Hey everyone, since the full Battle for Zendikar spoiler is out and the prerelease is a few short days away, I figured I would go over the set’s unique mechanics. I’ll explain what each mechanic does, how it fits into limited, and how it could fit into constructed. Hopefully I’ll point out some synergies that could help at the prerelease and beyond. So let’s get to the mechanics!

Awaken- Awaken is a mechanic that provides certain instants and sorceries with an alternate, more expensive casting cost. That more expensive casting cost allows you to animate one of your lands (and give it haste, so your land can always attack immediately) as an additional kicker on top of the spell’s original effect. The size of the animated land changes on a card to card basis.

Awaken is a mechanic that doesn’t seem especially appealing at first, but it is a doozy when you really think about it. At first glance, the Awaken costs seem prohibitively expensive and animating lands seems like a great way to make your manabase vulnerable to removal. However, it is important to remember that all of the spells that have Awaken are utility spells that would often make your deck anyway. It just so happens that those utility spells can kill your opponent now. Now your Unsummon can win the game on its own. Your Hero’s Downfall can put you on the offensive. Your Cancel can create a blocker. That added utility is huge and with all of the mana acceleration and huge, slow creatures in BFZ, Awaken costs are easily attainable. Awaken also keeps situational spells relevant into the late-game. Spells like Boiling Earth and Clutch of Currents ordinarily become terrible draws in the late game, but Awaken allows them to still have value. It’s also worth mentioning that almost every Awaken card is a 2 for 1 when cast for their awaken cost. It is that utility that made the Evoke creatures so strong in Lorwyn (if you haven’t played with Mulldrifter, I recommend you try it).

In Limited almost every Awaken spell is playable so feel free to fill your deck with them. It’s worth mentioning that you should be considering Awaken spells for their original cost and effect first. If your deck isn’t tempo-y enough to want an Unsummon, then Clutch of Currents probably shouldn’t make the cut just because it has Awaken. Also remember that you can stack the +1/+1 counters from multiple Awaken spells on the same land to make it even bigger. There are times when you’d rather have a 10/10 super land than a bunch of smaller ones. Stacking the counters increases the risk of a blowout, but spreading the counters can make it tricky to tap your lands for mana while also blocking/ attacking. All in all, Awaken looks like an amazing limited mechanic.

In Constructed, Awaken looks like it could easily be the foundation of a creatureless control deck. Awaken plays very well with man lands, (which I’ve talked about before) as the man lands get to keep their counters when they animate. A 6/7 Shambling Vent can easily put a game out of reach for an aggro opponent after one attack or block. However, do remember that you need to pay the animation cost for the man land if you want it to gain it’s keyword and base power/toughness. I could easily see a WUB creatureless control deck that runs on nothing but awaken spells and Shambling Vents. Another potential avenue would be a UR tempo deck that uses the blue Awaken spells.

Converge- Converge is a mechanic that rewards you for casting spells with multiple colors of mana. Each Converge spell has a variable effect that becomes bigger the more distinct colors of mana you use to cast the spell (so GGG would count as one color for the purposes of Converge and GRU would count as 3). As a result, every Converge spell is more powerful in a 4-5 color deck than in a 1-2 color deck. Since there is no mechanical overlap between the Converge cards, beyond being more powerful in multicolored decks, every converge card has to be analyzed on its own terms. Spells like Radiant Flames and Painful Truths are excellent in decks with 3 or more colors decks, but only ok in 2 colored decks (and they’re just bad in one colored decks). A card like Brilliant Spectrum is great in a 4 colored deck, but terrible in anything less (and completely unplayable in a 1-2 colored deck). Something like Skyrider Elf is amazing regardless of how many colors you play, but it is at its most bonkers in a 5 colored deck. The Converge spells are some of the swingiest cards in the set and they require very careful deckbuilding to utilize properly; but, when you do take full advantage of them, they are really efficient and powerful.

