maybe this is related to the "Is Dash beatable?" thread,
but i'm getting sick of red.
to be fair, i haven't actually played any additional [real, non-Cockatrice] DTK draft other than the first one i did. i have been watching channelfireball drafts, though.
i can't help but feel that the developers messed up bad and made red wa~~y too strong. i feel that even if a weaker colour is WAY open (blue or green), it STILL can't compete against an Rx deck as long as fewer than 4 people are in red.
i hate the idea that i either have to play red, too, or consciously build my deck to not get clobbered by red decks. i feel so constrained. i feel that there are all these other cards in the set that kind of become "useless filler" and that the viable archetypes are either "red" or "things that survive against red".
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this makes me wonder on what makes for a good format, for various people? my Timmy/Tammy - Johnny/Jenny motivations make me want to have the time to play cool stuff in unusual combinations. but i wonder: do Spikes even care if one colour or or one archetype is dominant? do Spikes simply happily see how to play the best strategy, and are happy as long as they feel that superior strategy has high influence on win % ?
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some of my favourite flavour text:
Wayward Soul "no home no heart no hope"
—Stronghold graffito
Raging Goblin He raged at the world, at his family, at his life. But mostly he just raged.
I'm not sure if your rant really fits with the title of your thread, but let me see if I can tackle both aspects here.
1) As someone who cares about winning, I only care that I have ways to outdraft my opponents and, barring that, still be able to outplay them because my cards don't leave me completely unable to compete with them. While I find some formats more fun than others, I feel that most of the past few formats have allowed me to use my skill to win without having to rely on my luck in opening good rares. Obviously, FKK was a little annoying because of the power level of the Fate rares (except for the ones I kept opening), but even there you could just try to read what the open strategies were and come up with a competitive deck.
2) It's really difficult to judge a format based on one draft, particularly when that draft occurs when the format is new. You admit to having played in only one draft, and yet somehow you're sick of red. If red is so bad, what does that make black (the color many feel is the actual strongest in DDF)? Likewise, if red is so strong, who is letting these players gather all the red?
Draft is self correcting. If B/R is the hotness, then shouldn't everyone at the table be taking the good B/R cards? And in so doing, don't they make that deck weaker and enable someone to beat them with all the good stuff from the other colors? Besides, you always have to draft with opposing strategies in mind unless you are drafting a format where there is somehow a non-interactive combo deck that just wins when it assembles all its pieces. If you can't interact with what your opponent is doing, that's usually a recipe for disaster in any format.
So far in this format (against players of varying skill levels), I've won a PPTQ drafting G/W bolster and I've had another draft where I won a game by activating the Formidable ability of Shaman of Forgotten Ways. There is definitely hope if you don't want to feel forced into any one color or strategy.
I had an opponent yesterday who easily stabilized at 9 and started beating me down with Lotus Path Djinns. I ripped runner runner Sarkhan's Rage. This format is the worst!
/troll
In all seriousness the format is actually fine as far as I can see. Red is strong, sure, but so is black, and green is very deep and is only held back by a weak pack 3. Blue is a little underpowered in the first two packs, but if you can correctly read a blue pack 1 signal it's quite rewarding due to its depth and power in FRF.
I think in general tricks are a little too strong in this format. There's a lot of solid removal, but most of it is sorcery speed or very expensive, and there are many cheap tricks in all colors; this means that the format is a little overaggressive as it's very hard to block and not get wrecked if you're low on mana. It's not a bad format overall though. Certainly better than Theros and the like.
Most of the time my favourite formats have three things:
1. Good color balance
2. Each color has a minimum of two directions you can go with it
3. Synergy is present but not so obvious that it trumps everything else
These three things combine to give you a format where a majority of your 45 picks will give you a relevant and interesting decision to make. DDF is not quite there, it fails point 2 - the optimal strategy for 99% of red and white decks is to make small dudes and turn them sideways backed with tricks. That's fine for balance, since those decks will often not be the best on the table; it's just not very interesting.
i actually have to think more clearly about how my rant is connected to my question, now.
i think it goes something like this:
1. It has become an emotionally-solidified belief of mine that this format is terrible.
1a. (Here is my rant trying to illustrate why I suspect I came to this belief).
2. It makes me feel dissapointment when I don't like a format.
3. I want to hear other's thoughts on feel sad (or feeling happy) about formats so I can shift the emotional quality of my belief (to dissapointment to acceptance, maybe). Spikes especially might give me insight because they might point out ways of approaching a format that I didn't think about.
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You admit to having played in only one draft, and yet somehow you're sick of red. If red is so bad, what does that make black (the color many feel is the actual strongest in DDF)?
my sickness of red comes from doing fake-drafts, cockatrice drafts, and watching channelfireball drafters. i still can't get over the "geez, red is just OP" when i watch it, even if i'm trying to force myself to see that maybe red isn't so OP after all -- i just can't see the truth in that.
