Hey everyone! Welcome to the first edition of Limited Weekend Update, where someone had the wonderful idea of letting me talk about whatever I feel like every week—as long as it pertains to Limited Magic. Surely nothing can go wrong with that.

The number one question I get asked is when I’m going to bring back the podcast. In a different version of the multiverse, I’m sure we’d still be banging out episodes. Where was Jace on that one when he was busy playing “What If?” with the entire world?

I can assure you that this is the next best thing. Limited Weekend Update is going to cover a lot of the same topics we would normally talk about on the podcast, just in written form. That means you’ll still be getting all the important Limited information, complete with terrible jokes, for the low, low cost of free. What a deal.

Every week, I’ll pick a Limited topic and ramble about it instead of recording it. For instance, this is the first weekend of a brand-new set, so we’re going to dig into the first few days of data and see how it compares to what we expected going into the format.

Other weeks, I might look at trends developing as a format evolves, talk about new Limited formats popping up, dig into draft strategy, or, if I’m completely out of ideas, resort to the dreaded mailbag.

I’ll also occasionally bring in guests so you can hear opinions from someone other than an old man yelling at kids to get off his lawn.

But seriously. Stay off the lawn.

There will also be a Question of the Week, so make sure you send in your Limited questions along with whether or not you’re okay with having your name published. Otherwise, I’ll have to protect the identity of the brave anonymous soul asking why they keep going 0-3 after forcing Rakdos every draft.

Oh, you wanted actual content?

Fine…

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Data Breakdown

We have a few days’ worth of data to work with now, which is just enough time for everyone to confidently declare that the format has been completely solved before changing their minds three days later.

For clarity, everything we’re looking at is based on the data available as of Saturday morning, October 3, 2026. That way, when all of these takes age horribly by Tuesday, we can at least point to the timestamp.

The biggest thing we’re going to focus on as we work through all of this is figuring out the why behind the numbers.

Raw data points can tell us what is happening right now, but understanding why they’re happening is what actually gives us useful information. That tends to hold up much better over the life of a format than simply pointing at a win rate and declaring something good or bad.

The numbers are the starting point. The real value comes from figuring out what is actually causing them.

Color Strength

We’ll mostly be focusing on two-color pairs here, but soup decks are extremely viable in this format. The basic landcyclers do a ton of heavy lifting when it comes to fixing, making it pretty easy to splash additional colors without completely destroying your mana base.

I still wouldn’t recommend going full three-color good stuff unless you have a very good reason, but splashing a third color—and occasionally even a fourth—for a powerful card is surprisingly painless in an otherwise solid two-color deck.

An extremely reductive way to look at these tiers is that you can generally aim for the top-tier decks because of commons, the mid-tier decks because of uncommons, and the bottom-tier decks because of rares and mythics.

Before anyone screenshots that sentence and uses it against me six months from now, this is very far from a hard rule. Take it with a massive grain of salt. Please do not quote me on this.

Higher-end Limited players can probably ignore this rule entirely. This is more for players around the same level as my wife, who occasionally puts down her Commander deck, drafts a few times per set, and would appreciate a simple starting point that doesn’t require staring at spreadsheets for three hours before Pack 1, Pick 1.

The basic idea is that the better archetypes tend to function with cards you’ll see regularly, while the weaker ones often need something more powerful or specific to give you a good reason to move in. Again, starting point, not law.

Top Tier: Azorius, Dimir, Golgari

The biggest thing that stands out about these three color pairs is how much control they give you over the long game. Azorius can certainly be aggressive, but it also has so many ways to surveil and manipulate the top of the library that it can consistently improve the quality of its draws as the game goes on.

It’s also interesting that two black color combinations are sitting near the top while the other black decks are near the bottom. Blue is almost in the same situation, with two top-tier combinations alongside one more middling deck and one near the bottom.

