I've been playing sealed queues on Magic Online. Oh my oh my this format is just terrible. Way, way too many games are completely one sided, mostly due to vehicles or creatures that grow without bounds every turn. You're either blown out early or you enter a holding pattern while you want to see who draws their bomb. Kaladesh is easily the worst set I've ever played. This is after about 30 limited matches, so I have had some experience now. I'll be quitting Magic until the next set.
Example: I just won a game drawing only three lands, and playing exactly three spells:
Have you considered playing draft instead of sealed? Sealed kind of sucks in general, and this is a set that rewards synergy so it's more conducive to drafting.
By far the stupidest thing about this format is that someone can completely blank all your blockers and sorcery speed removal going turn 2 Smuggler's Copter into turn 3 Sword of Fire and Ice into turn 4 bear, crew, equip, smash you for 5 flying on turn 4, draw 2 and discard 1, and nuke your 2-drop. What is this, Cube?
Have you considered playing draft instead of sealed? Sealed kind of sucks in general, and this is a set that rewards synergy so it's more conducive to drafting.
My thoughts exactly...why aren't you drafting if you are playing on MTGO? That's what the sets are designed for and it is usually a much better experience.
Renegade Freighter is a BOMB card and it punishes any opponent that doesnt pack maindeck removal against artifacts, as it has a giant size and trample is extremly strong on it (as the 1/1 tokens cant just jump it, like other vehicles).
And crew 2 is no cost at all, while crew 3 is a stinker from time to time and anything more crew 4+ is allmost terrible (so you need a real reason to use these vehicles at all, as they are that much worse).
----
Otherwise the set has a ton of synergy. If your deck can use this extra interactions, you get value out of cards that you might not have seen.
You absolutely need 2 drops to defend against aggressive opponents and you absolutely need removal , which includes artifact removal.
Anyway, if you fizzle with your deck and the opponent has the good start, you just die, like in any other format.
----
Kaladesh is a pretty fast format, as it has so many 2 and 3 drops that are very very aggressive and it has pretty much no card at all that wants you to have more like 5 mana at max (as all the "mana sink" cards become energy sinks and you absolutely want to have creatures, as much as possible on the board).
----
5+ mana cards that are really good can be stinkers if you simply cannot cast them in time.
----
All the energy counter creatures grow on ATTACK and not on blocks. This favours attacking by a lot, as they have sizes that beat the blocker.
If you can chain energy cards to keep them growing, your opponent has to double block quickly, and risks to get blown out by tricks and removal.
Thats why you cannot sit and do your thing, you have to make sure you can beat the first onslaught of your opponent OR you simply do it faster.
Removal or lifelink tricks can be the deciding factor who wins a damage race, as soon as someone can commit to it, you cannot ignore it.
Renegade Freighter is a BOMB card and it punishes any opponent that doesnt pack maindeck removal against artifacts, as it has a giant size and trample is extremly strong on it (as the 1/1 tokens cant just jump it, like other vehicles).
But it's not rare and it's a 3-drop and Insidious Will has gold on it so I have to first pick it because THAT is a bomb.
Renegade Freighter is a BOMB card and it punishes any opponent that doesnt pack maindeck removal against artifacts, as it has a giant size and trample is extremly strong on it (as the 1/1 tokens cant just jump it, like other vehicles).
But it's not rare and it's a 3-drop and Insidious Will has gold on it so I have to first pick it because THAT is a bomb.
The Renegade Freighter is quite a trap as it doesnt LOOK that strong, but it absolutely is.
Its for sure not often that a non-removal is that strong in limited.
Trample pushes it over the top, as otherwise the format offers a lot of jump blockers.
Hitting for 5 damage that your opponent cannot block to kill it is a pretty good way to win the game, especially if that starts hitting on turn 4 (and in the topic, it got even bigger with the Chief , so thats a very very strong combination against any opponent that cannot outright destroy the Renegade Freighter right away).
