The Pro Tour at MagicCon: Atlanta is almost upon us. This time around, we are getting a very different look at the draft portion of the event than we have in recent Pro Tours. The normal routine has been that a new set comes out, and ten or so days later, the players sit down and draft at the Pro Tour. It's a narrow window where they have to find all of the key archetypes, cards, strategies, pitfalls, and more.

In Atlanta, things will be different. The players who will draft Edge of Eternities have been playing with the set for a couple of months rather than a few days. This will give us a fascinating look at the metagame as it has settled and where people think they can attack it.

Big Picture

Edge of Eternities has proven to be a great candidate for this kind of setup, primarily because it's the most balanced format … ever? It's the most balanced since I've been drafting, and that covers most of the modern era of sets (my first drafts were in Lorwyn and Shadowmoor era).

For us as viewers, this is great. It means that you can't condense the format down into a handful of playable decks where the rest just get ignored. I've talked about the three big milestones players want to hit as they prepare for Limited at the Pro Tour. The first milestone is knowing the cards and the archetypes, which is table stakes for players of this caliber and assumed to already be the case. The second is a strong familiarity with the key archetypes in the format. This is big for Edge of Eternities. The third and final milestone involves understanding the niche archetypes, build-around cards, and strategies that rarely come up. These might not come up, but when they do, they matter.

Since the Edge of Eternities draft archetypes are so well balanced, players can't afford to focus on just a few of them. They need to know all of them. Technically speaking, black-green is the worst archetype and blue-green is the best, but if you don't know what's going on with red-white, black-red, and all the rest, you could find yourself giving up a lot of value at the Pro Tour table.

The name of the game for drafting at this level has always been to draft the best deck you could for your seat. There's only so much you can control, so the worst-case scenario is walking away from the draft table knowing that you could have drafted a different deck and didn't see the signals early enough or didn't know the deck well enough.

The Perfect Play Booster

With that in mind, let's construct the perfect Edge of Eternities Play Booster and use it to illustrate the format overall.

Imagine opening this bad beast at the Pro Tour:

Banishing Light
Cryogen Relic
Virus Beetle
Orbital Plunge
Galactic Wayfarer
Pinnacle Kill-Ship
Green Sun's Zenith [7wQAGhB73QMGrkjLD03BDt]
Dubious Delicacy
Biomechan Engineer
Codecracker Hound
Quantum Riddler
Ouroboroid
Cosmogrand Zenith
Forest

This is the most loaded pack I could imagine seeing, but it's also illustrative of the format as a whole and what's going on with it.

The Breakdown

First are the commons. In a Play Booster, there are six guaranteed common cards. Our first five commons will be the best commons in each color.

White

Banishing Light

Perhaps this isn't a surprise, but Banishing Light takes the top spot for white. This is illustrative of the fact that white isn't the all-in aggressive color that it sometimes can be in modern-day Booster Draft. In fact, three of the top four commons in white are removal spells.

Focus Fire
Radiant Strike
Knight Luminary

Focus Fire, Radiant Strike, and Knight Luminary make up the rest of the top four. Even Knight Luminary isn't particularly aggressive, opting for a more midrange, value-based play pattern rather than all-out aggression.

Blue

Cryogen Relic

Cryogen Relic seemed like a solid card from the outset, but few could have predicted that it would go on to be the best common in the set. But it is, and it earns that title every time you play it. The ultimate high-floor synergy card, Cryogen Relic works well with many cards in the format while also being good on its own.

Divert Disaster
Selfcraft Mechan
Lost in Space

The rest of the top four blue commons are Divert Disaster, Selfcraft Mechan, and Lost in Space. Blue also solidifies itself in the midrange camp with these cards, further hinting at its allegiance to artifacts. Selfcraft Mechan and Cryogen Relic are a dream duo and something we'll likely see on camera at the Pro Tour.

Black

Virus Beetle

Virus Beetle is another value-based card that has good synergies with the rest of the set, so we are really seeing a pattern here with the individual colors and what kind of decks they are going for.

Gravpack Monoist
Perigee Beckoner
Depressurize
Gravkill

The other top commons in black are similar. Again, we see cards that offer a combination of value and synergy rather than raw aggression or temporary advantages being the priority.

Red

Orbital Plunge

Many tagged Bombard as an early candidate for best red common, but once again we see midrange value cards taking the top spots while classic one-for-ones like Bombard slip down the rankings.

Kav Landseeker
Nebula Dragon
Zookeeper Mechan

The rest of the top red commons also give us a look at a midrange variant that is well supported in this format: ramp decks. As you can see, all top four commons in red either ramp you or are a ramp target. Or in the case of Zookeeper Mechan, both.