That tells me this format is being driven much more by synergy than raw color strength. Black isn’t simply good. Blue isn’t simply good. The decks that are successfully taking advantage of what those colors are trying to do are good.

That distinction is going to matter a lot when people start looking at the data and deciding they should force a color because “black is busted.” That’s not really what the numbers are saying.

Mid-Tier: Gruul, Selesnya, Izzet

Gruul’s numbers are actually right on the border between top tier and mid-tier, which left it up to me to decide which side it landed on. It just hasn’t felt quite as consistent to me, so I was perfectly fine letting it slide into the second tier.

It has access to some extremely powerful cards, including Craftwork Crusher and Kiora of Fire and Ashes, along with plenty of ways to ramp into them. The problem is consistency. When Gruul lines up correctly, it REALLY lines up. When it doesn’t, it can stumble just enough that it falls too far behind to recover.

Selesnya can also very easily play like a top-tier deck when the draft comes together properly. It can be almost impossible to keep up when a Bloombrute is constantly flowing out cards while the beatdown never really stops. The ceiling is absolutely there. You just aren’t going to hit that ceiling every draft.

Izzet is probably the most interesting deck in this tier because I think it also has a ton of potential to perform like a top-tier archetype.

Spells decks are always going to create a lot of static in early data, though. It takes a little longer to figure out whether mediocre numbers mean the draft environment simply isn’t providing enough of the right pieces, people are misdrafting or misbuilding the deck, or the archetype itself just isn’t particularly good.

They can also be more difficult to pilot than a straightforward creature deck. Sequencing matters more, knowing when to fire off a spell matters more, and small mistakes can snowball quickly. There’s a reason why Dafore consistently does better with this type of archetype than most players.

Because of that, I’m giving Izzet more of an inconclusive grade than firmly planting it in the middle tier. I want to see what happens once people get more reps with the format before I decide exactly where it belongs.

Sad Trombone Tier: Rakdos, Simic, Boros, Orzhov

Disclaimer: The numbers on these decks are not so bad that you should outright avoid them. Being in the open lane is far more important than blindly forcing one of the higher-ranked color combinations in this format.

So what do these decks have in common that has pushed most of them down here?

Rakdos and Boros are both fairly straightforward aggressive decks, while Orzhov can also lean aggressive with a sacrifice theme layered on top. The problem is that the sacrifice portion of Orzhov just feels pretty meh when so many other decks are generating value without jumping through nearly as many hoops.

That is really the larger problem for all three of these decks. There is so much random value stapled onto cards in this format that simply trying to attack people to death becomes much harder.

A card like Arcane Amphisbaena is a perfect example. When cards all over the format are replacing themselves, generating additional resources, or otherwise giving you extra value, the aggressive decks have a much harder time keeping up once the first wave of creatures gets answered.

You can absolutely run someone over when your draw comes together, but the longer the game goes, the more likely those little pieces of value start adding up against you.

Simic?

Well, I’m going to be honest here: Simic feels like a miss this set.

I appreciate that it finally got to do something besides ramp and play big dudes, but what it is doing just feels underwhelming compared to basically every other archetype.

It would have to be WIDE open before I started driving straight down Simic Road. Even then, I’d probably be looking for an exit ramp where one of those colors becomes the base of my deck and the other turns into a splash.

Format Speed

This is one of the things that really stands out about the format: it is significantly slower than most of the Limited formats we’ve had recently.

In Premier Draft, the average game is currently 9.681 turns, which is more than a full turn longer than The Hobbit at 8.609 turns. One turn might not sound like much, but in Limited that extra turn can completely change what cards and strategies are viable.

More importantly, it gives you additional time to make decisions—and this format has a lot of them. Between surveil, landcycling, sequencing, deciding what to keep on top, when to spend your resources, and planning several turns ahead, there are a ton of little choices that add up over the course of a game.

That combination of longer games and constant microdecisions makes this format feel especially rewarding for better players. You simply get more opportunities to make the correct decision—and, just as importantly, more opportunities for your opponent not to.

