I don't know how you can say that. Having drafted multiple times I have found it engaging and often times have come very close to time during matches...green/red energy is very fun and fast, some control drafts have been very challenging and gren/white has been a blast. I just don't see how you can say this
I know this thread was about bad Sealed beats, but after a few weeks of experience I think the title holds true for draft; Aether Revolt is a terrible format all around.
Like Kaladesh, there are blazing fast, snowballing aggro curve-outs that make for a higher amount of non-games than your average format. Unlike triple KLD, there's far less hope of drafting the nifty, synergistic, build-arounds that proponents of the format were wont to tout. It's a very CABS-y format without a lot of depth to support it.
The mechanics aren't all that interesting. Revolt is on scant-few cards that reward defense, and plays far stronger when you are on the beat-down. Yes, enablers like the Implement cycle and self-bounce exist, but it feels horrible to be holding onto some Revolt card while you're getting beaten down and light on catalysts, finding out that your 187-critter is now a vanilla Grey Ogre (and your opponent is not falling for the "attack Servo into a 3/3" line). And Improvise could have been interesting, were it not for poor development; too many of the cards are complete crap unless you have 3+ artifacts to tap while other cards would be decent enough without Improvise (e.g. Sweatworks Brawler is decent enough at 4CMC, great with any improvise whereas cards like Foundry Assembler are poor even with a strong number of artifacts to tap). This means it's not a mechanic you build around, or really factor into your drafting; you just go off of rudimentary raw power evaluations. Snore.
Speaking of poor development, jeez, is it out in force here. There's horrible color imbalance and glaring problems with power levels of cards.
Blue is absolute garbage in this set. I dare say it's close to AVR Black or BFZ Green. It's common suite is bad, and only a few Rare bombs would really pull me into the color. Conversely, Red and Green are quite deep. Their bad commons would be median filler in the other colors. Yes, draft is self-regulating, to a degree, but it's getting rather tiresome seeing constant screw-ups in terms of power parity among the colors in the Draft formats of recent sets. Supposedly, WotC dedicates a majority of their testing time to Limited, and has placed a higher priority on it as of late, but you'd hardly be able to deduce that from how imbalanced recent sets have been.
Balance is equally poor when looking at the set from a color-agnostic point of view.
Power Uncommons stand head and shoulders above most of the cards in the set. What the heck were the developers thinking with cards like Ridgescale Tusker or Untethered Express? Rare bombs are irritating, but understandable given the dual-mandate of sets to provide for Limited and Constructed players. But insane Uncommons can and should be caught, as they will, likely, show up in any given draft pod, ruining a lot more games.
And then there are the Commons. Sure, some of them are pretty good, but there are so many godawful, borderline unplayable pieces of jank stuffing these packs. Gone are the halcyon days of Kaladesh (I can't believe I'm saying this) where packs contained good numbers of playables at Common, enough to make the later picks feel important. Here there's a bunch of hot, hot garbage. Remember the Weldfast Monitor cycle in Kaladesh? Good, playable critters that are gold compared to AER's dung pile Automaton cycle. Why have a Bastion Mastodon when you can have a 0/3 for two? Who needs a Pillar Bug when you can play the world's most inefficient shade? And colored critters (that aren't Green/Red) hardly fare better. How would you like a 5CMC 3/2 Man O' War that only hits artifacts? Forget Glint-Sleeve Artisan or even Herald of the Fair...get excited about a vanilla 3/2 for 2W!
It's not very fun to draft when 1/4th or more of your picks feel meaningless and only playable in the most dire of scenarios, but that's what Aether Revolt late picks feel like. It's quite funny to note how much more likely any given common from the Kaladesh pack is to see play versus those from the AER packs; really puts the low power level in perspective.
Ugh, I think I might actually just stop drafting packs and join the FNM cube crew.
I know this thread was about bad Sealed beats, but after a few weeks of experience I think the title holds true for draft; Aether Revolt is a terrible format all around.
Like Kaladesh, there are blazing fast, snowballing aggro curve-outs that make for a higher amount of non-games than your average format. Unlike triple KLD, there's far less hope of drafting the nifty, synergistic, build-arounds that proponents of the format were wont to tout. It's a very CABS-y format without a lot of depth to support it.
I have to agree. I've done 20+ draft leagues online now and my experience has been extremely bad. Revolt and Improvise aren't inherently bad mechanics, but the actual design of the cards with these keywords, and their respective enablers are just bad. Worse, the exceptions to the rule are mostly vanilla, or french-vanilla cards that don't require much effort and just slide into a boring aggro or midrange deck anyway. Every time that I have tried to build a deck that does anything... anything, but curve out aggressively, I have been punished, and likewise for when my opponents that have tried to build around interesting concepts. Moreover, my sense of the format is that it's not necessarily fast, but it's aggressive, meaning that attacking is much much better than blocking, which tends to lead to races where the opponent who gasses out or stumbles gets run over.
