his name? Colson. Jack Colson. John Colson. And on turn two, I had no answer for it. And hilariously, he actually curved out, including playing a coye and a Raft security officer. And somehow the tokens and also the rap security officer are not heroes. So even though he activated it every turn, it was just a coye getting the tokens. It did beat me. He beat me pretty Handily, I had no answer for. For. What is it Phil for Dr. Phil? No, Sergeant Phil. Agent. Agent. Agent Phil Coulson. Yeah. Anyway, but yeah, Rap. Security officer. Not a hero, but still good enough to make the deck. Anyway, next up is. Go nuts. This is the Green sorcery with teamwork. 3. Choose one or both. If you teamwork it, put a plus one plus some counter. Target creature. And then target creature you control fights. Turret creature. An opponent control. It's been good. Yeah. I mean, it's a great card. The biggest knock on this is that it's just a green card. Yeah. Like, that's. Which is kind of a shame because I. I feel like it's. It. It's a really strong fight, supposedly one mana. Yeah. Yeah. And you can make this happen a lot. And there's a lot of cool ways that you can do it where you play creature and then do this on that creature plus one plus one. One of your attackers fight with the other creature. Clear the way, easy attacks, etc, and for one mana, you definitely feel like you're getting your money's worth. We have four uncommons in this pack. The first one is Kazar of the Savage Land, for. In a green for a 3:2. And when it ETBs, you make a 2:2 named Zabu, which is a legendary 2:2 that has landfall. Put a plus one plus one counter on this, and then Kazar has. You may look at the top card of your library anytime, and you may play lands from the top here. Library. Great card. Really good two. Yeah. Currently the best green card and win rate, but, you know, not as good as. As random white commons, of course. Right. But still, that is a fantastic five drop. Next up is Crossbones, Malicious Mercenary. That's the three in a black 33 death touch. It's a legendary villain, and it says whenever another villain you control enters, put a plus and plus one counter on Crossbones then. Or, sorry, he deals two damage to each opponent. This ability triggers only once each turn. I mean, you do need uncommon plus villain payoffs to make that deck do anything. Like, even the. The blue black version and stuff like that. And Crossbones is one of them. Like, this is the legit card. Oh, it's a really good card. I mean, that. The problem here, as we all know, is that it's just in the wrong archetype. It is villains. It's just really not where you want to be. Yeah. Next one is another very. I mean, excellent card for the archetype. It's Baron Strucker, Hydra overlord This is the two in a black. Yeah, two in a black. Two. Two legendary villain. And it makes your villains cost one less to cast. And then whenever. Whenever another villain you control enters, you may have it Connive. Do this only once each turn. Man, there's a lot of truckers. Awesome. It is. You can play this and then play a villain in the same turn and get the connive. And even if he dies, it's. It's very good. Very, very strong card. Yeah, I, I've had a lot of experience. I've had this a bunch. And it. The. The. The combination of mana reduction plus card draw. I mean, you're breaking even because you're just conniving. But it's still like you get to tear through your deck pretty fast and do all the things you want to do. Yeah. And as you said during the set review, you know, if you are playing a villain, colors, color pair, like blue black, or black red, you will have enough villains kind of on accident. And if you focus on it, you can have a ton. Like you can have 14 villains or something in the deck. Next up is Iron Lad. Diverging destiny. This is the two in a blue 22. Flying vigilant. Vigilance. Legendary artifact. Creature. Human hero. And it says you may look at the top card of your library anytime and you can tap it to reveal the top card of your library. And if it's an artifact, you draw a card. I've liked Iron Lad a lot. There's some cool stuff you can do. You need to have a stop set because on your upkeep, because let's say you turn three, you tap out for Iron Lad, Arena's just going to auto pass you. And if they go fast and pass it back, you might not have an opportunity. Because when you play it, you know your top card. And if your top card is an artifact, you want to upkeep. Use Iron Lad most of the time. Right. Because getting a card out of it, such a big game, free card, it's not a big deal that you didn't get to attack that turn. The main thing keeping this down is just that artifacts isn't that good. But other than that, like, it's. It's a. It's a fantastic card. Yeah. Do you. Do you view it as an artifact? Like, I guess, what's the number? You know, like I had six artifacts in a deck and I did run it. I wasn't planning on popping off with it, but I figured the combination of reasonable stats, plus maybe I get one card out of it at some point. Plus, I don't know. Do you put any value on knowing the next card of your library? I guess there's something. Yeah, it's. There's something there. I would want like 10 to 12 artifacts, you know, before. And more is better if you can. But. So. So would you say I should have left it out of the deck? Probably, yeah. In a six artifact deck, I mostly would not play this card. Okay. Yeah, I felt like I was on the edge, but apparently I was far from it. Our rare is Absorbing Man. This is the one. Green blue. 44 Vigilance. Legendary villain. And at the beginning of your first main phase, until your next turn, Absorbing man becomes a copy of up to one target artifact, non aura enchantment or land. Except his name is Absorbing man. He is a 44 legendary human villain creature in addition to his other types. And he has vigilance. So he basically remains Absorbing man but can get the attributes of what. From what I've seen, it's just always a land like you just. You copy your planes or whatever and. Or your. Your forest or something. But that's. That's upside though. Certainly the coolest thing you can do with this is. Or the most common thing you do with this is copy. Yeah. Right. And then. And then you end up with a pretty decent card. So I. I mean, I guess I wouldn't mind taking Absorbing man first. Yeah. I think for me I would take Kazar of the Savage