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Welcome to Ars Arcanum, the MTGO stats-based limited column. Journey into Nyx really crept up on me. It felt like one day I was putting together information for Born of the Gods, and the next day we were getting Journey previews. In any case, I’ve been itching to sit down and go through the numbers for the new set, and talk about how the new set will impact the draft format.

Normally I’ll list the basic premises of my articles, but I’ve done this enough times that I figure you can just go back and look at the concepts I’m describing in my old articles. First, I focus on analyzing creature stats. Second, the focus is analysis and exploration rather than prediction, but I do like to throw in a few predictions at the end of the article. Third, the basic concept of my articles is rarity weight, which you can see explored in some detail in my BNG article. If you want to have those things explained in more detail, you can refer to the BNG Spoiler Analysis.

 Before we start, I figure that I’ll talk for a moment about the BNG spoiler analysis. If you didn’t read the BNG Spoiler Analysis, then feel free to skip down to the next section. It’s interesting, because there were a few things that I really nailed, and a few things where I was off. I predicted that BNG wouldn’t make for substantial changes to the draft format, and that turned out to be very true. Since it was only one pack, and the cards in BNG tended to be less powerful on average than the cards in THS, it was mostly about fitting BNG cards into existing archetypes.

I also predicted that the speed of the format wouldn’t change very much, but that it would probably slow down a smidgen. This was an interesting prediction that turned out to be technically correct when I did my BNG draft overview, but it wasn’t really complete. While the average game in BTT was slower, one of the things that happened was that the fast decks got faster and the slow decks got slower. Part of this is because of a concentration of power in the red and white cards in BNG, and part of it is because people are continually figuring out how to better fine tune their decks in the format. I know a lot of people felt like the format sped up as a whole, but I think that’s more reflective of the fact that the fast decks got faster and the slow decks got slower, so people that exclusively drafted fast decks in the format have a very skewed perspective on how things shook out in BTT.

I also predicted that Tribute and Inspired would be overvalued, and that seemed to bear out exactly as I predicted. People were definitely first picking Tribute cards early on, but we started to see them go progressively later and later. For example, many people predicted that Thunder Brute would be a bomb, but I predicted that Thunder Brute would be about as good as Vulpine Goliath. You may disagree one exactly how powerful it ended up being, but it was certainly nowhere near close to a bomb, and much closer in value to Vulpine Goliath.

I also made some quick predictions at the end of the article about the strength of the colors. This was three sentences at the end of the article, but I predicted that blue and red would be the strongest colors. This turned out to be a mixed result. Red was obviously as strong as I predicted, though it probably turned out to be better than blue, but the color that I missed was white. Basically, I undervalued Akroan Skyguard. I thought it would be decent, but it turned out to be one of the strongest cards in the set, and in my opinion, it is a stronger card than Wingsteed Rider was in Theros.

Lastly, I predicted that since BNG was the pack in the draft, that it would incorrectly skew people towards drafting the things that would be strong in BNG, and that prediction turned out to be spot on, with many people drafting red and white very highly. This created an interesting split in the community with some people basically forcing a combination of red/white/blue aggressive decks, while other people responded by picking up the underdrafted green/black/blue control decks. I fell more into the second camp, and my win rate did pretty well because of it, and I feel like this is because it turned out that people were reacting to strongly to first pack signals, despite the fact that you tend to play fewer cards from your first pack on average.

Overall, it feels like the BNG spoiler analysis was a success. The things that I focused on the most turned out to be very good predictions. The color predictions were somewhat correct, though not perfect, but honestly I don’t mind that. There are going to be things that we can’t predict perfectly about Magic sets, and my perspective is that I want to spend more time understanding the underlying forces of the format rather than the specifics of individual card or color strengths. In that regard, the BNG spoiler analysis fulfilled its goals.  Hopefully I’ll be able to further improve my methods with this article.

(I should also note that this accountability section is new. If you like it, let me know, and I’ll keep doing it. If you don’t, let me know that too.)