Play /Draw Disparity

Now this is something I absolutely love to see.

The win rate on the play is all the way down to 52.1%, compared to The Hobbit at 54.6%. That might only look like a couple of percentage points, but that is a massive difference when you’re talking about thousands and thousands of games.

The Hobbit was creeping into territory we usually associate with some pretty ridiculous formats, including Cube, where being on the play can feel like you won a prize before anyone even kept their opening hand.

That makes this another huge point in favor of the format. A lower play advantage means more games are actually being decided by the decisions made during the game instead of the coin flip beforehand.

Combined with the slower average game length, it really reinforces the same theme we’ve been seeing throughout the data: you actually get to play Magic.

Interesting Data Points

I know one of the biggest talking points so far has been how completely busted Ajani Unrelenting is, but I don’t think that should qualify as much of a surprise. Anyone remotely competent read that card, gave it the maximum grade, and moved on with their life.

I’ll be doing a much deeper dive into the biggest overperformers and underperformers next week—slight spoiler there—but for now I want to focus on the things that really stand out in the early data.

Removal Overperforming

One of the biggest is just how well removal in general is performing.

Extended Absence has pretty absurd numbers for a common that is essentially a one-for-one with a small bonus attached. Mindseeker Oculus is fairly close to it in overall win rate, but Extended Absence is roughly 1.5 points higher in Improvement in Hand.

You expect value-generating creatures to show up near the top of the data. A relatively straightforward removal spell doing it is much more interesting.

So why is removal performing this well?

There are a lot of bombs in this format, and cards like Extended Absence give you a clean enough way to deal with the part that actually matters. No, it isn’t always going to answer everything perfectly, but if you can remove their busted card, you at least get the opportunity to go back to winning the value war with your own busted cards.

For example, ask yourself this. Do you want your opponent to get a free 2/2 on top of a one for one trade? Doesn’t sound too great without extra context. Now consider Extended Absence being used to remove Ajani Unrelenting.  You’re not thrilled that you’re down part of a card in the exchange, but you still have a chance in the game. That’s a huge part of why removal like this is performing so well.

Extended Absence specifically also gets a nice boost from exiling, because there are cards like Sphinx of False Conclusions running around where simply killing the thing isn’t necessarily good enough.

Unsummon vs Last Gasp

Now raise your hand if you had Unsummon performing better than Last Gasp.

The complete lack of hands is hardly surprising.

Granted, the two are statistically pretty close, and Unsummon is available an average of roughly two picks later. I’m bringing this up less because I suddenly think Unsummon is better than Last Gasp and more because it gives us a perfect example of how to interpret this kind of data.

This does not tell me that I should start taking Unsummon over Last Gasp.

What it tells me is that if I’m choosing between Last Gasp and another strong card, I can feel a little better about taking the other card because there is a decent chance I can pick up something like Unsummon later. Last Gasp or that other strong card probably won’t still be sitting there. Unsummon might be. That is a much more useful takeaway than blindly sorting a spreadsheet by win rate and drafting from the top down.

Surveillance Phantasm

Another hugely surprising performance from a common is Surveillance Phantasm. It is currently the third-highest-performing common by win rate, and an Improvement in Hand of 3.0 suggests that isn’t simply a product of the card happening to be played in good decks.

As I’ve said throughout this article, though, we need to look at the why instead of just crunching numbers.

A 2/3 blocks surprisingly well in this format, especially in the air. It can stonewall a lot of early aggression, poke in whenever you have an incidental surveil—which happens quite a bit in a format built around Empower Jace—and eventually provide its own repeatable card selection.

The slower pace of the format also makes mana sinks considerably more valuable than they have been in some recent sets. Surveillance Phantasm’s ability is relatively cheap, can be activated multiple times in the same turn, and can even trigger other cards that care about surveilling.