But it's not rare and it's a 3-drop and Insidious Will has gold on it so I have to first pick it because THAT is a bomb.
The Renegade Freighter is quite a trap as it doesnt LOOK that strong, but it absolutely is.
Sorry, sarcasm isn't always evident online.
I agree with you completely. In some of the other threads I was forcing Renegade Freighter into people's decks. Freighter was an absolute house for me and others at the prerelease. After a few rounds, it quickly became evident to the room that it's one of the best vehicles in the format. On paper, people seem to overrate the Crew 4 Menace guy and underrate Freighter. Being a 3-drop with Crew 2 that attacks for 5 trample is nothing to scoff at. That's serious value, and it's not easy to block or answer because of how early on curve it starts beating down and how easy it is to enable.
I think people are failing to notice how powerful it is because its rarity symbol is black, it has low cc, and it's base stats are a medium-sized vanilla (though it's functionally a 5/4 trample).
EDIT: When you consider that in Draft, people can build more focused decks and will be playing Speedway Fanatic into Renegade Freighter... Even the First Strike one is a beating.
EDIT: When you consider that in Draft, people can build more focused decks and will be playing Speedway Fanatic into Renegade Freighter... Even the First Strike one is a beating.
Frighter with first strike is "obscene" , it feels downright dirty to win a game that way, as the opponent just sits and cant do anything to survive (removal obvisiously, but then the 2/1 dies, rarely the Frighter itself).
It combos with a ton of 2 and 3 drops that make it stronger.
Be it +1/+1 from a dwarf, the chief, first strike or just a stupid combat trick (+2/+2 hexproof or lifelink/indestructible are just nasty), any color has some stupid trick to make it a blowout.
If the opponent is facing the dirt in your tracks and has to double block the Frighter all these tricks will just end them.
----
All this stuff makes me wonder how this card could be made a common, it should absolutely be uncommon, its just that much stronger than the other vehicles its not even funny.
Ofcourse the rare/mythic level vehicles all have some form of bonus that is just as stupid (and coppter/sovereign feel also downright unfair).
----
Theres not much commons that pack the kind of punch this card delivers.
Rarely that this happens in Limited (its usually some uncommon that is on this powerlevel).
By far the stupidest thing about this format is that someone can completely blank all your blockers and sorcery speed removal going turn 2 Smuggler's Copter into turn 3 Sword of Fire and Ice into turn 4 bear, crew, equip, smash you for 5 flying on turn 4, draw 2 and discard 1, and nuke your 2-drop. What is this, Cube?
I hope this was a joke
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By far the stupidest thing about this format is that someone can completely blank all your blockers and sorcery speed removal going turn 2 Smuggler's Copter into turn 3 Sword of Fire and Ice into turn 4 bear, crew, equip, smash you for 5 flying on turn 4, draw 2 and discard 1, and nuke your 2-drop. What is this, Cube?
I hope this was a joke
I'm pretty sure it is, it's not written that well though.
I dunno, I played a whole bunch of the limited set right before Kaladesh (I can never remember the name though - Shadows over Innistrad/Rise of the Eldrazi -- right?) and the sealed play was really good. Most pools were fairly balanced and most games were reasonable. Maybe I just had good luck with SOI/ROE, but I enjoyed those games, and maybe I just had bad luck with Kaladesh, but the games mostly sucked. And I mean, not sucked because I lost alot (although that is true), but because even when I won, it was almost pointless.
But maybe you all are right, maybe draft is the only way to go with KLD. I just think it's weird to draft and then play out of your pod, it seems odd to not be playing against players that made different choices than you did when presented with mostly the same cards. Drafting and then playing against random pods just seems too weird to me; but sealed is fine played that way because my deck is completely unrelated to anyone in my "pod" anyway. So I stay away from draft leagues, which is why I am playing KLD sealed.
Also I don't like draft during prerelease because of rare drafting skew.
