Magic Pro Sam Black sits down to give his first impressions of Bloomborrow limited in draft
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Drafting Archetypes
Drafting Archetypes 179: Bloomburrow First Impressions
Magic Pro Sam Black sits down to give his first impressions of Bloomborrow limited in draftCheck out our sponsor Untapped GG at our affiliate link:https://mtga.untapped.gg/companion?utm_medium=affiliate&utm_campaign=draftingarchetypesPatreon:https://www.patreon.com/draftingarchetypesSwag Store:https://my-store-d775a7.creator-spring.com/Follow Sam:Twitter: https://twitter.com/SamuelHBlackTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/samuelhblackJoin Sam’s Discord at:https://discord.gg/PKCZvatEFp
- Duration:
- 50m
- Broadcast on:
- 27 Jul 2024
- Audio Format:
- mp3
(upbeat music) - Hi, everyone. This is Sam Black with Drafting Architects. And today I'm going to be discussing my first impressions from playing with Bloombro in the streamer early access events. Yesterday at the time of recording this and also, of course, studying the spoiler. So as always, notes are available to follow along at patreon.com/draftingarchitites. So to get some of the big picture stuff that I kind of always look at out of the way, like I always like to look at the fixing. And the fixing that we have available, there are two common lands that are like very versatile fixing. Uncharted Haven, the land that comes to play tapped and you can choose a color and it taps to that color of mana, kind of like involving wilds that you don't have to sacrifice. And then Hidden Grotto, which is a ETB surveil tap for a colorless or a filter for any color. And that's like it for fixing lands in the set. But there's other common fixing available also. There's three tree mascot, which is a two-minute, two-one changeling that can once per turn turn mana of any color into a mana of any color. Fountainport Bell, one-man artifact search, you may search your library for a basic, put it on top, and then you can spend one and sack this to draw a card. So it's an interesting take on the campus guide type space where you have a common that puts a land on top in case you're missing a color or whatever. Here, instead of getting like an underpowered creature, you get just a cantrip. Since this set has cards that care about graveyard count as well as cards that care about casting non-creatures, Fountainport Bell has some synergies beyond being able to find a land. So it's kind of nice to play even in like a two-color deck where you can treat it like a draw-smoothing cantrip where in the early game, sometimes you'll wanna just find a land of one of your two colors and sometimes you won't. This is the kind of card where people are like, do you cut a land for this? Like what portion of a land do you count it as? And I have personally felt pretty safe basically just replacing lands with Fountainport Bells 'cause like if you have a hand that is one land, Fountainport Bell, it's not exactly as good as two lands because it is costing a draw step in terms of like finding another land. So you're guaranteed to hit your second, but you're less likely to hit your third than you would be if you just had two regular lands. But you do like get the redraw off sacrificing it. So it's not really costing you very much. I'm pretty comfortable just treating it as land personally. And then those are the colorless fixing options at Common. There's also Patchwork Banner at Uncommon which is a three mana mana lift. So in artifact, the taps for a mana mana color, except it also, when it enters you choose a creature type and all of your creatures of that type get plus one plus one, which is huge in this set. You're very likely to be pursuing a kindred theme where most of your creatures are going to be a particular type. And so this pumps like half your team or so and also fixes your mana. So generally strong card that gives you fixing if you happen to have it. And then there's also a bunch of green fixing. There's three tree root water weaver, which is a two mana one three that taps for a colorless mana. Notably, it is not. It's the only common creature that isn't one of the 10 supported creature types. And heaped harvest is a three mana food that searches your library for a basic land and puts it into play tapped when it enters or becomes sacrificed. Which is just a pretty good card in terms of like what you're getting out of it. You're getting two lands onto the battlefield and potentially three life for five mana. But if you have a thing that sacrifices the food without needing to put mana into it, most commonly that's going to be forage, then you have basically an improved cultivate in that both lands went to the battlefield rather than to your hand and also you got to pay for a forage. So really strong card that's also very strong fixing because it can find two different colors. And then the other card that I think is relevant for fixing isn't exactly fixing in a traditional sense. That's cash grab, the one in a green instant mill for, choose a permanent from among them to put in your hand. If you chose a squirrel or control a squirrel, you get a food. So that's just going to dig for to find a missing color if you're using this fixing. I'd say that this set is firmly in this base where if you have a non green two colored act that's looking to splash and you're willing to prioritize lands and colors fixing, you can certainly do it, especially because I don't think most people are going to be looking to