Looking at Theros, there are 7 uncommons that I would not feel bad about first picking. There are 12 uncommons which I consider not main deck cards. For M14, there 8 uncommons I like as first picks, I see 15 as not main deck cards.
Averaging the two sets together it's roughly 8 first pick uncommoms per set and 14 not main deckable cards. One could do this on a percentage bases, meaning 13% should be first pickable, 11 cards and 23%, 19 cards should be make main decks. I think this is the incorrect way to look at it. I think cards that don't make the main deck at uncommon are a failure unless they are a highly useful sideboard card like Artisan's Sorrow.
I would like to see 20% of the cards be considered for a first pick and 20% of the cards be not main deck cards because they are terrible or sideboard cards. This puts the numbers at 16 potential first picks, 16 potential cards to not make the deck other than as a sideboard card and the remaining 48 as cards to fill in the deck. For a draft this gives an increase of 15% that a good uncommon will show up, but decreases the chance of getting a card that won't make the main deck by 100% (285% to 180%). Less chance to open cards that won't make the main deck is always good and the increase in power level is fairly small.
Seriously, I agree that a larger set size is a good thing for Limited. The more cards there are, the longer it takes to "solve" a format, and thus the longer the format remains entertaining.
There's no real way to determine which of the uncommons in M15 were the 20 "extra" ones. I suppose the most sensible way is that they're the 20 that would be least likely to be chosen over the others for printing if there hadn't been extra slots, but how do you look at the finished product and say which ones wouldn't have made the cut? Are they the 20 worst? The 20 best? The 20 most likely to form a degenerate combo? The 20 that raise the most rules questions? The 20 vanilla-est? The 20 weirdest?
There's no real way to determine which of the uncommons in M15 were the 20 "extra" ones. I suppose the most sensible way is that they're the 20 that would be least likely to be chosen over the others for printing if there hadn't been extra slots, but how do you look at the finished product and say which ones wouldn't have made the cut? Are they the 20 worst? The 20 best? The 20 most likely to form a degenerate combo? The 20 that raise the most rules questions? The 20 vanilla-est? The 20 weirdest?
And ultimately, the question itself is probably meaningless because the 80 cards are designed collectively as a single set. Sure, a few were probably designed more-or-less independently, but on the whole it's a bit like looking at a car and trying to identify which of the four wheels is the "extra" one. It's not made by starting with a three-wheeled vehicle and stapling another one on; it's made from scratch to work with the four it does have.
The pessimist: (taking the 20 worst uncommons) "Wow, they really screwed it up by adding these twnety crappy cards to the set!"
The optimist: (taking the 20 best uncommons) "Wow, they made a great job adding these twenty cards! The set would have sucked without them!"
The weirdo: "Phew! Without these twenty additional uncommons there would have been no green uncommons!"
I'm fairly sure he meant that you'll have to see the uncommons to see if it's an issue. They could use the extra slots to print cards that increase the consistency of the build around me strategies by doing similar things, which hasn't really been done much (successfully) in the past. They tried it with DKA and the cantrip on flashback enchantment, it just didn't work out well because the card wasn't good. Had they put more uncommons into M13, for example, they could have had a second uncommon enchantment or creature that triggered each time you gained x life to make up for the reduced chances of getting two Angelic Accords.
More cards is better for limited, although Wotc has gotten worse at developing limited formats since implementation of new world order.
Resulting in such terrible limited formats as ROE and Innistrad.
ROE was awesome. Innistrad was awesome, although it got considerably worse with the addition of Dark Ascension, which was a terrible set. Innistrad was mediocre to draft. Scars of Mirrodin was decent, Av restored was terrible, RTR was mediocre, Gatecrash was terrible, full block was mediocre, and Theros first two sets were terrible with the final set pushing the overall block to meidiocre. Not a great track record.
Resulting in such terrible limited formats as ROE and Innistrad.
In the first ROE Drive to Work, Maro bemoans the fact that Brian Tinsman was less onboard with NWO than he (Maro) would have liked. Take that as you will.
Off the top of my head, that's only a few possible downsides, and the only "upside" I can see is the set being functional in a way that allows us to ignore the change in practice.
M14 was a great core set to draft, so I'll stay positive and hope they'll do their job well.
