One thing I had not realized initially is that there are only two true-colorless commons. One is a playable six drop, which you certainly don't want too many, curve-wise. The other is a weird four drop which seems worse than BFZ's version. The P/T is not great for 4, vigilance kinda goes with mana production, but is otherwise not that exciting.
The uncommons are all great though, but they look like high picks. Which is part of the problem.
The problem is that Wizards decision of not allowing basic waste from outside the draft means you need to sacrifice some picks to mana fixing your colorless. You can't splash without using some of your picks. Given how good the uncommon and rare colorless is, there will be this awkward thing initially of figuring when to pick colorless mana lands. On the other hand, there are many such common lands, so it may not be that hard to get one or two. But that is hardly enough to play colorless...
Add to that the the newness of colorless probably means that more people will be trying them out, at least initially. The small number of commons will mean that the splash will end up being small, most if the time.
All in all, I think wizards tried to stay conservative with colorless. They didn't put enough commons to make it work except one or two drafters at most at the table, and I expect people to splash that one uncommon they took, or, equivalently, to draft one or two spells, just in case, and end up deciding not to play them, diluting the decks of those going for colorless. I'm afraid colorless will end up a train wreck or at best, a minor thing.
Based on the lack of commons, restricting colorless to a splash in most decks shows that development made a concious decision to make colorless mainly a splash color as opposed to making colorless a full blown 6th color, and honestly it seems better this way. As is, the requirement to draft your wastes adds an interesting requirement to be able to use these cards, which allows them to push the effects/colorless cards more than they would be able to otherwise (the green devoid rootwalla, for instance). Adding more support for the polorless theme at common and supplying unlimited amount of wastes would probably force them to lower the power level of the existing cards, and take away some of the uniqueness of these colorless cards as well. There are pros and cons to either approach, but the way they did it doesnt seem to be a blunder as much of it is choosing their desired pros, and I doubt that the format suffers at all from this decision. My opinion is that this is probably a lot more interesting than the alternative, but only time will tell.
I like that there is additional challenge in building the mana base, having to decide the priority of mana fixing in draft, or trying to decide on the mana in sealed. That was one of the features I enjoyed in KTK.
I don't think drafting colorless as though it was another full color will really be a thing, and the lack of commons should make the pretty obvious to even casual drafters.
I'm not sure if making the colorless card good is a positive or not. If people are super disciplined, it rewards those who happen to open a good uncommon early, in the first pack.
One way to look at the problem is that there are more common lands that produce colorless than there are colorless commons. So everyone will be picking colorless mana just in case, which might screw those who picked the colorless spells.
I guess we'll see. I'm just afraid it will always be a small splash off too few lands that mostly doesn't work out well.
It is too early for me to say with confidence but I think that drafting a few colorless sources will be fine in a 2-color deck, without too much affecting the ability to cast colored spells. Common colorless producing lands Crumbling Vestige, Holdout Settlement, and Unknown Shores are in my view good ways to help minimize the effect of color screw in a 2-color deck, and adding a Wastes or even two if you can't get the other colorless producing lands should not be too much of a problem as long as you don't go too far with lands which do not produced colored mana.
Part of that depends upon whether or not it is an 18 land format like BFZ is. 8-8-2colorless or 8-7-3colorless should work as long as you do not have low casting cost spells requiring double color such as Ancient Crab.
The payoff for having access to colorless at some point in the game seems worth splashing a small number of these lands, since many of the effects are very powerful. I also think that common Hedron Crawler is decent enough if the colorless is meaningful since it also ramps. Common Seer's Lantern is also okay in a pinch if you have some good high casting cost cards to ramp to.
I think that if you try for 3 color plus colorless, that could really be stretching it too far unless you can get a couple of the uncommon dual-lands or other fixing (green).
It's worth noting that the motivation to draft true colorless cards also incentives people to to play regular old 3-color decks, also. The mana fixing in this set is actively good (if not Khans level), and if some people are splashing for true colorless cards, then that opens the door for others to splash, say, black. I think it's very likely that 3-color decks are going to be the norm in this set.
While I agree that there are not enough common "true-colorless" cards to warrant it being a full second color in a deck, the excellent colorless activated abilities on many of the creatures leads me to believe that a large number of decks will pick up some colorless <> producers (especially the common lands) to get that value. In essence, even if you don't draft true colorless cards, you almost have to make a concerted effort to avoid having any cards that benefit from <>. Given that picking up those sources is of little cost to you, lets you activate your Kozilek's Shrieker, and also leaves you open to pick up a Spatial Contortion in pack 2, I can't help but think those lands, Hedron Crawler, Warden of Geometries, and other <> producers will be much more valuable than the impression I've gotten from people thus far.