And ... KLD sucked for me not just because of the freighter. It felt like, for whatever reason, a vastly larger percentage of games were completely one-sided than normal. I have never played so many games where I died on 15+ or my opponent died on 15+ than I have in KLD. All of those creatures that grow when they attack or energy is pumped into them, they just push the attacking power level up too high and their butts are usually fat and can't be effectively blocked. Red has so much good low cost removal at its disposal, it can be nearly impossible to keep anything on the board in some games.
Maybe the larger pools do have something to do with it. I guess in draft I wouldn't be expecting people to be dropping Planeswalkers and Mythic Gearhulks left and right like they have been in sealed.
My very first KLD pool had three planeswalkers in it (Nissa, Chandra, and the weakish blue/red one). I mean, what the hell. By the way, I only 2 - 3 that event despite this, because even planeswalkers in this set can be easily overrun by the humungous attacking power available to everyone, and you often don't have time to stabilize the board to the point where a planeswalker can have good effect.
I'll try a few more KLD sealed, and maybe a KLD draft, but I don't expect to be playing too much limited in this format. Just not fun enough.
One final stupid question: are there more packs in a prelease sealed? Maybe so many more mythics and bombs due to more packs in the pools is the reason? If so, that could bode well for post-prerelease sealed.
I do like sealed, I just like making the best out of random assortments of cards. Drafting is OK too, and if I could do phantom drafting, I'd totally do it. But playing phantom sealed online costs me very little; maybe $2 per event on average. Playing prerelease sealed has been costing me like $14 per event, that's just too expensive.
EDIT: To answer my own question, phantom sealed and KLD prerelease sealed are both 6 packs, but according to the Wizards website, the KLD prelease also includes an extra "premium rare or mythic rare", which I guess explains the obscene number of planeswalkers, gearhulks, and other bombs I have been seeing. Also explains the rapid drop in KLD planeswalker values over the past day and a half.
EDIT 2: OK so I played two drafts tonight. They were, indeed, much better than the sealed events. Still a bit too swingy for my liking, but much better than sealed.
One thing that could make the games seem more swingy aswell is that the format is much faster than soi/en.
The games are more aggressive, end faster and stumbling on mana or plays are punished more severely.
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I also found sealed Kaladesh to be terrible, by far the worst I have had to play.
I just kept getting half of the synergies.
Energy sources without sinks, cards that care about artifacts not enough good artifacts, Pilots but no vechicals.
I had double cloudblazer, nissa, rashimi, saheeli's artistry and 4 other green creatures and 2 other playable blue cards, just awful. I played WR vechicals with only a few vechicals so it was WR aggro (I had Depala and good red removal), lost everything. I should of built Bant white with a double splash so I could play my actually good cards but how do you see a three colour deck with your worst colours?
I am also struggling in draft atm, I expect to get better, by the end of draft sets I just start rattling off 3-0s but I have had a particularly slow start this time.
It's a fast format. That by itself is going to make a lot of people hate it. Fast formats tend to punish people more for having mana problems or failing to pick up enough low drops in the draft, which are largely outside of the players' control. It's also a synergy format, which *also* is going to make people hate it, because all the players who just want to draft goodstuff and not think super hard about deck construction are often going to get run over.
The combination is a little bit weird, and it's not one I think we've seen before to this extent. So far I'm enjoying figuring things out (4 events under my belt, now), but I can absolutely see why people are going to be down on it. That said, I kinda suspect this format is going to be one of those that goes down in history as one of the best ever, exactly because it is so unforgiving and complex. The people who put in the work to understand this format are going to do far better than average, I suspect.
By far the stupidest thing about this format is that someone can completely blank all your blockers and sorcery speed removal going turn 2 Smuggler's Copter into turn 3 Sword of Fire and Ice into turn 4 bear, crew, equip, smash you for 5 flying on turn 4, draw 2 and discard 1, and nuke your 2-drop. What is this, Cube?