Land. I. I know I'm not supposed to or whatever, but like I wouldn't say not supposed to. One of the things that's good about Kazar is that it's so splashable. So I. I don't mind taking Kazar for that reason. Yeah. Also, you know, if you are trying to stick to the current trend of white based decks being the best thing to do. You know, White, green is. Is the second best deck in the format currently. So you are not out and plus. And it's a hero. Right, and. Exactly. And we're not missing any key white cards. You know, we opened Burrow Backup, Brave Brawler and Raft Security Officer. Yeah. These are all the filler cards for White. They happen to be better than the other filler cards in the set. But you know, these are. These aren't the bombs or anything that are drawing you in that direction anyway. So I would take Kazar. What do you. Yeah, no, I like Kazar actually. I. I like Absorb Man. The card is kind of. Kind of clowned me every time I played against it. But you should probably just Kazar. Yeah, Especially because blue Green is fine. It's kind of mid low in the pack. It's like playable. Okay, let's do another crack a pack. They never end. Our first card out is a Wakandan Royal Guard, the the four and a green four. Four that we talked about before. Next up is. Yeah, like, this is a good example of a perfectly reasonable card, but they just didn't push the removal. This is Repulsor Blast. This is the three in a red Sorcery. It does five damage to a creature. And then if you teamwork two to it, it also does two damage to that creature's controller. It's just not pushed right. It's fine. It checks the box. But, like, it's not an instant. It only does five occasionally. That extra point of damage matters. You know, these little things at le, they. They did make it friendly. Like, teamwork two is the baseline. Teamwork. It means you can almost always teamwork it if you choose to do so. And the two damage does matter. So I like that part about it. But, you know, when I see a repulsor blast, I'm not like, oh, thank God I got a repulsor blast. I'm like, sure. You know, I think it's also tough because it does have to stand up to. To Lightning Strike, you know, which is legitimately very efficient by comparison. And it. And it, you know, doesn't hold up quite as well. Yeah. My experience with the removal spells is really that if you're the one playing creatures and they're the one playing removal spells, you're. You're getting a pretty significant advantage. Agreed. And, you know, and we talk about this a lot with the. The tempo nature of how removal works now, which is that you almost always need to be either even with mana, that they paid for it, or even profiting in that way. And that is one way that you can get ahead in a game of magic. But if the table set the way it is in this set, where you already are starting off a little bit, like, even if you break even, you're kind of behind, like a lot of the creatures leave behind something else or get you a card or, you know, are part of a bigger plan or whatever, where you may not even be able to keep up if you're even on mana, it puts a lot of pressure on the removal to be really efficient. Like, really efficient. And cards like repulsor blasts are not. I mean, you are looking to break even with that card. Maybe you kill a 5 drop or something, and you're like, oh, I did it. You know, but it's sorcery speed, it's expensive, and, yeah, it just doesn't really keep up. Next up is Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. this is the two in a white two, four, human hero, and it's also a spy. And it says whenever a creature you control attacks alone, that creature gets plus one. Plus one until return. This is a good opportunity to talk about that archetype Louise as another one that, again, it pops up the attack alone thing every once in a while, but it's not. Excuse me. Every single game. Yeah. It's the sort of thing that, like. Excuse me. Oh, you're good. Good, good. It's the sort of thing that, like, yeah, you can say, like, hey, this is a theme in the set. And, you know, sometimes it does come come true, but it's not. I wouldn't go so far as to say it's even feeling like an archetype at all. Right. That's how I feel, too. It comes up sometimes in the game. It is a thing, but it is. If you draft black, white, you will attack alone when the board state dictates it. But many, many, many times, it's not. You're just attacking with your creatures and calling it good. That said, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has been fine. Yeah, it's okay. Next up is. It's a card that's mostly getting carried by the fact that its color combination is good. Decoy ploy 1. In a black instant, choose one or both. Return a villain or a hero card from your graveyard to your hand. So I. I've kind of, like splashing this card or, you know, kind of, like enabling it a little. Like, I had a red black deck that had Justice, Vance Astrovic, the. The two mana, the three mana. Two. Two flying that bounces a creature. You mean the Marshallist card. Like, lock it in. Oh, yeah. And if you end up in a spot where you have, like, two or three of whatever, the smaller number is, like a couple blue villains in your blue, white deck or a couple red, black, white, whatever heroes in your, like, red, red, black deck. This card can be pretty good. It's not usually worth messing around with, but the mana fixing in this format is actually really good. So there's something you can do here. Most definitely. Yeah. I found it. I found it to be good enough and pretty often that you can get both and. And that's. That checks the box. All right, here we go. Next up is Lightning Strike. So we actually have Repulsor Blast and Lightning Strike both in the Same pack one in a red instant does three damage to any. Any target. You know, I. The way I see it is Lightning Strike is great, but again the format is a little bit hostile to removal based plans. And I just don't think it's enough to drag red out of the muck. You know, it's just. Yes, that helps that that was a good thing to do. But it needed. It needed more. Especially from its creatures or needs more. Next up is call Damage Control. This is the one in a green sorcery. Choose up to two and return those cards from your graveyard to your. You can choose an artifact, creature, enchantment or land. I have not been playing this card. No. Well, part of that is