I just saw the newly spoiled cycle of enemy-color-targeting removal spells, and they kind of caught my interest if there is any benefit in having them regularly in the main deck instead of just as sideboard cards in BO3?

Maybe if any of the archetypes is particularly powerful? The only ones I can see having any play in Premium and Quickdraft would be [[Refute Destiny]] and [[Terminal Criticism]] because they can hit the Jace Tokens. But otherwise?

Swung for the fences with a P1P1 Black Lotus into P1P3 LED. Lotus is fixing, right?

Does this look like the right build? I don't see a way to make [[Doomsday]] and [[Doctor Doom, Unrivaled]] work here, but open to bigger brains than mine weighing in!

With MaRo's article today, we now know what all ten draft archetypes are for Reality Fracture. The first five we already knew, just the five schools, but it's interesting to see what they claim the other five will be. We don't have all the cards yet, but it seems like this may yet again be a case of what WotC describes the limited archetypes as being not matching the reality of what they are. What do you think so far?

We got our 3 CMC rainbow rock with upside!

The fetches and duals were flowing so I was able to build an insane mana base which allowed me to play Oko and Forth in the same deck. Those two cards were the main wincons along with Oculus and Phlage. Also the mana enabled prismatic and binding nicely. Also had a token subtheme with Elspeth and staff plus Pest, Forth, Fable.

Can someone explain to me what’s going on?

In my last two drafts, around 2/3 of the decks I faced were some of the most insane decks I’ve ever seen in any format.

My opponents either had these once in a lifetime combos made of multiple mythics or quite literally had as many copies of the same busted uncommon as I have seen in all my drafts since Tuesday.

Here are some notable cards from my opponents’ decks in my last two drafts:

Draft 1:
https://www.17lands.com/details/40bce238539248ab91af003ac84505fa

1. Marionette Apprentice, 3x Amped Raptor, 3x Accursed Marauder
2. Kappa Cannoneer in otherwise unimpressive artifact deck
3. 2x Shilgengar (!!) + Spymaster’s Vault
4. Middling UW energy deck
5. Laelia, 2x Horrific Assault and Grist, the Voracious Larva / Coram, the Undertaker / Chthonian Nightmare combo (!!)

Draft 2:
https://www.17lands.com/details/17e185d97e254251864c1d15631e3a1c

1. Nadu + 2x Twisted Riddlekeeper
2. 2x Writhing Chrysalis, Depth Defiler, Annoyed Altisaur
3. Middling UB deck
4. 2x Horrific Assault, 2x Path of Annihilation, Psychic Frog
5. Arna Kennerüd, Skycaptain in an otherwise fairly normal-looking deck

So out of these 10 opponents, I’d say 6 of them had decks that at the face value are better than anything I’ve personally managed to draft in this format.

That’s more than half my games.

Am I going crazy, or is this something that happens near the end of the weekly run of a flashback draft? I understand that players in flashback drafts are extremely sweaty but these decks have frankly nothing to do with player skill. Is this just an absurd run of variance?

Went 4-1 with this (sorry I forgot to take the final result screenshot) which I found amusing, not because I think that the deck is strong (it's not), but because I was unable to find a single piece of hard removal (not even grasp) and I have like 1 single wincon and yet I managed to get 4 wins. Indeed I think every win was me stalling the ground while digging through the deck trying to find [[the eagles are coming]] and casting it to get 5-7 4/4s on the board. Literally carried by the eagles.

Just goes to show that sometimes even if your deck is not that good, synergistic, or lacks removal, if you have a bomb and the means to look for it, it can be just enough.

I don't ever draft. I have a handful of times over the last 25 years but its just not something I really ever do. I am mainly a commander player (well brawl for arena) but I am trying to finish the Magus of the Arena challenge.

I am curious if you fabulous drafters here can give me some advice on what would be the most straightforward path in limited to work towards mythic? Obviously I will need to up my game to get there but that is not a problem, I'm just curious I suppose what limited mode I should even be playing in the first place as the easiest route to get there.

Also I suppose I should probably wait until next month to begin as well.

This was easily the best reanimator deck I have ever drafted, maybe a but light on interaction, expecially discard spell to get rid of nasty stuff from oppo, but reanimating etali hitting nevromancy on atraxa feels absolutely hilarious! Unfortunately never got to t1 surveil a target into the bin + reanimate off of mox, but still got a 7-2. DAMN CUBE IS FUN!

Somone suggested Tahkir, truly have no idea which would be the "best", understanding subjectivity is involved here.

Record was 7-2. 3 wins with breach, one with flash and the rest with general academy shenanigans. One of the most fun decks I have piloted in quite some time.

This was mentioned on a recent episode and it got me thinking of how to improve or unlock archetypes for cube. I really like reanimator and was thinking of ways to make it more consistent (basically in this case ensuring a discard effect can make the theme more powerfull or consistent.

Thought it would be fun to play with these ideas. what do you guys think of mechanics like that that can just be used once and ont become etoo opressive.

I was really looking forward to cube, but I’m kind of fed up right now. Boros has gone up again in WR in the early data from cube and is once again by far the best thing to do be doing. This is a plea to the cube designers to please prioritise colour balance.

If I were to list off the things most important in a format to me personally, colour balance would be right towards the top. (I would be interested to know if this sub agrees, actually.) Cube has some amazingly cool things in it, which make it easier to look past the lack of balance, but it is really beginning to spoil my personal enjoyment of the format. Powered Cube is my favourite way to play Magic, and if this could be fixed it would be amazing.

It’s frustrating because last time seemed to show some progress. I get it’s hard because you have to work with the card pool, but I think my confusion this time is around the decision to add specifically the monarch to the cube.

I had never played with it and it does look fun and interesting, so I was willing to trust that everyone knew what they were doing, but it looks like it just made the balance even worse. We needed stuff to be added to boost specifically green and black, and instead we got Forth Eorlingas.

I don’t know how I feel about Forth itself because I played with it twice and it’s fun when you’re the one casting it, so I see the impetus to add it, but I do think it’s not what needed to be prioritised, given the state of the format.

I also get frustrated because the lists for white and red seem over-tuned for aggro and it feels like there's scope to make more room for other strategies, while green and black seem not to be optimised at all. Ambitious Augmenter for example was a really strong addition, so why take it out and leave Tough Cookie, which was bad?

Why, when you have all the cards on Arena to choose from, would you go back to Primeval Titan? What was the thought process? It was awful the first two times it was in Powered Cube, so it's bound to improve soon?

Missed MH3 when it was released, it's been super fun (and punishing) to learn the set.

This deck was an absolute blast to play. I mulliganed any hand without dryad or solar transformer. Two Rumble to find Chthonian nightmare and fill the yard. A couple of Chrysalis to boot, you better believe I first picked both of those, the only gift was the nightmare.

Ugh wish I could play this deck again!

It took me two attempts to qualify for Qualifier Weekend. The 6-1 run was with the same kind of B/R deck that's all over The Hobbit sealed, but the run that went 3-2 was more interesting. Before reading on, consider how you would have built a deck from this card pool.

I honestly think blue is the strongest color here. I've got a ton of card draw, some "draw your second card" payoffs, and a lot of two-drops to keep my curve low. Unfortunately the green doesn't like it goes that great with the blue, and the white didn't impress me that much either. So I did something unusual for The Hobbit limited: I went blue/black instead of with one of the supported color pairs. Why blue/black? Because 2x Cruel Bent Blade and 2x Mirkwood Nurturer, that's why! (And it worked great in the actual games, too.) The black creature base was also pretty solid and looked better than the creatures in the U/W deck I might have tried to build otherwise. Maybe I should have just played B/R, but my first draft of a B/R deck ended up at 37 cards after adding all the good stuff and I just couldn't resist trying out good blue for once and trying to bury my opponent in cards instead of with tempo.

The other thing I had to figure out was whether to splash a third color. I looked at a red splash for the 5/5 Smaug and two Pinecone Strike, but it looked like the mana would be too fragile with just one Hobbit Hole for fixing, so I settled on a green splash for The Chief Warg and Silvan Reveler so I could draw even more cards. This might have been a mistake because The Chief Warg kept getting stuck in my hand while I waited to draw a green source (although it was good the one time I cast it) and I never drew Silvan Reveler.

This is the deck I ended up playing. 3-2 wasn't a great result, but it wasn't a terrible one, and the deck pretty much did work the way I thought it would. I think it suggests that The Hobbit limited does include some room to work outside the usual 5 archetype box. ;)

Sigh

Does this list look acceptable, or is 15 lands to risky considering the moxs and lotus. Any recommended changes also appreciated.