I hope this was a joke
I wish this was a joke. You haven't played against someone who cracked a Masterpiece?
The probability of that happening is very low, but when it does happen, it redefines the word "broken". I wish I never had to sit across from that.
I'm with OP. I did the PR, played a couple of drafts with my prizing, dropped out. Energy is an annoying gimmick, as people mentioned you can get trampled by these vehicles super quickly and the occasional masterpiece can lead to bizarre situations.
I'm now on Magic hiatus because of this set, and will probably wait for Amonkhet as I don't believe AEther Revolt will sweeten the deal.
It's a fast format. That by itself is going to make a lot of people hate it. Fast formats tend to punish people more for having mana problems or failing to pick up enough low drops in the draft, which are largely outside of the players' control. It's also a synergy format, which *also* is going to make people hate it, because all the players who just want to draft goodstuff and not think super hard about deck construction are often going to get run over.
The combination is a little bit weird, and it's not one I think we've seen before to this extent. So far I'm enjoying figuring things out (4 events under my belt, now), but I can absolutely see why people are going to be down on it. That said, I kinda suspect this format is going to be one of those that goes down in history as one of the best ever, exactly because it is so unforgiving and complex. The people who put in the work to understand this format are going to do far better than average, I suspect.
I've played three events and I like it so far. I agree with most of what you said except for one thing.
I don't think a format can go down in history as one of the best ever from the perspective of the masses if it's perceived as unforgiving and complex. I could see pros and other Spike-y players feeling that way though.
It's a fast format. That by itself is going to make a lot of people hate it. Fast formats tend to punish people more for having mana problems or failing to pick up enough low drops in the draft, which are largely outside of the players' control.
This is a great post, but I'd like to take a moment to point out that I think Kaladesh does a much more generous job of providing players with low drop options compared to other formats. It seems to me like you had to do a pretty bad job reading signals to truly get screwed out of your low drops in this format. Enough so that mana problems or poor draws would outshadow the actual opportunities presented by the draft.
By far the stupidest thing about this format is that someone can completely blank all your blockers and sorcery speed removal going turn 2 Smuggler's Copter into turn 3 Sword of Fire and Ice into turn 4 bear, crew, equip, smash you for 5 flying on turn 4, draw 2 and discard 1, and nuke your 2-drop. What is this, Cube?
Come on now. How often is that gonna happen? You need a specific rare AND a masterpiece and you have to draw them both within 2 turns.
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Example: I just won a game drawing only three lands, and playing exactly three spells:
- Turn 3 Renegade Freighter
- Turn 4 Chief of the Foundry
- Turn something Appetite for the Unnatural
That was it. My opponent happened to not be able to deal with a 6/5 trample attacker on turns 4 - 7. End of game. SO BORING.
Next game:
Opponent got:
- 3/3 flyer that grows with energy on turn 4
- Black 3/1 flyer
- An energy producer or two
And I could not possibly beat 7, then 8, then 9 flying power over the next three turns.
Kaladesh is, by far, the least fun Magic I have ever played. Totally non-interactive.
What an awful set.
My thoughts exactly...why aren't you drafting if you are playing on MTGO? That's what the sets are designed for and it is usually a much better experience.
And crew 2 is no cost at all, while crew 3 is a stinker from time to time and anything more crew 4+ is allmost terrible (so you need a real reason to use these vehicles at all, as they are that much worse).
----
Otherwise the set has a ton of synergy. If your deck can use this extra interactions, you get value out of cards that you might not have seen.
You absolutely need 2 drops to defend against aggressive opponents and you absolutely need removal , which includes artifact removal.
Anyway, if you fizzle with your deck and the opponent has the good start, you just die, like in any other format.
----
Kaladesh is a pretty fast format, as it has so many 2 and 3 drops that are very very aggressive and it has pretty much no card at all that wants you to have more like 5 mana at max (as all the "mana sink" cards become energy sinks and you absolutely want to have creatures, as much as possible on the board).