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warplord:
it comforts me to hear you say that
you think these formats /do/ offer you ways to outplay your opponent (vs luck being the sole factor)
that you did well with G/W bolster
hearing this from a competitive player does something to soothe this anti-red bias that i cannot shake off just from watching youtube drafters.
Draft is self correcting. If B/R is the hotness, then shouldn't everyone at the table be taking the good B/R cards? And in so doing, don't they make that deck weaker and enable someone to beat them with all the good stuff from the other colors? Besides, you always have to draft with opposing strategies in mind unless you are drafting a format where there is somehow a non-interactive combo deck that just wins when it assembles all its pieces. If you can't interact with what your opponent is doing, that's usually a recipe for disaster in any format.
these two points i'm don't feel agreement with.
- my impression is that red is simply so strong that it can support even up to three drafters at the table. and, even if it is self-correcting (ie even if red is hypothetically so strong that it can support 8 players), i personally don't want to feel that i am forced to play a certain colour
- i think i don't mind drafting with many varied opposing strategies in mind, but it's when i think that one strategy is just so oppressive or dominant that it's THE most important strategy i have to keep in mind that i get unhappy.
toodumbtopost:
In all seriousness the format is actually fine as far as I can see. Red is strong, sure, but so is black, and green is very deep and is only held back by a weak pack 3. Blue is a little underpowered in the first two packs, but if you can correctly read a blue pack 1 signal it's quite rewarding due to its depth and power in FRF.
i like hearing this, too. my bias tells me that red is way stronger than the other colours, so hearing you acknoweldge that it's strong but so are black and green, allows me to be more open to the idea that red might not be completely dominant.
in the one IRL draft i did, green was WAAAY open, but i got trampled over by Goblin Hellcutters and good removal (and Lose Calm and Sarkhan's Rage &etc), two matches in a row, which made me feel that red just has no weakness. my green cards that i thought were good against that deck (4 CMC 3/4s, 3 CMC 2/4s) seemed to do nothing against the consistent answers that my opponent had.
so i came away with a strong bias, that has only been strengthened with all the youtube drafts i see. was this simply bad luck against an unusually good red deck? i guess i don't have the analaytical skills to know, so this is why it's good to hear counter-impressions from actual competitive players.
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toodumbtopost,
if i understand you correctly, you're saying that it's not just balance that makes for a fun format (for you), but also interesting choices. and that red is a little one-dimensional, but that other colours definitely are workable and can go in more than one direction.
There's a lot of solid removal, but most of it is sorcery speed or very expensive, and there are many cheap tricks in all colors; this means that the format is a little overaggressive as it's very hard to block and not get wrecked if you're low on mana. It's not a bad format overall though. Certainly better than Theros and the like.
can you give me advice on how to, in this format that is more aggressive than usual, draft with Green and Blue and Black? [what are the different directions i can go with those colours?] do i have to be aggressive, myself? or are there viable non aggressive strategies? if so, .. how do i block (or how do i not be aggressive) and not get wrecked?
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Goblins have poor impulse control. Don't click this link!!
some of my favourite flavour text:
Wayward Soul "no home no heart no hope"
—Stronghold graffito
Raging Goblin He raged at the world, at his family, at his life. But mostly he just raged.
maybe this is related to the "Is Dash beatable?" thread,
but i'm getting sick of red.
to be fair, i haven't actually played any additional [real, non-Cockatrice] DTK draft other than the first one i did. i have been watching channelfireball drafts, though.
i can't help but feel that the developers messed up bad and made red wa~~y too strong. i feel that even if a weaker colour is WAY open (blue or green), it STILL can't compete against an Rx deck as long as fewer than 4 people are in red.
i hate the idea that i either have to play red, too, or consciously build my deck to not get clobbered by red decks. i feel so constrained. i feel that there are all these other cards in the set that kind of become "useless filler" and that the viable archetypes are either "red" or "things that survive against red".
----
this makes me wonder on what makes for a good format, for various people? my Timmy/Tammy - Johnny/Jenny motivations make me want to have the time to play cool stuff in unusual combinations. but i wonder: do Spikes even care if one colour or or one archetype is dominant? do Spikes simply happily see how to play the best strategy, and are happy as long as they feel that superior strategy has high influence on win % ?
Mostly I want games to allow me to most leverage playskill differential while also providing strategic depth to allow decks to feel different. I did very well throughout Theros limited (including a GP T8), but it sucked. Sure it wasn't as bad as Gatecrash, but the format so often came down to tempo and the primary way to recover tempo was to have the opponent stumble rather than anything you did (either that or griptide -- a key reason why that card was so insane in that format). Like, yeah, playskill still mattered (I can't think of a format where the most skilled player was not advantaged), but the games just didn't feel good.
M14, 3x KTK, 3x RTR, full TSP block -- all of these formats were a ton of fun, and that's independent of how well I did in them. M15 was even fine for me, and I remember our test drafts for PT M15 resulted in some crazy drafts that did really wierd things (For example, I remember a WRB reanimator-control deck that did very well, even though it was totally out of left field. Similarly, one of my teammates for GP Portland had hyper-specialized on GR Invasive Species + Hammerhand as an archetype).