I was not a huge fan of Kaladesh, but my feeling was that it was basically saved from infamy by the shenanigan-y UGr energy decks and UW blink decks that legitimately worked if you got a good draft. My sense of AeR is that any attempt to build these types of decks is purely a trap. If you're not building a basic curve-out deck, you're at a serious disadvantage, and that's a bummer.
"Revolt is on scant-few cards that reward defense, and plays far stronger when you are on the beat-down. Yes, enablers like the Implement cycle and self-bounce exist, but it feels horrible to be holding onto some Revolt card while you're getting beaten down and light on catalysts, finding out that your 187-critter is now a vanilla Grey Ogre (and your opponent is not falling for the "attack Servo into a 3/3" line)."
I agree. However, I consider all of this a positive. I like that revolt is overall somewhat weak, and not something you just build because you are in the colors. The 187-critter Deadeye Harpooner is not even a good card overall in my view, I would rather just not include it, but some people like it and I think that diversity in opinions is good for the game.
Regarding improvise: "This means it's not a mechanic you build around, or really factor into your drafting; you just go off of rudimentary raw power evaluations. Snore."
I disagree. Several pros at the recent pro tour commented about drafting an improvise deck and I have done it a few times myself. I was wrong about this initially, because I was not impressed with improvise as a mechanic during spoilers but I have come around. Casting a common 5/5 can't be blocked by artifacts on turn 5 or a common 4/4 hexproof on turn 4 due to including a lot of cheap artifacts in the deck (building around), or just casting it even during some mana screw, is a big game and it can be done with decent reliability (or even earlier than my examples) if you build your deck around it. There are plenty of cheap artifacts, and the implements are in my view a great design since they cycle so at worst they are not too harmful to have in a deck.
"And then there are the Commons. Sure, some of them are pretty good, but there are so many godawful, borderline unplayable pieces of jank stuffing these packs."
I agree. But once again I consider this as a positive. One of the reasons I only play limited is that we all have to play with mediocre cards and make the best of what we can get. I like looking at what my opponent played and silently laughing, then looking down at one of the cards in my hand and stop laughing.
"What the heck were the developers thinking with cards like Ridgescale Tusker or Untethered Express?"
I agree with this. I wish that WotC would stop printing super-powerful uncommons like these two which are by far the most egregious in AER. They seem to do this in every set, though these two are even worse than in other recent sets.
I liked triple Kaladesh because, while it was a fast format that punished missteps, its card pool was deep enough to allow you to build good decks that required you to make decisions about what to cut, not whether you should run an 18th land. Blue was weak, but if you drafted well you could make use of it (especially in UB, but I won drafts with UW and UR as well). Blue fell further behind in AER. Vehicles got worse as well. The biggest problem is that most AER cards are terrible, and too many games come down to who draws the most Kaladesh cards. They only make up a third of your picks, but I've noticed most of my decks were around 50% Kaladesh, and I've been seeing the same proportion or greater in decks that beat me. I'm fine with draft being dominated by mediocre to poor cards, so long as its balanced, but when two packs are low powered and the last pack is strong your night is more likely to come down to luck, mainly did you happen to be in the colors that the good cards in your third pack were in. If we still drafted Kaladesh first, it would have probably been better, because you'd be able to plan your AER picks around your best cards.
Maybe in a month or so it will improve. DTK was similarly imbalanced, but eventually enough people were forcing Dash decks that if you went UW you'd get something that could win a draft because you would be the only guy drafting it, with another 2 splitting UB and GW and everyone else going for dash or gruul. Whatever, I'll sit out until Amonkhet and hope they finally figure out how to balance colors and not rely on gimmicks to make draft work.
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Whether its blue players countering your spells, red players burning you out, or combo, if you have a problem with an aspect of Magic's gameplay, you can fix it!
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
At first I thought blue was completely unplayable in AER, but it seems that it's actually an OK support color (particularly with R aggro). UB mid-rangey improvise actually plays better than it looks. UW is better (U has a couple aggro cards now, and has some bounce cards for racing), but probably below average. Fliers still works against mid-range.
50% Kaladesh doesn't fit with my experience. KLD commons are better, but the packs are not very deep. You are playing 11 of your Pack 3 picks? I guess you were in the right colors, anyway.
I checked a bunch of draft lists I had, KLD cards made up about 6-9 out of 23/24. Maybe I'm terrible though.
