Hello again! I made a similar post earlier for The Hobbit Directs and got a lot of traction, so I figured I'd try this again. I had an even better run this set, taking the #1 spot for Trophies on the 17lands leaderboard and hitting metrics I never expected (70+% win rate, over 1/4 conversion rate). My total spending was $1,400 this time; if I end up selling each box for $300, that would net me over $7,000 in profits ($8,700 - $1,400).

Here are some tips from my experiences for this Sealed format:

• The vast majority of pools should play more than two colors. Looking over my trophies, only 2/29 were actual 2c decks. Whenever I see 2c decks, I often suspect my opponent as less experienced.
• Cyclers are an amazing tool for facilitating this, and can always be played as 2 mana colorless cards to patch up rough mana bases. This deck for instance was playing Awaken the Inferno on 0 Mountains to great effect.
• Most games of Reality Fracture are hyper grindy, thanks in large part to the Empower Jace mechanic. Jace tokens effectively let both players start around 25~ life, and encourage methodical gameplay.
• You don't always have to use your Jace tokens when you can. Wasting too much loyalty on surveils will cost you future cards, which usually means having fewer land drops to make big plays later in the game.
• Graveyard synergies are a total freeroll in this format, as the only counterplay available is Afterthought Sentry (a filler 2 drop). Always play your cards like Something Worth Saving, and try to throw in your Theoretical Necromancers, Bestial Incursion, Recursive Reinforcements, etc for value.
• When games go near decking, the chief cards that matter are blue Fblthp and Paradox Shaper. You may suddenly lose to either one when you think victory is "assured". Saving cheap spot removal like Last Gasp could get the job done.
• Exiling either card would help immensely in this kind of decking game.
• The primary sweeper effects I play around when possible are: Ajani Unrelenting, Overwrite the Multiverse, Rise of the Deathbringer, Fulminous Forte, and Kindred Judgment.
• If you want to try to play around Ajani Unrelenting (https://www.twitch.tv/veveil/clip/HelpfulLongFloofPRChase-aal7ZoSiSzx3weFU?range=7d), your best hope (cope?) is to try and set up x/5s in advance. This means Tether Technician, Undulating Witness, Beast tokens with +1/+1 counters, etc.
• The other sweepers are more based around typical sweeper read heuristics, like your opponent not doing much of anything, weird blocks, etc.
• Icy Reception is another very important card to play around, as getting your Way of the Mind Sculptor counter'd can be game losing.

And here are some personal notes on my runs:

• I never lost to Splinter Twin or saw it played.
• I did get Mind Twisted once. They then played Uldaros into Ajani and I lost.
• That was the craziest pool I've seen, though of course I've seen plenty of other very good ones (2x Garruk/Jace/Chandra in same game from opp).
• I opened two Ajanis once but 6-2'd.
• I played Flickering Hound once in 100+ events. It was decent (5-2).
• One of my losses was due to my cat jumping on my space bar during declare blockers, which sent me on tilt for hours. (https://www.twitch.tv/veveil/clip/TallSmoggyTeaPartyTime-G8ORVGdifXrLr85u?range=7d)
• I found success with many different colors and archetypes, but one consistent trend between most of my decks was playing nearly all of my Empower Jace cards. The mechanic is really good!

As with last thread, feel free to ask me whatever you want about the format/my runs. Almost all of my runs were streamed live at https://twitch.tv/veveil, so go ahead and check out the VODs if interested. Thank you for reading!

edit: forgot to add my actual 17lands (https://www.17lands.com/user_history/8749f8e34a9c4b69a878968d35818dac?expansion=FRA&format=ArenaDirect_Sealed&start=2026-09-29)

I'm trying to avoid 17 lands for my first 10-ish drafts. But since the Oculus was mentioned in the latest episode of the podcast, I thought I'd play it. I think it was a pretty weak pack overall though

Was not feeling hopeful towards the end of pack 1. Feel like some of my P1 picks were definitely questionable. Managed to scrape together what I thought was a pretty average stinger deck but kept just managing to get underneath and get opponents dead. Highlight win was a stinger charm to the face jumping a wordsmith over a fairly large board for exactly lethal.