Actually, colorless mana producers should be very high picks. I haven't really seen anyone claiming they won't be. I see a lot of people talking about trying to pick up 5-6 colorless sources, in fact, which means valuing them as literal first picks.
IMO the non-Wastes colorless producers will be high picks, so you can enable those cards sans hurting your mana. OTOH I doubt most decks will actually want Wastes, except as a one-of to be searched for.
Are the colorless ability activations worth the cost of picking colorless lands early? I admit I haven't looked at them closely, maybe they're dense and impactful enough to make it worthwhile.
In any case, this proves my point: not *everyone* can be picking them early and end up with enough. I suppose that your claim is that those who get them in pack one will be passed the others in the other two packs? That people won't pick them up if they haven't already got one in pack one?
Are the colorless ability activations worth the cost of picking colorless lands early? I admit I haven't looked at them closely, maybe they're dense and impactful enough to make it worthwhile.
In any case, this proves my point: not *everyone* can be picking them early and end up with enough. I suppose that your claim is that those who get them in pack one will be passed the others in the other two packs? That people won't pick them up if they haven't already got one in pack one?
I count 1 common in green, red, and 2 in black and blue that have colorless activated abilties that jump up almost an entire point in ratings (from say a 2.0 to 3.0) if you can activate the ability. Since its a small set, i would be really surprised if you didnt end up with at least one of these in any given deck, which suggests to me that youll probably want some incidental sources of colorless in your deck. Crumbling vestige in particular is intriguing to me: it seems like it would hurt your mana the least (although if you need the colorless mana rght away its bad, which is really interesting). Add a couple of uncommons, and it seems like there should be a real demand for at least a 3 source splash type of deal.
Im interested in seeing where seers lantern and warden of geometries end up. Hedron scrambler seems like a high pick just as a 2 mana ramp spell, but the other arent good enough to traditionally warrant playing without some synergies.
Are the colorless ability activations worth the cost of picking colorless lands early? I admit I haven't looked at them closely, maybe they're dense and impactful enough to make it worthwhile.
In any case, this proves my point: not *everyone* can be picking them early and end up with enough. I suppose that your claim is that those who get them in pack one will be passed the others in the other two packs? That people won't pick them up if they haven't already got one in pack one?
Think of it like splashing a 6th color. Not everyone will do it for starters, lets say half of the table. And among them for the most part it will be purely a splash, so only requiring 3-4 sources. Maybe one person is Ux and has a couple of the tappers, the flyer, and multiple true colorless cards and wants a real number of colorless sources. With so many random colorless sources floating around (scions count too) I just don't see it being a problem. Maybe it gets overdrafted at first, to the point that what you are concerned about happens, but that will self-correct in a hurry and happens with plenty of the new archetypes/mechanics that come out. And realistically with almost all of it at uncommon+ it will just be hard to really overdraft it to the point that you are describing.
One thing I had not realized initially is that there are only two true-colorless commons. One is a playable six drop, which you certainly don't want too many, curve-wise. The other is a weird four drop which seems worse than BFZ's version. The P/T is not great for 4, vigilance kinda goes with mana production, but is otherwise not that exciting.
The uncommons are all great though, but they look like high picks. Which is part of the problem.
The problem is that Wizards decision of not allowing basic waste from outside the draft means you need to sacrifice some picks to mana fixing your colorless. You can't splash without using some of your picks. Given how good the uncommon and rare colorless is, there will be this awkward thing initially of figuring when to pick colorless mana lands. On the other hand, there are many such common lands, so it may not be that hard to get one or two. But that is hardly enough to play colorless...
Add to that the the newness of colorless probably means that more people will be trying them out, at least initially. The small number of commons will mean that the splash will end up being small, most if the time.
All in all, I think wizards tried to stay conservative with colorless. They didn't put enough commons to make it work except one or two drafters at most at the table, and I expect people to splash that one uncommon they took, or, equivalently, to draft one or two spells, just in case, and end up deciding not to play them, diluting the decks of those going for colorless. I'm afraid colorless will end up a train wreck or at best, a minor thing.
I expect poeple to fight over colorless a lot, making all their decks weaker in the process. I'm going to just stick to what's open. Also, there'S no telling how many colorless sources will be opened. So you might end up with great cards that you can't cast/activate.
From what I've seen. Sealed pools only had 1 or two wastes in them on average. I don't know that the set can support more than 2 players per table trying to build colorless.
