Give me your Zendikar Rising draft tips! It runs for a week starting tomorrow and I’ve saved up some gold to play it. I’ve never drafted it before but I’ve been practicing a bit on Draftsim, and what I’ve got so far is that W/G landfall and U/B Rogues seem good. What about Wizards, is that a viable archetype?

Reminiscent of Caetus, Sea Tyrant of Segovia (which, to my dismay, I’ve never been able to work out a good shell for).

Both sides of this just have unlock triggers; the card doesn’t do anything as it sits on the battlefield. There’s no reason for this to be an enchantment except that they were trying to shoehorn some stuff into the set’s marquee mechanic.

Hmm… does this help Insidious Roots enough to make it a competitive deck?

I get why this is a vehicle. It makes sense flavor-wise; arguably it’d be weirder for it not to be a vehicle. And I get the “creature is abducted and comes back changed” storyline. That also makes sense and is flavorful. But it’s kind of hilarious to have them both on the same card. Like, while the aliens are performing their horrifying and unnatural experiments, you can also have some random unrelated dude jump into the captain’s chair and zoom around for a while.

“Are you from the X-Files?”

“No! We’re the Phenomenon Investigators. Our lawyers want us to be very clear about that.”

Yeah, I was hoping to see more (or any) actual cards with Phasing, like Sandbar Crocodile. The highest Mirage block card on the list was Teferi’s Veil at #18, and there was sadly no mention of one of my pet cards, Dream Fighter, who can block first-strikers, flankers and deathtouchers with impunity. But I suppose it’s Wizards’ fault, really, for making the original batch of Phasing cards underpowered, and then never revisiting the keyword.

I like the art on this one.

“Common or uncommon artifact creature that puts cards back in your library for two mana” seems to be a new staple.

• Transplant Theorist
• Phyrexian Archivist
• Hoverstone Pilgrim
• Tomb Trawler
• Barkform Harvester

I rarely play them or see them played. It’s true that a non-zero percentage of my draft games end in board stalls with one player milling out, and in theory I like the idea of having some insurance for those scenarios, but the cards are never impactful enough in any other situation. But this one might come the closest – a 4/4 flyer for 6 isn’t bad, and in Duskmourn it can also function as a Delirium hoser.

This is a translation so I guess we’ll see what the official English wording is, but it sounds like this uses the old Mesmeric Fiend-style templating, which means you can exile something permanently if you flicker this creature with its ETB trigger on the stack. It would have to be that way, I think, to let you get your own exiled creature back too.

But casting a six-mana creature and then being able to flicker it right away is a lot to ask. More likely we’ll see people reanimating this, or possibly doing Smuggler’s Surprise-type tricks, to get around having to exile their own creature.

This seems like a pretty solid draft pick, wouldn’t be shocked if it showed up in Constructed too. Could be a surprise blocker, could be a repeatable Delirium enabler, could just help you smooth out your draws.

Weird that a spell called “Break Down the Door” doesn’t have anything to do with unlocking Rooms. In fact, you could use it to exile a Room, making it less unlocked than before.

Someone in a Discord server I’m in pointed out that this is a potential turn 4 kill with Bloodletter of Aclazotz. Requires the opponent to have no removal or blockers, but still.

Duplicate of Wary Thespian aside from the creature type. A fine draft pick with no prospects for Constructed.

Maybe (probably) I’m missing something, but I don’t understand why you’d want this effect on a Leyline, since you can’t use it in the early turns of the game. At best you can spend turns 1 and 2 ramping and then cheat out one expensive spell on turn 3, and maybe that spell is some Eldrazi or other, but is that really a better plan than the existing Sneak Attack or Goryo’s Vengeance decks?

I’ve got an Azorious Flash deck for Standard in which I’m currently running a 2-2 split of Malcolm and Plumecreed Escort because neither of them are exactly what the deck wants. This might be worth an audition… although the lack of flying is a strike against it.

Who ya gonna call?

I initially read this as “Whenever an enchantment you control enters a room”. Shortening “enters the battlefield” to “enters” was weird enough, but it’s extra weird now that they’re introducing something else that could conceivably be “entered” in the very next set.

So the opportunity cost of including, say, Floodfarm Verge in a slot where you would otherwise be running a Plains is low but not nil. Considerations:

• Are you running fetchlands such as Fabled Passage, and if so, is this dropping your basic land count low enough that you might run out?
• Are you running enough basic lands that you can reasonably expect to turn these on in most games?
• Are nonbasic hate cards like Furnace Punisher or Sunspine Lynx common in your meta and/or particularly good against your deck?

Overall I think I probably like these better than most of the rare duals that are currently in Standard, although that’s “like” in the sense of “want to play with”; I’m not necessarily saying they’re stronger in the abstract.

Interesting to note that the cycle depicted here is only allied colors and only goes clockwise (on the color wheel) when adding the second color. There is potential for three more cycles like this one if Wizards wants to make them.