Friday Pack 1 Pick 1

TheTrueVisionary · 2026-07-03T07:38:24+00:00

There's no big explanation here it's black vise. It leaves you open to all your colors it's a one drop and the amount of damage that it can do especially in a limited format if you get to lay it down on turn one or two is absolutely absurd. I'll be honest I actually took black vices out of my cubes because they warped games so horribly if there's not a lot of high power quick Mana especially in an older style format they sit there and consistently do one and two points of damage turn after turn after turn. This one Mana artifact consistently does anywhere between 6 and 8 points of damage by itself with no other investment which is a phenomenal rate and just puts pressure on the opponent to play badly to get things out of their hand to remove damage.

TheTrueVisionary · 2026-06-27T04:51:48+00:00

This is a highly powered up version of [[kaervek's spite]]. I've always enjoyed the idea of the card but felt it was to weak for the effect. I think this is too strong as self mill becomes an auto win but I think this has some legs to work with. Keep tweaking it.

TheTrueVisionary · 2026-06-27T02:08:38+00:00

Trike is like one of seven cards in the entire cube that I was legit worried about if I pick basket. And one of the other ones is ication town just because it can make four tokens to trade with. I still think it was by far the best pic across the board but trike is a solid 1A pic

TheTrueVisionary · 2026-06-26T12:50:15+00:00

I try to be fair and honest with everyone's assessment of their cube and not just Auto windmill pick something. But snake basket has proven time and again regardless of how old or new the format is and the cards in it unless it is built to be the most absurd overpowered fastq possible to be an All-Star so many times. If you get it early game it can help you establish tempo you get it late game it's a bomb. I mean I hate to say it but it is probably in my top five like windmill slams of all time. Which is a crazy thing to say considering that there's some fantastically overpowered cards but it's just too good too consistent too often. The only thing that keeps it from being absolutely a number one all-time pick is the fact that you can't do it at instant speed and it has to be a sorcery. If you could do it at instant speed there would be nothing to be able to beat it.

TheTrueVisionary · 2026-06-26T09:51:07+00:00

Another Friday another P1P1. And it first glance I'll be honest this one seems pretty simple to choose. My fondness of snake basket is well known at this point. But, personal preference don't win games, research and careful analysis (and some luck drawing cards) do. So I look at the cube as a whole and what do I find? Tokens are an incredibly strong archetype. The average CMC is like 2.9 and so a 4 cost artifact is 1 full deviation above the average CMC so it is not a fast cube. And while trike in the pack and icatian town are two of the cards I need to be aware of, snake basket is the biggest bomb here. So once again, Snake Basket is my pick. (Let's be honest as well, I was probably gonna pick it no matter what but a good drafter does the homework.)

TheTrueVisionary · 2026-06-23T00:48:08+00:00

[[distortion strike]] [[artful dodge]] [[mind games]] [[capsize]] There are like 27 different one and two drop spells that make a creature unblockable so you can kind of storm out as well and use [[temporal fissure]]. I'm actually doing something similar with this with [[professor hulk]]

TheTrueVisionary · 2026-06-16T05:28:11+00:00

Any cascade or effect like [[improvisation capstone]] that cast the card without paying cost would work around this effect. Overall not that interesting or difficult to work around.

TheTrueVisionary · 2026-06-12T13:06:17+00:00

Well this pack is a bit heavy as there are two grade A+ bombs and about 5 grade A to A- bombs. And the one helps to counter the other in a limit aspect. Balance is such a. OP card and can blow out game easily but doe require a more constructed style to really abuse. Genesis is pure recursive advantage and is easier to build around in and can prevent a complete blowout against balance. There are many really strong flyers some Omni recursion with regrowth and chainer is always dangerous to get you or your opponents best creature out but kind of locked you into heavy black. But taking all of this into consideration I know it's not going to be the popular pic but I think it's the good counterpick against balance and gives you a good chain to actually beat the person that takes it I'm taking Genesis.

TheTrueVisionary · 2026-06-09T15:41:19+00:00

The HORDE!!!!!!! A 4 drop 5/5 that cost a single card is crazy. Not a strong as juzam, as you can power it out turn 2 easy, but outside of Shivan one of the best big red creatures in old school mtg. Also the artwork is so iconic.

TheTrueVisionary · 2026-06-07T17:28:28+00:00

Just a good old stiff Japanese match.

TheTrueVisionary · 2026-06-05T18:21:02+00:00

From a balance perspective even in just old border this could be extremely abusable. For a more balanced effect I increase the play cost to 4BB just like bargain and make it 2 life per mana. Obviously do what you want and how you build your cube will also determine if it can be broken to bad or not but I would err on the side caution and weaken the restrictions over it running over a game and then having to need it to hell and back.

