“They reached the bottom. All around them, a sea of lifeless bodies. Scattered amongst the fallen; Eye of the Storm, Experiment Kraj, Confusion in the Ranks, and Chandra Ablaze.”

Remember kids, going deep* is fun, but every once in awhile, you need to remember to come up for air.

There was a time in my Magic career when someone convincing me of the above statement could have very well improved my results. On the other hand, maybe I would have never gotten to where I am today. It isn’t fun to sit on the side of the boat, looking down at what might be happening below the surface. Is it safer? Yep. Is it fun? Not nearly as much.

Seven different formats. Sixteen individual competitors. More than seventy teams from around the world. A coverage team that numbers in the dozens. Five days of live coverage. There is going to be nothing else like Worlds Week during the tournament season, and it will all start coming to you live on Wednesday, with wall-to-wall coverage straight through to the awards ceremony on Sunday, when we will crown the 2013 World Champion and World Magic Cup winners.

This is a draft primer for Rise of the Eldrazi (ROE), an expert-level set released in April 2010. It marks the third set of the Zendikar Block, preceded by Zendikar and Worldwake. Different from the traditional large-small-small block structure of Magic‘s expert sets, ROE is a large set with its own draft format, comparable to Avacyn Restored‘s role in the Innistrad Block. Even today, ROE is considered one of the most enjoyable, interesting, and strategically deep limited formats ever.

This article is meant to provide an overview of ROE limited for newer players who missed the Eldrazi invasion the last time around, as well as for those who simply want to brush up on their knowledge before joining a draft. This is made possible by Magic Online (MTGO), where “old-school” drafts with booster packs that have gone out of print recur periodically as special events.

This primer is divided into six parts: In Part I, the mechanics and key cards of ROE limited are examined. This also allows us to make some early observations on the strategic focus of ROE limited.Part II covers Eldrazi-based strategies, which are best-supported in green decks. The aggressive decks of the format are highlighted in Part III, which deals with Leveler decks and focuses on white, blue, and black. In Part IV, the control decks of the format are explained, drawing their support from blue, black, and red. Part V completes the archetype discussion and highlights fringe archetypes and single-card strategies. Part VI includes some practical tips and tricks and concludes the primer.

Change is hard. I'm a creature of habit and routine. I still frequent (if I can use that word in this context) the same Mexican restaurant in Sacramento, California (Sal's in West Sac) despite the fact that it is now three moves in my past. Basically, I eat there every time I visit my parents.

When the M14 rules changes were announced, there was a lot of buzz about them ruining Magic. In particular, people focused their energies on how hard the hexproof Geist of Saint Traft and Thrun, the Last Troll would be to deal with. When you think about it, the whole idea of using a clone as a legend killer is a little weird.

Theros just dropped some preview art at Comic-Con and PAX Australia, and we have much to discuss.

I’m an art history graduate, and I studying more than my share of classical and neoclassical art, despite studying late medieval art as much as possible. Visually, we will only see about five percent of the possible influence that this range of styles can bring us. Let us compare 1200 BCE through 476 CE and the 1800s of “Classical and the revival of classicism” to just “gothic horror.” The well is way deeper in one instance. That’s exciting because we can return in the future; it’s not disappointing because it might not be thorough enough.

For you art/storyline fans, the Vorthos folk, we need a primer on Greek mythology, but we haven’t the time. What we can do is talk about the art—namely, what classical and neoclassical art is—some things to look for, and some expectations using the previewed art as a roadmap. This set, according to MaRo “is to Greek mythology what Innistrad was to gothic horror.” I see some classicism, yes, but more so, I see neoclassicism, the lens by which most Americans see Greek and Roman art.

About fifteen months ago, Devon Rule wrote an article titled “1,000 Commander Decks” to take a look at the top commanders and colors in the format. I thought it’d be fun to take a look at the final data and see if anything’s changed since then.

The Most Popular Commanders of 2012

Devon hosted a thread titled “Most Popular Commanders 2012” and kept it open from January 1 until December 31, 2012 on the official Commander forums. Readers were invited to list the decks they played regularly along with any regular decks from their playgroups. In December, Devon started an additional thread on the Commander forum at MTGSalvation. The threads ultimately collected four hundred eight-five responses and three thousand two hundred ten decks. It was a huge response, but since readers were invited to comment instead of being randomly sampled, it’s likely the data are significantly biased, especially against casual players who don’t spend much time hanging out on forums. So, any results have to be taken with a grain of salt. Still, in the same way tournament data says a lot about committed tournament players, Devon’s survey says a lot about committed Commander players, which makes it a valuable resource for trying to describe the global Commander metagame.