that like the green decks that are good are. Are. Are usually like the heroes ones that are attacking a bunch and. Exactly. And you're not messing around with random other types. I think this card actually can be kind of legit and sealed. Especially if you have something like the Superhero Civil War or any of those really ridiculous cards, you know. Totally. Yeah. I. Which by the way, that card. We should talk. That card is stupid. It's so tough. That thing can win games that other cards definitely cannot. Yeah, I main. I. I think the main point is. Yeah, you just can't mess with stuff like this. You know, like this is a card that might be able to get you some value. Basically the idea is I get a creature and then maybe I get something else and you're just happy with whatever else you have to. To grab. But I don't want to sit here and look down at call Damage Control in my hand rather than just seeing a creature. Next is giant growth green. Instant target creature goes plus 3. Plus 3 until end of turn. Sure. Yeah. I mean it's a playable card in like green white for example. But yeah, not. Not a card. You're. You're. You're like stoked about. I feel like the number of this that I want is like 0.5 per deck on average. It's like every other deck I'll some one giant growth will slip in there and otherwise I'm not. I just want more creatures and stuff. Next is Hawkeye's bow. This is the red equipment that gives a creature plus one plus zero and reach. And whenever the creature becomes tapped, it deals one damage to each opponent. And the equip cost is one. They tried Luis 1 Mana 1 to equip a bunch of ones on the title, but it just feels a little too low powered still when. When my opponent plays this against me this is one that I'm like, oh, thank God. Yeah, I agree. I, I, I've had some fun with this card with, with Hawkeye, you know, where you start to really make like a ping deck. I had a, a bunch of the 1 3, like the, the Hydra doom bots, Hydra assault robot, the one three that pings when you play an artifact or villain, and the bow and Hawkeye Young Avenger, and you just like, just damage them out. Photon blasts and stuff. But yeah, most of the time, that's not really how this plays out. Yeah. And Hawkeye is pretty dang good on its own. Doesn't really. The bow, it turns out, uncommons Training regimen three in a green enchantment creatures you control plus with plus one plus one counters on them have trample. And at the beginning of combat, on your turn, put a plus one plus one counter on target creature you control. They do not make you wait for it. So that's kind of nice. How has this card been doing? I kind of like it, but maybe I'm bad. Yeah, I'm really bad. It's terrible. I don't, I don't think it's particularly good now. Oh, no, it's bad. Bad. Like below average bad. Yeah. This is a, this is a good example of being too slow, right? I mean, one way to read this card is formana to put a plus one plus one counter on a creature. Now, as the game progresses, you may be able to capitalize more on that, but how many counters do you need to get out of this before you even feel like you got your mana's worth? It's got to be like three or four, right? Yeah, I was gonna say like four. And yeah. And that takes for absolute ever. I love cards like this that let you set up a longer game plan, but it doesn't seem to line up with the format. It's just too slow again, you know, and, and I, I keep thinking about this, Luis. We talked about it in the set review as well, but I keep going back to that thought I have of. So you, you come up to me and you say, I have a green red deck or whatever it is, right? And you go, should I play training regimen or should I play the common 3 in a green 34 with some ability in the set, Right. A common. Just a regular, you know, a C. Right. Should I play a C level creature with the same mana cost or should I play training regimen? And it's like these type of cards always look cool and interesting, but I always go, you know, I think you're gonna win more if you just play the stupid 3 4. Like, yep, whatever it is. And. And that's not a. Not a great thing. Next up is White Widow Free Agent. This one's kind of funny because it's both a hero and a villain. It's three and a white for a two three. And when it enters, you can either put a plus one plus one counter on up to two target creatures, or you can return an artifact or enchantment from your graveyard to your hand. Is card solid? I mean, obviously it's. It's good in the hero curve out deck. And I've used the enchantment raised dead part a few times. Like, I. Yeah, it helps if you have, like, specific cards that. That are like, I don't want to keep going back to Superheroes of War. Somebody did that to me. A busted saga. Yeah, totally. It is good. Yeah. And. And what you're saying is exactly right. A busted saga. Like, because those go to the yard on their own. It is not common that your removal spells, you know, your webs and stuff like that are going to end up in the yard. They do every once in a while and then great. But otherwise you're just like, sure, you know, getting some counters. It's a good part of a curve out. Also, it is funny to see it right next to Training Regiment, right? Because like, if you look at White Widow, right, I'm getting four power and five toughness now. Like right now, out of this card, if I control one other creature, I get all of that versus training regimen, where it's going to take me four and a half turns to get that return. That's ridiculous. Next up is Moonstone. Harsh Mistress. This is the three in a black two four flying villain. And it says whenever you discard a card, which, by the way, is almost always through connive, like, that's kind of the main way to do it or rummage or whatever. But you may exile that card from your graveyard if you do until. Until the end of your next turn, you may play that card. I mean, you're just not going to be doing this card very often, right? I mean, I. This is a. I think this is a victim of. Of two things. One, the villain deck being bad. So this. And this card is not clearly great. It needs help, right? A three, four mana, two four flying villains. Okay. But definitely not checking the box fully. And then it needs some other way to get connive or rummaging or looting or something going. Yes, that is a powerful Combo. But then you find the other half of the problem, which is