Limited Resources 864 - Marvel Superheroes Sunset Show

Foreign. What is up everybody? Welcome to another episode of Limited resources. This episode, number864. My name is Marshall. I'm one of your limited resources. And joining me on the line all the way from Denver, Colorado, and it's Luis, Scott Vargas. Luis, we're back, baby. Oh Yu-Gi-Oh You had a nice little trip over to Amsterdam. I did and it was cool. That was the one where we got to do the draft top eight. That was my first time doing a full on PT draft top eight. So it was really, really cool. Yuki Ichikawa ended up taking the thing down and I, I felt like it was a really good showcase for draft and for limited. The draft was interesting. We actually watched Kenya Kihiro draft and he was kind of wild with it. If you should definitely look that up if you want to see kind of a crazy draft. And then Ken does as Ken does and then. And then the matches were awesome. Like we got tons. Like most of the quarters and semis went to five games and like were really close. Really interesting. Lots of combat decisions, you know, just kind of a different look, you know, from Modern especially. There was a contrast there at this particular event. But one-of-one I think it went really well and I'm really hoping we get to see more and more of that going forward. Yu-Gi-Oh really cool to have limited be the. The top eight. Even if unfortunately I wasn't there. I still liked it in theory, you know. Yes, yes, you were definitely missed as well. But we're back now and kind of funny I had a chance to meet in person Sirkovitz over there for the first time. It was great. We got to hang out for a little while and Yu-Gi-Oh it was really cool. And we got to chit chat and everything. And then right before we were leaving, he was like, hey, you know, when should I come on the show next? Oh, maybe next week would be good, you know, to get him to get his thoughts on Marvel superheroes. And then I got home and producer Jeff was like, hey, so it looks like the Hobbit's coming out pretty soon and we probably need to do the Sunset Show. And so that means that we had to skip the Serco one for this time, unfortunately, because we are. We're doing the Sunset show today for Marvel superheroes. It's weird. It's been out for a while, but still felt like it came up kind of quick. I think it's just an artifact of trying to jam seven sets into one year. You know, it's just a lot of scheduling that needs to happen. But sure enough, the Hobbit's going to be coming out pretty soon, so we're gearing up for the set review for that. So with that in mind, we are doing the Marvel Superheroes Sunset show today, and we're going to go over and take a look back at what was kind of an interesting set, given the weight that it had on it. We'll talk about all of that in just a minute. Before we do want to say thank you to everybody who supports us over on patre patreon is patreon.com limitedresources if you'd like to support us. And we'd also like to thank Ultimate Guard for their support of the show. If you need to protect your cards, your decks, your collection, you need to go head over to ultimateguard.com to check out their full line of products. They really do it right. You know, there's this whenever you make a consumer good like this, you have to kind of marry design with materials. It's a difficult thing to do. It doesn't always come together as easy as you think. And of course, you have to deal when you're designing these type of things with constraints. You can't just pick the most expensive, best thing at every single option and still hit the price points that you want to hit. And this is where Ultimate Guard really sings. If you get one of their products, it lasts you a very long time. 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Well, I think this has been worse, but mainly because of the small sets, you know, that they've kind of put put out. You know, from Spider man to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. And yes, by the way, the Hobbit is also that same framework that kind of pick two vibes where there's far fewer cards, they focus on five, two color archetypes rather than the full 10. And then there's this wrinkle where it can be drafted with four players picking two cards each rather than the the normal six or eight drafting one card each. Teenagement Ninja Turtles was fine. It wasn't a disaster. Spider man was a disaster, Although I think it technically came out the year prior. But that was like an abject disaster, I think. But it feels like maybe they've learned a few lessons or maybe made a few wrinkles here or there. Because even though I prefer the bigger sets, like the one we just had here with Marvel Superheroes, Teenage Mutant Turtles was fine. I played a lot of it. I, you know, I. I put it through its paces and I'm anticipating doing the same thing with the Hobbit. What do you think, Luis? I mean, I think if I look here, the best set. Let's even go back a little bit to like Final Fantasy, right? So you have like Final Fantasy Edge of Eternities, Spider Man, Avatar Lorwyn, Eclipsed and Ninja Turtles seeks to Strixhaven and Marvel that group of sets, you know, kind of compared to Murders at Karlov Manor, Allergy, Thunder junction, Modern Horizons 3, Bloomberg, Duskmourne and Foundations. Part of what I like the older sets more specifically because I think Modern Horizons 3 and Duskmourne are better than any of the sets that the recent sets. I think Final Fantasy is probably the closest because I did like Final Fantasy quite a bit, but Spider man was garbage. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was better, but I still, you know, wasn't like the biggest fan by any stretch either. Drift I didn't think was that great. Dragonstorm, Tarkir Dragonstorm. There's a little before Final Fantasy I thought we're just okay. Avatar I thought was good, and Strixhaven I thought was solid and Marvel Superheroes was solid. Lorman Eclipsed, I think I honestly didn't like that even that much. Whereas, like, I also have a dark horse. Foundations, I think was just really good. Like, I drafted a lot of foundations of Those sets of MKM, Outlaws of Thunder Junction, Modern Horizons 3, Bloombro foundation and Duskmoorn foundation was like my third most drafted set after Modern Horizons and Duskmoor. Like, I drafted more foundations than mkm, OTJ or Bloombro. Yu-Gi-Oh I just really liked it. So, Yu-Gi-Oh I mean, I think Bloomborrow was pretty mediocre. I think Outlaws of Thunder Junction was a lot worse than it should have been. It felt like it. Multicolor, lots of lands, some cool Mechanics. I just didn't really jive with it. I don't really know why I thought MKM was totally fine, but not great. But mostly it's the strength of Duskmourne and Modern Horizons 3. I think when I look at a question like this, the peaks matter more. Because if you think about it this way, the kind of like medium sets, you can just not draft that much or ignore. The good sets matter a lot more because past a certain point, like, everyone has this, right, You've got this threshold. If a, if a set is below this threshold, you'll just do whatever the most fun thing is that is not magic. Like, right? You'll just play. Watch more tv, play more basketball, play more. Slay the spider. If you're smart, Slay the spider is awesome. But past a certain point, those sets don't really matter that much. So for me, what mostly matters is where are the highs? What are the peaks? And I think the peaks in 2024 were higher than 2025, 26. You know, I, I think that basically like, of those sets, Yu-Gi-Oh Final Fantasy and Avatar were the sets recently that made me play a lot more. Whereas like a lot of these other sets, like, you know, there's different thresholds. Spider man is the lowest. I think I did three Spider man drafts and I was like, this is just too, too insulting to my, my eyes and brain to be looking at these Omen path cards and, you know, effectively a slop. I know that that's not literally what it is, but that's what it felt like. Whereas like, you know, some of the other sets, like, I think you're right, the small sets, like, they'll hold my attention for like closer to 10 drafts, not 50 drafts. You know, I did a lot of strict saving drafts. Totally fine format too. But Yu-Gi-Oh I, that just made me miss Dusk morton, Modern Horizons 3. Mostly, Yu-Gi-Oh I think that is the hard part is that if you take an average set from the past, like say three, four, five years, you know, it's probably going to be like a B at least. Like, they really hit a stride with the consistency of the sets for a stretch there. And anytime I think that you put in either a total dud like Spider man or a compromise set like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and maybe even the Hobbit going forward, compromised by being smaller and having just less room to work with less cool build arounds, you know, and a few of the design choices that they've made for these with, you know, common legendary creatures and stuff that kind of just again, little Dings on the format that kind of patch auto down a little bit. You're never going to be able to compete. Like if you just take Bloomborrow, which was a set that neither you nor I were really particularly excited about. It is far from an all timer. It was kind of an on the board, straightforward set. Didn't have a whole lot going on. Felt a little bit like a core set in, you know, maybe not the best way. I would still just put that up against Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or Spider man, you know, any of these small sets. It's just. I just don't think that they can compete. They're just not as interesting, they're not as deep, there's not as much design space. And they feel like more of a marketing exercise than like a really dedicated great product for limited players. And you know that that is the world that we currently live in. And we, we vote with our feet. Right. I mean if, I mean we did right when Spider man came out, we both played like one draft and we're like, this is just garbage and I'm not interested in it. And we did the sunset show the week after. Like, we just were like, okay, well we're not doing this. You know, I love that. Yu-Gi-Oh Which was. Which started as a joke and then we were like actually we should just do that. But. But Yu-Gi-Oh one-of-one I just think it's going to be really hard to compete. So Yu-Gi-Oh I would take the, the older stuff rather than the ones with the small sets in it. I don't think that they're garbage. I think Spider man was. I don't think Teenage Mutals was. And from what I've a Hobbit. I think it has a little bit of potential there, but I don't think that any of those are ever going to be as good as just even a normal full on full size set with you know, 10 color pairs and some room. Room for some more