The colorless activated abilities are very strong and most of the cards with them are pretty awful without access to <> so you need to prioritize <> sources. Unknown Shores and Holdout Settlement are like top-tier commons because they make all colors. They are as good as Evolving Wilds was in BFZ and evolving Wilds is even better now because you can get a Wastes with it. If you don't want to fight over <>, your options are BW allies/cohort, GW Allies/support, U/W allies/good blue cards and RW aggro allies. I suppose R/U surge is also possible but unlikely since the payoff for drafting U/R/<> seems much higher. I'm pretty sure RG is not a real deck, there is no support for Landfall and a bunch of normal sized ground creatures is not the way to win at magic. BG tokens is not a deck either, there is no support for B/G synergies and Baloth Null is so good that everyone in G or B will grab it to splash. It's like Drana's Emissary, it's too good so it's impossible to actually get one midpack even if no one else is specifically B/W.
The one draft I did was triple Oath and I drafted an insane R/W aggro deck with multiple of all the white common allies backed up by red removal. I had an Eldrazi Displacer and it made my deck worse by trying to cram 2 Holdout Settlements into an aggro deck.
Are the colorless ability activations worth the cost of picking colorless lands early? I admit I haven't looked at them closely, maybe they're dense and impactful enough to make it worthwhile.
I think this is what will draw people into grabbing up colorless lands. Slaughter Drone and Kozilek's Shrieker in Bx Devoid aggro want you to not only have colorless lands but have colorless mana relatively early so you can activate their abilities on turns 4-6. Same with Stalking Drone. The alternative is that these potentially aggressive cards might just be much worse in draft than in sealed because you can't rely on enabling them early.
Cards like Maw of Kozilek and Gravity Negator, on the other hand, are probably fine if you only draw your colorless source late. I suspect these will both be good cards.
Blinding Drone will obviously be a far cry from Benalish Trapper (did anyone realize this card wasn't called "Benalish Tapper"?). Unless you have 5-6 colorless sources, its power level will depend on how useful it is to have a 1/3 that only reliably taps down lategame fatties.
Luckily black and blue both have common C producing-creatures and green has common scion producers. There are 2 C-producing creatures and Seer's Lantern in colorless itself, playable in any deck. I suspect that these, on top of the 2-ish colorless lands people will draft, will be what enables these creatures to work. So perhaps these colorless producers will be higher priority than they would appear just to enable other cards. Alternately, maybe that makes all of it just worse than drafting guys that are unconditionally good.
I am pretty sure that optimizing your colorless mana producers will be a key (if not _the_ key) to this draft format. You can have too many as well, and screw your colors.
I am sort of tempted to just eschew colorless costs for a few weeks and let people mana screw themselves and draft obligate colorless bombs they can't play. But then if I did that, I would be behind the learning curve once everyone else figures it out.
One other trick I picked up from playing against shaky manabases in the prerelease...
Suppose opponent only has one colorless mana source but more than one creature with colorless activations. If opponent attacks into your bigger creature with Slaughter Drone or Stalking Drone or Havoc Sower (and normally the correct play would be to let it through to avoid losing your better creature) but they ALSO have a creature on defense that needs colorless mana (or Blinding Drone or whatever), it's often correct to call their bluff. Now you're squeezing their resources. They can pay the colorless to kill your guy but then they might face an unfavorable attack on their turn, with their colorless mana now used up. When deciding on an attack, players may often forget they need the colorless mana on both ends but can't use it for both.
I don't know if this was a "reverse self fufilling prophecy" or what, but my 1st draft of the format I ~nearly completely fell into the colorless mana trap. I thought my deck was REALLY solid, but it had 2 flaws. I dedicated 5 reasonably high picks to colorless lands (including evolving wilds pack 3), and STILL my mana base was boned.
Obviously it was super greedy to run Baloth Null but
1) it's my best card
2) I got it at a reasonable time pack 2 after getting a very late Hissing Quagmire pack 1.
RESULT: 1-2 and a lot of mulligans. Turns out ye olde' 7-7-5-2 mana base is bad.
I suspect that the venting thread will have plenty of complaints about opponents with ridiculously greedy mana bases now that we have 6 types of mana instead of just 5. Still, it will be fun to try to strike the balance between power level and too much greed.
With 8 sources of colourless and.. I still lost the first match by not drawing any colourless :/, I am still on tilt a day later from those two games. I crushed my next two opponents. The other glaring problem was there was straight up no removal, I think I passed some early pack one but then took whatever I could get, either there wasn't any in the packs or people were sucking it all up. There were a lot of other people cutting me since this is the cool new deck everyone wants to play, two other colourless drafters.
