Throne of Eldraine Initial Impressions

I just want to start out by saying thanks to everyone who looked at my set review.  I know there's a nearly infinite amount of ways to spend your time on the internet, and I'm glad some of that got devoted to my review.

Color Rankings

1. Black 
2. Green
3. Red/Blue
4. White 

• Black contains a huge density of removal spells, and has high card strength among each rarity.  Black is extremely deep and versatile as well, as there's only a couple really weak cards at common.  Multiples themes are well supported, with Food and Knights the obvious standouts.
• Green is a very close second, and falls short as its a bit weaker at common and lacks good removal aside from Outmuscle, which is risky in context.  Green rares make up the majority of the best rares in the set, meaning you'll often start drafts wanting to commit to Green.  Adamant is well supported here, and Crashing Drawbridge makes up for a lack of good 2 drops.
• Red and Blue look to be relatively even in strength.  Red has very good commons but the drop-off in power is steep.  Blue has lots of strong commons and has some fliers that will be very difficult to deal with the other colors near complete lack of them, but it suffers at uncommon and above as there's not a whole lot of raw power there.
• White continues its dominance as running worst color in the set, although here I think it's not by as large of a margin as any of the past few sets.  There's lots of good two drops and strong rares/mythics, but everywhere in between White lacks power and flexibility.  Multiple weak one mana creatures really hurt White, as well as the extremely over costed  Lonesome Unicorn.

Format Speed

On a 10 point scale, where a 10 is original Zendikar, the fastest format I've ever played, and 1 is an old set not intended for Limited like Beta, I'd rate Throne of Eldraine a 4, as I see it playing out a notch slower than an average format.  Most Adventures incentivize playing for the long haul, as they give various value oriented bonuses.  Food gives every deck access to life gain, leading to games ending with burn effects less common.  Removal is incredibly good and cheap creatures in general die to it consistently, and it get outclassed by more expensive cards earlier than usual.  Evasion is less common than usual, with Flying taking a major dip once you're not counting the legion of 1/1 fliers for 1.  Taking all of this into account there are some powerful aggressive decks and tricks that give large stat bonuses, so short games will still be common enough.

Land Counts

In general I'm looking to always start at 18 in Sealed and at 17 in draft here, as decks will have much more to do with their mana in general than in most sets.  Games also will skew a bit longer due to all of the value oriented mechanics, and Adamant incentivizes playing lots of colored sources, which will often mean more lands.  I expect to play 18 lands in draft more often than normal, especially if I'm heavy on Adventure cards.

Unusual Incentives

There's so many Artifacts/Enchantments running around that you should always maindeck the first True Love's Kiss or Return to Nature, and strongly consider a second.  True Love's Kiss is particularly powerful as it draws a card as well, meaning that it won't even need to hit a real target to generate an advantage.

Play vs. Draw

Extra ways to spend mana incentivize playing first, as you'll win games less on raw resource count vs. having the time to turn all of your mana/cards into usable resources.  Adventure is key here as just having 4-5 Adventure spells in your deck will give you a ton of extra places to put extra mana. While I don't advocate playing 18 lands in draft yet, I would be hesitant to run 16 unless my deck was casting lots of 1 and 2 mana spells with nothing above 4.

Until next time,
Kevin
@sealedawaymtg on Twitter