If you've been following me through 2019 - heaven help you - then you know I've gone deep into uncharted theory waters. But how can I continue that tradition when there's a new set to discuss?

We have new cards, Danny! Don't you get it?!

Well, since a big part of my theoretical pie relies on how terribly unreliable our intuitions are and basically the entirety of trying to evaluate new cards without a full context means that we're leaning hard on those same bad intuitions, I thought I could look over Theros 2: Enchantment With a Vengeance while testing some of these same theoretical frameworks!

You really can have it all, boys and girls.

(Cut to me, sleeping in a driveway I don't own.)

To Theros!

Before we begin, here are my known biases regarding Theros and its conceptual innards:

• I once expressed to a friend on a snowy, dark, winter evening that I didn't care about Theros as much as the previous sets because I was much more into village horror spook and infinite city world than I was real world mythology. You have no idea the kinds of looks you get from one-track-minded Spike players who basically never look outside a card's text box when you say shit like this.
• Although, Urza block in its big risk, big reward (re: big successes, big failures) spotlight was quietly a "failed" swing at an enchantment-based block, I find it far more creatively charming than Theros' "just staple stuff to creatures and let's go to lunch" philosophy.
• I associate Theros with pretty lousy Standard gameplay. The Bant Heroic decks were particularly ridiculous in my estimation.

So that's what I think of when I think of Theros. Fortunately, I am of a discerning mind, and I won't let the marketing fool me into thinking they're the same -

(Cut to me seeing a spoiler full of enchantment creatures.)

Well, whatever.

Your Lying Eyes

Without looking anywhere else on the internet for Magic information - what am I, dumb? - I think I can safely say people have been calling this "the new Think Twice" or other such nonsense.

Let me confirm with some friends that this has happened.

Yes, they tell me. In multitudes.

Here's how I know this card isn't Think Twice: The names of the cards are different.

This. Is. Your. Intuition.

Stop. Listening. To. It.

Escape was not a mechanic the last two Standards you had access to Think Twice - were most of you even playing then? - we have no idea how viable escape will even be in a format with access to cards like Ashiok, Dream Render; and we have no idea if durdly Blue control air will even be able to compete in a world with big uncounterable devotion ramps and Cauldron Familiars draining people for fourteen life a turn.

The truth about this card is we have no idea how much it'll play like Think Twice or Evermind or Whispers of the Muse or any other card that sort of looks like other cards we personally remember having stories about from our past life, but that don't reflect a single statistical fact about how the card is going to play in the format we're actually playing it in soon.

Because the format is entirely different, the context is entirely different, and Magic truisms are as ubiquitous as they are useless.

Literally, you should think twice about this.

The only way to know the card is to play with it. Proxy up, get something resembling actual data, and stop being a big, unscientific lazy about this. We have events to win!

You do, anyway. I'm going to stay home.

Devil's advocate: Let's say I think it's reasonable to line this card up beside Thirst for Knowledge - if you're wondering why we aren't lumping Compulsive Research in, you've got work to do, young'in.

How could I prove the point that they're nearly the same card for evaluation purposes?

Well, I can't. Because it's rubbish.

But if you really wanted to try, you could start by comparing the total number of artifacts in the older 'Knowledge' format (Mirrodin plus whatever, before or after mass bans) to the newer format we're about to play (the 'Meaning' format). Cool, there's some data there!

Now we just need to hope that both Standard card pools contain all completely identical cards.

Hold real quick. I'm checking the spoilers.

Let's see, Mirrodin had these cards...okay, and Theros: Beyond Death has...dammit. It was just as I feared. They're completely different.

So in addition to our really incomplete information about the new set (as of this writing, I think we're less than a third of the way into preview season) and all its relevant competitive interactions just on first-glance text, we also have no idea how the various emergent strategies that play off those cards are going to interact with one another in the greater developed metagame.

I can see your face now. Let's get something clear.

Do not get me wrong: I'm not against speculation and conjecture during spoiler season. That is the entire joyous point.

But...

Saying "This is the new Thirst for Knowledge" and then moving on isn't speculation or conjecture or productive; that's just you looking at an old yearbook photo, smiling at yourself, and turning the page.

That is the opposite of the fun of spoiler season.

It's not the same card. It's not the same game.

Put some nuance on your muffin in the morning.

I mentioned this once already, but it really is worth beating the drum over:

Why do we need this card again? I know the most convenient Fireball will do when you're leading with Thoughtseize, Pack Rat, Phyrexian Arena/Yawgmoth's Bargain, so it's not all its fault, but what on Earth is the upside?

Is there a secondary market shortage on them or something? Do people miss the play pattern of being Corrupted several turns in a row that badly? Is that why we got all the damn Food from Throne of Eldraine? So we could stay out of range of the same creature that condemned us to terrible gameplay deaths all those months - doesn't feel like years, does it - ago?

Ari Lax once said that Elder Deep-Fiend looks like a Mistbind Clique homage, but he has no idea why that'd be a development goal. I agreed with him then, and I agree with him now.

Anyway, yeah, again, the format is different, and our intuitions are terrible so it's probably fine...but again, what the hell is the point?

I think I've made the important theory points. Moving on, here are a few of my no-games first impressions and faulty intuitions on some of the cards I think about enough to talk about:

Ari is as unconcerned about Gray Merchant as I am about this card. He's concerned with this card. Again, we may never know what the point was.

My only real impression of consequence is that Red used to suck in Commander. Cards like this changed that.

I'm pleased to see Sagas back so soon. They're the best storytelling in-game innovation I can remember, and they did it without making the cards look like those upside down Kamigawa disasters.

A friend commented that they'd rather have Satyr Wayfinder than the Saga, but I have no idea why that matters in a format that doesn't have Satyr Wayfinder anyway. I wrote an entire piece on this intuition (before I prattled on about intuitions all the time), but it was lost in the great content purge of 2019. This is a better article about it, though. Go read it at some point.

I played with this some in the cool Magic Arena powered up test drive event they had a few weeks back. Getting to use Black Lotus to power out turn-two Ashiok isn't fooling anyone, devs, but it was a good try. And it was fun, so no harm.

I don't have any thoughts on the card itself, but Ashiok is getting Jace levels of Thesaurus problems.

Pray tell: What is the difference between being a "nightmare muse," a "nightmare weaver," and a "dream render"? My guess is its somewhere between whatever inches in meaning lie between a "mind sculptor" and an "architect of thought."

Unbelievable.

This is a card that I would be astonished to see in a competitive Standard deck, but I admire it for the following reason: It marries the Blue color pie artifact love with the Red color pie equipment love, an overdue interaction for design.

So what's going to define new Standard? Are there any definitive conclusions we can make?

The only axiom I'd trust enough to endorse this early are that new archetypes have to work harder in the early metagame than existing archetypes. In the earliest Standard formats, you can get free wins from players who tried too hard to change the world overnight.

Until we see how much ammo they put in the Devotion cannon, it's almost all guesswork. So decklists that aren't shooting blanks for fun are another week or more out, me thinks.

As for the near future, I think it's high time to do a piece on what an absolute disaster the color pie is at the moment. Next week calls. Tune in.

(~_^)

"The Rascal"

The Indestructible Danny West