It doesn't really matter to me if a single archetype is especially deep (refer to RTR where Selesnya often supported 3-4 players). What matters to me is how games play out -- it's way easier to play in multi-day events when you really enjoy and are passionate the format, and on top of that, it's easier to remain focused.
Just got to say, you've definitely earned distinction as an MTGS hero
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I like formats with long, interactive games, and many modal cards. Removal, flash creatures and other things to do at instant speed are nice. Formats where games are often about managing your resources and building incremental advantage rather than making one big play (i.e. summoning a bomb creature). I'm not just happy to play the best strategy; I want to play controlling decks with plenty of removal and card advantage. I may begrudgingly draft an aggressive deck every now and then, but my preference is to draft blue control every single time.
So no, not all Spikes, at least, are 100% win percentage oriented.
I can't say for all the veterans, but if we average the findings out we will probably see the veterans favoring a slower format. Take note that slower doesn't mean you can't shift to a faster gear, but at least there's options. And more importantly, diversification. Repeatability in a draft is a huge factor, and the speed is a definite correlation.
Wizards have data for the speeds of limited formats. I personally believe games that end (on average) turns 4 and 5 are fast ones, where 7-8 are on the slow end. I think we can all agree with DtK is a T5-T5.5 format. Zen was probably a solid T4-T4.5.
All gamers love to explore, and reinvent ways to win. Magic, especially limited is no different. If I ever had the power, I would limit no more than 3 jank cards (Lens of Clarity, Darksteel Relic, etc) per set.
Wizards have data for the speeds of limited formats. I personally believe games that end (on average) turns 4 and 5 are fast ones, where 7-8 are on the slow end. I think we can all agree with DtK is a T5-T5.5 format. Zen was probably a solid T4-T4.5.
According to Goldfish data, the average DTK draft game is 9.3 turns, and it's about average speed, so your estimates are way off. It's faster than Khans and Fate Reforged but not by a lot. Triple Theros for comparison was 8.7 turns which was the fastest in recent history.
Wizards have data for the speeds of limited formats. I personally believe games that end (on average) turns 4 and 5 are fast ones, where 7-8 are on the slow end. I think we can all agree with DtK is a T5-T5.5 format. Zen was probably a solid T4-T4.5.
According to Goldfish data, the average DTK draft game is 9.3 turns, and it's about average speed, so your estimates are way off. It's faster than Khans and Fate Reforged but not by a lot. Triple Theros for comparison was 8.7 turns which was the fastest in recent history.
This sounds much more correct than turn 4 or 5, which would honestly be a fast kill for aggro in Constructed.
Bear in mind, games can be effectively decided by Turn 4 or 5. Like if you have a really slow draw and your opponent curves out perfectly, you might be sitting there on Turn 4 thinking there's nothing I can draw to get out of this hole. But rarely are games literally decided so early, and you're really only going to be dead on Turn 4 or 5 if you had to mulligan or got an extremely unlucky draw.
I like formats with long, interactive games, and many modal cards. Removal, flash creatures and other things to do at instant speed are nice. Formats where games are often about managing your resources and building incremental advantage rather than making one big play (i.e. summoning a bomb creature). I'm not just happy to play the best strategy; I want to play controlling decks with plenty of removal and card advantage. I may begrudgingly draft an aggressive deck every now and then, but my preference is to draft blue control every single time.
So no, not all Spikes, at least, are 100% win percentage oriented.
Your definition, though, is basically what lends itself to higher win percentage. You define a format that lends itself to longer games, play decisions, less emphasis on tempo, and no bombs. These are the things that get allow the better player to gain advantages. The longer the games, the less bombs, and the more complex the cards are, the higher the win percentage will be for better players.
I like formats with long, interactive games, and many modal cards. Removal, flash creatures and other things to do at instant speed are nice. Formats where games are often about managing your resources and building incremental advantage rather than making one big play (i.e. summoning a bomb creature). I'm not just happy to play the best strategy; I want to play controlling decks with plenty of removal and card advantage. I may begrudgingly draft an aggressive deck every now and then, but my preference is to draft blue control every single time.
So no, not all Spikes, at least, are 100% win percentage oriented.
Your definition, though, is basically what lends itself to higher win percentage. You define a format that lends itself to longer games, play decisions, less emphasis on tempo, and no bombs. These are the things that get allow the better player to gain advantages. The longer the games, the less bombs, and the more complex the cards are, the higher the win percentage will be for better players.
And then of course people complain about the format being slow and grindy and nothing but boards stalls that runs to time...
I like formats with long, interactive games, and many modal cards. Removal, flash creatures and other things to do at instant speed are nice. Formats where games are often about managing your resources and building incremental advantage rather than making one big play (i.e. summoning a bomb creature). I'm not just happy to play the best strategy; I want to play controlling decks with plenty of removal and card advantage. I may begrudgingly draft an aggressive deck every now and then, but my preference is to draft blue control every single time.
