Iain Bartolomei says it is the best color. Nick Falgout (in the comments) says it is the worst.
Personally, I think it is the worst color, but only by a little -- the colors are very balanced in this format. But it is definitely not the best.
I can't really disagree with much of Bartolomei's analysis of the cards... I just think every card he mentions is slightly worse than he thinks it is (especially Elvish Visionary).
I think it might be the second best colour, behind black. People saying that it's terrible really surprise me, firstly because saying any colour is terrible is not at all true in M13 draft and secondly because I've had good results with green.
I think he overvalues both of the three drops, without giving enough credit to Timberpack Wolf - Rating forcemage so much above the wolf seems wrong. He mentions the aggressiveness of the format as a reason for having 3 drops, surely the same applies to 2 drops.
I also pick the spider over Centaur Courser, and though I admit that I might be wrong here, he hasn't convinced me of it. There are a lot of fliers you have to be able to answer.
Plus I don't get the random hate on Spiked Baloth. It's a fine card.
M13 is very subtly balanced. I think each of the colors is so close in power level that it isn't worth trying to force any particular color. It rewards a skilled drafter for understanding what type of deck would be best with the cards coming their way and building around that. For example, an aggressive UW flyers deck wants completely different blue cards than a more controling UB deck. Green wants very different cards when it's paired with white than it does when it's paired with black (Spiked Baloth is actually kind of nuts with exalted, while Primal Huntbeast is much better when you can stick a Mark of the Vampire on it and not worry about being 2-for-1ed). People say red is shallow, but I've won two FNM drafts with nearly mono-red decks with just a splash of black.
Bottom line is, don't worry about what color's power level is compared to other colors. Concentrate on taking the best cards and trying to build from there.
Playing green requires a little bit different mindset than it has in the past, and I think it throws a lot of people off. You can tell when people understand the color when they praise cards like Visionary - you want your green decks to be about making your opponent's attacks disadvantageous (although not necessarily impossible - chumping with a 1/1 is often a great choice). Green blocks really well in this set. At the same time, cards like Rancor are for turning every small creature into an opportunity to trade, and cards like Primadox make it so you can usually win an attrition war.
Green is at its worst when it's trying to just curve out and get there, because every other color expects this and has a plan for it, and green lacks anything special to make that strategy resilient, and that makes it easy to dismiss the color as underpowered. But really you just need to be more careful about how you build with the color and know what strengths to play to, and the color is just fine.
Wit's End is the PERFECT answer to your opponent's Monomania however.
Just hold on to your Wit's End when they Monomania, so you can Wit's End them on your next turn!!!
I think this is fairly reminiscent of the "Jace Battles" we have seen in past standards.. My guess is we will soon witness the great Monomania-Wit's End battles.
Upfront, I don't know that I would definitively say that any color is definitely worse than green, but I don't think that it's enough worse than anything else that you should avoid it if it's coming or you open good stuff in it. (Similarly, I don't think it's nearly good enough to force, even if it's good.)
Whether or not his conclusions are correct, I don't think that the sample he offers - eight games, although there were presumably more that went into it - is really enough to make any sort of judgement on. Everyone (of necessity) makes judgements about colors and cards with less data (and less well organized data) than is necessarily ideal, but card evaluation information is so noisy and so prone to personal bias that eight drafts don't say anything, especially if what prompts the idea for an article is a (potentially fluky) string of wins with some color combination. The fact that I'd guess that GPs are at least slightly more competitive than a random online draft pod also plays a role.
I'm surprised that Huntbeast is so low in his list; while it's not super impressive in a vacuum, it's the cornerstone of basically everything remotely unfair that green decks (mostly G/B and G/U decks) get to do in this format. Building around Huntbeast is, in my experience, way better than building around Primadox. He does acknowledge that Huntbeast's value varies a lot, but in general I'd rather take Huntbeast and then make it good than take cards that are better in a vacuum but have a lower ceiling.
It might be true, but it's kinda of meaningless since the other colors aren't significantly worse.
I think this is the most important point in this whole discussion... the color balance in M13 is "good enough." That is, the worst color (whatever that is) is not so bad that it's correct to skew your draft to avoid it, and no color is so good that it's worth forcing it against signals to the contrary.
For the record, I think black is the best color in the format, and white and green are 2nd and 3rd in some order (but again, the color balance is quite good this time out).
Iain Bartolomei says it is the best color. Nick Falgout (in the comments) says it is the worst.
