Uh, no mention of crew in the mechanic article.

They shouldn't have to mention Crew now that it has become something of an evergreen or deciduous mechanic.

You know what I'm hoping for in Dominaria?

A major "main phase matters" theme

a) Goes with the time theme from Time Spiral
b) Interacts with Raid

Also, there will be hella Saprolings in Dominaria. There doesn't seem to be much reason for Saprolings in RIX except to dovetail into Dominaria.

One reason for Saprolings in RIX is to make ascending easier for green, but I agree that Saprolings in DOM make a lot of sense.

I rather have IXL than any format from Theros Block, thank you.

I've never played Ixalan but I've played Theros and you can't be wrong.

Cato you should draft triple IXL a couple times because it's really quite mind boggling how bad it is.

It's one thing to make a draft format where the PLAY styles are forced and repetitive - this is the typical critique of Theros or 3xOrigins- (3xIXL is pure curve out aggro), it's another to combine this with a a drafting stage which manages to be both high variance and "railed". You basically just pick one of 4 tribes by pick 2 or 3 and hope that you get shipped it. Maybe one match in 5 was even interestingly close, they games were just usually blowouts one way or the other.

RIVs is, indeed much better. Although I wouldn't enshrine it as a great format, it at least has some depth. It was actually kind of cool to see the first couple weeks of the format be everyone drafting "way better" IXL tribal decks, only to have there be a sea change back to more controlling durdly strategies. I think it's even interesting that there are a lot of really stupidly strong bombs in Rivals (like FRF level) -- because if you don't get one early you have some interesting options to try to go under or pre-sideboard against decks that have them. Or you can pick fixing and hope to get something insane pack 2.

Prediction: Geddon and S2P will be in M25.

That cycle of powerful triple costed creatures has me wondering if a monocolor set could be in the future. Not a whole lot to go on, but I can dream.

It looks to me like all the signpost uncommons for Dominaria will be legendary creatures. At time of writing, we have 8/10 confirmed: https://scryfall.com/search?q=e%3Adom+r ... order=name

BR might be Garna, the Bloodflame and RG could be Grand Warlord Radha, but we don't know their rarities yet.

Here are my guesses for the archetypes.

: historic
: historic
: sacrifice? (signpost unconfirmed)
: wide aggro? (signpost unconfirmed)
: go wide
: legendary tribal?
: Wizard tribal
: Saproling tribal?
: Auras/Equipment?
: ramp?

Some of these seem questionable, so the signposts might be misleading as to the actual archetypes.

These look supported. Not sure about the ally pairs at all.

Is goblins looking like a limited archetype? Just an offbeat honored build? Or constructed only?

Really depends on the commons. We haven't seen any common Goblins yet, but we haven't seen many commons in general.

The CCC creatures in Dominaria lead me to believe there's a return to Theros within a year of Dominaria's release. That or a different set with devotion in it.

Ah that would make some amount of sense. Those CCC are clearly a plant but at rare it's not for limited. There is are also a few "swamps+B" matter cards.

Return to Theros is possible but it could also be just a nostalgia thing

BTW You posted this before MTGO had Theros flashbacks, and are even more wrong now. Theros wasn't a terrible format, it was just a bit voltrony. I think it was better than 3xAKH, and 3xAKH was *way* better than IXL.

Rivals, BTW was much better. Above average, even.

The BR and RG signpost cards have been confirmed as Garna the Bloodflame and Hallar, the Firefletcher, so I'm revising my archetype guesses slightly.

: historic
: historic
: sacrifice
: kicker
: go wide
: legendaries and Knights
: Wizard tribal
: Saproling tribal
: Auras/Equipment
: ramp

Oh, we now know that the MMM cycle wasn't a plant for anything. They actually go against the theme of the upcoming block