build arounds and stuff like that. I, I agree that the way we like to interact with magic, the, the small sets are way more likely to misfire than the large sets. And I think that is, I think that is true. Like they're moving away from small sets for a reason. They're doing worse for sure. I think that it's less of an issue if you're going to do. If you're just. I'm going to do three drafts at my shop over the lifespan of the set. I think that's like, it's putting less pressure on the set, less demands on the set. But in this, in this world, there's a lot of people who want to engage with magic a lot. And I think the small sets really do hurt the replayability when it comes to drafts. Yu-Gi-Oh And that's. And that's the group that we are a part of. Right. The people that like to draft a lot. Totally understand if you're, if you're a dabbler and you kind of just pop in and, you know, you do a few drafts and I wouldn't even call it a dabbler. I would even just say someone like this is the way they engage with, with magic. It's not. You're not doing 30 drafts or even 15, you know, but. So would you say, like, they dabble in draft? No, because dabbler, like, I think has more of an implication that they're not as into magic, which I don't think is necessarily true. If you really like the paper draft experience, you could be Zebra into draft and still want to do five paper drafts and not any online drafts. Sure. I don't know. I would call them adapter. Yu-Gi-Oh I just met somebody who doesn't put in the numbers. No, I just respect our audience, I think is the biggest difference. Let's do a crack a pack. In fact, our last crack a pack for Marvel Zebra Heroes, and we'll see what we get. Our first card out is PIM Technologies. That's the Blue Green Gain Gain Land. Blue Green ended up being actually one of the better archetypes, though I'll have to say I almost never drafted it. It's a little weird. It wasn't drafted that often, but it did perform decent when it did. I would not be taking PIM Technology. No, no, you're, you're, you're hoping not to, at least. Next up is Savage Land Dinosaur. That's the Green Land Cycler. The Land Cyclers were a bright spot in this format. I do think that they were very, very cool. Yu-Gi-Oh I do, too. What do you think about the green one in particular? I mean, it's solid. It's. It's one of the, One of the. The ones like, compare. I mean, well, Broxon boots. The black one, like, loses out in part because of the black one. Yu-Gi-Oh it's our next black being being weaker than Green. But I think that Savalian Dinosaur is also just like a better card if you cast it. So, Yu-Gi-Oh I think. I think it's a pretty solid one. I, I guess I would take it over the blue Green land, but I really do hope that we're not Taking either of them. Yu-Gi-Oh And then Roxxon Brutes is our next card. And then the next card is perhaps the Goat Herby Scout Unit. We could not figure out what Herby stands for. It says something in the flavor text. But then we looked it up and. And on the, like, some Marvel wiki or whatever, it doesn't have that. So it's like, I guess they're. They just made it up or something. But Yu-Gi-Oh I'm not sure. But Yu-Gi-Oh I mean, I would take it over. Over where we're at right now. Yu-Gi-Oh Also sealed. All Star Herbie Scout Unit. Next is. We're gonna definitely talk about this card, Murdoch's Crusade. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh What an over performer. Holy smokes. We underrated this one a bit. I will say that. I mean, to say the least, right. This is one of the best white commons. Like, obviously hero in training is the Goat, but Murdoch's Crusade has argument to maybe be the second common. Yu-Gi-Oh And I think that it's certainly the pick right now. I mean, one of the things you do want to do is. Is start out in white. So opening a good white common is a fine way to do that, especially if you're not seeing other competition. But we haven't seen the whole Beckett, of course. And you know, it's interesting because the clues were there. Luis. Right. Like, it has the vibe of a card that has been tweaked, right. That somebody went back and said, this is too good. Instead of Excel Target Enchantment, let's make it mana value 4 or greater. Like, it's just. It's killing too many web ups. Let's just. Let's just make that a thing. And because this. This style of card is typically a fringe playable or a sideboard card, and this one's just like, again, this, to me, is the poster child for the hypothesis that we put forth basically every set review now, which is, is this creature going to die for less mana than I cast it for? And. And flipping that around is, can this removal spell trade up? Can. Can I spend less mana on this removal spell than my opponent spent on the thing? And that's kind of built into Murdoch's Crusade, right? Like, it has to. Basically, it's. It's almost impossible for it not to do that. And then it has this random mode that if you get to teamwork it, you somehow get like nine mana worth of stuff for your two mana, and it's like, oh, okay. Well, that's just an Absolute blowout. You know, anytime you get to do that extra Thing. Next up is Kunlun Warrior. This is the red 2 drop. I very much a victim of red here. This is a perfectly reasonable magic card, but it missed for two reasons. One, because the other red cards stink. And two, it's somehow a hero, like villains really needed this to be a villain, you know, to be, to be. Okay, Yu-Gi-Oh I, I, I, I see what they were trying to do there, which is they're trying to like seed it a little bit where it's like, oh, this is the a red hero for like the heroes deck. And they're the, they had like the, the other discard theme there too, but with Midnight, whatever her name was, the three one that like, you can discard. Draw a card for each card you discarded. Yu-Gi-Oh But yes, it really did hurt that this wasn't a villain. And it turns out the villain, the villains needed a lot more help than the heroes. Definitely. And you know, this would have been a good one for that, right? Because there was the cares about two creatures in the yard sub theme. And this, you know, could have been a way to help smooth that out. You know, the Land Cyclers did a good job with that, but it needed a little more help. Next up. This is kind of funny because I view this card and the next card in the pack as both the opposite of Kunlun Warrior. They're fine, but they get held up a lot by their other cards, which is Brave Brawler and Agent of Atlas. Really, Agent of Atlas is kind of in my crosshairs for this, but Brave Brawler to an extent as well, which are totally reasonable magic cards, but they are, you know, high performers in the format because of all of the other good things going on in white. Yu-Gi-Oh I, I think that they, they are pulled up by the rest of the white cards more than they're. It's not like they're an awesome card them, right? They're fine. But Yu-Gi-Oh I mean, imagine if Agent of Atlas was red. Like, just. You wouldn't even touch it. Next up. Underrated for sure. At the beginning of the format, SHIELD Spy Kit, Scar ended up doing some work, man. Yu-Gi-Oh that SHIELD Spy Kit is another card that just did way better than it that it looked like it was going to. At least to me. Definitely. I mean, I still think you're supposed to take Murdoch's crusade over it, but it is, it is, it is a good card. Clearly Uncommons. First one is SHIELD Helicarrier. This is the, the four mana, four five vehicle that creates two one ones, but it has the kind of crippling crew Cost of six. It's. That is a tough pill to swallow. Yu-Gi-Oh Though I did. If you've actually been looking at stats, this card has gotten slightly better as time went on. Oh, I do think. Yu-Gi-Oh I do think that it's. It's not like an amazing card, but I. I think it's a. Certainly a playable one. Yu-Gi-Oh I. I don't think I ever put this card in my deck. Maybe once when I had maybe like the Mind Stone or something like that. I can't remember. But some. Some like mild synergy that I thought maybe it was Wiccan or I don't know, something that I thought would. I could blink this thing or something. But I mean, Yu-Gi-Oh just on its own, it. It just played too close to 4 mana for 21 ones to be really great. Next card also, man, red really got wrecked. It's truck toss. 2 red. Red does 4 damage to any target. If you control a vehicle, it's even cheaper. I mean, geez, like, this type of card should be good, right? Like you would think so. Yu-Gi-Oh But I think the double red. The double red alongside red being like not a great color is really hurting Truck Toss here. You know what I want to talk to Circle about next time is what. Which are the cards that make a thing not a great color. Like, is it just the creatures? Like, is that what. Because Truck Toss is a good card or at least. At least a playable card. So it. Like if we. If we keep looking at every red card and saying, well, the other red cards are drawing it down. Well, which ones are they? Because I don't think Truck Toss is pulling other cards down. Right. It's like you would think it would be an auto include in any red deck. For example, maybe not like a first pick, but, you know, does four to the face. Like, I mean, that. That can really end the game. It even has like a random cost reduction on it. Yu-Gi-Oh that. That one doesn't obviously come up too often, but Yu-Gi-Oh that's a real thing too. Evil's Thrall is next. That's the two in a red threaten effect. And if you control a bigger villain, you get to keep it for a little longer, I guess. Sacrifice time to make this thing go. Yu-Gi-Oh I never really got this one to work, so I can't say that I don't too thrilled about it. I like this next card a lot. It's Night Nurse, Healer of heroes. Yu-Gi-Oh this card's good cards. This card's in the magic online cube right now. Oh, really? Because, I mean, if you Remember the Samwise was in for a long time and this is kind of a better version because it has LifeLink. Right. And you can just back with it and stuff. Or. Yu-Gi-Oh I mean you could, you could do that with Samwise as well. But, but Yu-Gi-Oh the, the, the ring nonsense, the tempted by the ring stuff didn't really ever do anything. So LifeLink I think is going to be ultimately better there. Better. And our rare, our last rare for Marvel superheroes is World War Hulk. Sad. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh This card looked pretty cool and I had it in a big red green deck the first time I drafted it, but I didn't end up doing that much. I feel like I had the same. So what do we like? Night Nurse Murdoch's Crusade. I think I would probably just take Murdoch's Crusade. I'll just take Crusade. It's just, it adds more to your deck. Like it adds a removal spell, which I think is just more important. I do too. And again, the, the insane upside on Murdoch's Crusade is just. And, and the baseline was close enough too. Okay, well, we would not have Beckett that in our first draft of Marvel Superheroes, but as we know, our things change as you go through the format and we're gonna end up taking Murdoch Crusade. Let's get on the sunset Show. First up, if you can summarize the set in one sentence, what would it be? Heroes are good and villains are bad. That, that's, that's what I would say. Yu-Gi-Oh they really did let that play out in real life. I said it aimed for a double and it hit a double. You know, the set to me seemed, it didn't seem to go completely off the deep end. Aiming for some really deep, rich, interesting, multi colored build around format. It went more for individual card quality. You know, kind of, here's a superhero, look how cool he is. Here's another superhero, look how cool he is. And then kind of just piling up a bunch of those together and that leads to a more straightforward environment, which I don't think is a bad thing. And also, I don't know, Luis, you have a better view on this. You would have a better view on this with your career in gaming and game design. But you know, man, if, if I worked at Wizards and the bosses came and said, hey, you're going to be in charge of the next set. I'm like, oh, cool. What is it? It's Marvel superheroes. Like, this is one of the biggest IPs that they haven't done yet. If not the biggest. Right? I mean, this is a huge monetary stance for Wizards of the Coast. Like, they really need this to do well. And the last time this happened was Final Fantasy, and it crushed. Right? I mean, it. Absolutely. It broke every record for Wizards, and, and the limited format was really good, and the cards were really interesting, and it had all these cool promos and all this extra stuff, and it just sort of checked every single box. And, man, if this thing landed on my desk, I would be so worried about shooting for the stars and missing on such an important IP that I just wonder if I would just try to keep it a little more in the. Like, I'm just going to try to hit again, like a stuff. Solid double. That's a real. You know, I'm aiming for a B, but I'm going to take a lot less risk so that I can hit it. Do you think that has anything to do with how these, these sets are designed? I mean, they have to think in the back of their head about the risk and the, and the rewards monetarily. Right. I mean, I, I would be surprised if they didn't. Like, I, I obviously, I don't know exactly how, how, how this all came to be or, like, you know, like what the process looks like, but if I'm the, if I was in charge of this, I would be thinking of the same things. I, I really, I really don't know how you could, how you could not. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh I think it's just too, it's too important to, like, when you're doing something with an outside IP and especially with, like, Spider man. And then they probably paid, you know, through the nose or something to make it so they didn't have to do omenpaths again. Right? Yu-Gi-Oh So they had to give up something in that. I would assume so. So if that's all, if those are the stakes, then, Yu-Gi-Oh this would not be the set to try anything too particularly wild. And they did a heavier creature set where the heroes are good and the villains are not, which I don't. I know that I don't think that was int. But better that than the alternative. Better for the heroes to be good and the villains to be bad than the villains to be good and the heroes to be bad, I think definitely. I mean, seriously, if you and I were in a design meeting where we were like, okay, we've got this heroes and villains kind of layer on this thing, and I raise my hand, you're the lead designer, and I say, hey, so what if we design all these and then a month later everybody realizes that the heroes suck. Right. And by the way, you know, you might chuckle. You're like, Yu-Gi-Oh but they're not going to do that. Well, look at some of the ones. Like some of the, the heroes that they put out are somebody's favorite character, fictional character in the world. Right. I love the Human Torch. I've got his poster, I got his first appearance. And this is what you get, right? You get some tutu Fleer with marginal upside. Like, for the most part, they did a good job with these, but you can see what it looks like if across the board, they did a little bit too bad of a job. And then, and then the agents of Hydra is the best, whatever. And you're like, Yu-Gi-Oh people aren't, there's not as many people that are into that, you know, as these heroes. So, you know, I, I, I just, it kind of feels like they weighted it towards the middle ground and then they weighted it a little bit towards heroes and just said, if we are gonna lean in a direction, it's gonna be like that. And I, and I think that's fine. I, I don't, you know, I'm not going to judge them for it. And, and you know, in my opinion, they hit the double. They, they, they, they hit that mark, and that's totally fine. That's what they're going for. They got it. Yes. What turned out to be the best archetypes, I mean, this is, I think for us, this is the, the story of the format, right? Is that, I mean, for most people, it's that White Heroes Aggro was typically the best. Blue, White, certainly the, the front runner, especially initially, like, it was kind of ridiculous, but green white as well, ultimately ended up being fine too. Yu-Gi-Oh You know, you and I did our format overview and I looked at the, the archetype breakdown numbers on 17 lands before we did this show just to see, like, how much of stuff shifted or, you know, we, the question we always have is, can the format adjust? Can it adapt? And it did a little bit, but not really. I mean, looking out, it's the same stuff. It's, it's blue. White is in a tier of its own. And then green white and green blue are in kind of the next tier. And then all the other archetypes make up the rest of the tiers, except for the very last one, which is significantly below that middle chunk. And that would be black red villains. It didn't really change. Also of note, blue, I did go end to end. It is. It was played over double the amount of games as the next competitor. And it was about 2% clear of the field, which is a lot. So, you know, for us, that's the headline. I mean, that was the set where blue white was too good. Where white was too good. And that is, I think if you're gonna pick this set apart, that's the mark on it, right. Is that they, they missed with white and specifically blue white. And while there always has to be a best archetype, you know, being the most. Yu-Gi-Oh it doesn't have to be that big, especially when people are playing it at the clip that they're playing it. So that would be the mark on the archetype, is that the balance did get off. Yu-Gi-Oh I, I agree and I, I think that that did detract from the fun for a decent amount of people. Yu-Gi-Oh I think so too. And I think another victim of kind of going straight down the middle with the, the solid double style approach is that, you know, they did put in, and we'll talk about them in a little bit, some build arounds, the plans were kind of seated build arounds and stuff, but basically all of them missed. And then there wasn't, you know, the last few sets that we've had, there was a hidden archetype or an 11th archetype, if you will. Right. Something that was there that they hinted at or that you could see if you went over all the cards and you could go, okay, well is it going to be a real thing? You know, the Vivid deck or the, you know, converge or the, the decks that pay you off for having multiple Topps of mana, multiple lands, the five color deck, that type of stuff. And this set didn't really support that. It didn't really have the cards for it. It didn't really have the payoffs for it. And so it did feel much closer to a two color, maybe with a splash or if you're green, maybe you're three colors, something like that type format. And again, these are things that aren't critical to have a good format, but they are critical to have a format that lasts for a really long time. And I think it's one of the reasons that this one had some legs, but maybe not as much as some of the others that we've had. I, I think that you, you hope for a little bit more self correcting, but if it's too far out of whack, it's just there's only so much you can do. That's right. I did think the gameplay was good. Um, Yu-Gi-Oh you know, the, the, it was Interesting board states. There was always a lot of considerations, especially with mechanics like teamwork and power up. They. They were very much on board. They made you think like, well, if my opponent taps this, then they could teamwork that and then that would be really bad for me or, you know, attack leave up thread of activation as far as power up goes, because they didn't make it. Sorcery speed, that. That made boards more interesting. What cards were we most wrong about during the set reviews or cards that really surprised us when we're so many options. We certainly lower on the white cards than the. Than we should have been. Well, should have been is kind of tricky because, like, we don't really know what the format's gonna look like exactly. But Heroine training, that one, I'm willing to give us a slight more of a pass in the sense that this one really is. Because it's exact. The. The white hero deck is so good that this card becomes awesome. But I think one that we really did miss on is Murdoch's crusade. And I think that some of what we mentioned earlier really does apply where it's like, yes, it's situational, but it's two different narrow things. And they're both expensive kind of by virtue of their characteristics that they require for you to cast it on them. So I think that might have been one we could have hit. Whereas Hero in training, we probably should have thought it was better than it was. But like, that whether that card is going to be the best, like, that's not necessarily something we're always going to know. No. And we really liked it. I mean, it's not like we. Yu-Gi-Oh it's not like we thought it was bad. Yu-Gi-Oh But I mean, I don't think either of us expected that it would be like, up in the one-of-one rates of the rares. Right. I mean, that just got completely out of hand. Murdoch's Crusade, that was the real hidden gem. Because again, it looks a lot like a typical sideboard or narrow card. And then it even somehow looked worse because of, like, the extra claws on hitting the enchantment with. Right. The cost four grader. It's like, what is going on? Like this. It feels like they nerfed a mediocre card. And after having played with it, you're like, oh, okay, I get it now. What about you put Ant Man Colony Commander. Yu-Gi-Oh we were just. We thought this card was