So no, not all Spikes, at least, are 100% win percentage oriented.
Your definition, though, is basically what lends itself to higher win percentage. You define a format that lends itself to longer games, play decisions, less emphasis on tempo, and no bombs. These are the things that get allow the better player to gain advantages. The longer the games, the less bombs, and the more complex the cards are, the higher the win percentage will be for better players.
And then of course people complain about the format being slow and grindy and nothing but boards stalls that runs to time...
I didn't say it made them fun, just that it helps the better players out by having more plays and seeing more of the deck they drafted and built.
I like formats with long, interactive games, and many modal cards. Removal, flash creatures and other things to do at instant speed are nice. Formats where games are often about managing your resources and building incremental advantage rather than making one big play (i.e. summoning a bomb creature). I'm not just happy to play the best strategy; I want to play controlling decks with plenty of removal and card advantage. I may begrudgingly draft an aggressive deck every now and then, but my preference is to draft blue control every single time.
So no, not all Spikes, at least, are 100% win percentage oriented.
Your definition, though, is basically what lends itself to higher win percentage. You define a format that lends itself to longer games, play decisions, less emphasis on tempo, and no bombs. These are the things that get allow the better player to gain advantages. The longer the games, the less bombs, and the more complex the cards are, the higher the win percentage will be for better players.
And then of course people complain about the format being slow and grindy and nothing but boards stalls that runs to time...
I certainly do not complain about that. If rounds go to time, they should just play faster Avoiding unintentional draws really is very simple. And if you ever catch me complaining about a format being too slow and grindy, you should alert the mods about account theft, as that ain't me
But yeah, I'm not going to tell people what they should like or that they're wrong for liking different things, but what I personally like about Magic is what I described.
I'm fine with rounds taking forever. I play faster than my opponent 95% of the time so that's just going to mean more clock wins for me. I don't want to win that way, but I prefer it to losing. Now if it's 50ish minutes of dreadfully boring play, I'll just skip that format. But I'm perfectly happy with slow and grindy.
In general, Spike players should want games to go long because the longer the game goes, the more decisions each player has to make. The idea of being a Spike is that you're going to work hard to ensure you're making fewer errors than your opponent. You gain value from that by increasing the number of opportunities for mistakes per game.
Spikes should hate aggro, because once novice players learn how to draft aggro, they don't have to do a lot of thinking. It doesn't take a genius to go 2-drop, 3-drop, 4-drop, removal, combat trick, game over.
I personally enjoy slower, card-advantage-based formats more than faster, tempo-based formats.
(Usually. There have to be interesting, complex things going on in those long grindy games or I get really bored, so for instance I enjoyed New Phyrexia block draft but hated M14. Both were slow, grindy formats, but couple that with M14's awful color balance and core set simplicity and I found it unbearably dull, fighting AVR for the title of my least favorite format ever.)
I'm not convinced, though, by spairy's claim (and please forgive me if I've misunderstood it) that such formats are inherently more skill-intensive or skill-rewarding than tempo-oriented formats. A longer game will tend to have more decisions (though not necessarily; there are essentially no decisions to be made in many board-stalled turns).
However, I believe that tempo-oriented formats often require much more demanding and consequential strategic choices about your overall line of play that are skill-testing in the extreme. In NPH draft, for instance, there usually wasn't a ton of ambiguity as to which line you should follow, since you almost always just wanted to do whatever would provide you the greatest possible value from each of your cards. There's some skill in identifying that line, to be sure, but in a tempo-oriented format you need to give more consideration to giving up value in exchange for tempo. Identifying turn-by-turn whether you're trying to race or stabilize, and answering questions like if and when to chump block, or when play into a trick to tie up your opponent's mana... these are all difficult decisions that require planning several turns ahead, and they don't lend themselves to simple heuristics like "Never risk a 2-for-1" or "Hold your removal as long as possible" that were pretty good in formats like NPH-MBS-SOM.
The only thing I see as a strong point in favor of "Tempo-based formats are less rewarding of skill" is that they tend to punish mana screw really badly, which exacerbates those situations. That's fair.
All that said, I do enjoy slow, grindy formats more as a rule... but then I don't think I'm really a Spike. I think I'm a Timmy who likes a lot of the same things that Spikes do, because the "experience" that my Timmy heart wants to have is an interesting, beautifully played game with lots of back-and-forth and clever plays and intricate interactions. I don't care too much if I win as long as the ride is fascinating.
I personally enjoy slower, card-advantage-based formats more than faster, tempo-based formats.
(Usually. There have to be interesting, complex things going on in those long grindy games or I get really bored, so for instance I enjoyed New Phyrexia block draft but hated M14. Both were slow, grindy formats, but couple that with M14's awful color balance and core set simplicity and I found it unbearably dull, fighting AVR for the title of my least favorite format ever.)