In my Born of the Gods analysis, I talked about how draft order would affect the coming format. One of the things I talked about is how you tend to play fewer cards on average from pack one than you do from packs two and three. This is because in pack one, you aren’t decided on the color or archetype of deck that you are going to play. During your first few picks, you will often waver between multiple colors, just taking the best cards, until you get a feeling that one or more colors are open. Then, in packs two and three, you will hopefully pick up more playables in your colors. In pack two, you are anticipating that you will get some rewards for having cut the colors that you are drafting, and in pack three you’ll expect to get cards in your colors because of the signals that you were reading. It’s important to remember that people sometimes switch late into the draft, so this isn’t something you can count on, but it is true that you tend to play fewer cards on average from pack one than packs two or three. The following chart shows the number of cards I played from each pack over the course of 100 drafts during triple Theros. Since all three packs were the same cards, we can make a comparison. If, for example, we were looking at Born of the Gods, we would see different numbers since the cards in BNG are differently powered.

Cards Played per Pack of Triple Theros Draft

This phenomenon was important in several ways. First, it meant that you were more likely to get signals in red during the first pack, but those signals were less likely to pay off in packs two and three. Since red was probably the strongest color in BNG, you would often get powerful commons, but end up fighting with your neighbors over red. If you weren’t careful, this could have a serious impact on your draft when you got into packs two and three. At that point, the red would usually dry up since it is much weaker in Theros, and you would find yourself struggling to put together a cohesive deck. On the flip side, BNG often gave weak black signals, simply because the black cards in BNG weren’t very good. This meant that often fewer people would go into black, but it could be hard to notice since the black cards were just a lower power level than the cards around them. However, going into black would usually pay off big in packs two and three. There were many cases where I was able to pick up 5^th and 6^th pick Gray Merchants, 14^th pick Disciple of Phenax, or even a 7^th pick Abhorrent Overlord for myself. Another effect was that the depth of commons in pack one was less important; red had several strong commons, but it also had quite a few stinkers, but as long as you got the strong cards, it wasn’t that big of a problem in pack one. However, green was fairly deep, but it didn’t have any real powerhouse commons, so it often got passed over in pack one as people were jockeying to pick up the strong cards. Again, this often led to green being underdrafted, and mono-green or near-mono-green decks was my own most drafted archetype.

Journey into Nyx brings an ever bigger change the format with regard to draft order. Not only do we have a new set that we are drafting first, but we are also suddenly drafting Born of the Gods second. An important part of the BTT draft environment was the effect of having BNG be the first pack, and it’s likely that there will be a shift in the value of cards and archetypes in BNG because it is now the second pack in the draft.

I’ll start with the effects of this change on BNG, and then I’ll take a look at how the draft order will affect JOU. The important thing to remember about the second pack is that it is the one that comes from the opposite direction. The first and third packs are the ones that you get from the right, and you have very little ability to affect what colors and strategies those players are taking. But in the second pack, you often see a much bigger impact because of the signals that you passed in pack one. In a triple set draft, this isn’t a huge deal, since all the cards are the same. But in a full block draft it is very important, and we saw a great example of this in Gatecrash. During DGR block draft, I you decided to base your deck around a Gatecrash guild, it was very important to cut signals in those colors very hard so that you could reap the benefits in Gatecrash. If you didn’t, then you would miss out on the pack with your strongest cards. This same thing will happen in BNG, though probably to a less pronounced amount. We know that red and white are particularly strong in BNG, blue is flexible, and both black and green are a little bit weaker than the other colors. We also know that black, green, and blue are both strong and deep in Theros, while white is strong and shallow, and red is just not very good in Theros. If you are in a red based deck, then you are going to depend very heavily on the power of your BNG pack. If you are in black, then the BNG pack is not going to be great for you, but you’ll be hoping to pick up good stuff coming from the right in pack three.

In draft, this means that you need to pay more attention to the signals you are sending if you are in white or red, but that you need to pay more attention to the signals you are receiving if you are in black or green. If red relatively open in the first pack, that might not even be a good thing for you; if you have a choice between three good red cards in pack one, then you are still passing two. Normally you make up for this signal by passing more cards to your left, but this is a problem if you are counting on your strongest cards to come from your left. However, if you are getting a lot of good black or green signals in pack one, then you’ll probably be able to expect a very healthy pack three. You might send a few black or green signals that make less of those colors come from your left, but those probably weren’t going to be your strongest cards anyway.

