We spent the weekend at GenCon where the games were excellent and where the ceiling was falling (more on that in our notes). Our favorite game of the show was definitely Gudnak (it means war in Orcish, apparently). Definitely recommend giving it a look.

This week, we’re going over drawing cards, whether that be in Limited or Commander. Talion says Rhystic Study turned cEDH into a format where the only counterplay is having your own copy. Dylan Skorish says “draw a card” commons flattened Limited into decks that ask nothing of you. Turns out drawing cards is good in card games?

Also in this issue: the Invitational mats unveiled, with art by Phil Stone. We're proud of these.

Let’s get into it.

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How do you end the game against a deck built solely to ensure the game doesn't end? Talion returns with the case for the ban — because the only counterplay to Rhystic Study is Rhystic Study.

By Talion

Why is everyone playing a bunch of enchantment clones? Why do tournament games draw with alarming regularity? And why do I, a passionate but mediocre cEDH player, currently have a 61% winrate?

Deep in your heart, you know the answer to all these questions is the same.

Back in 2024, Dockside Extortionist was banned, along with two potent pieces of fast mana. The cEDH meta changed overnight - creature clones saw a sharp decline, and with decks no longer able to make absurd quantities of mana in a single spell, many of the “outlet commanders” began to decline too. Sisay, Kenrith, and Korvold all lost out, and engine decks began to see a rise.

With the best burst mana generators gone, decks became more reliant on card advantage to generate mana - those fast mana pieces you have are only useful if you draw them. Everyone knew Rhystic was the best draw engine in the format, but few people understood how hard it was to beat a Rhystic without having something as explosive as a Dockside Extortionist. It began to cement its stranglehold on the metagame, and just as we saw with Dockside, people began to run more ways of cloning the best permanent in the format - Copy Enchantment, Mirrormade, and eventually Clever Impersonator and Flash Photography.

Now the year is 2026. The norm is multiple Rhystics, every single game. Even the most passionate Rhystic defenders cannot deny that the card has warped the format beyond recognition - the way these “slop” decks are constructed is radically different from even the grindiest “pre-Rhystic meta” decks. You would have seen raised eyebrows at cards like Commandeer and Misdirection - hell, I was once personally laughed at for suggesting Disrupting Shoal. These cards are now staples, and Rhystic Study is the sole enabler for them, as much as some people like to claim other engines are comparable.

So why is any of this bad? The meta has changed, sure, but that’s what metas do. What makes Rhystic a problem, as opposed to just another cEDH super-staple?

The main problem is its lack of effective counterplay, which is exacerbated by its ubiquity. Generally, your options when faced with a Rhystic are:

“Rhystic Study should just be one-sided Sphere of Resistance.” 

For a moment, let’s pretend that a 3-mana one-sided Sphere of Resistance is a reasonable Magic card to expect to win games against (which it isn’t).

Even if this was the case, this is not how real games play out. Let’s say everyone decides to be responsible and pay the 1, and somehow still be able to develop and have any sort of gameplan (2 mana Birds of Paradise and 3 mana Arcane Signet are a lot worse). Then someone goes for the win! I can stop them with my free interaction, but I’m tapped out. I cast it anyway, so I don’t lose. The Rhystic player draws a card. The pushing player fights back. The Rhystic player draws more cards.

And this is the best case scenario. It’s much more common for one player to reason that their opponents being responsible probably means they can afford to feed the Rhystic player a few cards (often in aid of developing their own Rhystic), which generally leads to the game becoming a two-horse race between them and the person they just fed 5 cards to. They draw cards off each other, creating a pseudo-parasitic feedback loop of development and counter-development until one of them inevitably wins. So that’s not workable.

“The Rhystic player can’t win if they’re dead.”

In practice, this is probably the most common way that people deal with Rhystic - just try to win while the Rhystic player is tapped out. The obvious flaw in this plan is that if you get stopped, by the Rhystic player or one of the other players, you are almost assuredly going to die to the person you just fed 10 cards to. And the longer you push, the more likely you are to get stopped, and the more certain your subsequent demise.

This plan hinges on you being able to draw protection or a win before the Rhystic player draws into something that stops you, which with the way that these decks are being constructed is becoming a less and less reasonable proposition - the interaction density of the “slop” decks is higher than it has ever been, because they understand that all they have to do is land a Rhystic and survive and they will eventually win by default. How do you end the game against a deck that is built solely to ensure the game doesn’t end?