Green

Galactic Wayfarer

My favorite card in the set, Galactic Wayfarer, is one of those perfect designs that manages to be powerful and relevant without pushing it so far that it feels out of place at common.

Gene Pollinator
Biosynthic Burst
Diplomatic Relations

The rest of the top green commons provide a mix of ramp, removal, and even a combat trick. On the Limited Resources podcast, LSV and I refer to Gene Pollinator as "Gene, Pollinator" (emphasis on the pause) because we feel it might as well be a planeswalker. While it isn't quite on the level of Galactic Wayfarer, it is a powerful and synergistic one-mana play, and those are hard to come by.

With two more common slots left, let's see what's in the rest of this Play Booster.

Colorless and Special Guests

Pinnacle Kill-Ship

Though it was a bit underrated at the beginning of the format, Pinnacle Kill-Ship has proven to be a solid top-end ramp target that can kill basically anything when it enters, and with a relatively low station cost of seven, it gets in the air and swings hard, frequently ending the game in a swing or two.

The last common slot can sometimes be replaced by a Special Guests card. Wouldn't you know it, we have one here!

Green Sun's Zenith [7wQAGhB73QMGrkjLD03BDt]

Green Sun's Zenith! How exciting! GSZ is a multi-format staple for a reason. It's flexible, powerful, and there are a range of great targets from the aforementioned Gene, Pollinator to some of the high-rarity bombs in this set.

Plus, look at that artwork. C'mon!

Uncommons

Dubious Delicacy

Put your space belts on. As we go up in rarity, these cards get pretty gnarly pretty quickly.

If someone says, "The perfect removal spell for Edge of Eternities doesn't exist," show them Dubious Delicacy.

Dubious Delicacy has it all. It has flash. It gives a creature -3/-3 instead of dealing damage. It's an artifact. It works in control decks where life gain can be the difference. It works in aggressive decks where the 3 points of life loss can be the difference. This card has artifact synergies, raw power, and is the right color for this effect. Dubious Delicacy has it all.

Biomechan Engineer

Biomechan Engineer is on the short list of my favorite cards in the set, and it perfectly illustrates what blue-green is trying to do in the format. Blue-green primarily works in a ramp deck, but it has some nice value engines, and this is probably the best of the bunch.

Basically, you play the Engineer on turn two and get your Lander. This puts your opponent in a position where they have to use removal on a card you already got a two-for-one out of. If they don't, they'll wait around until you get to eight mana and take over the late game. Basically, it's perfect.

Codecracker Hound

My dog. When I first saw Codecracker Hound, I had to read it twice because I couldn't believe that it does what it does, twice. But it does. Let's just say there's extra treats in the pantry for this good pup.

Rares and Wildcards

Ok, now we get a guaranteed rare or mythic rare, then two wildcards: one traditional foil wildcard and one non-foil wildcard.

For our rare or mythic rare, we have none other than the best card in the set.

Quantum Riddler

I mean, it's not a surprise that this one is the best of the best. It encapsulates a lot of what this format is about, but at an extreme level. It provides value all over the place, is easily castable and good at any stage of the game, can be dominant late in the game, provides inherent card advantage, is a great blocker, and is a great attacker. This is definitely my Edge of Eternities GOAT.

Now, wildcards can be of any rarity. Wouldn't you know it, we have another mythic rare!

Ouroboroid

It might be hard to pronounce, but it's not hard to see why this is the other best card in the format, or why blue-green is the best archetype (even if it's not by a lot). At a first glance, it looks really strong, but then you play it and realize that it puts counters on itself as well. That means the second go-around nets you (at least) two +1/+1 counters on all of your creatures. After that, it gets dumb.

If you wanted to argue that Ouroboroid is the best card in the format, I would probably cling to my Quantum Riddler. But I would see your point.

Traditional foil wildcard time! Wow, look at that, another mythic rare! Look, this is supposed to be the best Play Booster ever, right?

Cosmogrand Zenith

There is a second spell subtheme in white and blue, and Cosmogrand Zenith is the ultimate payoff for that. It has good stats, is well supported, and you can set it up so that you get some value out of it even if your opponent has a removal spell in hand. Three-mana bombs aren't something you see every day, but Cosmogrand Zenith is most definitely that.

Midrange for Eons

So that's it. A perfect Play Booster for the Pro Tour, and a good way to illustrate the format. Basically, the player can draft any color pair, with most aiming at the midrange or later part of the game, and they'll have a plan to make it work. The question is whether they'll put in the time to learn every two-color pair or if they'll miss their calling at the table in Atlanta.

What would you take? And perhaps more importantly, what are you hoping to wheel from our dream pack? I'll see you on the Pro Tour stream where I'll be commentating on the draft portion of the Pro Tour on Friday with Paul Cheon!

@Marshall_LR