Draft order for the JOU pack will probably impact things in a similar fashion to what happened to BNG in the last format. Color depth will tend to be less important in the first pack, since you are looking for strong cards to point you in a good direction. A perfect example of this is with blue; blue has a few fairly strong commons like War-Wing Siren and Hubris but it also has some real junkers like Triton Shorestalker, Rise of the Eagles, or Countermand. While losing a pack of deep blue cards will definitely make blue weaker overall, it will also be less bad than what we might expect because you can take the best commons in the first pack, and then rely on the late picks in the second and third packs to pick up your filler cards. On the flip side, white seems both powerful and deep at the common level in JOU. This could sometimes prove problematic because it will make white seem like it is more open than it really is. You may end up passing more white signals than you hope, just because the white cards are better than their counterparts, but you’ll feel like it’s okay since you’re getting the best cards. But you’ll really feel this in pack two when you are cut out of your Akroan Skyguards, and in pack three where you are stuck taking a pack of Traveling Philosophers.

Since a draft format is a dynamic environment that can change dramatically based on only a few changes, it is hard to predict exactly what effect this will have. It’s possible that this phenomenon will lead to blue and red getting more underdrafted, which in turn makes them exceptionally powerful choices, similar to what happened with black and green in BNG. I expect that white will become even more popular with the release of JOU, which might just make it even more difficult to get a good white deck. However, it could change in other ways, depending on which commons really stand out from the other colors. The one prediction that I feel safe making is that green should continue to be a very strong choice in JBT draft. It is very typical for green to get a deep set of commons, but not to have very many commons that are clear first picks, and JOU seems to continue that tradition. Green is so deep in this block that it would take a significant change in circumstance for it to become overdrafted to the point where you need to avoid it.

Converted Mana Costs of Creatures in Journey into Nyx

Converted Mana Costs of Creatures – JOU, BNG, and THS Comparison

In the first graph, we see the distribution for CMC’s for creatures in Journey into Nyx. In the second graph, we see a comparison of this data with the same data for creatures from Born of the Gods and Theros. We see a fairly standard distribution of CMC’s, though we can also point out a few major differences between this set and the ones that preceded it. The most important thing, though, is a similarity; all three sets have almost exactly the same distribution of two drops. I have a feeling this is not a mistake; the two drop slot is definitely the most important in a set. If a color is lacking there, it becomes very hard for them to compete with the aggro decks in a format. In JOU, we see a decent number of powerful 2cmc creatures in each color, which means that every color should be able to put together a decent early game.

 The next thing to notice is that JOU falls behind the other sets in the next three categories, and then jumps pretty far ahead on six drops. It’s worth noting that JOU actually has slightly fewer creatures per pack than the other two sets; this is the result of two major influences. The first is strive, which takes up a large number of instant and sorcery slots, and the second are non-creature enchantments, like the fonts or the dictates. These play into the two new mechanics for the set, and by necessity, they leeched away a few of the creature slots. The good news is that the only creature slot that was ever difficult to fill was the two drop slot. I don’t expect this to have a dramatic effect on the environment. The one thing worth watching is that the creatures in this set are definitely distributed more evenly along the x-axis (except the two drops) which means that you might find yourself getting stuck with a few more five and six drops than you want.

Overall, I think that this distribution of mana costs will have a slowing effect on the environment. I’ve shown in the past that although intuition tells us that more low drops will make a format faster, it actually just means that all decks are better able to compete in the early game, meaning that slow decks are able to interact early and potentially slow things down. The majority of the slots we are losing are three drops in the common slot. The kind of three drops we are losing are things like Agent of Horizons, Minotaur Skullcleaver, Nessian Courser, Wingsteed Rider, and the three common bestow creatures. The rest of the slots, which were taken up by 2/3s and 1/4s in THS, are still being filled in Journey into Nyx. (We have a 2/3 for 3 in every color at common except blue and black. Blue gets a 1/3 flyer for 3 and an 0/3 for 2, while black gets a 1/4  for 3.) The creatures we are losing are the high tempo three drops, and we are replacing them with Strive cards and Fonts. While Strive seems like a mechanic that will help push games to end faster, I don’t think it will be a stronger influence than the change in the mix of creatures.

This brings me to my second major point about the converted mana costs in Journey into Nyx. For the Born of the Gods spoiler, I put together this chart which was designed to demonstrate the effect of bestow creatures on the format:

I was going to put together a similar chart for Journey into Nyx, and I had set up the spreadsheet to crunch the numbers. Then, I went to the Journey into Nyx spoiler to go look up all the Bestow creatures and Auras. At this point, I noticed something very important and strange. There are no common bestow creatures in Journey into Nyx. (There also aren’t very many creature auras). That sentence just seems too small to encompass what is happening here. Let me state it again, and then think about what it means. There are no common bestow creatures in Journey into Nyx.

