I think it has been in a bad spot since Bloomburrow, personally. Never really recovered from the addition of the mice and monstrous rage and by the time the cards were banned, there were too many other dominant things ready to come in and replace it.

Personally, I’m glad Nemesis and Vivi got banned but I don’t think this is even close to enough to get Standard playable again.

I have been looking for a new format to play and I think for me it’s a curated cube. I think that offers the most variety and fun and I personally love PreModern so I will try to put an old-frame cube together next and just play that from now on.

I also like pre-constructed tribal decks that are all aligned on their power level. I think that has been the most fun to take Elves vs Goblins. I love what MtG did with Jumpstart and I think that’s all I would play if I had more time/money for Magic now.

Looks like they removed tutors from the list of conditions entirely, those must only be identified in game changers.

This is pretty amazing. Watching Emrakul swing in for that annihilator 6 feels so good lol. I love this.

I honestly would be hyped if this was a set of commander decks or a secret lair drop. Being a main set just makes me feel sad. I LOVE turtles, probably my #1 comic / outside interest and I just don’t feel happy about it.

I love this one. Feels more like a black card w/ the artwork but so good.

I agree, I think odds are in favor of that set being a “break” where we see UB/other IP characters as planeswalkers. Spun as “a silly what if?” scenario but then ultimately and always planned as the full transformation.

Wow lol what on earth could this even be… I can’t wait for Secret Lair Crayola to come with crayons and blank cards to make your own!

Wow I stand corrected – currently watching Azorius Control in the finals O_O

This is super helpful, thanks @TehPers@beehaw.org

I’m glad you posted this here, I saw a discussion a few days ago and the entire thing just disgusted me. I actually played when these cards came out but I never knew about this card or any of what this was. Now, in hindsight, it’s pretty ridiculous to me that Mark Rosewater pushed this thru to actually being printed. To print something like this, it has to go through numerous stages of review. He thought this was so funny and such a good “in joke” that he pushed it through. Never once apologized, and whenever was asked about this, he never said anything or apologized at all.

NOW after this all comes out the guy issues an apology and owns it. That’s great and all, but what kind of a scumbag does this, especially someone in their 30s. He wasn’t a child, he was a grown adult working for a big game company. He even brought this card up on his drive to work podcast and never said anything about the true meaning behind the card. I have lost a lot of respect for Rosewater over the last few years but this is beyond sick.

This is especially sick because this was done to a woman during a time when it was incredibly difficult for women to get into the game. A woman who just dared to “have a relationship” with other magic players. Done to someone who didn’t and couldn’t really speak up for herself given the overwhelming pressure of trying to fit into the group of magic players and the heightened position that Rosewater had at WoTC. All the more egregious to me.

Good to see some deck diversity but I guess control is just dead as an archetype now. I don’t know if there is a viable control deck in any format, maybe Pauper has one. The death of control seems directly related to threats becoming far better than answers over the last 5-10 years.

This is absolutely mental and it’s very clear to me that I’m just taking a long time off from this game. Unreal.

Wow I actually never noticed that until now. That’s kinda odd for the game too, they kinda have to have the same rules and type/subtype for it to work. I don’t know how the rules fully work, but it could be that they’re both “stones” and Infinity/Terminus is an adjective or something. I have no clue what is going on anymore.

It’s too bad we can’t see overall pre-release attendance by set but there was a reddit thread on the main subreddit about attendance. All if it anecdotal but it seems like it’s pretty down overall. I’m not surprised either, regardless of UB they totally half-assed this entire set. It was originally planned to be an aftermath style booster, like those 7 cards, and this is what we get when executive leadership decries 6 standard sets a year. Upper management is the only force possible to ruin this game.

This is awesome work, nocturne. I can’t believe you got this much done already. I’m pinning it to the top for a little while and maybe we could even make a separate page on the site to host these rankings with comments.

Wow, this is awesome work you’re doing here. I never would have assumed that but I would say if I were going to buy a precon I would absolutely want to know this ahead of time.

That actually is very important context, not just for beginners but anyone looking to get into Commander with a pre-con. It would be a huge amount of work but honestly it could be something we even try to crowdsource here or Reddit. I would love to see a fan-created list of what the brackets actually are for the pre-cons.

Apologies because I don’t have an answer for your question, but it was my understanding that all pre-cons were Bracket 2. I didn’t think any pre-cons came in higher or lower than that.

It would be a great service to see what the bracket is for the pre-cons, it could be a lot of work - it looks like there are currently 145 of them.