That is an awful lot of utility packed into a two-mana common.

The craziest part? Its current Average Last Seen At is 5.42, so people aren’t even fighting particularly hard over it yet. It’ll be interesting to see if the numbers hold up when the ALSA lowers.

Fblthp?!?

Probably the biggest surprise for me has been how well Fblthp, Impossibly Lost is performing.

Granted, that is largely because an entire little archetype has developed around using Fblthp as the actual win condition. It has been surprisingly viable so far because Fblthp has been available relatively late along with many of the self-mill creatures you need to make the deck function.

The big question is whether that continues once the initial wave of casual drafters starts to fade away.

Casual players tend to be extremely hesitant to draft self-mill cards because throwing your own cards into the graveyard just feels wrong when you aren’t used to playing that kind of strategy. We saw a great example of this back in Midnight Hunt, when cards like Organ Hoarder were somehow going absurdly late early in the format. There was even someone trying to argue that it was card disadvantage because two went into your graveyard.

That stopped happening once people figured out what was actually going on.

Fblthp might be in a similar situation right now. The deck may legitimately be good, but part of its success could also be coming from the fact that the people drafting it are getting all of the pieces several picks later than they probably should.

If that’s the case, the deck won’t necessarily disappear—but the free lunch eventually will.

Question of the Week

If you could bring back one Limited mechanic from any past set, what would it be and why? – Trever M

A lot of people love getting painfully pedantic about questions like this. For me, the answer is really simple: I LOVED Blood from Crimson Vow.

Blood helped minimize both mana screw and mana flood, which is already a massive win. Fewer games where someone stares at two lands for six turns while pretending they’re having fun? Sign me up.

The bigger thing, though, was how many tiny decisions Blood created over the course of a game. When do you cash one in? What do you throw away? Do you hold it because your hand might get worse? Do you cycle away a mediocre card now and immediately draw something even worse because Magic enjoys reminding you who is actually in charge?

Those little decisions added up. Blood created a constant skill check that a lot of players probably didn’t even realize they were taking, which is exactly the kind of mechanic I love.

The short version: Blood eliminated a bunch of non-games for everyone while still rewarding better players over time. It reduced the dumb luck without removing the skill gap.

More of that, please.

Now, if you’re wondering why I picked Trever’s question, take a look at one of the main mechanics of Reality Fracture: Empowering Jace.

The mechanic can provide a lot of the same benefits I loved about Blood. It helps smooth out your draws, reduces the impact of mana screw and flood, and gives better players more opportunities to gain small advantages through better decisions.

I still prefer Blood because you don’t have to defend it and you can use multiple Blood tokens in the same turn, but Empowering Jace is operating in a lot of the same space.

More than anything, it feels like a sign that the designers were actively thinking about how to make Limited games better. Giving players more agency while reducing the number of games decided by bad draws is exactly the kind of design I want to see.

Bad Beat of the Week

Am I going to add this section to every article?

Probably not.

It was a lot easier on the podcast because Chris has some of the most absurd luck imaginable in both directions. If nobody sent us a bad beat, there was a pretty good chance something ridiculous had happened to him that week anyway.

So why am I adding it here?

Because I was literally in the middle of posting this article when I saw a good one.

Fellow Draft Lab member Ekil was rolling along in the Arena Direct and looked like he was about to collect another Collector Box when disaster struck.

He was about to close out the game when his opponent played Divining Duelist to barely stay alive.

At this point, all the boomers already know exactly where this is going.

His opponent untapped and, sure enough, slammed Special Guest Splinter Twin onto the Duelist and casually went infinite.

Nothing like being one turn away from a Collector Box only to get transported directly back to 2015.

Wrap Up

Thanks for reading!

I’ll be back in a couple of days with the next edition of Midweek Magic, followed by another Limited Weekend Update next weekend—as long as I don’t get canceled before then.

Until next time, stay classy, people.