Tempest Remastered is an online-only set that takes the entire Tempest Block and boils it down to one set designed for limited. If you were to take one block and give it the same treatment, which block would you pick?
I'd love to play Mirage block that same way. Though the best drafting experience might be an Invasion block set done like that. I really like Tempest Remastered. I think it's a cool idea and pretty well executed.
I'm thinking cold snap and ice age combined would be fun. The whole nemesis and what not. Tons of opportunities. Tempest wasn't as bad as some other ones.
For me that would be Ice Age, Mirage or Invasion. Mainly because I played those intensively back in the day. I think Invasion especially could be pretty sweet.
Agreed on Mirage. My first ever test-run at cube with my playgroup was Mirage-block (as I have complete sets of Mirage and Visions, so it wasn't too hard to find the best cards in the block from that point on). There are some fun, fun cards, but man was Mirage a slow, combo-filled grinder... the cube matches took a fair while!
Another I'd really like to see is Urza's block. Saga in particular had so many crazy cards in it, but the meta as a whole was very unbalanced. Finding a way to balance the meta and still keep all that craziness on board sounds like good times to me.
Mirage would be very cool. Playable Limited Saga sounds amazing. But my own personal pick would have to go to Fallen Empires and Homelands. Let's see someone make something playable out of that
On that topic, there's also the idea of "remixing", where a set's card values (casting cost, P/T etc) are updated to reflect modern power levels. On second thoughts, maybe that's a better idea for FE and Homelands
- Remove the Runes of Protection (causes games to go to time by allowing weak white decks to completely stonewall B/R decks; maindeckable because of cycling)
- Remove the more stupid color hosers
- Halve black removal, pestilence to rare
- Bump down in rarity a lot of green and blue creatures
- Bump down in rarity a lot of the weaker enchantments. Rancor to uncommon
- Remove the auto-wins like Phyrexian Processor
Then remove the bottom 50% to get one decent set instead of a block. Might be fun to try, really.
If just 'remastered' and condensed into a really tight limited environment, probably Mirage or Urza's. If we're talking 'remixing', with redesign across the board but preservation of themes and flavour, probably Kamigawa would be nice to see done right. That block started off quite well with Champions but came off the rails after that.
I'd love to see wizard's take on an all-6-sets Ravnica Masters. I recently consolidated all of my personal rav sims into a 450 singleton cube, but I'd still be interested in trying a ravnica-encompassing set that preserved the normal common/uncommon/rare distribution scheme.
Invasion was fun as it was. Kamigawa remastered would just be 3xChk or 2x and a betrayers. I actually enjoyed Urza's block draft, though i would also rate tempest block almost as highly as remastered. Masques block was good online as it was released in full block boosters. Either mirage block or ice age, alliances, coldsnap minus ripple. Dishonorable mention to Theros block.
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I've been working through Masques as a bit of fun and... if you hack it down to the size of tempest remastered and downgrade a lot of rares to uncommon, you actually have a decent set (but it's a stretch for some rares).
I loved Theros btw. People who didn't like Theros should realize how awesome of a set it was.
The draft set for 3x Theros itself was basically a very simple draft, probably one of the best introduction to drafting sets (certainly for a non core set) there has ever been. I introduced a bunch of people to drafting at my LGS.. By giving them a quick run down of the linchpinch commons that strongly singled an archetype. Removal was expensive and it was hard to avoid getting value with your enchantment creatures but monstrous was a great mechanic and <3 Gary.
Then born of the gods ruined everything....it had two awful mechanics that didn't add to the ones in theros... plus it basically just took the critical mass required to make devotion decks work. In my opinion this set tried too much to be its own thing instead of being a bridge between the simple theros set and the more complicated journey set. This set needed to make devotion remain a key mechanic for critical mass reasons and monstrous wass also too elegant a mechanic to lose.
Journey to Nyx.... it was actually a pretty good set and it felt good to play, except you always hated the middle pack. It was a much more intricate synergistic set compared to the simple Theros. I liked the enchantments and graveyard matters themes of the set that wasn't in the other sets.
I would basically combine Theros and Journey cutting most of Born... to properly have a mix of simple archetypes and deeper more complicated ones. You'd still have a set with bad, clunky and ineffective removal but that in itself gives a set flavour.
Invasion and Scars of Mirrodin please! Definitely the funnest blocks I've played! A lot of cards jive really well with each other making most drafts feel good.
I think combining any two blocks (e.g. ZEN + BFZ) would be a fun excercise to do. But for me I would take in: (since this a mental exercise anyway)
Old blocks: Weatherlight Saga / Invasion block : The Phyrexian War block, with all the characters
Modern: Ravnica : combining both blocks into a mega block of 10 guilds, meshing and appropriately melding all 10 color pairs. I have a pauper Ravnica cube and I gave up on it, consuming time formulate and not enough time to test.
A remaster of ABU would interest me; tidy up the wording, do some high res art scans and cut all the ante/dexterity cards. You might need to make a few other changes like cutting the really unplayable stuff but it would be fun and interesting for people *(like me) who never drafted or played the set.
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All of the "bad" formats could be more fun if fixed. So things like:
- Ice Age
- Masques
- Kamigawa
Might be a fun project to do.
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Another I'd really like to see is Urza's block. Saga in particular had so many crazy cards in it, but the meta as a whole was very unbalanced. Finding a way to balance the meta and still keep all that craziness on board sounds like good times to me.
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On that topic, there's also the idea of "remixing", where a set's card values (casting cost, P/T etc) are updated to reflect modern power levels. On second thoughts, maybe that's a better idea for FE and Homelands
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- Remove the Runes of Protection (causes games to go to time by allowing weak white decks to completely stonewall B/R decks; maindeckable because of cycling)
- Remove the more stupid color hosers
- Halve black removal, pestilence to rare
- Bump down in rarity a lot of green and blue creatures
- Bump down in rarity a lot of the weaker enchantments. Rancor to uncommon
- Remove the auto-wins like Phyrexian Processor
Then remove the bottom 50% to get one decent set instead of a block. Might be fun to try, really.
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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!
I loved Theros btw. People who didn't like Theros should realize how awesome of a set it was.
The draft set for 3x Theros itself was basically a very simple draft, probably one of the best introduction to drafting sets (certainly for a non core set) there has ever been. I introduced a bunch of people to drafting at my LGS.. By giving them a quick run down of the linchpinch commons that strongly singled an archetype. Removal was expensive and it was hard to avoid getting value with your enchantment creatures but monstrous was a great mechanic and <3 Gary.
Then born of the gods ruined everything....it had two awful mechanics that didn't add to the ones in theros... plus it basically just took the critical mass required to make devotion decks work. In my opinion this set tried too much to be its own thing instead of being a bridge between the simple theros set and the more complicated journey set. This set needed to make devotion remain a key mechanic for critical mass reasons and monstrous wass also too elegant a mechanic to lose.
Journey to Nyx.... it was actually a pretty good set and it felt good to play, except you always hated the middle pack. It was a much more intricate synergistic set compared to the simple Theros. I liked the enchantments and graveyard matters themes of the set that wasn't in the other sets.
I would basically combine Theros and Journey cutting most of Born... to properly have a mix of simple archetypes and deeper more complicated ones. You'd still have a set with bad, clunky and ineffective removal but that in itself gives a set flavour.
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Old blocks: Weatherlight Saga / Invasion block : The Phyrexian War block, with all the characters
Modern: Ravnica : combining both blocks into a mega block of 10 guilds, meshing and appropriately melding all 10 color pairs. I have a pauper Ravnica cube and I gave up on it, consuming time formulate and not enough time to test.