It brings back one of Early Magic’s downfalls: excessively complicated combat. Time Spiral Remastered was designed for extremely enfranchised players-folks who perhaps may not have been around for the first printing, but who have enough experience with the game to scan through the daunting array of abilities and niche roleplayers. Of course, the addition of Black-and most importantly, Blightspeaker-gives Rebels the reach it needs to close out games. Saltfield Recluse and Aven Riftwatcher are next in the pick order, both of which can make combat incredibly frustrating for your opponent-particularly when you tutor out Riftwatcher with Amrou Scout mid-combat. Amrou Scout is the second most important card in the Rebel archetype after Bound in Silence (which you’ll be fighting against every other White drafter for, so it’s first pick material).
Mono-white without Icatian Crier was less than ideal, but Celestial Crusader brought a huge game if you snatched up the Rebels plus some Sunlances and Ivory Giants. Tendrils of Corruption at common and the existence of Nightshade Assassin make going mono-black attractive, and I always had success with mono-blue Errant Ephemeron builds. Triple Time Spiral was also one of the great mono-colored formats, which Time Spiral Remastered appears to have faithfully maintained. You could easily get there with Rebels, or with a complicated Storm deck, or with Goblins with a Storm finish, or with Icatian Crier plus Fortify, or simply open Stormbind and mulligan aggressively. The draft format degraded a bit with Planar Chaos before improving with the wackiness of Future Sight, but triple TS is one of the peaks of Magic Limited. Regardless, I have an abiding fondness for triple Time Spiral. I may just have lucked into opening megabomb Stronghold Overseer. I got pretty decent at what was a rich (albeit somewhat random) format-or at least I thought I got decent. My Tuesday night tradition was heading to a hotel bar where twenty pounds got you a draft and two pints of decent cider forty pounds got you two drafts and five pints if you didn’t have anywhere to be. Original Time Spiral came out when I was studying abroad in London. Maybe it’s just because I’m riding high off of Time Spiral Remastered-the combination of spring weather, encouraging vaccination news, and cards I haven’t seen since they rotated out thirteen years ago has frankly made me feel better than I have since that last March day. I’m not excited to play against a stranger’s Gandalf the White Commander deck, but I’ve also never been excited to play against Animar, Soul of Elements.
This is why I’m sanguine about Universes Beyond-so long as we keep getting nostalgia sets for the hyper-enfranchised, let them print as many Transformers and Godzillas as they please. Modern Horizons was havoc for Modern, but an extremely fun draft environment, and both Mystery Booster and Time Spiral Remastered are too huge to experience in a few drafts alone. Revisiting old favorites in new contexts is my favorite part of Magic, and Wizards has, over the last three years, consistently delivered products that curate a deep Limited experience with the admixture of serious nostalgia.
The last social thing I did before lockdown last March was steadily drafting my way through two boxes of Mystery Boosters and a case of local microbrews with three friends.