Jun 29, 2026 · 2 hr 5 min · 10 segments
New format, new opportunities. We can start discovering the secrets of the MSH set, but you've got to start somewhere - and where better than with the early 17Lands data? We look at set statistics…
I think that what the designers of last couple of sets were thinking was how to change set design for limited so that it doesn't feel samey.
because this was one of the big complaints in the last couple of years that the sets are good, but they all sort of feel similar to each other.
There is the card file, and then based on the card file, you build a collection of cards that are very similar.
You just change small parameters.
It played well because that card file was pretty good, But it lacked this kind of spark, this kind of novelty of it.
And then I looked at the comparison between, you know, 100 plus sorceries and instances in Strixhaven versus 44 instances in sorcery in this set, looking at... giving all the removal tools you can physically get to a set so that maybe aggro can be stemmed versus here not giving good low and aggressive creatures so that the games get prolonged not by removal but by port stalling and I think that's what they are literally testing and I had a big epiphany listening to the recent rough drafts from Sam Pratt, which I highly recommend.
It's about flyers.
And from the episode I did a couple of episodes ago when we had the guests that talked about the mulliganing data from 17 Lens and their paper that they wrote about it.
And one of the... interesting conclusions from that paper was that if both players mulligan the on the play advantage disappears you go from five percentage points advantage of being on the play to basically zero and that made me thinking okay so uh why would that be and um instant thing was that linking it to some episode and some talks in that episode why flyers are not as good as they used to be mainly because the rate of general creatures has gone up and the rate of flying creature has didn't follow just enough so you know you regularly get two three uh two drops or three to two drops in the set um but you never will get like a three two flyer for three mana at common at least And because of that, of course, flyers always have this cost of flying.
The flying costs around one mana.
And if they don't catch up with the rate of power and toughness with the ground creatures and ground creatures are growing in the last couple of years, then of course they lag a bit behind.
And because of that, they become less powerful.
And this has led me to the idea that This is also the reason for the increasing on the play advantage, because if the rate of the creatures, the stats of the creatures increase in the last couple of years, one mana that you spent earlier means a bit more because it means a bit more the games are more likely to snowball just a bit and because they are more likely to snowball just a bit obviously the person who is deploying the first pebble in the whatever avalanche we're talking about is going to get a slight advantage so i think that design team is not stupid they know that and they are trying to experiment on how to bring back the balance to the sets without turning them into slop like oh it's not slop but like slogfest like um um kinds of track here for example in terms of how long the game lasts they want to keep the games being decided relatively early without necessarily having to lead to the gameplay where everyone runs out of things and it's a top-deck mode at some stage of the game.
And I think that Strixhaven and Marvel Super Heroes are two very different approaches to try to see if that works.
And I'm going to be absolutely interested in how that's going to work out over a couple of years, because of course they are releasing those sets now.
the information that they can use from this will be only utilized in 2028.
So we're going to see if there are lessons learned, but I am foreseeing that there is going to be change in Limited and they're going to expand their range of how the design sets.
It's not longer going to be the paint by numbers kind of file that they have to fill in with the cards.
There's going to be some of it, but there's going to be big non-cosmetic balance shifts in terms of what kind of nature does the set have.
I think that this is what they are planning, and I might be wrong, but I have a good gut feeling that that's what they are, at least at the back of their head, is to increase the range of experiences for the limited while keeping the things that work in the card file, while also trying to make sure that the advantage on the play and on the draw is somewhat minimized by some tools.
um and of course because of those experiments we are faced with an interesting set i'm not saying it's perfect because it's not there is a big problem big elephant in the room and we're going to see it in a second but it's interesting and i'm very keen on seeing what weeks two three and four of this format are going to bring because right now we're still in this situation where you can basically force blue white because people who are playing magic occasionally or drafting occasionally are almost active almost always active in those first days of the format because of that people can get away with forcing blue white blue white is clearly the best deck we're gonna see it in a second and um this is a small blemish on the set however i think that there are options of doing things differently here and um it's going to be worth exploring them in the next couple of weeks which i'm definitely going to do so don't you worry about it and this episode the early data is always about the basics of the set this is to lay the groundwork for what we're going to be experimenting with because in order to experiment there is you know it's better to know what are the ground rules of the set and what is important So first of all, I start with the general statistics of the set, and we can look at the color popularity rankings, and we see that in terms of the popularity, as I measure, I measure it so that it accounts to 100%, which is not exactly what's going to happen in the set, but just for the ease of imagination, we see that white and blue are definitely way overrepresented in what 17 Lens users are playing.
