MTG Salvation

Hi all, I'm returning from a lengthy hiatus from the games and the forums. Years ago I would post all my draftcaps here with commentary. I just realized that my settings were changed so unfortunately I don't have the draftcaps, but here are my first 2 triple Dominaria draft decks.



White was extremely open. I could have played mono White, but I wasn't really getting rewarded for being mono White vs. just heavy White, so I threw in the 3 Red cards. They were all late picks, I wasn't trying to be Red, it was more an opportunity that didn't cost me anything.

This deck went 3-0. Some of the standouts were Pegasus Courser, which is excellent at getting damage through once the opponent has some ground blockers, and Aven Sentry as another cheap source of Flying damage. The plan here, perhaps obviously, is to get off to a fast start and then close with Flying. The one negative was the number of X/1 creatures in the deck. That bit me a couple of times with cards that deal 1 damage to all creatures. Six 1-toughness creatures is more than I'd want to run again in the future.

I'll be back later to add the 2nd deck...

I don't play Constructed, so I'm asking from a position of complete ignorance. But the resell value of rares in this set seems much lower. I only see 2 mythics that are trading near or above $10 -- Gideon & Ulamog. The best rare is like $3. Is something weird going on in Constructed where practically no BFZ cards are desirable?!

Between Play Points driving the price of packs in the secondary market back up to $4, and these depressed prices for chase rares, this is a very expensive set to draft!

Thanks fellow parents for your support! It's really nice knowing that 1) I'm on the same path others have traveled and 2) you're still here, meaning the adjustment is not catastrophic.

I actually ended up 2-1 in that draft I mentioned, beating some serious newbs in Rounds 2&3. (My Round 2 opponent played a 60-card deck, for example.) This changed my perspective in a lot of ways. It reminded me that even if I don't know *this* set, I know the fundamentals and that counts for a lot. I also remembered that Swiss is great because even if you're not the best player at the table, you can often still get a very respectable 2-1 result by playing tight. Finally I was reassured that the reason the signals in the draft were so strange was probably because there were 2+ players at the table who had no business drafting, based on how they played, and maybe one or both was sitting near me. For example, the guy who passed me a Blight Herder?!

I know this can't be done, but it would be cool if there was a "Senior" circuit of Magic. For folks who used to play a lot and for whatever reason in life (family, career, changing tastes) have transitioned to less frequent play, like they do for pro golf.

I do listen to podcasts while commuting, and that does help a lot. I at least knew going into this draft what the popular archetypes of BFZ are.

Thanks again. Just another example of why this is the best Limited community. Good luck finding support like this on Reddit...

Yup, first one! It's amazing. I'm not complaining about how the baby is taking away from my Magic hobby, more just coming to terms with the idea that I can't grind anymore, therefore it's going to be quite difficult to be "not bad" in the online meta-game. Like I'm not sure how I feel about even playing a spot draft here and there, because it doesn't feel fun being so far behind the curve.

I suppose I'll try to draft once per set, with expectations of going 0-3, and take it from there.

But seriously, Magic is a young person's game. The time commitment required to be good is enormous. It's not like other games because every 4 months you have to re-master it. To those of you in your late teens and 20s...if you have aspirations of a family one day...enjoy your time now because there won't always be time to be a good Magic player. There's a reason all the pros seem to be late 20s/early 30s with no kids.

Haven't played in over 3 months (had a baby). Finally get a night to myself.

Round 1, Game 1: I keep 2 lands and Anticipate. My third land is 7 cards deep.
Round 1, Game 2: I keep a 4 land hand. My next 6 draws are land.

Ya know I hate to say this, but I honestly might just give up the game. The last 3 months haven't been that bad. I'll never have time to be better than bad anymore -- being good at this game requires a time commitment that raising children and holding down a steady job simply don't allow. Maybe this was the universe kicking me in the nuts like...come on man, you have a kid now and you don't have time to practice the set, put the cards down.

The worst draft formats are bad because there's only ONE archetype -- aggro -- and nothing more interesting can compete with it. See: original Zendikar.

If having access to 5+ archetypes bores you, I think you should just quit Limited and try a different game because it doesn't get much more diverse than that.

