#1: In blue we have Betrayal, which I haven't gotten to play but sounds like a really good card to ward off early aggro, and Shrieking Drake, a really bad card because you can't play it turn 1 and you nerf your board for a 1/1 flyer. Just pay an extra mana. You normally don't want your flyers blocking in the first place so Cloud Elementalis the best card to get out of this set when drafting. I also hate Undo, why did they print a double Unsummon for 3? In a format that really wants you playing auras? Breezekeeper is a 4/4 flyer with phasing so that works out to be 2/2, which is still good for a 4-cost! And we finally have a common draw spell that just draws two cards...that costs 4 but baby steps. Yeah blue has a lot of solid choices at common that can finally put together a good board of blue creatures instead of just having to pick the color only for the spells. For noncommons you have the nasty old man that turns you into a sheep, that sounds really good but I feel like it costs too much to be a solid choice. We're starting to see some potential use for phasing with cards like Shimmering Efreet and Rainbow Efreet, but it's still a dumb bad mechanic. Oh but if you can get a Desertion you can make people really mad when you not only counter their spell but steal it. For 5. Pretty good.

#2: Infantry Veteran is a real sicko card that will make your swings so much better. White actually does have a consistent theme of, "dorks that stay back and apply pumps n tricks during combat," thanks to these additions. Resistance Fighter, Gossamer Chains, Parapet, Remedy, (I stuffed a mass ping for 1 with it. It ruled.) Jamuraan Lion, and Warrior's Honor. Yeah most everything that's a white common will mess with combat, and that means white can finally find a niche since there's plenty of commons that's viable for that. It is the one single niche though and it's still white so it still needs help from other colors but this is not nothing. At uncommon Miraculous Recovery is a great way to play your bomb, watch it get removed, and then play it again. It was really aggravating the times I dealt with it so I'm pretty sure in some format it's a menace. Retribution of the Meek is a rare. It's not awful but good luck getting it and using it against the limited decks it was definitely made to counter. I've just been referring to Zhalfirins n whatnot as flankers all this time but we finally have the ur-flanker with Zhalfirin Crusader in rare. Pay 2 send damage dealt to it somewhere else. No limits. On a 3-drop. That's a hell of an ability to put on a creature. Oh and a 5/5 vigilance flyer for 7 who cares?

#3: Green's got a River Boa. River Boa's the black 1/1 regenerator meme but it's actually 2/1 and it has islandwalk on top of that. That snake is really hard to get off you if you have water. They got a Warthog with swampwalk as well, and a Bull Elephant with a solid cost and stat line for this meta to make its drawback acceptable. Their spells are pretty bad but I think that's because they already had good green spells. Uktabi Orangutan can just remove artifacts when played and oh boy can that be fun. Most of their uncommons and rares are back to being too bad or too jank, but Quirion Druid is actually busted since it turns your lands into 2/2s, for a green and a tap. And it's a 3-cost creature, so if they can't answer you will run away with the game especially if you have white's board pump.

#4: Well Rock Slide is a wide-angle Disintegrate for nonflyers and being able to yeet 2-3-4 creatures that are about to kill you can win the game on the spot. Dwarven Vigilantes are also great since they can use evasion effects to then ping stuff for two. Talruum Champion is strangely good despite only being a 3/3 for 5 because having exclusive rights to first strike during blocks allows it to check any flanker. And finally, the stupidest common card they printed: Fireblast. It's 6-cost and it only does 4 damage to anything sure but, you can just sac two Mountains to cast it instead. That means it's a turn 2 play if you really want to, but usually instead, it's 4 damage for free added to the final deck to the face. It just has plenty of other utility as well. No wonder it didn't play nice with the greater meta. Oh the rest of the cards? Bad. Okay at best. Red is left tricks with none cohesion. So in a draft this set doesn't do that color many favors. It's not much better for their noncommons either, though it has good creatures like this drake and this 5/5 for 5...in this world where a 5/5 is not exactly easy to answer.

#5: Black has Crypt Rats. .........Okay, that's all for good black commons. Maybe the 3/1 flyer for 4 that can snack to regenerate? Ehh. Actually it's amazing how awful your options for black are. There's a couple of good options at uncommon with Necromancy and Nekrataal, and all the rares are underwhelming. Honestly I can see you drafting black in this block and going, "UGH VISIONS." It's honestly impressive how low-impact their cards are. White has somehow stopped being 5th and it's all black's fault. I think they were still trying to add downsides to the pros they were trying to give black but I'm gonna keep saying this until they learn: aristocracy doesn't work if you don't have creatures readily available and NOT tied to cards.

Set Observations:

So I have a personal problem, that's not objective and they can perhaps design around this, but having to draft one pack of thing means I get one less pack of the previous things. You know, where all the cards I wanted live. I somehow scrapped by getting handed three Armor of Thorns on the winning run because the AI just did not want to play green, but this happened a lot: I get some really good cards, I need more really good cards to achieve consistency, pack 2 ends and I'm out of luck. I could try to pick cards that'll work well with pack 3, but when pack 3 can just give me nothing that sounds like a losing strategy.

So when Visions puts out some pretty alright cards and I don't hate any of it, it doesn't particularly matter because it doesn't have as much of an impact on draft as I would like. I mean look, this is why in the future we don't have a draft be three sets. And I can see the interest and appeal of having a massive card pool to draft with, but as far as my need to draft every set is concerned, it makes it harder to put together a good deck and then hope none of the 7 AI luck out with an absurd amount of removal copies or really good creatures.

I'm gonna take this time to talk about the mana rocks in this block. We had the diamonds in the previous set but we also have a common rock in the form of Sisay's Ring here. I have tried my best to justify running these, but the answer has always come up, "I'm not wasting my turn 2 play on splashing a color when the cards are not that impactful." And unfortunately for Sisay's Ring that's still the case because the cards that are so overcosted that you might consider using it, is not enough to do the above when the fast decks can go really fast. Stupid fast.

So I'm starting to see the shift from "a 5-cost creature is a 3/3" to, "a 5-cost creature is like a 4/4 base. 5/5 if we give it drawbacks to balance it hey wait why are you playing it anyway?" Seeing as how magic to this day still tries to maintain "the fatty" as an X/X for X this is a change I'm okay with. This is also a change I'm okay with because for the longest time it was just faster to play burn spells and pings than actually swing a board. Creature-based Magic is getting a chance now...at least from what I've seen in this miniset.

I don't have a lot to say otherwise aside from pointing out the small additions because we're still in the framework of Mirage. We'll be in the Mirage framework for Weatherlight as well and I'll once again not have much to say. I think it's because I have already mentioned that unless the new sets line up well with the old sets in the block, you're just distilling the color identities more and having a caustic soup of draft picks by set 3. And that's what Visions did. I think there's some good cards in Visions but Mirage was all about red and green and they didn't get big help nor synergy with Visions. I see some lines in blue and white but those colors were awful so it's a tough sell without the lucky rare or uncommon. I did see more white being played because of the little frickers they got with Visions but I still find it difficult to draft that color because my priority remains, and continues to remain, red, followed by green, then black. The common spells that can win games continue to dominate.