I think that what the designers of last couple of sets were thinking was how to change set design for limited so that it doesn't feel samey.
because this was one of the big complaints in the last couple of years that the sets are good, but they all sort of feel similar to each other.
There is the card file, and then based on the card file, you build a collection of cards that are very similar.
You just change small parameters.
It played well because that card file was pretty good, But it lacked this kind of spark, this kind of novelty of it.
And then I looked at the comparison between, you know, 100 plus sorceries and instances in Strixhaven versus 44 instances in sorcery in this set, looking at... giving all the removal tools you can physically get to a set so that maybe aggro can be stemmed versus here not giving good low and aggressive creatures so that the games get prolonged not by removal but by port stalling and I think that's what they are literally testing and I had a big epiphany listening to the recent rough drafts from Sam Pratt, which I highly recommend.
It's about flyers.
And from the episode I did a couple of episodes ago when we had the guests that talked about the mulliganing data from 17 Lens and their paper that they wrote about it.
And one of the... interesting conclusions from that paper was that if both players mulligan the on the play advantage disappears you go from five percentage points advantage of being on the play to basically zero and that made me thinking okay so uh why would that be and um instant thing was that linking it to some episode and some talks in that episode why flyers are not as good as they used to be mainly because the rate of general creatures has gone up and the rate of flying creature has didn't follow just enough so you know you regularly get two three uh two drops or three to two drops in the set um but you never will get like a three two flyer for three mana at common at least And because of that, of course, flyers always have this cost of flying.
The flying costs around one mana.
And if they don't catch up with the rate of power and toughness with the ground creatures and ground creatures are growing in the last couple of years, then of course they lag a bit behind.
And because of that, they become less powerful.
And this has led me to the idea that This is also the reason for the increasing on the play advantage, because if the rate of the creatures, the stats of the creatures increase in the last couple of years, one mana that you spent earlier means a bit more because it means a bit more the games are more likely to snowball just a bit and because they are more likely to snowball just a bit obviously the person who is deploying the first pebble in the whatever avalanche we're talking about is going to get a slight advantage so i think that design team is not stupid they know that and they are trying to experiment on how to bring back the balance to the sets without turning them into slop like oh it's not slop but like slogfest like um um kinds of track here for example in terms of how long the game lasts they want to keep the games being decided relatively early without necessarily having to lead to the gameplay where everyone runs out of things and it's a top-deck mode at some stage of the game.
And I think that Strixhaven and Marvel Super Heroes are two very different approaches to try to see if that works.
And I'm going to be absolutely interested in how that's going to work out over a couple of years, because of course they are releasing those sets now.
the information that they can use from this will be only utilized in 2028.
So we're going to see if there are lessons learned, but I am foreseeing that there is going to be change in Limited and they're going to expand their range of how the design sets.
It's not longer going to be the paint by numbers kind of file that they have to fill in with the cards.
There's going to be some of it, but there's going to be big non-cosmetic balance shifts in terms of what kind of nature does the set have.
I think that this is what they are planning, and I might be wrong, but I have a good gut feeling that that's what they are, at least at the back of their head, is to increase the range of experiences for the limited while keeping the things that work in the card file, while also trying to make sure that the advantage on the play and on the draw is somewhat minimized by some tools.
um and of course because of those experiments we are faced with an interesting set i'm not saying it's perfect because it's not there is a big problem big elephant in the room and we're going to see it in a second but it's interesting and i'm very keen on seeing what weeks two three and four of this format are going to bring because right now we're still in this situation where you can basically force blue white because people who are playing magic occasionally or drafting occasionally are almost active almost always active in those first days of the format because of that people can get away with forcing blue white blue white is clearly the best deck we're gonna see it in a second and um this is a small blemish on the set however i think that there are options of doing things differently here and um it's going to be worth exploring them in the next couple of weeks which i'm definitely going to do so don't you worry about it and this episode the early data is always about the basics of the set this is to lay the groundwork for what we're going to be experimenting with because in order to experiment there is you know it's better to know what are the ground rules of the set and what is important So first of all, I start with the general statistics of the set, and we can look at the color popularity rankings, and we see that in terms of the popularity, as I measure, I measure it so that it accounts to 100%, which is not exactly what's going to happen in the set, but just for the ease of imagination, we see that white and blue are definitely way overrepresented in what 17 Lens users are playing.
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