on Bolt the Bird!

Jumping into the World of Marvel

Wed, 24 Jun 2026 11:38:14 +0200

Even though I’ve never read a Marvel comic in my life, I’m pretty excited about Marvel Super Heroes (MSH) . Since returning to Arena, this is the first set I’ve been around for from day one, so I’m planning to play quite a few MSH Drafts during the July season.

This time, before jumping into my first Draft, I read the official Prerelease Guide, took a first look at the Limited Tier Lists from Untapped and Draftsim, and watched the usual pre-release episode of the Good Luck High Five podcast featuring Judge Rob, where they go over the new mechanics and some of the trickier card interactions in the set.

Universes Beyond: We Say Thee Yay!

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 08:34:06 +0200

When Wizards of the Coast announced Universes Beyond in early 2021, the initiative that would bring characters and worlds from other franchises into Magic: The Gathering, reactions were swift. Some players welcomed the opportunity to see their favorite universes represented on Magic cards. Others, however, expressed concern about the potential impact on the game’s identity.

During the first few years, the discussion remained relatively contained. Many Universes Beyond products were aimed at Commander or other specific formats, and players who were not interested in them could simply ignore them. But the situation changed in late 2024 when Wizards announced that future premier Universes Beyond sets would become legal in Standard.

Three Final Fantasy Drafts: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Fri, 19 Jun 2026 18:16:36 +0200

This week, a Flashback Draft of Final Fantasy (FIN) was available on Arena, and since I’d read that FIN is one of the best Draft formats of recent years, I decided to give it a try.

According to the Draftsim guide, the strongest color pairs are Izzet Big Spells and Golgari Graveyard (Midrange).

For my first Draft, with Draftsmith enabled, I built an Orzhov deck with a strong white focus. Technically, Orzhov is supposed to be a sacrifice-oriented archetype, but my deck revolved more around Equipment and the Job Select mechanic.

Pure Fun (6–3 with Jeskai in SOS)

Fri, 12 Jun 2026 18:01:56 +0200

I’m finding myself agreeing more and more with the idea that Limited is the most fun way to play Magic. I just finished another SOS draft—my first one this week and my seventh overall—and I had an absolute blast!

I think I drafted well, striking the right balance between taking the strongest cards and taking the cards that best fit the deck that was taking shape. I ended up with a Jeskai build, closer to the Prismari school than Lorehold. In fact, white was mostly limited to my removal package ( Erode , Ajani's Response , and Stand Up for Yourself ) plus a few multicolored spells, while the deck’s mechanics revolved around Opus and Converge. The deck performed far better than I expected and, in fact, I kept discovering new interactions as I played.

An unexpected 7–0 in a Phantom Draft

Thu, 11 Jun 2026 20:14:15 +0200

To celebrate the International Day of Play, from June 10th to June 12th Arena is hosting what they call a Phantom Draft. It’s a draft with no entry fee (a regular Premier Draft costs 1,500 ), but the cards you pick are not added to your collection and there are no meaningful prizes either: you can earn an alternate art style for a card, with the reward depending on your number of wins.

A bad week for drafting

Fri, 05 Jun 2026 18:56:57 +0200

When I considered going back to Arena to play Limited, I read a post on Reddit (highly recommended) where the author mentions that if you play drafts during the first week of the season (seasons last one calendar month, usually) you’re more likely to face more experienced opponents and, therefore, your chances of winning are reduced.

Seeing how my week went, that’s probably true. I’ve also learned that, during the season, there aren’t only drafts from the current expansion, but also drafts from previous expansions that are only available for a few days. This month, for example, you can play Avatar, The Last Airbender (TLA) from the 2nd to the 8th; Final Fantasy (FIN) from the 16th to the 22nd; and Sealed Tarkir: Dragonstorm (TDM) from the 9th to the 15th.

Domain Zoo: Now what?

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 17:19:34 +0200

Last year I had a great time at the Modern tournament of Relic Fest, so I’ve decided to go again this year. I figured it would be worth showing up with a more competitive deck and having a shot at winning more rounds than last year (I won just one out of 8) and to keep growing in the format.

Over the past few months I’ve put a good chunk of my MTG budget toward building a meta deck, specifically: Domain Zoo. At its core, Domain Zoo is an aggro deck with a mana base that tries to have all 5 basic land types (domain) in play as early as possible, and plays very efficient creatures (high power, low cost) that take advantage of that synergy.

My first Draft victory!

Thu, 28 May 2026 20:30:02 +0200

I accidentally started a Strixhaven (STX) Premier Draft, thinking it was a Secrets of Strixhaven one, and I realized it when the rare in the first pack was Sedgemoor Witch . I had already thought it was strange that the draft queue was taking much longer than usual to fill… My first reaction was, “Damn, I’ve thrown away 1500 gems,” thinking that the experience I had built up in the previous 4 SOS drafts would be useless. But I kept going, trusting that Draftsmith would help me. What else was I going to do!?

First steps drafting Secrets of Strixhaven

Mon, 25 May 2026 15:22:17 +0200

Over the last 10 days I’ve played 3 Secrets of Strixhaven (SOS) drafts using Untapped.gg’s Draftsmith. The experience has been much more positive than I remembered from the drafts I had played sporadically in the past. This time I knew that Boros, Orzhov, and Golgari (or maybe I should say Lorehold, Silverquill, and Witherbloom) are the winning decks, and I had looked over the tier list a little. Still, I have to say the guidance Draftsmith adds is crucial: not just for picking cards, but also for deciding which 40 cards will make it into the deck. I think what I still struggle with most is, first, staying open to changing colors after the first few picks and, above all, building the deck. In the next drafts I play, I’ll turn Draftsmith off while building the deck and only turn it back on afterwards to see whether what I built is very far from the recommendation.

Back to MTG Arena

Sat, 16 May 2026 16:06:27 +0200

It’s probably been about a year since I uninstalled MTGArena from my iPad. Kind of fed up with Standard BO1, constantly playing against the same decks, and opponents who just rope you when things don’t go their way… I haven’t missed it, to be honest! I rather play in person with actual cards.

That being said, in recent months I’ve been pretty hooked on Magic and I want to improve as a player and, above all, as a deck builder. For the years I’ve put into it, I’m actually quite bad, I won’t lie to you! And I think MTGArena and MTGO are the best options available to work on that.

Brand new blog!

Tue, 12 May 2026 18:32:17 +0200

Ever since I went to Relic Fest last year and started thiking about writing a tournament report, the thought of starting a blog to talk about Magic has been bouncing around in my head. The problem is that, over the past few years, whenever I’ve felt like creating a blog I’ve ended up sucked into a rabbit hole of picking up a platform, a theme, hosting, etc., and inevitably left everything half-done with the post still unwritten… So this time I did it the other way around: I started with the content. I wrote the tournament report, published it as a private GitHub gist, and shared it only with the friends I figured would want to read it.

Relic Fest 2025: My first Modern tournament

Sun, 23 Nov 2025 12:57:41 +0100

Thursday

We arrived in Labège, on the outskirts of Toulouse, on Thursday at around 4pm and, once we had settled into the hotel (there were already people playing Magic in the reception area), we took a walk around Diagora to soak in the atmosphere. The Agora, which is the space reserved for Relic Fest, is divided into two areas: the roughly 500 m² hall, where the bar was and, at the back, the artists’ area; and the main room, a huge square space with an organizer booth in the middle where crowds gathered on all four sides, flipping through binders and playmats, evaluating cards and negotiating trades, or simply admiring some of the most powerful cards in the game.