splash. And then if you're green, you can realistically draft a like three plus color base green deck with pretty good fixing and incidentally, squirrels are kind of the best suited to it because both cash grab and heaped harvest are at their best in squirrel decks. So that's kind of what's going on in terms of the mana. For the most part, decks are following tight themes in two color pairs in such a way that means that they mostly don't want to splash. So the fixing that's available isn't highly contested. So the people who do want it can get it and there will be people who want it. There are some powerful three color mythics and stuff like that. The set has 10 common creatures that are duos. They have two different creatures in the art of two different types and they have mechanics that connect the two types that the card represents. I think these cards are really cool. They simultaneously increase the density of each of the creature types. So that like there just are enough of each of them impacts while not being like changelings that are just going to go in every deck. So they specifically go to the right people and also they each kind of showcase. They each have mechanics that are tied to both of the types that they are. And so they kind of work as bridges or pivots or suggestions about how you could play those two types together. And I think that those cards are just like really cool. And they're at a pretty wide range of power levels. Some of them are very good. Some of them are more like filler if you're looking for this energies that they offer. But I just want to call those out as interesting and relevant cards that I really appreciate the design of. I'm not going to like look really deeply at three color groups in this set because Fixing's minimal. Most of the color combinations are like mostly aggressive decks that mostly want to just be two colors. But I will note that Solti specifically makes a lot of sense to me. Again, you have kind of a squirrel/green base for splashing. You also have a shared interest in graveyard self-millish nanigans between the squirrel theme and the rat theme in Blue Black. Rats care about threshold, which is at odds with squirrels caring about foraging because squirrels are kind of stopping you from getting to your threshold numbers. But you still have enough like overlap in the self-millish energy that you can find ways to make it work. And then frogs are the other type in that overlap in blue-green. And they mostly care about like ETB abilities and reusing them and creatures entering and leaving. And there are a lot of good like ETB abilities among the squirrels and rats that you can take advantage of with the frog stuff. So the mana works. All of the decks are kind of on the grindy side. So I like what's going on in Solti in particular as far as three color goes, which is pretty common in a lot of sets. Solti makes sense because blue and green often get up to fixing because blue's card selection helps with mana and green's fixing and ramp plus card draw play together well. And green black is generally grindy and green blue is generally controlling. And it all just kind of works out with most versions of designing most of those colors and color pairs. Another group of cards that I want to call attention to is the talents. These are class cards, enchantments, mono colored, one for each color at uncommon, one for each color at rare. Basically all of them that I've seen in play have impressed me. They come down pretty cheap. They have like relevant abilities at most stages, most of the time and most of them when completed have some way to like meaningfully generate recurring card advantage that can like take over a game. So I would say don't sleep on the talents as a whole. They're like pretty strong and pretty worth drafting around. I'm sure there are a couple of them that are exceptions that are weak, but for the most part the cards are very good. And then just a random note, red removal in this sets not very good. Usually like red is one of the better removal colors. Here the red common removal options are two men a deal three. If you control a raccoon, you can rummage. That one's pretty good, but then your other options are three men a deal four or exile an artifact sorcery and five men a deal six to a creature and two to a token. Those are both like a little expensive and clunky for my taste. So I kind of think that like green and white and even arguably blue have like better removal than red, which is a bit weird, not like super important reds kind of, you know, doing other stuff, mostly just like aggressive attacking type stuff, but wanted to point out that the red removal is, you know, we often have like a one manner removal spell and a two manner removal spell. And here we only have two and up. And so yeah, just a little bit below what I'd expect for red. And the removal space. So now backing up to go over kind of like what each of the archetypes are doing. So blue, white is birds. I counted the number of creatures in each type in each color combination at each rarity. 