Hmm yes manabases may get shakier now that the format has 5 colors.
I see what you did there.
I do think green will improve to the point of reasonable playability. Some of the cards in BFZ that were essentially useless, like Unnatural Aggression become pretty solid when green actually gets on/above curve beef.
The uncommons are all great though, but they look like high picks. Which is part of the problem.
The problem is that Wizards decision of not allowing basic waste from outside the draft means you need to sacrifice some picks to mana fixing your colorless. You can't splash without using some of your picks. Given how good the uncommon and rare colorless is, there will be this awkward thing initially of figuring when to pick colorless mana lands. On the other hand, there are many such common lands, so it may not be that hard to get one or two. But that is hardly enough to play colorless...
Add to that the the newness of colorless probably means that more people will be trying them out, at least initially. The small number of commons will mean that the splash will end up being small, most if the time.
All in all, I think wizards tried to stay conservative with colorless. They didn't put enough commons to make it work except one or two drafters at most at the table, and I expect people to splash that one uncommon they took, or, equivalently, to draft one or two spells, just in case, and end up deciding not to play them, diluting the decks of those going for colorless. I'm afraid colorless will end up a train wreck or at best, a minor thing.
I like that there is additional challenge in building the mana base, having to decide the priority of mana fixing in draft, or trying to decide on the mana in sealed. That was one of the features I enjoyed in KTK.
One way to look at the problem is that there are more common lands that produce colorless than there are colorless commons. So everyone will be picking colorless mana just in case, which might screw those who picked the colorless spells.
I guess we'll see. I'm just afraid it will always be a small splash off too few lands that mostly doesn't work out well.
Part of that depends upon whether or not it is an 18 land format like BFZ is. 8-8-2colorless or 8-7-3colorless should work as long as you do not have low casting cost spells requiring double color such as Ancient Crab.
The payoff for having access to colorless at some point in the game seems worth splashing a small number of these lands, since many of the effects are very powerful. I also think that common Hedron Crawler is decent enough if the colorless is meaningful since it also ramps. Common Seer's Lantern is also okay in a pinch if you have some good high casting cost cards to ramp to.
I think that if you try for 3 color plus colorless, that could really be stretching it too far unless you can get a couple of the uncommon dual-lands or other fixing (green).
In any case, this proves my point: not *everyone* can be picking them early and end up with enough. I suppose that your claim is that those who get them in pack one will be passed the others in the other two packs? That people won't pick them up if they haven't already got one in pack one?
I count 1 common in green, red, and 2 in black and blue that have colorless activated abilties that jump up almost an entire point in ratings (from say a 2.0 to 3.0) if you can activate the ability. Since its a small set, i would be really surprised if you didnt end up with at least one of these in any given deck, which suggests to me that youll probably want some incidental sources of colorless in your deck. Crumbling vestige in particular is intriguing to me: it seems like it would hurt your mana the least (although if you need the colorless mana rght away its bad, which is really interesting). Add a couple of uncommons, and it seems like there should be a real demand for at least a 3 source splash type of deal.
Im interested in seeing where seers lantern and warden of geometries end up. Hedron scrambler seems like a high pick just as a 2 mana ramp spell, but the other arent good enough to traditionally warrant playing without some synergies.
Think of it like splashing a 6th color. Not everyone will do it for starters, lets say half of the table. And among them for the most part it will be purely a splash, so only requiring 3-4 sources. Maybe one person is Ux and has a couple of the tappers, the flyer, and multiple true colorless cards and wants a real number of colorless sources. With so many random colorless sources floating around (scions count too) I just don't see it being a problem. Maybe it gets overdrafted at first, to the point that what you are concerned about happens, but that will self-correct in a hurry and happens with plenty of the new archetypes/mechanics that come out. And realistically with almost all of it at uncommon+ it will just be hard to really overdraft it to the point that you are describing.
I expect poeple to fight over colorless a lot, making all their decks weaker in the process. I'm going to just stick to what's open. Also, there'S no telling how many colorless sources will be opened. So you might end up with great cards that you can't cast/activate.
From what I've seen. Sealed pools only had 1 or two wastes in them on average. I don't know that the set can support more than 2 players per table trying to build colorless.
Good luck to those who try.
The one draft I did was triple Oath and I drafted an insane R/W aggro deck with multiple of all the white common allies backed up by red removal. I had an Eldrazi Displacer and it made my deck worse by trying to cram 2 Holdout Settlements into an aggro deck.
I think this is what will draw people into grabbing up colorless lands. Slaughter Drone and Kozilek's Shrieker in Bx Devoid aggro want you to not only have colorless lands but have colorless mana relatively early so you can activate their abilities on turns 4-6. Same with Stalking Drone. The alternative is that these potentially aggressive cards might just be much worse in draft than in sealed because you can't rely on enabling them early.
Cards like Maw of Kozilek and Gravity Negator, on the other hand, are probably fine if you only draw your colorless source late. I suspect these will both be good cards.
Blinding Drone will obviously be a far cry from Benalish Trapper (did anyone realize this card wasn't called "Benalish Tapper"?). Unless you have 5-6 colorless sources, its power level will depend on how useful it is to have a 1/3 that only reliably taps down lategame fatties.
Luckily black and blue both have common C producing-creatures and green has common scion producers. There are 2 C-producing creatures and Seer's Lantern in colorless itself, playable in any deck. I suspect that these, on top of the 2-ish colorless lands people will draft, will be what enables these creatures to work. So perhaps these colorless producers will be higher priority than they would appear just to enable other cards. Alternately, maybe that makes all of it just worse than drafting guys that are unconditionally good.
I am sort of tempted to just eschew colorless costs for a few weeks and let people mana screw themselves and draft obligate colorless bombs they can't play. But then if I did that, I would be behind the learning curve once everyone else figures it out.
Suppose opponent only has one colorless mana source but more than one creature with colorless activations. If opponent attacks into your bigger creature with Slaughter Drone or Stalking Drone or Havoc Sower (and normally the correct play would be to let it through to avoid losing your better creature) but they ALSO have a creature on defense that needs colorless mana (or Blinding Drone or whatever), it's often correct to call their bluff. Now you're squeezing their resources. They can pay the colorless to kill your guy but then they might face an unfavorable attack on their turn, with their colorless mana now used up. When deciding on an attack, players may often forget they need the colorless mana on both ends but can't use it for both.
2 Blinding Drone
1 Makindi Familiar
1 Eldrazi Skyspawner
1 Halimar Tidecaller
1 Kozilek’s Shrieker
1 Incubator drone
1 Havoc Sower
1 Gravity Negator
1 Jwar Isle Avenger
1 Deathless Behemoth
1 Baloth Null
1 Unnatural Endurance
1 Spatial Contortion
1 Tar Snare
1 Flaying Tendrils
2 Oblivion Strike
1 Comparative Analysis
1 Overwhelming Denial
1 Evolving Wilds
1 Holdout Settlement
1 Unknown Shores
1 Crumbling Vestige
1 Hissing Quagmire
1 Forest
6 Island
5 Swamp
2 Ancient Crab
1 Mist Intruder
1 Ulamog’s Despoiler
Obviously it was super greedy to run Baloth Null but
1) it's my best card
2) I got it at a reasonable time pack 2 after getting a very late Hissing Quagmire pack 1.
RESULT: 1-2 and a lot of mulligans. Turns out ye olde' 7-7-5-2 mana base is bad.
1 Prophet of distortion
3 Blinding drone
2 Sky scourer
1 Slaughter drone
1 Hedron crawler
1 Matter reshaper
1 Cultivator drone
1 Eldrazi skyspawner
2 Warden of geometries
1 Thought havester
1 Murk strider
1 Kozilek's translator
1 Kozilek's channeler
1 Kozilek's pathfinder
1 visions of brutality
1 Containment membrane
1 Oblivion strike
1 Hedron alignment network
lands
1 Crumbling vestage
1 Unknown shores
1 Skyline cascade
8 Island
6 Swamp
1 Rush of ice
1 Dispel
1 Grave birthing
With 8 sources of colourless and.. I still lost the first match by not drawing any colourless :/, I am still on tilt a day later from those two games. I crushed my next two opponents. The other glaring problem was there was straight up no removal, I think I passed some early pack one but then took whatever I could get, either there wasn't any in the packs or people were sucking it all up. There were a lot of other people cutting me since this is the cool new deck everyone wants to play, two other colourless drafters.
Pioneer:UR Pheonix
Modern:U Mono U Tron
EDH
GB Glissa, the traitor: Army of Cans
UW Dragonlord Ojutai: Dragonlord NOjutai
UWGDerevi, Empyrial Tactician "you cannot fight the storm"
R Zirilan of the claw. The solution to every problem is dragons
UB Etrata, the Silencer Cloning assassination
Peasant cube: Cards I own
I see what you did there.
I do think green will improve to the point of reasonable playability. Some of the cards in BFZ that were essentially useless, like Unnatural Aggression become pretty solid when green actually gets on/above curve beef.