Opponent casts Emrakul.
I unsummon Emrakul, sacrificing 3 lands.
Opponent casts Emrakul, I try to counter with icy reception, it doesn’t work because Emrakul untaps all their lands.
I draw into vraska with 7 lands on board. I cast vraska and target Emrakul, sacrificing down to 5 lands. This doesn’t kill Emrakul. I thought it would since the ability went on the stack while I had 7 lands. This confuses me, but so be it.

Fblthp wins the game from 12 cards in the library after drawing 7 with variable chaser and milling three with metamage after several Emrakul related punts.

Fblthp is love. Fblthp is life.

The tournament structure and prize pool ($250,000) have been posted on magic.gg, and MTGScribe has an article with the details:

• https://magic.gg/events/arena-limited-championship-tournament-rules

• https://mtgscribe.com/2026/10/15/arena-limited-championship-structure-revealed-250000-prize-pool-announced/

We already knew the dates - Jan 16/17.

There will be 12 rounds: 4 drafts, 2 each of Reality Fracture and Star Trek, and you advance with a positive record.

Given that they have said they expect to qualify ~120 participants, we can expect about 750 participants.

Assuming 768 participants (for round numbers), this would mean 15 pods in draft 4, so prize money would be as follows:

• $3333.33 for 3-0

• $2222.22 for 2-1

• $1666.67 for 1-2 or 0-3

tl;dr:

• 4 drafts, FRA/TRK/TRK/FRA

• 2-1 or better to advance pods (no draws)

• 3-0 in draft #1 gets you straight into draft #3

• 2-1 in draft #3 gets you qualified for the LC (and for draft #4)

• $250k prize pool, but only for making draft #4

And the worst thing is that this makes 75% of the archetypes in the format almost unplayable, as they have a terrible matchup into these grindy control decks. The "salvation" - the aggro decks - are still way too contested, and blue way too underdrafted, so the only way to get a decent fighting chance is to also play a grindy control deck and try to win those mirror slogs.

I bet this format is an absolute blast in pod play with good drafters. But on arena the unranked pods into ranked matchmaking just make it a dreadful experience. I want to start a draft, and I just think about those 5-8 20 minutes long control mirrors I will have to get through, and rather do anything else.

Anyone else feel this way?

Here's two decks that went 7-0, taking me from 120 mythic to top 30. Obviously the UW one is just a great deck top to bottom in a very open QD seat, but the BW deck is premier draft, just curving out and removing anything important, supplementing the opener with some incidental surveil. I even accidentally played an off color dual (which I drew, and still didn't remove until 6-0 smh).

When both blue good stuff and RG ramp is cut off I think white aggro can be quite good. There's a ton of cards here that just don't get picked highly but perform quite well when opponent is durdling. It's definitely a zig while they're zagging archetype. I never attacked a jace Planeswalker the entire 7 games I think.

Just me?

Deck was sweet. Only drew Avatar once, it was busted.

I've been drafting a lot of blue, so I'm taking a look at my own preferences for blue cards, including some controversial 2 drop opinions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UFC8Ckvn0Y

https://open.spotify.com/episode/4Ukd1Kh6qrOA9VqaMCJf0c

https://linktr.ee/roughdrafts

I actually had the chance to get 8, but had to get at least a little removal in pack 3. I know I have to make a few more cuts, just wanted to pust the funny screenshot first.

Pack3 got passed the denzilore on Pick 2 into Proctor of Potential then Lyra back to back. Felt great

Time and date linked here (Saturday 17 October 23:30 UTC) https://www.timeanddate.com/countdown/generic?p0=240&iso=20261018T1030&msg=Magic%20Mates%20Cup%202026

Every set the top 2 players from our weekly drafts qualify for our end of year tournament via our ladder system: https://mtg-magic-mates.com/

Expect high-level game play (one of our competitors is off to Worlds next month) and low-level streaming quality (we only do it once a year!)

Tune in if you're free!

https://www.twitch.tv/magic_mates

This draft I landed on to UG maybe in second pack, since i was being passed really good blue cards very late. Ended up drafting this cool deck which lacks interaction (sureshot sower worked great these games, once playing double duty with restore with empathy), but has a clear plan that executed well: long games with huge board states, some threats that the opponent needed to answer and me drawing almost my entire deck with arni and jace tokens, only for me to play fblthp when there were 2 cards in the library and attack for the win with restore with empathy backup if they kiled fblthp before attackers.

it was fun but the games took a long long time. 4 were won with fblthp's trigger, one with avatar of burgeoning echoes' ability, and a couple with verdant kraken's huge army + hunters axe.

Kind of funny situation here. I know the deck if fine but what are your alls opinion on the Pupperbeast here over Garruk? They're both good here. But which one is *better* you think?

I have pinging the opponent with unblockables with Tetsuko Umezawa and Ghalta, stalling the board with tons of Wizard Soldier tokens until I can cast Kindred Judgment, attacking through the air and milling myself with Fblthp as four different wincons.

Any notes are welcome.

Pretty sure this deck is gunna go 0-3 because i'll be tempo'd out, but this has been an insane first two packs.

Had a pretty fun 7-2 with this deck trying to make some dragons. Never did get the 1-5 rare curve, but got Saheeli to make multiple 5/5s in a turn a few games. This format has been pretty fun so far even as a low ranked drafter.

I can't imagine how else I ended up with 10 on color rares. Highlight of the run was [[Bend Mortal Limits]] to make my opponent discard their ajani unrelenting and then using [[rewrite regrets]] to reanimate it.

It seems that knowing the full sheet(s) would narrow down the possibilities for what the third card in the echoed pair slot could be significantly. This would obviously be most important in sealed, where you could more easily play around cards in you opponents' pools but also in draft, knowing the possible cards someone could have picked if a full pair is left pick2 could help with reading signals.

More specifically the color hosers. How highly do you prioritize them when making your picks? Any other cards that tend to do better in Bo3?

Still new to drafting. Currently doing quick drafts to try and learn and get more practice reps. Not sure if I leaned too much into the dream scenario of Proft paying off with this deck, but I know blue is really strong in general for FRA.

Im aware I still have a lot of cuts to make, but I want to decide on the sphinx first before starting to streamline the build.

What we thinking?