I know this sounds weird, but I like drafting Core Sets. There's an archetype for every color/combo, and less "have-to-memorize-200-cards." As far as which, I don't really recall the differences.
Then again, I also liked ZZW. Mostly because I dominated, mostly because I went U aggro. (Wind Zendikon.)
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RoE was/is very good, if a bit unbalanced in favor of control strategies.
ISD is quite balanced and interactive.
Modern Masters, however, is likely my favorite limited environment ever. For one set to be able to support as many disparate archetypes as there are available in MM is nothing short of amazing to me.
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Triple ISD is probably my favorite ever. Other contenders would be RGD, TPF, triple ROE.
+1.
I also enjoy IPA, Kamigawa block minus Saviours, and Alara block. In my view, many limited formats boil down to "pick two open colors, draft a decent curve over picking for synergy, attack and block till victory, collect 3-0, wash rinse repeat". Any format that breaks this mold is above average.
RoE was/is very good, if a bit unbalanced in favor of control strategies.
I don't think it's necessarily skewed in favor of control. You just have to be willing to go all-in on the aggro plan, not the hedge-your-bets midrange "aggressive" deck stuff we've seen lately. With ROE online this week, I've played aggro in every draft but one, and I've only lost in round 1 when I played the control deck. ROE has plenty of tools for the aggressive strategies to deal with those big drops the control decks can try and stabilize with.
Plus, there are more archetypes that are draftable and balanced in ROE than I have ever seen in another format.
That's why ROE is the best format ever. And that's why I'm a sad panda that it's over tonight
RoE was/is very good, if a bit unbalanced in favor of control strategies.
ISD is quite balanced and interactive.
Cosign on all of these. I haven't drafted Modern Masters so I can't really comment there. One that I really enjoyed was triple Champions; it's a surprisingly open format with a reasonable balance level before the expansions shot it all to hell (what with Betrayers introducing the Most Overpowered Limited Card Ever and Saviors cutting the number of playables to the bone). RGD was fun, but only if everyone knew what they were doing. I usually found that if you tried an RGD draft with 1-2 people who couldn't read signals, you ended up with one person with a beastly deck and 7 people with 4-color trash.
here is sene's completely unbiased Truths About Limited Formats™:
MVW: bad format, WotC didn't know what they were doing, lotsa cards were complete blanks. 2/10
TSE: decent format, rolling thunder is stupid tho. 6/10
Urza: underrated, but not a very good format. Sanctum Custodian is nuts, but Pestilence & co is better. 5/10
MNP: never played it.
IPA: good format, very fun. Extremely interactive games, interesting decisions. The bad thing about the format is the mana. It's just not good enough, and decks end up with very shaky manabases. 8/10
OTJ: decent enough format, graveyard interactions are pretty cool. Complete inability to splash is also a shame, and there was a real shortage on playable cards in general. 6/10
OLS: pretty bad format. Morphs are pretty random, and there are some pretty oppressive commons (Sparksmith & Timberwatch Elf anyone). Too many creatures, too bad curves, games are tedious. 4/10
MD5: good format. Very interactive, lots of interesting archetypes. 8/10
CBS: better without Saviors. Almost no card advantage outside of soulshift & splice shenanigans. All the ****ty cards kinda wear on you. Still not a terrible format by any means. 6/10
CCC: crappy format. Triple small set is never a good thing, and ending up with 7 of the same ripple card was just really obnoxious. And it happened fairly regularly. 2/10
RGD: now we're talking. Infinite possibilities, a host of archetypes, many sources of CA and interaction, fun cards to play with. A complete home run. 10/10
TPF: basically exactly like RGD, only TPF has Sprout Swarm, which is kind of a shame, since it's an absolutely amazing format apart from it. 9/10
LLM: much better without Morningtide aka "have fun blocking". Decent format still though. 7/10
SSE: strong format. Hybrid-based sets open up a lot of possibilities, and everything from mono-color to U/B/r splashing Deity of Scars were possible. Fun interactions, many archetypes. 8/10
SCR: decent format, but made pretty random by its manabase. Cascade is also pretty much the worst, and Alara Reborn was unbalanced. Better with just Shards and Conflux. 6/10
M10: ****ty format, but at least they're trying now. 3/10
ZZW: when I try to draft monored, you know something's up. Way too fast, creatures basically couldn't block. People still say "this set is basically Zendikar", which can be translated into "this set is so fast it's just crap". 2/10
RoE: this set is the nuts. Lots of really cool and weird decks (UW or UB levelers, walls, BR tokens, UR distortion strike, 4-color shared discovery, GW auras, etc etc), games were really good. Only thing hindering maximum score was the small number of cards, which lowered replay value. 9/10
M11: quite a step up from M11. Had some game to it, but still Core set formats can't be genuinely good. 5/10
MBS: good format other than the lulzy rares. Cool decks and interactions, then someone played Elesh Norn. 6/10
M12: **** format. This is the Zendikar of Core Sets. Goblin Artisans picked over Serra Angels can't be good. 2/10
DII: good format, though triple Innistrad was actually insanely good. Dark Ascension didn't bring anything while weakening the actual cool Innistrad archetypes (of which there were many). Still solid. 8/10
AVR: urk. This set had no interaction; it was all about dumping creatures and pairing them up, and you could rest easy knowing your opponent had no tricks, 'cuz there were none. 2/10
M13: didn't play.