At first I thought blue was completely unplayable in AER, but it seems that it's actually an OK support color (particularly with R aggro). UB mid-rangey improvise actually plays better than it looks. UW is better (U has a couple aggro cards now, and has some bounce cards for racing), but probably below average. Fliers still works against mid-range.
50% Kaladesh doesn't fit with my experience. KLD commons are better, but the packs are not very deep. You are playing 11 of your Pack 3 picks? I guess you were in the right colors, anyway.
I checked a bunch of draft lists I had, KLD cards made up about 6-9 out of 23/24. Maybe I'm terrible though.
Its really just because most Aether Revolt cards are terrible, except for mostly rares and uncommons. Every time I've had to run mostly AER cards, I've been miserable. If I manage to get enough cards in my colors pack 3, I do much better. Even when I do well in a draft, I feel like I'm just playing worse Kaladesh, eg Kaladesh, now with more crap and a few new good cards. I have yet to enjoy a draft after 10+. I'm swearing off this garbage, and won't draft again until Amonkhet releases. Its got the same feel as BFZ block, which is you mostly run crap and every once in awhile you end up getting passed a lot in one color and steamroll. I have totally lost faith in WotC ability to make small sets.
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The Meaning of Life: "M-hmm. Well, it's nothing very special. Uh, try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations"
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Whether its blue players countering your spells, red players burning you out, or combo, if you have a problem with an aspect of Magic's gameplay, you can fix it!
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
I find the reverse is true when I play blue...especially UR. UR was the weakest color pair, but it's rock solid in AER. As a result, it's common in that color pair to play very few cards from your Kaladesh pack. I had a recent draft where I went 3-0 with UR, and despite only playing 15 lands, I had a mere 5 cards from Kaladesh.
It is true that a number of AER cards are really only good if you're using their synergy elements.
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Like Kaladesh, there are blazing fast, snowballing aggro curve-outs that make for a higher amount of non-games than your average format. Unlike triple KLD, there's far less hope of drafting the nifty, synergistic, build-arounds that proponents of the format were wont to tout. It's a very CABS-y format without a lot of depth to support it.
The mechanics aren't all that interesting. Revolt is on scant-few cards that reward defense, and plays far stronger when you are on the beat-down. Yes, enablers like the Implement cycle and self-bounce exist, but it feels horrible to be holding onto some Revolt card while you're getting beaten down and light on catalysts, finding out that your 187-critter is now a vanilla Grey Ogre (and your opponent is not falling for the "attack Servo into a 3/3" line). And Improvise could have been interesting, were it not for poor development; too many of the cards are complete crap unless you have 3+ artifacts to tap while other cards would be decent enough without Improvise (e.g. Sweatworks Brawler is decent enough at 4CMC, great with any improvise whereas cards like Foundry Assembler are poor even with a strong number of artifacts to tap). This means it's not a mechanic you build around, or really factor into your drafting; you just go off of rudimentary raw power evaluations. Snore.
Speaking of poor development, jeez, is it out in force here. There's horrible color imbalance and glaring problems with power levels of cards.
Blue is absolute garbage in this set. I dare say it's close to AVR Black or BFZ Green. It's common suite is bad, and only a few Rare bombs would really pull me into the color. Conversely, Red and Green are quite deep. Their bad commons would be median filler in the other colors. Yes, draft is self-regulating, to a degree, but it's getting rather tiresome seeing constant screw-ups in terms of power parity among the colors in the Draft formats of recent sets. Supposedly, WotC dedicates a majority of their testing time to Limited, and has placed a higher priority on it as of late, but you'd hardly be able to deduce that from how imbalanced recent sets have been.
Balance is equally poor when looking at the set from a color-agnostic point of view.
Power Uncommons stand head and shoulders above most of the cards in the set. What the heck were the developers thinking with cards like Ridgescale Tusker or Untethered Express? Rare bombs are irritating, but understandable given the dual-mandate of sets to provide for Limited and Constructed players. But insane Uncommons can and should be caught, as they will, likely, show up in any given draft pod, ruining a lot more games.
And then there are the Commons. Sure, some of them are pretty good, but there are so many godawful, borderline unplayable pieces of jank stuffing these packs. Gone are the halcyon days of Kaladesh (I can't believe I'm saying this) where packs contained good numbers of playables at Common, enough to make the later picks feel important. Here there's a bunch of hot, hot garbage. Remember the Weldfast Monitor cycle in Kaladesh? Good, playable critters that are gold compared to AER's dung pile Automaton cycle. Why have a Bastion Mastodon when you can have a 0/3 for two? Who needs a Pillar Bug when you can play the world's most inefficient shade? And colored critters (that aren't Green/Red) hardly fare better. How would you like a 5CMC 3/2 Man O' War that only hits artifacts? Forget Glint-Sleeve Artisan or even Herald of the Fair...get excited about a vanilla 3/2 for 2W!