Bestow is the foundation of the format. It is the glue that holds the heroic decks together. It allows aggro decks to fill their mana curve with creatures at different slots, while also putting in enough effects to trigger heroic, and also giving them a way to punch through in the late game. The above chart was designed specifically to illustrate that point. For example, if you have 3 Nimbus Naiads in your deck, you have a pretty good amount of cards in your three drop slot, so you’ll usually be able to dump out a Wind Drake, but you also have 3 powerful five drops, and they aren’t even taking up a card slot in your deck. For an aggro deck, this means you have the early game creatures you need, but you also have powerful late game cards. This is the biggest reason why five and six drops aren’t very good in Theros. You just have too many things that you can already do at that mana cost, but that also make it so you can cast spells through the entire game.

That is changing with Journey into Nyx. With no common bestow creatures, we are losing some of our most power late game cards, it will be more difficult to make mana curves that can compete at every stage of the game, and it will be harder to trigger heroic.

Distribution of Power and Toughness for Creatures in Journey into Nyx.

 

In these charts, we see the distribution of power and toughness among creatures in Journey into Nyx. The red line shows us how many creatures we have for each power, the green line shows how many creatures we’ll have for each toughness. The table below shows the average stats for Journey into Nyx. In that table, P/T differential means the average difference between the power and the toughness of creatures in the set. These numbers have always been very strong predictors about the speed of the format and the strength of particular removal spells and strategies, among other things.

The first thing is that this power and toughness chart is substantially different from the same charts from Theros and Born of the Gods. In Theros, we saw a chart that showed an almost even distribution of power and toughness, with toughness skewing slightly more to the right. In Born of the Gods, we saw an imbalance of distribution in favor of power, with toughness skewing slightly to the left. In Journey into Nyx, we see the exact opposite; we have a chart that skews heavily in favor of toughness. It seems like the spike at two for power means that the creatures will attack better, but it actually means the opposite; there will be a lot of two power creatures, and a lot of three, four, and even five toughness blockers. In fact, toughness outpaces power at every slot after two. If we were just drafting Journey into Nyx, we would expect a lot of board stalls.

One of the most important indicators in my articles is the P/T Differential. I’ve shown in the past that a P/T differential that is close to zero, or that is positive, always results in a fast format. A large negative differential usually results in a slower format. A differential of -0.5 is a pretty large negative, and this suggests that Journey into Nyx will slow down the format overall. The one exception I’ve seen to this rule was Theros, which also had a -0.5 differential. However, in the spoiler analysis, I showed that the effect of Bestow, Heroic, and Monstrous on the format would work together to speed things up significantly. As I mentioned earlier, there are no common Bestow creatures in Journey into Nyx. There are Monstrous creatures at common, but one of them costs six mana, and the other is a very defensive four drop, and both of them have 7cmc monstrous costs. Strive is a speed up mechanic, but not in the same way that Bestow was, since you need to time things right to make Strive good. Strive is reactive while Bestow is proactive. Constellation seems like a slowdown mechanic. Overall, there just isn’t a compelling reason to overturn the results of the P/T Differential results. Journey into Nyx has a higher number of defensive creatures than the other sets in the block, and it seems clear that it will slow things down overall.

In my Theros article, I showed this chart to demonstrate the tempo-positive effect of Bestow:

Average Power of Attackers with Auras, Bestow, or Monstrosity vs. Average Toughness of Defenders in Theros

Again, I intended to make a similar chart for Journey into Nyx, but since there are no common Bestow creatures, there just wasn’t a point. Instead, we can look at this chart, which shows us the average greatest power and toughness by land drop in Journey into Nyx.

Average Greatest Power and Toughness of Creatures per Land Drop in Journey into Nyx

In this chart, we see that toughness simply outstrips power and every step of the mana curve. Comparing these two charts is a pretty big deal; in BTT draft, you could often just start attacking into your opponent’s creatures on turn 3 onward without fear, since you had bigger creatures and you were backing them up with a bunch of combat tricks. In Journey into Nyx, attacking is always going to be an uphill battle. Using combat tricks will help you get through, but they just don’t have the permanent bonus that Bestow gave, so you’ll be facing yet another difficult attack the next turn.

