Standard Rotation and Midnight Hunt

 I actually really loved Throne of Eldraine from a Vorthos perspective. Magic's original design in Alpha was top-down, before the nuances of game mechanics created a drive to build things around those mechanics. But anyone who has been playing MTG can tell you, there are some real powerhouse cards from that set that have been dominant in Standard for nearly two years.

Then again, if you've been playing in Arena, you've probably been playing in 2022 Standard, which excises Eldraine, Theros, Ikoria, and Core Set 2021 from the format.

Given that, the new Standard is going to be, basically, that plus the new Innistrad set that launches tomorrow. Even without Lovestruck Beast, Green Stompy has been a very powerful and popular dech archetype in that format, and I imagine with a big influx of werewolves, we might see that trend reinforced - though we might also see it branch out into Gruul colors, given that werewolves are a red/green tribe.

As someone who didn't get to play Innistrad on the last two visits, I'm eager to see how the various classic mechanics work out.

One note of controversy is the Decayed keyword, which is a drawback that shows up on zombie tokens. Decayed means the creature cannot block, and if it attacks, you sacrifice it at the end of combat. Now, if you love making massive, ever-growing hordes of zombies, this drawback might seem terrible. However, the intention here is that the drawback allows for cost reduction - you can pump out a whole lot of these tokens for cheap thanks to the keyword. And then, you can use them as fodder - either to attack with a lot of monsters at once to overwhelm blockers (kind of like a zombie movie?) or to sacrifice for other uses.

I don't think any creature cards themselves have decayed - it seems to be something that is only given to tokens or creatures who enter the battlefield from the graveyard. Obviously, I'll have to see it in play to get a sense of how well it works, but I'm curious.

I don't know if there's a real defining vampire mechanic, but they're going to be the centerpiece of the next set, so we'll have to see what happens then.

One thing I will miss is the Ikoria Triomes. I guess I'm just a sucker for any dual (or in this case triple) land that actually has the land types on them. One of my prized possessions is a Revised Edition Underground Sea, which is of course from the OG dual land cycle that had no downside (other than, in rare cases, land-type-specific-sweepers like Flashfires.) This, of course, was before basic land types had their mana ability as a baked-in rule, and in fact before land types were even listed on the type line (or "basic" for that matter,) so the card had to explain that you could tap it for black or blue mana, and that it counted as both an island and a swamp.

Anyway, I'm curious, given that the Streets of New Capenna will, I think, be built around 3-color factions, if we'll get new triple lands then, but that's probably not coming until next... spring? Summer?