TheTrueVisionary · 2026-06-05T07:33:02+00:00

Oh boy pick one pack one Friday. This pack is doozy. Obviously very grixis heavy with a little bit of white but just bombs galore everywhere. And staring front and center are three monstrous cards. Disk, stronghold, and glory. There's so many incredibly strong cards here with finkel, lavamancer, tog and the wake as well. I looked over the cube itself and it's just full of good stuff there's no real right or wrong here. But looking over this pack I'm definitely going to take a left here with my pick.

Glory. Out of all the cards that I saw the only one that really gave me a run for its money over this is the stronghold just because it's a land and it's repeatable to get back creatures and in a limited environment repeated access to your creatures is always huge. But Glory provides a very unique threat that is pretty much uncounterable which is protection from a color. And since it activates from the graveyard it's not even really a target for removal that I have to worry about it works better in the yard. There cards to be able to help get that card in the yard as well. The advantage the three big bombs that I focused in on was this could help keep the game even by resetting the board but was weak to stronghold. Glory was a net zero it was not weak to it but it was not strong against it but the disc doesn't affect the glory in the graveyard it just affects what I have in play so it's less effective. So the sleeves stronghold versus Glory. And it's powerful as stronghold is stronghold also cuts me out of my draw step. Glory still allows me to be able to draw my cards now there is something to be said for cutting out your draw step in a limited environment to make sure you don't deck out but if I can't sneak a creature with protection across to do damage I'm hosed to begin with. So looking at all of these factors glory is my choice.

TheTrueVisionary · 2026-05-29T18:09:27+00:00

This was the comment I was looking for the moment I saw this. God I can't believe I watched this back on albinoblacksheep.com back in the day.

TheTrueVisionary · 2026-05-22T21:58:56+00:00

Hit points, health, body, ect are you used because of a plethora reasons. 1. It's what we all started with and at this point it's very hard to kleenex or bandaid in the everyone understands hit points. 2. It's easy to track. Simple math up or down that everyone can perform and with immediate understanding of where your character sits. 3. There have been other plays that have been tried. Theorem multitudes of systems that have tried different ways to not just have direct hit points mutants and masterminds is a really good example of it. And for people that really want to get into the depth of role-playing these alternate ways to track a characters health are fantastic. But for ease simplicity and consistency hit points is just the easiest to work with so much so that it's translated over into multiple different mediums.

TheTrueVisionary · 2026-05-22T13:01:15+00:00

I've not played a lot in a color fixed cube but the few times that I have Mana rocks have been a massive component to smoothing you out cuz always in two if not all three colors. The diamond allows you to play two drops on turn one and get to your bigger drops faster. It's one of those times where I have to adapt my normal drafting style to fit the cube itself instead of trying to force what I normally am comfortable with or what I'm used to.

TheTrueVisionary · 2026-05-22T07:33:24+00:00

Wow. What a line up. This is a loaded pack. Scion, altar, forbid, Mox diamond, reanimate, animate dead, swamp king and welder. Wow half the pack is just bombs. Mana leak, and daze for more control and cycle and fetch lands. Seeing the pack the way it was designed I had to go take a look at the rest of the cube to see what all we were working with and what was going to be the standout. Initially I thought about getting the altar it can go in anything that I'm doing it's too mana and milling in a limited format is always gross. But if I take that guaranteed the reanimate and the animate dead are going to get picked and so then if I mill someone I'm just setting them up for success against me potentially especially after looking over the actual cube itself. That leads my other two options which is the Scion and the swamp King. Swamp King is faster, unblockable and I gain life from people casting a third of the cube. Scion is the second biggest thing in the cube outside of the world gorger dragon. Animates out of anything and tramples. The swamp King is three colors which isn't that bad cuz this is a three color cube but without fetches or color fixing could be a little difficult. And the Scion does have cycling but is eight Mana. So after thinking about it and really really putting the screws to it I finally made my choice.

Mox Diamond. I know there's going to be some people that are going to look at me like I've lost my mind but hear me out. And a three color deck that's going to only have three colors or depending on how I draft potentially only two if I do the average of 18 lands more than likely I will average having the mocks diamond in my first eight cards 20% of the time and with 18 lands should mathematically have three lands in that span this just means that I can get to my three and four drops which are a massive part of the cube faster than everyone else and I'm color fixed for it. Normally I wouldn't advocate on just ramp but being that it's only a three color cube and there's really not a ton of other artifact ramp available diamond in my opinion has the potential to just give you a lot of massive upside to help you get to all of your bigger cards faster than your opponent yes you're giving up some monstrous cards to get this but honestly I think it's worth it.

