Hey guys. I haven't quite immersed myself in Magic until this year and am finding the limited draft format of Theros just a blast. I hear other players at my LGS talk about how fast gatecrash was or how slow dragons maze was which made me think about how BNG would play and stuff like that.
But even more, I found myself regretting not drafting previous sets when they were the "new thang."
So MTGS, let me live vicariously through your experiences. When you drafted older sets, which specific cards did you look for? What deck did you try to build in RoE? Who was the Gary in your pod? Just how zomgamzing was triple Innistrad?
What were your favorite draft formats and what cards made it that way?
I started drafting during Shards block and I loved it. Almost always found Bant or Esper to be super open and managed to win vs. overfished Jund. I liked playing Ardent Plea into Jhessian Infiltrator, and Sanctum Gargoyle led to some nasty plays.
Next was Zendikar, and I loved it. I loved the flavor, the art and the mechanics (vamps! Landfall! Et Cetera!,) but mostly I liked my playgroup and the fact that I won a bunch by going Blue when no one else would (Wind Zendikons won a lot of games for me.) Searing Blaze, Plated Geopede, and Vampire Nighthawk were all nasty cards, and Walking Atlas enabled some great plays while going really late.
I also loved Scars of Mirrodin block. While Infect bothered me as a mechanic (cheeeeaaaap,) I had a lot of fun drafting dinos and Fangren Marauder decks. I'll admit, I wasn't above snapping up Plague Stinger, Untamed Might and Flesh-Eater Imp, but Infect wasn't a fun mechanic. Still, I love artifacts, so...
( I didn't draft much NPH at all.)
Innistrad is one of the best formats ever. Moonmist was a fun little jerk of a trick. Wild Hunger was gross. Tribalism like we hadn't seen since Lorwyn, which was between my MTG times. Didn't play much AVR.
Return to Ravnica was fun; I managed to scoop up all the Frostburn Weirds for a while. Pursuit of Flight was nearly unfair with that little guy. I got bored with GTC pretty quick, but did have fun with the Extort/Cipher deck on the backs of Basilica Screecher and friends. DGM didn't impress me much; seemed like a crapshoot too often.
So, basically, I love drafting, and each set has something I love about it, but some aren't deep enough to keep my interest.
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My Decks: EDH: Sygg, River Cutthroat , Road to Scion
Grimgrin, Corpseborn Modern: Polytokes IRL: Progenitus Polymorph , Goblins
I'm always the guy grabbing the U/W Psychic Venom bounces and blinks deck in Time Block Draft, and I was particularly happy to get 5 Slow Motions (out of one pack, keep in mind!) and even a Barrin in Urza Block very recently. Generally though I just go with my gut, and with the information provided to me, rather than forcing an archetype.
The set that comes to my mind when I think of fun limited (and block/standard for that matter) was Kamigawa. Arcane was such a fun mechanic whether you milled people out with Dampen Thought or controlled the board with repeated burn ala Glacial Ray. This was also back when combat damage could be fooled around with which means it actually had combat I could tolerate, unlike more modern sets.
The number one thing I look for in a good format is that a good proportion of the commons need to be playable in multiple archetypes.
So, do you think that Theros will be making your top single-set formats list? The general consensus seems to be that it has a particularly high number of common playables spread across all of the colors.
So, do you think that Theros will be making your top single-set formats list? The general consensus seems to be that it has a particularly high number of common playables spread across all of the colors.
An important word in that sentence is "archetypes."
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My helpy helpdesk of helpfulness.
My Decks: EDH: Sygg, River Cutthroat , Road to Scion
Grimgrin, Corpseborn Modern: Polytokes IRL: Progenitus Polymorph , Goblins
An important word in that sentence is "archetypes."
Pretty much this. When the best color basically fits into only one deck type, the format really can't be any better than mediocre because it just isn't replayable enough.
The other thing about Kamigawa block was that Ki counters - whilst a terrible mechanic in the context of Magic as a whole - were great for Limited. It's a format that was very unforgiving of casual drafters, though, so not for everyone.
(And since we're invited to name cards too: Waxmane Baku!)
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(I'm on on this site much anymore. If you want to get in touch it's probably best to email me: dom@heffalumps.org)
Forum Awards: Best Writer 2005, Best Limited Strategist 2005-2012
5CB PotM - June 2005, November 2005, February 2006, April 2008, May 2008, Feb 2009
MTGSalvation Articles: 1-20, plus guest appearance on MTGCast #86!
<Limited Clan>
I have to strongly disagree with those promoting Shards block. It was a terrible, terrible format where the only thing that mattered was mana fixing. You know it's a bad format when you draft the Tri-lands over any other card in the set, including rediculous bombs.