'Cause I felt like some of the creature's creatures they're like were more of than others. And so it kind of informed like, can you expect to have a whole deck that's just these or are you gonna be like, you know, half or primarily this, but like have to have a significant number of cards that like aren't that type. The creature types range from four to seven comments. So like there are only four common otters. That's the least common type while there are seven lizards, seven frogs and like six plus one rabbits. And there's carrot cake of food that makes rabbits. And every color combination also has one non-creature that references its relevant creature type. So birds, for example, has dazzling denial, which is a two-man encounter spell that counters unless they pay two or four if you control a bird. So five common birds is on the low end and the theme for birds is like flyers plus non-flyers. And of course, all of the birds that aren't changelings have flying. So given that your cards sometimes specifically require non-flyers to work, it is very strongly suggested that birds will not be exclusively birds. It will be birds and some other stuff. So there's the uncommon signpost blue-white bird puts a plus one plus one counter on a non-flying creature when it or another bird. No, it or another creature with flying enters. So to make the most of that card, you really wanna cast that card on exactly turn three so that you can follow it up with more birds and more triggers. But to get value out of that, you need to have cast a non-flyer on turn one or two. So birds, I think, really wants to find one and two mana non-birds to include in the deck. Mice work well there in the mice care about being targeted and the birds are often targeting the non-birds with like buffs from the birds. But I also think that it doesn't really matter all that much what your non-bird creatures are. It just kind of matters that you have some for your birds to be like buffing. So my primary takeaway from the time that I drafted birds was you really wanna be looking for like cheap stuff to get you started before your top end birds. Also, because you're looking to round out your deck with non-birds, you're gonna play other stuff. And since everything is so linear and so invested in what its type is doing, if you put some mice in your deck, the mice are gonna try to pull you into the mouse direction. They're gonna want synergies that exist in red, which is gonna be awkward for your blue-white deck. So you kind of have to decide like, are you going to be three color to support whatever base color you go or like whatever base type you go for your non-birds or are you just gonna stick to two color and not go very deep into your support type for your birds. So birds struck me as a little bit tricky to draft, just because you can't quite be as all in as you can with the other types. Like the other types, you might not see enough rats to only play rats, but you're not like actively looking for non-rats to make your non-rats work the way that you are with birds. Blue-black is rats. There are six rats that come in, pretty normal number. But the common rats mostly, don't strike me as very strong, but they do help with synergies on the higher rarity rats. And I think the higher rarity rats are very good and like some of them care about how many rats you have. And so the common rats help with that count. Again, rats theme is a threshold. They have some self-milling and a lot of cards that reference working better when you have threshold, so seven cards in your graveyard. They play well with removal spells, card draw, card draw and/or removal that mills you. I think it's generally pretty easy to get threshold on at some point in the game, not necessarily super fast. And rats have like some really, really, really good uncommons and rares. And I would not want to get into rats based on their comments. Red-green is raccoons. Only five common raccoons, so toward the lower end. Also, notably, two of the raccoon rares and one of the uncommons cost green-green. And this is with casting costs like just GG or 1GG, which means that if you have those things, you'll want to significantly bias toward base screen, like more forests than mountains. And given that you're probably only drafting any of these, if a higher rarity card's put you into it, or if you're the only person in raccoons and someone opens one of those rares or uncommons, it's more likely that it's going to get past you. I think a decent portion of raccoon, DAX, will end up caring about that green-green casting cost. That's not really a factor in other tribes or other types. So just a little-- just something a little bit weird there. Also, so the thing that raccoons care about is expending or something. They care about using four and eight mana in a turn. But they don't have a lot of mana sinks. There are a bunch of raccoons that give you mana and even more raccoons that care about whether you have expended, but in order to expend, you need to spend mana on something. And the raccoons mostly are not directly giving you that thing to spend mana on. So I think you want to be cognizant of looking for mana sinks in your raccoon deck. I was thinking that you'd want equipment and food and stuff like that, but that's not the case. So you have to actually have spells. Raccoons are not enabling that super well. There is like a tormenting voice type effect that can help you keep having stuff to cast. But I would say that you want to be careful-- have a plan for how you're going to keep casting stuff. Maybe raccoons want to-- maybe Timor is a thing where you have raccoons and otters, and then you have a bunch of card draw spells to trigger your otters and trigger your expend and stuff. But that's just my concern with raccoons, is you want to have a plan to keep up your card flow, I think, if you have a lot of expend triggers. Green White is rabbits. There are a relatively large number of rabbit