I'm not really sure if this event is balanced. A lot of people seem to be trying to play the Ashiok deck because of the greater number of power cards. In short, I think this event could have been put together a little bit more fairly in am more obvious way.
Not all the Power 9 is represented in this event. IMHO, the representation of those famous cards is unbalanced. That's all that people really seem to be noticing.
Ashiok is a UB deck that wants to play the long game with control and removal. Whereas Elspeth is a mono-white deck that feels like it wants to hit fast and hard with creatures and pump. Whatever deck you choose, you will always play against the other deck, always. There are no mirror matches.
Both decks are built more like Brawl decks, there are no duplicates except for basic lands. They're effectively singleton decks with no commander so you'll actually play the games a little bit different.
Ashiok is more likely to pull at least one of the power 9 more often, this means you're likely to see at least one of Mox Saphire, Mox Jet, Black Lotus and/or Ancestral Recall roughly 40% of the time in your opening hand. In contrast, the Elspeth deck only has Mox Pearl or Lotus which results in a opening hand possibility of 22%. It's playable but inexperienced players are likely to be disheartened when they see the Ashiok player drop both Mox, Lotus then cast Ancestral to refill their hand all before they manage to get anything more than a 3/3 onto the field.
Since this event is doing the Brawl mulligan rules, if I didn't find one of the power cards in my opening hand, I always mulliganed. When I started doing this with the Elspeth deck, I started seeing better games since I was more likely to draw that Mox or Lotus.
I noticed the Elspeth deck list tries to offset the mana disadvantages by including things like Sol Ring but I think this is of little comfort to the inexperienced players.
It's worth playing for the three free Thereos packs though. But beyond that... eh.... I couldn't enjoy a bunch of games because it just so happens that my dailies didn't quite match up with the event. eg, play X red or green spells. Uh... sure....
I'm not really sure if this event is balanced. A lot of people seem to be trying to play the Ashiok deck because of the greater number of power cards. In short, I think this event could have been put together a little bit more fairly in am more obvious way.
Not all the Power 9 is represented in this event. IMHO, the representation of those famous cards is unbalanced. That's all that people really seem to be noticing.
Ashiok is a UB deck that wants to play the long game with control and removal. Whereas Elspeth is a mono-white deck that feels like it wants to hit fast and hard with creatures and pump. Whatever deck you choose, you will always play against the other deck, always. There are no mirror matches.
Both decks are built more like Brawl decks, there are no duplicates except for basic lands. They're effectively singleton decks with no commander so you'll actually play the games a little bit different.
Ashiok is more likely to pull at least one of the power 9 more often, this means you're likely to see at least one of Mox Saphire, Mox Jet, Black Lotus and/or Ancestral Recall roughly 40% of the time in your opening hand. In contrast, the Elspeth deck only has Mox Pearl or Lotus which results in a opening hand possibility of 22%. It's playable but inexperienced players are likely to be disheartened when they see the Ashiok player drop both Mox, Lotus then cast Ancestral to refill their hand all before they manage to get anything more than a 3/3 onto the field.
Since this event is doing the Brawl mulligan rules, if I didn't find one of the power cards in my opening hand, I always mulliganed. When I started doing this with the Elspeth deck, I started seeing better games since I was more likely to draw that Mox or Lotus.
I noticed the Elspeth deck list tries to offset the mana disadvantages by including things like Sol Ring but I think this is of little comfort to the inexperienced players.
It's worth playing for the three free Thereos packs though. But beyond that... eh.... I couldn't enjoy a bunch of games because it just so happens that my dailies didn't quite match up with the event. eg, play X red or green spells. Uh... sure....