like a B. It's like it ended up being a D partially, or at least like a C partially because of blue green not being as good as. But also just like the, the whole plus and plus one counters and tokens thing, I. I don't think really kind of came out particularly well. What about Secret Invasion? The. The one blue. Blue kind of Oblivion ring or. Yu-Gi-Oh that one I definitely should have been higher on. Like, that one ended up being pretty good. Not like unbelievable, but definitely good enough. And I think it ended up being one of the. One of the better blue cards. It didn't look that good to me. And now it's time for confessional. You'll start with the Coming of Galactus. So the way these two cards would. Is. Is I didn't put either of them on. And then you're like, all right, you thought you're getting away from this. You put Coming of Galactathon, which ended up being an like an A minus level card. And I thought it was like a B level card. So, you know, there, there is certainly some mea culpo there for you. It's Earth's Mightiest Heroes that, you know, is, you know, you thought it was like a C level card and it's like a B level card. So it's not like the biggest misses in the world. But we both argue about it. Earth's Mightiest Heroes might be like an Aish right now. It 17 lands. Has it listed as a B minus. Okay. Okay, cool. So I was going by that. So I was less wrong than you is what you're. Yu-Gi-Oh that's. That's, that's the important takeaway for sure. Yu-Gi-Oh But th. Those ones were interesting and difficult, I think, to. To pan out. I think the. When you get up into the teamwork, costs are really, really high. It's like, well, do I actually have this? That Earth Mightiest Heroes was a card that like, you really wanted to pay the teamwork and it turned out that you could like, meaning you could afford to do that and just still have a board state because you did that. And it wasn't like shields down. It was like, no, you just get all of it. If you can get over the hump on that card. That was one of the great. I, I love cards like that that are difficult to pull off, but when they do, those can lead to comebacks. Right. Like, that's definitely the type of card where you're. You're in a precarious situation and then you resolve a teamworked one those and it's like, you know, back in the game. What about underrated cards? I thought stature was a bit underrated, at least at the beginning. Definitely Stature is real. Is real sweet. Like just, you know, a one mana, one. One unblockable. You get to get in there and then at some point just becomes a 55. It just plays really, really nicely. Yu-Gi-Oh definitely. Let's see, what else do we have here? Controversial cards, man. This one was really interesting to talk about as the set developed. The Sentry, Goldin Guardian. The. Makes a mirror of itself that has to attack, but they're both indestructible. Yu-Gi-Oh this. This. This, I think, is a perfect entry for this. So this. This card is really cool. I think it's a really fun design. I do think that the. The. That the Sentry is not very good. I mean, it's. Right. As of right now, its one-of-one rate is like, in 52%, a little bit lower than kind of what you'd expect an average car, basically a negative card to put your deck. Right. Right. But it's certainly very powerful. If they don't answer it, you get a 55. Indestructible vigilance, which kind of vigilance because it blocks the Void every turn. But obviously, if they do answer it, it's just like a complete disaster. And I find that. That. That gameplay is both fun and appealing to a lot of people, though obviously, a lot of people are probably turned off by it too. And I think that it's. It's definitely controversial. You can. You can see the arguments for and against the card very clearly. Definitely. And. And it ended up being a liability more, you know, than a. Yu-Gi-Oh Not being a good card because it was too risky. Yu-Gi-Oh And. And the reason for that is because of the removal in the set. Right. There were just too many ways to exile, and people played them. You know, Web up and Cruel alliance were like, everywhere. Everybody played every copy of those that they could get. Almost every copy of those that were opened in a given draft were played. Those were splashable, so people would splash them or they'd play them in their primary colors. And it just. Every time you played the Sentry, you're, like, holding your breath and you just had that feeling like they're gonna have something like, you know, Frozen and Ice did similar. And then all of a sudden, you know, you're. You're losing to your own card. And like, that is. That is really unacceptable, like, to. To put yourself in a position that your opponent maybe Goldin have done anything. And then you played a card and now you open the door. Yu-Gi-Oh that one-of-one it. Yu-Gi-Oh that's. That. It's no good. What's your what card had your favorite artwork? I liked Ariel Doombot. I just like the doctor Doom is a really cool character and I think the Doombot is just a lot of fun. Yu-Gi-Oh I wish the Artifact X was better, you know. Yu-Gi-Oh that was by Michael McRae. Michael McCray. I really liked. The card itself was kind of whatever, but Rapid Rescue by Raymond Bonilla. This is what it reminded me of was like a scene from an actual comic book, but kind of a higher version. You know, like a painted version of that where, you know, a lot of the. A lot of the cards in the set were kind of, you know, they didn't look like comic book art, but you could really see the. The vibes of, oh, it's a superhero doing a superhero pose and, you know, he's got his fist in the air or whatever it is. This one looked a lot to me like a wide shot from a comic book. But if. If somebody really took the time to, you know, do a full art treatment on it, paint it and make it look really, really cool. So I thought. I thought Raymond did a really good job there. This one's a little sad. What were the best build around cards in this? Yu-Gi-Oh I think this is the biggest miss for the set for me. They didn't have the 11th archetype. Fair enough. But I really wanted some cool build arounds. And I do feel like they tried. It's just they all kind of missed. And I think the headliner for that would be the plans. Like, they all kind of missed. Right. The. I think the only one. You know, there's one that was good. Yu-Gi-Oh That you'd really want to see was political, what was called Victory. Political Victory or political. What's it called? Political Triumph. That card was really good. But that wasn't interesting. Right. It was like it didn't have anything to do with plan or. You know, like a good example on one that I really wanted to be good was the. Somehow now I don't know any of the names. Doom Reign Supreme, I think it was called. Right. The. The 2 drop that cared about villains entering. Yu-Gi-Oh that was cool. Like, that was a really cool card. It's rare. It's pushed a little bit on Power Level. It's only two mana. And it just, you know, that fell victim to villains not being very good. The card itself, I think is fine, but plans in general, I think are pretty fun. Yu-Gi-Oh And they all kind of missed. They did. It was. It was a shame. One that. That did hit, but again, it's like I really wanted like an Actual build around to be good. This one, I guess you would say it had a build around component which Avengers Assemble. The Five Mana, Mythic rare. That thing was just absurd. And yes, you did need to make sure that you had some critical mass of heroes. But, you know, it just didn't feel like it changed your draft picks that often. Like maybe you take an Agent Atlas over, you know, something that maybe you'd prefer slightly more. But like, these were like tiny picks. These weren't like, okay, now my deck's going in a different direction. It more or less just fit with the white builds and you know, was awesome. So. Okay, fine. That, that's kind of a cool one. And I know you love Vision Quest. Vision Quest is really cool. That was like one of the bright spots of the format. So you get to Vision Quest for, you know, any, any good artifact creature, any or bad one, honestly. And it gets a bunch of plus plus encounters and haste. It was really good on the War Machine that pumps equal to its power. So you get like a 4, 6 war machine in play and then pump something. Plus 4, plus 0. I wish that the blue red artifact deck was better, obviously, but Vision Quest was actually good enough to pull you into it. So it's successful. Builder on. Hooray. Yes, they got one. Yu-Gi-Oh so they got one. Right. And that one was even able to overcome, you know, the environment in which it lived. But Yu-Gi-Oh and then, you know, there was a couple of cool shout outs that we have, but they weren't real. You know, these were like, maybe closer to meme type stuff. So one of them was Speedball. New Warrior. So I talked to Rashad and he loves to draft these kind of off the wall decks. And he was explaining to me about Speedball. You know, Speedball is the one that gets plus two, plus two and it gets targeted, but. But you can choose new targets for whatever's targeting it. It makes it really difficult to kill any spell that targets it. Any removal spell that your opponent wants to point at, it will get retargeted to something else if there's another target, either one of their things or even one of your other creatures, if it came down to it. And so it, it did have like web up still hits it. There's a few things that still got it. But it did mean that you could take cards that other people weren't interested in, like Zebra intelligence and what was it called, Zebra strength or whatever, those type of cards and pile them up and kind of do the, you know, what's that modern deck called? The one that Maria loves. Oh my God. Boggles. Yu-Gi-Oh boggles. Kind of thing where you're like, you know, the, maybe a battle cruiser style magic or whatever, you know, where you're just dumping all this cool stuff on and your opponent kind of doesn't really have an answer for it. And the stuff that you're getting for it is coming like, like, you know, 10th or 12th pick or whatever. That is cool. I don't know how real it was. And also you would kind of need to get two copies of Speedball to at least, you know, if you're gonna build that reliably draw it. Exactly. So that was one and then the other one, which again, this is really neat that they put this in. But you know, being spread across some colors and, and it made it difficult. Was the Fantastic Four. If you got all four of them on the battlefield, there was like a infinite damage thing that happened. Kenji did it once, which is neat. But again, not something that's really cool. Yu-Gi-Oh I wish it was better, but I think it is cool. Yu-Gi-Oh To me, this is, this is the, the two marks against this format are the color imbalance