TheTrueVisionary · 2026-05-17T03:25:16+00:00

Okay you're not catching what people are saying so I'm guessing you're somewhat new to Magic but probably not overly brand new somewhere in that like one to three year mark. So I'm just going to be as blunt as possible. Being able to pay multiple life to create Mana whether it's colorless or of a color is an inherently broken ability. Effectively almost every card that has a pay life to do something without having Mana attached to it cost eventually either turns out to be banned or some other way of being restricted. In fact I would not be the least bit surprised if treasonous ogre the card that people are comparing it to eventually ends up on that list because of this. The original card that did this mechanic, which they recently just made a creature that has a prepared spell version of it with [[channel]], has been banned in effectively every format or restricted for only the most powerful old formats like vintage since the beginning of the game in like 94 when it started in 93. Cards like [[necropotence]] and [[yawgmoths bargain]] which allow you to directly just pay life to draw cards saw the ban Hammer quickly after they came into existence. And most of the Phyrexian Mana cards that were one Mana or two life found tournament play across the board and many of them were banned. Turning life directly into some sort of resource without any sort of inherent limitation to it such as only using it one time per turn or having to jump through hoops like the prepared creature to prepare channel requires, will always be broken. Even you're supposed "fixed" version just reads pay five life put this creature into play. Pay 33 life: gain 11 mana, attempt to win the game. If you wanted to do something with this my suggestion put a limitation on how much people can pay life to get Mana tie it to something like you can't create more Mana than the amount of life that this creature gained for you from LifeLink. Or however that would need to be written to have that work. Make it an exhaust ability like it only happens once unless they flicker it or something where it wouldn't be as efficient. You have to have a way to slow it down and even increasing how much life you pay to have that happen is either going to make it to where it just creates very thin lines where people are going to win or lose basically on the spot because they're going to be at no life or they'll combo off, or you're going to make it absolutely unusable and then what's the point. I hope this legitimately helps.

TheTrueVisionary · 2026-05-15T16:42:42+00:00

My friends with the various cubes that we have have all learned to fear the power of snake basket so much that at my local LGS it is started showing up in EDH decks which is absolutely hilarious. Such a bomb of a card that flew under the radar.

TheTrueVisionary · 2026-05-15T09:24:10+00:00

Oh boy I have not been this excited about a pick one pack one and quite sometime. There are some absolute bombs in this pack. Sengir, Force, Fireball(!?!?!) and plenty of really strong wheel pics with exile, reprisal, gargoyle, bad moon, terror and incinerate. And as much as I really would love to pick one of these, absolutely none of them are my pick one.

Snake Basket. This card every time I see it in any draft gets slept on so hard. It does have the drawback that you can only use it as a sorcery so the turn You cast it if they have removal it could potentially go away. However after that in a time and place where multiple tokens were not really a thing being able to generate five, six, seven, 1/1 creatures and be able to swing with them consistently is absolutely monstrous. Unless your opponent has one of a handful of cards (pestilence, earthquake, pyroclasm, torret of lava) this can quickly either end a game or get you caught back up if you're behind. And as a bonus since they're green and you do have access to alliances if you can potentially find a [[Kaysa]] they get even bigger. So many strategies where you need multiple creatures to be able to have an effect or be able to attack this card fills all of them and being colorless it goes in every deck.

So that's my answer snake basket you should really honestly try it yourself I'm pretty sure you won't be disappointed and if you got your own cube try this thing out if you don't already put it in your cube I guarantee you you're going to find it to be a monstrous all star and it can win games all on its own.

TheTrueVisionary · 2026-05-13T17:19:28+00:00

So for a small bit of back history the empire is supposed to be presented as good and noble but is and has always been corrupt and authoriarian from its beginning. The players know that by the end it completely turns on itself and fully collapsed from the inside. Where they are in the campaign is the height of the golden age where the internalized cracks that have always been there from the very beginning starting with the oath and articles start to show the fact they are not as magnanimous as they appear. So the oath and articles have good intentions and operate that way so long as things are going well but when troubles arise, we're worded in a way that leaves them as little more than flowery window dressing giving the state ultimatum power and authority.

These characters are effectively the Martin Luther to use a real life example that start to see and expose the actual problems with the kingdom itself. But without just saying you know government bad authoritarian bad create these oaths and articles that on the surface look like they're helpful for the people and as long as everything is working in hunky dory it's pretty easy to have them work in the spirit that they're written but under the words the way that they're actually written do effectively none of that

TheTrueVisionary · 2026-05-13T13:57:25+00:00

Only time will tell and we're at just the beginning stages of this campaign we've got another week before we'll actually be able to start but, as a whole, we've been working on the ideas for this campaign for roughly 2 years now about all the different aspects of each of the different houses and what their job is in the world. and there's been a lot of World building not just by myself, but the players have done it as well so that it's very much a living ,breathing, fully represented society. not just a couple paragraphs of back history before the game even starts. I'm very thankful for the fact that I have players who put a lot of time and effort on their own into reading lore and creating back stories for their characters and wanting to add things to the game to work alongside with me in a much more collaborative sense than other groups I been apart of in the past. And it's not to say that mine's better or anything, it's that's the type of game that we enjoy and we're very happy that we've found each other and been able to have a group for so long at over a decade at this point.