Personally, I think it is the worst color, but only by a little -- the colors are very balanced in this format. But it is definitely not the best.
I can't really disagree with much of Bartolomei's analysis of the cards... I just think every card he mentions is slightly worse than he thinks it is (especially Elvish Visionary).
What do you all think?
Hmm..I wonder who this "Nick Falgout" guy could be? Seems fishy...:D
Damn - you get passed the nuts one day and then ruin my jokes on here the next. You're out of line, sir! Oh, the comments I could have made...:laugh:
On an actual strategy note, Iain is just wrong. His decks he shows there are mostly a joke - yeah, I get that Akroma's memorial with a bunch of creatures is awesome..I don't think he proves anything there, really. The only thing he really gets right are that the two best green commons are arbor elf and centaur courser, and that both are much better than sentinel spider. I could pretty much leave everything else in his article. When I used to actually ever play green cards in this format (probably a month ago), I probably built 10-15 green decks that were better than any that he posted there. His sample size is simply too small. He uses EIGHT drafts total to try and "prove" something about the format.
Uh...I do eight drafts in the span of a couple of days..that's literally nothing. I don't start making firm conclusions about a format until I'm at least somewhere between 50-100 drafts in. At this point, for me to draft green, I need a 5th pick overrun (which actually happened yesterday).
The set is very balanced and I have had enough success with a variety of decks to say that green is certainly not the best color. It does what it does well when things come together but all the potential decks in the format do.
The overall difference between the best color in m13 (black in my opinion) and the worst (probably blue) is pretty small. A rare occurrence in a limited environment.
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I was playing a draft the second week up avacyn being out and i was constructing my deck when the guy across from me spilled his cherry kool-aid all over mine and his cards, he had a griselbrand and I had a cavern of souls.
I think green is obviously at it's best when paired. You can do so much fun **** in M13 limited with G/x, Primadox can create some real fun loops. And Rancor is damn near the best card in the set, IMO. Rancor Nighthawk or Scroll Thief for some stupid advantage.
I like green and dislike blue overall - the problem with "different pick orders for different color combinations" is that the effect is so strong in blue that you only have about six (different) playable commons per color combination. I never want to actually spend three mana to cast Divination over any creature in UW, for example, just like Welkin Tern is the nut low in UB and Wind Drake isn't much better. In my blue decks my first 19 cards are always the nuts and the last 4 are always worth about half a card each.
I mostly agree with Iain's evaluations, though I don't think Elvish Visionary is actually playable except as 23rd card filler and I would rather play the 18th land over the first Spiked Baloth in the main. On the flip side, I value Vastwood Gorger much higher than most people do and am always happy to play one and sometimes more if the deck calls for it. Because of this I walk into most of my 8-4s looking for GB - black is the best color by a mile in M13, and is awesome when you have a lot of mana to play with, but the common creatures are all average to rubbish at blocking so black decks often just get bullied out of the combat step by the exalted exalted removal opening. Green neatly fixes that problem by playing guys that are +1/+1 above the curve (plus arbor elf accelerating) so that they can trade or beat the exalted openings while doubling as a fast win condition once the beatdown runs out of dudes.
Note that the above logic is why I think that Fog Bank is the best uncommon card in UB behind Invocation and is level with Nighthawk in that deck.
Finally, the big problem with green that wasn't obvious from the spoiler is that you want completely different cards in your deck for different matchups. Centaur Courser, for example, is the best card in your deck against BW but mediocre against Ux, whereas Spiked Baloth is horrible against red and BW but is actually playable against blue (since blue doesn't have very many creatures that trade acceptably with it). The nice thing, though, is that just about every green common is playable in some circumstance so you end up with a giant sideboard in every green deck. I think failure to utilize sideboard options (and not just the obvious stuff like naturalize for rings, more the ability to change your gameplan completely because of your extra options) is something that ruins your win percentage with green in this format.
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Personally, I think it is the worst color, but only by a little -- the colors are very balanced in this format. But it is definitely not the best.
I can't really disagree with much of Bartolomei's analysis of the cards... I just think every card he mentions is slightly worse than he thinks it is (especially Elvish Visionary).
What do you all think?
I think he overvalues both of the three drops, without giving enough credit to Timberpack Wolf - Rating forcemage so much above the wolf seems wrong. He mentions the aggressiveness of the format as a reason for having 3 drops, surely the same applies to 2 drops.
I also pick the spider over Centaur Courser, and though I admit that I might be wrong here, he hasn't convinced me of it. There are a lot of fliers you have to be able to answer.