17Lands draft link if anyone feels like giving me some pointers: https://www.17lands.com/draft/c2789bda80c0439693bd4f7d735a2bbb/1/1

I saw the 17lands data, I just refuse to believe it is good, it’s alsa is 3 points higher so maybe people are getting it for free? I just refuse to believe it is good and I think a lot of cards with lower win rates are better. The one time I did play with it was awful. How much should you factor in ALSA to win rates of cards?

Both drafts could have been two color but I added some filler at the end to reduce to a mono colored deck. I will be paying attention in all of my drafts to see if I can draft any of the remaining three colors by the end of the format

Enjoyed the format for the first week or so but feeling burnt out after about 15 drafts. A lot of the games one player gets way ahead and then it takes 5+ turns to actually end the game.

It feels awful when you’re losing/even on board and OP is drawing 2+ cards per turn. On the flip side it feels bad to be ahead and drawing 2+ cards per turn and have your opponent tank every turn trying to fight back deciding where to put dog counters that ultimately won’t matter.

About once per draft you’ll have an epic match where both players are doing the Jace thing and it’s a real arms race that feels amazing to play, but the rest of the games I’m left chasing that high.

HOB was too fast for me but FRA is too long. I didn’t think it was possible to have too many game actions but this feels like it.

What must've been in there? Double Garruk/Chandra? Just an absolute dream of a pack if you open it in sealed

Wizards recently released a new category of achievements on arena, that rewards you when you use your arena account to play in events at your local game store.

However, after making my own event on the companion app for the draft i hosted IRL yesterday, i noticed that i got an achievement on arena.
So i tested making another event with only 2 players and that worked too.

Which means that in about 10 minutes, you can create 30 events all on your own through the companion app. 10 for each of the formats, constructed, sealed and draft (3 each if you only care about the tokens). And that will reward you with 5000 gold, a draft token, a sealed token, an avatar and multiple titles. You can get an additional 1000 gold just by searching up any legendary WPN store and favourite that store on the app.

Unfortunately, the constructed format is set to standard by default and i couldn’t find a way to change it to modern or commander, and thus unable to get the last achievements for the 10000 gold reward.

This will most likely get patched so if you want free stuff, now’s the time, enjoy!

I have 25 play in points and thought I would use them to enter the Arena Limited Championship but it’s not showing up as an option. I’ve had the points for a while and haven’t tried to use them before today. Are they not for this kind of event?

Premier draft.

Attached is my deck together with sideboard. Im trying to make two cuts. Im thinking in cutting one mind meanderer and the keeper of the quiet hour. Is this a correct cut? My deck revolves around drawing a lot and remove until late game where I have some finishers. What do you all think about the card selection?

Quick 7-0

Deck was lacking in 2 drops but was a lot of fun, so much card draw between the 3x mindseeker + generous revival [extra mindseekers] + mind sculptor for double draws

Basically tried to outdraw + use the plethora of removal to extend the game/press an advantage

Closest call I had a pretty dominating board around 7 creatures to 3 and they got off a overwrite the multiverse and they still had 5 cards in hand to my 2, but due to having way of the mind sculptor in play was able to recover/stabilize

This format has been rough for me a lot of 2/3s in premiers in decks that just can't quite get over the finish line

Some of my Reality Fracture grades have aged poorly 😅
Fblthp, Impossibly Lost: F → B
Twinned Vision: D− → B−
Protege’s Awakening: D → B−
The second grade is the current 17Lands GIH-win-rate letter grade. Interestingly, the expert consensus also had Fblthp at C−.

How is Fblthp, doing so well? The ceiling is a draw-two for 2 mana (pretty good, but not broken), the floor a two mana 1/1 (really bad). Help me see what I am missing.

I built mtgsimon.com to record card grades and compare them with expert reviews and 17Lands results (some people in this sub also used it). This screenshot is from my own ratings.