villains are bad on one side and then on the other side the other decks are assertive. This is a slow card that this is not one of those cards that you play and you go boom. Take over the game. It's like boom. I played a maybe averagely costed creature in a sub powered deck and now I need to do a bunch of other stuff to try to get some value out of it. That is not a combination. If this card fit into an already good archetype, it would probably be fine. Like you'd probably be like, yeah, yeah, sure, I'll take it. You know, it has just enough checkboxes to get it over the line. But as it stands, it's the opposite. Yeah. Is unfortunate because there's some cool stuff. Like, you know, you can see the hints of cool things, but it's also just not that pushed to begin with, I think is our part of the problem too. Exactly. Same with the next card, actually. War Machine, legacy of Iron 2 and a Red White Hybrid. So 3 Mana total for a 13 Flying Hero. And it says at the beginning of combat, on your turn, another target creature you control gets plus X. Plus zero where X is War Machines power. So this is a cool card. I found a really good combo with it. Would you find Vision Quest because it's an artifact. So if you, let's say spend five mana, you get a four six flying and then it immediately pumps one of your other creatures plus four unless you attack. But if you spend six mana, you all now you're getting a five seven haste. That's giving plus five plus zero to another creature. Dude, that is cool. You can just fireball them out. It's actually pretty sick. That is great. Yeah, you know, I. My experience with this card has been that it's surprisingly difficult to get its power above one consistently. Like yes, there are some artifact, some equipment around, but I don't often run them. And it's like I'm not. There are some really good equipment. There are some really good equipment. And I think if you have it, I would bump up War Machine a bit. Both because it has flying and because of the bonus. But on its own, it, it, it's a little. It feels a little underpowered when my opponent plays it. I'm not going like, oh no, I can't beat that. I'm going, oh, okay. Yeah, you did it. You know, but it feels like they just played kind of another. You know, Agents of SHIELD is like roughly comparable card you know, it doesn't, it doesn't feel like it's doing something crazy. I do like that combo. Our rare gleaming bastion. Come on, Jeff. Jeff, please. This is a dual land. We obviously have producer Jeff just generate our cracker packs and we don't tell him to do anything. But. And, and he did his job this time for sure because we got a stupid blue white duel, which I'm not taking. No. But do you, do you want to know that how high the win rate is on the. The blue white land? The blue white common land Adventures Avengers hangar. It's like 58.7. It's almost on the gain land, slightly edging out Iron man armor of the mythic. Yeah. So, so that, but that is a really great. That is a great illustration of what you were saying about, like, circuit break popping up and being like. No. Right. Which is that, you know, the, the, the rising tide does lift all the boats of a particular color pair or archetype and lend win can win rate to it. I wonder if there's a way to tease out what the cards are that are raising the bar versus the ones that aren't. Is it just the ones with the higher win rate than them? Is it that simple? Yeah, yeah. I, I, it's not that simple because there's also, like, synergies and stuff to consider. But yeah, there is definitely a lot of things going on in. It's interesting. Yeah. So take the land because it makes it more likely that you're in blue white, and then you can win. So what do we want to take here? I mean, we've got White Widow Free Agent. We've got Lightning Strike. It's actually kind of a weak pack overall. Yeah, I would take White Widow over Lightning Strike. I would too. I just, I just don't think that you're supposed to take a red card over a white card. It's almost impossible for that to be right. You know, like, honestly, the War Machine is pretty good too. Like, if you can get some counters on it. I mean, the fact that it is a hero is pretty nice. And it's a little. It's not that flexible because you're just not going to want to cast it for red very often. Producer Jeff says that he did Gleaming. He chose the Gleaming Bastion Pact because it's the headliner for the set. It's like he's trying to be in line with our, with our headline of blue White's really good. Well, great job, Jeff. Yeah. But, yeah, no, I think I would probably just take White Widow Guess White Widow. Yeah, I would do. This is a pretty weak pack, to be honest. Quite weak. Quite gleaming. Bastion is probably the best card here. Honestly. Maybe that is like I'm not even. I'm not even way. No way. Come on. Yeah, you should take White Wood. You should take White Widow. But I would take white. It depends. It depends how committed you are to being blue eyed, that's all. I mean, it does show incredible commitment to take a blue eyed duo back one big one over a reasonable white card. Okay, so which. Which of the archetypes did you want to highlight here? Well, I want to talk a little bit about blue white, just very briefly. It's exactly what you think it is, which is you're supposed to take as many blue and white heroes at a reasonable curve with some good bounce spells. Like. Right. You know, things like, like the Stricter stress stratagem is just such a good card. So good. The Connive is the best kicker they've had on one of these. And this appropriately is like one of the top blue cards of all rarities. Like it's just a really good card. And what we're going to talk some more about individual cards to highlight, but in general, just the blue and white cards are very strong. And you should look at white as the main color, blue as the support color. And this is where you should be looking to be given no other information. Like without. Without knowing anything else. So one card I wanted to mention for it, I don't know if you had it on. There was Murdoch's Crusade. Yeah, the. The Daredevil one, the Exile Enchantment. Or a card that creature that costs four more. Yeah, we gave it a low grade thinking that it would be far too narrow at sorcery speed. And then, you know, we kind of knocked it for being like, it's Exile target creature with toughness four or