RtR: average format. Few archetypes, and somewhat uninteresting gameplay. Dumb rares like Pack Rat and Mizzium Mortars didn't help. The format was still very playable though. 6/10
GTC: way too fast. All five abilities are aggressively oriented (though extort is more like race-oriented than strictly aggressive) and are better on your turn than on your opponent's. Few archetypes, little room for maneuver, and uninteresting gameplay. 3/10
DGR: still a rather fast format, but there is a lot of room for maneuver, and the format is more welcoming to interesting draft strategies. The games aren't a lot better though. 7/10
So there you go, the comprehensive guide to Limited magic.
Tempest Stronghold Exodus. Lots of people complain about rolling thunder at common, but everything else was really fun (I love me some rolling thunder).
My top 3 are: ROE, INN and M13. I didn't play RGD at the time though, so I can't really comment on that. I can say that modern masters isn't even close to even M13.
Sene, where does INN rate? It's not in your evaluation. Also, you should play M13 sometime and rethink "Core set formats can't be genuinely good"
i loved M12, largely because control is so viable in M12, as long as you went all-in at the beginning. there are so many cards in WU that make creatures frozen for a few turns (Frost Breath, Gideon's Lawkeeper, Stonehorn Dignitary, Mind Control), plus some big walls (such as that 2/5 Flying wall). there was also Fog and Crown of Empires to help.
add to that that there weren't things like the Rings or Exalted in M13 that make things huge, and that there wasn't much like Armed // Dangerous to force things through (other than one red land destruction card), and then add the fact that Mana Leak and Ponder were in the set, makes for WU control very viable.
oh, and mill was viable, too, unlike of late. (a two-drop milling card in blue, Jace's Erasure + Merfolk Looter, etc).
but, i like how aggro was still viable despite what i just said, with bloodrush. i think it was a very balanced set. these days, it seems like control is way, way too difficult to draft, especially in M13.
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some of my favourite flavour text:
Wayward Soul "no home no heart no hope"
—Stronghold graffito
Raging Goblin He raged at the world, at his family, at his life. But mostly he just raged.
triple innistrad by a considerable margin but i only started around late scars early m12
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"A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom will make it clearer? 4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? And he will probably ask himself two more: 1. Could I put it more shortly? 2. Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?"
Wait a minute... RGD.... DGR... why am I just noticing this?
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My Decks: EDH: Sygg, River Cutthroat , Road to Scion
Grimgrin, Corpseborn Modern: Polytokes IRL: Progenitus Polymorph , Goblins
Sene, where does INN rate? It's not in your evaluation. Also, you should play M13 sometime and rethink "Core set formats can't be genuinely good"
He called triple ISD "insanely good" in his evaluation of DII so I'd assume it would be a 9 or a 10/10.
I thought M13 was a well done core set too. Probably my favorite core set to date as far as limited anyways but it still falls short of an average expert level set.
I have a special affection for triple Champions. The set gets a lot of flack for being awful in standard (and it was), but in its own little world, the cards work pretty well together, and the games were always amusing. It also provided me endless amusement as I listened to people struggle to pronounce the card names.
Triple Innistrad, any Time Spiral block combination, and Modern Masters are my favorites. All formats that offer multiple archetypes and are not stupid fast.
1) Eldrazi tokens/ramp. Grab the token makers and enjoy the benefits of early Ulamog's Crushers, Pelakka Wurms, and anything else huge that you're lucky enough to draft. If you had lots of tokens and cheap creatures there was a niche archetype that used Raid Bombardment to good effect. Big ups to Broodwarden here too.
2) Levelers/Level-Up. Grab Venerated Teachers wherever possible and cut all the cheapest, most efficient level-up creatures like Skywatcher Adept. Ramp is welcome in this archetype (and pretty much every archetype) since you have so many mana sinks.
3) Kiln Fiend Spellslinger. Instants, sorceries, and rebound spells to push huge damage through with cheap beats. Goblin Tunneler and Distortion Strike could help end games in short order with a Fiend or two on the field.
