LORD OF THE RINGS DRAFT GUIDE!!! Top Commons, Color Rankings, Archetype Overviews, and MORE!!! 

Good call on the Legendary creature part. It can still be completely useless if you don't have any creatures in play (or significantly worse if you lack one of the proper color), but that is a good point you have made. In my explanation I was also trying to emphasize that even when it works, the effect is just not a strong one for Limited. The best card in a Draft deck is almost never worth spending 3 mana to tutor for, as it is just such an incredibly tempo negative play. Diabolic Tutor is a similar card from previous sets that has always been bad for this exact reason, and I wanted to point out that it is a trap because Tutors tend to look better than they are.

@@NicolaiBolas I completely agree with that assessment. It's just interesting to think about how the ring mechanic is going to change a lot of how the legendary matters ends up playing out in this format. I'm excited to see how it shakes out

The card tempts you itself before checking, so all you need is any creature in play. Still not a great card for limited but its usable if you have something good to be searching

Even 3 mana unlimited tutor would at best be an ok card in most sets. Add a few hoops and even if they are a bit easier to jump through thanks to tempting the end result is still a bad card

Thank you for the kind words! I'm so glad you enjoy my Draft Guides!

Shadowfax is definitely a major win! I made a whole short just about how much I like the way they implemented Shadowfax when I first saw it. The reminder text is just brilliant!

Great quote!

Thank you!

I am so glad to hear it! I appreciate your kind words!

I'm so glad you found it helpful! Good luck at your Prerelease!

I'm so glad you found it helpful!

I appreciate the kind comment and I'm so glad you found the Draft Guide helpful!

@@NicolaiBolas they always are!

I really appreciate your kind words! I'm so glad to hear you are enjoying my Draft Guides!

I love them to!🥰

@@user-hu9bq1jn1p That is great to hear!

That is awesome news! I'm so happy to hear it!

You are welcome! Good luck at your Prerelease!

I'm so glad you found it helpful!

I'm glad you enjoyed it!

I’m so glad you liked it!

I'm so glad you find it helpful! I try to keep my guides compact, so it is nice to hear that they are hitting that target!

I'm so glad you enjoyed the video! Red White looks cool for sure!

You are welcome Robert! I’m glad to hear you have been finding my videos helpful!

Thanks! I'm so glad you found it helpful!

I'm so glad you find them helpful! Your kind comment is appreciated!

I'm so glad you found it helpful! The goal is definitely for it to be useful for the Prerelease as well! This set is going to be awesome!

I'm so glad you enjoyed it! I also appreciate the feedback, but I like to save archetype rankings until my Draft Meta Update, which I usually release a week or so after the set comes to MTG Arena. It just makes the ranking a lot more accurate because it is hard to figure out archetype strength before seeing how everything lines up. Hopefully that makes sense!

I'm glad you enjoyed the video! Good luck at your Prerelease!

Good luck! I'm glad you enjoyed my guide!

I'm glad you find those sections helpful! I think knowing what Combat Tricks your opponent could have is always a big confidence booster when Drafting!

Thank you so much for the kind words!

You are welcome! I'm glad you found the video helpful and I hope your Prerelease was a success!

@NicolaiBolas It was!!! I won all 3 of my sets.

I'm glad to hear it!

I’m so glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for the kind comment!

Me too!

You are welcome! I'm so glad you enjoy them!

I am so glad you enjoyed it!

I'm so glad you enjoyed it! I'm super excited for this set too!

I’m super excited for this set too! They did such a good job bringing the story to life! I will certainly do my best to deliver on the crazy draft videos!

Prereleases are awesome!

Good luck at your Prerelease! I'm glad you enjoyed the video!

That's a cool combination for sure! It is funny to think about endlessly sacrificing a 4/4 cause usually smaller creatures get sacrificed, but if it's just going to come back anyway than it is totally worth it! I guess it's just about building a deck where you'd be happy playing Warbeasts of Gorgoroth and then figuring out which sacrifice outlet fits with whatever other colors you are in!