Triple ROE was amazing, Triple Innistrad was ok except for invisible stalker, triple RTR was fantastic and easily my favourite.
Rise of the Eldrazi, Time Spiral, old Ravnica, Modern Masters, Innistrad. The big five for me.
Rise of the Eldrazi: When the format started, I was all about Grixis. I forced it in every single draft I did. The deck was centered around Mnemonic Wall along with removal, bounce, card draw, and Surreal Memoir. The finisher could be whatever, like Halimar Wavewatch, Ulamog's Crusher or Artisan of Kozilek, but my favorite was Sphinx Bone-Wand, which frequently tabled. To my great misfortune, people caught on after a bit, but I've never won as much in any format as I did when RoE was new on Modo - I almost cracked 2000 rating. Later, I was more open to drafting green ramp as well, with the occasional B/R token deck, but Grixis is the deck in my heart.
Time Spiral: Unlike most formats I've played, I didn't have a favorite archetype or two in Time Spiral limited - I liked them all. With a preference for blue, of course, but all colors could imitate blue to an extent in this terrific draft format (at least with Planar Chaos in the mix). The reason why I enjoy this format so much is because of the number of decision each card is presenting. There are next to no vanillas, a ton of cards have several different functions and abilities, and many different ways to play them. There were also very few unplayable cards, a host of archetypes, and it was incredibly diverse. However, there were a couple of big offenders in TPF too - Sprout Swarm was not just obscenely broken for a common, it was also an incredibly tedious and unfun card. And you almost had to have a plan for it & keep it in mind at all times, and also during the draft make sure you were open to taking it and splashing it (if you weren't green) in case you opened it or got passed one, somehow. Key commons are almost too many to mention, but I should bring up Errant Ephemeron, at least. An absolutely massive and undercosted flier. There haven't been many better commons since.
Ravnica: Meaning the full block. It was a very balanced format (other than Selesnya being very bad, since you couldn't draft a shard or a wedge with Selesnya that had a guild in each pack), had fun gameplay, and plenty of the ingredients that make Limited play very fun. Experimenting with how different guilds interacted with each other was fun, and the manafixing to support this mixing was there (as opposed to in RTR block). It also had a number of minor subthemes and combos you could aim for. Unfortunately for me, I only really started drafting competitively when Time Spiral was released, so I don't have quite as much experience with it as the other sets here, but I still thoroughly enjoy it every time it's on Magic Online.
Modern Masters: This format is, I find, rather similar to Time Spiral both in that the Time Spiral cards and mechanics are largely dominating, and in that it has a very high density of playable cards, a lot of archetypes, and a lot of cards that present a lot of options at any given time. It didn't have Sprout Swarm, though. The format was fun, balanced, and most cards had answers that were easily accessible to you. Personally, I forced blue control in this format every single time. Usually Grixis control, but also 4CC or 5CC with sunburst cards. The key cards were Glacial Ray, Vivid lands, and Petals of Insight. The finisher was usually Errant Ephemeron, but it could be anything, really. Having a counterspell or two was important. Mana fixing needs to be prioritized, since I intend to put Plumeveil, Horobi's Whisper and Glacial Ray in the same deck. This format gave me my best win % after Rise of the Eldrazi, I'm pretty sure.
Innistrad:Spider Spawning, Burning Vengeance... so much value. It was more fun in the beginning, when everyone didn't attempt to fight over the sweet archetypes (I preferred it when my Burning Vengeances all tabled, dammit), but the format had an incredible amount of depth, so it was never bad. It had a few more duds than I liked and a few more vanilla-like cards than I would have preferred, but it still stands out as one of the better sets of the recent past. The process of having to show each other double faced cards was kinda lame, but it wasn't as big of a deal as we had feared. My preferred archetype was Grixis (big shocker there) Burning Vengeance. Beyond the enchantment itself, key cards included Silent Departure, Rolling Temblor, Think Twice, Forbidden Alchemy, Armored Skaab.
Grixis forever.
Honorable mentions go to M14 as the best Core Set, to Invasion for being the block with the most awesome value cards, and to Masters Edition 3 for being my personal hidden gem.
The other thing about Kamigawa block was that Ki counters - whilst a terrible mechanic in the context of Magic as a whole - were great for Limited. It's a format that was very unforgiving of casual drafters, though, so not for everyone.
(And since we're invited to name cards too: Waxmane Baku!)
