I'm refining an Innistrad draft sim/cube I own and had a quick question on power balance: was Olivia Voldaren as much a draft wrecker as Drana, Kalastria Bloodchief was during Rise of the Eldrazi? In my draft sims, I try to put together a powerful set of rares and mythic, but I will almost always exclude the set's unbeatable super bombs like Drana and most planeswalkers.
I'm just inquiring about Olivia because I had specifically excluded her from my first draft, and would need to go out and pick up a copy were she balanced enough for inclusion.
Not quite. She's multicolor of course, which naively reduces the odds someone can play her by a factor of 4. She's a 3/3, which makes her susceptible to Brimstone Volley (for a while), and you can also frequently kill her with Prey Upon or Smite the Monstrous, whereas I believe Drana only died to Flame Slash at common. Additionally, Burning Vengeance doesn't really care, certain Spider Spawning decks wouldn't care that much, and INN has aggro archetypes which could threaten to just tap her for a couple of turns and kill you, which ROE largely did not.
On the other hand, she is probably even more insane than Drana once she untaps, and she is an entire mana cheaper. She's warps the majority of the games she's drawn in, and I probably wouldn't bother including her unless you specifically want to give RB vamps (by which I mean the RB aggro archetype generally, which usual had some vampires) some extra juice at mythic.
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I primarily play limited, so most of my spoiler season comments view cards through that lens.
If you're included a curated selection of rares/mythics, I think Olivia is an easy cut. While she may not be as much of a draft wrecker as Drana, she's still pretty far outside what I'd consider a healthy power range for rares in Limited. I'm pretty sure I'd include either/both planeswalkers from ISD before Olivia, if that gives you an idea of where she stands (hovers?).
Olivia was easily the top bomb rare in ISD, but ISD wasn't really format defined by bombs. She was also one of relatively few reasons to want to be BR in a format that was not especially rewarding to vampire decks. I'm not saying she should be included, since I'm not sure she ever contributed to a single fun game of limited Magic, but she is a factor in the balance of the set. I think if you were going to go so far as to cut her from the environment, then a far more deserving card that should also be cut is Travel Preparations. Then at least you're pairing a nerf to the least consistently good deck in the format with a nerf to the most consistently good deck in the format.
I don't know... not including a particular mythic isn't going to have much effect at all on any archetypes/the environment. (It's also normal for draft sims to not include all mythics, because doing that while keeping the rarities correct requires an enormous cube, literally thousands of cards). But cutting the key common from a major archetype would be a huge change.
FWIW, I actually have an Innistrad draft cube that I've been maintaining for the last couple years. It started with a nearly exact reproduction of the commons and uncommons, with what I felt was a balanced and representative selection of rares. But I've been tweaking it as I go along and doing a little curating. For instance, as puddlejumper noted, red-black (really red in general IMO) was a little underpowered and GW was a little too good... not enough to wreck the format, but you noticed if you drafted enough.
My thoughts on what I've been doing with my Innistrad cube, in case Dolono or anyone else finds it helpful:
What I've been doing is pruning back the quantities of the more egregiously bad/unplayable commons and uncommons and making up the numbers with just a dash of Dark Ascension cards. The idea is to simultaneously achieve three goals:
1 - Slightly boost the power level/pack depth. Not enough that it feels like a different format, but enough so that when you finally wrangle 6-10 people for a cube draft, nobody sees a bunch of crap packs or ends up with a truly disastrous deck. I think a conservative nudge in this direction makes for a better experience overall. It also helps 6-person pods produce more normal-looking draft decks, something that comes up more often when you're organizing a cube draft than it does at FNM.
2 - Tweak color balance, e.g. by doing more tinkering with red and less with white. As above, the balance was a little off in Innistrad, and this is one way that DKA actually improved on 3xISD.
3 - Introduce the BW Human Sacrifice archetype from DKA. I really liked this deck, which IMO was the other thing DKA did right. What DKA did wrong was mainly to dilute ISD's niche archetypes (e.g. Spider Spawning) so you couldn't really draft them anymore... but since I'm not touching the frequency of any of those cards, we get to have our cake and eat it too.