cards, as I mentioned. And their theme is like tokens and go-wide. Really pretty straightforward. They have a variety of effects that pump all their creatures and make more creatures. And I think that there's a 2 mana 2 too that you can spend 4 mana to give all your creatures plus 1 plus 1. I suspect that card's very good. There was a card that had an effect like that, except it also gave vigilance in AFR-- adventures in the Forgotten Realms-- and the pump, your team ability really overperformed there. And then with rabbits, you're going to be wider than you were in most decks that could use that. And I just think that at some point, you're likely to be able to hit the 8 mana point where you can double activate that. And that's usually very significant. So I would keep an eye on that particular common. White-black is bats. Like with birds, there are only five common bats. So another one that's on the low end. The theme here is gaining and losing life. There are some non-bats that support that very well, like, for example, the 2 mana-black lizard that your opponent loses life and you gain life when it attacks. I think that you really do want to lean into the theme, but it's kind of hard not to. Basically, all the bats reference gaining life or triggering when you gain or lose life. There are a lot of cards that make you very, very good at regularly triggering your gain and lose life stuff. Bats has seemed pretty good to me if you can get a good density of it. My only concern is the relatively small number of bats that exist. But I have a bunch of fliers and life gain and there's some synergies. Like, the fundamentals on bats seem pretty good. I realized that I accidentally skipped over lizards. Lizards is the black red, a relevant creature type. There are seven common lizards, which is a lot. I like their common non-lizard-relevant spell, scales of shale quite a bit. The trick that costs three mana minus one for each lizard you control and gives plus two power and lifelink and another keyword. And those tricks generally play pretty well. And lizards really wants to be able to attack with all the lizards. It's a very aggressive deck. Its thing is basically damaging your opponent or your opponent losing life. So having an inefficient high quality combat trick that other people don't want makes it a lot easier to keep attacking with your creatures. Also, the trick plays really well with menace and lizards have a bunch of menace. I haven't drafted lizards yet, but the cards look really good to me. Blue Red is otters. There are only four common otters. And all of them cost at least three mana. And I think that this deck really wants to get on the board with an otter before that, because otters are mostly giving you rewards for casting non-creature spells. And so if you're not playing any of those until turn three, you're not like getting your first trigger until turn four at the earliest. And then you're only triggering a single otter. So I feel like it's pretty important to get some of the higher rarity otter cards so that you have otters that cost less mana. Overall, otters seem very fun to me, but a little hard to get together, just because there are so few actual otters and you need a good mix of those otters and the cards that ward you for them. And you kind of need to draw them in the right order, because you have to cast your otters before you cast your non- otters. But you also, if your deck ends up being expensive otters and cheap non- otters, then there's a bit of a push to use your mana and cast your non-creature spells before your otters aren't played a benefit from them. So I kind of wish there had been a two mana common otter to support this thing a little bit more. So I don't know. I played against otters some in the early access, and mostly, I think, wasn't as scary as a lot of the other decks. So too soon for me to say, but I have the most skepticism about otters. Squirrels, I like a lot. There are five common squirrels, plus cash drab, so slight light side, I suppose. But Barkform Harvester is a common changeling that I think squirrels wants a lot more than the other types do. So to some extent, both common changelings are more squirrel than other things, just because the squirrel decks, like the one that fixes, I think squirrels, the most likely base that's going to want to be splashing. And then Barkform Harvester is the 3 mana 2/3 reach changeling that you can spend to put a card from your graveyard on the bottom of your library, which works best if you're aggressively milling yourself. Specifically, I think Barkform Harvester is really good if you have a lot of cash grabs, because that's a quick way to empty your library so that you can start doing the full recursion thing. And squirrels really want you to have a lot of cash grabs, because it's a great enabler for what the squirrels are doing. And it's hard to play a lot of cash grabs without having a Barkform Harvester, because then you risk connecting yourself. And I really liked the way that squirrels play. They have a good mix of feeling very traditionally green black, while also feeling very squirrel. And they seem pretty good at setting up some pretty cool engines and synergies with the graveyard stuff that they're doing and the food stuff. I personally expect to draft a lot of squirrels. Mice are the red-white creature type. Six common mice, relatively high number. Their theme is valiant slash targeting. So every mouse either cares about being targeted or has a way to target