Jul 20, 2026 · 1 hr 45 min · 13 segments
This week on Limited Resources Marshall and Luis welcome back Wizards of the Coast Arena Cube Runner Zach Barash on the show with an exciting announcement! There is a brand new Cube experience coming…
Luis Scott-VargasHostUh, before we get into the, the meat of the matter, um, we do have a Patreon question of the week.
I've been listening for about a year, and I think I'm getting better and my F&M drafts are improving." That's great, Larry.
I try to grade the cards before you do in the set review, and my card evaluation could use some work.
Can we revisit card evaluation basics? For example, what's the vanilla test for 2026? Has quadrant three changed with power creep? Thanks again for the show and hard work." Great stuff, uh, Larry.
You know, the vanilla test goes all the way back to the beginnings of LR when we had Ryan Spain as my co-host.
And, uh, back then, kind of interestingly, uh, you could use a vanilla creature, or sometimes we would call them French vanilla if they had, like, a basic additional ability like flying or trample or something like that.
You know, is it better or worse than that? And that would be kind of a reasonable benchmark.
But Larry points out here, Luis, that, that benchmark is, uh, very much in the rear view mirror.
Do we try to adjust some sort of baseline? Vanilla test was appealing because it was easy to remember and there were cards like that in most sets that you could kind of put them up against.
Part of the reason I haven't really pushed to kind of re- g- look back into this...
I mean, we could, we could, we could chat about it, but I think that the biggest thing is that there isn't a really hard and fast vanilla test, or not, not a clean one, because it used to be like, yeah, three three for three is a pretty good benchmark.
You'd, you'd generally play that card in your deck and, uh, you'd be, you'd be happy to do so, right? Centaur Courser was just, like, a fine card.
N- now there's not actually a, a good one because- A three mana 3/3 is slightly below, but a three mana 3/4 is, like, really weird stats.
Uh, before we get into the, the meat of the matter, um, we do have a Patreon question of the week.
I've been listening for about a year, and I think I'm getting better and my F&M drafts are improving." That's great, Larry.
I try to grade the cards before you do in the set review, and my card evaluation could use some work.
Can we revisit card evaluation basics? For example, what's the vanilla test for 2026? Has quadrant three changed with power creep? Thanks again for the show and hard work." Great stuff, uh, Larry.
You know, the vanilla test goes all the way back to the beginnings of LR when we had Ryan Spain as my co-host.
And, uh, back then, kind of interestingly, uh, you could use a vanilla creature, or sometimes we would call them French vanilla if they had, like, a basic additional ability like flying or trample or something like that.
You know, is it better or worse than that? And that would be kind of a reasonable benchmark.
But Larry points out here, Luis, that, that benchmark is, uh, very much in the rear view mirror.
Do we try to adjust some sort of baseline? Vanilla test was appealing because it was easy to remember and there were cards like that in most sets that you could kind of put them up against.
Part of the reason I haven't really pushed to kind of re- g- look back into this...
I mean, we could, we could, we could chat about it, but I think that the biggest thing is that there isn't a really hard and fast vanilla test, or not, not a clean one, because it used to be like, yeah, three three for three is a pretty good benchmark.
You'd, you'd generally play that card in your deck and, uh, you'd be, you'd be happy to do so, right? Centaur Courser was just, like, a fine card.
N- now there's not actually a, a good one because- A three mana 3/3 is slightly below, but a three mana 3/4 is, like, really weird stats.
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