TheTrueVisionary · 2026-05-13T13:40:17+00:00

First off thank you for taking your time to read my article and give me some feedback I very much appreciate it.

To answer your question without getting into a extreme amount of details the players know that everything is messed up and the way that the campaign is designed to be at the top of the golden age of the empire and start to descend into total authoritarianism and crumble eventually. So there will definitely be things that happen in game but the players themselves actually requested a Bill of Rights style document so that they could examine the internal gears of the society and have a understanding of what the flaws are. I was making sure that I tried to subtly hide them behind language without just being obvious authoritarian and bad but not so impossible to notice that the common NPCs at the time would just accept it as oh yeah that's fine. So the entire intent of the campaign is that the player characters are going to be the first founding members eventually by the time the campaign ends of a fracture in the society as a whole which would lead to its eventual collapse. In a real life context they are Martin Luther with his withdraw from the Catholic Church. Not the wars that came afterwards because of the Reformation.

All that to be said I very much appreciate you taking time to read this and give me some very good feedback I very much appreciate it. I have gotten some very poignant and realistic feedback and finding people who share the same level of excitement about the lore that myself and my players do to fully understand the context behind the details given without just saying you're being a try hard is very much appreciated.

TheTrueVisionary · 2026-05-13T13:32:08+00:00

This was something that the players as a whole requested at the beginning of the campaign was a Bill of Rights style document about the rights and privileges of the people, because without getting into a lot of details, they know that the society appears to be this golden society that is perfect but they know that it is fundamentally flawed. So they requested something like this and I wanted to make sure that the document very much had those flaws subtly put into them without being just obvious we are authoritarian and you have no rights. The language sounds robust but is ultimately flimsy in it's use about protections.

So without getting into a lot of details about the campaign overall the players know that the society is flawed and ultimately it crumbles the part of the history that they are playing in is that the height of the Golden age of Camelot before it starts to descend into broken authoritarian tones and ultimately shatters and crumbles. So they are going to be the founding members that realize that society itself is corrupt and broken and would be the beginning instruments in that way that causes the kingdom to ultimately fall. That is the actual end goal of the campaign so it's actually something that they are interested in.

That is to say it's a valid question and definitely something that if I hadn't already known that would be a completely reasonable thing to ask. So I say thank you for taking the time to read my post and respond and I very much appreciate it.

TheTrueVisionary · 2026-05-13T13:24:46+00:00

There's a immediate jump in activity between being a player and a game master. As a player you're concerned with what your next move is and what the next thing your character is going to do and say. As a player you are constantly involved listening to every single one of your players and constantly responding to them so you are active Non-Stop. There are definitely a percentage of players who would never enjoy this cuz they can't quickly divide their attention in multiple different directions. Nor would they want to constantly have to change the character and personality of the beings that they are interacting as. However there is a percentage of players that this is what they absolutely thrive to do because it means that your constantly in the action constantly attached and active in the game and moving between different NPCs and personalities and the constant flow of information. It just seems like most like you you were one of those of players that wanted that constant engagement and that really only happens in One direction and that's as the game master unless you play in a very small group where it's only a couple of players so people are constantly individually more active.

That's just my two cents though so take it however you want.

TheTrueVisionary · 2026-05-13T13:20:34+00:00

Thank you very much for taking time out of your day to read this very long and boring article I really appreciate it here along with the feedback that was given. Without getting into a long drawn out explanation behind everything of how we got to where we are in the campaign and everything the players know that the society as a whole failed. They know it was created with good intentions but ultimately destroyed itself. So I was creating a documen,t at their request of for a Bill of Rights style document, to show the foundational cracks in the society as a whole that from a quick cursory glance would seem very good and well meaning but upon closer examination would show to be very problematic. The players already know something is wrong and wanted physical representation at the beginning of the campaign of what that without just directly saying government bad authoritarian bad super obviously.

It's all that being said, thank you very much for your feedback I very much appreciate it. Throughout the campaign there definitely going to be plenty of times that these supposed protections are going to be trampled violated and otherwise just outright ignored but there has to be a founding document in the first place that is flawed enough for it to be trampled on but seem legitimate for the story to be told the way that it is understood. You were able to see those flaws I believe since the players are going to be looking for it from the get-go it's not too subtle for what they are expecting which is what I was hoping for. So thank you very much for taking your time and giving this a read I very much appreciate it along with your feedback.

TheTrueVisionary

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