Foundations (FDN) Limited Overview — Colorless, Lands, SPG

Note: This article was translated from Chinese by AI and may contain errors. Read the original Chinese version.

Foundations (FDN) prerelease events run on November 8, 2024, with the official release one week later on November 15, 2024. Want to know more about how individual cards rate in Limited, plus some pick advice? Then check out this series of FDN Limited overviews!

Rating Scale

5.0: Unconditional first pick; gives you a near-winning advantage
4.5: Unconditional first pick if you are in the right colors; gives you a huge advantage
4.0: Worth a first pick; synergizes extremely well with the archetype, and can be the deciding card for splashing / switching colors or moving into a color pair
3.5: Top uncommons and commons of the set and other sufficiently strong cards; synergizes well with the archetype and can be the key card for moving into a color pair
3.0: Important cards for the archetype, plus other above-average cards; you want these in your final deck
2.5: Average; usually a decent curve filler
2.0–1.0: Below average; you generally prefer not to play them, can be used as filler if necessary, but not too many
0.5–0.0: Unplayable; basically never play them, they will only help you lose

Card Ratings

Colorless

Score: 4.5
Comment: Impeccable combat power, though the seven-mana cost is a bit stiff.

Score: 2.0
Comment: Although this set pushes many tribes hard, many of those tribal cards come from extra products outside regular boosters, so assembling a dedicated enough tribal deck in Limited is still quite hard, and even the most numerous Human army may struggle. Also note that this card’s bonus is determined when it enters, so play order seriously affects its floor and ceiling.

Score: 2.5
Comment: Its token-making efficiency is not high, and the condition is not hard but a bit troublesome. Early on it may cause a dangerous tempo gap, but if you drag the game to the mid-to-late stage and it starts rolling, you reap an endless army of tokens, and in a long attrition war it can drown people. (If it comes in DSK with Survival, the score gets at least +1.)

Score: 3.0
Comment: The opening-hand Leyline effect is just a dream in Limited, but even cast and equipped normally this axe has quite strong suppressing power, although the cost is a bit clunky, yes.

Score: 2.5
Comment: Strong on your own turn but completely ineffective on the opponent’s turn, a card for even or winning board states.

Score: 2.5
Comment: Strong when you can build a supply chain of sacrifice fodder, though regular boosters in this set have few such cards, and it also makes the opponent’s removal lose more card advantage the more they use it.

Score: 3.5
Comment: Both sides drawing together neither gains nor loses, but if it takes 2 each round it is close to a small Sheoldred, the Apocalypse, and if the opponent does not remove it early they will bleed a lot.

Score: 1.5
Comment: Getting its value out takes too much synergy and timing; this set, unlike ZNR, does not have low-cost landfall creatures to push the burst ceiling.

Score: 3.0
Comment: A universal ramp and color-fixing friend, and you can usually use it as a wall to dodge a punch of damage while ramping.

Score: 2.5
Comment: Use it when playing three or more colors and facing bigger fixing pressure.

Score: 2.5
Comment: A safer early curve play for decks of three or more colors.

Score: 3.0
Comment: Plain and unadorned, but gives you a very real effect for a very low cost.

Score: 3.0
Comment: In any case it is at minimum a ramp, usually strengthens your board to some extent, and can rescue a color-screw crisis when needed.

Score: 2.0
Comment: These days a 5/3 for four with a downside is already below average.

Score: 3.0
Comment: Usable if you are fairly confident in your own ramp, or if you have enough long-game staying power but lack removal. Although clunky, it is at least universal removal, giving some basic respect to noncreature bombs.

Score: 3.5
Comment: The best ramp for both tempo and board resources.

Score: 3.5
Comment: In Limited, put this on a stronger creature, such as a big flier, and the opponent should be about to explode.

Lands

Score: 3.5
Comment: As long as your card pool has no fixing pressure, the manland is a free bonus of extra power. Also note that this card is worded very specially: it becomes a creature permanently, not until end of turn.

Score: 3.0
Comment: The benchmark for land-fetching lands in Limited.

Score: 3.0
Comment: When there is no fixing pressure, it is an extra hard-to-stop finisher. Although efficiency is not high, it costs almost nothing in deckbuilding.

Score: 1.0
Comment: You should not need it for fixing in this set’s Limited, especially since this set gives out many fixing lands, unless you open some multicolor bomb that needs it and its tribe happens to make up the bulk of your deck.

Score: 3.0
Comment: As long as the Limited environment is not too extreme in tempo, the cost of the fixing land entering tapped is acceptable.

Special Guests (SPG)

Score: 3.0
Comment: As a one-mana removal spell there is nothing to nitpick.

Score: 4.5
Comment: If you have played Origins you know how efficiently this thing kills… Shore up your defenses a little and before long people are dead.

Score: 2.0
Comment: Three mana and 3 life is actually not a small cost. If your deck has a high enough payoff bomb, you can turn it into a second bomb, but in a curve-focused deck without many bombs you hardly need it.

Score: 5.0
Comment: Very hard to guard against, and once it comes out it easily collapses the opponent’s front line in an instant.

Score: 3.0
Comment: You can use it as an early curve play, or in the mid-to-late game play other creatures first and then kick it, pumping your teammates for a charge together to instantly create a breakthrough.

Score: 3.5
Comment: Usually you can treat it as a two-mana mana dork that produces 2 mana, and its efficiency is not low, but note that it basically cannot solve your color-screw problem.

Score: 3.0
Comment: So why does one set of SPG give two two-mana mana dorks… Compared with the one above, this guy fixes colors more reliably, but its ceiling is just a normal two-mana mana dork.

Score: 4.5
Comment: Casting it probably wins the game; the only issue is how to survive to seven mana, but this set has so much ramp that reaching seven mana should be easier than in regular sets.

Score: 5.0
Comment: As long as it resolves, you profit no matter what.

Score: 4.0
Comment: As long as you do not deal with it immediately, it makes its own body and the board terrifying.

Conclusion

This set has very rich fixing and ramp, essentially at the level of a three-color set, and the environment’s tempo is guessed not to be too fast. It may be a set where you can actively splash a third color for high-scoring cards or high-cost bombs, going for the deck’s ceiling.