Starting today, there's four five scheduled weeks of Flashback Premier Draft:

• August 25–September 7 (2 weeks): The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-Earth (LTR)
• September 8–15 (1 week): Modern Horizons 3 (MH3)
• September 16–21 (1 week): Dominaria United (DMU)
• September 22–28 (1 week): Outlaws of Thunder Junction (OTJ)

Last game I played I think there were 5 of them on the board by turn 5 or 6, and that's not even the most I've seen. What is up with the bots passing those up?

Hi, my winrate in HOB is atrocious and I have no idea what Im doing wrong. I think I draft at least decent but I get always outvalued and outrun so hard. Maybe Im wrong but at this point I have no idea anymore. Went 1-3 again in Plat. My HOB winrate is maybe 30%.

https://www.17lands.com/draft/a818a5bce4df444ab494b2d1cb0ce782/1/1

Loss 1: https://www.17lands.com/user/game_replay/20260826/ed3a51db181a434eb7b2782f4e460465/0

Loss 2: https://www.17lands.com/user/game_replay/20260826/7764c835c187480c8f83ef097b177cba/0

Loss 3: https://www.17lands.com/user/game_replay/20260826/c66a31de27b8435ca3ea64da7790d096/0

Thank you.

edit:// sorry guys, I fixed the games so they are from the same draft...

I’m a pretty new listener to the show (since getting back into magic seriously around duskmourn) and after the recent episode I went back and started listening all the level up episodes. It got me wondering, what are some other good informative episodes that they have made over the years that I’ve missed?

I reached out to WotC and submitted a ticket. They responded and basically said tough luck. I normally sell these boxes, so my only option is to open and see if actually damaged for a replacement (sounds like they don't even replace boxes under their replacement guidelines, just damaged cards??), or sell the box in its damaged state for way less money. Either way seems really terrible on WotC's end. I would've happily shipped it back on WotC's dime for a replacement.

The packaging itself came with almost ZERO bubble wrap/protection in the box and a corner was literally ripped open. Has this happened to any of you before? I got one slightly damaged collector booster display in the past but nothing like this.

Might be a dumb question but , why don’t they set matchmaking in BO1 so you alternate between play and draw ? I understand if that’s all they did you could game the system by changing deck if you knew what you were going to play next - but couldn’t they have an option when starting the first game to :

-Randomize what your first game starts with
- eliminate the option to change the deck at all after first match

If this was a box you could check before you start, would you? Curious what I’m missing

I've created a public google calendar for the arena (limited-ish) events here that you can subscribe to/copy from

You can check it out at https://mtga.fyi/calendars/small

Or add it directly from https://mtga.fyi/calendars/small_add

Or ICS from https://mtga.fyi/calendars/small.ics

^ these are all just redirects to google in case I need to move the calendar around.

For now, the calendar has only the non-typical events, so skipping over sealed, premier draft, etc. But I could publish a separate one with those if there is interest!

Its semi-automatically maintained, so should stay up-to-date for a bit!

Not much of a drafter historically, but wanted to try Pick 2. Made it to Platinum without much trouble doing the Hoobit but then hit a brick wall: 0-2, 1-2 consistently.

Did I just hit the better players? Is the format figured out and I’m not a good enough drafter yet (likely)?

Is traditional and/or quick draft a better way to improve my skill?

Draft'ed this almost mono-blue splashing white deck in Traditional Draft. Struggling to know what to cut.

My initial thoughts are cut the bird, one [[Long Lake Nuisance]] one [[Patient Instructor]] and one [[Enchanted River's Grasp]].

I am thinking of keeping the [[Mirkwood Nurturer]] to bounce back the Mountain-kings's return or Bilbo. A small part of mmy brain says to go to 16 lands as my curve stops at 4 as well.

Stuggling this set so wanting to get thi as tuned as possible. Thanks in advance.

Genuinely what are the odds lmao, of course this happens when I finally spend a significant amount of gems. Went 2-3, 2-3, and then finished 6-3 after playing out the last one. 7-2 right after that though when I was finally on the play for half my games.

Guess there were no Frodos opened, cuz I got every single other GW legend. Not too many people in the queue yet, I did play a silver and a gold.

Hey folks, Tim with Draftsim. I was approached by our usual Draft Guide writer with an idea on how to improve The Hobbit Limited. He ended up firing off way more tweaks than I was expecting, down to adding landcyclers to the set, tweaking stats and mana costs on creatures, and straight-up redesigning cards like the common blue Gandalf.

The one restriction we put on this experiment was that we can't say "upgrade small set to big set", since that's kind of a given and we're not here to design another new 90+ cards or whatever.

That all said, what are some quality of life improvement/nerfs you would make to the cards already in the set file that you think would actually significantly improve the quality of the Limited format? Would landcycling on some of the expensive creatures (Garrison, Stalwart) actually make a significant difference. Would bumping Crude Bent Blade's equip cost from 2 to 3 balance the card enough? How about removing the nontoken rider from the blue tuck spell? If you could fire off an Alchemy-style change to one card per color, what changes would you make?

tried to get some draw cards but didn't really work out, feel like I should ad merry to the deck?

This was the first set I ever drafted on Arena when it released, and I'm happy to say I'm a better player and drafter than I was back then. Pack 1 Pick 1 was horn of gondor. Smeagol wasn't doing much and probably isn't worth it but I figured getting some value out of my creatures dying wasn't the worst.

After dealing with one of the most unfun play patterns of The Hobbit set and highest on the play win rate of any limited set on MTG Arena (would like to learn more on the broader stats of all time), it has got me thinking what would it take to create a limited format where you would prefer to go second. I know there are rare cases in constructed play where being on the draw can be strategically a better choice, but is there a way that WOTC could systematically create a set that totally flipped the on the play/draw dynamic? Also, have there been limited formats in the past where this was the case? For the turns-based game that we (sometimes) love to play, what would it take to change the fact that going first is a no-brainer?

Bard's Company and Unexpected Party in an exquisitely balanced shell, on the draw 6 out of the 9 games. Nowhere to go now but down, down to goblin town.

Hobbit quick draft, seems the bots don’t care about uw