Plus I don't get the random hate on Spiked Baloth. It's a fine card.
Draft it on Cubetutor!
Bottom line is, don't worry about what color's power level is compared to other colors. Concentrate on taking the best cards and trying to build from there.
Surprise.
Green is at its worst when it's trying to just curve out and get there, because every other color expects this and has a plan for it, and green lacks anything special to make that strategy resilient, and that makes it easy to dismiss the color as underpowered. But really you just need to be more careful about how you build with the color and know what strengths to play to, and the color is just fine.
Whether or not his conclusions are correct, I don't think that the sample he offers - eight games, although there were presumably more that went into it - is really enough to make any sort of judgement on. Everyone (of necessity) makes judgements about colors and cards with less data (and less well organized data) than is necessarily ideal, but card evaluation information is so noisy and so prone to personal bias that eight drafts don't say anything, especially if what prompts the idea for an article is a (potentially fluky) string of wins with some color combination. The fact that I'd guess that GPs are at least slightly more competitive than a random online draft pod also plays a role.
I'm surprised that Huntbeast is so low in his list; while it's not super impressive in a vacuum, it's the cornerstone of basically everything remotely unfair that green decks (mostly G/B and G/U decks) get to do in this format. Building around Huntbeast is, in my experience, way better than building around Primadox. He does acknowledge that Huntbeast's value varies a lot, but in general I'd rather take Huntbeast and then make it good than take cards that are better in a vacuum but have a lower ceiling.
I think this is the most important point in this whole discussion... the color balance in M13 is "good enough." That is, the worst color (whatever that is) is not so bad that it's correct to skew your draft to avoid it, and no color is so good that it's worth forcing it against signals to the contrary.
For the record, I think black is the best color in the format, and white and green are 2nd and 3rd in some order (but again, the color balance is quite good this time out).
Hmm..I wonder who this "Nick Falgout" guy could be? Seems fishy...:D
Damn - you get passed the nuts one day and then ruin my jokes on here the next. You're out of line, sir! Oh, the comments I could have made...:laugh:
On an actual strategy note, Iain is just wrong. His decks he shows there are mostly a joke - yeah, I get that Akroma's memorial with a bunch of creatures is awesome..I don't think he proves anything there, really. The only thing he really gets right are that the two best green commons are arbor elf and centaur courser, and that both are much better than sentinel spider. I could pretty much leave everything else in his article. When I used to actually ever play green cards in this format (probably a month ago), I probably built 10-15 green decks that were better than any that he posted there. His sample size is simply too small. He uses EIGHT drafts total to try and "prove" something about the format.
Uh...I do eight drafts in the span of a couple of days..that's literally nothing. I don't start making firm conclusions about a format until I'm at least somewhere between 50-100 drafts in. At this point, for me to draft green, I need a 5th pick overrun (which actually happened yesterday).
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The overall difference between the best color in m13 (black in my opinion) and the worst (probably blue) is pretty small. A rare occurrence in a limited environment.
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Black/white/green I am always happy to play in M13.
I mostly agree with Iain's evaluations, though I don't think Elvish Visionary is actually playable except as 23rd card filler and I would rather play the 18th land over the first Spiked Baloth in the main. On the flip side, I value Vastwood Gorger much higher than most people do and am always happy to play one and sometimes more if the deck calls for it. Because of this I walk into most of my 8-4s looking for GB - black is the best color by a mile in M13, and is awesome when you have a lot of mana to play with, but the common creatures are all average to rubbish at blocking so black decks often just get bullied out of the combat step by the exalted exalted removal opening. Green neatly fixes that problem by playing guys that are +1/+1 above the curve (plus arbor elf accelerating) so that they can trade or beat the exalted openings while doubling as a fast win condition once the beatdown runs out of dudes.
Note that the above logic is why I think that Fog Bank is the best uncommon card in UB behind Invocation and is level with Nighthawk in that deck.
Finally, the big problem with green that wasn't obvious from the spoiler is that you want completely different cards in your deck for different matchups. Centaur Courser, for example, is the best card in your deck against BW but mediocre against Ux, whereas Spiked Baloth is horrible against red and BW but is actually playable against blue (since blue doesn't have very many creatures that trade acceptably with it). The nice thing, though, is that just about every green common is playable in some circumstance so you end up with a giant sideboard in every green deck. I think failure to utilize sideboard options (and not just the obvious stuff like naturalize for rings, more the ability to change your gameplan completely because of your extra options) is something that ruins your win percentage with green in this format.