Episode 83 - Cryotheory Adept

So the impetus for this episode, talking about blue cards, uh, was partially inspired by Lords of Limited this week.

So they were talking about how the scuttle is that blue is the strongest color, which I do agree with.

Um, and I think they agreed with that too, but were pushing the narrative that, you know, this format has powerful cards across all colors, which means you shouldn't, like, lean too hard in one direction.

And I do agree with that to some respect, but I also think that this is a great format to exercise preferences in.

Um, I find that my favorite formats, my favorite limited formats in general, are ones where it is wide open like that, where there is a wide variety of things to do, where there's power across all the colors and across most of the color pairs.

But that doesn't mean that you can't draft with preferences.

And my preference this week has been very strong into, um, blue and black.

I have realized that I have been pretty unhappy drafting green, in particular green-black I haven't really liked over the past week.

Um, and I've been leaning a lot heavier into blue in particular, with black to supplement.

I've definitely ended up in blue-black more than any other color pair at this point, by a very wide margin.

Um, and I feel like I have a really good grasp on how I like to draft this format, and that's what this episode is going to be.

So they were talking on Lords of Limited about the blue cards, and in their Discord, I sort of gave my tier list of blue commons.

And I think I have a couple of hot takes in there that are, like, Sam-specific, and I thought it would be interesting to go a little bit deeper on how I'm viewing the format, um, through, like, my own preferences, how I'm seeing the blue cards, what blue cards I like to take, um, what my blue decks look like, that sort of thing.

So this episode's gonna be kind of a deep dive on my own preferences, and I think that, you know, you could take away from this, you could try to draft like me, or you could say, "Sam, you're crazy.

I don't think you should like Cryo Theory Adept more than you like Surveillance Phantasm." Spoiler alert for later.

[laughs] Um, but I think that this might be an interesting use case for understanding how someone else might draft a format with different preferences than you do.

So that's what I'm gonna do today.

Um, I'm going to just go through all of the blue cards below rare and talk about each one, talk about what I think about them, talk about how highly I take them.

Um, we're gonna sort of go in order from the blue cards that I like the best to the blue cards that I like the least, um, starting with the commons and then I'll do the uncommons.

I will preface all of this by saying I have been drafting mostly, um, trying to draft in the Grixis space.

So, like I said, blue is my favorite color in this format.

I try to get into blue in most drafts.

Um, black is my second favorite color.

Uh, it is closer to blue than anything else, so I'm trying to end up in blue-black, no matter, like, blue or black.

So last week I was saying that I was trying to end up in Sultai as one of my base colors.