I'm not convinced, though, by spairy's claim (and please forgive me if I've misunderstood it) that such formats are inherently more skill-intensive or skill-rewarding than tempo-oriented formats. A longer game will tend to have more decisions (though not necessarily; there are essentially no decisions to be made in many board-stalled turns).
However, I believe that tempo-oriented formats often require much more demanding and consequential strategic choices about your overall line of play that are skill-testing in the extreme. In NPH draft, for instance, there usually wasn't a ton of ambiguity as to which line you should follow, since you almost always just wanted to do whatever would provide you the greatest possible value from each of your cards. There's some skill in identifying that line, to be sure, but in a tempo-oriented format you need to give more consideration to giving up value in exchange for tempo. Identifying turn-by-turn whether you're trying to race or stabilize, and answering questions like if and when to chump block, or when play into a trick to tie up your opponent's mana... these are all difficult decisions that require planning several turns ahead, and they don't lend themselves to simple heuristics like "Never risk a 2-for-1" or "Hold your removal as long as possible" that were pretty good in formats like NPH-MBS-SOM.
The only thing I see as a strong point in favor of "Tempo-based formats are less rewarding of skill" is that they tend to punish mana screw really badly, which exacerbates those situations. That's fair.
All that said, I do enjoy slow, grindy formats more as a rule... but then I don't think I'm really a Spike. I think I'm a Timmy who likes a lot of the same things that Spikes do, because the "experience" that my Timmy heart wants to have is an interesting, beautifully played game with lots of back-and-forth and clever plays and intricate interactions. I don't care too much if I win as long as the ride is fascinating.
Punishing mana screw is definitely one of the bigger things, but the other is this:
You see more of your deck, thus the deck that you actually drafted and constructed is much more important. In tempo based formats, redundancy is key, as you see so many fewer cards and your opening hand is disproportionately important.
But it's also that tempo based formats lead to such a high percentage of games where one player is on the back foot the entire time and there is no possibility of recovery.
It's really akin to why the better player is such a massive favorite in true control mirror matches in constructed.
I enjoy slower formats as long as it isn't a matter of frequent boring board stalls, and I think Wizards has done a good job of avoid board stalls in the past several sets.
I miss the 3-color days of KTK but I really enjoy the morph mechanic as that a) adds elements of strategy and the unknown, b) makes it easier to smooth out the curve, and c) allows me to play the big (costly) stuff I enjoy playing without being dead due to not having enough 3 drops. I am enjoying DTK because it has a good number of morphs, and overall it is just a fun set (albeit not nearly as fun as KTK).
I think it's also important to recognize the "setup" cost in a format. Understandably, KtK being a 3 color format requires a bit of working. It's not often one gets to cast a wedge drop like Woolly Thoctar or Mantis Rider 100% on T3 every time. Having said that, there're intentionally slower 2-color formats like m14.
I would like to add that Spikes especially love a format that require more than the basic decisions of tapping your mana, casting creatures and smashing.
Although there might be Spikes (what I call a Spike's Spike) out there that have no preference for the speed or complexity of the format so long as they adjust and win. Winning is all that matters.
1. Good color balance
2. Each color has a minimum of two directions you can go with it
3. Synergy is present but not so obvious that it trumps everything else
These three things combine to give you a format where a majority of your 45 picks will give you a relevant and interesting decision to make. DDF is not quite there, it fails point 2 - the optimal strategy for 99% of red and white decks is to make small dudes and turn them sideways backed with tricks. That's fine for balance, since those decks will often not be the best on the table; it's just not very interesting.
To me it also fails at points 1 and 3 and this causes failure at point 2:
1)The color balance: The cards push you toward the dragon's colors (BR, WG, UW, BU and GR) as these are the color pairs that have clear synergy. This brings me neatly to point 3
3)The synergy is so obviously present in the dragon's colors but also obviously gone in the other 5 color pairs. I have seen things like harsh sustenance or Grim contest at last pick even though they are OK cards in the right deck. However, the WB synergy of warriors lacks the warrior lords to work well and is, at best, a weaker version of WG which puts tokens onto creatures. The big butts synergy of GB is also no longer there.
These combined leads to a lack of 2) as often the 2 directions are defined by the color combination you make. There still are 2 directions for each color but in a good draft format there should be more than 2 to divide the colors properly.
That said, I'm starting to get the hang of the format and even though I haven't opened a dragonbomb yet, I'm starting to do well with aggro decks like BR dash and WG bolster. The only disappointment in the set really is the lack of good dragons below rare.
I have had enough success with enemy colored decks that I don't really agree with the premise. The only color combination I've really struggled with is GB, and I think it's because I'm drafting the wrong cards in that combination.
