#27 - Not Aetherdrift

Featuring the first look at Final Fantasy, more Brackets fallout, and zero talk of Presidents' Day.

Feb 17, 2025

Welcome to all the new friends who are going to skip this one because most of the time, this space isn’t for purely limited strategy.

Glad you enjoyed the last one. See you on Wednesday.

Yes, I’ll be doing a big update on Aetherdrift before Chicago that’ll go out midweek. To absolutely no one’s surprise, there has already been a shift in how the format. Excited to bring people up to speed.

Today, it’s a regular round-up of news (and Seymour) that usually follows my Saturday column.

Return of the Mack

You may recognize Mack Smith’s name if you watch LSV’s team drafts on YouTube. The guy is an absolute Vintage Cube beast and I’m always alternately happy/destroyed to see him on my team/beating me.

Per the MTGO Blog, the best cube online returns in roughly one month, so if you’re looking to train in the offseason, I highly recommend reading his tier list. Don’t just click the image. The image is nothing. The blog is everything.

There’s card-by-card analysis of his top 100, but there’s context and cards that you should be looking out for when you take X, too. What I really love is that he acknowledges his bias constantly and gives you flexibility within rating. The cube draft channel that we’re in (and I’ve been neglecting for two months) definitely loves Boros. If you’re at a table that feels the same, this is spot on, but if not you can move Mana Crypt up, for example.

Great analysis and I hope he does more.

🎵Heard The Screams Gettin’ Louder🎵

Speaking of LSV: Did you know nothing can stop you from signing up for Arena as LSV? I tested this back in the day with another popular creator’s handle (rhymes with Boebert Snow Shoe) to see if this is real. It is.

Each Arena Username features a weird set of numbers after it like you were a guy on X with Very Cool Opinions. That chain of numbers separates accounts from each other, not the characters. Cool because no one can squat on your handle. Bad because people can spam “Good Game” with your handle as you resolve mulligans.

I suppose the context clue here might have been LSV rated Bronze:

Regardless, congrats on reaching Gold 1, DoubleStrikeJoe, and your decisive victory over Lumpy Space Vixen, which is what Sam thinks LSV stands for.

The Seed 2.0 (Roots)

My favorite part of any PT near a set release is people trying to crack Format X. It’s a time of innovation. Everyone working in a singular pursuit of greatness. We’re in a Space Race with a bunch of Matchbox cars.

Here, BorosBoss tried some decidedly unBoroslike things with this Roots list. There’s nothing that makes this uniquely great from DFT outside of Verges to help the mana base. But I like Roots. I like Tyvar. I like the idea of combo existing in Standard instead of Tempo vs. Control.

More cool stuff will happen, but this caught my eye.

Final Fantasy Begins

Final Fantasy and I go way back. My buddy Arthur let me monopolize his Nintendo for easily hundreds of hours in elementary school as we tried to beat the original on NES. Then I got my own NES and we stopped hanging out as much.

I never owned another console after that, never played another FF game, but it looks like the franchise has been just fine without me.

Spoiler season has begun. If you’re curious why, considering Tarkir: Dragonstorm is chronologically the next set to be released, do not ask me. I’m stoked for TDM. It’s the format for Spotlight Series Denver, which will likely be the biggest event on my ‘25 Calendar.

The only Easter Eggs I care about this season

But FF will dominate the year (outside of Marvel) from a fan and financial perspective, so we received a few Commander precon teases today.

The homies I once knew certainly have received a glow up:

Steam Community :: Guide :: Final Fantasy 1 - Class and Party guide.

tbh I’m not sure any of them are in this photo

People Are Finding Out They’re Not Fun

I really loved what Weeks did with the original Brackets graphics (added context, always great) and wow, did some people not get it. Took a stroll through the replies and instead of responding to them individually like an actual lunatic, figured I’d sum up the biggest argument I see here:

“I play a bad deck with a lot of Game Changers™! Don’t make me play against Fours!”

In my experience, you’re one of two people:

Someone fun who wants to make a bad Commander stand a chance at a normal table
Someone who isn’t interested in playing a bad Commander for fun and wants to make everyone else a little miserable

So here’s the deal: you’re going to have to talk to people.

There’s no system of Magic classification that can perfectly get every deck to fit between a one and a five. This system is designed to out you, the person playing powerful cards, as one of the people above instead of lurking into higher or lower-powered games you aren’t a good fit for.

I don’t want to play against the Mono Red deck that messes with my lands in a Three pod. You having to tell me you’re a Blood Moon pervert makes that a much easier “no from me, dawg” than if you just say, “Yeah, I’m running a pretty bad Ben-Ben, Akki Hermit deck.”

If you’re a Banding deck that runs Trouble in Pairs and Smothering Tithe to not get run over, I’m much more interested in a game.

If you want to play Grand Arbiter as a Three, perhaps you’re just finding out that other people have a different sense of “fun” than you.

Make sense?

I just don’t understand the point of this question. Are you worried about a cEDH player coming to your pod of Four decks and wrecking house? Well, then they’re lying to you because they know they’re playing a cEDH deck. It’s like porn: you know it when you see it.

Are you worried about your Four deck stumbling into a cEDH pod? Or protecting cEDH players from a rogue deck? They’re not worried at all! It’s the cleanest pregame discussion there is.

This is the problem with a lot of the discourse: straw men and people going, “but what about me personally?” Unless you think what your bringing up is an actual, real life problem that you have a solution to, perhaps listen.

Fluffle Butter

I’ve been following Ondrej Strasky’s development process on Showdown for a while now because I think it’s fascinating when pros branch out to start a game. His whole thing is cracking the crypto space with the first great game. Someone has to do it.

The above tweet is my problem.

I don’t know what a Fluffle NFT whitelist is. I need to stake $50 in USD crypto (I think?) to guarantee a spot to play a game I know nothing about. It all feels like a massive hurdle for anyone who isn’t already in the crypto space and, having dabbled slightly with it in the past, I have zero interest in re-entering.

IDK. Maybe I’ll go up to Broomfield and do a tournament report. I guarantee you, the crowd will be fascinating.

Odds and Endstep

I would have built differently, but it does seem strong. Also gives me hope for Chicago, in that great pools go 7-3 sometimes. Any opinions, chat? Comment or let’s talk about it in the Discord.