4) Vent Sentinel Defenders. It wasn't often that this deck came together but when it did it was both sweet and hilarious. Overgrown Battlement in multiples with other defenders was great ramp and you could gum up the ground for a few turns and then start dropping actual threats.
5) Aura Gnarlid/Totem Armor. Draft Gnarlids, lots of auras, and if you manage to draft a Kor Spiritdancer begin reaping big value.
Did I miss any? There were synergies you could draft as well that weren't quite archetypes, like Bloodthrone Vampire paired with tokens and token-makers like Pawn of Ulamog as well as feeding her with whatever you stole with Traitorous Instinct.
Can someone tell me what archetypes existed for those formats? I'm most interested in ROE x3, Innistrad x 3, and TSPCFS.
Off the top of my head, for Innistrad (it has been awhile):
Green/White (Humans + Equipment). I think I forced this one a lot, I think there were a lot of playable humans.
Werewolves - Werewolves are also humans on their day side, so really most of these decks were really just human decks with a focus more on bigger dudes and more red than white.
Spirits - Blue/White fliers, essentially.
Black/Blue (Zombies), aka Self Mill. Armored Skaab is a major piece of this one, a 1/4 for 3 that puts 4 cards in your library. Then you have 4/5s on the ground, and 3/4s in the air that required you to exile a creature card from your graveyard in order to cast. Milling cards into your own library was also good because of flashback cards. Silent Departure was a great card in this format.
The really, really going Deep Spider Spawning deck. Basically your entire goal with this deck is to mill yourself down to no cards, and just start looping Memory's Journey and Runic Repetition your Spider Spawning, with Gnaw to the Bone keeping you alive by giving you 20+ life a casting. It's deep because all the important pieces to this deck are uncommon: Spider Spawning and Runic Repetition are key players.
Black/Red (vampires) was also a decent deck though I did not draft it as often as B/U or G/W.
Which were the best?
Thx
Then again, I also liked ZZW. Mostly because I dominated, mostly because I went U aggro. (Wind Zendikon.)
My Decks:
EDH: Sygg, River Cutthroat , Road to Scion
Grimgrin, Corpseborn
Modern: Polytokes
IRL: Progenitus Polymorph , Goblins
Just a friendly reminder that I will drive this car off a bridge
RoE was/is very good, if a bit unbalanced in favor of control strategies.
ISD is quite balanced and interactive.
Modern Masters, however, is likely my favorite limited environment ever. For one set to be able to support as many disparate archetypes as there are available in MM is nothing short of amazing to me.
:dance:Fact or Fiction of the [Limited] Clan:dance:
+1.
I also enjoy IPA, Kamigawa block minus Saviours, and Alara block. In my view, many limited formats boil down to "pick two open colors, draft a decent curve over picking for synergy, attack and block till victory, collect 3-0, wash rinse repeat". Any format that breaks this mold is above average.
3XMM
RDG
3XInn
3XROE
I don't think it's necessarily skewed in favor of control. You just have to be willing to go all-in on the aggro plan, not the hedge-your-bets midrange "aggressive" deck stuff we've seen lately. With ROE online this week, I've played aggro in every draft but one, and I've only lost in round 1 when I played the control deck. ROE has plenty of tools for the aggressive strategies to deal with those big drops the control decks can try and stabilize with.
Plus, there are more archetypes that are draftable and balanced in ROE than I have ever seen in another format.
That's why ROE is the best format ever. And that's why I'm a sad panda that it's over tonight
BBB Drana, Kalastria Bloodchief BBB
GBW Ghave, Guru of Spores WBG
BUG Damia, Sage of Stone GUB
WBR Kaalia of the Vast RBW
UBU Sexy Wrexy BUB
RUG Riku of Two Reflections GUR
GGG Sasaya, Orochi Ascendant GGG
Cosign on all of these. I haven't drafted Modern Masters so I can't really comment there. One that I really enjoyed was triple Champions; it's a surprisingly open format with a reasonable balance level before the expansions shot it all to hell (what with Betrayers introducing the Most Overpowered Limited Card Ever and Saviors cutting the number of playables to the bone). RGD was fun, but only if everyone knew what they were doing. I usually found that if you tried an RGD draft with 1-2 people who couldn't read signals, you ended up with one person with a beastly deck and 7 people with 4-color trash.