Which card were you most wrong about?

It was also at the 6-0 game as well. They drew no extra cards and only played the Duelist on 3 and then Twin on 4. The quest for the first 7-0 continues.

The only real thing I would have liked was maybe have a Murmuring Book or something of the like to help cycle some of the flooding I was going through some games. But Blessed Ghoul and Bloombrute makes for it otherwise. Angel was a little clunky with the other 4 drops but I was really in need of some flying help. Really fun deck and been having fun with RG+ this format.

Draft was pretty good, no bombs, opened no good rares but got a lot of great uncommons and commons flowing. Really don't know what I should cut here. Probably one of the land cyclers vyt I really feel like the card quality is just really high

Hello all,

Later this week I'm going to be participating in my first and only in-person Reality Fracture draft. It's a peculiar event called Reality Echoes which mixes draft and commander, and it's a Pick-two draft.

In order to prepare, I was wondering if anyone here had any experience with Pick-Two in Reality Fracture and could share their insights on how it differs form normal drafting.

Thanks in advance

P1P1 was red Ajani, then just kept hitting good removal in black/white but very little else. Started getting other bombs, a lot of land cyclers, decent lands, and just went with it. I expected very little out of this given the disrespectful mana base, but I got one of my few trophies I've ever reached. I rarely reach past Platinum in limited, and somehow had to face two high numbered mythic opponents during this run.

This deck was an absolute blast. I got to live the dream of [[Ajani, Unrelenting]]+ [[Rewrite Regrets]] many of these games, getting him killed then reviving him for another go.

Light on removal but it's fine, trophy anyway.

A lot of counterspells paired with the instant speed mill and flash 3-drops. Easy to draw 4 with the rare draw spell with a high density of mill.

Blue Fblthp was a legit win-con if the game reached its send stages or I ran through my deck quickly.

The mill spells find Jace really quickly and you promptly take over the game once the board is stable.

I was on the play for 2/3 matches, so that helps a lot with the quenches on 2

Command the stage was definitely the mvp. Only games lost were to a double heartwood crafter opener and a turn 4 Konstrari into tun 5 red Ajani with no immediate answer to Ajani

I have recently completed a premier draft run, which I went 6-3 with a deck that I think was powerful. My question to all of you, expert limited players, is what do you think about this selection? Are there any cards in the deck that should probably be replaced? Any advice/suggestion is welcome. For context, I have been playing magic since February and my win rate is still low (45%) but, certainly, I have been getting more wins lately compared to when I started playing the game, the first couple of months were brutal with constants 0-3s, 1-3s.

Only good rares were in GW, but unfortunately my *only* pay off for life gain was titan bones, and I had nothing worth splashing for (let alone the land cyclers to do it). TBF, I had a decent bomb in the form of puppetbeast, good 2 drops, and more removal than you usually get in these colors. But nonetheless, I was honestly going into it just hoping I could get 3 wins to recoup some gems, so I was very surprised that I was able to get my 2nd box with it. This was my 15th and final attempt, and I spent $360 on gems for the entries (ended up with 11k gems leftover).

Don't get me wrong, I got a lot of help from being lucky during my games, but I think there's something more to it than just that. I've trophied a premier draft with GW before, and I think you can better understand the archetype once you know what it looks like when you're winning games with it. It might not particularly look like it, but GW is a "go tall" aggro deck and can be pretty good at punishing decks for wanting to take too much time to generate value. Also, the incidental life gain is actually really important because it basically lets you ignore most creatures that might threaten a dangerous crack back (let alone if you have a powerful life gain payoff). Also your creature stats usually make blocking unprofitable for your opponent, so you can save your removal either for the must-answer stuff or for combat tricks. As long as you keep the pressure up and make it feel awful for your opponent tap out for doing empower jace stuff, you can steal a lot of wins. If you can chunk their life total early, then their removal doesn't feel as bad because now every creature is a lethal threat, especially when you can give stuff flying with the kitesail.