You are most welcome!

You are welcome!

I'm glad you find them helpful!

That is true, but some colors have a lot more, "The Ring tempts you," cards than others, especially ones that you would be happy to include in your deck. It is nice to be able to enable synergies that care about Legendary creatures without having to play cards that may be subpar for a particular strategy.

You are welcome!

I'm so glad you enjoyed the Draft Guide! I'm really looking forward to this set too! To answer your other question, I will be participating in the Early Access Event, so you can expect to see draft videos from that event once it happens!

I’m so glad you enjoyed it!

You are welcome!

Thank you for the kind comment!

You are welcome!

I think Quick Draft will come eventually. I’m so glad you enjoyed the Draft Guide and found it helpful!

I'm so glad to hear it!

You are welcome!

Thanks! I'm glad you liked it!

Good luck! Prereleases are a blast!

I'm glad you enjoyed it! Most of the concepts do apply to Sealed, as the good cards tend to remain relatively constant between the formats, but decks in Sealed tend to be a bit slower and less focused on synergy, so there are definitely some differences as well.

@@NicolaiBolas thank you very much! I'll keep that in mind. I'll focus more on the good common then!

Steal and Sac tends to be a great combo when it is present. This version of the combo is a bit less reliable because Grishnakh is not always going to be able to steal the creature you want, but it makes up for that lower reliability by including Grishnakh instead of an Act of Treason variant, and Grishnakh is just a great card on his own. Act of Treason tends to not be playable without the sacrifice synergy, but Grishnakh is just a card many Red decks will be happy to play! I'm also looking forward to seeing how everything plays out!

Indeed it does!

Keep in mind that with color rankings it is mostly just a tiebreaker thing and they are all pretty close together. Just because one color is above another doesn't mean it is massively better, and after the first couple picks of a draft, it is way better to just take the cards in the open color. In a ranking of 5 things it might seem like the one at number 5 is vastly worse than the one at number 1, but that is rarely true in Limited. With that out of the way, I'm glad to explain my ranking! First, Blue looks stacked to me, and there were a couple cards that I wanted to include (including Birthday Escape) that I didn't have room for due to the constraints of a Top 3 list. That's one of the reasons I put it at number 1. To me it felt like Green just had tons of strong cards that I would be happy putting into various decks, so maybe we are just evaluating the cards differently. It feels like some of the Green creatures especially are just incredibly problematic to deal with, and something like Bag End Porter could attack for like 5 or even 6 damage on turn 5 which is quite scary. Sometimes a color gets strength not from one or two cards that need to be taken highly, but from the fact that no matter which cards you run from that color, you are going to be happy with them. With regards to Black being low, it just felt like the color had a couple more clunky cards that weren't on par with the power level for the rest of the set, and there weren't that many cards I'd be happy to take early. Red's cards felt solid, but there was nothing spectacular to really blow me away, and it also felt like some of the cards were a bit more niche or toned down compared to versions of those effects we have seen in the past. White just had a nice middle ground of power level and depth which is why I put it in the middle. One of the things that influences my Color Rankings is how difficult it is to make a Top 3 Commons list. If it is difficult because there are too many options to consider, I tend to rank the color a bit higher, and if it is difficult because there aren't any real standouts, I rank it a bit lower. Obviously I have to then factor in the relative strength of the Top Commons for each color, but that is something I think about as well. The colors are usually close together, so ranking them is often a challenge.

@@NicolaiBolas Definitely agree that colour rankings are just a tiebreaker (most of the time definitely some sets in recent memory where I would pass insane cards of a colour just to avoid being in it), just felt like I saw very little of value amongst green cards, though at this stage its been quite cursory. I value Birthday Escape much higher than the 2/1 flier that draws on death, I could be offbase here but these effects never seem to be quite as good as they appear. I think the 2 black combat tricks are going to be very high value but I agree with your picks for the top 3.