greater, which sometimes there are, sometimes there's not. And then it's Exile target enchantment with mana value for greater, which felt kind of unnecessarily punishing on a teamwork for sorcery. Right. It was kind of like I can't just hit a different enchantment. But I guess they knew what they were doing by making it difficult because, yeah, this card's actually quite strong. There are numerous enchantments that are worth hitting at the four slot. You know, there is an enchantment sub theme in this set that you could say it's not that it cares about enchantments, but there's just a decent amount of them. And then yeah, this is really good against the problematic creatures that you face. The high toughness, the big stuff out of green, that type of thing. That can be good blockers. Murdoch's crusade can do it. And if you ever get to teamwork it it's nasty way better than we thought. Yeah, I agree. Okay. So I think that blue light you're gonna is. Is really not that difficult to figure out. Like obviously if we discover some interesting things to drill down in more we'll go into it in another show. But like that's like the level one part of the show. I did want to talk about blue red artifacts. Even literally in our show notes I put blue red artifacts, parentheses mostly don't draft this. And that is yet. I I, I have tried to draft this deck and you know it's, it really is just. There's not that many reasons to do it. The the the main reasons are are at the high rarity. Vision Quest is actually amazing. Definitely underrated that one by a lot. It just turns out you the the plus one plus one counters kind of give you your money back in terms you spent two mana above what that creature cost. Right. I thought we gave it a pretty decent build around. We said it was okay, but it's actually like really good. I think it's like a car that you could first pick and draft artifacts. Like a build around a or something like that. Yeah, I think it's a builder on a. The the. The real big point to hit is just six mana. Go get a four drop. It's got haste and four plus one plus one counters. Like you know, there's just so many different things you could get at that spot. Various iron men or really anything. Yeah. And it could be really good. So Vision Quest is a reason Tony Stark the the the flip mythic that's also a 55 haste flyer that puts artifacts into play for free. Like that's another one. If you have either of those in their first couple picks of a draft, I would heavily consider going artifacts. And you don't even have to go like 16 artifacts. But you know having a lot of artifacts in your deck and these cards are good. Tony Stark's actually good enough without all that because you can just cast it as the six mana version. It does. Who cares. But it is a lot better if you do have artifacts. You want the two drop to do something if you and you want the six drop to put things into play for free because that's also a nice one. Past that once you are in Artifacts cards like SHIELD Deployment Drone, Aerial Doom Bot, Shuri Wakanda Inventories are all great cards, you know, making artifacts cheaper. The aerial Doombot is a really strong card. If that card is a hero, it would be obscene. It would be. It would immediately get like plus 2 to 3% win rate probably, but it's still very good. They give it in the heroes deck, it's a one man, a one on flyer that is also just a four. Four flyer. Right. Like that is. That is fantastic. Blue and red removal spells are fine. Things like Iron Lad can be good. There's like a. That ping sub theme where you can get Hawkeye Young Avenger, Hydra Assault Robot, Hawkeye's Bow, sometimes like Photon Blast, and there's a variety of, like, things that end up pinging and. And you know, that makes that a little bit better. Repulsor Blast also works with that. But mostly it's like if I open one of those busted artifact rares, I could see going into artifacts, but most of the time, I just don't think you're supposed to be doing that. It is. It is a cool deck. You know, in theory, it just. I haven't seen it, like, it work out all that well. Yeah, I think I. I think there's some meat on the bone, but you really have to be all in, and I think that's difficult. And you also need those narrow payoffs to come your way, and that's also difficult. It's. I think it's pushed the win rate down quite a bit. Also. Red is a. Is a color that has been struggling a bit. So you know, it. It is definitely a steep hill to climb. The thing I like about blue Red is that it has a real identity. Like it is the artifacts deck. Like, you know, there. There are cards that you want in that deck that other decks aren't interested in. And I think that this format feels like it's lacking that a little bit. So, like, blue Red artifacts is kind of a. A holdout for that style. That said, it's not doing well. Like, it's the second worst deck. It's. It's. It's the worst. You know, it's. It's the only. The only worst act in it is black red Villains. So, you know, maybe it's raw power level. Maybe it's people figuring out the right build for it. Maybe it's like the type of deck that if you do open Vision Quest, you go, okay, this is my. That's my green light to go for this deck. But I don't Force it. I don't go for it otherwise, that type of thing. But we'll have to see where it ends up settling, you know, big picture in the format. But you know, this is. This could also just very much be a casualty of, you know, white based X just being more consistent and powerful. Plus build around. You know, build around means narrow. Build around means taking on risk. Build around means I'm gonna play this, I'm gonna try to draft around it, but I'm at completely at the mercy of what gets open in the, in the packs. And I may not get the things that I need need for it. Where if you look at the decks like green, white, blue, white, they don't have that. They, they. There are plenty of things that you can slot in at any mana cost, any rarity to fill out a deck like this. As long as you're not the fifth person at the table in it, you're gonna and end up walking away with something. If you open up Vision Quest and go for it and you miss, like your deck could be an abject disaster. Like it could be very, very, very bad. So that is of course the downside to doing these highly synergistic decks. But I mean, if you draft a lot, it's worth it. And if that deck is there, I