(Meet the new core set, except it can't do skateboard tricks anymore.)

#1: Pestilence is still a common and blockers are still easy to find. Black has like no bad common cards. Underwhelming sure but everything there can serve a purpose. This makes it somehow better than red because it's more consistent and capable of putting a deck together than red is. So picking black as one of your two colors is pretty safe even if you're not playing control. Which by the way, no Underworld Dreams but Cursed Land is similar and easier to play. (More expensive but requires less black mana.) Also has one of the first rare creatures I've seen and went "That's good". Nightmare scales off your swamps so as a mono black deck it's a 6/6 flyer for 6, and will likely be a 3/3 flyer with two colors, that will only get stronger as the game goes on and you play the rest of your lands. Black actually has a lot of "actual-bomb-and-not-just-me-using-the-term-bomb-like-an-idiot"s.

#2: All your favorite common burn spells are still here in red but there's also very few unplayable cards. (Really just Goblin Rock Sled. In what universe is this a good card? Maybe if you need something for the out-of-set Goblin Grenade.) Since these games still run long and stall often Disintegrate to face with an X cost of like 8 or more is still a consistent way to close out games. Pyrotechnics is here as well but unfortunately got nerfed to uncommon. For some stupid reason they also reprinted Orcish Oriflamme. While red doesn't have as many strong uncommons as black does, red still has a stellar set of commons that will win games.

#3: Joining Blue's repetoire of common cards is Apprentice Wizard, Gaseous Form, and Unstable Mutation, and this is in combination with Tim. But the big nasty common that can really put the brakes on lategame is Flood. It doesn't work on flyers but works on walls and green's big bodies. Uncommon blue bombs are plenty, so it can hold its own considerably better than before. I still think it's a color you use in conjunction with something else however, unless you get lucky.

#4: Two thirds of green's commons are creatures. They're not all winners unfortunately and spells are still better than creatures and they got rid of the tanky green creatures except Ironroot Treefolk but you can still play green creatures and have other boards balk at you. Your common green spells are still just nothing but Giant Growth. Fog if you wanna stall. Green has hard removal at uncommon that's funny. Because it's ridiculously overpriced. BEES got buffed to be uncommon so it's now viable to get a bunch of BEES and terrorize your opponents as monogreen. Only other thing of note is Wanderlust. Unfortunately all creatures with left spells isn't great, especially when other colors can find ways to get rid of your big creatures. At least they just play the creature and not have to also put auras on top of it.

#5: White's having that exact same issue again where their best common creature is a 2/2 for 3. And regrettably the circles and wards have returned. Swords to Plowshares and Serra Angel are both here, but with both of those being uncommon, you'll have to get lucky to make white a viable color. Land Tax is here as well but has unfortunately been nerfed to rare. This color is still so bad otherwise. I need to remind you that white's idea of winning games is not creatures to deal damage, or even effective removal spells, no, it's just pretending damage doesn't exist therefore it can't lose the game.

Set Observations:

So this is the fourth edition of the core set, of which Beta was actually the second edition, which I played as apposed to the first edition of the core set because all Beta did was clean up the text on the cards a little bit. Also remember to print two cards they straight up forgot and a third basic land art.

Most rares are still pretty bad. (There's like, one, per color, where I would be like oh that's the chase rare.) The Power Nine is gone. No multicolors. Otherwise most things from Beta are still here, so there hasn't been a whole lot of shaking up to what works in the core set. At this point it's more about the good uncommons and the readily available burn spells than the super rare cards that usually just do nothing or get you killed. At least the quality of the cards have improved and playing them feel more impactful. ...The commons and uncommons, not really the rares.

The things I've noticed from Beta still applies. You're not even free from rare-chasing because things like Birds of Paradise and Statis are still rare cards. There's still color hate but there wasn't as much as Legends.

This was played as the edition where they take out the nasty cards and put in cards from the other tiny sets I can't draft. There was also Chronicles where you could get more cards from all the sets between Beta and here, but in a draft I would have to sub out one of the fourth edition packs to play with those cards, so I ignored that set.

It's a very peculiar draft set as a result, and I think unfortunately, even though the other colors have ways to deal with the Red Deck Wins meme, the red deck still wins. It's not just that they can dish out a lot of damage that a board can't prevent, it's that red has a lot of ways to do that and several of them are at common so a red deck with a lot of burn spells is one of the easier things to make. If you couple that with the many ways to just stuff all boards that don't utilize flying, unblockable, or landwalk, then you sit pretty until you draw your wincons. It's unique and a curious time to see every color except white try to deal with that scenario, but I'm pretty sure it would get stale really fast. Only so many times you can smile at the Ball Lightnings, Disintegrates, Lightning Bolts, and Strip Mines before you want to go do something else.