I consider more cards, in general, to be an upside - don't we generally prefer large sets to small sets? Acknowledging all the things above that can go wrong, if they *don't* than I think it will be a net positive (though as stated above, it will probably won't be hugely noticeable).
By increasing the number of uncommon to 80, the average number of copies of any given uncommon in a draft has dropped from 1.2 to .9. Basically, don't expect to see specific archetype-defining uncommons in every draft.
And how do you plan to evaluate that?
The pessimist: (taking the 20 worst uncommons) "Wow, they really screwed it up by adding these twnety crappy cards to the set!"
The optimist: (taking the 20 best uncommons) "Wow, they made a great job adding these twenty cards! The set would have sucked without them!"
The weirdo: "Phew! Without these twenty additional uncommons there would have been no green uncommons!"
Looking at Theros, there are 7 uncommons that I would not feel bad about first picking. There are 12 uncommons which I consider not main deck cards. For M14, there 8 uncommons I like as first picks, I see 15 as not main deck cards.
Averaging the two sets together it's roughly 8 first pick uncommoms per set and 14 not main deckable cards. One could do this on a percentage bases, meaning 13% should be first pickable, 11 cards and 23%, 19 cards should be make main decks. I think this is the incorrect way to look at it. I think cards that don't make the main deck at uncommon are a failure unless they are a highly useful sideboard card like Artisan's Sorrow.
I would like to see 20% of the cards be considered for a first pick and 20% of the cards be not main deck cards because they are terrible or sideboard cards. This puts the numbers at 16 potential first picks, 16 potential cards to not make the deck other than as a sideboard card and the remaining 48 as cards to fill in the deck. For a draft this gives an increase of 15% that a good uncommon will show up, but decreases the chance of getting a card that won't make the main deck by 100% (285% to 180%). Less chance to open cards that won't make the main deck is always good and the increase in power level is fairly small.
Great. I like more cards
Oh boy, another cardboard rectangle!
Seriously, I agree that a larger set size is a good thing for Limited. The more cards there are, the longer it takes to "solve" a format, and thus the longer the format remains entertaining.
There's no real way to determine which of the uncommons in M15 were the 20 "extra" ones. I suppose the most sensible way is that they're the 20 that would be least likely to be chosen over the others for printing if there hadn't been extra slots, but how do you look at the finished product and say which ones wouldn't have made the cut? Are they the 20 worst? The 20 best? The 20 most likely to form a degenerate combo? The 20 that raise the most rules questions? The 20 vanilla-est? The 20 weirdest?
And ultimately, the question itself is probably meaningless because the 80 cards are designed collectively as a single set. Sure, a few were probably designed more-or-less independently, but on the whole it's a bit like looking at a car and trying to identify which of the four wheels is the "extra" one. It's not made by starting with a three-wheeled vehicle and stapling another one on; it's made from scratch to work with the four it does have.
I'm fairly sure he meant that you'll have to see the uncommons to see if it's an issue. They could use the extra slots to print cards that increase the consistency of the build around me strategies by doing similar things, which hasn't really been done much (successfully) in the past. They tried it with DKA and the cantrip on flashback enchantment, it just didn't work out well because the card wasn't good. Had they put more uncommons into M13, for example, they could have had a second uncommon enchantment or creature that triggered each time you gained x life to make up for the reduced chances of getting two Angelic Accords.
ROE was awesome. Innistrad was awesome, although it got considerably worse with the addition of Dark Ascension, which was a terrible set. Innistrad was mediocre to draft. Scars of Mirrodin was decent, Av restored was terrible, RTR was mediocre, Gatecrash was terrible, full block was mediocre, and Theros first two sets were terrible with the final set pushing the overall block to meidiocre. Not a great track record.
In the first ROE Drive to Work, Maro bemoans the fact that Brian Tinsman was less onboard with NWO than he (Maro) would have liked. Take that as you will.
I consider more cards, in general, to be an upside - don't we generally prefer large sets to small sets? Acknowledging all the things above that can go wrong, if they *don't* than I think it will be a net positive (though as stated above, it will probably won't be hugely noticeable).
Check out my expected lands table at:
https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Airj6A6lYAz_dG05T2JETnVTak1xQ0tqOHNSdEJLWVE&hl=en_US#gid=0