It's not very fun to draft when 1/4th or more of your picks feel meaningless and only playable in the most dire of scenarios, but that's what Aether Revolt late picks feel like. It's quite funny to note how much more likely any given common from the Kaladesh pack is to see play versus those from the AER packs; really puts the low power level in perspective.
Ugh, I think I might actually just stop drafting packs and join the FNM cube crew.
I have to agree. I've done 20+ draft leagues online now and my experience has been extremely bad. Revolt and Improvise aren't inherently bad mechanics, but the actual design of the cards with these keywords, and their respective enablers are just bad. Worse, the exceptions to the rule are mostly vanilla, or french-vanilla cards that don't require much effort and just slide into a boring aggro or midrange deck anyway. Every time that I have tried to build a deck that does anything... anything, but curve out aggressively, I have been punished, and likewise for when my opponents that have tried to build around interesting concepts. Moreover, my sense of the format is that it's not necessarily fast, but it's aggressive, meaning that attacking is much much better than blocking, which tends to lead to races where the opponent who gasses out or stumbles gets run over.
I was not a huge fan of Kaladesh, but my feeling was that it was basically saved from infamy by the shenanigan-y UGr energy decks and UW blink decks that legitimately worked if you got a good draft. My sense of AeR is that any attempt to build these types of decks is purely a trap. If you're not building a basic curve-out deck, you're at a serious disadvantage, and that's a bummer.
I agree. However, I consider all of this a positive. I like that revolt is overall somewhat weak, and not something you just build because you are in the colors. The 187-critter Deadeye Harpooner is not even a good card overall in my view, I would rather just not include it, but some people like it and I think that diversity in opinions is good for the game.
Regarding improvise: "This means it's not a mechanic you build around, or really factor into your drafting; you just go off of rudimentary raw power evaluations. Snore."
I disagree. Several pros at the recent pro tour commented about drafting an improvise deck and I have done it a few times myself. I was wrong about this initially, because I was not impressed with improvise as a mechanic during spoilers but I have come around. Casting a common 5/5 can't be blocked by artifacts on turn 5 or a common 4/4 hexproof on turn 4 due to including a lot of cheap artifacts in the deck (building around), or just casting it even during some mana screw, is a big game and it can be done with decent reliability (or even earlier than my examples) if you build your deck around it. There are plenty of cheap artifacts, and the implements are in my view a great design since they cycle so at worst they are not too harmful to have in a deck.
"And then there are the Commons. Sure, some of them are pretty good, but there are so many godawful, borderline unplayable pieces of jank stuffing these packs."
I agree. But once again I consider this as a positive. One of the reasons I only play limited is that we all have to play with mediocre cards and make the best of what we can get. I like looking at what my opponent played and silently laughing, then looking down at one of the cards in my hand and stop laughing.
"What the heck were the developers thinking with cards like Ridgescale Tusker or Untethered Express?"
I agree with this. I wish that WotC would stop printing super-powerful uncommons like these two which are by far the most egregious in AER. They seem to do this in every set, though these two are even worse than in other recent sets.
Overall I like AER.
Maybe in a month or so it will improve. DTK was similarly imbalanced, but eventually enough people were forcing Dash decks that if you went UW you'd get something that could win a draft because you would be the only guy drafting it, with another 2 splitting UB and GW and everyone else going for dash or gruul. Whatever, I'll sit out until Amonkhet and hope they finally figure out how to balance colors and not rely on gimmicks to make draft work.
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
50% Kaladesh doesn't fit with my experience. KLD commons are better, but the packs are not very deep. You are playing 11 of your Pack 3 picks? I guess you were in the right colors, anyway.
I checked a bunch of draft lists I had, KLD cards made up about 6-9 out of 23/24. Maybe I'm terrible though.
Its really just because most Aether Revolt cards are terrible, except for mostly rares and uncommons. Every time I've had to run mostly AER cards, I've been miserable. If I manage to get enough cards in my colors pack 3, I do much better. Even when I do well in a draft, I feel like I'm just playing worse Kaladesh, eg Kaladesh, now with more crap and a few new good cards. I have yet to enjoy a draft after 10+. I'm swearing off this garbage, and won't draft again until Amonkhet releases. Its got the same feel as BFZ block, which is you mostly run crap and every once in awhile you end up getting passed a lot in one color and steamroll. I have totally lost faith in WotC ability to make small sets.
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
It is true that a number of AER cards are really only good if you're using their synergy elements.