My memories of the entire block are kind of hazy, but I drafted a heck of a lot of triple Champions. So for what it's worth:
One of my favorite archtypes of the set was black-based Spirit/Arcane. Horobi's Whisper was the mainstay removal spell, and one of the main workhorses of the deck was the otherwise-unassuming looking Thief of Hope. That little dude did so much work in a Spirit deck, often netting five or six life if your opponent couldn't remove him, and then recurring one of your cheaper spirits when he did die. You had so much removal in black, in addition to HW you had Pull Under and Swallowing Plague, both of which were also Arcane spells so you could splice Whispers onto them (or Whispers onto Whispers) to just dismantle an opposing army. Green was a great pairing for black (Kodama's Might, Kodama's Reach, Hana Kami and Kami of the Wild Hunt), as did Blue (Consuming Vortex, Eye of Nowhere, Teller of Tales, and the various Soratami). Depending on how many Spirits you could draft, Devouring Greed was often a finisher that could come out of nowhere for eight or more points of life.
Champions was also one of the few sets in which there was an actual milling strategy available to you in Dampen Thought. I know a lot of people actively forced the deck for a while, grabbing the card really early and hoping to snag a second later in the draft.
If aggro is more your speed, White and Red had some great strategies around Bushido and equipment. Ronin Houndmaster was a staple in red, and the oddly useful Uncontrollable Anger was one of the earliest Auras I can remember actively drafting. It could land as a surprise combat trick, or you could force your opponent's little annoying creature out of the way to clear the path for your alpha strike, and it often made your creature a serious threat, even with the 'drawback'. Of course you also had Glacial Ray as the prime red removal spell, but critically you also had access to Frost Wielder. I loved playing multipes of that guy, because Champions was slow enough that you could feasibly get multiples out and just start sniping everything in sight. Even if you couldn't kill something, negating graveyard triggers/recursion and Soulshift was pretty clutch. Hanabi's Blast was a great card that made good use of late game land draws. You didn't always get to keep it, but getting to cast it two or three times in a game was serious advantage. You also had the red spell Devouring Rage, which could (like Greed), kill out of nowhere.
Man, I loved Champions. I'll be honest though, it'd be a little strange playing it again, since the combat-damage rules change happened afterwards. Cards like Sakura-Tribe Elder were so awesome because you could stack their damage and activate their ability for loads of value. I'm not sure how many other cards like STE were affected by the rules change.
Onslaught block in particular is a completely different format to the way it was at release; morphs play differently (worse) without stacked damage, goblins are much worse when you can't stack damage and sac to Airdrop Condor and buddies, and the Great Creature Type Update broke the Amplify mechanic in half because Human wasn't a creature type when the mechanic was designed. All in all the format still sucks; it just sucks differently to the way it used to.
I loved Kamigawa draft too. I had success drafting a green Kamigawa deck with lots of snakes (including the two uncommon Snake legends; Sosuke, son of Seshiro, and his sister Sachi, Daughter of Seshiro, as well as the card that makes 2 1/1 snakes that you can buy out of your graveyard by playing more snakes), as well as UR arcane/spiritcraft. Lots of fun archetypes in Kamigawa.
I kinda liked triple Avacyn, which everyone else hated, but that's partly because I once 3-0ed a draft when I was the only one at the table drafting black.
But even more, I found myself regretting not drafting previous sets when they were the "new thang."
So MTGS, let me live vicariously through your experiences. When you drafted older sets, which specific cards did you look for? What deck did you try to build in RoE? Who was the Gary in your pod? Just how zomgamzing was triple Innistrad?
What were your favorite draft formats and what cards made it that way?
Moved from Magic General. -Galspanic
Next was Zendikar, and I loved it. I loved the flavor, the art and the mechanics (vamps! Landfall! Et Cetera!,) but mostly I liked my playgroup and the fact that I won a bunch by going Blue when no one else would (Wind Zendikons won a lot of games for me.) Searing Blaze, Plated Geopede, and Vampire Nighthawk were all nasty cards, and Walking Atlas enabled some great plays while going really late.
I didn't draft Rise until this year, and it's awesome. Ramp with Emrakul's Hatcher and the like is fun as all get out, but my favorite was the wall deck with Vent Sentinel and Overgrown Battlement.
I also loved Scars of Mirrodin block. While Infect bothered me as a mechanic (cheeeeaaaap,) I had a lot of fun drafting dinos and Fangren Marauder decks. I'll admit, I wasn't above snapping up Plague Stinger, Untamed Might and Flesh-Eater Imp, but Infect wasn't a fun mechanic. Still, I love artifacts, so...
( I didn't draft much NPH at all.)
Innistrad is one of the best formats ever. Moonmist was a fun little jerk of a trick. Wild Hunger was gross. Tribalism like we hadn't seen since Lorwyn, which was between my MTG times. Didn't play much AVR.