would go for it. I just haven't had it yet. I mean, the good news is what you said, which is there's not really a reason to do it. So you're going to end up getting the artifacts you want, I think a decent amount of the time. Like I don't think that's going to be a huge issue, you know, so. Yeah, and I messed around with that some and like, you know, kind of we talked about mostly just don't want to be doing that. But there, there is some interesting stuff for sure. And there's some cool cards. I want to talk about some individual cards as well, though. Already talked about War Machine Vision Quest. We got to talk about Earth's Mightiest Heroes. Turns out this card has been pretty good. It's like one of the saga that we were talking about. No, that's the 6 Mana collected company for all your creatures. It's just one of the top green cards, which isn't saying much because the green cards aren't that great, but it is. This card is actually pretty good. Oh, the. The mythic. Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. I have not played with her against yet, so it is really good. It's pretty strong. Yeah. Like it just gets a bunch of cards into play. You're supposed to play a bunch of heroes and a bunch of creatures. I mean, you just are frequently putting three to four creatures into play or whatever. Okay. Like, that's solid. Secret Invasion, another card we are kind of low on is better than that. It's not amazing, but it's good enough. Like, it's. It's. It's a decent card. It's like a B level card. I thought it was like a little bit worse than that. That's the. You or you put on a creature Exiles. Their creature turns into it. Yeah. And yeah, it's just enough as a removal spell or whatever. Yeah. SHIELD Spy kit is one of the big winners. That's the one white equipment which gives plus and plus one when it attacks alone. Untap it and SCRY one. This card is just good. Like, it is just a fantastic card. It just. I think it's hard to tell these things because it just. The numbers matter so much and how the games play out matter so much. And it turns out this is just all the sum of its parts is enough to make it like the pseudo vigilance, the scrying, the. The. The stat boost at the. At the right cost. The. The. The format speed. All that is added up to make this like a legit good card which a lot of formats you drop this into. It would not be. Stature size shifter is another one. I really like the one mana one one. The blue one where it's unblockable as long as one power, then you power it up at some point, hit him for like six on the final turn or seven. One thing to note that's come up is, like, if you put a plus one plus one counter on this, like through some other means, it stops being unblockable. So just make sure, like, I have intentionally not buffed this card before because I wanted to continue attacking with it. And you wanted to save it for the one attack, then buff and kill the. Yeah. Loki God of Mischief has been awesome as well. That's the two one that when you target something with an ability, you draw a card and it just. It just turns out there's just a lot of abilities like turn two Loki, turn three web up. Their creature draw card is awesome. Totally. I. I've done Loki into the. The villain that hits their hand for a number of cards in claw subjugator. Yeah. And it's just like, oh yeah, it. It is. Also, I. I think Loki is one of those cards that like, you may not realize how many abilities you have that are triggering Things like it'll trigger, and you're like, oh, yeah, sweet. I forgot about that. You know. Right. It's one of those cards, you know, I initially was like, okay, well, if you, if you take Loki, like, you have to make sure you have some ways to use it. Your opponent might not know if they play it. You're not sure. You should basically kill this card when you see it. I think, I think, I think it's, it's Loki is just ridiculous. Ridiculously good cards. Like, it's just going to draw a card. You know, with SHIELD Spy Kid, or other equipment, you just pay one to draw a card every turn. Right. Like, just equipping is enough. Oh, that's crazy. Yeah. Yeah. So I've been really impressed with Loki then. Photon Blast Barrage has been awesome. That's the red. Red x. Make x1 ones or deal x. Deal one damage and you can pay X to copy it. It just turns out, even without ways to combo with it, it's just there's enough small creatures that casting this for five mana, dealing four damage, killing a three, three and a one. One or two? Two twos is, is plenty fine. Yeah, it's been fine. Yeah. I, I, I. It, it went from a card I was, like, wondering about to one that I'm like, yeah, that's making the cut. Like, if I'm playing red, I'm, I'm putting that card in my deck, especially if I can ramp at all. But yeah, some of the rares, man, have been insane. I Do you think that we have a chance here for a, A prince format? Yeah, I, I, Because I feel like the best text don't do that. Like, blue, White doesn't really. I mean, it has the best rares, as it turns out, but it doesn't really need them. But at the same time, the removal's down. And these rares are dumb. Like, superhero Civil War is just stupid, crazy good. I mean, I think that it's, it's kind of confusing because, yes, on the one hand, certainly there are some ridiculous rares. More like. So the rares are peaking at levels that we normally don't see. Captain Marvel, the 54 Flying Life Wing is also like, like we're looking at win rates. We typically just don't even see it of any card in the set. Around 70%, you know, exactly. But also, a deck full of blue and white commons can beat any deck pretty well, so. Right. Yeah, normally I view it with my. Yeah, normally I view it like the, the thing to me, that brings a set from From Prince even. So it has to have really good rares. If the set doesn't, then it's not going to be a princet no matter what. But this one 100% checks that box. Then the question is, can the common removal kill these rares or deal with them? And then that almost always leads to a popper format, which most formats are. But I kind of feel like a. Some of the rares in the set like, like Captain Marvel can get indestructible superhero Civil War isn't a creature, so it doesn't care about removal. Photon Living Light. That's the Monica Rambo card. That thing has Hexproof. If you cast it on the flip side, there's a lot of these cards, you know, and