BTW, I strongly support the creation of any and all Innistrad cubes. Drafting Innistrad for free, forever, is basically all I want out of Magic.
My cube is composed of 4 of each common (minus the worst couple of commons from each color, which I'll identify below), 2 of each uncommon (minus the worst), and 36 rares. Packs are assembled in the standard 3 packs of 11c/3u/1r config, although sometimes my group does 4 packs of 8c/2u/1r when there are fewer players available. Each sim is trying to approximate something like a "most playable box a group could possibly have picked up and drafted."
Here's the selection of rares/mythics I've included, and the excluded commons and uncommons for each color. These were refined using data off of draft bestiare, and then just tweaked a little based on personal interests:
What? Memory's Journey was an important component of the INN draft experience, as the Journey+Runic Repetition package really helped with the inevitability of the more self-milling (read: better) Spawning decks. I'm sure there are a bunch of blue uncommons which could be removed to much less effect.
Edit: Alright, I jsut looked at the blue uncommons, and there aren't actually that many. I think Curiosity is the easy cut, although you could also just axe Invisible Stalker for fun concerns.
Thanks for the recommendation. That seems like a reasonable substitution (curiosity was out during my first draft, but statistics on draft bestiare prompted me to try swapping it with memory's journey).
I didn't really feel like Drana was that oppressive either, to be honest. There were a number of commons that dealt with her, so although she was clearly incredibly strong and a first pick slam, she was no Pack Rat in my book.
But she was more oppressive than Olivia simply due to the fact that she was rare while Olivia was mythic. But Olivia was one of the top three cards in the set; the others being Devil's Play and Bloodline Keeper. I don't think we ever really managed to conclude which of them was the best one, but if Olivia had been single color, I'm pretty sure it'd have been her.
And yes, Memory's Journey is not a card you can cut. That's the kind of card that makes Innistrad great!
I really hope we can someday have a conversation about bombs being unreasonable in the context of them being like Olivia instead of being like Pack Rat. I mean, considering relative frequency (i.e. Jitte was a much rarer rare than PR was), it's the single most disruptively overpowered card in the history of limited Magic, yeah? Something doesn't need to compare favorably to Pack Rat to be pretty darn oppressive.
@seisyll:
I've got the latest version of my cube in an excel spreadsheet. There isn't a way to upload such files to the forums, is there? I thought I'd seen spreadsheet files in posts before, but maybe I'm thinking of a different forum.
I really hope we can someday have a conversation about bombs being unreasonable in the context of them being like Olivia instead of being like Pack Rat. I mean, considering relative frequency (i.e. Jitte was a much rarer rare than PR was), it's the single most disruptively overpowered card in the history of limited Magic, yeah? Something doesn't need to compare favorably to Pack Rat to be pretty darn oppressive.
I can't help but interpret this question as an attempt to fail to have a conversation about bombs being unreasonable without comparing them to Pack Rat, which seems a bit ironic to me considering the context.
But nope. Clamp didn't play badly in limited. It was abusable in constructed but it actually played pretty much as intended in limited. Crystal Shard was a more oppressive presence in that format (pre-M10-rules-changes-ruining-Magic-forever, of course).
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I'm just inquiring about Olivia because I had specifically excluded her from my first draft, and would need to go out and pick up a copy were she balanced enough for inclusion.
Thanks much!
-D
"Personally I love high-riak, low-reqars gambles. Life's best with a decent amount of riak. And f*** reqars."
On the other hand, she is probably even more insane than Drana once she untaps, and she is an entire mana cheaper. She's warps the majority of the games she's drawn in, and I probably wouldn't bother including her unless you specifically want to give RB vamps (by which I mean the RB aggro archetype generally, which usual had some vampires) some extra juice at mythic.
Interested in Custom Card Creation.
My Cube:Cardinal Custom Cube
A custom version of a third modern masters: MM2019
(filter->rarity to see in set rarity).
FWIW, I actually have an Innistrad draft cube that I've been maintaining for the last couple years. It started with a nearly exact reproduction of the commons and uncommons, with what I felt was a balanced and representative selection of rares. But I've been tweaking it as I go along and doing a little curating. For instance, as puddlejumper noted, red-black (really red in general IMO) was a little underpowered and GW was a little too good... not enough to wreck the format, but you noticed if you drafted enough.
