Rough Drafts - A Limited Magic Podcast
Aug 20, 2026 · 28 min · 11 segments
My second post-release Hobbit episode goes into my big-picture format experience without 17lands, including why I've been winning with black, why this set is so good for small games, and why this is…
So, like I said, last week was mostly about, um, individual cards, but I did have some, um, big-picture thoughts at the end of last week after my first six or so drafts, which was I felt that from what I had seen from my opponents and from the little that I got to play with it, black-red specifically seemed very, very strong.
And after the last two times we saw amass being, um, War of the Spark and Lord of the Rings, it was very dominant in those formats, and this seemed to be following that pattern pretty exactly.
I also was really high on the blue cards last week after my first couple drafts, and I think I stand by this evaluation of the format from a high level.
Like, I think that black-red, as we'll get into today, I think is very, very strong.
I think blue has a lot of particular cards that I really like, but blue being sort of diametrically opposed to black-red, not playing with black and red because this is a five-archetype set, not a 10-archetype set, um, blue-black and blue-red are not supported decks.
I do think that that weakens blue by quite a bit, though I have done my fair share of playing, um, at least blue-red, and I might have gotten a, uh, blue-black draft h- in here or there.
I would say that my big adjustment from last week, because last week I mostly talked about the blue cards, that is what I got to play with the most, I've just come up and up and up playing with the black-red cards.
It was partially playing with black and red more, playing with the amass cards more, but also losing to it a lot.
I'll get into this later in the episode as well, but part of, um, not talking with the set with anyone, not looking at the data is I felt like I was paying a lot more attention to what my opponents were doing, and it's very clear when you're losing to black-red in this format, because the starts can be very, very fast.
Um, and there's a lot of things that make black and red work really well, mostly black, that positions it, in my opinion, very, very strongly in this format, and is able to come out to some really brutal starts and back it up with the right type of cards to seal the deal.
So, like I said, last week was mostly about, um, individual cards, but I did have some, um, big-picture thoughts at the end of last week after my first six or so drafts, which was I felt that from what I had seen from my opponents and from the little that I got to play with it, black-red specifically seemed very, very strong.
And after the last two times we saw amass being, um, War of the Spark and Lord of the Rings, it was very dominant in those formats, and this seemed to be following that pattern pretty exactly.
I also was really high on the blue cards last week after my first couple drafts, and I think I stand by this evaluation of the format from a high level.
Like, I think that black-red, as we'll get into today, I think is very, very strong.
I think blue has a lot of particular cards that I really like, but blue being sort of diametrically opposed to black-red, not playing with black and red because this is a five-archetype set, not a 10-archetype set, um, blue-black and blue-red are not supported decks.
I do think that that weakens blue by quite a bit, though I have done my fair share of playing, um, at least blue-red, and I might have gotten a, uh, blue-black draft h- in here or there.
I would say that my big adjustment from last week, because last week I mostly talked about the blue cards, that is what I got to play with the most, I've just come up and up and up playing with the black-red cards.
It was partially playing with black and red more, playing with the amass cards more, but also losing to it a lot.
I'll get into this later in the episode as well, but part of, um, not talking with the set with anyone, not looking at the data is I felt like I was paying a lot more attention to what my opponents were doing, and it's very clear when you're losing to black-red in this format, because the starts can be very, very fast.
Um, and there's a lot of things that make black and red work really well, mostly black, that positions it, in my opinion, very, very strongly in this format, and is able to come out to some really brutal starts and back it up with the right type of cards to seal the deal.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.