It is important to say again that Journey into Nyx is only one pack in a three set format. These predictors make it fairly likely that the format will slow down overall, especially since Journey into Nyx is replacing a pack of Theros, but it is unlikely that it produces a tremendous effect on the speed of the format. It will likely make aggressive decks like RW heroic slightly more inconsistent, but they will still be powerful and plentiful. It will likely make slow decks a little more able to compete, but the format will probably still be fast and tempo heavy.

 

We’re finished with the bulk of the article, but I’d like to take a little bit of time just to discuss the incoming mechanics in the set.

Strive

Strive is an ability word that lets you pay additional mana in order to increase the number of targets of a particular spell. It is a kicker variant that allows you to cast your spells in modes of increasing power. The mechanic was specifically made to enable you to play more creatures with Heroic, allowing you to go wide, as well as tall.

Strive is an inherently strong mechanic. It would be strong in any format, since it is a mana sink that allows your spells to have a function in the late game while also giving you a strong late game presence. They are very much like a collection of Fireballs. Ajani’s Presence is a perfect example of this; in the early game, it keeps your heroic creatures alive and lets you win an important combat. In the late game, it allows you to swing a stable board position into a winning board position. It is also especially  powerful with heroic, since it allows you to support heroic with fewer pump spells.

It’s hard to imagine that Strive won’t accomplish its goals as a mechanic. They are all more powerful than they look, and Ajani’s Presence promises to be one of the set’s most defining cards, and probably the second best combat trick in the format, after Dauntless Onslaught, but the flexibility of Ajani’s Presence means that even that comparison is up for debate. But strive isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. There are a few very particular problems with strive. The first is that strive costs are quite expensive. Yes, the spells are more flexible, but you are definitely paying for that flexibility. I’ve been trying to imagine almost all of the Strive spells as if I were choosing between paying the cost once or twice, essentially giving us two modes. It is tempting to think of times when you are going to hit seven or ten mana and completely blow your opponent out, but it is important to be realistic about these cards. Second, all of common strive pump spells provide pretty small effects. They mostly provide +1/+1 bonuses, though both the black and the red spells are slightly different, providing only power. Except for Ajani’s Presence, none of those cards would make my deck very often if I didn’t have the option of kicking them for another target. The third problem is that Strive is reactive rather than proactive. If you are just using them to trigger heroic and deal more damage, but if you aren’t getting a card out of the deal, then you are giving up a lot of late game value. This means that you’ll often have to wait to use them until an appropriate situation. It will be difficult to decide whether you need to just use your Ajani’s Presence now on one target while you know you’ll get the card, or save it for a potential blowout down the line. The main point is that this isn’t as straightforward of a mechanic as Bestow; there are definitely risks to playing Strive pump spells.

Constellation

Constellation is another ability word mechanic that goes on enchantments. Whenever that enchantment or another enchantment enters the battlefield, you get some effect. This mechanic is the “god” mechanic, and is supposed to represent the forces of Nyx combining in their effort to beat the mortals. The mechanic rewards you for playing more enchantments. We have seen abilities like this before with Landfall, for example, and we’ve gotten pretty good at evaluating these things. Essentially, if the card would be playable without any extra activations, then it will probably still be very strong.

The question we have to ask ourselves is how many enchantments there are in Journey into Nyx. The answer is that roughly 38.3% of the cards in the set will be enchantments. That is a pretty big number. It’s about an 8 point increase from Born of the Gods, and almost a 15 point increase from Theros. There will definitely be more enchantments running around in JBT draft. At a preliminary estimate, we can guess that about 1/3^rd of the spells in your deck will be an enchantment on average. In other words, you’ll have somewhere between 7 and 8 enchantments in your deck. It is probably reasonable to expect a card like Harvestguard Alseids to be activated 2 to 3 additional times in a given game.

There aren’t many constellation cards that are really worth warping a deck around, especially at common. Eidolon of Blossoms definitely encourages you to draft enchantments more highly, but it will also be very strong if you activate it even just two times, and it is fragile enough that I wouldn’t recommend putting all of your flowers in one basket. The one card that might make for an archetype is Thassa’s Devourer. A 2/6 for 5 is not unplayable by itself, and if you get multiples of this guy, then you can mill someone out quite quickly. However, without multiple, the ability probably doesn’t matter. This also means that you won’t be picking up things more highly just because they are enchantments. Font of Fortunes might give you a teensy bit more value for being an enchantment, but it is probably best to evaluate it as a 4 mana Divination.