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but i'm getting sick of red.
to be fair, i haven't actually played any additional [real, non-Cockatrice] DTK draft other than the first one i did. i have been watching channelfireball drafts, though.
i can't help but feel that the developers messed up bad and made red wa~~y too strong. i feel that even if a weaker colour is WAY open (blue or green), it STILL can't compete against an Rx deck as long as fewer than 4 people are in red.
i hate the idea that i either have to play red, too, or consciously build my deck to not get clobbered by red decks. i feel so constrained. i feel that there are all these other cards in the set that kind of become "useless filler" and that the viable archetypes are either "red" or "things that survive against red".
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this makes me wonder on what makes for a good format, for various people? my Timmy/Tammy - Johnny/Jenny motivations make me want to have the time to play cool stuff in unusual combinations. but i wonder: do Spikes even care if one colour or or one archetype is dominant? do Spikes simply happily see how to play the best strategy, and are happy as long as they feel that superior strategy has high influence on win % ?
Goblins have poor impulse control. Don't click this link!!
some of my favourite flavour text:
Wayward Soul
"no home no heart no hope"
—Stronghold graffito
Raging Goblin
He raged at the world, at his family, at his life. But mostly he just raged.
1) As someone who cares about winning, I only care that I have ways to outdraft my opponents and, barring that, still be able to outplay them because my cards don't leave me completely unable to compete with them. While I find some formats more fun than others, I feel that most of the past few formats have allowed me to use my skill to win without having to rely on my luck in opening good rares. Obviously, FKK was a little annoying because of the power level of the Fate rares (except for the ones I kept opening), but even there you could just try to read what the open strategies were and come up with a competitive deck.
2) It's really difficult to judge a format based on one draft, particularly when that draft occurs when the format is new. You admit to having played in only one draft, and yet somehow you're sick of red. If red is so bad, what does that make black (the color many feel is the actual strongest in DDF)? Likewise, if red is so strong, who is letting these players gather all the red?
Draft is self correcting. If B/R is the hotness, then shouldn't everyone at the table be taking the good B/R cards? And in so doing, don't they make that deck weaker and enable someone to beat them with all the good stuff from the other colors? Besides, you always have to draft with opposing strategies in mind unless you are drafting a format where there is somehow a non-interactive combo deck that just wins when it assembles all its pieces. If you can't interact with what your opponent is doing, that's usually a recipe for disaster in any format.
So far in this format (against players of varying skill levels), I've won a PPTQ drafting G/W bolster and I've had another draft where I won a game by activating the Formidable ability of Shaman of Forgotten Ways. There is definitely hope if you don't want to feel forced into any one color or strategy.
/troll
In all seriousness the format is actually fine as far as I can see. Red is strong, sure, but so is black, and green is very deep and is only held back by a weak pack 3. Blue is a little underpowered in the first two packs, but if you can correctly read a blue pack 1 signal it's quite rewarding due to its depth and power in FRF.
I think in general tricks are a little too strong in this format. There's a lot of solid removal, but most of it is sorcery speed or very expensive, and there are many cheap tricks in all colors; this means that the format is a little overaggressive as it's very hard to block and not get wrecked if you're low on mana. It's not a bad format overall though. Certainly better than Theros and the like.
Most of the time my favourite formats have three things:
1. Good color balance
2. Each color has a minimum of two directions you can go with it
3. Synergy is present but not so obvious that it trumps everything else
These three things combine to give you a format where a majority of your 45 picks will give you a relevant and interesting decision to make. DDF is not quite there, it fails point 2 - the optimal strategy for 99% of red and white decks is to make small dudes and turn them sideways backed with tricks. That's fine for balance, since those decks will often not be the best on the table; it's just not very interesting.
i think it goes something like this:
1. It has become an emotionally-solidified belief of mine that this format is terrible.
1a. (Here is my rant trying to illustrate why I suspect I came to this belief).
2. It makes me feel dissapointment when I don't like a format.
3. I want to hear other's thoughts on feel sad (or feeling happy) about formats so I can shift the emotional quality of my belief (to dissapointment to acceptance, maybe). Spikes especially might give me insight because they might point out ways of approaching a format that I didn't think about.
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my sickness of red comes from doing fake-drafts, cockatrice drafts, and watching channelfireball drafters. i still can't get over the "geez, red is just OP" when i watch it, even if i'm trying to force myself to see that maybe red isn't so OP after all -- i just can't see the truth in that.
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warplord:
it comforts me to hear you say that
hearing this from a competitive player does something to soothe this anti-red bias that i cannot shake off just from watching youtube drafters.
these two points i'm don't feel agreement with.
- my impression is that red is simply so strong that it can support even up to three drafters at the table. and, even if it is self-correcting (ie even if red is hypothetically so strong that it can support 8 players), i personally don't want to feel that i am forced to play a certain colour
- i think i don't mind drafting with many varied opposing strategies in mind, but it's when i think that one strategy is just so oppressive or dominant that it's THE most important strategy i have to keep in mind that i get unhappy.
toodumbtopost:
i like hearing this, too. my bias tells me that red is way stronger than the other colours, so hearing you acknoweldge that it's strong but so are black and green, allows me to be more open to the idea that red might not be completely dominant.
in the one IRL draft i did, green was WAAAY open, but i got trampled over by Goblin Hellcutters and good removal (and Lose Calm and Sarkhan's Rage &etc), two matches in a row, which made me feel that red just has no weakness. my green cards that i thought were good against that deck (4 CMC 3/4s, 3 CMC 2/4s) seemed to do nothing against the consistent answers that my opponent had.
so i came away with a strong bias, that has only been strengthened with all the youtube drafts i see. was this simply bad luck against an unusually good red deck? i guess i don't have the analaytical skills to know, so this is why it's good to hear counter-impressions from actual competitive players.