“Why does everyone act like Rhystic Study has split second and hexproof?”

I have had my share of Rhystics countered, and I have countered my share of Rhystics. Ultimately though, in order for there to be interaction pointed at a Rhystic, the table has to be certain that that interaction is not about to be required to stop a win, or worse, another Rhystic. One of the worst feelings in cEDH is Red Blasting a Rhystic only for the next player in turn order to smirk and thank you as they drop their own.

Ultimately, it’s just rarely a winning play to interact with Rhystic Study - you’re removing potentially multiple pieces of interaction from the table in order to stop something that isn’t immediately winning the game, and no matter how much people will try to tell you that Rhystic is a potent win condition, it still doesn’t kill you as fast as Necropotence does. Given the choice between “die now” and “die later”, I’m taking the latter every time.

Ultimately, the only reliably effective counterplay to Rhystic Study is Rhystic Study (outside of specific decks - shoutout to Tayam players). The best strategy for surviving the slop is to ensure you’re keeping parity with them, and the only way to do that is to have your own Rhystic.

This is why I think Rhystic should be banned. One of the core hallmarks of a card that shouldn’t exist is when its only counterplay is controlling one itself - we saw this with Dockside in cEDH. People were running Aboleth Spawn (!!!) by the time that card was banned, and we’re seeing even more warping effects from Rhystic, with some decks playing cards like Psychic Possession in a desperate attempt to extract more value from opposing Rhystics. But unlike Dockside, a tool for ending games, Rhystic is a tool for extending them, which leads to more draws, more tournament clock abuse, and overall less satisfying games.

Worse cards have been banned, and for less egregious crimes. Rhystic Study needs to be dealt with, before the format completely dissolves into parasitic slop.

There is still time.

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We went big this year: full two-player cloth mats by Yggdrasil Materias, with art by Phil Stone depicting Rograkh and Tymna. Everyone playing at the Invitational on August 22 receives the tan mat. Top ten on the leaderboard get the grey instead. Make Top 4 and you're playing on the black and sky blue. The winner takes home the multicolor Champion mat.

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The midrange slop slips its sticky appendages under the door and asks: why are you trying so hard? Dylan Skorish on Top Common Syndrome, the 17Lands receipts, and how to read a new set blind.

By Dylan Skorish

What makes a good common in Limited? It’s been a bit of a transition for a lot of longtime players in the Play Booster era, as more and more drafts are defined by packs having more rares and uncommons. For a long time, Limited discussion was shaped by the commons. You were never guaranteed to rip that premium bomb, but you were guaranteed to have your choice of commons, and knowing which ones were premium was a key differentiator for successful players. They were your bread and butter, and it has felt like that dynamic has shifted. But every set we see outliers: commons that rise above their status to the level of the best uncommons and even the rares. We’re spoiled nowadays with as much data as you could ever want, and you can put your sticky little snot-covered nose to the grindstone and have your evaluations done for you once the set has been out long enough.

But how are you approaching a new set when you don’t have the data? Sure, you can go to any number of content creators who will evaluate the cards for you, and sometimes they’ll even be right, but finding a deeper understanding when approaching the cards in a pack blind will take you a long way when you don’t have the crutches the modern Limited landscape affords you.

Often the successful archetypes congeal into a gelatinous midrange-shaped mass full of cards that you’ll always put into your deck, with the ability to make them truly excellent when combined. Meanwhile, the aspirational, underperforming archetypes ask you to do work to bring your cards up to the level where you’re happy putting them in your deck. 

Let’s use the most recent set, Marvel Super Heroes, as an example. Taking a look at two of the headliner color pairs and what they offered at common. One of these archetypes was the best in the set and the other was close to unplayable and we’re going to pull out the aforementioned crutch of “The Data” to illustrate our point. We’re going to be using Game-in-Hand win rate data from 17Lands, but I feel compelled to make it clear that the data is a tool and not the gospel. You can do all right if you just blind-picked off the numbers in your average Arena Best-of-1 queue, but if you’re still reading this far, you clearly want to dream a little bigger.

The three highest-performing commons in the Red/Black Villains deck were all removal spells: Cruel Alliance, Hour of Defeat, and Lightning Strike, coming in around 55% Game-in-Hand win rate on 17Lands, which is just about average. 