Return to Ravnica was fun; I managed to scoop up all the Frostburn Weirds for a while. Pursuit of Flight was nearly unfair with that little guy. I got bored with GTC pretty quick, but did have fun with the Extort/Cipher deck on the backs of Basilica Screecher and friends. DGM didn't impress me much; seemed like a crapshoot too often.
So, basically, I love drafting, and each set has something I love about it, but some aren't deep enough to keep my interest.
My Decks:
EDH: Sygg, River Cutthroat , Road to Scion
Grimgrin, Corpseborn
Modern: Polytokes
IRL: Progenitus Polymorph , Goblins
Just a friendly reminder that I will drive this car off a bridge
Modern masters, the best format ever created for draft by Wotc. Yes it is expensive, but it is well worth it.
3XRav/RGD/3XROE, all were about equal to me. Many different possible decks, pretty equal in power.
3XTSP/TPF, Big sets/block, Makes for some strange decks, but because of the size everyone was on equal ground.
3XINN, Good set with solid archetypes. Good game play.
The number one thing I look for in a good format is that a good proportion of the commons need to be playable in multiple archetypes.
So, do you think that Theros will be making your top single-set formats list? The general consensus seems to be that it has a particularly high number of common playables spread across all of the colors.
An important word in that sentence is "archetypes."
My Decks:
EDH: Sygg, River Cutthroat , Road to Scion
Grimgrin, Corpseborn
Modern: Polytokes
IRL: Progenitus Polymorph , Goblins
Just a friendly reminder that I will drive this car off a bridge
Pretty much this. When the best color basically fits into only one deck type, the format really can't be any better than mediocre because it just isn't replayable enough.
(And since we're invited to name cards too: Waxmane Baku!)
(I'm on on this site much anymore. If you want to get in touch it's probably best to email me: dom@heffalumps.org)
Forum Awards: Best Writer 2005, Best Limited Strategist 2005-2012
5CB PotM - June 2005, November 2005, February 2006, April 2008, May 2008, Feb 2009
MTGSalvation Articles: 1-20, plus guest appearance on MTGCast #86!
<Limited Clan>
Triple ROE was amazing, Triple Innistrad was ok except for invisible stalker, triple RTR was fantastic and easily my favourite.
Rise of the Eldrazi: When the format started, I was all about Grixis. I forced it in every single draft I did. The deck was centered around Mnemonic Wall along with removal, bounce, card draw, and Surreal Memoir. The finisher could be whatever, like Halimar Wavewatch, Ulamog's Crusher or Artisan of Kozilek, but my favorite was Sphinx Bone-Wand, which frequently tabled. To my great misfortune, people caught on after a bit, but I've never won as much in any format as I did when RoE was new on Modo - I almost cracked 2000 rating. Later, I was more open to drafting green ramp as well, with the occasional B/R token deck, but Grixis is the deck in my heart.
Time Spiral: Unlike most formats I've played, I didn't have a favorite archetype or two in Time Spiral limited - I liked them all. With a preference for blue, of course, but all colors could imitate blue to an extent in this terrific draft format (at least with Planar Chaos in the mix). The reason why I enjoy this format so much is because of the number of decision each card is presenting. There are next to no vanillas, a ton of cards have several different functions and abilities, and many different ways to play them. There were also very few unplayable cards, a host of archetypes, and it was incredibly diverse. However, there were a couple of big offenders in TPF too - Sprout Swarm was not just obscenely broken for a common, it was also an incredibly tedious and unfun card. And you almost had to have a plan for it & keep it in mind at all times, and also during the draft make sure you were open to taking it and splashing it (if you weren't green) in case you opened it or got passed one, somehow. Key commons are almost too many to mention, but I should bring up Errant Ephemeron, at least. An absolutely massive and undercosted flier. There haven't been many better commons since.
Ravnica: Meaning the full block. It was a very balanced format (other than Selesnya being very bad, since you couldn't draft a shard or a wedge with Selesnya that had a guild in each pack), had fun gameplay, and plenty of the ingredients that make Limited play very fun. Experimenting with how different guilds interacted with each other was fun, and the manafixing to support this mixing was there (as opposed to in RTR block). It also had a number of minor subthemes and combos you could aim for. Unfortunately for me, I only really started drafting competitively when Time Spiral was released, so I don't have quite as much experience with it as the other sets here, but I still thoroughly enjoy it every time it's on Magic Online.