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toodumbtopost,
if i understand you correctly, you're saying that it's not just balance that makes for a fun format (for you), but also interesting choices. and that red is a little one-dimensional, but that other colours definitely are workable and can go in more than one direction.
can you give me advice on how to, in this format that is more aggressive than usual, draft with Green and Blue and Black? [what are the different directions i can go with those colours?] do i have to be aggressive, myself? or are there viable non aggressive strategies? if so, .. how do i block (or how do i not be aggressive) and not get wrecked?
Goblins have poor impulse control. Don't click this link!!
some of my favourite flavour text:
Wayward Soul
"no home no heart no hope"
—Stronghold graffito
Raging Goblin
He raged at the world, at his family, at his life. But mostly he just raged.
M14, 3x KTK, 3x RTR, full TSP block -- all of these formats were a ton of fun, and that's independent of how well I did in them. M15 was even fine for me, and I remember our test drafts for PT M15 resulted in some crazy drafts that did really wierd things (For example, I remember a WRB reanimator-control deck that did very well, even though it was totally out of left field. Similarly, one of my teammates for GP Portland had hyper-specialized on GR Invasive Species + Hammerhand as an archetype).
It doesn't really matter to me if a single archetype is especially deep (refer to RTR where Selesnya often supported 3-4 players). What matters to me is how games play out -- it's way easier to play in multi-day events when you really enjoy and are passionate the format, and on top of that, it's easier to remain focused.
Body Count: GRRRUUUUUUUUUUU
إن سرقت إسرق جمل
Level 1 Judge
My Cube for use with 6th ed. Rules
So no, not all Spikes, at least, are 100% win percentage oriented.
Wizards have data for the speeds of limited formats. I personally believe games that end (on average) turns 4 and 5 are fast ones, where 7-8 are on the slow end. I think we can all agree with DtK is a T5-T5.5 format. Zen was probably a solid T4-T4.5.
All gamers love to explore, and reinvent ways to win. Magic, especially limited is no different. If I ever had the power, I would limit no more than 3 jank cards (Lens of Clarity, Darksteel Relic, etc) per set.
UR Melek, Izzet ParagonUR, B Shirei, Shizo's CaretakerB, R Jaya Ballard, Task MageR,RW Tajic, Blade of the LegionRW, UB Lazav, Dimir MastermindUB, UB Circu, Dimir LobotomistUB, RWU Zedruu the GreatheartedRWU, GUBThe MimeoplasmGUB, UGExperiment Kraj UG, WDarien, King of KjeldorW, BMarrow-GnawerB, WBGKarador, Ghost ChieftainWBG, UTeferi, Temporal ArchmageU, GWUDerevi, Empyrial TacticianGWU, RDaretti, Scrap SavantR, UTalrand, Sky SummonerU, GEzuri, Renegade LeaderG, WUBRGReaper KingWUBRG, RGXenagos, God of RevelsRG, CKozilek, Butcher of TruthC, WUBRGGeneral TazriWUBRG, GTitania, Protector of ArgothG
According to Goldfish data, the average DTK draft game is 9.3 turns, and it's about average speed, so your estimates are way off. It's faster than Khans and Fate Reforged but not by a lot. Triple Theros for comparison was 8.7 turns which was the fastest in recent history.
This sounds much more correct than turn 4 or 5, which would honestly be a fast kill for aggro in Constructed.
UR Melek, Izzet ParagonUR, B Shirei, Shizo's CaretakerB, R Jaya Ballard, Task MageR,RW Tajic, Blade of the LegionRW, UB Lazav, Dimir MastermindUB, UB Circu, Dimir LobotomistUB, RWU Zedruu the GreatheartedRWU, GUBThe MimeoplasmGUB, UGExperiment Kraj UG, WDarien, King of KjeldorW, BMarrow-GnawerB, WBGKarador, Ghost ChieftainWBG, UTeferi, Temporal ArchmageU, GWUDerevi, Empyrial TacticianGWU, RDaretti, Scrap SavantR, UTalrand, Sky SummonerU, GEzuri, Renegade LeaderG, WUBRGReaper KingWUBRG, RGXenagos, God of RevelsRG, CKozilek, Butcher of TruthC, WUBRGGeneral TazriWUBRG, GTitania, Protector of ArgothG
Your definition, though, is basically what lends itself to higher win percentage. You define a format that lends itself to longer games, play decisions, less emphasis on tempo, and no bombs. These are the things that get allow the better player to gain advantages. The longer the games, the less bombs, and the more complex the cards are, the higher the win percentage will be for better players.
And then of course people complain about the format being slow and grindy and nothing but boards stalls that runs to time...
I didn't say it made them fun, just that it helps the better players out by having more plays and seeing more of the deck they drafted and built.
But yeah, I'm not going to tell people what they should like or that they're wrong for liking different things, but what I personally like about Magic is what I described.
In general, Spike players should want games to go long because the longer the game goes, the more decisions each player has to make. The idea of being a Spike is that you're going to work hard to ensure you're making fewer errors than your opponent. You gain value from that by increasing the number of opportunities for mistakes per game.
Spikes should hate aggro, because once novice players learn how to draft aggro, they don't have to do a lot of thinking. It doesn't take a genius to go 2-drop, 3-drop, 4-drop, removal, combat trick, game over.
(Usually. There have to be interesting, complex things going on in those long grindy games or I get really bored, so for instance I enjoyed New Phyrexia block draft but hated M14. Both were slow, grindy formats, but couple that with M14's awful color balance and core set simplicity and I found it unbearably dull, fighting AVR for the title of my least favorite format ever.)
I'm not convinced, though, by spairy's claim (and please forgive me if I've misunderstood it) that such formats are inherently more skill-intensive or skill-rewarding than tempo-oriented formats. A longer game will tend to have more decisions (though not necessarily; there are essentially no decisions to be made in many board-stalled turns).
However, I believe that tempo-oriented formats often require much more demanding and consequential strategic choices about your overall line of play that are skill-testing in the extreme. In NPH draft, for instance, there usually wasn't a ton of ambiguity as to which line you should follow, since you almost always just wanted to do whatever would provide you the greatest possible value from each of your cards. There's some skill in identifying that line, to be sure, but in a tempo-oriented format you need to give more consideration to giving up value in exchange for tempo. Identifying turn-by-turn whether you're trying to race or stabilize, and answering questions like if and when to chump block, or when play into a trick to tie up your opponent's mana... these are all difficult decisions that require planning several turns ahead, and they don't lend themselves to simple heuristics like "Never risk a 2-for-1" or "Hold your removal as long as possible" that were pretty good in formats like NPH-MBS-SOM.
The only thing I see as a strong point in favor of "Tempo-based formats are less rewarding of skill" is that they tend to punish mana screw really badly, which exacerbates those situations. That's fair.
All that said, I do enjoy slow, grindy formats more as a rule... but then I don't think I'm really a Spike. I think I'm a Timmy who likes a lot of the same things that Spikes do, because the "experience" that my Timmy heart wants to have is an interesting, beautifully played game with lots of back-and-forth and clever plays and intricate interactions. I don't care too much if I win as long as the ride is fascinating.
Punishing mana screw is definitely one of the bigger things, but the other is this:
You see more of your deck, thus the deck that you actually drafted and constructed is much more important. In tempo based formats, redundancy is key, as you see so many fewer cards and your opening hand is disproportionately important.
But it's also that tempo based formats lead to such a high percentage of games where one player is on the back foot the entire time and there is no possibility of recovery.
It's really akin to why the better player is such a massive favorite in true control mirror matches in constructed.
I miss the 3-color days of KTK but I really enjoy the morph mechanic as that a) adds elements of strategy and the unknown, b) makes it easier to smooth out the curve, and c) allows me to play the big (costly) stuff I enjoy playing without being dead due to not having enough 3 drops. I am enjoying DTK because it has a good number of morphs, and overall it is just a fun set (albeit not nearly as fun as KTK).
I would like to add that Spikes especially love a format that require more than the basic decisions of tapping your mana, casting creatures and smashing.
Although there might be Spikes (what I call a Spike's Spike) out there that have no preference for the speed or complexity of the format so long as they adjust and win. Winning is all that matters.
UR Melek, Izzet ParagonUR, B Shirei, Shizo's CaretakerB, R Jaya Ballard, Task MageR,RW Tajic, Blade of the LegionRW, UB Lazav, Dimir MastermindUB, UB Circu, Dimir LobotomistUB, RWU Zedruu the GreatheartedRWU, GUBThe MimeoplasmGUB, UGExperiment Kraj UG, WDarien, King of KjeldorW, BMarrow-GnawerB, WBGKarador, Ghost ChieftainWBG, UTeferi, Temporal ArchmageU, GWUDerevi, Empyrial TacticianGWU, RDaretti, Scrap SavantR, UTalrand, Sky SummonerU, GEzuri, Renegade LeaderG, WUBRGReaper KingWUBRG, RGXenagos, God of RevelsRG, CKozilek, Butcher of TruthC, WUBRGGeneral TazriWUBRG, GTitania, Protector of ArgothG
I have had enough success with enemy colored decks that I don't really agree with the premise. The only color combination I've really struggled with is GB, and I think it's because I'm drafting the wrong cards in that combination.