other creatures. Mabel is the closest thing to an exception. Mabel's a rare or maybe mythic mouse legend, but it creates an equipment called Craigflame. And then that can equip things. So Mabel is basically a target error in this paradigm. I think this deck can be very strong and snowball-y. But because you're like A plus B, where half of your stuff is targetters and half of your stuff is things to be targeted. A deck with a good amount of disruption can potentially strand you on all A's or all B's. So either all things that target or all things that pay you for targeting. And then you're not really getting anything out of your synergies. I do think mice are pretty well supported, pretty strong, pretty aggressive. But I do think that if I'm playing against mice, I will feel best if my deck has a lot of removal so that I can try to break up those synergies. Blue-green is frogs. They're actually a large number of frogs, which I was a little bit surprised by. Seven Cummins, although a few of them I don't really like. And their theme is bouncing, flickering, leaving, entering just like ETBs and stuff that cares about these things moving between zones or coming into play again or whatever. I think that's pretty cute. They manage to tie in bouncing to be evocative of frogs jumping. It's not strictly all bouncing. It doesn't always involve going to your hand. There's a good amount of flickering instead. But I feel like I get the joke they were making and it's satisfying. I think this architecture is really cool and fun to play with. It's just very fun to reuse ETB abilities and get extra value out of all your cards. Has a bit of the mouse situation where it's a lot of A+B combos where you want your stuff that does something when you enter and stuff that lets you do it again. But in a way that's a little bit more is really into removal just because you're getting a lot of ETB value. So if they kill your thing that gave you an ETB ability, then whatever. I think that the good, cheap ETB frogs are really important, just like they're the stuff that you need to make everything else work, in particular, sunshower druid, the green O2 that puts a +1 +1 counter on a creature. And you gain a life when it enters and pond profit, the 1/1 that draws a card when it enters. I think you need to prioritize both of those very, very highly to just make sure that your other synergies are working smoothly. I want to play frogs as a really grindy deck to get the most out of their thing. But I think that it's possible that they want to be more like tempo based. And there are some frogs that point you in that direction. And that is basically what I have. That's what each of the pairs are doing and kind of the big picture stuff. I have only gotten to draft some of these. So not a ton of experience, of course. This is my first time talking about Bloomberg. Fortunately, this is after playing it enough that I feel pretty familiar with the cards and play patterns. But I haven't personally drafted all of them yet. I'd say I'm pretty excited to try out lizards and bats from among the ones I haven't played. And I suspect that it's going to be hard for me to get away from drafting squirrels. And I guess if I'm liking the looks of lizards, bats, and squirrels, I'm probably going to be drafting black a lot in this set. So yeah, that's what I have prepared. So now I'm going to turn it over to Twitch chat for questions. While I'm getting some questions ready, I would implore anyone who's interested in supporting the podcast to check out patreon.com/drafting archetypes to support the show. First question is about three color archetypes that I see as viable. Mentioned, I didn't want to go super deep into that. But Sultai and Teamer are the first that come to mind. I suspect that there are some others that can work, but it seems a lot easier if you're a base green. So I am mostly going to stop at those. I guess I kind of wonder about bands, just as a way of mixing like birds with non-birds with fixing. Any subtle combos or synergies I'd like to call out? This sets mostly not subtle about its combos and synergies. Even where there's cross-type synergies. All of the synergies in any given type are very clearly that this was planned to work together. And then most of the ones that are like cross-type are still pretty loud, like the lizard that drains your opponent for one when it attacks. Being a good card for bats isn't subtle. It says gain life, bats say whenever you gain life. And like the frog stuff works with ETBs. There are ETBs among non-frogs. There's the raccoon that taps 2 minutes to 2. Tap to give target creature haste until end of turn, use only as a sorcery. That card is not a mouse, but it does let you target something every turn and it's a red creature. Like I kind of suspect that that raccoon is better in the mouse deck than it is in the raccoon's deck, possibly by quite a bit. So those are some synergies to be aware of, but I mostly think of them as like pretty loud. Question about how good is the removal? I mentioned that the removal in red seems pretty bad. Removal in black has felt pretty strong. White's removal is pretty good, banishing light at common is like a very significant removal spell. I think the removal overall feels pretty normal. It's just that like red happens to feel a little bit weak. How did it feel to ignore the kindred synergies and drive across loans, so to speak? I tried to draft like an Esper-controlled act that ended up kind of like leaning into bandit class, the