UBDragonlord Silumgar WGKarametra, God of Harvests
BRUNekusar, the Mindrazer BGMazirek, Kraul Death Priest
URMelek, Izzet Paragon UGPrime Speaker Zegana
WUHanna, Ship's Navigator BWUSydri, Galvanic Genius
WUBRGSliver Queen RBBladewing the Risen
WBKarlov of the Ghost Council RGXenagos, God of Revels
GFreyalise, Llanowar's Fury RWAurelia, the Warleader
RIb Halfheart, Goblin Tactician BDrana, Liberator of Malakir
UAzami, Lady of Scrolls WNahiri, the Lithomancer
WBGDoran, the Siege Tower CEmrakul, the Promised End
Modern Masters is a 9/10 format, by the way.
Tempest Stronghold Exodus. Lots of people complain about rolling thunder at common, but everything else was really fun (I love me some rolling thunder).
Sene, where does INN rate? It's not in your evaluation. Also, you should play M13 sometime and rethink "Core set formats can't be genuinely good"
Draft it on Cubetutor!
add to that that there weren't things like the Rings or Exalted in M13 that make things huge, and that there wasn't much like Armed // Dangerous to force things through (other than one red land destruction card), and then add the fact that Mana Leak and Ponder were in the set, makes for WU control very viable.
oh, and mill was viable, too, unlike of late. (a two-drop milling card in blue, Jace's Erasure + Merfolk Looter, etc).
but, i like how aggro was still viable despite what i just said, with bloodrush. i think it was a very balanced set. these days, it seems like control is way, way too difficult to draft, especially in M13.
Goblins have poor impulse control. Don't click this link!!
some of my favourite flavour text:
Wayward Soul
"no home no heart no hope"
—Stronghold graffito
Raging Goblin
He raged at the world, at his family, at his life. But mostly he just raged.
My Decks:
EDH: Sygg, River Cutthroat , Road to Scion
Grimgrin, Corpseborn
Modern: Polytokes
IRL: Progenitus Polymorph , Goblins
Just a friendly reminder that I will drive this car off a bridge
He called triple ISD "insanely good" in his evaluation of DII so I'd assume it would be a 9 or a 10/10.
I thought M13 was a well done core set too. Probably my favorite core set to date as far as limited anyways but it still falls short of an average expert level set.
How you should approach every game of Magic.
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1) Eldrazi tokens/ramp. Grab the token makers and enjoy the benefits of early Ulamog's Crushers, Pelakka Wurms, and anything else huge that you're lucky enough to draft. If you had lots of tokens and cheap creatures there was a niche archetype that used Raid Bombardment to good effect. Big ups to Broodwarden here too.
2) Levelers/Level-Up. Grab Venerated Teachers wherever possible and cut all the cheapest, most efficient level-up creatures like Skywatcher Adept. Ramp is welcome in this archetype (and pretty much every archetype) since you have so many mana sinks.
3) Kiln Fiend Spellslinger. Instants, sorceries, and rebound spells to push huge damage through with cheap beats. Goblin Tunneler and Distortion Strike could help end games in short order with a Fiend or two on the field.
4) Vent Sentinel Defenders. It wasn't often that this deck came together but when it did it was both sweet and hilarious. Overgrown Battlement in multiples with other defenders was great ramp and you could gum up the ground for a few turns and then start dropping actual threats.
5) Aura Gnarlid/Totem Armor. Draft Gnarlids, lots of auras, and if you manage to draft a Kor Spiritdancer begin reaping big value.
Did I miss any? There were synergies you could draft as well that weren't quite archetypes, like Bloodthrone Vampire paired with tokens and token-makers like Pawn of Ulamog as well as feeding her with whatever you stole with Traitorous Instinct.
Off the top of my head, for Innistrad (it has been awhile):
Green/White (Humans + Equipment). I think I forced this one a lot, I think there were a lot of playable humans.
Werewolves - Werewolves are also humans on their day side, so really most of these decks were really just human decks with a focus more on bigger dudes and more red than white.
Spirits - Blue/White fliers, essentially.
Black/Blue (Zombies), aka Self Mill. Armored Skaab is a major piece of this one, a 1/4 for 3 that puts 4 cards in your library. Then you have 4/5s on the ground, and 3/4s in the air that required you to exile a creature card from your graveyard in order to cast. Milling cards into your own library was also good because of flashback cards. Silent Departure was a great card in this format.
The really, really going Deep Spider Spawning deck. Basically your entire goal with this deck is to mill yourself down to no cards, and just start looping Memory's Journey and Runic Repetition your Spider Spawning, with Gnaw to the Bone keeping you alive by giving you 20+ life a casting. It's deep because all the important pieces to this deck are uncommon: Spider Spawning and Runic Repetition are key players.
Black/Red (vampires) was also a decent deck though I did not draft it as often as B/U or G/W.
@Innistrad: Also don't forget Burning Vengeance, a pretty sweet archetype. Usually it was blue-red, but it could easily splash stuff here and there.