Oct 6, 2026 · 1 hr 59 min · 14 segments
FRA is a banger. But a banger that is particularly hard to navigate. Cards can be contextually good, but there are some universal trends. Once you know them - the rest will become much easier. And…
All right, let's move to the new set.
And there is definitely a lot of optimism in that one.
I personally enjoyed it thoroughly to play the game.
I do like how the set is designed.
I think the design team has done a tremendous job.
It's very well detailed.
It's an interesting gameplay, interesting set of terms of engagement.
And most importantly, well, maybe not most importantly, but also importantly, it's a balanced set.
Normally, I start this early data seminar by looking at color balance.
In terms of popularity of colors, it's pretty much what you would expect in a balanced format uh we have one color that is slightly over represented blue at 22 of the games 20 is what you expect in the perfectly balanced set so only two percent above it we have one color that's slightly below white at 18.4 which is 1.6 percentage points below the average so And then black, red and green are within half percentage point from 20.
So not the most balanced format ever in terms of color popularity at this stage.
That was Final Fantasy when everything was at around 20, which is impressive, but very close to that.
More importantly, the win rates are even better balanced than the popularity of the colors.
Average win rate for the set so far was 55.1%.
Not a single color is above 0.6% away from that.
Blue is 55.7%, so 0.6% above.
And white is 54.5%, so 0.6% below the average win rate.
And the other two colors are oscillating around the average, with black being almost perfectly on it.
This means that not only is the set colors are quite balanced in terms of popularity, they're also quite well balanced in terms of their win rate.
And that makes me also think that there is space for blue to be drafted a bit higher.
at the cost of white and if you do that their numbers should come even closer to the average which means we're going to have a very set that is very very easy to balance itself Next thing I normally look at is I look at what kind of decks people are playing.
Is it a two-color format? Is it a multi-color format? And I usually start with comparison with the previous set that we had, and that was Hobbit.
In Hobbit, 78% of all the games logged by the 17 lands at this stage of the format were two-color decks straight.
No splashing, no nothing, just two colors.
And 16.5% of the games were two colors and a splash.
All right, let's move to the new set.
And there is definitely a lot of optimism in that one.
I personally enjoyed it thoroughly to play the game.
I do like how the set is designed.
I think the design team has done a tremendous job.
It's very well detailed.
It's an interesting gameplay, interesting set of terms of engagement.
And most importantly, well, maybe not most importantly, but also importantly, it's a balanced set.
Normally, I start this early data seminar by looking at color balance.
In terms of popularity of colors, it's pretty much what you would expect in a balanced format uh we have one color that is slightly over represented blue at 22 of the games 20 is what you expect in the perfectly balanced set so only two percent above it we have one color that's slightly below white at 18.4 which is 1.6 percentage points below the average so And then black, red and green are within half percentage point from 20.
So not the most balanced format ever in terms of color popularity at this stage.
That was Final Fantasy when everything was at around 20, which is impressive, but very close to that.
More importantly, the win rates are even better balanced than the popularity of the colors.
Average win rate for the set so far was 55.1%.
Not a single color is above 0.6% away from that.
Blue is 55.7%, so 0.6% above.
And white is 54.5%, so 0.6% below the average win rate.
And the other two colors are oscillating around the average, with black being almost perfectly on it.
This means that not only is the set colors are quite balanced in terms of popularity, they're also quite well balanced in terms of their win rate.
And that makes me also think that there is space for blue to be drafted a bit higher.
at the cost of white and if you do that their numbers should come even closer to the average which means we're going to have a very set that is very very easy to balance itself Next thing I normally look at is I look at what kind of decks people are playing.
Is it a two-color format? Is it a multi-color format? And I usually start with comparison with the previous set that we had, and that was Hobbit.
In Hobbit, 78% of all the games logged by the 17 lands at this stage of the format were two-color decks straight.
No splashing, no nothing, just two colors.
And 16.5% of the games were two colors and a splash.
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