black class that cares about your opponent not having cards in their hand. And it felt pretty weak. It felt like I'm just giving up so much power in what the set's like offering by declining creature synergies. I ended up like kind of back-doring into rats 'cause it's like, well, I need to have some way to win. And I guess I'll play some rats 'cause I'm playing a long game. So my graveyard's gonna be full. In general, I do think that a vast majority of the time it's gonna be better to really plan around a creature type. And you might be able to play a controlling version of it, like rats and squirrels play very good control games, but I don't feel for the most part, like I want to be spell forward in a way that ignores the creature types. I think this set is definitely and very much actually a like kindred set and like doing the creature type stuff matters in a way that feels pretty unavoidable. But to answer the question about whether control decks seem viable, yes, they just involve building engines that are in line with what the creature types are looking to have you do. Do I think the set has an abnormally high amount of combat tricks? I think that most sets have several. I don't think that I would be surprised if this set had more than others 'cause I'm basically under the impression that most sets pretty strongly follow a skeleton about like how many tricks and removal spells and creatures at various costs and stuff there are. So a set would only feel like it has an abnormally high number of combat tricks. If the combat tricks are better or like more of them end up in decks because there's some specific deck that wants to play them such as like mice and this set. Okay, good advice. Would I give a newbie diving into that kind of format? I'm assuming just into this format. I would say. Actually, this is something I should have talked about earlier. I think that the density of whatever you're trying to do is almost always going to be a little bit lower than you want it to be. Like there will be packs that don't have any of the thing that you're doing. And those packs will often offer you a strong card that's doing a different thing. And I think that it's very hard to stay focused in this set but I think that it really rewards you for doing so. And that suggests kind of a blinders on approach but you're so rewarded for being in the open lane because you want to be so focused that I think there's some value in drafting in a way where you kind of straddle a few archetypes and then choose one to lean into rather than trying to hybridize the two. This is something that I personally believe that I'm bad at and that I think that I will have to consciously practice in this set because I do feel like a large portion of time you really want your final deck to be settled in an open lane more than to be just like hybrid of various like strong cards that you saw in the draft because the synergies are so real. The creature seems small generally. How does that affect the gameplay or strategies? It means that like synergies are a little bit more significant 'cause the individual cards are less likely to win on their own. I mentioned that the only common creature that isn't any of the types is the creature that taps for a man of any color. There are a bunch of uncommon creatures that aren't any of the types. I wrote the whole list in the notes. They're all like pretty powerful. A lot of them are big. Those are all kind of I think intentionally strong enough that you can kind of put them in any deck that can cast them and they'll be fine. And so that means that the decks will have like a little bit more in the way of big stuff just 'cause you can like play some of those like good uncommon big stuff creatures that will make it a little bit less just all small creatures or whatever. And then you stand out removal spells that I saw. I think that like banishing light is a strong removal spell. Like all of the creature type based removal spells like sonar strike and polywallup are good if you are like in that type. I think that the blue like grip tied variant or whatever the or put a creature on top of its owner's library. It costs less if the creature is like attacking blocking or tapped is pretty good. I liked the black removal spells collectively. Thoughts he's guy, the thoughts he's lizard is back breaking with frogs is a comment that I agree with. Maybe that counts as like a more subtle synergy, but again, that's basically just frogs plus ETBs. I took a lot of advantage of stuck in the pantry in green. What's my take on heirloom epic? The one man artifact lets you draw for draw for form and analyze tapping creatures to this. I didn't see it in play a lot, but I did see it in play once in like a frog deck and my opponent had like a bunch of like O2s and one ones 'cause of like the frogs that enter and then don't really do anything and it looked pretty great there. The fact that it only draws at sorcery speed and so you have to commit your mana and or tapping your creatures on your turn is a very real drawback, but it's only one mana to play and potentially represents a strong engine. I think it's like pretty good in the decks that are likely to have a lot of one ones, especially if you like build them to be a bit more controlling. I think that it's like a lot of the card advantage tools that are available. You have to like be in the right space to take advantage of it, but then it's very strong. I saw in the vaud, you disagreed with LR about when it makes sense to