My thoughts on what I've been doing with my Innistrad cube, in case Dolono or anyone else finds it helpful:
1 - Slightly boost the power level/pack depth. Not enough that it feels like a different format, but enough so that when you finally wrangle 6-10 people for a cube draft, nobody sees a bunch of crap packs or ends up with a truly disastrous deck. I think a conservative nudge in this direction makes for a better experience overall. It also helps 6-person pods produce more normal-looking draft decks, something that comes up more often when you're organizing a cube draft than it does at FNM.
2 - Tweak color balance, e.g. by doing more tinkering with red and less with white. As above, the balance was a little off in Innistrad, and this is one way that DKA actually improved on 3xISD.
3 - Introduce the BW Human Sacrifice archetype from DKA. I really liked this deck, which IMO was the other thing DKA did right. What DKA did wrong was mainly to dilute ISD's niche archetypes (e.g. Spider Spawning) so you couldn't really draft them anymore... but since I'm not touching the frequency of any of those cards, we get to have our cake and eat it too.
BTW, I strongly support the creation of any and all Innistrad cubes. Drafting Innistrad for free, forever, is basically all I want out of Magic.
Would you mind posting your ISD cube somewhere? I have one as well (similar goals) and would love to see how you've assembled yours.
On the other hand, I understand if you haven't got it typed in and everything yet. Thanks!
My cube is composed of 4 of each common (minus the worst couple of commons from each color, which I'll identify below), 2 of each uncommon (minus the worst), and 36 rares. Packs are assembled in the standard 3 packs of 11c/3u/1r config, although sometimes my group does 4 packs of 8c/2u/1r when there are fewer players available. Each sim is trying to approximate something like a "most playable box a group could possibly have picked up and drafted."
Here's the selection of rares/mythics I've included, and the excluded commons and uncommons for each color. These were refined using data off of draft bestiare, and then just tweaked a little based on personal interests:
White rares/mythics
Blue
Cackling Counterpart (would be snapcaster if $ wasn't a concern)
Black
Red
Instigator Gang (personal preference over charmbreaker devils)
Green
Daybreak Ranger (personal preference over tree of redemption)
Gold/Artifact/Land
Excluded Commons
Excluded Uncommons
"Personally I love high-riak, low-reqars gambles. Life's best with a decent amount of riak. And f*** reqars."
What? Memory's Journey was an important component of the INN draft experience, as the Journey+Runic Repetition package really helped with the inevitability of the more self-milling (read: better) Spawning decks. I'm sure there are a bunch of blue uncommons which could be removed to much less effect.
Edit: Alright, I jsut looked at the blue uncommons, and there aren't actually that many. I think Curiosity is the easy cut, although you could also just axe Invisible Stalker for fun concerns.
Interested in Custom Card Creation.
My Cube:Cardinal Custom Cube
A custom version of a third modern masters: MM2019
(filter->rarity to see in set rarity).
"Personally I love high-riak, low-reqars gambles. Life's best with a decent amount of riak. And f*** reqars."
But she was more oppressive than Olivia simply due to the fact that she was rare while Olivia was mythic. But Olivia was one of the top three cards in the set; the others being Devil's Play and Bloodline Keeper. I don't think we ever really managed to conclude which of them was the best one, but if Olivia had been single color, I'm pretty sure it'd have been her.
And yes, Memory's Journey is not a card you can cut. That's the kind of card that makes Innistrad great!
I've got the latest version of my cube in an excel spreadsheet. There isn't a way to upload such files to the forums, is there? I thought I'd seen spreadsheet files in posts before, but maybe I'm thinking of a different forum.
Skullclamp?
I can't help but interpret this question as an attempt to fail to have a conversation about bombs being unreasonable without comparing them to Pack Rat, which seems a bit ironic to me considering the context.
But nope. Clamp didn't play badly in limited. It was abusable in constructed but it actually played pretty much as intended in limited. Crystal Shard was a more oppressive presence in that format (pre-M10-rules-changes-ruining-Magic-forever, of course).