----
5+ mana cards that are really good can be stinkers if you simply cannot cast them in time.
----
All the energy counter creatures grow on ATTACK and not on blocks. This favours attacking by a lot, as they have sizes that beat the blocker.
If you can chain energy cards to keep them growing, your opponent has to double block quickly, and risks to get blown out by tricks and removal.
Thats why you cannot sit and do your thing, you have to make sure you can beat the first onslaught of your opponent OR you simply do it faster.
Removal or lifelink tricks can be the deciding factor who wins a damage race, as soon as someone can commit to it, you cannot ignore it.
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
👮👮👮 #BlueLivesMatter 👮👮👮
But it's not rare and it's a 3-drop and Insidious Will has gold on it so I have to first pick it because THAT is a bomb.
The Renegade Freighter is quite a trap as it doesnt LOOK that strong, but it absolutely is.
Its for sure not often that a non-removal is that strong in limited.
Trample pushes it over the top, as otherwise the format offers a lot of jump blockers.
Hitting for 5 damage that your opponent cannot block to kill it is a pretty good way to win the game, especially if that starts hitting on turn 4 (and in the topic, it got even bigger with the Chief , so thats a very very strong combination against any opponent that cannot outright destroy the Renegade Freighter right away).
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
👮👮👮 #BlueLivesMatter 👮👮👮
Sorry, sarcasm isn't always evident online.
I agree with you completely. In some of the other threads I was forcing Renegade Freighter into people's decks. Freighter was an absolute house for me and others at the prerelease. After a few rounds, it quickly became evident to the room that it's one of the best vehicles in the format. On paper, people seem to overrate the Crew 4 Menace guy and underrate Freighter. Being a 3-drop with Crew 2 that attacks for 5 trample is nothing to scoff at. That's serious value, and it's not easy to block or answer because of how early on curve it starts beating down and how easy it is to enable.
I think people are failing to notice how powerful it is because its rarity symbol is black, it has low cc, and it's base stats are a medium-sized vanilla (though it's functionally a 5/4 trample).
EDIT: When you consider that in Draft, people can build more focused decks and will be playing Speedway Fanatic into Renegade Freighter... Even the First Strike one is a beating.
Frighter with first strike is "obscene" , it feels downright dirty to win a game that way, as the opponent just sits and cant do anything to survive (removal obvisiously, but then the 2/1 dies, rarely the Frighter itself).
It combos with a ton of 2 and 3 drops that make it stronger.
Be it +1/+1 from a dwarf, the chief, first strike or just a stupid combat trick (+2/+2 hexproof or lifelink/indestructible are just nasty), any color has some stupid trick to make it a blowout.
If the opponent is facing the dirt in your tracks and has to double block the Frighter all these tricks will just end them.
----
All this stuff makes me wonder how this card could be made a common, it should absolutely be uncommon, its just that much stronger than the other vehicles its not even funny.
Ofcourse the rare/mythic level vehicles all have some form of bonus that is just as stupid (and coppter/sovereign feel also downright unfair).
----
Theres not much commons that pack the kind of punch this card delivers.
Rarely that this happens in Limited (its usually some uncommon that is on this powerlevel).
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-Chandra Nalaar
I'm pretty sure it is, it's not written that well though.
But maybe you all are right, maybe draft is the only way to go with KLD. I just think it's weird to draft and then play out of your pod, it seems odd to not be playing against players that made different choices than you did when presented with mostly the same cards. Drafting and then playing against random pods just seems too weird to me; but sealed is fine played that way because my deck is completely unrelated to anyone in my "pod" anyway. So I stay away from draft leagues, which is why I am playing KLD sealed.
Also I don't like draft during prerelease because of rare drafting skew.
