Fdn Draft Guide Mtg Arena Zone

Bonisiwe Shabane

-Nov 18, 2025, 6:04 AM

We’ve all had a couple of weeks to sling some spells in Foundations, and I’ve been loving it. I do think this is a solid set overall, and I’ve been enjoying the speed of the format. Yes, Josh is still in the basement, and yes, he is being humanely treated. Let’s talk about magic! The format is a bit on the slower side, and being on the play/draw isn’t as big of an advantage compared to other sets. Boros and Rakdos can be on the faster side, with the remaining decks feeling pretty mid-range oriented.

Dimir is the best two color archetype of this set, and there are a few reasons why. The colors are among two of the deepest, with plenty of playable commons and uncommons between them. Dreadwing Scavenger is a pretty busted uncommon, and I’m happy to first pick it. Dimir really benefits from the speed of the format, leveraging removal, card advantage, and evasive threats. Azorius doesn’t deal with threats as well as Dimir, but it has more threats with the creatures White provides. Empyrean Eagle can be devastating with small flyers like , Mischievous Mystic, and Faebloom Trick.

Tier 2: Rakdos, Selesnya, Simic, Boros, Orzhov Chandra, Flameshaper | Illustration by Mark Winters Greetings planeswalkers! We’ve had about a solid two weeks of Foundations drafts so far, and there’s an Arena Open coming this weekend, too. The core question I want to answer here is: How do you play the latest Magic set? Is there anything unexpected about this new Core Set?

Or is it mostly just stock MTG? By the end of this guide, you should be well prepared to battle this weekend. Valkyrie's Call | Illustration by Scott Murphy Foundations is the latest Core Set product that isn’t called a Core Set. It was designed as a solid introduction to the game that would function as Standard‘s backbone, and it's hands down the best MTG set to draft for beginners. Foundations cards will be legal for a full five years, which is more than twice as long as most Standard sets.

The set is half new cards and half reprints and focuses on communicating tried and true MTG concepts to new players. Crush your next MTG draft with our Foundations draft guide, including a color tier list, card ratings, set mechanics, and more. Improve at Draft and Sealed with Draftsmith, Untapped.gg’s draft and deck builder assistant. You may cast a card with flashback from your graveyard. If you do, you pay its flashback cost rather than paying its mana cost. Flashback doesn't change when you can cast the spell, so a sorcery with flashback can still only be cast during your main phase.

Also, casting a spell with flashback doesn't change its mana value. Mana value is always based on a spell's mana cost, even if you pay an alternative cost to cast it. Threshold abilities care about you having seven or more cards in your graveyard. Some threshold abilities are, like the one Crypt Feaster has, a triggered ability. Whenever Crypt Feaster attacks, its ability checks to see if there are seven or more cards in your graveyard. If there are, the ability triggers and goes onto the stack.

Players can respond to this ability with instants or activated abilities. Prowess is a triggered ability that gives the creature that has it +1/+1 until end of turn whenever you cast a noncreature spell. Any spell you cast that isn't a creature will cause prowess to trigger. Remember that lands aren't spells, so playing a land won't cause prowess to trigger. Casting a spell that's a creature and also another type (such as an artifact creature) is still casting a creature spell, so prowess won't trigger in that case either. The AI ratings are gathered with from the MTGA Assistant deck tracker.

Pro ratings are provided by Nizzahon Magic. The Pro ratings and comments are made before the set officially releases while the AI ratings are dynamically updated with new data all the time. All of those keywords means it's basically impossible to block or attack through the Sire, and it'll also gain it's controller tons of life. Ward makes sure your opponent gets punished hard if they can kill it. 3 mana for two 2/2s is a great rate and you're likely to have other cats around to push the advantage. You can get a counter from this even when it doesn't attack, and it's nice it can put the counter on itself too, as a 5/5 vigilance is pretty formidable.

If this was 5-mana for a 3/2 that makes a 1/1 and gains you 3 life, you'd play that card happily -- and this has lots of upside beyond that. Below you'll find Draftsim's draft rankings and ratings for every card in Foundations. These ratings are used in our draft simulator to inform the bot pick order within the packs. As always, a list like this is only a jumping off point to help you with Pack 1, Pick 1 decisions -- or maybe your first few picks. However, you should be quickly adjusting your picks according to curve, synergy, and signals from the other drafters. Feel free to share and discuss these ratings - I love talking limited!

If you want to use ratings on-the-fly while playing MTG Arena, just download our app Arena Tutor and it will automatically give you an overlay that shows you the rating and which card to... Wizards of the Coast, Magic: The Gathering, and their logos are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast LLC. © 2025 Wizards. All rights reserved. The copyright for Magic: the Gathering and all associated card names and card images is held by Wizards of the Coast. Draftsim.com is unofficial Fan Content permitted under the Fan Content Policy.

Not approved/endorsed by Wizards. This site is © Draftsim.com. Our Privacy Policy. Master your next MTG draft with the best pick order tier list and rating for every card in Foundations powered by the latest game data. Improve at Draft and Sealed with Draftsmith, Untapped.gg’s draft and deck builder assistant. We have a Foundational set!

Magic Foundations will be Standard legal for at least the next 5 years, providing a base level magic experience that will underlay anything else coming out in that time. Wizards has given us a Foundation for what Magic should be, how it should feel, and what it’s like to draft. We’re back to basics, but with a modern power level and a lot of interesting things to do. The cards are simpler and there are no tricky mechanics, but the format will still be interesting and skill intensive. There are a lot of cards coming to standard, and only about half of them are draftable. For reference, here are the draftable Foundations cards.

If you want a card-by-card breakdown of every draftable card in the set, here is the full ratings list which I’ll be updating weekly and here is the full card-by-card review where I explain... This article is for the general strategy for each color pair, and useful numbers while you’re drafting. Without further ado, let’s get started with: Here are some useful numbers for context and future reference. Draft deck metagame only consists of decks with the maximum number of wins (3 wins in Traditional and 7 wins in Quick and Premier drafts). Select an archetype to see the popular cards used in winning decks of that group.

Fdn Draft Guide Mtg Arena Zone

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