In limited, Converge is going to be tricky to take full advantage of. If you base your deck in green/blue and splash the other colors you should be able to build a workable 5 colored mana base, especially if you get a few copies of Evolving Wilds, Fertile Thicket, Blighted Woodland, and Lifespring Druid. Once you’re in 5 colors you get to play with almost all of the good cards in your pool, so the reward is certainly there. Fortunately, almost all of the converge cards can be played with only a single colored mana so while you do need to be playing 4-5 colors, they don’t need to be a specific 4 at any given time. Just start in green and work out. Almost all of the converge rares are back breaking if you can cast them as colorfully as possible so strongly consider them. Also remember that the colorless Eldrazi don’t care if you are in one color or five, so they play very nicely with converge spells.

In constructed, Converge looks bonkers to me. The fetchlands and the slowlands form together like Voltron to make five colored mana bases not just possible, but consistent. With the mana out of the way, you’re free to play five color good stuff. Bring to Light looks like the card around which a powerful five colored control deck could be built. I would love to play a card that can simultaneously be an End Hostilities, Utter End, Dragonlord Ojutai, Siege Rhino, and Crackling Doom. I think that Woodland Wanderer will snuggly take Polukranos’s place in green based midrange decks and beat faces for many a month. Radiant Flames will be played as an Anger of the Gods replacement in a lot of three colored decks. However, the Converge card that I really want to call out though is Painful Truths. The card is capable of being 3 mana and 3 life for 3 cards. That is absurd. That amount of draw has never existed that cheaply before without some huge hoops (barring the broken Treasure Cruise). I don’t know what deck wants it yet (probably some flavor of Abzan, you know, the best deck for the last year), but it is pre-ordering for a dollar and that seems stupid. It seems almost as stupid as when Dig Through Time pre-sold for the same amount. So maybe skip a latte and pick up a playset. If I’m wrong, you’re only out a latte and if I’m right, you bought a busted card for a dollar.

Devoid- Devoid is a pretty simple mechanic: cards with Devoid are colorless, despite the fact that they have colored mana in their casting cost. Colorlessness is the calling card of the Eldrazi, one of the two major factions in Battle for Zendikar, and Devoid allows for Eldrazi cards to maintain their unique colorlessness and still fit within Magic’s color pie.

In limited, Devoid does a few things on the fringes, but doesn’t impact much. It help support “colorlessness matters” cards like Dominator Drone and Forerunner of Slaughter, which provides synergy to Eldrazi decks. Devoid is largely going to pop up incidentally since so many cards have it, but it doesn’t seem to provide enough synergy on its own to drive a deck. It is worth mentioning that Eldrazi Scions and Awakened lands are also colorless, so they also turn on colorlessness matters cards and play nice with devoid. Just use Devoid as a shorthand to visually sort your Eldrazi and Eldrazi support cards.

In constructed, Devoid doesn’t do much on its own; however, the colorlessness matters cards that support devoid also happen to support artifact creatures (since they are generally colorless as well). So Herald of Kozilek plays very well with Hangarback Walker. Ghostfire Blade also plays well with any devoid creature. In general, I think there might be a UR devoid/ artifact deck out there that uses the Herald of Kozilek/ Hangarback Walker/ Ghostfireblade synergy, but I’m not sure how powerful that deck would be. Devoid also allows cards to get around “protection from x color” while still being playable in an x colored deck, which is useful in some edge cases (but not in BFZ limited, since there are no cards with protection in the set). It is nice to be able to play mono-blue, but still be able to block Goblin Piledriver for example. It is also nice to be able to target Etched Champion when it has Metalcraft turned on.

Eldrazi Scions- Though Eldrazi Scions aren’t technically a named mechanic, they are a big enough part of the set that I feel like I should address them. Eldrazi Scions are token creatures that a lot of Eldrazi spells produce as a kicker to whatever other effects the spell has. Scions are 1/1 colorless creatures that can also be sacrificed to generate one colorless mana. The Eldrazi Scions are Battle for Zendikar’s answer to the Eldrazi Spawn and Scions being 1/1s instead of 0/1s makes them much more versatile without support.

