For a core set, I'm still enjoying Foundations limited. It's likely my favorite core set draft of all time, but I want to let some of the recency bias wear off before I declare it as fact.
I've drafted the format a lot, and while it's almost exclusively on my stream, I have had the urge off-stream to fire up a draft here and there as well.
While I don't usually use any tracking software, I've come around to utilizing Untapped.GG as a tool for my stream that also keeps track of my stats. Here are my stats in Arena Bo1:
I'm told 67% is a great win rate for Best of One, and I'm currently moving to Best of Three where I've only lost a single match in five drafts, giving me a 14-1 record overall.
After playing, talking, and theorizing about the format, here are some of my conclusions. I will preface this by saying what works for me might not work for you and what you succeed with may not work for me because Limited has a lot of moving parts that aren't easy to simplify. In Limited, two conflicting ideas can be true for different individuals based on play style, biases, and risk tolerance, among other things.
My Favorite Archetype: Izzet Spells
Izzet has tools to compete with any other archetype. Counterspells are excellent, and most importantly the threat du jour is Tolarian Terror. Terror dominates the battlefield and can rarely have easy interaction.
The most important aspect of this archetype is Burst Lightning. Burst Lightning is the best common in the format, and it's not even close. Burst Lightning breaks up early synergies from opponents relying on cards like Llanowar Elves, Healer's Hawk, or Hungry Ghoul.
Burst Lightning, because of its kicker cost, also interacts with a majority of the larger creatures in the format and can get your opponent dead, especially in multiples.
Izzet also has the best gold uncommon, and my pick for best uncommon, in the set: Balmor, Battlemage Captain. Balmor can flip games instantly, especially with Think Twice at common, effectively turning your card advantage spell into an Overrun.
It's worth noting that you can play Dimir in a similar fashion to controlling Izzet, but you won't get that scalability out of Stab like you do with Burst Lightning, and while Dreadwing Scavenger is a great gold uncommon, it does not pack the same punch as Balmor.
Izzet is harder to get than other combinations at the moment because people are finally respecting blue, and Burst Lightning, the real draw into red if you're in blue to start, is hard to come by. If you get a pair of Burst Lightning, you're in great shape.
You are not looking to play a bunch of creatures in your Izzet decks. That is a massive mistake most players make and a core reason the stats for the combination may look poor if you look at the overall rather than my personal 82% win rate over my largest sample of any archetype. A card with raid should never be in your deck outside of a few exceptions because you shouldn't have enough creatures to support that mechanic. I typically play about 10 creatures on average in my Izzet decks and often less.
My Least Favorite Archetype: Rakdos
With this one, I have a putrid 31% win rate over a relatively small sample, but I also feel the archetype is flawed in this format.
Sacrifice synergies don't work well if you're facing down other good players who prioritize removal in drafts. You shouldn't be able to set up a well-timed Involuntary Employment for a couple of reasons. For one, especially in Bo1, the best decks are blue decks that are relatively threat-light, which often means removal-heavy. Thus, your Hungry Ghoul isn't going to be in play anymore or there's nothing to take control of, you have reactive spells rotting in your hand as they bury you in card advantage.
This isn't to say I've had the best Rakdos decks, and I believe the best Rakdos decks will be much heavier in black and won't utilize red's creatures.
At this point, I'm avoiding this archetype like the plague.
With that said, I've yet to draft Golgari. If you want to get technical, that's my least favorite archetype, but I don't see a way to realistically move into Golgari since the colors don't support each other well and all the Golgari gold cards are fairly weak.
Color Rankings/Best Common in Color
1) Blue
Blue pairs with basically everything quite well. The ability to draw extra cards, play the best common threat (Tolarion Terror), and interact with the stack puts blue far ahead of the other colors. Blue is where you want to be in this format.
Blue's best common is Tolarion Terror, but don't sleep on Think Twice, as it synergizes nicely with lots of what blue is doing, while also being one of the scarce sources of card advantage for the set.