Just to point out because people often get this wrong -- Mortuary Mire is not classical "card advantage." You're still drawing the same number of cards. You need to be putting a card that is in the top 50% of your deck on top or else it might even be a net negative effect.

In the late game, this is not an issue because lands become less useful and good creatures are more likely to be dead. But early in the game, it's questionable to put a 2-drop on top, for example, just because you can. It's sometimes correct to decline the "may" ability.

Quote from randomdragoon »

Assuming the small set has 70 commons, discounting foils, there will be an average of 2.29 copies of each small-set common opened in the new SSL draft format, compared to 2.38 copies of each large-set common opened in a triple-large draft. So the commons in SSL draft shouldn't be any more degenerate than the commons in a LLL draft.

While correct, this doesn't really address my point. The issue is that you're going to have 2.29 copies of S commons vs. 0.79 copies of L commons, or nearly 3 to 1. Add in the fact that L comes last, and it becomes strategically meaningless. You can't count on seeing any particular L card, therefore you can't build a strategy around trying to obtain them. L just becomes garnish for your deck. You have to build around S, and considering you're getting the same concentration in 2 packs of S vs. 3 packs of L, you'll know early in the draft whether a particular strategy is open.

Degenerate combos come from combinations of cards. By offering S in similar frequency but fewer number of commons, you're more likely to obtain the pieces of a combo.

SSL: 2.29 to 0.79 ratio (2.9 to 1)
SLL: 1.15 to 1.58 ratio (1 to 1.4)

The latter allows for better balance. Not everyone wants balance, but WotC has a poor track record of balancing a small set. I'm not saying it can't be done, but I'll believe it when I see it.

This is a drastic change. You can't just say frequency in two packs = frequency in three packs. That's mathematical hand-waving.

Even if the issue is not degenerate combos, the format is going to get stale quickly because you'll be drafting more of the same S commons over and over and over.

I'm also not very receptive to the "But the sets were DESIGNED to be drafted this way!" argument. We get horrible draft formats all the time. They're all designed to be good. Many are simply...not. There's not a lot of evidence that R&D has fine control over how their formats turn out.

The relative frequency of small set commons to large set commons will be so different that the small set will almost entirely determine the nature of the format. You won't be able to rely on getting any particular card from the large set so you can't build a strategy around it. The strategies won't be as degenerate as SSS, but more degenerate than SLL in the sense that you're more likely to get 4+ of a small set common.

Pros: SSL will be drastically different than LLL, whereas SLL was often similar to LLL. You can build around new cards in S that previously might have been ignored unless they were heavily supported in L.
Cons: If S has any degenerate strategies at common, they are more likely to overwhelm the new format since we'll have a high concentration of each S common.

Quote from Puddle Jumper »

Sorry. I wasn't trying to discredit you; but to point out that pretty recently you had the exact opposite opinion about spoilers from a set from the one you're currently expressing.

Historically, core sets and expert sets have been designed quite differently leading to different dynamics as the sets mature.

Quote from Dire Wombat »

The advantages that I can see to doing Devoid instead of Eldrazi tribal are that:

- It's a bit broader for Standard; colorless-matters synergizes with the thopter theme in Origins and with Morph/Manifest from Khans block.

While it does create synergy, it's kind of ham-fisted. There's this evil race of monsters who work together...but they also get along with creatures who are in sneaky fireball form...and little 1/1 mechanical flying drones.

- They can do effects that care about colorless cards/spells in general, not just creatures. They can't do that with tribal since retiring the Tribal card type.

I didn't realize they're retiring the Tribal card type. I suppose that does explain it. I question if this is a more elegant solution but at least it's a logical reason. Thanks for catching me up.

Quote from Locke_Daemonfire »

Though it would work mechanically, in terms of flavor having the lands become Eldrazi makes no sense. Awaken represents the land rising up against the Eldrazi. Giving lands the Eldrazi creature type would subvert that entirely.

Well then it makes even less sense that these mechanics interact well! Allies can't do anything with awakened lands, but Eldrazi can use them for their needs. Flavor fail.