In limited, Eldrazi Scions are going to function as both mana ramp and as cheap blockers/attackers. Since they are in every color except white, the Scions are going to allow almost any deck to go wide with attackers or chump block. They are also going to allow you to convert that broad base into accelerated monsters. It only takes a few Scions to ramp up to the big 10/10 monstrosities that can end games by themselves. There is also a creature sacrifice theme in BG and the Scions are great cannon fodder for all of the sacrifice spells. Thanks to the Scions you shouldn’t be afraid of running a few of the 8, 9, or 10 mana Eldrazi in your limited decks.

In constructed, I expect the BG sacrifice theme to manifest itself into some kind of deck and I would expect to see From Beyond in some kind of green ramp deck. If you want to cast Ulamog, you’ll likely need some Scions to help. In terms of using the Scions to attack, I think there are too many cheap ways to wipe the board for a real weenie swarm deck to manifest itself.

Ingest- Creatures with Ingest exile a card off of the top of your opponent’s library whenever they deal combat damage to that opponent. Before I break down what ingest does strategically I feel it’s important to explicitly say what it doesn’t do. Ingest will not “mill out” your opponent (remove all of the cards from your opponent’s deck so that they lose when they try to draw from an empty deck). Barring your opponent having tons of lifegain or card draw, it is more likely that your ingest creatures kill your opponent with the damage that they are doing than their deck by eating it. Ingest creatures also don’t help you deny your opponent good cards by exiling those cards from their deck. Unless you have a way of seeing the top card of your opponent’s deck, you have no way of knowing what their next draw is. So you are just as likely to Ingest bad cards that they don’t want as you are to Ingest their best stuff.

Now that we’ve covered what Ingest doesn’t do, let’s talk about what it does do. Ingest helps turn on a host of Eldrazi Processor cards. You see, Eldrazi draw power from cards in exile (this is thematically supposed to represent the Eldrazi drawing power from consuming parts of Zendikar). Ingest creatures are all small and cheap in order to put some of your opponent’s cards into exile so that your processors can turn those exiled cards into powerful effects. Cards like Blight Herder and Ulamog’s Despoiler can turn two exiled cards into huge swingy effects by moving those cards from exile into your opponent’s graveyard. That processor/ Ingest interaction is what Ingest is all about.

In limited, Ingest is just going to come with some of the small Eldrazi creatures that you’re going to want to play anyway so in a way Ingest is a nice bonus. However, if you manage to draft some strong processors, most of which are in UB, you can prioritize Ingest creatures over some of the other low cost creature spells. Ingest looks like a mechanic that is very swingy, it either makes ok creatures overwhelming or does absolutely nothing. If you happen to get a bunch of processors, but few Ingest creatures, try to pick up some of the Eldrazi removal spells since they all exile. If you get a bunch of Ingest creatures, try to focus on the processors that can repeatedly process exiled cards.

In constructed, I don’t know that Ingest will show up. Ingest is a mechanic with two huge barriers to playablity: the relative power of the Ingest creatures in a vacuum and the relative power of the processors when they can process. If the Ingest creatures are terrible on their own, then they just won’t keep up with the established monsters in the format and they’ll rarely make contact with your opponent. If the processors don’t do enough when they have fuel, then jumping through hoops to turn them on isn’t worth it. I predict that some of the processors will see play, but they are going to be fueled by some of the exiling removal spells like Titan’s Presence and Horribly Awry. It looks to me like there are a few ingest creatures that can stand up on their own, but there certainly aren’t enough good ones to fill a mana curve from 1-3. If I was going to play some synergistic one and two drops I think I might move towards another mechanic…

Landfall- Landfall is back people! Landfall is a mechanic that causes certain permanent and spells to get bonuses whenever you play a land. Landfall was one of the premiere mechanics of original Zendikar and it is deceptively powerful in the right decks. Some Landfall creatures gain keyword abilities like First Strike or Trample whenever you play a land, but other have repeatable effects that get better and better the more lands you play in one turn. That distinction makes Landfall one of the most fun mechanics to play with since there are so many different permutations of it and it takes advantage of a part of the game that is often unglamorous: playing lands.