2) Red
Red is held up by having the best common in the format in Burst Lightning. Red is mostly aggressively slanted with the synergies it touches on being mostly raid and four-power or more, but also a bit of "spells matter," as you see with Izzet.
Red's real strength is it's a good support for every other color. While it's not super deep in and of itself, it provides every other color the support it needs. I like Gruul, Boros, and of course Izzet. Rakdos is my least favorite archetype at the moment that I've drafted with any kind of real frequency, but it has been praised by other players I respect. While I personally don't like it, it's a viable archetype.
I almost always have red cards in my deck, regardless of my other color.
Burst Lightning is easily red's best common and the best common in the format.
3) White
White is one of the deeper colors and plays out the exact opposite of blue. You want a nice low curve with Healer's Hawk as the life-gain synergies are powerful. White has so much lifelink it's able to race with anything and has access to one of the best removal spells in the format, at common to boot, in Banishing Light.
White has depth, speed, and plenty of synergies that don't force you to sacrifice too much on power. I don't mind pairing white with anything and may move it up to my second favorite color.
White's best common is Banishing Light, but Healer's Hawk plays a pivotal role in a lot of white decks as well.
4) Black
This is a bit of a hot take, as most people love black, specifically Dimir. Black has been touted as one of the best, if not the best, colors, but I'm not buying it. Black has the most amount of removal at common, but its creatures are so bad I don't want to play with any of the common ones. It has some nice uncommon creatures like Vampire Nighthawk, but outside of a card like Burglar Rat or Hungry Ghoul in some instances, I don't want black creatures in my deck and that is a problem.
While I'm happy to play black, it's overrated by some. I don't avoid the color in the least, but I keep an eye out for when I should start reevaluating cards like Stab and moving them down in my pick order so I don't end up in black too often.
Black's best common is likely Bake into a Pie, but I actually prioritize Stab because Bake into a Pie is more replaceable with Eaten Alive in the format. If forced to choose between those two cards, I generally take Stab at the start of the draft.
5) Green
The exact opposite of a hot take here, green has been largely labeled the worst color in the format, and with good reason. The common removal spell, Bite Down, is bad because it requires a creature in play in a format where many players are playing at instant speed, and removal really matters.
This is not a particularly great Llanowar Elves format, as the games tend to slow to a crawl and Llanowar Elves has the same problem a card like Thoughtseize has in midrange mirrors—the later you draw it, the worse it gets. A turn-one Elves is a big advantage if you can continue to capitalize on the mana advantage each turn, but you usually run out of gas and get stopped in your tracks at some point. I'm not saying don't play Llanowar Elves. I'm saying they're likely a lot less impressive than you'd want them to be.
Treetop Spinner is green's best common, but I like my green decks to be more on the aggressive side. I rather like Gruul with four-power-matters stuff, and I like how easy it is to get Giant Growths, which can leverage a tempo advantage out of these more aggressive green decks.
Spinner is out of place in these kinds of decks, but it packs enough of a punch to see inclusion in every green deck, providing you with a valuable mana sink for when games slow down.
The only real reason to be in green is if it's extremely underdrafted at your table and you can be base green, or you open some kind of really strong rare like Sylvan Scavenging.
While I'm mostly fine drafting any of the other colors, I try to avoid green.
My approach to this format is to start in a color by taking the best card out of my first couple of packs, which in many cases is a blue card, though not always, and then move into colors when I see either a powerful gold card like Balmor, or I see the signpost removal the color had to offer me such as Burst Lightning, Stab, Baked in a Pie, or Banishing Light. This is a traditional approach that translates well into a set like this core set. While the format is slow and has lots of play to it, you want to equip yourself for playing longer games than you may be used to, and cards like mana sinks and clunkier build-arounds have more potential.
With Arena Open and Arena Direct coming up, I plan to play a lot more Foundations Limited, and hopefully cash in at the end.
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