others too, like Modoc that come in, and yes, they are susceptible to removal, but in many scenarios, they come down and kill some things and then they need to be removed. And sometimes they aren't right away. Dr. Doom is not susceptible to removal, particularly because he just leaves his buddies behind. Leader super genius usually gets you the card back right away with card selection. And then if it dies, you're like, sure, but, you know, again, it's. The damage has already been done. So in my mind, I'm looking at it, and I'm just like, the removal is kind of nerfed, and a ton of these rares either are impervious to it or kind of punish you for using your removal on it on some level. And I do wonder if we end up with a. With a princely format by the end of it just because of those combos, these. These rares, like you said. Also the win percentages are off the charts. I mean, they are super high. Yeah, I mean, they. They really end up like it. The removal being bad certainly has got to make a pretty big impact here, I would imagine. Yeah, like that. That really does not help with the whole rare situation. And what you said, by the way. I just did a quick check. So if you look back at Secrets of Strixhaven. Right. Played that for a long time as the last set. The best rare in the set, which if, if you'll remember, was together as one, was 65 and a half percent, and then the next one was practiced offense at 64 and a half. And it has a nice kind of gradual 64, 63, that kind of thing going down. And if you fast forward to this set, there's a. There's two cards tied at 70, which is captain Marvel and Superhero Civil War. Then there's a 68, a 66. A 65. A 65. A 65. And the first card that is below the highest one from SOS and just raw win rate is Justice Vance astrovic. So that's 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. There's seven cards right now with a higher win rate than the final win rates of the best cards from sos. Now this is early, so we don't want to overdo it, but still that, that is an indicator, you know, again, that we might be heading in a, in a prince direction here certainly. I mean, oh my God. Two cards at 70. Louise. Like, oh my God. It's really something. It really is. Like now I know what I want to open in my seals for this. Oh my God. Yeah. So that is wild. This is interesting format. I, I like some things about it definitely, but there's a lot, there's a lot about it that I'm skeptical is gonna age all that well. I am too. I, you know, right now, if I had to guess down the line where this format would end up, you know, it feels like a B. Like, it feels like they check the boxes to me. Like the cards are cool, they clearly put a lot of care into it, but it feels like they aimed not for the skies. Like they aimed a little lower than that and they messed it up a little bit. Like the, the white or the white blue might taint the format a little bit. In that way the things that would normally save it, which would be like a multi colored archetype, aren't there. And the build arounds particularly like build around like enchantments and things like that at least thus far haven't emerged yet. And those are, you know, kind of key markers for long term health on a format. And it feels like even they may just not be obvious, but they may be there, but at least we know that they're not obvious from the get go. And, and those are knocks against the format. So it feels to me like they kind of went down the middle on this again. I, I do understand why you would do that. This is a major, major IP and a major release for them for this year. And this is the kind of set that if you told the, the designers to just take the gloves off and go nuts and they screwed it up or it just ended up being a wildly, you know, weird or bad format or whatever, it could have a pretty big scar. But that being said, we've seen them do it with major releases before where they've really hit a home run. Like for Final Fantasy for example, where that was also A major IP and something they didn't want to mess up and they just absolutely crushed it. You know, just an A plus set there as well. And this is not, definitely not going to be an A plus. We know that. But I think it's probably going to be in the like C to B range, something like that. Yeah, it's checking the box. It's going to depend a lot on how this plays out over the next, like two weeks. Because early, early information is wrong. Can be wrong for a variety of different reasons. But in this particular case, like, yeah, I do think that the blue white deck is just going to be the best deck. Like, I don't think that's going to change. Yeah, I feel like we'll have a good idea after the pro tour. That'll be kind of the, the. We'll. We'll put a stamp in it at that point and kind of go, okay, here's where this format settled down to. And then, you know, of course on the show we'll be talking about little niche archetypes and strategies that we may be able to find, but that won't really change the broad strokes on it. Are you going to play more arena directs, Luis? Are you going to try to. I know you've taken a stab at a few and kind of been like, eh, but are you gonna, are you gonna jump in the streets on this one? Yeah, definitely. I'm gonna, I'm gonna play a few more. The sealed is a little different too. Like, obviously Blue Eye is still very good in sealed, but it's a little. There's a little bit more going on with like all the, like the multi color stuff. We didn't really touch on that, but Dual Lands and Land Cyclers and all the special lands make it so like playing a bunch of colors can be okay, like a little splash here and there. I think that in draft I've been doing less and less of that, unsurprisingly, but in Sealed, I actually think that's going to be kind of in full force. Yeah, I've been doing that too. Also, the hybrid cards really do smooth things over. There's a few decent ones and you know, those hybrid cards can go in, you know, a good chunk of the archetypes available, kind of regardless of what they are. Yeah, I'm going to be playing a few more of these arena directs. We'll report back on that next week and it'll be interesting to see too. This is one thing we'll leave with this side note, Luis, of how many arena like, how many days of this set can I be playing in Arena Direct compared to, like, whatever the set was last year, right? Like, it feels like we're being experimented on, you know, like we're the rats in the cage. And it's like, well, how much cheese will they actually eat? You know? And we're just slamming the button. Give me more geez. Until we keel over. And then they're going to go, okay, dial it back one step from there, and that's where we're going to land. But, I mean, it used to be, you know, once a set, and then it was like, okay, there's a, you know, play booster one and a collector booster one. And then the last set, they were like, let's just do it four times. And then it was like, oh, you know, Saturday, Sunday. Now let's try Friday. Saturday, Sunday. Now it's out on freaking Tuesday. I'm just like, is it just going to be on arena now? You know, because I will say we said it before, but that is a good way to burn out and tap out your player base, is to, is to overdo that. You know, those events should feel kind of special, and you don't have people spend quite that much money in such a short period of time. So I'm going to keep in a tabs on that because this set's going to be out for a while. This is our main set for a good stretch, and I'm curious to see how hard they push that button and also how it affects me, like, because I also hit my limit with these where I'm like, you know, I did a bunch of them. And, like, I'll tell you, Luis, it did affect me on the last one because I played so many of the arena directs that when the. What's it called? The championship qualifier or whatever came out, you know, I did a few of them. I had a particularly busy weekend, but I didn't even feel that bad about it. I'm like, I've been playing tons of, you know, magic for stakes. I'm, I'm okay. And that's not normally how I feel. That means that they really kind of pushed it. Normally, if they put up anything with any stakes beyond a draft, I'm kind of just in, like, I wish I would rather be doing that than whatever else I'm doing for that weekend. And, well, this little rat is starting to get a little full of cheese, I think. So, Yeah, I, I, I agree. I, I have gone from, like, oh, an Arena Open. It also matters, too, that I, like The draft part of the Arena Open. But, like, I remember an Arena Open was like, oh, there's the Arena Open for this set. And I'm definitely going to plan on doing this this weekend when the times I can now, it's like, oh, yeah, you can play. You can spend a bunch of money to play sealed every. Every weekend, basically. And then sometimes that's profitable, like if you win a lot. And it's sometimes, like, I think it's collector boosters this weekend, which I assume is pretty good. But, like, it is just funny how. How that all kind of works out where it's like, yeah, the less. The more often you have something, the less special it becomes. And that is a risk they have to consider, you know, when they're. When they're making their decisions. Exactly. All right, let's call it a show there. Hopefully everybody's enjoying the format as we take our first dive into it, and we will, of course, continue to do so over the coming weeks to keep you up to date on anything that we discover, any cool new archetypes, any strategies, and any shifts to the metagame. You can find us on social media pretty much anywhere. I'm Marshall Underscore, lr, Luis's lsv. You can check out Luis's early draft videos on his YouTube channel, LSV, and see what he's been up to as far as that goes. And of course, you can find everything related to the podcast@lrcast.com including links to his YouTube channel, right on the front page there. We want to say thank you to our Patreon supporters as well as ultimate guard for their support of the show. That is going to do it for this one. We'll see you next week. Are you hyped? What should I be? USA is playing tonight? Oh, yeah, they're playing tonight at like, five, right? Yeah. I got to root for two teams this year because, you know, my wife Gab's obviously from Ecuador and, you know, her parents were in town and when the World cup was starting and, like, everyone got their jerseys on and we were all rooting and it was sick because they lost round one. I think I mentioned this on the show. They lost round one to Ivory Coast. They drew with Curacao. Round two, Round three. They're playing Germany. So we're like, ah, they're done. They beat Germany. They beat Germany to advance one one to one. That is crazy. An extremely great record. And then they got thrashed by Mexico last night, like, two. It really. It was one of those games. And I'm not even like that experienced with soccer by any stretch. Watching five minutes, I'm like, oh, Ecuador's toast. Like, well, Germany, Mexico just was. Had to control the ball more than two thirds of the time. They were taking. Getting these good shots off like that could. Goalie did great. He made some good saves. Still, like, if. If you're the only one really getting pelted, you're going to lose. And then a bunch of times, even in the second half, when Ecuador had like, the ball a lot more often, had more possession, had more, more offense going, they kind of felt like they didn't know how to actually, like, execute goal scoring plays. Like, there was a lot of passing back and forth into like, you know, two thirds of the way down the field and it was like, okay, but what are you doing with that? And I think that's where you really need to my. Again, uneducated perspective. Some a striker who could really good at like, operating in traffic or setting things up or making things happen. It. It. Whatever they were missing, they were missing it. It was something going on where they really were not able to. To close things out. And that was a shame. Would have been, yeah, awesome run. It would have been nice to see them go. But now, usa, I'm gonna be. Gonna be hyped. Gonna be watching this one. All the kids are getting into it. Well, not all of them. Two of them are too young to understand at all what's on going, going on. But the older two are definitely five and ten are definitely into it. So let's go. You know, honestly, the World cup every four years, that's. That's great. I. I don't think I would be as excited if it was like every year. And I certainly don't think that, like, I, I like how much excitement there is here for everyone. People are really into it and I think that. I think it's really cool when it comes around and that, that, that is something that a lot of people are enjoying it.