In limited, creatures with Landfall combo very well with mana acceleration like Natural Connection and lands that get other lands like Evolving Wilds or Blighted Woodland. Most of the great Landfall creatures are in red and green, but every color gets some Landfall love. If you find yourself with a lot of Landfall creatures, pay very close attention to how you sequence your lands. For example, if you have Natural connection and Belligerent Whiptail, wait until your opponent gets into combat with the Whiptail to play your Natural Connection. The same thing goes for Evolving Wilds, sometimes saving the Landfall trigger is more valuable than searching up a land that taps for mana.

In constructed, Landfall looks to me like the most explosive thing you can be doing in the new Standard. As with Converge, the fetchlands and slowlands come together to create a very consistent mana base that is capable of easily triggering Landfall twice a turn for the first 3 -4 turns. By combining the fetches with things like Makindi Sliderunner, Scythe Leopard, Atarka’s Command, and Swell of Growth a GR Landfall deck can reliably kill a defenseless opponent on turn three. Let me paint you a picture. Turn 1: forest + Scythe Leopard. Turn 2: fetchland, fetch a mountain, play Makindi Sliderunner, swing for 3. Turn 3: Fetchland, fetch a forest, play Atarka’s Command using the 3 damage and play an extra land options, play another fetchland, fetch a forest, exile the fetches and Atarka’s Command from your graveyard to play Become Immense for two mana on Makindi Sliderunner, swing for 17. In that sequence the GR player did 23 damage before his/her opponent could play a 3 drop. That is straight broke. Hold onto your Wild Slashes and Twin Bolts, you’re gonna need ‘em.

Rally- Rally is Battle for Zendikar’s version of the ally mechanic from Zendikar and I think it is quite a bit better than the first version. In original Zendikar, there were a bunch of creatures with the ally creature type and each ally had some ability that would trigger when it or another ally entered the battle field. The trigger could cause all allies to gain an ability or it could cause one ally to gain +1/+1 counters or any other number of triggered abilities. However, allies used to only impact other allies, which made them quite parasitic. If you wanted to play with allies, you really had to commit to only playing allies. Rally has the same trigger as the old ally trigger, but the abilities often impact all creatures you control. There are allies that give all of your creatures keyword abilities and allies that boost your creatures’ power and toughness. As such, Rally is great in any deck that wants to go wide, but it is at its best in an ally deck that wants to go wide.

In limited, Rally is going to end games. Most of the keywords and bonuses that Rally can bestow are strong enough to push through huge amounts of damage if the table gets clogged with creatures. If you can repeatedly trigger some of the uncommon allies, you will be in a very strong position. It is for that reason that Retreat to Emeria is a busted card in BFZ limited, it can make allies and pump up all of your creatures. Allies are in all five colors so getting a few strong allies in 3 or four colors could easily push you towards using a lot of Converge cards as well. Rally also plays very well with Eldrazi Scions since Rally will pump whatever army you have, be it Zendikari, Eldrazi, or both.

In constructed, I’m not sure if the ally deck will work yet. As I said in the Eldrazi Scion section, there are a lot of ways to clear out small, cheap creatures right now. So I’m not sure that an Ally deck will be able to hit the critical mass of creatures and triggers necessary to win. Maybe an ally deck can be created using Secure the Wastes or Hoardling Outburst to create a token swarm which is then pushed over the top by Rally. I think a real ally deck will have to wait for Oath of the Gatewatch to come out and for some other strong strategies to rotate out of standard.

Whooo that was a lot. I think I just went into an MTG analysis vision quest. I hope that advice helps you prepare for Battle for Zendikar.

This will be my first Magic set played in almost 2 years, as I took a break when my first daughter was born, and I am SOOOOO excited. Zendikar was probably my prime time in Magic, and returning to it will be amazing. The cards and flavor look awesome, and have a similar feel to the OG Zendikar set.

I don't know if I'll get into standard right now, I picked up one box of Origins but don't have any Khans, so I may just be doing limited until Khans rotates, but I still find it super fun to follow. Not sure what will make a big splash in standard, but that's half the fun, trying to break something old with something new. I'm hoping some sort of U/B control will be viable soon, it's my favorite color combination.