issue and the lack of build arounds that were actually successful. What card still looks good when you read it, but it just doesn't really see play? For me, my favorite card that is, I think, not good, unfortunately is Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur. I, I, I. This one, it's. It's like a build around that kind of like self solves where it's like you draw your second card, you get a giant attacker. Every time you play an artifact, you draw a card. Like, that's really cool. It just doesn't work. Blue, green, artifacts isn't a thing. You know, artifacts is barely a thing. Exactly. Yu-Gi-Oh And you know, and along those lines, you know, one of the cards that it's just a, A lowly common, but it's one that I kind of had tagged when we did the set review in my mind of like this could be an important, important card for the format. And it ended up just being like a nothing, which was Hydra Assault Robot. That's the two mana artifact. I love that card. Yu-Gi-Oh I got to go off really hard with Hawkeye and that in one of my first drafts. Yu-Gi-Oh Oh Yu-Gi-Oh This is cool. And it's just like. No, it's not. It's not that cool. I'm sorry. Right. And you know, it's clearly an attempt at what we on the show call a pivot card. It's a card that's trying to work within the constraints of two separate archetypes that share a color, and this one, you know, with artifacts and villains. And so you could kind of go either direction or maybe throw it in your deck if you had just enough of one or the other to. To make it viable. And, you know, ended up being terrible. I mean, just not really a playable card at all. So that's one that I still look at, and I'm just like, Yu-Gi-Oh that should have worked, and it didn't. And then another one along similar veins. This one's uncommon, but it's similar in that it's really simple. It's just Pym Particles. Like, I just. You know, there's a sub theme about drawing a second card each turn, and it seemed low effort, right? I mean, you get a creature in that could just one-of-one you the game. If your opponent's tapped out or tapped low, you know, you can feel pretty safe about firing it off. It replaces itself for the things that it matters on. And it did affect the board in a meaningful way in the sense of. Of, you know, pushing through a big chunk of damage, sometimes for a relatively low cost. And it just. You just weren't rewarded for the extra card enough to make it worth the liability of the card. I'm a big attack and probe enjoyer, but Pim Particles didn't really get there, unfortunately. Not quite. Was this a Prince or a Popper set? This is a Prince set. This set actually has the distinction of having a murderous row of the best rares in any set we've seen. Like, definitely superhero Civil war, like almost 70% one-of-one rate. Captain Marvel and sort of Fire Ice, about the same, you know, like, and that's just. That's too much like, you don't want. That's not a good thing. You don't want cards that are winning that much. Like, I think that that's not really. Just not a. A fun place to end up, you know. Totally. And, you know, I. When we did the. The review, or when we first started looking at the numbers from 17 lands for the format overview, I went back and looked at, I don't know, Secrets of Strict Haven or something, and it's like, you know, the best card in that set was like 62 or something, you know, and this one has like 12 cards that are better than that. Like, it's definitely a top heavy. The. The good news is, is they did give us a good enough removal so that at least most of these cards weren't just completely devastating. I will say, though, that anytime you start to Go down the route of Indestructible or particularly straight up hex proof, you know, which is they've more or less gone away from it's. It's more of a Ward world now. That is a dangerous territory. You know, if you're playing was a. Was an example of that. Photon was probably the best example of that because it just wasn't really interactable. Very frustrating experience. I think for. For limited players to go, well, I could literally turn over my whole library and just not have an answer to that card. So I guess I just lose. Like, that's not a very fun experience. Some archetypes did the same thing for Captain Marvel, Earth's protector, where it has. If you got it to Indestructible, you know, like red, green, we're just like, well, I guess it's over. Like, can't do anything. The good news is, is like I said, they did actually give us good removal. There were multiple answers for Captain Marvel, for example, even with Indestructible, you know, with cards like Web Up, Frozen and Ice and Cruel Alliance. So, you know, they did mostly cover their bases on that. That. But they have to be careful. Like, that. That is you. You need to have that removal in there. Because otherwise, if somebody plays a card that you could literally flip your library up and not have an answer for, that is not a good play experience. I think that that is something that they've learned the lesson on a long time ago that they don't want to do that. What is the. It's a bad card, but I love it one-of-one For you, Hawkeye's bow, that was another card that goes really nicely with Hawkeye. It's a cheap. It's artifacts, one mana. And I just. I just was kind of ruined by my. One of my first drafts having like a multiple Hydra assault robots and Hawkeye's bow and Hawkeye, the, you know, the 24 Young Avenger or whatever that makes your pings deal. Two extra. And it was like, oh, this is really cool. There's, like, villains overlap, there's artifacts. This format looks like it's got some cooking. And then it just didn't. But. But I do like it. Yu-Gi-Oh mine was multiversal incursion. Like it might just say one-of-one more. Right. Like right across the front of it. But it was in a cool way, and it did feel absurd when you got to pull it off. But it's bad. What about the I literally never one-of-one with it, but it always seems to beat me card? For me. For me, that's certainly Mockingbird Ace Agent, which is not a particularly good card, but it is a card that goes in good decks, which is to say white aggressive hero decks. And as a result, I've lost to this card more than I. Than I would like. More than your fair share. Yu-Gi-Oh For me, it was kind of similar. It was World War Hulk, the. The card that we opened in the crack a pack where, like, it really was kind of slow and kind of eggs basket one, right. Where it was like, I'm just gonna do all this stuff, but, like, if you have any instant speed interaction or if you can, you know, narrow my good creatures down, then it kind of doesn't do anything very all in vibes on it yet. It felt like every time my opponent casted, I just used my last removal spell and I just got to watch, you know, whatever thing they had laying around just smash me. What about the. My opponent played this card, so now I have to one-of-one this game or quit magic forever. So. So my answer here is, like, actually a little bit less extreme than that because it's not a terrible card and I have lost to it, but it's a reptile dino morpher. That's the one mana one, two that you can, like, pay three to make a four or five or pay six to make a six. Six. And again, the card is not horrendous or anything. Right. But these cards just drive me nuts. I don't want these cards in my deck, and I'm annoyed when I lose to them because it's like, it's so expensive. How. What games are you playing that you can sit there and just cast this card and spend man on this card? Those are just not the games of magic I tend to. Obviously, the card does have its uses, so. No, totally. You know, I think why you think that too, is that whenever I've seen that card played by really good players or against really good players, they seem to be able to just, you know, run circles around it, right? Like, have you ever seen somebody attack in with it thinking, well, I could just pay the six mana, so you can't block. And then they just block with a two. Two. Oh, Yu-Gi-Oh Right, right. And they're like, I don't actually want to pay this amount of mana to get rid of an inconsequential 2 or 3 mana to kill the 35 even or to make it a 3 5. It's just like, it's one of those cards that. It looks interesting, but if you're a really good player, you can kind of maneuver it so that that card kind of doesn't do anything ever. Or if it does, it's a big risk to the player doing it. So I think that's why it offends you a little bit because you are that good player on the other side of it. And you're like, Yu-Gi-Oh no, for me it was worlds within worlds. Which by the way, I did have somebody plague. That's the seven mana Exile. All your creatures. Blue, green one. I was trying to think of what card that you were talking about cuz I'm like, Yu-Gi-Oh this card doesn't seem good. Yu-Gi-Oh it's really bad. And somebody played it against me and it gave me a huge advantage. Advantage. So that's the one where once that car goes on the stack and. And remember, like a lot of time the card that meets this criteria for us is like a really cheap like artifact or something that costs one mana that doesn't do anything. This is their ramp payoff. This is what they put in their deck to do rather than some other. Even just, you know, a 76 dinosaur trample, which would be much better, right. Instead they're like, nope, I'm going for it. You know, I'm undercover. Scroll seven mana bounce. A bunch of stuff. Right? Do nothing. So I really. You really have to one-of-one if they. If they play that. Okay, Luis, I. I'm gonna ask you a question. Okay. So we are at the point here where we are going to assign the biggest grown test. I want to ask you, is this the biggest grown test? Is this the goat grown test card? Superhero Civil war. It. It really might be. Like this card's absurd. You know, like for a long time, Umazawa's GTA was the card. I would like hold up as like, this is like the. The ultimate limited boogeyman. This is the card you're scared of. This is, you know, like the. The thing that you're like, this is. It's retired in my like CFB reviews. It's retired into the hall of fame. It's above a 5.0. Above an A plus. Right. Silver superhero. Civil War. Feels like the. The Second Coming. Like this. This really is it. I think it really has. I mean this has to be the goat. Yu-Gi-Oh Of contest. I think it basically is at this point like the groat, if you will. The groat, yes. It is just really that good. Like it's. It's. You're. You're not. There are some games you can one-of-one against this card, of course, right. There's no card is like stone unbeatable or whatever, but, like, it is just like from almost any position. It's going to be incredibly hard to beat this thing. And in fact, you just one-of-one most of the time. That's right. Also, I remember early in the format, Woody texted me about it, and this is like week one or something like that. And he's like, wait, is this a mythic rare? And I'm like, Yu-Gi-Oh like, you're gonna see this card around, dude. Like, it is rough. So, Yu-Gi-Oh we're putting that one into the. Into the hall of fame for grown test. Okay. What cards have you tried for Cube? Tried a bunch. Some of the best of them. The Fantastic Car. It can be bad in the sense that sometimes you Dr. It and you don't have enough stuff to trigger it, but the Fantastic Car is really an amazing card. Is that the. Are you talking about the shield? The. The Blink car? No. No. Oh, I guess. Yu-Gi-Oh You don't play constructed at all. It's three mana. When you play a non creature spell, you. It. It turns into a 4. 4. It's a vehicle. When you play your fourth non creature spell, you sack it to make 4. 4. 4 haste. It's the fantastic Four car. And is it from like a. A What is it from? Oh. Oh, I guess it's. Yu-Gi-Oh it's not in this. It's not in the set. Seen that card? Yu-Gi-Oh And in vintage, you cast it off Workshop. Oh. Oh, Yu-Gi-Oh Okay, so it says it's from msc. I don't know what that. That must be just like an adjacent product. D. That thing looks dope. Okay. All right. So you just turn one that sucker and then you play like. And you play Imagine in. In like vintage constructed, you go like Workshop. Fantastic Car mocks. Mocks Sensei's top. Attack them for 16 and they're basically dead. But in Cube, you can kind of do the same thing. I had a To learn Academy deck. Surprisingly that. That did, you know, get to play fantastic or play four spells or sometimes you play fantastic card and then just one spell a turn. If you is. It's a three mana. Four. Four Fleer Dude, that is a cool card. That is. No, it's, it's. It's. It's worked out well, though. I have a little rant about it, which is it's. You know, when you're designing cards, you're looking at something like the Fantastic Car. It's like. Well, it's the Fantastic Four Car. When you play four spells, it makes four. Four fours. Huh? What should this card cost? Turns out three is the answer. Which is going to make it too good in a lot of the formats. What? It just should be costing four. Of course it should. Like look at it. So it's kind of like how. How Griselbrand costs eight despite being a 77 Fleer where you pay seven life to draw seven cards. They would have rather it costed seven. But I think correctly, we're like, Yu-Gi-Oh it just kind of has to cost 8. This is like the opposite. It should have costed 4, and that would have made it a better design card. But instead it was just absolutely hilarious. A couple like kind of medium ones. These are cards that are good enough for now, but I don't think are last like forever. It's like the Fantasticar or Sorry Leader, Zebra Genius, which is like a fine 4 mana draw 2 cards. A turn Thing, Superhero, Civil War and Cube. It's. It is good in the future matchups, but it's more of a sideboard card or. Or you'd main deck it, but it's not good in every matchup. Thor, God of Thunder is pretty cool. That's the 5 Mana 55 Flying. You can replay a time walk or an ancestral or like a, you know, whatever out of your graveyard. And it's like big and it triggers when you play spells. So it's a cool card. I really like the wondrous WASP2. 2 Mana, 21 Flying Flash type of creature. And lose all abilities. So it's good in the blue Black Ninjas deck. And then like, you know, this kills Urza's Contracts Saga constructs. Because once they lose their ability, they just die. They're zero zeros with no ability. Oh, that's cool. Because they're a star star and they're set by their text box. So, you know, there's a bunch of ways to make those constructs in the cube Wondrous Wasp can kind of snipe them. And then the. The hidden layer cycle of land stuff. Yu-Gi-Oh there's some decent stuff in Cube. Nothing outstanding, but some. Some okay stuff for sure. The hidden layer ones are just the rare duels. Yu-Gi-Oh And they're actually a little worse than you might think. Just because they don't always work. But you need to have a basic, right? Yu-Gi-Oh but they're still pretty good. Okay, what was the most frustrating quote, bad card to lose to or card maybe that you just one-of-one miss playing against or just annoyed you? Well, it's definitely the century. Yu-Gi-Oh for sure. The. The century is like, you know, it's. It's the sort of the thing where it's like, if you lose, if you play against the century and you have an answer, you one-of-one so fast and so easily. Right. They play the century and you cast, you know, your web up and the game's over. But when they don't, it's like you, you remember the times you're like, God, why? Why am I losing to this stupid thing? I. You know, like, it's just. It's just really funny. Dude. Dude. This is a one of the best answers for this category for sure. Because you feel the card is right. Yu-Gi-Oh You feel you're not supposed to be playing that. I'm supposed to be able to punish you for it, and instead I'm just getting my butt kicked by it. That is extremely frustrating. That's a great choice for that. This one's interesting. What was the bombiest bomb? The cardio hope is hope to open Pack 1. Pack 1 or in your sealed pool? I mean, it has to be the superhero Civil War because it was white adjacent and the best card. So that was it. But I will say that cards like Captain Marvel Leader Zebra genius and Doctor Doom were all one color bombs that were like just a half step below superhero Civil War that didn't require a splash or, you know, because most. Most time you didn't. To me, perhaps the most remarkable thing about superhero Civil War is that red white wasn't even really a archetype that you wanted to be in. Yu-Gi-Oh it wasn't really about red white. Right. It was almost always splashed, which is just wild. Like, you know, imagine if. How much higher could the one-of-one rate go if it was even, you know, what if it was just three white wide or whatever. one-of-one But I did, you know, these Captain Marvel Leader and Dr. Doom were definitely on my short list as well. Not just for raw power level, but because they were. They represented just a single color. Yu-Gi-Oh And I, I, obviously you're thrilled if you open any of these cards, but I, I agree that the. You'd rather, you'd probably rather open Captain Marvel than superhero Civil War if you got so choose. But it just has like a 5% higher chance of actually making it in if you just didn't get any fix. I don't know. There's something, there's something to that that for sure. What was the best common for each color? White was easily hero in training. And we should talk about that for a minute. Heroin training is something that we don't get that often, which is a mythic common. I mean, this card, you know, the level, the. The type of cards that are around it, the rarities, and the power level of them is. Is mostly unheard of. Like, you know, it had the same one-of-one rate as King t', Challa, for example, as path to Exile, as. I mean, these are just absurd. There is that tide, you know, rising. Rising tide, lifting all the boats thing going here, but still here in training is a special common that. That is. That does not come together that often that you see one with the one-of-one rate that high and especially in, you know, at Common. Yu-Gi-Oh Blue Ice Trickster Trickster Stratagem, which was really good. Trickster strategy. Strategy is crazy because they always make this card. But it turns out that the Connive was just better than most of the things they tend to put on that. Totally. So it's awesome how good that this card end up being really, really good. And next is Black, which was Cruel alliance, which. Which ended up being like a significant chunk better than Hour of Defeat. I think if you were to take just default stance, you would probably put Hour of Defeat above it, you know, on like day one. But it turns out that Cruel alliance, combining Exile primarily, but with a significant life bump every once in a while, and the fact that it could unlock to just kill anything put it significantly above. I mean, it was. Was definitely the best Black Common. Yu-Gi-Oh And. And you needed. Oh, Yu-Gi-Oh it sure did. It. It. It Black, even with that was still like, you know, even with some pretty good removal spells, still not really where you wanted to be. But this. These were good removal spells. Speaking of where you really didn't want to be. And this was the thing that suffered the most was Red. It had Lightning strike and even Hulk Smash. Both very efficient, very good removal spells. And those were its two best. They were really close. They were barely above average in one-of-one range. Yu-Gi-Oh I mean, it's the worst I've seen Lightning strike be in a long time, definitely. And then the last one, which actually ended up being my favorite of the whole bunch, was Undercover scroll for Green. That card ended up being kind of the savior. That was the card that, after the dust had settled on Blue, White was like, well, where can I go? Where's the next stop where I'm not in the full fight against three or four other people at the table for this Blue White archetype. But so what's the next best thing? And it was Undercover Scroll. It opened up. You could just go Green white, which is the second best deck. And it was fine in there, but then also it opened up some nice splashes some really good mid range stuff that could go toe to toe with blue white. I love that very strong mana dork. They. We. We usually don't get them quite that strong. Totally. It did take me like two weeks to convince myself that it didn't have death touch for some reason. But I finally. Well it's because the stupid frog in from Exactly Ninja Turtles or spiders. The mythic uncommon for this set. Now this is not personal bias. This is like this card. No. When we get to the Marshallist card, I'm. I'm gonna. You know. So you know Red Rocks, right? Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh Red Rocks is an outdoor concert venue here right outside Denver. It's like Goldin Colorado or something. Fantastic place. Viewer opportunity to see a live show out at Red Rocks. Incredible. It's just this like natural amphitheater that obviously got then built out to like be such a good place. And there used to be like a competition that was like what's the best outdoor vey concert venue in the U.S. they after red Rocks one-of-one enough times, they retired Red Rocks. Now it's the Red Rocks award or whatever and it's every other outdoor venue is in competition. I kind of feel like that needs to be it for Marshall is to card because it's just. Yes. If you want we can just put the man or every single set. If you want we could do that. I kind of feel like we can acknowledge that whatever the man or is that is the most martial card. But like let's, let's. Let's dig a little deeper to try. I don't know what's a little more interesting. We'll look back, I'll prove it to you. It's not is it is awesome. Looks like what's the Marshall card? Oh, it looks like the manor on the set. Okay. That's. That's what's okay. But we're not even on that. We are on mythic uncommon for this set which is also clearly is which it definitely is. Which is Justice Vance Astrovic. Yu-Gi-Oh That card did serious work. Really high one-of-one rate, really powerful. One of the better blue cards full stop. And definitely above the competition as well. I. I loved it obviously. I mean this is one of the. The you know it. It feels like every two or three sets we get a man of war that has somehow pushed the limits on what I thought it could be. And this is another one of those. What was the worst card in the set or the biggest blank or the most last Beckett Well, show and tell is in competition but that's you could argue that's not like, literally from the set. If you wanted. If you wanted to. To. To. To talk about a card from the set, Hex Magic is a good one for that. It's. It's of a lot also. Pretty much just not. Not, not. Yu-Gi-Oh that was completely terrible. You know, another one that came to mind, I can't remember the name of it, but the, like, eight mana artifact that, like, basically just decked you. The ten rings. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh Like, that has to be on there, you know, because you're paying all the. The eight mana for it, and then it kind of just kills you. It's like, wait, what? But my maximum hand size was 10 when I died. You guys, like, okay, cool. All right. This is Luis's wheelhouse. This is what he was born to do. Some people think it was to play Magic the Gathering, but in fact, it was to pick which card was the most begrudgingly playable. So I've got two entries into the category. One is shield. Oh, okay. So that. That. That's the. The three mana. Two. Three. That. Two. Four. Yu-Gi-Oh Two four. Sorry. That when you attack alone, your creature gets plus and plus one, which has a pretty decent one-of-one rate as far as one-of-one rates go. But again, that's because it's a, you know, a hero and it's in the right color. It is deceptively begrudgingly playable, but it is 100%. And another one is a ninja of the hand, which is definitely worse. It's. It's right on the border there. But I played against a lot of ninjas of the hands, and I. I guess I'm giving my opponent opponents benefit of the doubt that they begrudgingly played it. Maybe they're excited, I don't know. But I know when I put that card in my deck, it's been, like, kind of mildly painful. Those are so what the award is for. Those are. Those are both, like, 23rd, 24th cards. Every time, is there a card that you will miss? Drafting good Land Cyclers. I. It was a delight to get to draft good Land Cyclers again. I haven't. We haven't gotten to do that very often. Like, a lot of the times the land cycles are just not good, and they were good in the city set. That seems to be a difficult balance to hit because a lot of times when we do the set review, we look and we're like, hey, these are pretty dang good. And then they. They fall short. This time, they didn't. They were actually good, and I love having them. It. They changed the Format, I think, pretty significantly to have those around. Also, it's nice that they can search for any land like that. That's important. You know, there were times, a few times, where people put off color land cyclers in their list, especially in seals, just to be two mana. Go get a basic that I want, which is sometimes you would cast that one off color land cycler, too. Yu-Gi-Oh You know, that happens every once in a while too. Totally. You have a random, you know, one of the uncommon lands or something like that. I'll miss drafting Undercover Scroll. And the reason for that is because almost all the archetypes in this format felt, you know, somewhat on rails. I don't mean like you. Your picks were predestined, but it was like. Like once you knew you were a color pair, you probably knew you weren't stretching beyond the bounds of that color pair, and you kind of just needed to know what cards were good and 10 to your curve and stuff like that. And that's fine. I mean, that's just drafting. It's okay. But I really do like to have an archetype where when I pick a card early, I actually don't know where I'm going with it yet. And Yu-Gi-Oh that is exactly what Undercover scroll does. You go, you know, I could take a decent white card, but I'm gonna go for the scroll. I'm gonna go, you know, I'm gonna try to zag a little bit bit here. And then you're like, I don't know, like, I. I could be three or four color deck. I could be. I could end up being green white and keep it really straightforward and anything in between it. And I really. I. I will miss the view from my computer desk of me having Undercover scroll pack one, pick one, and not knowing where this draft is going versus having, you know, hero and training and kind of being like, I'll. I'll probably pick up some more white cards in there. Yu-Gi-Oh Where. Where am I going from here? Well, let me see. Yu-Gi-Oh Spoilers. What was the most. What was the LSV is card? In the Martialist card for me, I put Iron Man, Master of machines, because it's like an artifact payoff that requires you have lots of artifacts and draws you cards if you. If you do. And I really like everything going on with this card. The only thing I don't like is that the deck really didn't come together very often. But other than that, I really do enjoy the card same. And I just think it's a shame. I mean, you know, that that, that Iron Man Master Machines is a perfect example of Damn, that could have been cool. You know, like that is a really neat design. And you know, if you ever get to see it do its thing, which I did once, it was like, Yu-Gi-Oh this is really, really cool. But, but not so great. Mine. Okay, fine, it was just as fantastic. We'll move on. Marshall Soap Ox card. I mean I had a few things, but I, I, Zebra Intelligence is definitely on the list. Hate cards. Yu-Gi-Oh I mean Zebra Intelligence is the kind of card I had to mention at some point because obviously like it's, it's the kind of card that just deeply offends you to your core. So it does, I, I, I think it does qualify for the soapbox treatment. In that case, I'm anti intelligence. It's true. Also, you know, I will say that, you know, from a soapbox perspective, you know, the color imbalance was something that came up very early and was a big concern and never really resolved itself. And it kind of had a lasting mark not ruining the set. I, I don't want to be hyperbolic. Every set has to have a best color pair and it's okay if one of them's a bit better. But it did feel, you know, a little bit like I wish it could have self corrected a little bit more than it did. And then later in the format I would look to the missing 11th archetype and the like lack of build arounds is the things that kind of have stuck with me. What card do you still have to read when it's cast against you? So there's like this pair, Swordsman Sharp Scoundrel and Ronin Shadow Stalker. And they're both like black Uncommon Equipment payoff cards. And they do weird things and, and not, I can't for the life of me really recite what they do without having to look it up. Yu-Gi-Oh there's even another one too. There's the, the whiplash. Whiplash. The one drop. Yu-Gi-Oh like that one didn't see enough play. What did it do? Let's see. When it attacks. When it attacks, it drains them. Frequent number equipment on it. I think X equals the number of equipment attached to him. So you actually do know that one. So good for you. Yu-Gi-Oh The other ones, these were complete misses. Right. Like the art, the equipment deck just was not a thing. Like it just did not come together. You might have one occasional interaction where it would be like, oh, I'm actually doing the thing. They just, but they missed. You just had no reason to learn what they did. Exactly. Basically okay, let's go. Big picture here. From a design and development aspect, how did this sit? Fair. How are the mechanics? What were some of the wins and the losses? The mechanics were power up, teamwork, plans and then there was the. A little bit of connive slash draw an extra card in there too. I mean the mechanics themselves were pretty good. Like I think power up is a pretty cool mechanic. It. It encapsulates the superhero feel nicely, giving you a discount the turn you play it. I love stuff like that. Like you now, now you have like basically good seven drops to top deck or six drops, you know, whatever the expensive power up things are while also still being like a decent early play. I love cards like that. And so this is honestly like an. A mechanic for me. It just like it plays well. It's good flavor, it's simple. It does cool stuff. There's. There's a lot of gameplay to it. Yu-Gi-Oh teamwork. Teamwork's fine. I like convoke the most of the like tap your creatures to do stuff mechanic. Teamwork. Teamwork has an additional cost. It's okay. I would say it's like a B level mechanic where it's not really detracting from the set. But I don't think it adds too much plans. I gotta like dock them pretty heavily here because plans are cool. That's the problem. Them, they're cool and they didn't work. So it's like Yu-Gi-Oh that's a loss. Like you don't. You can't say this is a successful mechanic if none of the cards in the mechanic with the mechanic on it work and the plan builder rounds don't work. So I like plans. I'd like to see them come back. But I, I don't think this is a shining example of them. And then connive. Yu-Gi-Oh connive's a fine mechanic. Like it actually plays pretty well. Like the fact that you have to discard a real card, not a land to get the plus plus one counter. It's a cool bit of tension. I like when they, they. I like when they play around with discarding non lands for a benefit because I think that makes looting a lot more interesting. It's kind of like how rummaging I think is more difficult and more interesting than looting. Discarding non lands is also more interesting because looting is all. Especially in the middle delay of the game is just draw your card, discard your land. Right. It's not that. Not that complicated. Whereas good. It's just not that interesting. Yu-Gi-Oh Yu-Gi-Oh I think the Biggest loss overall for when you're talking about design development is just the color imbalance. I think color and balance at a certain point does matter. And in this case, it was severe enough that I feel like it impacted kind of how fun the draft format was. So you got to knock it pretty heavily for that. Yu-Gi-Oh I have the same kind of vibes about the color imbalance stuff is hard to overcome, but it kind of did. Again, I don't feel that