Quote from Puddle Jumper »

Well, either the set is a lot more midrangey than we're used to or these cards are largely straight up terrible. Because not a one of these are cards I'd be happy running in a set even as fast as 3xKhans.

WotC has printed terrible cards before because they misjudged the nature of the format in testing.

Also I think it's a dick move to post a block of text where I was wrong about Magic Origins just to discredit me. The fact that I was wrong then doesn't mean I'm wrong now, and it looks like you're just trying to shame me for being wrong in the past. We're all allowed to make predictions here and most of them that aren't super safe will be wrong.

Quote from BK7 »

The current conditional abilities requiring colourless creature work with the creatures from Awaken, for one.

That's a rather complicated interaction for a newer player to grasp. (Most new and casual players think lands are the color of the mana they produce.) You could accomplish the same by making the Awakened lands creature type Eldrazi. Maybe they're doing something cool with Devoid down the line, but right now it feels like they wanted to do Eldrazi Tribal and somebody said yeesh that seems boring, can we do something else with them? So they made a new mechanic that is so far 99% Eldrazi Tribal but with a new name to pump up the number of new mechanics they can advertise.

So far I'm struggling to see the value of Devoid over Eldrazi Tribal. I suppose it leaves some design space open but so far every Devoid creature is also Eldrazi, and vice versa.

I'm also always wary of the sets where everyone says "Oh cool they've ratcheted down the aggro so we can all play midrange decks!" That gets said a lot during spoiler season, then after a few weeks of hands-on experience, the aggro decks emerge. I'm a little concerned because both Eldrazi and Allies are linear mechanics, and linear = speed. Maybe not of the same sort as Magic Origins where it's all about overpowered 2-drops, but more in an avalanche-of-value way.

You slow down a format by printing good removal and blockers, not by simply increasing the frequency of expensive drops or things like Awaken spells. I'm not going to get excited until we see those cards that actually enable the strategy. Right now we're just seeing the potential rewards, and also some ramp which is nice.

Mage-Ring Bully is a beautifully designed card. It creates such a great game-within-the-game. The fact that it has to attack means your opponent isn't giving any information away by attacking with it. If it were just a 2/2 with Prowess, you'd assume they would only attack into a 2/3 if they had the trick...but with Bully, the defender is forced to make that choice with essentially no information.

The fact that Bully rarely gets blocked by a 2/3 tells me I should be attacking with 2/2 Prowess creatures into 2/3s more often than I probably do. The bluff is rarely going to be called, especially in Red where the 2-for-1 potential off instant speed removal is quite real.

Then in the same set, they pair it with Jhessian Thief which is the exact opposite of Bully. Bully says "You probably can't afford to block me." Thief says "You probably can't afford to not block me." It's a small thing but really great design.

Quote from pops »

Which other color gives you the most stuff to do at instant speed to pair with this? Most of the good instants I can think of only cost 1, so I can't think of anything besides Celestial Flare

Blue has by far the most instants. Black has the least. The other colors are all sort of equal so there's not really a perfect pair.

I don't particularly want to run Artificier's Epiphany but I think the card is OK if: you're short on playables, you have a lot of artifacts/thopters, or you have a lot of instants like counterspells. If you can just do something with it, to make it Divination occasionally, and to make it effectively free occasionally because you held up counterspell mana that your opponent played around, it's perfectly fine. It's worse than Anticipate on average but with some upside as long as you have at least one artifact in your deck.

You should always cut it for "real" cards though. The only reason this card is OK is because it's an instant and replaces itself plus a bit of card selection. That sets the bar very low. I'm not sure that I'd ever run more than 1 copy, because multiples could really screw up your tempo with no great benefit.

Joraga Invocation is clearly good. It's not Overrun. The main problem is that Overrun pushes through damage whereas Invocation forces chump blocks. That's similar if you're at parity, but a lot worse if you're behind. If your opponent can chump enough of your guys and crack back with the portion of their team that was tapped, you accomplished little. The difference is that Trample on Overrun more often ends the game immediately. Chump blocking is not an option.

Invocation is still likely to cripple your opponent but it will often be "Overrun except your opponent gets one more turn." Big downgrade.

With all that said -- Overrun is a format warping type of effect. "Worse Overrun" can still be really good.