When the gods of Theros were first being revealed to us, I immediately fell in love with the concept of the warring Twin Gods. Who better to represent the domain of war than twin siblings who were constantly at each other’s throats? As I tried to imagine what the personality of each of these characters was like, I fell on this idea that their relationship was similar to two young boys who constantly fight over their toys. I could picture the Twin Gods, yelling back and forth as each attempted to claim the same oracle for himself.

“Hey! That oracle is mine—get your own!”

“No it isn’t! Its mine! It’s my turn to have an oracle!”

“No, Kruphix got that oracle for me!”

The twin gods would complain as they fought. I would laugh to myself, picturing the result of such sibling rivalry as the two brothers began wrestling each other (and most likely accidently breaking the oracle in the process).

I bet the two gods of war would fight over everything, I thought. I bet they would even fight over who would get to be my commander.

It’s been a while since I’ve talked about the guilds in my Cube. Between some sweet Drafts and making some changes, I’ve had to leave my Ravnican friends behind for the time being. Today, I took the road back to the city and am visiting those who live on the outskirts and then the mad scientists in the urban center. These guilds might share a color, but the decks they produce are anything but similar—

—unless you count the burning of things. In that case, Gruul and Izzet are siblings from the same year.

Starting with the greener of the two, Gruul can present a conundrum for Cube designers. The red-and-green combination as a reputation for being a bit of a mindless aggressor. While not as throw-everything-at-you-on-fire as Rakdos aggro can be, Gruul has to look toward nontraditional forms of card advantage to keep up with the grindy nature of black or the pure card-draw of blue. How does Gruul accomplish this?

So back to Conspiracy.

While I may not be interested in the set itself for its intended purpose, I am definitely very interested in picking out any potential gems for my cube.

The hook for this set is that it is a multiplayer set based around drafting, and that some of the cards affect the actual draft itself. There are two main types spoiled so far: Conspiracies and the "Cogworkers."

The Conspiracies are sort of like the old-school Vanguard cards, in that they exist outside of your deck and the game and alter the rules in some way. You still draft them out of the packs like normal cards, but they don't actually go in your deck.

For Cube I'm definitely not sold on these at all. They feel too casual to me, to the point that it doesn't really feel like Magic anymore.

What I am really interested in, however, are a few of the "Cogwork" cards. There are seven of them spoiled so far, and each of them is an artifact creature that has some sort of direct effect on the draft itself. Let's take a look at them all, starting with the first one spoiled.

Cedric Phillips chats with Rookie of the Year front-runner Jared Boettcher about his incredible seven-month run in Magic, what it feels like to be Platinum at such a young age, and the powers of his Pokemon hat.

Cedric Phillips sits down with Pro Tour Journey into Nyx Top 8 competitor Jamie Parke about his return to competitive Magic, what it was like to work with The Pantheon, and why Carmelo Anthony is his favorite player from Syracuse.

Ten rounds of Block Constructed and six rounds of booster draft—two weeks before the Pro Tour I was optimistic that I could bring my best game to all of them. My team came through in fine form: Andrew Cuneo conceived of the B/U/G deck that most of the team wound up playing. Gabriel Nassif, Jelger Wiegersma, and William Jensen put countless hours into fine tuning the list. Sam Black, Patrick Chapin, and Owen Turtenwald brewed up dozens of potential new decks that I might've played under slightly different circumstances. And that's not even to mention the blood, sweat, and tears that all fourteen of us (plus a few working remotely) put in day to day, testing matchups and solving the Block format. Every deck, every sideboard card, and every single win that the team earned in the tournament belongs—at least in part—to the team as a whole. I thank them all for their hard work!

But I might as well start from the beginning...

Playing in my first Pro Tour was exhilarating, which is weird, thinking back, because I didn’t know nervousness mixed so well with excitement. I was among the best players in the world, and I felt a burning inside my mind, intensifying that I wasn’t satisfied just getting onto the Pro Tour; I was going to try become a well-known name among the magic the gathering community. Battling through nerves and other highly skilled players was rough, but I was able to place ninth after the dust settled and the weekend was over.

All of a sudden, after checking everything online, it was brought to my attention that I’m in third place for the Rookie of the Year race.

Ah, Conspiracy. It's a secret to everybody. Well, not anymore—I'm incredibly excited for you all to see the set. After months of teasing, hidden messages, and sly references, you will soon be able to see the the entire set at the Card Image Gallery.

When creating the Conspiracy set, the goal was to take some big swings on making a unique draft environment. We wanted to create an opportunity for large and exciting things to happen in a Conspiracy draft that wouldn't necessarily happen in a regular draft—and letting us put draft actions of various types in the packs let us do just that.

Additionally, the games are designed to be played with somewhere between three and five people—something else that we have never tried with a draft product. I think it is safe to say that Conspiracy is a draft experience unlike anything you have ever done before, and I hope that you enjoy it.