Modern Masters: This format is, I find, rather similar to Time Spiral both in that the Time Spiral cards and mechanics are largely dominating, and in that it has a very high density of playable cards, a lot of archetypes, and a lot of cards that present a lot of options at any given time. It didn't have Sprout Swarm, though. The format was fun, balanced, and most cards had answers that were easily accessible to you. Personally, I forced blue control in this format every single time. Usually Grixis control, but also 4CC or 5CC with sunburst cards. The key cards were Glacial Ray, Vivid lands, and Petals of Insight. The finisher was usually Errant Ephemeron, but it could be anything, really. Having a counterspell or two was important. Mana fixing needs to be prioritized, since I intend to put Plumeveil, Horobi's Whisper and Glacial Ray in the same deck. This format gave me my best win % after Rise of the Eldrazi, I'm pretty sure.
Innistrad: Spider Spawning, Burning Vengeance... so much value. It was more fun in the beginning, when everyone didn't attempt to fight over the sweet archetypes (I preferred it when my Burning Vengeances all tabled, dammit), but the format had an incredible amount of depth, so it was never bad. It had a few more duds than I liked and a few more vanilla-like cards than I would have preferred, but it still stands out as one of the better sets of the recent past. The process of having to show each other double faced cards was kinda lame, but it wasn't as big of a deal as we had feared. My preferred archetype was Grixis (big shocker there) Burning Vengeance. Beyond the enchantment itself, key cards included Silent Departure, Rolling Temblor, Think Twice, Forbidden Alchemy, Armored Skaab.
Grixis forever.
Honorable mentions go to M14 as the best Core Set, to Invasion for being the block with the most awesome value cards, and to Masters Edition 3 for being my personal hidden gem.
My memories of the entire block are kind of hazy, but I drafted a heck of a lot of triple Champions. So for what it's worth:
One of my favorite archtypes of the set was black-based Spirit/Arcane. Horobi's Whisper was the mainstay removal spell, and one of the main workhorses of the deck was the otherwise-unassuming looking Thief of Hope. That little dude did so much work in a Spirit deck, often netting five or six life if your opponent couldn't remove him, and then recurring one of your cheaper spirits when he did die. You had so much removal in black, in addition to HW you had Pull Under and Swallowing Plague, both of which were also Arcane spells so you could splice Whispers onto them (or Whispers onto Whispers) to just dismantle an opposing army. Green was a great pairing for black (Kodama's Might, Kodama's Reach, Hana Kami and Kami of the Wild Hunt), as did Blue (Consuming Vortex, Eye of Nowhere, Teller of Tales, and the various Soratami). Depending on how many Spirits you could draft, Devouring Greed was often a finisher that could come out of nowhere for eight or more points of life.
Champions was also one of the few sets in which there was an actual milling strategy available to you in Dampen Thought. I know a lot of people actively forced the deck for a while, grabbing the card really early and hoping to snag a second later in the draft.
If aggro is more your speed, White and Red had some great strategies around Bushido and equipment. Ronin Houndmaster was a staple in red, and the oddly useful Uncontrollable Anger was one of the earliest Auras I can remember actively drafting. It could land as a surprise combat trick, or you could force your opponent's little annoying creature out of the way to clear the path for your alpha strike, and it often made your creature a serious threat, even with the 'drawback'. Of course you also had Glacial Ray as the prime red removal spell, but critically you also had access to Frost Wielder. I loved playing multipes of that guy, because Champions was slow enough that you could feasibly get multiples out and just start sniping everything in sight. Even if you couldn't kill something, negating graveyard triggers/recursion and Soulshift was pretty clutch. Hanabi's Blast was a great card that made good use of late game land draws. You didn't always get to keep it, but getting to cast it two or three times in a game was serious advantage. You also had the red spell Devouring Rage, which could (like Greed), kill out of nowhere.
Man, I loved Champions. I'll be honest though, it'd be a little strange playing it again, since the combat-damage rules change happened afterwards. Cards like Sakura-Tribe Elder were so awesome because you could stack their damage and activate their ability for loads of value. I'm not sure how many other cards like STE were affected by the rules change.
Lyzolda, the Blood Witch from Ravnica suffered terribly from the change....
I still can't believe they changed combat damage. Such a bad decision.
Well that out of the way, it's nice to see so many people also enjoyed Kamigawa.
Onslaught block in particular is a completely different format to the way it was at release; morphs play differently (worse) without stacked damage, goblins are much worse when you can't stack damage and sac to Airdrop Condor and buddies, and the Great Creature Type Update broke the Amplify mechanic in half because Human wasn't a creature type when the mechanic was designed. All in all the format still sucks; it just sucks differently to the way it used to.
I kinda liked triple Avacyn, which everyone else hated, but that's partly because I once 3-0ed a draft when I was the only one at the table drafting black.
*DCI Rules Advisor*