Thanks again for reading. Journey into Nyx feels like a fabulous set, and I think it will create some interesting changes in the JBT draft format. I’ve mentioned that I like to focus my articles on thinking about the set and exploring the themes, and using that information to help guide decisions about the format. I do like to make predictions, but it’s very easy for people writing articles about the spoiler to just make random and/or wild predictions, since they will almost never be taken to task for those predictions. However, one of the reasons that you come to these articles is to get my thoughts on what will happen, and so I like to list my predictions at the end of the article.

1.       It is very likely that Journey into Nyx will force us to reshape our draft strategies, and it should have a much bigger impact on the format than Born of the Gods did. However, there is a small possibility that the cards in Journey into Nyx will just be weaker than they appear, which could make the set perform worse than expected.

2.       The changes in draft order will probably change the way we draft colors in the following ways; red and white will become a color that needs you to carefully manage the signals you send, black and green will depend on the signals you are receiving, and blue will go both ways depending on which kind of blue deck you are drafting. There is also a reasonable chance that I’ve missed some important and format defining cards in particular colors, which could lead to the metagame shaping up much differently, especially with regard to both blue and black. I imagine that these colors might have sleepers that end up more powerful than I expect.

3.       I am reasonably certain that Journey into Nyx will have an overall slowing effect on the format. This will probably result from the introduction of more defensive creatures, as well as the loss of common bestow creatures. This should hold true unless strive ends up being much stronger than I expect.

4.       I’m somewhat certain that white will be the strongest color in Journey into Nyx. The white commons seem both powerful and deep. White does seems a little less aggressive than in the other sets, but it is very likely that white will continue to be very popular and produce some of the best decks in the format. However, this prediction could turn out wrong if some combination of Supply-Line Cranes, Akroan Mastiff, Harvestguard Alseids, and/or Lagonna-Band Trailblazer turn out much weaker than I think they will be. I also think that it is likely that white will be drafted heavily, and the best strategy could very well be to let other people fight over white, but it is also deep enough that it might just be worth fighting over. I know that I’ll be trying to take advantage of white early on, but I suspect I’ll move towards black and green as the format progresses.

5.       I’m also fairly certain that green has once again gotten a very deep pool of commons. Many of these cards are deceptively powerful, which should mean that people undervalue green in the first pack, but the color is deep enough in all three packs that it should make for an optimal and effective color to draft. However, if Oakheart Dryads turns out to be bad, and if Pheres-Band Thunderhoof and Ravenous Leucrocota are just too expensive to be competitive, then it is possible that green is a weak color.

6.       Blue and red seem to be very weak in this set. Blue is popular enough in the other sets that it shouldn’t be avoided to heavily, and RW should still remain one of the most popular decks, but I think that these colors being weak will lead to them being avoided a little bit more in pack one. Blue should still be a great color to draft, since it is still very good in the other packs. Red’s strength will probably depend on how well you can cut it in the first pack in order to take advantage of pack two. However, this could be wrong if I’ve underevaluated Sigiled Starfish and Cloaked Siren in blue, or Rouse the Mob and Starfall in red.

7.       For the prerelease, I’ve been recommending the colors in this order: green, white, black, blue, and red. Green seems to be the deepest color in all three sets, and depth is especially important in sealed. If you pick green, you have a much higher likelihood of being able to keep the color you chose, and it also means you’ll pick up enough fixing to play our bombs. White also has a very high powerful, and gets much deeper in Journey into Nyx. If you are getting a seeded pack of white cards, than that should make your white decks particularly strong. Red just seems to narrow and shallow to be a good choice for your color.

As always, thanks for sticking through, and I hope that this analysis helps you out in the first few weeks of Journey into Nyx. Remember that the goal of this analysis is to help you do your own thinking about the format, and come to your own conclusions. If you have any questions or additional thoughts, please feel free to leave them in the comments below, or let me know on twitter. You can follow me on twitter @oraymw for updates about articles. I’ve also put up a Tumblr account at http://oraymw.tumblr.com/ where I post links to my articles. You can go there and subscribe to the RSS feed, and then you’ll be able to get updates whenever a new article goes live.

Finally, I encourage you to check out the podcast that I do with my buddy Zach Orts, which is called All in the Telling. In it, we look at stories from a professional standpoint in order to get a better understanding of why they are important to the human experience. But mostly, we just talk about what makes awesome stories awesome.