@@ZaxploitationFilms I also liked Black's Combat Tricks! They just have a lot going on for quite a low mana investment. I agree that the creatures that draw cards when they die have tended to underperform (like Spore Crawler), but often when they are Flyers they have been 4 mana instead of 3 which is a pretty big difference. Also, I think the 2/1 Flyer might end up being a pretty good Ringbearer, as natural evasion stacks pretty well with the evasion provided by The Ring, and that might help ensure that it hits the opponent and gets value. That might incentivize opponents to kill it which will in turn get the card (cause one of the problems is if you attack with the creature and they race it never dies so it's just a small-ish flyer). There also seem to be a decent number of 3/2s, which could make the 2/1 flyer able to trade effectively. We'll see, but it does seem like the sort of card that will basically always be solid. Blue had tons of great looking Commons so that list was hard to make. With regards to Green, I think the 2/2 Dogs that can convert Food into +1/+1 Counters are another card that looked pretty solid to me, and Bag End Porter reminds me of Lattice-Blade Mantis which was also a great card. I think there's a lot of potential in Green.

@NicolaiBolas thats fair I hadn't considered the ring painting a target on cards making death triggers a bit better. Will be interesting to see how it plays out, looking forward to getting some drafts in

You are welcome!

I'm so glad you enjoyed it, and I appreciate the kind words!

Sealed definitely has some differences from Draft. The format is slower because players aren't able to draft low curve decks as easily, the synergy is lower because you can't choose what you get, and there tend to be more bombs to deal with because players essentially have 6 packs to open a bomb rather than 3 (sometimes you get passed a bomb in draft, but it is still less on average). This means removal is a bit more important in Sealed because the games last longer and there are more bombs, so on average more will be drawn per game. This is just some quick differences, but hopefully that helps! Good luck in your Prerelease and I'm glad you enjoyed the video!

@@NicolaiBolas great write up! Very informative. Thank you

@@zeliousNA1 I'm so glad you found it helpful!

@@NicolaiBolas Thank you for the detailed response! Definitely something I'll keep in mind while putting my sealed deck together.

@@Dennis450D You are welcome!

Don't follow the color guide. RB is literally the strongest in draft. Basically never draft anything except for grixis with maybe occasional RW if stars allign.

I’m glad you liked it!

You are welcome!

Sealed and Draft tend to be similar enough that I don't make a dedicated Sealed Guide. Sealed is a bit slower and lower on synergy, with a few more strong Rares running around that demand removal. Those are the main differences, but the good cards tend to remain relatively constant between the formats.

Basically whenever you play a card that says, "The Ring temps you," you choose one of your creatures to hold The Ring. That creature will have all of the abilities you've gained from The Ring progression up to that point, so if you have played two, "The Ring tempts you," cards, your Ringbearer (the creature holding The Ring) will have the top two abilities found on The Ring emblem. Hopefully that makes sense, and I'm glad you enjoyed the video!

@@NicolaiBolas Thank you so very much. Seems clear now. Excited to watch your LOTR drafts 💪

Good call. It can still be completely useless if you don't have any creatures in play (or significantly worse if you lack one of the proper color), but that is a good point you have made. In my explanation I was also trying to emphasize that even when it works, the effect is just not a strong one for Limited. The best card in a Draft deck is almost never worth spending 3 mana to tutor for, as it is just such an incredibly tempo negative play. Diabolic Tutor is a similar card from previous sets that has always been bad for this exact reason, and I wanted to point out that it is a trap because Tutors tend to look better than they are.

Good call on the Legendary creature part. It can still be completely useless if you don't have any creatures in play (or significantly worse if you lack one of the proper color), but that is a good point you have made. In my explanation I was also trying to emphasize that even when it works, the effect is just not a strong one for Limited. The best card in a Draft deck is almost never worth spending 3 mana to tutor for, as it is just such an incredibly tempo negative play. Diabolic Tutor is a similar card from previous sets that has always been bad for this exact reason, and I wanted to point out that it is a trap because Tutors tend to look better than they are.

It is kind of like why auras are bad in Limited. It is usually better to play a new 2/2 rather than giving another 2/2 an extra couple of counters because it makes it harder to get blown out by removal.

I'm so glad you liked it!

I don't think this set is designed with Commander Drafting in mind so I'm not sure what the procedure would be for that. Usually sets where you take two cards from a pack also have two Rares in the pack, but again, I've only done those drafts a couple times so I'm not as familiar (and this is just a normal drafting set).

@@NicolaiBolas I feel like you could commander draft in this or any Standard set, considering signpost legends

The rankings!

How it came at such a good time 🥰🙏

Remember ringsight tempts you first which makes a creature legendary. That way you can play in decks with low legendaries and tutor your bomb or removal or out

@@andrewfrete9027 Good call. It can still be completely useless if you don't have any creatures in play (or significantly worse if you lack one of the proper color), but that is a good point you have made. In my explanation I was also trying to emphasize that even when it works, the effect is just not a strong one for Limited. The best card in a Draft deck is almost never worth spending 3 mana to tutor for, as it is just such an incredibly tempo negative play. Diabolic Tutor is a similar card from previous sets that has always been bad for this exact reason, and I wanted to point out that it is a trap because Tutors tend to look better than they are.

@@MELOVISIONHD I'm glad to hear it!

I'm excited for a whole new set with a whole new list of fun things to try!

Good call on the Legendary creature part. It can still be completely useless if you don't have any creatures in play (or significantly worse if you lack one of the proper color), but that is a good point you have made. In my explanation I was also trying to emphasize that even when it works, the effect is just not a strong one for Limited. The best card in a Draft deck is almost never worth spending 3 mana to tutor for, as it is just such an incredibly tempo negative play. Diabolic Tutor is a similar card from previous sets that has always been bad for this exact reason, and I wanted to point out that it is a trap because Tutors tend to look better than they are.

@@NicolaiBolas I agree. tutors definitely aren't good in limited because of tempo. I only meant to point out that if you have a bomb that would be worth putting a tutor in your deck for, that it isn't as bad as it seems at face because of the ring ability.

@@xerowolf4242 It is a valid point and I'm glad you pointed it out. If I had a card on the level of The Scarab God or Tetzimoc, Primal Death in my deck, I could see running the card. I put it in the Trap section because it is the sort of effect that looks way better than it actually is because folks are used to playing in Commander or other formats where tutors are more valuable, and in Draft (as we both seem to agree) the tempo loss is just not worth it almost 100% of the time (even when the card does work as intended, which it doesn't always if you lack a creature or a creature of the proper color). Gold Uncommons tend to be good, so the fact that this one is quite bad also seemed like it could trip people up.

The set is going to be on MTG Arena for Draft, so you will definitely have the chance to play it! I'm glad you liked the video!

​@@NicolaiBolas Thanks!👍

I'm glad you liked it!

I'm glad you enjoyed the video!

I'm glad you liked it!

To me it felt like Blue had strong cards across the board, and that for many of Blue's typical effects (like Countermagic, Card Draw, Flyers, etc.) there were great versions at low rarities. Hopefully that explanation makes sense!

I didn’t misread it. It is a Valor Singer with Reach, and I was simply saying that if you get multiple into play it’s an effect that stacks pretty nicely, not that it buffs multiple things on its own. Hopefully that clarifies it for you, I think it’s a nice card.

I'm glad you liked it!

It feels quite powerful to me. There are several cards that look similar to ones we have seen in the past, but lots of them are just a bit better. For example, Rally at the Hornburg is a better Forbidden Friendship and Glorious Gale is a better Essence Scatter. Lots of cards seem to have a bit of extra strength compared to what we normally see, at least in my opinion.