Good luck to anyone playing pre-release with your sweet potential foil mythic! Or even better, a treasure land!

Great article Pinguino! The converge talk really got me thinking, and I'm still a fan of your potential R/G landfall deck. I'd love to see/play against what you think a fully fleshed out version of that deck would be? Obviously not every game would go that smoothly :P

I've very little interest in MtG these days, stopped playing after Coldsnap or the set after Coldsnap maybe. But I really enjoy your write ups on the game. Very entertaining and insightful.

@jesus_phish: What a dark time to quit playing magic if you stopped during Coldsnap. If you stopped in Lorwyn, you are one of many who were driven out during the Time Spiral/Lorwyn/Shadowmoore days. Those are some of the most beloved sets in Modern, but those sets also almost got parts of R&D fired. The inaccessibility of those sets are what gave birth to New World Order, the new design imperative that dictated that common cards have a maximum level of complexity that they should not exceed.

@takayamasama: U/B control should work just fine in the upcoming standard, though I would suggest adding white since splashing a third color is trivial right now. Then you get to play all of the best control cards.

@bollard: The fleshed out version of R/G Landfall is playing well when I goldfish, but I'm not sure how it will hold up against opposition.

It looks like Bring to Light, my favorite Converge card, has quadrupled in price in the last few days. Presale prices are really crazy.It's worth mentioning that I think that the next 6 months are going the be the window for Converge. Once the fetchlands rotate out, I think the mana base won't hold up anymore barring some fetchland reprints in Oath of the Gatewatch.

@thatpinguino: I've started thinking about how I would make the deck myself. Stumbled across this and took a lot of inspiration (I was already planning on running Omnath) - I didn't think of the elemental tribal theme. You might like it.

@bollard: That deck is doing a lot of ramping in order to play a worse finisher than Dragonlord Atarka. Omnath will win you the game, but he takes much more set up than the dragonlord and he doesn't impact the board the turn he comes down barring a few fetches getting cracked in response to removal. That deck is also playing way too many cards in the 3-8 mana spots and not enough on the early end of the curve. If you want to play a bigger style of G/R, I advise a lot of Wild Slashes and possibly Radiant Flames to keep the board clear for your fatties. Also Hedron Archive looks like something you might want to play for ramping purposes.

@thatpinguino: I wasn't sure if Time Spiral came before or after Coldsnap but that was when I actually stopped. The last MtG event I attended was a Time Spiral release event.

I think maybe if I could've gone to more FNM events I might've hung about. But at the time I was young, the only event was held in a college and I was still in school and MtG was just a game me and my buddies played and we'd go to pre-release events and meet others on Saturday afternoons in the game shop where we'd buy boosters.

@jesus_phish: Time Spiral was the set right before Coldsnap. I played it while I was young and the mechanics and interactions broke my brain occasionally in limited. That might be the least intuitive set ever. I love it, but man was it difficult.

wrt Painful Truths: I'd argue that Read the Bones is a better card, and it didn't see a huge amount of play in Standard in the past 2 years.

I want the processors to be good, especially in a UB tempo deck. Ulamog's Nullifier looks like a card designed to get me back into Magic, and I'd happily cast Wasteland Strangler too if I could reliably enable it. Unfortunately, as you said, viable ingest creatures don't really exist. A 2/1 devoid ingest for B might've helped to replace the rotating black 2-power 1-drops from Theros block, and might've allowed this sort of deck to get early threats that enable processors on the board and then hold up mana for Nullifier and the like past turn 2, but instead none of the ingesters really seem to do well enough on the vanilla test.

That said, with all the fetches people are looking to be running in their 5c goodstuff decks (or even in their 1c aggro decks), combined with the few viable exile control cards in the format, maybe the format will enable the processors incidentally. If so, they'll probably show up in small quantities in control decks.

@fnrslvr: +2 card advantage is better in almost all cases than scrying 2. The only case in which scry 2 draw 2 is potentially better is if you scry both cards to the bottom or if that one extra life is really important. Otherwise you end up getting the same cards you would get from read the bones and one more card. I think playing with a draw 3 effect in place of scry 2 draw 2 will show to be considerably better.