gift with you seemingly, with you seeming to be willing to gift a lot more often, is that something that depends on the archetype? What I was disagreeing with was a claim that gifting would be done 20% of the time in general. I just think that like both different cards are going to differently incentivize gifting such that like rounding to how often gifts are paid in aggregate, just sounds like a silly thing to try to do to me. And also, I think that it's very easy to evaluate gifts as the thing that I'm giving doesn't sound good relative to what I'm getting in a vacuum, but in context, I think that what you're getting often looks better than it sounds like I saw a discussion about the like deal two damage to all creatures, and then you can like gift a card to deal one extra damage somewhere. And it's like, well, why would I wanna do that? Like that's such a small portion of the damage that I'm dealing, obviously like giving a whole card to do an extra damage isn't something I'm gonna wanna do. But as soon as you're playing a game and there's a single three toughness creature that you care about, it's like, yeah, obviously, I would rather kill this creature and give them a card. And I think that that's just how a lot of the gift cards work is it kind of doesn't sound good to give your opponent a resource, but once you're actually playing it and you're like, oh, I'm getting this thing that affects the board right now to give them this thing that doesn't really matter immediately and actually I do care about the board right now, the gifts start to look a lot better than they kind of sound in theory. Did I get a sense of any paper beats rock hierarchy between the archetypes? Not a lot, I mean, I think that it's more gonna come down to exact cards and builds. This is something that I say whenever people ask about this between different archetypes, you know, to some extent, it's like, I think mice are relatively weak against removal while like rabbits are probably relatively strong against removal. So if like rats are relatively likely to have a relatively large amount of removal, then they would naturally be better against mice than they would be against rabbits. But I think all that stuff is like very soft. I'd mention the duos had varying power levels, which ones do I feel have higher card power while having the ability to stay open. I think that like the squirrel raccoon that makes it food and gets plus one plus one when you expend is like a really good card. Just like a tutu and a food is a really good baseline, even in the fact that it can get bigger, especially if you have like things that are actively looking for the food. Similarly, I think that like the bird bat that gains life whenever a creature enters and is a two mana one two flyer is really strong, both just like a good baseline and an extremely good enabler for the bats energies in particular. I think for the most part, like the cheaper duos seem a lot better than the more expensive duos. How do we build a five color bread deck here? So five color just following essentials. It doesn't sound good to me. Yeah, no, this set is about this energy is that it's about. I think that knowing myself, I might loosely try to fight that at some point, but I am not optimistic about it. I think that, you know, this set really is most comparable to something like Lauren, where the creature types like really matter. I do like the way that this set is constructed in particular. I like the play patterns around the creatures. I think Lauren had some amount of that, but they feel kind of like more clearly defined and more distinct to me in this set than they did in Lauren, which honestly is a little bit impressive, given that like Lauren is free new world order, which is say that Lauren is at a time when it was more permitted in design for creatures to have like more activated abilities. And stuff, but I think my first impression is that like, the kind of like big picture, like, you know, vision level design for this set. I think came up with kind of like more cohesive and generally just cooler decks and synergies than Lauren had. Do I have a sense of which bombs I should be looking for to pull me into it type in a sealed pool? No, I'm not going to try to like analyze here the top and rares or mythics in case someone happens to open one that I happen to think of mentioning in sealed. I just don't think it's a good use of time. If you're looking for like a detailed breakdown of rares, a lot of other content creators do set reviews that are card by card and it's just out of scope for my focus. Anyway, yeah, I think that's going to wrap it up for today. So thanks for listening, everyone. Next week is going to be weird for me. I'm going to Gen Con and I'm leaving early Wednesday and the set doesn't come out until Tuesday. So I think I might not record next week because I can't really find a reasonable way to fit it into a schedule. So apologies for that. Just the way that my timing works. It's obviously better to get episodes out early in a set, but I just don't think that my schedule really allows it in a coherent way. I think it's better to focus on playing on Tuesday. And yeah, so a rare week off for the podcast because of Gen Con and then I'll be back the following week of getting into archetypes. So I will be back back into podcast feeds again in just under two weeks. So enjoy the set and I'll see you then. Bye for now, everyone. Prepare for light speed. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING]