Limited Resources 851 - Secrets of Strixhaven Format Overview (and Prismari Converge Deep Dive)

What is up everybody welcome to another episode of limited resources this episode number 851 my name is Marshall I'm one of your limited resources and joined me online all the way from Denver Colorado it's Louis Scott Vargas Louis we've had this set like a week now have we solved it we're fully into the mid-mid-range or mid game of the set it's funny we we comment on that all the time now but it really does come up quickly we've got the pro tour coming up this weekend and that means that for people who are qualified for the PT we're recording this on Tuesday they're gonna be playing on Friday morning like cracking packs to draft on Friday morning so hopefully they've had enough time to get up to speed on the intricacies of this format we're gonna be talking about some of the big picture things that we've seen and even getting into the weeds a little bit on one of our favorite archetypes today on the show to help you know what we think about the format early on before we do want to say 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question question of the week this is one of the perks that you get for being a patreon supporter of ours is you get to put questions in for the question of the week and when we have guests when we do our Q&A this question comes from Grayson who says would you like to see cube incorporated into sanctioned competitive play such as the upcoming 2027 limited championship or would you prefer to stick solely to booster draft if so do you think watsy would actually do it first I want to know if this is mark Grayson because it's Grayson first name but not sure okay who knows you know maybe we'll find out later you don't watch invincible do I don't know who mark Grayson is I thought you were saying about like a friend of yours or something now I spent a lot of time with him but okay is this a show or so like do I need to watch this show or what's oh it's awesome it if you invincible is a really really cool show it's a comic book show but like about superheroes but it's also it's pretty it's more like the boys then oh yeah like Superman gritty mm-hmm for sure and it's it's a lot of fun but anyways we've seen cube in sanctioned competitive play before I played a world championship where I forced monorette and went one two that I really should have gone to yeah that was the players championship right right championship rebranded it's the same 24 people or something yeah and we've seen some online high stakes cube culminating in ultimate guards kind of cube championship last year that that we saw like eight players play out live after playing all like the qualifiers on Magic Online so yeah I think you go great for competitive play I I think that you are gonna run into things like I play you know imagine they had a cube pro tour and it's like I lost playing for day two of the pro tour because my opponent went turn one lotus you know into a questing beast or something like that or they top deck balance you know but like that can happen in constructed or limited people can top deck things that are good like yes when you lose in cube sometimes it's like pretty ridiculous like one of my best draws ever in cube I had against Sam Rolf actually I had like turn one Academy Mana Crypt mocks Narset time twister right and like yeah that's obviously ridiculous and like you didn't get to play the game but I think that most of the time you know cube is I mean you can actually just specifically see that cube is a high stakes or a high-scale format by looking at the lifetime win rate of people playing cube in competitive setting so while there are things to complain about I think overall it would be awesome I think the biggest challenges are logistical you can't really run a grand pre-vintage with vintage cube unless it's online but online does does solve that nicely yeah and I bet you will see something like that from arena you know for for something I mean they just kind of have to do it I would love to see it I you know I've had their privilege of covering many of those events that Louise just mentioned and they've been I mean my biases towards cube aside they've been really exciting I mean there's just such a cool look I think the main thing for me would be I would want it to still feel special like I wouldn't want to see it come up all the time it would have to be kind of its own special thing for every once in a while because it does put an incredible amount of pressure on the cube design to be balanced if you make it like a repeat format with stakes like that that is the type of thing that the you know the pro community will really break and make not fun where if you put it up on arena even or magic online to a large crowd their preferences still will supersede you know pure balanced decisions I mean there's people in cube that just aren't going to draft agro decks there's people that just want to draft blue every time whatever they want to try for combo decks and they're willing to pay the entry fee to do that but if you start to say hey you can win thousands and thousands of dollars it's like well that now they're good it's kind of a race to the bottom I think in that way good question grace and thank you for that Louise let's get into the format so we've had it a week now it came out last Tuesday on arena and we've both been jamming you've been going pretty hard right oh yeah I've done a lot of drafts for sure okay I've done a good amount I would say I'm at about 13 ish now which is fewer than I normally would have done but I'm getting ready to go to the PT which is ironic because I need to know this stuff for the PT but also I have you know everything else in life to try to take care of before I actually hop on an airplane but I do you know it is interesting this one of the things that we should note right off the front here Louise is we are talking about you know essentially a five deck format maybe you had another half deck in there for converge if you consider that its own thing but you know Wizards of the Coast clearly focus this set on these five two-color pairs the schools as they were and it does make it a little easier to suss out what's going on yeah I think that I this format's interesting I actually really like it so far it has shades of drag Tarkir Dragonstorm in that one of the best decks in the format or one of the big decks I don't want to say best decks it's just one of the main decks in the format is this like five color soup feeling deck right you've got converge cards like one of the best cards in the entire format is together as one the six mana converge card and you know like the best you know one of the best green cards is the is the like snarl that makes two xx's and you gain x life also with converge so converge is definitely a big part of it but and that the two aggro decks are white black and white red which is actually a lot like Tarkir because Mardu was like the aggro deck in that format but I think that there's a there's a lot of interesting stuff going on and I've liked the gameplay a lot so the way I see it there's two kind of main poles there that the format's like cluster around there's lore holder silver coagras a white based aggro white black or white red usually not splashing pretty aggressive lore hold has a slightly different build as well it can go a little grindier maybe it's a little worse aggro is you know in exchange but I've definitely lost some long games to lore hold decks they can grind nicely and then on the other hand there's prismari and what I say prismari I kind of mean three decks or maybe four depending on how you look at it there's straight blue red prismari spells so and this is what we're gonna spend a lot of time talking about today actually want to go pretty deep on it because I've been drafting it pretty much exclusively to the surprise of no one you know this is the like sometimes literally zero creature deck with just tons of removal tons of card draw counters finishers whatever there's also a prismari aggro deck that I played against but I haven't had just haven't been pulled into it because the way I see it and I'll speak more about creature accounts later it's really bad to play like six aggressive creatures in your deck you got to play like 10 or 12 or play like none right the removal is good in this format they will die right and it's just like you're opening up there they're tone blast all of a sudden is good if you're playing your your expressive artist you know you're too many to two but if you do if you play that get it tone blasted then don't have much follow-up it's like you kind of just are down a card for no real reason so there but there is that there's also kind of prismari converge and this is actually I think a lot of where the format is going to land because I actually haven't found that quadrics is either a deck standalone or as part of the converged deck that often I mean and maybe other people are doing it a little bit more than I am I've been converging in quadrics yeah but I feel like you could blue green base and converge or you could red blue base and conversion just have better cards much better removal certainly better removal there are reasons to play quadrics it's not a zero percenter and you know sometimes you are gonna want to like have green green based removal to kind of are sorry green base fixing to kind of like get you get your colors and the high quality fixing like the two-mana to do the it goes and gets a basic yeah the cards awesome I first picked that card and I'll draft around it for sure but I think that prismari is like blue red spells or blue red echo or converge and it kind of quadrics is kind of folded into that I haven't seen that often just like a straight-up quadrics like you could probably draft a decent quadrics tempo deck if you found the right cards but I feel like the two ends of the format are really this like blue red base spells deck with maybe converge stuff going on or not and then like white black or white red aggro where does that leave quadrics well again in the spells category but wither bloom is like the most interesting one there because it's kind of in the middle it is actually a mid-range deck and the strength of that is you can actually beat aggro decks with a good mid-range deck and you can also sometimes go under control decks enough and I certainly lost to wither bloom before I've kind of felt like mid-range does tend to go better against aggro and worse against control and I would say when I'm playing prismari I look forward to playing against wither bloom I just it feels like they have a lot of cards in their deck that just aren't that good against you and you know that they kind of like didn't choose a lane and the disadvantage is people who chose a lane even harder than you sometimes will get an advantage so really it comes down to do you want to play grizzly bears or divinations those are those are like the two of the big things going on but I do want to be clear that I think that the overall better thing to be doing if you can get a good build is to play one of the aggro decks like I do think that though that they're really strong silver quill and lowerholder both quite good and this is not like Tarkir in the sense that I think the five color dragons deck was just the best thing to do in Tarkir I don't think that the five color control deck or prismari deck is necessarily the best thing to be doing I personally enjoyed a lot so I drafted a lot but I think it's good but if you open a good silver quill or lowerhold rare you should certainly be taking it so it's not it's not don't you know don't don't draft these aggro decks unless you force to it's they're actually just great decks yeah I was thinking you know if I was playing in the pro tour this weekend I mean I would love to open up a great white card like that seems to be a really great place to start to go in either of those more assertive directions they you know they represent the two top decks currently this is after one week so you know we don't go crazy on it but they are the two most winning decks in the format and it really gives you an opportunity to go for one or the other I found that the better boros builds are those more mid-range base builds the ones that can take advantage of some of the graveyard synergies and some of the cards that you wouldn't maybe necessarily associate with a straight-up red white aggro deck those those type of builds are the ones that I've had the most success with silver quills feels a little bit more all-in but you know if you would have told me Louise well this for this archetype cares about targeting stuff and a lot of the time that happens to be your stuff because of the way that they put a lot of you know extra target your stuff cards in the set especially with the cards that have like the little free spell attached to them like half of the white and black ones just target your your own thing I would have been really skeptical that that would have been you know something that could be consistently good but it has been it's it you know rewarding you for removing your opponent's threats when you're trying to attack them is a snowball-y type thing that can absolutely lead to two wins I would say that's probably my least favorite deck to play in the format just stylistically but it's been strong and a little more resilient than I want to give it credit that I would have given it credit for but boros has been quite a bit more resilient it's just a little less edgy on the aggro and it's a little bit more towards the value mid-range but enough with the assertion so that the slower blue based decks can't just do whatever they want and that's kind of the sweet spot for the format I agree with you about the witherbloom decks being kind of stuck in the middle a little bit one of the you know heuristics that I use early in a format is come up with whatever you would describe as a quote good version of the deck like a b-minus or something like that of each of these archetypes and you know I'm actually pretty happy with all of those except for witherbloom I want and I and I have one with and lost to witherbloom so I'm not saying that it's even bad I want a good version of it like I want something really pulling me in that direction as far as rarity goes or a whole bunch of synergistic things I want one little extra bump above what I would normally expect from a deck to kind of make me go in that direction because I think that what you said is true Luis is just positioned not perfectly in the format and so I need a little bit more incentive where all the other decks if you gave me what I would consider to be just a solid version of it I'd probably be just fine yeah and and and that that's kind of in my experience with witherbloom as well it certainly at a baseline seems like the the weakest of the decks but yeah but it's also not so far apart that you can't play any of these decks you know I so far the format balance hasn't seemed too bad to me no it hasn't and I have the at least the week one numbers are and this is really easy because there's only five decks red white is 58.1 with white black being 57.4 is the top two there of course it does show you the other colors but it's basically ignorable as it's a tiny fraction of how many times it's been drafted and it would have to be something special for that to happen so I'm just ignoring them for now next up are effectively tied are the two blue decks Simic and is it or I guess in this case whatever you know Prismarian quadrics and then witherbloom is pulling up the rear but only by like another half a percent below those so the whole the total spread is 54.3 to 58.1 and that's totally acceptable right that's a totally fine like if I was a designer at Wizards of the Coast and I really needed to make sure that these five archetypes were all viable and one of them didn't get down into 51% territory and you came to me and said would you accept 54.5 to 58 as your range I'd be like heck yeah like that that is totally a normal distribution because remember there is more pressure here with only five viable archetypes maybe six if you count converges a separate deck to really nail it if one of them falls off completely it gets kind of rough pretty quick where you know all of a sudden you only have four archetypes to draft and that can be difficult to self correct etc etc Luis do you want to do crack a packs now that we've kind of set the stage and then go deep on some of the other stuff yeah that sounds like good point okay because I know that one of the things that we're not mentioning but we will in just a little bit is the interesting nature in which when you pile on so many cards I mean what did we have 10 gold cards per color pair that we went over in the set review when you do that you know now you can start to see differentiation within an archetype and we'll be talking about that a little bit today too and that's something we don't always get okay so let's open up our first crack a pack for sick secrets of strict save and our first card out is fields of strife and that is the red white surveillance the lands are good I mean you obviously want to be playing these lands you're not really going to be taking them super highly but yeah you know they're good to have they're good to have next up is tenured concoctor this is the foreign agreeing four five vigilance and it says whenever this creature becomes target of spiller ability and opponent controls you may draw a card and it has infusion it gets plus two plus one as long as you've gained or excuse me plus two plus oh and as long as you be in life this turn I have yet to play tenured concoctor yeah I think in a actually forgot it existed if I'm being honest and probably a shocking twist I don't I don't play a lot of this card but I certainly have lost to it it is a tough card there you go next is one of a trio of common red removal spells all of which have proven to be playable in the format this one's heated argument the expensive one it's four and a red for an incident of six damage to a creature you can exile a card from your grade of our if you do this thing does another two to the creatures controller yeah I mean I really don't prioritize this card like it it's just so expensive like you just you'd really don't want to be starting a draft by taking such no no no this this is one of the one of the lower end but it is proven playable I you know you and I talked during the set reviews Louise quite a bit about the overlap potential for cards and it's very obvious that the designers were very keen to do as much of that as they could and this one you know removes a card from your graveyard and it's like oh hey cool you know but obviously you can also play it in Prismari where you're getting opus plus with the five mana cost here next up is pull from the grave to in a black sorcery return up to two target creature cards from your graveyard to your hand and gain to life I have a story about this card when we get to when conditions this card is actually I have embarrassingly splashed this card in some decks but I found this card you couldn't find enough card draw oh you oh I see what happened okay yeah go ahead go ahead this is a very Louis situation to find yourself in by the way basically you and Paul were ignoring me yesterday but I was sending you pictures of that of that Prismari deck I started with and I did not see it I was not ignoring but I didn't see it what was it well I just started up for a party draft pretty nicely right you know my first couple picks were like it was like like vicious or the violent outburst you know the blue red deal 3 flow state and like another removal spell you know it's a vibrant outburst of vibrant yeah I really need to learn these anyway so but at the end of the draft it was one of those drafts where you don't see a good wind condition so my wind condition I had like a perfect blue red setup in terms of removal card draw every all that my wind condition was I had one quadrics the the proof the the green yeah you know dragon I was splashing two black cards pull from the grave in the in the five man at 3 3 flying that drains to the only cards in my deck that could deal damage were quadrics the 3 3 I had the 3 2 haste that cast destroy a non-basic and then I had like a couple tone blasts and vibrant outbursts but so I played pull from the grave because it's like I knew what it was this quadrics so I really do need a way to get it back in a super long game hilarious did it work oh yeah I mean I got I went 5 3 with the deck yeah that works I would say that was reasonable I'm actually one of the biggest problems I had with the deck was I didn't get any hounder spells and I lost to two mirrors like having no counters in the mirror is actually pretty bad but I have found pull from the grave be one of the more backbreaking cards in these like you have this close game and all of a sudden you know it's it's down to top decks or what have you it's just like pull from the grave it's like all right well yeah cuz games go long graveyards get full and pull from the grave getting your two best creatures is really rough next up is potioners trove this is the three mana artifact that taps add one mana of any color but you can also tap it to gain to life but you can only do that if you've cast an instant or sorcery this turn I like this card a lot car this card annoying it yeah it does a couple things that are really good one is it fixes all your colors for you know the converge stuff which that's obviously great but the other thing that it does is sometimes you just like you play against someone right and you're you know you stabilize it for but there's a lot of things you have to worry about with this card you just all of a sudden make that 10 you know like you're just like gaining life for free over and over again and it's just it's just incredibly good yeah and you know I was taking a look at the trove because it really seemed to be over performing like this truly you know it was like oh that card's just doing a lot of work here every single time it feels and it turns out it is that that isn't just a gut feeling you know I went and looked at it for both quadrics and for Prismari and it was like top eight commons in both of those archetypes so that's that's pretty great you know that especially for a card that's quite over lookable next up is efflorescence this is the two in a green instant put some counters on a creature and then if you gain life this turn the creature gains trample in indestructible you have to play it not on my radar yeah I had a game where someone had it against me and it was really good but yes generally I just don't think it's a it's a particularly great card now this looks like the type of card that you'd want in like you know like a wither blue mirror or something like that I just don't find myself like I'm just thinking about the other cards I'm facing and I'm like yeah I guess it's okay against red burn spells maybe I don't know combat next up is pursue the past this is a surprising card for sure just in how incredibly well it's performed it is red white for a sorcery you gain to life you may discard a card if you do draw two cards and it has flashback for two red yeah this card has been awesome it's it's really really done a lot like it just it turns out it gases up the red white decks enough while also providing some good card advantage and that's really all you need it is and I mean currently and for the week it's been the number one common in the format it's like really overperforming especially the type of card that you'd look at and say oh yeah red white yeah beat down and then you're like well why am I doing this and obviously it has synergy things and it's a decent power level card as well I mean this is the fuel you know for your lowerhold mechanic deck but dang I would never have guessed that card would perform that well this one we both really liked and it is doing quite well it is studious first year you know anytime you can play a relevant card on turn one and use that mana up it's it has a good chance to perform and that's what's happened here with both it and elite interceptor and white this is the green one one and it enters prepared and its spell is rampant growth so one in a green social library for a basic put it on the battlefield tapped and then shuffle at sorcery speed and I mean yeah you know if you're trying to do either the quadrics thing where you're kind of just trying to go big and maybe have a little splash in there or you're trying to do the you know full on converge stuff studious first year is just nuts for that for either of those strategies yeah it's one of the better reasons to be in kind of base green even if I think greens the weakest color just in terms of looking at the different decks white I think is clearly the strongest so definitely white the best yeah I'm hesitant to take to take early green cards next up is our first uncommon we've got five of them here it's Emil Vaslan's Romer this is the two in a green three three creatures you control plus and plus some counters on them have trample and then you can pay for and a green and tap it to make a fractal where X is the number of differently named lands you control usually three three or four maybe at the most yeah I'm not it's slow it's not really that look I play against the card a bunch they play it I kill it with a burn spell you know life goes on that that is how it feels it's been my experience with the card to be honest right because the thing is you're always looking for things that kind of break the it doesn't have to be the literal mirror but similar strategies basically if you're playing like blue green or blue red and you're facing another blue green blue red or converge deck what are the cards that really matter and cards like Emil hit this middle ground that aren't fast enough to matter early and beat your opponent down and get you an advantage for having them and they don't end up winning the long game because it's a creature and it dies and these decks all have tons of removal next up is our what do they call wild card slot or whatever disdainful stroke one in a blue instant counter target spell with mana value for a greater of course these cards have been very important you know this whole run of extra printed cards there's one in every yellow the mystical archives are huge what that's actually something we I think should have been a little bit more clear about in the set review is that right these things you just see them every draft literally every pack right so yeah we did go over them thankfully we didn't because there's some of them that only you know it is difficult to keep up on exactly which type of set we have here is it the one where it's one in every pack and then the special guest is one in every whatever eight or 20 or whatever it is or is it the one where you usually don't see a card from a bonus sheet unless it's that one out of eight packs or whatever this is one of the sets that has the the slot for every single pack gets this it's just a matter of which type you get disdainful strokes been pretty fine though I've been playing it yeah I it's okay it is worse than I kind of hoped it would be to be honest like it is it is a fine card and it's important to have in some mirrors you feel pretty good when you have a disdainful stroke upright a lot of the time but I think that it I think that it's it misses enough and is bad enough in your opening hand that honestly I'm lower on this card than I thought I would be doing it's obviously a fine card it is yeah and like you said in the mirror that's where you want it but if you are playing again if you are the blue deck and you're playing against Silver Quill or lower hold it suffers it does they do a whole lot of stuff they also have a lot of cards that kind of count as that much mana but aren't you know like they play a three drop with a spell attached and then they play that spell for two and you're sitting there looking at disdainful stroke next is witherbloom charm this is the green black instant choose one you can sacrifice a permanent if you do you draw two cards you can gain five life or you can destroy target non-land permanent with mana value two or less it's fine yeah it's fine then it's not it's not a card I'm like you know going nuts over no I actually like the next one I'll go pretty far out of my way does not start witherbloom so when I say it's fine it's actually like I'm really not taking this card yeah I guess what I meant is the cards fine in a vacuum it's definitely not on my radar to first pick here next up a silver quill charm this one's a bit better black white put two plus one plus one counters on a creature or exile a creature with power two or less or each opponent loses three life and you gain three life all at instant speed I mean it fits in the deck just fine like you can target one of your things maybe the best it's the best charm like is it the best one yeah I haven't really ranked them but this one's great in terms of power level I think it's the strongest one very good card all it just does all the things that these decks want exactly including that last ability each opponent loses three life and you gain three life that can help in a race situation and it can really finish off a game if you're looking at silver quill you know it is not uncommon for them to get off to a decent start then you stabilize but then they go a little wider than your board and they're like attack with everything in your like man they're gonna target two things that don't get blocked they're gonna silver quill charm me out like they just have all these different ways of pushing through that last little bit of damage and this is one of them last uncommon is diary of dreams this is two mana for an artifact book and it says whenever you cast an instant or sorcery spell put a page counter on this thing and then you pay five tap to draw a card but it costs one less to activate for each page counter on it is this I wanted to like this card and I had it once in like a really low curve blue red deck that was like it was kind of popping off and I was like oh yeah maybe this card's good it's not good like don't okay yeah that's been my impression I had one opponent play it in a situation where it would actually like they had gotten two counters on it the board was starting to look stable and I'm like huh maybe that's actually gonna matter this time and then I draft I can't remember what it's called but the the bonus sheet card that's like white and you can add one to like destroy an artifact enchantment or put a plus and plus counter on all your guys it's like Reclamation revelation whatever anyway and so instead of it mattering I put a plus and plus on counter on my guys and blew it up for one extra mana and just completely destroy them I'm like yeah in this matchup that doesn't seem very good even if I couldn't have destroyed it I don't think it would have been a huge problem just way too slow it's just too slow our rare is a regular rare and it is Bertha wise extrapolator this is the two blue green one for a legendary frog druid with increment and or whenever whenever one or more plus and plus on counters are put on Bertha you can add one mana of any color and then you can pay X and tap it to create a zero zero green and blue fractal creature token and put X plus and plus on counters on I have not actually got Bertha yet and I've drafted a quadrics a fair times a fair bit I played against it a few times and I just haven't been that impressed honestly it's just it's fine it reminds you of the Emil Vasselins Romer is it yeah like it's it's the sort of thing where it's like it is a card they need to kill but it's not super fast and like yeah sure but generating mana on it is kind of nice like that that does do something but it's just not a card that I'm like usually that impressed with overall and certainly not something I'm not like I'm like that like I go out of my way to go get totally so what are we taking out of this pack this is kind of an interesting one because there's pursue the past studious first year there's the two charms here there is the rare Bertha if that's where we want to go I think my eyes would go to silver quill charm here just for raw power what do you like I think you're certainly supposed to take silver quill charm yeah okay now wait a minute what are you taking that I would take silver quill charm like it depends on it it really depends on like how much I want to like force prismari or what have you but I just don't think that like I just can't justify taking trove or disdainful stroke over silver quill charm like I do actually care also about winning like it's the sort of thing where if like if in this pack well there was like a vibrant outburst sure I could I could certainly talk myself into taking vibrant outburst over silver quill charm I just think that these other cards aren't good enough yeah yeah I think the other argument is is to take Bertha and try to wheel you know one of these green cards or something but it's just silver quill charms just a bit too good there okay let's do another crack a pack uh since it is the beginning of the format and we have to we have to dive deep here all right our first card out for crack pack number two is zealous lorecaster that's the five in a red four four and one at etbs you can return on the center sorcery for your graveyard to your hand yet another of those overlapping cards you know for theoretically for prismari and also for lower hold yeah this is not one I tend to play very often like really uh so here's the here's the thing is like I I feel like this is going to be one of the the worst ways to try to finish games compared and there are some some cards that I think do a lot better job of that so yeah I I actually don't usually uh go after these very highly like I'm not saying I don't play the card like it's still it's still worth playing it's just not something that I tend to prioritize because I just feel like you have better options for late game cards yeah I mean there's just not a shortage of ways to get an advantage for six or more mana five or more mana so I I just don't go out of my way to to play cards like this yeah the only thing I like about it over the other ones is that it gives you a little bit of board presence and I do like that like while you're generating other value but yeah I mean this is certainly if you have like a traumatic critique or something like that then yeah like you know like it's the sort of thing that gets a lot better but I also I put a lot of value on uh cards like uh you know divergent equation or wisdom of ages and once you have those I'm less inclined to need the lowercaster right yeah it's also like a completely non-prioritized pick like you can pick it up super late like last yeah you are the person in the market for the right right next up this is an interesting one because it's clearly you know a powerful card on its own but this is one that I think I wanted to ask you about when you were talking about the different versions of Prismarie again we're going to go deeper on this but this is elemental mascot this is the one blue red one four flying vigilance with opus it gets plus one plus oh until end of turn and then if you cast a super opus then you exhale the top card of your library and you can play it until the end of your next turn so it beats down it's got good stats and it's even a little value engine in in in the later part of the game where you add on the mascot um I haven't been too impressed with it I certainly don't think it fits in most of the like big in the spell Prismarie decks and even when playing against it in like the Prismarie it really is just not that impressive honestly how is that possible right isn't it weird when you read that and you're just like for toughness gets bigger it even has vigilance so it's like a decent blocker and can chip away damage and then it even your creature is now generating value for you it's like man I have a similar vibe to what you do to be clear I'm not uh disagreeing with you I'm just like surprised that a card could be this pushed have this many angles of attack and still just kind of be like it's fine which is how I feel about it by the way yeah I mean that that's just been my experience with it again it also is the sort of thing where like when you are opening the door to like okay creatures matter here then you end up in a spot where you're turning on some of their removal I will say to the mascot's point of favor it does have for toughness which does dodge a lot of the kind of cards I'm trying to to avoid so that's not too bad what about quick study same cost or same mana value two in a blue instant draw two cards oh now we're talking have you been doing a lot of quick study yeah I mean I don't think it's like an amazing card but I think quick study is totally fine okay yeah I always wonder if I'm supposed to be playing the the bigger later card draw spells like because it does start to get kind of crowded on card draw spells sometimes and I'm not sure which ones I'm supposed to be prioritizing like I don't understand can you you're wrong actually it does get to the point where you there are a lot of options for card draw so I actually don't prioritize quick study very highly because Seize the spoils and quick study are both like pretty comparable you know you you have like trove and tablet of discovery also on three deduce a common is you know masterpiece common or mystical archives common but still just like a common good card right like I haven't found that much trouble in finding ways to convert mana into cards so that does not end up usually being like a super high priority for yeah I have it kind of in the middle I I think I have it the same as you it's playable but it's not like oh I gotta get those quick studies it's kind of like that'll sort itself out next is glorious decay this is the one in a green instant choose one destroying artifact it does four damage to a creature with flying or you exile a card from a graveyard and draw a card um I have yet to play just a sideboard card like I I don't really know where else you would you would want to put it to be honest next up is rapier wit which is one in a white for an instant tap target creature if it's on if it's your turn put a stun counter on it and then regardless you draw a card yeah I mean I find part of like lore holder silver quill certainly have had had the card be good against me I'll tell you that yeah so silver quill really able to take advantage of it but I will say that it is funny because the the card that you get from what's it called elite whatever is is very similar interceptor elite interceptor is very similar to that and it's like kind of for free next is interjection this is a white for an instant target you get plus two plus two and gains first strike until end of turn funny because it's a perfectly serviceable trick in a format where tricks are extra rewarded because of silver quill but I never find myself needing prioritize it because of what I talked about earlier where you just find the ability to target things is kind of tacked on to a bunch of stuff in your deck including your your spells like your discard spell has it your card draw spell has it and so I just it is funny that I still don't prioritize combat tricks in the deck that wants combat tricks like I don't know this is maybe just a me thing but you know interjection is not like I I'll play one I guess but I'm not like oh I got to get this from my deck I just feel like it works itself out yeah I mean it's it's funny because it's also on like the same like the next card we're gonna say is basically the same card and yeah I would say that you don't really have to prioritize these too much though they're certainly good when they come up next card is dig site inventory that's white for a sorcery put a plus and plus one counter-attractory creature you control gains vigilance until end of turn and then critically it has flashback for white and that that's what gives it the overlap status that like interjection doesn't have and that means that you know in a pinch you could play this in your lower hold deck to get another lower hold trigger going if you found yourself short on those yeah and and this is it's funny because it's like a lower hold card that definitely it doesn't fit with like kind of the controlling long game aspect but you do need a card like this to make it so your mascots and stuff just kind of pop off like so I've seen the card be plenty good even if it's not uh not a card that you're always like looks like it always fits exactly the plan five uncommon again we've got forum necro scribe this is the five and a black five four uh with war discard a card and repartee uh whenever you cast an instant or sorcery that targets creature return target creature card from your graveyard to the battlefield is this card good I I haven't yeah I mean I think it has its moments it feels like doesn't it it's an expensive card and um it's it it's kind of asking you to either play it on seven mana or have it survive but this is the kind of card that can be very good against a control deck but it's pretty bad otherwise like I don't think this card's very good in the mirror for example right but and it hasn't been impressive it can be strong right it has not it hasn't been the type of card that when it comes down I'm like oh no I don't know why I again this is another one that I'm reading and I'm thinking well there's a lot to like there how is it actually done let's see necro not not well oh wow yeah really bad actually really about 51 points at what in the world that's terrible hmm maybe it just doesn't fit the format uh next up is stargaze that's the black black x sorcery look at the top x cards of your library put x cards from among them in your hand and the rest into your graveyard and then womp womp you you lose x life yeah I don't think you really have time for this even even like if you're the silver coil deck or you're the wither bloom deck and you're like getting ahead in silver coil or gaining life in a wither bloom I just haven't found like this card really works that well no it just seems very mediocre next is coroll history buff this is the white red 2 3 and it says whenever one or more car leaves your graveyards your graveyard coroll becomes prepared and then his spell is pack a punch one red white sorcery mill a card put two plus one plus one counters on target creature it gains trample and tell end of turn the miller cards a nice little touch you know in order to get lower hold going you do have to have cards going into your yard and then out of your yard and sometimes you have ways to get them out but no ways to get them in and tacking on they've done a really nice job of supporting that archetype by putting little things like this in it yeah this card is I think mostly gets gets there on just like two mana two three with with some upside leader yeah that's what it is it's I to me it's just I've been another one that's like sure like thumbs up I guess next up is graduation day that's the white enchantment with very partay put a plus one plus one counter target creature you control I have gone all in on this and had it be very good I don't know how it's doing overall do you have a sense for that um no I guess I could look it up but I've had I've seen it be good for sure so you know I'm not I'm not I'm not opposed to to playing it um but I don't it seems tricky to use yeah it is and also build arounds are usually the toughest ones especially in the first week to like glean what's actually going on like it's win rates very low um but I would also assume that there's a bunch of more inexperienced players just throwing it into their deck and just thinking this is going to be fine where you know if you completely build around it it probably does pay you off enough but it's close next up is fractalize this is the blue x instant until an eternity our creature becomes green and blue fractal with base power and toughness equal to x plus one not not a fan of this one no it turns out it just I think it doesn't really it doesn't really work that well no it's just a weird combat trick I mean I had one person get me with it and I was like oh it actually did something you know like that's kind of where I'm at on fractalize which isn't great our rare is tragedy feaster this is the two black black seven six trample with ward discard a card and it has infusion beginner end step sacrifice a permanent unless you gained life this turn I I mean the card is scary powerful yeah is it good I don't know that I would say it's good I don't know either I I would lean towards slightly good like I've had it come down on opposing board in the mid to late game where I was like seven power plus trample in addition to the six toughness is a problem like I cannot ignore this thing and they will sacrifice like a pest and a land over the next couple of turns if they don't gain life and a lot of times they do right I mean they can effectively sacrifice a pest by just turning it sideways gaining the one life and then not having to worry about it it to me is just across the line on like yeah I'm interested if I'm in black and I'm especially in wither bloom like yeah I'm gonna play a tragedy feaster I am not cutting that card for my deck yeah I agree with that I I think that it no it's definitely not a bomb that that I that I would agree with I I've had the the wide range of experiences with this card I had it in one deck I played against it a couple times I think if you don't play it in times when it's bad it's pretty good but it's definitely easy to screw up you know you could end up in a spot where you're just not that basically I had an opponent play it on like turn five sack of land and then the next turn I tapped it down with a I like killed their other guy and tapped it down discarding a card but then they had to sack another thing and then I was able to basically delay it for a few more turns and even though what it eventually hit me some it was still just like okay yeah this wasn't actually that good yeah pretty rough against blue as well where bounce spells go a long way tap down stuff stun counters like those are pretty punishing on a card like this as well it's kind of a crappy pack oh really crappy I would not be happy with any card I mean I guess I'm taking tragedy feaster here I had not not happily but that's you're gonna do yeah otherwise I'm looking down at quick study an elemental mascot as my my backup plans that is rough when you get five modern era uncommons and all of them are like it's pretty rough basically I think that tragedy feaster can go in either wither bloom or silver quo whereas like curel obviously is just straight up lower hold card so I mean if you wanted to I guess you could take like no this pack's horrible I don't really know what else you could take yeah it's really bad yeah I think for you and I Louise we heard feast and we're like sure I'm in let's go so even if it happens to be feeding on on tragedy okay um the deck that the two decks that I've drafted the most are unsurprisingly prismari and quadrics and I know you've been going hard on prismari and have many thoughts about it let let it what do you what do you think about prismari and how it works so like I kind of mentioned in the preamble there there are a couple different prismari decks the two I want to talk about are the straight prismari blue red all spells deck and then they're like kind of converged version of that because because those blend together and you often you think you're in one or what rather you think you're straight blue red and then it's like oh well I guess pack three I opened an off color rare that's really good or you know together as one and all of a sudden like yeah I should get a few more sources in but there's a lot of easy ways to splash so that let's just start by from the assumption of like you're trying to play a lot of spells that draw cards that deal damage you know the killer creatures bounce some counter spells a couple finishers and the finishers are pretty interesting so we'll start with that because uh basically there there are some really strong finishers and if you look at like the win rates on exhibition tide caller or like math and magics like it's pretty clear that you you some of these like finishers that basically one shot you can be really strong and yeah the way you play tide caller I think is pretty easy you just on turn six or greater play it and then play one spell mill them for 10 often that's going to be enough and if it's not they have to kill then kill it and if you don't if they don't kill it you're gonna almost surely kill them the next turn but even if they do it's like well I build you for 10 we can just kind of play a game now and I know you have to kill me and that that can be pretty challenging especially in the in the mirror those mirrors and and we're using the word mirror loosely you know that just similar strategies yeah spell mirror basically yeah math and magics is also so it's for for 10 mana you make them draw 16 cards and for 12 mana 32 12 mana is always lethal 10 mana is often lethal so I mean I've had games where I go end of turn homesickness tap your two creatures make you draw two cards untapped math and magics you draw 16 you're dead and if you've never killed them with math and magics it looks like you won the game of solitaire back in like like old microsoft solitaire because it goes and their head explodes that's great it's really cool I very much enjoy it and I saw I've certainly had fun doing that but other big you know big finishers like traumatic critique and crack with power can do a lot of damage those my experience is you do want a way to get them back you're not really going to traumatic critique them for 20 very often unless you have the the loot is an awesome awesome card I kind of count that as a as a finisher but uh crack with power so you you if you go x equals four you can do you deal 20 to them that's pretty hard that's 14 mana but more often you play x equals two for eight mana and you kill their creature you'll tend to them get it back do it again and then you know together is one is obviously like you it's not literally winning you the game that often because it only deals five damage that's that's the colorless uh converged card oh yeah x deal x gain x mostly what happens is you kill their biggest creature draw four or five cards gain some life and then you can kind of take over the game from there um but one card I really want to mention is arcane omens this card is absurd this is the four to black converge card discard x it's actually one of the top black cards and it I have a category at the end here that are cards I lose to when I'm playing the stack it is on that list definitely like it it's the kind of card though that you don't even necessarily have to do that much and even against the aggro decks sometimes if you go turn to like I had a game where I was like turn two on the play kill your thing turn three they play a card I play potions trove they play another card hit me I mind twist their whole hand they hit me down to like eight but then on my next turn I just cast two removal spells and the game is done it also is really useful at clearing out their their removal spells when you are going to play one of your very few creatures as a finisher especially in the decks that like don't have a mathamagic style finisher arcane omens eventually just wipes their whole hand and then you can play your dragon or your colossus or whatever idiot you want to use to kind of actually finish out the game arcane omens a really powerful card it's actually worth splashing for in a lot of tight kinds of decks I think that it's a card that people should be taking more highly than they are currently and it's the card it and snarl song are the two cards that push me into a converge deck more than most snarl songs the five in a green converge make two xxs gain x life so it's like two four fours gain four that's just great it's a both a finisher and a way to stop yourself from dying and it's also really brutal when recurred like you cast this and then you cast diversion equation for x equals three the next turn getting back this plus a removal spell plus a counter spell or something and so dumb yeah so I also see divergent equation and wisdom of the ages as finishers these are the wisdom is like the better version I think though they both have their their pros and cons they're both getting back a bunch of spells I've had a lot of decks where I cast wisdom and I return 11 cards and my opponent's just like I don't want to play this game anymore they they understand that you probably have a way to kill them in the last nine cards of your library and some people stick it out and they want to actually see it but honestly and wisdom gets you all of your incincense sorceries and you have no max hand size so it just goes nuts honestly you cast it like a visionary's dance and then you get it back and you cast it again that's the make the two two three threes yeah and they die with two cards in your deck and they probably walk away feeling damn almost got them and it's like no you didn't yeah like I have lost so many where I'm like I got them to two cards but there was never a chance yeah look I have definitely lost games to decking and in fact the deck the game I the deck I just told you about where I just had quadrics and the the the regrowth I did lose one game where they just they just killed all my stuff like I just never I never got anything I couldn't have anything stick and that was short on counters so I couldn't protect it well enough but I would say that even in this format you really shouldn't worry that much about having a win condition you can make some really bad cards win the game if you can otherwise dominate the game if you kill all their creatures if you draw all the cards if you have two counters in your hand it really like one of the decks I got seven wins on pretty early in the format was like blue red all removal all counters all card drawn like two terra fractals and I would just eventually cast a terra fractal for x equals seven and then one for x equals eight or whatever and you don't need that many turns as long as they're not the two of the bottom four cards of your deck and even then if one's fourth from the bottom and you cast it x equals like 10 easily win the game yeah so there's some cool win conditions one of the coolest ones by the way is brain freeze brain freeze is one of the more polarizing ones where it's one of the worst win conditions against silver coil and lower hold because those decks don't go through their deck that much and like it takes a lot of spells to kill them and you don't have and it's such a dead draw but in the control mirrors it's actually maybe the best card because how many games have you lost or could have lost if you just imagine they had a brain freeze in their deck oh every one like seriously it feels like every game if they had it like oh I've got two counters in my hand but what if they just go spell spell spell brain freeze or I play a spell and then they play a spell then I counter it then they go okay brain freeze you for 12 right it's like oh I mean I live in fear of the the one drop and brain freeze is like the sneakier harder to interact with version of that yeah and it's yeah that exhibition tide color yeah like it and yeah I so yeah I think that uh I think that brain freeze is like sneakily a really really good card but it also is very much matchup dependent so man I'm not uh by the way you you ready to do your victory lap on exhibition tide collar yeah exhibition one what oh exhibition tide 61.4% win rate right now and you remember you were calling it that like this is good and I'm like yeah but you always think mill cards are better than they are oh you win this round holy crap yeah I mean that this card is scary it it this card I mean there is an exhibition tide call so much better than brain freeze even though if I knew I was playing the mirror I'd rather have the brain freeze you play against an agor deck and this you turn seven or six play this mill them for ten even if they kill it sometimes you can get it back from the graveyard or you just got them low enough that you can kind of just wait them out you know kind of cover all their the rest of their threats so really lighter is better when it comes to win conditions if I already had let's say I had an exhibition tide collar or a mathamagics I would really go down a lot on a lot of the other win conditions I mean things like traumatic critique or together as one or snarl song are just fantastic cards those aren't just win conditions they're just cards that make your deck win but once you have a mathamagics you really need a brain freeze so you know don't don't don't go too nuts here but you want one or two of the like pure win conditions like one at least of the pure win conditions if you can have it like the cleanest deck I ever had was a blue red straight blue red spells deck with a brain freeze with just all really cheap removal encounters and that deck that deck just crushed it was awesome because that deck just never had clunky hands and just would eventually just brain freeze someone for 15 or 12 or brain freeze them for nine and get it back and brave them for six or whatever you don't need to do that much um the next category is there's the mana rocks there's actually two really strong mana rocks there's poshers trove and tablet of discovery tablets the two in red one I think if you know your blue red spells tablet is a little bit stronger than poshers trove but early in the draft I actually think you should take the trove over it because it's so good if you're converging it just it just does everything you want it accelerates you it gets you the fifth color or the fourth color also the gaining like you know four to six life in the middle of the game or eight you know at some point you stop dusing it because you don't need to you at 27 you don't need to gain life but it just puts the game out of reach so that like the lower hold deck can't just you know ping you out with those last couple things or the silver cool deck you can't get one guy through or heck has this over cool charm I wonder if it's just better well because obviously getting an extra card plus the extra mana is really really powerful I've had tablet man gaining life for tablet so filling it happens a lot is is turn four you cast on turn four with an island in your hand that way if you flip a land or a blue or red spell you can then play your island and cast it like oh I flipped a quick study I guess I want to play an island cast it because my tablet taps for two right I will say poshers trove is probably the overall better card but if you are pretty heavy into blue red spells and you don't look like you're splashing tablet is a better card there okay it's really really strong I just wonder if the trove you know filling that gap because like blue reds not gaining life it's true I mean that there are very very true both decks both of the decks that you care about the most have cards at common that don't even need to attack to ping you right like black has the one and a black two two that you know repartee drains you and red has the one four and it just sits there and you're just you're watching your life total just creep downwards even if you feel like okay I've got most of my bases covered here and gaining like four life or six life in those situations is like six extra turns or something I it's interesting because I really I would love to maybe we'll have um sirco or something take a look at that because totally I I it is weird for me to even say it but I really do wonder if the life gain is just so much more what the deck needs even though clearly the red one is like way more over the top powerful like those the the turns and the things that it enables while also being card neutral is just nuts right it is completely nuts what that card can do but it just feels like it's doing more of what that deck's already good at where the trove gives you a different angle kind of interesting yeah and and they're both they're both very strong the pushers trove is the strongest mana rock we've seen it sends probably the the orb of dragon kind you know whatever right the one that you could search up yeah the globe because it well it as it turns out and I think we've we've we should keep this in mind when we look at future mana rocks three mana tap for any color baseline not good enough in most limited formats add a five color deck starts to become more interesting at a secondary ability not even a big one just a small one and it becomes great yeah the orb did not have a you know massive ability neither does the trove if it's untapped and you've cast a spell and you don't need the mana you tapped a game to turn out that plus converge has gotten it over to over the line and I want like two of these in all my decks if I can get them okay um also if I had two troves I would just play five colors a lot of the time instead of just blue red whereas if I had two tablets I'd try to blue blue red you get the idea uh for a card draw like the premium the the gold standard we all know stock up is just unbelievably good and you get to play with it a lot one of the reasons I like this format flow state also very good pretty easy to have have that one going great early one of my favorite one of my favorite openers uh is you just like tone blast into essence scatter or quick study and then then well the dream is you're on the play and you and you go like turn two vibrant outburst or two drop ignore their three drop cast quick study turn four flow state essence scatter then you get around to killing whatever they played on turn three then the game's over yeah where you going I've never cast a flow state without two cards types my graveyard would rather concede so just keep that in mind okay I've done it to try to get a land on turn two come on I just build my deck so that doesn't happen oh I see I see but stress stream is also really good this is both removal and card draw this is the five mana deal five and then you get to you know sleight of hand very strong card so don't don't don't don't underrate that one and then you have cards like deduce sleight of hand quick study seize the spoils visionaries dance visionaries dance is mostly a sleight of hand that you sometimes start casting later in the game which one's that again the kind of way I was that's the seven mana make two three threes or two mana discard at sleight of hand yeah I like that better puts both cards or puts the other cards graveyard um that's a really easy one to set up flow state by the way because it's a sorcery and it can mill something is that a is that a is that a win condition a lot for you yeah I would I rarely have a deck where that's what my like primary plan of winning the game but uh you know I had a deck that had like two of those and wisdom and and then it had like a the six six red white colossus and like a one more creature and it basically between all those I was usually able to close out the game I didn't lose any games to deck what's your split on using the ability on it versus just casting it do you think four out of five times you're discarding it and then you know 20 of the time you're casting it okay but more but more it's like what stage of the game are you at once you're at seven mana you're often going to cast it if that's going to be enough to make the board a good place or your head on board if you're behind or it's just not enough like or you're digging for a specific thing it's like if I find crack with power they're just dead then you'd rather use that but it's a nice flexible card I like flexible cards so when I look at the deck because the last couple categories are removal encounter we're going to go through those two basically you're trying to balance all these categories and and you know we'll get to like a skeleton where I look at those like how many cards of each category you kind of often end up having but the way I tend to do it is a premium card at the top of its category almost all of them taking out of a pack like I might have a lot of quick studies I'll still take a stock up out of a pack because stock up is just better and I can cut a quick study right um likewise it's like oh you've got a lot of removal it's like yeah but burst lightning is just unbelievably good so I will take burst lightning pretty highly or in practical joke the one-man or removal spells even if I'm like pretty well up on removal but once you've started to like get deeper into the draft then yeah sometimes it's like oh do I want sleight of hand or run behind well run behind is usually more important so I'll probably take that but I've got a lot of removal you know or like oh do I need this win condition right like near the end of the draft sometimes you're scrambling you're like okay I gotta take like a lorcaster or some you know six mana card just because I need a way to close out the games or like oh I have zero counters all right I'm gonna take brush off uh over over like a vibrant outburst because I just do need a counter and actually brush off specifically is very good but it really is just balancing all the categories to the degrees they need you don't need equal amounts of win conditions as a removal you need a lot more removal but even if you're well up on a category it's like oh I don't I don't you know I you you're like oh mathematics yeah that's a great win condition I'm gonna take that even if I already have a good win condition um so then you look at like the removal category you like the one mana plays like in practical joke burst lightning super high pecs vibrant outburst is great note it note that vibrant outburst can hit their face yeah that has actually happened sometimes you're like I've had a game vibrant outburst into burst lightning into their version equation that's 14 you know and that that can sometimes get across the line a braid is great because it can kill opposing troves and tablets and it can kill arc of hunger my least favorite card in the format because I always lose to it uh that that's the red white artifact I just literally never have beaten the card yeah that's unbeatable run behind is great uh you want to talk about procrastinate specifically right because this is an interesting card yeah procrastinate is is one of those ones that doesn't look very good we we did talk about it in the set review is like well you can kind of make x kind of big and just take a creature out forever but I think I have it in the it like bumped up into the fringe playable range for me just especially because if you're drafting quadrics but it counts here too is it is effective at taking things that have already resolved and kind of setting them off to the side for a huge amount of the game it also can trigger your you know super opus stuff or your ex-bell stuff again more overlapping things but I found myself including one of these in my deck more than I think I thought I was going to I wouldn't say I'm thrilled about it and you can kind of get them for free but um I don't know I've been playing it a little bit more than I thought I would what about you yeah it is less a bounce type spell and more a kind of flexible but potentially expensive removal spell like you know my my hesitance was kind of the same as yours it's like well the game's gonna go long why why am I putting this card turns out if you cast it for four mana the game doesn't usually go that long that's six turns like if you can't find an answer by then then you're in trouble so yeah I don't prioritize procrastinate but I one has made the cut a lot more often than I expected it to and in the late game it's actually one of your best removal spells in the late game you can lock a creature yeah for enough turns that you know the game is not gonna end and they can't raise dead it and like you know there's like a lot of it just sits there and play and they're not doing anything yeah there's some good targets for it too yeah um yeah procrastinates a kind of interesting one but and then there's counters so the best counter actually is days days is really awesome if you've got a really heavy island deck well imagine if it's your opening hand you can just cast it I know on curve and it's gonna be good and then if it's uh you know on turn four or five you can return up you can return an island when you're tapped out like that's a huge swing and then later in the game it's not that good but you never know you can snipe um brush off is the four mana counter but it only costs two if you're countering instant or sorcery honestly I want one of these in all my decks and I would even play two in a lot of these decks you do get to be there does get to be an interesting kind of meta game that we'll talk to talk about in a sec here but brush off is like gold in the mirror like it's it's really hard to beat actually it's just one of the blue counter their most important stuff or two blue blue counter their dragon if you need to like it it's not like it misses you know um essence scatter is more of a removal spell than a counter spell but obviously like kind of is both yeah do you like it do you like essence counter in this format I want to I want to in my decks I don't usually try to take it past that because there's also a lot of spells that make creatures and so those are all pretty bad to not to not have but it is nice in the mirror like countering a tide caller or a dragon so it never hits the board it can be really strong um and then there's a disainful stroke which we talked about earlier which yeah I will play but I don't prioritize as heavily because I've just had it miss a lot of times in ways that are like pretty unpleasant so added putting this together kind of like the the the spells version uh is going to have like one to two finishers and I'm talking pure finishers if you have a card like the snarl um you know snarl song that's just a great card like whatever you can put whatever category you want I don't really count it as a pure finisher because it's just very very good yeah it might finish the game but it's just raw power yeah but cards like brain freeze and wisdom of the ages you don't really want more than two and one is often fine um zero to two mana rocks I don't usually play three but one or two is awesome if I can get them one to four counters you really do want the one and in an ideal world like I think two to three can be good but depending on not counting essence scatters if you have essence scatters that number can kind of go up because that's just more of a removal spell but like having like a disainful stroke and a brush off puts you in a pretty solid position in the mirror 10 to 12 removal like you just need a lot of this like this is this is how it makes your deck function and and you have cards like stress stream which you know is both a card drawing or removal spell but you want lots of removal you're usually not I rarely am at a point where I'm like oh I've got two much removal better cut some uh and then five to seven like card draw spells and again there's overlapping categories but like a deck that has like a flow state a quick study a deduce you know and like a stock up I would still probably want one or two more depending on what they are obviously like the cards that kill things and draw cards are all of our higher value and then cards like diversion equation or wisdom kind of overlap a little bit here so again the categories are a little a little mutable but you do need ways to get an advantage if you just kill all their stuff but I've no card draw they're just gonna like every deck has card of end mechanisms they put those in all the colors so you will run out of cards against witherblum the deck that you're kind of well positioned to against it in a vacuum and then this is an important one really try not to put random creatures in your deck don't play random hydrochannelers or you know the the you know the molten mascot the phoenix or whatever like if you if I put a creature on these decks it's either an etb creature like uh you know the the lower hold 4 4 that gets expelled back or like uh you know a dragon or whatever or like the the mana order three mana 2 2 bounce up that those are fine a creature without an etb that doesn't replace itself it doesn't do something pretty outstanding I just you just don't want to do that like all you're asking for is to make the removal good like that that's all that does really so try to avoid it obviously if you have to you have to and then if you get enough creatures the cost becomes negligible so I would rather play eight creatures than three in in that you know in that realm so and then the more quadrics versions of the deck can play more but that's kind of what these decks look like uh the difference between a prismari deck and a prismari converge deck is really two potioners troves and two dual lands and a tempera morphe and then like two converge cards it's not a couple okay are you playing like two converge cards like the one like this if I get them yeah the converge cards right no I guess what I'm asking is like if you if you were to say here's a good conversion uh converge version of prismari how many converge cards are how many non blue red cards are in that deck oh it could be as little as zero and you just have together as one and you're converging it um you know or like uh the you know blue and red can like style converge cards like just the one card like you you're you're cool just yeah yeah you don't need to do too much um okay the the five the full five color soup deck is a little different than this but and it's very much a deck but the the version I've done better with is base blue red so that you can still count on cards like seize the spoils and quick study and flow state to draw you cards and having blue red for vibrant outburst up early and essence scatter and stuff like that you know stock up is one of your best fixing cards right so you and then the converge cards are really powerful you don't need like I had a blue red deck that played one arcane omens is like the only non card uh blue red card it was still fantastic I had two troves and I had like a red white dual and a blue green dual and like that was it and like that was enough and like a seize the spoils and all that um if you if you're really getting hooked up on converge you can go a slightly different direction and you can do more five color stuff that is a different deck that is a good deck but I'm specifically saying like the prismari converge deck does not need to be a a deep well and you can also pair it with another splash so one of the one of the more common splashes for me is white for um there's the one in a white card on the mystical archives that destroys a creature with power toughness greater than four yeah or four greater that card like defiant whatever like that card's great stand your ground is good like there's a bunch of white red cards that are pretty decent and what you'll have there is like two red white lands a pteromorphic extant a planes and two troves and then you're playing like a couple white cards plus a convert card okay and like that works totally fine too okay so what what I find the most interesting though about all this is that the format's kind of polarized and the cards that are good in the mirror are counters discard and card draw the cards that are good against agro are cheap removal and actually faster finishers so they don't you know so you get the game over with or more like mid-rangey cards they're they're not usually the same card cards that are good in both matchups are prized those are a card like stock up is just excellent across the board right but brush off as maybe your best card in the mirror and is close to a blank against these other decks or at least not at least not very good sometimes you can catch something and sometimes late in the game four man a counter on spells just good to have when you have seven cards in your hand but this reminds me do you remember that uh that old standard format where the of the mythic invitational where everyone was either playing espar control or mono red basically yeah yeah super and it was like the espar mirror was like did you draw more of your negates and planeswalkers and the mono and versus espar versus mono red like did you draw more of your wraths and removal spells if you drew the wraths and removal in the mirror you would lose if you do counters against the red deck you would lose that does kind of feel like that's going on a bit here and that can be interesting can also lead to some kind of frustrating games where it's like i have the perfect you know curve of removal but it's the mirror and they just go trove and arcane omens and it's like oh well that didn't work out it does feel much more variant yeah another card that comes to mind is banishing betrayal that's the one in a blue bounce spell it's just like you know in the right in against the agro decks it's really good and against the others it's like rip it up yeah and and you end up in a spot where you're you you're kind of hoping to draw the right mix of spells for the matchup which is kind of true always we're always hoping to draw the right mix of lands and spells and in the right order but it is a little more polarized than normal i will say though i slant more to beat the agro decks because if you if you stumble against the agro decks you lose you don't get to play the game and you're dead whereas against the control mirror sometimes you can draw out of that that start imagine that start where you had all the removal and they had the the trove or whatever but what if they didn't have arcane omens and then you drew a quick study and they're not going to use a counterspell and a quick study usually and off the quick study you draw another counter and then all of a sudden you're just playing a normal control matchup and you drew out of it you play the game against the agro deck where your hand is arcane omens quick study trove with some of the ages and three lands like you're enough time to draw out of that you're gonna die so card draw can smooth things out and you have time to play card draw in the mirror you don't have time to play tons of it against agro obviously you have time to play some but not not you don't get to spend your whole turn just spinning your wheels so that's why i have a high number of removal spells desired for these decks and i i kind of just hope that i see a couple cards against ag control if i play the mirror i will say best of three i think is a lot more interesting in this format than in most formats so you know if you if you want to delve into best of three i think there's some cool stuff there because the other thing i want to talk about was cards i lose to with prismari because you know i i do enjoy playing this deck i think it's good i i think i've been pretty clear it's not like this deck is crushing the format you should have to draft this deck that is not the case right cards i lose to with prismari uh well archivist longer i lose to with every deck but uh spell pierce and other one-man-of-play is like royal treatment or masterful flourish that's the plus one plus one destructible or the green plus one plus one hexproof and ward one these are the kind of cards that really can just crush the control deck when they tap out for their stress dream on turn five or whatever and you're like royal treatment or spell pierce or masterful flourish or a lot of all those at least with the flourish they still get their card with the other two they don't even get their card um counter spells in general which you know might not be that helpful in the sense that your lower hold deck can't play a counter spell but i could see in best of three world if you had a couple counters on your sideboard picking up some fixing and then your lower hold or silver cool deck uses like pteromorphic expanse or uh i guess lower hold can can uh play a blue red land silver cool can't actually play a blue blue a blue adjacent top land because they're just isn't black white or black blue but counters in general can be very effective against this strategy it's part of the reason they're the best card in the mirror same with arcane omens i think your wither bloom mid range decks should be heavily prioritizing arcane omens and trying to slip a couple ways in because i tell you i'll tell you what you you play as wither bloom with this prismari deck you feel like oh yeah i've got them covered and then you just tap out for a stop stock out on a stock up on like turn four or five and then they hit you with arcane omens like that's a way to turn that turn that ship right on around you know for sure so there are certainly ways to beat this deck and cards that are important and i do play spell pierce in the deck too i think the card's good enough to just kind of main deck and then discard away if you if you don't need it but it's just really strong if you if you can get it it's a fun deck it it can do some big things i enjoy the like i'm gonna almost deck myself control games a lot and trying to find ways to win those games can be really interesting but certainly you have to respect the silver quill and lower hold decks or you will just not get a chance to utilize all these awesome cards you're thinking about using and then a quick note so you mentioned the straight prismari build plus and then also the prismari with converged splash what about the aggressive version like there does seem to like they seem to have attempted that from a design standpoint there's numerous creatures that have like a version of prowess and then if it's like super opus they get even bigger you know they get double strike they get some extra thing the sky whale the two drop these type of cards um have you tried that out yet do you think it's legit do you think there's any meat on that bone i haven't tried it um i think in theory it's fine i i i've played against it and honestly i feel like the control version does pretty well in that matchup because it's a lot of their their spells are removal or bounce spells that you're not really providing targets for the yeah it's very lopsided in that way yeah and sometimes you just kill their first two plays and that's just like oh now you're just a worse version than of my deck yeah i from from what i've seen the the version that you're talking about this the non-aggressive version it just seems to have more redundancy like the aggressive version kind of relies on a few specific um threats that have to survive and if they do it's very well supported you can cast spells you can get opus going you can get super opus going you can kill your opponent pretty easily with those but if they die all the rest of the strategy kind of falls apart until you rebuild a few like usually it's two you need two of those creatures on the board and then you can kind of start cooking with fire but i found that the removal in this format is definitely strong enough that you do not assume that your two mana two two will survive if your opponent doesn't want it to they die they get bounce they get tapped down like you don't get to just run rough shot over people with only two threats on the board where when you flip the script to the version that you're talking about either the straight prismaria all spells or the more converged version super well supported and really really redundant right i mean think about the you talked about the counter spells well here's like five of them right what about the card draw spells well here's six that i can choose from and they're all playable and they're all fine i think that's the difference it's not necessarily that they're not both supported but it feels like one of them has like tons of redundancy and the other one has a much more narrow set of threats that it can actually choose from yeah that that that has been my experience as well for sure so i think that the the slow version is going to be the one that we really want to do i have been drafting quite a bit of quadrics which plays somewhat similarly but it's missing some key tools it does go bigger easier the green ramp spells are very real and they get you either the converged stuff or just big mana almost effortlessly it also has a bunch of x spells that scale well with even flooding out which is really nice because you do pretty often and you also are already starting to do library counts like you know eight or nine turns into the game you're like when do i got 20 cards left okay let's see what we're going to do because you can do the same thing where you can kind of draw yourself out of the game in a way the downside though to the to the archetype and it's another reason that like procrastinate came up is because you do need as much interaction as you can get and there isn't quite enough there is enough i shouldn't say there isn't enough but it does feel like you're scrapping it out for it a little bit where when you play prismari that doesn't feel like it's the case the addition of red and giving you the suite of burn spells that go from two to four to six damage a common plus an uncommon a bunch of other really good ones x spells that type of stuff ways to win the game off of those means that for the most part what i've played quadrics i'm splashing and it's often red and i'm dipping over for those type of cards that's the natural splash because of both the the gold cards the lands and just prismari's strategy is well suited to that exactly i think the one there's a little bit of a speed bump i don't know if it ends up being a problem or not but i do find it kind of interesting which is that there of course is the converged version of this as well it is not difficult to get to all five colors if you want but it is kind of interesting because if you're going to play a bunch of the cards that are like rampant growth effects either ones off of like studious first year or the actual rampant growth off the bonus sheet i forget what it's called but it's rampant growth you know any of those type of spells start to take up a lot of slots as a trove would normally also take up trove works perfect for converge you don't need a land that makes that color of man it's not you know uh what's it called it's not rewarding you for having different basic types or anything like that and it gets kind of interesting because then are you not playing your trove well now you're having to put in basic lands in your deck that are for splashes you have a random swamp you have a random planes in your deck that are just for a splash or for a converge but that don't help cast your other stuff where trove does and i wonder if when we look back we'll see that prismari actually just was doing a better version of you know making more colors and making more mana because of trove then uh than quadrics was because of course you can put trove into quadrics but then you're kind of giving up what drew you there in the first place which was the really great mana fixing and ramp available so i kind of wonder if trove maybe uh swung the pendulum for that bigger more mana intensive deck over back to to prismari in the first place which then gets the bonus of the removal and all that stuff that's a yeah you're you know you're actually uh i think it's a great point that when there's good colorless fixing green it eats a lot of greens lunch and trove being a great color fixer means that yeah i don't i don't think green green is gonna it's providing less uh powerful things it's bringing less to the table than it would otherwise yeah and it's exasperated by the fact that converge doesn't care where the mana came from what's the mechanic uh chromatic or whatever you know whatever it's called the one that cares about basics domain domain that cares about basics right it's like that would be really great with this but it that's not what we have in this format any other cards you wanted to talk about before we uh we wrap here louise um elite interceptor check in the box i just want to point out that elite interceptor is just awesome yes we knew that the first time we looked at the card i feel like we probably said enough to say that i just just to point out thraven inspector is the goat and will always be the goat and you can even a thraven inspector that if it dies your clue goes away it still doesn't matter like this one's the fact that the clue taps a thing is just like or tops it whatever you know it's just awesome so very good card and uh yeah diary dreams does not work i tried that one okay good to know yeah it is funny i i just keep going back to the uh what was it the exhibitionist or whatever it's called i yeah man i uh yeah you nailed that one and exhibition ty caller and i just freaking fear that card man like i because i'm always playing these blue decks that can't really kill it you know it's like i maybe i'll have some some red removal around but then it's like too late they already know that it can die and uh yeah might have to have you sign my exhibition ty caller next time we hang out um should we call it a show there louise are we good anything else you want to do yeah that sounds good i mean this this is a cool format i obviously it has some amount of like you know there's there's only five different supported color pairs and wither bloom seems like it's not like the best in general in terms of positioning but there's a lot of interesting metagame stuff going on and the converged stuff plus like lorehold having grindy elements to it i think there's some cool stuff going on there i do too i i think that calling it right now i think if i if at least if i were one of the people who worked on the set the thing i'd be least happy about is that quadrix feels like it's it's a noticeable step behind everyone else especially in terms of like what is this archetype doing it's kind of consumed by prismari converge or whatever to some degree and that's just unfortunate to be good if it had its own identity but i think that i think this is playing out great so far i do too and i i think that they just checked all the boxes that we would need like if they failed to put playable converge in this set it would be a big big hit like things would be kind of locked in and there wouldn't be as much room to explore i mentioned it before but i'm going to be doing commentary at the pro tour on friday me and polcian will be in the booth for the first draft in the morning and we'll be we'll be seeing how things go from that and we'll see if the players at the pt have put in the time and effort needed to get good at this set because it's not just about knowing the base archetypes it's about knowing the archetypes within the archetypes and is that like this because there are so many things you can do a player that says sound and drafts prismari and thinks that it's just blue red is going to be making a big mistake if they don't keep their eye open for converge for example you know based on what we talked about on the show i think it's going to be really interesting and i'd love to see you there um you can also find everything related to the show over at lrcast.com we want to say thank you to our patreon supporters as well as ultimate guard for their support of the show you can find us on social media marshall underscore lr and louise's lsv pretty much everywhere make sure you check out louise's youtube channel as well for draft videos of all sorts every single day they are fantastic that is going to do it for this one i'll be back from the pt next week and we'll be diving even deeper into secret district saving we'll see you then you know it's funny as he jumped the gun because of uh because of gracing in the in the patreon question of the week but i actually didn't want to say we just finished uh the last season uh that's out of invincible and it was it was incredible it was it was really really fun where is this at it's on prime um it's a comic book adaptation and uh it don't let the style fool you it's a lot more um the style is it a cartoon or something it's a cartoon yeah okay it's a lot more intense than it looks it looks in a lot of ways like if you just saw someone watching this for two minutes you'd think it was a kid's cartoon it is very much not do not show this to your children that is not what i'm recommending uh but this is like hardcore okay cool it's really good you know there's not that many shows i i basically am all or nothing when it comes to tv much like a lot of the things in my life it's either i'm watching a show that i really want to watch it no and i just want to like kind of blaze through it or i just like i'm not interested in watching it like there's i don't have that many like shows that i'm just like if i'm kind of into a show i'd rather just draft or play sleigh the spire or do anything else for me to watch show if we really into it so invincible is one that we were really into until we finished it so really really good show and there's multiple seasons or yeah it's on season four i think and you but you've only got through the first season no no i finished all the seasons you got all the seasons okay the most recent season came out recently and we and we finished it pretty quickly and are there more coming or did they wrap it yeah i'm sure there are more coming they're more coming okay cool maybe they'll check this out i think you would enjoy it it is up your alley it's like avatar except you know the the fights look a little bit different i mean this is your last recommendation to me was avatar and i loved it so i don't recommend shows that often you're kind of writing a high yeah and you're not one of those people that spam out recommendations so i take it seriously like i can't ask bk like have you watched this show because the answer will be yes you know so was it good wow that's that's a different answer