Those are all just one-for-one removal that can give you a little minor advantage in lifegain, draw smoothing, or pure efficiency—but what about the creatures? Our top three Red/Black creatures are Red Room Recruit, Crimson Operative, and Ninja of the Hand.

These all coalesce at about 53.4% Game-in-Hand win rate. Pretty mediocre numbers for some creatures that need a little help to excel. Red Room Recruit offers to be a 2-mana 2/3 that can help trigger draw-2 and Villain synergies; Crimson Operative essentially draws a card while being a reasonable enough body at 4 mana, with the added benefit of some artifact synergies; and Ninja of the Hand is a 3-mana 2/2 deathtoucher that can be a mana sink or just a 5-mana Ravenous Rats.

Let’s compare that to the best cards for Blue/White Heroes. The top-performing commons are Hero in Training, Trickster’s Stratagem, and S.H.I.E.L.D. Deployment Drone.

All of these come in at around 61–62% Game-in-Hand win rate in Blue/White. That is exceptionally good, on par with the best uncommons and many of the rares. Hero in Training just does everything you could want from a common: draws a card and has potential to gain you life, with a synergistic creature type. Trickster’s Stratagem is temporary removal that lets you filter cards and buff your creatures, enabling you to clear blockers and mitigate flood. S.H.I.E.L.D. Deployment Drone is a classic Limited overperformer: a 3-mana 2/2 flier that makes a 1/1. The old adage that flying is good in Limited has always been true, but especially in a format prone to board stalls, the Deployment Drone can start presenting a real threat if left unchecked while giving you a creature to muck up the board.

So what’s the real difference? The Blue/White cards just work. Sure, the Red/Black cards affect the board while giving you some advantage and can be elevated when you have your synergies online. But the Blue/White cards? They affect the board while giving you card advantage and become that much better when you can reap the benefits from the set mechanics. They don’t need anything else involved to be some of the best cards in your deck.

What can we take away from this now that Marvel Super Heroes is ending and we look ahead to the next Limited format? Let’s take a look at some of the best commons from a handful of recent draft formats.

What do all these cards have in common? They ask nothing of you. Each one alludes to enabling or getting paid off for the set mechanics, and they don’t need you to have anything else going on to make it worth the mana to play them. When you are able to take advantage, have the payoffs, and make them even more than the sum of their parts, they become amazing cards rather than just good cards.

Another thing they have in common? Besides Galactic Wayfarer, they’re all White or Blue. As the color pie becomes more of a suggestion than a prescription, the way White cards are designed has morphed. What do the colors generally do? Red deals damage and is aggressive. Black has lots of removal and trades life for resources. Green puts power and toughness into play and ramps. Blue draws cards, flies, and interacts on the stack. Meanwhile, White has started getting some of the best removal, gaining life, drawing cards, making tokens, and can curve aggressively.

It’s worth paying close attention to the White cards when looking at a new set, since my feeling is that in the last few years it’s been consistently the strongest base color in a lot of Limited environments and is especially prone to the kind of power creep in lower rarities that I’m highlighting here. The lack of parity in the colors recently is a topic that we could go on about endlessly (when is the last time you remember Red having a standout common that wasn’t a removal spell?), but we’ll save that for another time. 

We all have our inner optimist that sees the potential in crafting your perfect board state where you get to go off and trigger all your synergies with the cards you got to pick at the end of the pack because nobody else wanted them. That is a real strategy that can come together, especially in pods where people are in the know, but you should be prepared to see past the golden calf on the hill and take the cards that ask nothing of you when they present themselves.

As the ever-present shadow of power creep hangs over us, the decks that consistently stand out above the fray are the ones that settle into that dreadfully boring midrange space. All their cards just work; they can curve out, draw cards, and interact with their opponents. Crafting a control deck that gets over the top of the midrange decks becomes that much harder when your opponents are keeping pace on card advantage while pressuring your life total. Crafting a true aggro deck where you’re putting an emphasis on speed is that much harder when your opponents are clogging up the board with higher card quality. Your clunky synergy decks draw too many enablers and not enough payoffs (or vice versa), and all of a sudden you’re just behind on board before you have the chance to assemble your Rube Goldberg machine.

These dynamics shift from set to set, but I have felt more than ever that the scourge of the Top Common has stifled some of the space for more interesting draft decisions. That oozing mass of midrange slop slips its sticky appendages under the door and asks you the question: Why are you trying so hard?

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