And ... KLD sucked for me not just because of the freighter. It felt like, for whatever reason, a vastly larger percentage of games were completely one-sided than normal. I have never played so many games where I died on 15+ or my opponent died on 15+ than I have in KLD. All of those creatures that grow when they attack or energy is pumped into them, they just push the attacking power level up too high and their butts are usually fat and can't be effectively blocked. Red has so much good low cost removal at its disposal, it can be nearly impossible to keep anything on the board in some games.
Maybe the larger pools do have something to do with it. I guess in draft I wouldn't be expecting people to be dropping Planeswalkers and Mythic Gearhulks left and right like they have been in sealed.
My very first KLD pool had three planeswalkers in it (Nissa, Chandra, and the weakish blue/red one). I mean, what the hell. By the way, I only 2 - 3 that event despite this, because even planeswalkers in this set can be easily overrun by the humungous attacking power available to everyone, and you often don't have time to stabilize the board to the point where a planeswalker can have good effect.
I'll try a few more KLD sealed, and maybe a KLD draft, but I don't expect to be playing too much limited in this format. Just not fun enough.
One final stupid question: are there more packs in a prelease sealed? Maybe so many more mythics and bombs due to more packs in the pools is the reason? If so, that could bode well for post-prerelease sealed.
I do like sealed, I just like making the best out of random assortments of cards. Drafting is OK too, and if I could do phantom drafting, I'd totally do it. But playing phantom sealed online costs me very little; maybe $2 per event on average. Playing prerelease sealed has been costing me like $14 per event, that's just too expensive.
EDIT: To answer my own question, phantom sealed and KLD prerelease sealed are both 6 packs, but according to the Wizards website, the KLD prelease also includes an extra "premium rare or mythic rare", which I guess explains the obscene number of planeswalkers, gearhulks, and other bombs I have been seeing. Also explains the rapid drop in KLD planeswalker values over the past day and a half.
EDIT 2: OK so I played two drafts tonight. They were, indeed, much better than the sealed events. Still a bit too swingy for my liking, but much better than sealed.
The games are more aggressive, end faster and stumbling on mana or plays are punished more severely.
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I just kept getting half of the synergies.
Energy sources without sinks, cards that care about artifacts not enough good artifacts, Pilots but no vechicals.
I had double cloudblazer, nissa, rashimi, saheeli's artistry and 4 other green creatures and 2 other playable blue cards, just awful. I played WR vechicals with only a few vechicals so it was WR aggro (I had Depala and good red removal), lost everything. I should of built Bant white with a double splash so I could play my actually good cards but how do you see a three colour deck with your worst colours?
I am also struggling in draft atm, I expect to get better, by the end of draft sets I just start rattling off 3-0s but I have had a particularly slow start this time.
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
The combination is a little bit weird, and it's not one I think we've seen before to this extent. So far I'm enjoying figuring things out (4 events under my belt, now), but I can absolutely see why people are going to be down on it. That said, I kinda suspect this format is going to be one of those that goes down in history as one of the best ever, exactly because it is so unforgiving and complex. The people who put in the work to understand this format are going to do far better than average, I suspect.
I wish this was a joke. You haven't played against someone who cracked a Masterpiece?
The probability of that happening is very low, but when it does happen, it redefines the word "broken". I wish I never had to sit across from that.
Turn 1 Sol Ring will also be obscene.
I'm now on Magic hiatus because of this set, and will probably wait for Amonkhet as I don't believe AEther Revolt will sweeten the deal.
I've played three events and I like it so far. I agree with most of what you said except for one thing.
I don't think a format can go down in history as one of the best ever from the perspective of the masses if it's perceived as unforgiving and complex. I could see pros and other Spike-y players feeling that way though.
This is a great post, but I'd like to take a moment to point out that I think Kaladesh does a much more generous job of providing players with low drop options compared to other formats. It seems to me like you had to do a pretty bad job reading signals to truly get screwed out of your low drops in this format. Enough so that mana problems or poor draws would outshadow the actual opportunities presented by the draft.
Come on now. How often is that gonna happen? You need a specific rare AND a masterpiece and you have to draw them both within 2 turns.