@thatpinguino: +2 card advantage? How did you get from draw 3 vs scry 2 draw 2, to +2 cards vs scry 2? I'd expect the surface intuition to be to compare +1 card to scry 2. (Which, given the typical rate of duds draws to gas, I tend to find pretty even.)

But going a little deeper, can we agree that PT is only better than RtB if neither of the top 2 cards is dead? In that case, the third draw gets extra gas if the third card is good, and fixes your next draw if the third card is dead. Conversely, RtB is better if both of the top 2 cards are dead: you bottom them and get the next two, of which PT only gets a look at one of. On average, I think it's hard to argue that P(both cards are gas) is substantially higher than P(both cards are dead), even post-board in a format with manlands -- and I think the success of Dig Through Time (an absolutely incredible card that still only hit $10 when people came to their senses saw it do ridiculous things in the Pro Tour) demonstrates that the ability to dig deep for card quality tends to outstrip simple card advantage, especially if you're looking for answers.

Then I think the mana cost swings it in RtB's favour: even in a format with fixing comparable to legacy, 2B is much less awkward than having to tap your only blue and green sources as well as a black source.

I mean, some of this might be a little off, but I can't see myself being so off about this that PT will turn into a format sleeper and make back more lattes than the one you have to forego to pick up that playset. But then again, I really like my coffee. :)

@thatpinguino: Well you'll have to show me your version some time! I'm very curious.

@bollard: Will do! I also have to put together a Bring to Light deck of some kind.

@fnrslvr:I misspoke, I'm comparing +1 ca and scry 2 to straight up +2 ca. The only scenarios where Read the Bones is better that Painful Truthes is when you scry both cards to the bottom and either the second draw is the card you want or you end up wanting the first and second cards. If neither of them are desirable, you are in just as bad a shape as with Painful Truths except you've dug 1 card deeper into your deck. Your deck is still randomized so digging 1 card deeper could be the difference between winning or loosing or it could end up being meaningless. This is especially true in a world where fetchlands are going to make you shuffle all the time. I agree that digging a little deeper is better than not doing so, but I don't think that it is worth giving up an extra card in hand. There is a lot of power in being up an extra card, even if those cards seem useless and that would only happen in the absolute worst case scenarios. However, if you scry none of the cards to the bottom or 1 card to the bottom, Painful Truths is straight up better since you still dig just as deep into your deck, but you get to keep all three cards you would be looking at with Read the Bones. Even if you would have scryed one of the three to the bottom, getting to keep it in hand is better than chucking it out. If it's a land you can still play it or bluff with it. If it's a spell, maybe it will be useful at some point you didn't imagine when you were scrying.

I think the disconnect in our evaluation is that I see Painful Truths getting played more in midrange decks than control desks since midrange decks tend to employ multiple broad threats instead of narrow removal. Control decks often need a specific card or subset of cards more than they need more card advantage, while midrange decks tend to just need gas. This is especially true in the comming Standard since Landfall is going to be a thing. I don't know that there can be a draw three effect that completely whiffs in a standard where land drops can hold huge value. Giving a deck like Abzan an easily attainable draw three for three just seems really unfair. I've played with and against Treasure Cruises cast for three mana and those still felt really broken at the time. I'm guessing Painful Truths will turn out to be a strong standard player, but we shall see. My ears always perk up when effects are offered for the cheapest they've ever been.

Hot damn I think this set is pretty fun in limited. Of the three pre-releases I did, I went 4-0, 3-0, 0-3 in that order, and walked away with some OK stuff. Mid range in this set is very very undervalued, as most people want to just play there big 6 or higher cost guy. Both my undefeated decks peaked at 4 mana, first one being U/R devoid with 14 devoid cards and way more Vestige of Emrakul then I should have (that card is amazing btw), and second sealed my deck was just 10 3-4 cost flyers in W/B.

The removal in this set is sparse in almost every color outside white, in which is seems abundant, so getting that early game 2-4 drop rush going on really pays off. I will be super interested in drafting it next Friday and seeing what kind of things people gravitate to, and what colors/themes seem open.

