Zendikar is the newest set, coming soon to a store near you the week after this weekend, which is the Prerelease for said set.
I'll be dressing up like a butler and greeting people at the New York Anime Fest, so you can imagine my disappointment that the two events are co-scheduled for the same weekend. Also, I want to win cards for being good at a game and make free money. Frown town.
Here's my primer for you guys on Zendikar Limited without cracking a single pack of the set, so take this with you to your local prerelease, release, or events immediately leading up to people who are professionals define what is or isn't good in Limited.
To start, check the spoiler on MTGSalvation, which is still about 40 cards shy of complete at the time of writing, but I've been scanning it for months now so you can clearly trust everything I have to say.
The first thing you want to note about Zendikar is that it's VERY similar (in a bare-bones kind of way) to M10 Limited: you're dealing with a slower format that requires you to build up a board and drop big dudes that are better than your opponent's big bomby dudes to win. Being really aggressive with anything aside from building up your board to support dropping your big, bomby dude is not as strong (but still a possible) strategy as, say, playing defensive guys early until you have 5-9 lands in play and dropping Iona or some other crazy stuff.
This also applies for most aggressive strategies in this format: aggressive Landfall-centric decks need a steady flow of land in play to make your 1R for a 1/1 First-Striker into 1R for a 9/9 turn 3. The other thing you should note is that relying entirely on dropping one or multiple lands every turn is not a good idea unless you decide to play 20 lands. This is also probably not good.
You need to get a balance out of your cards that rely on Landfall and let your "cards that cost more than them" do the rest. A good example of this is in UG - Windrider Eel is fine as a 2/2 for 4 that flies, but then gets huge with a land and becomes impossible with Harrow or something similar.
Another thing that carries over from M10 is that Blue looks like it will be horribly underdrafted. Although Blue lacks Divination and Ponder coupled with Merfolk Looter (though all three effects can be found in the set, lawl), blue has a solid early defense plan backed by a plethora of fliers, the only counterspell in the set, and extremely playable bounce. UG or UW look to be solid combinations archetype wise.
Black is also pretty good, as the "Vampire Theme Deck" of limited seems to recommend, but Black also lacks the sheer number of removal cards and life-cushioning effects it had in M10 (see Tendrils of Despair, Consume Spirit, Child of the Night). It still has retarded-good removal and its creatures are mostly all pretty good, but there is a decent want for a larger guy who won't get eaten by more defensive late drops or white and greens' "We're 2/3s for 2" men.
Red seems like a self-sustainable color this set, as well. This is probably more an on-paper than in-practice notion, but I'm ok with being wrong since I only ever splash red in M10 for Fireball and Lightning Bolt.
Allies also are pretty much all good on their own, except for several of the "Comes into play, effect happens" ones, like in Red and Black. They're GREAT when you have a deck with several Allies, but you need to really bunker down and draft them to make them worth the 5+ mana they cost. Also the Rare allies are fine on their own and bonkers with multiple Allies in play. Obvobv.
Until the spoiler is finished, this is my assessment of Zendikar limited. Top 15 picks will come when the spoiler is over.
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