it ruined the format. It just made it. It less good than it could have been. I felt like the big takeaways for me, you know, were. Were the fact that the. The longevity stuff was just not present. The. The build arounds, the five color stuff, or however you want to, you know, the 11th archetype, however you want to describe it, the ability to go deeper and further through the format, that just didn't exist. And that didn't mean that the baseline wasn't good. It was fine. But it did mean that, you know, the hobbit kind of jumped up on me here. I'm like, oh, you know, I got back from my trip to Amsterdam and it's like, okay, what are we doing for the show? And it's like Jeff's like, sunset show. It's like, oh, crap, you know, and, you know, but. And. And I'm not like, sad about seeing Marvel superheroes go, but I'm also not like, get me out of here. It was good. I played a lot of it. So, Yu-Gi-Oh I don't know. I. To me, it just feels all kind of in the middle, you know, it's not perfect, it's not terrible. It's just kind of straight down the middle for me. What did the format teach you? This format taught me something kind of funny, which is that it's the first format I think, in existence, maybe that I like the sealed format more than the draft format. I. I just thought that the sealed format was more interesting. You got to play with a wider variety of decks and cards. And even though I normally, like, draft more, because you have full control over what you're doing and you get to like, kind of decide like, oh, I want to draft this, or read signals. So much of the draft format was playing with or against Blue Eyed, White, Green, whatever, and sealed didn't really suffer from that to the same degree. So I. That was the. That was the main takeaway for me from this format, dude. Same. I mean, so there's two things to mention here. One of them is that I. A lot of opportunities, a lot of sealed dude, so much Sealed. I, it, you know, we, we keep referencing the fact that they seem to be running like a rat in a cage experiment on us to see how much, you know, higher cost events we're willing to play. Right. And you know, I mentioned it before, but, you know, the Arena Direct style events went from, you know, a couple of weekends per set to like, I don't know, I feel like the last one, the, the one for the Play boosters was up for like a week, like maybe even more. Started on Tuesday or something. Yu-Gi-Oh like, it was up forever. And that wasn't the first one either. They did the collector booster one too. So, you know, these, they, they are really, really pushing those boundaries. And I played a bunch of them because I really enjoyed the sealed format a lot. It was really good. I felt like I was good at it, which always, you know, makes you feel not, I mean, I want a good amount. Not that I was like absolutely crushing it, but I didn't. Right. I don't know, it, it felt, emotionally, I felt like I knew what I was doing and I enjoyed doing it. So that's a big, I mean, these days that is a huge deal. Like, it's underrated. Like, if a format's really good at seal, that actually matters a lot to me. Me, because A, I play way more sealed these days than I have in the past because of these higher stakes arena things. And B, they matter more. I mean, they just, you know, like I'm paying a lot of money to enter into these tournaments rather than the relatively low amount for a draft. And Yu-Gi-Oh so it matters a lot. And frankly, I, you know, a few of the seals, the ones that you and I really disliked and felt disjointed for Sealed, you know, I only would do a few of them because it was so not enjoyable to do this one. I, I, I, honestly, I'm not going to lie to you, Luis. If, if there was a Arena Direct up right now, I'd probably jump into one after the show. Like, I really, I really enjoyed playing in those. And this is one of the best sealed formats we've, we've had. What grade would you give the set? I know what I would give it. I would give it a B, honestly, for my own enjoyment. It's probably closer to a B minus, but I would give it a B. I give it a B also. So it checked the box. It did the thing that it was supposed to do and that's, that's what, you know, I mean, look, that we, we gave Final Fantasy an Yu-Gi-Oh plus like, they swung for the fences and absolutely hit it out of the park. This one swung for a double and hit the double that they hope to get. I think that that's, that's how my brain interprets it. Not being in the building. I have absolutely no idea how they actually approach these things, but that's what it felt like from the outside and that's how I see it. And this definitely check the box. And like I said before, it's. It's kind of hard to blame them. You know, it's like, this is Marvel. I think it makes sense. And this is not going to be the last Marvel set, I'm sure. Right. They're. They're going to do more stuff, especially if they do well with it. Right. You get to. They get to do more totally. What was your favorite card in the format? I think Iron Lad, Diverging Destiny. That's the two. Two that. Oh, that's cool. Look at your top card and tap. If it's artifact, you draw it. Right. I thought it was fun. It will Blue Ice nicely with like cantrips and stuff like that. And you know, it just, it's. It's a cool card. Vision Quest, also pretty high up there for me. Yu-Gi-Oh you talked about Vision Quest quite a bit. I, I know you love that one. My, my favorite card was Agent 13 Sharon Carter. The 32 that gets you clues when you attack alone. When you attack alone. Yu-Gi-Oh that card's cool, dude. I love that card. I love. I, I love. I have a real affinity for any cards that make like a little mini game game. Right? Yu-Gi-Oh some of the ones, Some of the cards I really tend to be gravitated towards are games that are our cars. And this was another one that was on my short list, which is Alien Invasion. I love those type of cards that you play it. It's relatively difficult to interact with like an enchantment or something. And then all that kind of matters is like if you can just prolong the game, that becomes your focal point and it creates. Survive. Yu-Gi-Oh survive. And then an Aaron. Agent 13. Sharon Carter's not like that because obviously it's a two toughness creature. It's very interactable, but it does become the only thing that matters because in most scenarios you were able to cast it, get it one attack in, get your clue locked up and then kind of put your opponent in check and just say, hey, you better kill this thing or it is not going to end well for you. And my favorite part about it was, at least in the games that I played is that for whatever reason, if it didn't get killed immediately, I would prioritize attacking alone, obviously, but I would not be cracking the clues. I would usually be using the cards in my hand to clear out blockers or to enable more attacks. And then my opponent would finally kill Agent Sharon Carter, and I'd have, like, three or four clues, and I'm like, this is the kind of game I want to play, baby. I got a stockpile. I'm going to dump all my mana into this over the next next few turns, and I'm going to kind of boa constrictor this game down. You know, where it's like, maybe your opponent thought they stable. Every game of magic that you want to play it is. That is exactly what I want to do. So I love. Which I'm not saying is bad, because I also enjoy that. Yes, it is definitely in your wheelhouse. All right, well, that's it, Luis. That. That is us saying goodbye to Marvel superheroes. It was a good set. It checked the box. And hopefully we'll get to see more from this universe where they go. Go, you know, totally crazy and down all these different rabbit holes and all that type of stuff, and. And that'll be fun. But as it stands now, we're going to a different universe, one that's much more familiar to the magic landscape, which is that of Lord of the Rings, the Hobbit, that type of stuff. And I'm. I'm excited for it. I mean, I. You know, the. These ones that are really closely adjacent to magic are just such an easy fit. They just. They port over so well that it feels like if you didn't know what Lord of the Rings was, you might just believe that this was just another magic set. You know, they're that close. But if you happen to be in the Lord of the Rings, the Hobbit, if you grew up reading it or watching the movies or whatever, then you're gonna get that extra cool thing, too. So I'm curious to see where they go with it, but I will. I one-of-one lie. My expectations are tempered being this. This new format, you know, five archetype small sets. I do not have high hopes for these. I just hope that they get to the, like, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles level, basically. Yu-Gi-Oh And I. And I think that we have done a good job this year of showing them what we like and don't like, and I think that that actually does help quite a bit. Yu-Gi-Oh And we're not shy about it. You know, we do take our responsibility seriously, you know, in the limited community as members of it for a long time and people who, you know, want to, you know, make it as good and awesome as we can for the people that listen to our show and for us. Okay, that's gonna do it for this one. If you want to find us on social media, Marshall underscore LR and Luis's lsv, pretty much everywhere. You can find everything related to the show over@lrcast.com and we want to say thank you to our Patreon supporters and Ultimate Guard for their support of the show as well. That is going to do it for this show. We will see you next week. All right. I was really excited to learn that the hall of Fame is going to be back, as I'm sure many were. And we are both actually, along with a bunch of other folks. It's about 40 people on the selection committee, so me and you. Marshall Gion gets a vote, too, and I don't have my votes finalized. I'm definitely going to vote for Javier Dominguez, and I'm definitely going to vote for Ken Yukiro. But past that, I'm considering voting for Sam Pardee. Considering voting for one-of-one Manuel De Pra, Matt Nassau. So I think that after the Yuki Chikawa as well. Yu-Gi-Oh for sure. Yu-Gi-Oh The only two I've locked in are Javier and Ken. I'm gonna vote for both those guys. And I think this is gonna be interesting, class, because now it's every two years. Yu-Gi-Oh And so getting in now is a pretty big game. Definitely. It's a huge deal. It has a lot more weight. The voting committee is smaller. It's, I think, 40 people or something like that. It's very small. And. And there's a long wait in between, for sure. There's also Brad Nelson. I think he's also a good candidate. So. And Utah Takahashi. These are, like, the main folks I'm looking at, so I don't know where you're at. I. I've got to think about it still. But I think Javier and Ken are good books. Sa.