Also pulled an expedition :D. Wasn't a fancy one, the new G/R land from BRZ, but I'm still excited, and it looks pretty as all heck. I collect foils of all kinds so it made my day.

P.S. Sire of Stagnation is amazing and I realllllly wanna try to get him to work in some sort of U/B control standard deck but I don't know if it's gonna work :(

@takayamasama: I'm so jealous! The art on the expedition G/R slow land is one of my favorites! There were no expeditions pulled at my prerelease so I didn't get to see any fancy cards.

I opened a pretty mediocre pool and rode some smart play to 2-1 and a 4th place finish out of 21. I actually managed to beat a person who had two dragonmaster outcasts by some miracle of clutch draws and horrible misplays on his part. My best open was the b/r dual and Woodland Wanderer.

It looks to me like the awaken cards are straight nuts in limited and every archetype is well supported. It is kind of amazing how well balanced everything is.

Removal is going to be at an all time premium since the only common removal that can unconditionally kill eldrazi is 7 mana. It looks like every color combination and draft strategy can be played multiple ways without cards that completely skew your draft like the 3 color commons and uncommons in Khans. This limited might be even more skill testing than Khans and that was a tough format.

I was lucky to complete almost all of my fetchland playsets in trades after the draft as well. I also managed to snag a bunch of the new duals and cards that I think are undervalued. I am so pumped for new standard. 5 color here I come!

@thatpinguino: The store I played at was packed at nearly 40 people each event I went, but the insane thing was the expeditions pulled. If the show of hands when asked were true, at least 10 people at each of the events pulled an expedition. Mine was from a prize pack, but damn was I shocked to see that many floating around. I'm gonna be super interested if expedition stats from those pre release boxes come out, they seemed way higher then anything predicting them I read beforehand.

Also double Dragonmaster sounds like crazy, though with my sealed luck, I would have pulled those and then only like 5 red cards total XD

Excited to draft this format Friday, and get my Buy a Box card! It ain't no Hero's Downfall, but it will still be good for a while, with how much removal is leaving standard come Friday.

You guys almost make me want to go to FNM to play draft for the first time in years - but then I started thinking about how you actually play MtG again and I think it's no longer for me.

@jesus_phish: I don't know if you are still up on your game, but Battle for Zendikar looks like a blast in limited. There is an 8/9 trampler at common and it's playable! It looks like the format can support decks centered around 1/1s and decks centered around 10/10s. Also there are full art lands in every pack so the set is going to hold tremendous value without the allure of the Expeditions. If Khans of Tarkir didn't make you jump back in, maybe MTG isn't your thing anymore, but BFZ looks like a blast.

@takayamasama:I ordered a box and a fatpack online because my local store is already unsure if they are going to be able to sell fatpacks for the foreseeable future. Apparently this fatpack print run was very small. I can't draft this weekend, but I can't wait to try drafting 5 color. 5 color sealed was just not gonna happen without a miracle.

@thatpinguino: I am hoping my local stores won't run out too badly. Playing in Hawaii is always kinda weird, since it's an enclosed community, but the card shops around Oahu get tons and tons of product, and somehow it's always tax free. I don't know what system retailers on this island have, but standard sets are always 3 bucks a booster, 90 bucks a box and I love it. Hopefully they have fatpacks though, I heard the first run is small since the first runs include full arts as the lands. I'll be at my local card store the moment they open :D

@takayamasama: That is absurd. I can't get that price on boxes without going to online retailers and group buy sites. I'm just happy that I was able to get a fatpack at all. Gotta get my full art land playsets out of the way.

I attended a pre-release event over the weekend and learned the hard way how ingest should work. I worked it more as a 'mill' simply because so many ingest cards I had were cheap, and most hard to block ( I had 3 Mist Intruders and 2 Benthic Infiltrator's, for example), which was enough of just an annoyance I sometimes could get my big hitters out like Breaker of Armies, but not reliably enough. I think I was missing the advantage that Oracle of Dust could have given me for card draw.

Either way, even without a full understanding of how some of these could work in your favor, this set is some of the most fun I've had since Khans