Good things about theros: Tricks relatively good compared to removal, makes it fun to play. Relatively deep that there isn't a clear amount of unplayables making there be more interesting picks a bit later down the line. Not really any broken cards either that are just unbeatable. Sealed is not just about bombs for example.
Bad things: it's a bit bland. except heroic there are hardly any decks relying on synergy and it's just pick goodstuff and any colors can match. Play can also be a bit too tempo driven which makes it a bit of a racing affair too often. Also dislike the ordeal cycle, it's too high reward high risk but for many decks good enough to play so you get games with a blowout on turn 2 either way.
3x THS: B: The mechanics are very fun flavorful. But it gets old after a while since the decks are all kind of similar and there's only a few reasonable archetypes (W/x heroic, B/x control, G/x big dudes). Also it's not very bomb heavy and mostly about synergy, which I like.
3x M14: D: Blue being so good and white being so bad means that drafting isn't very fun. Taking the best card usually means you'll be one of 5 blue drafters and not get anything reasonable. And as a result you see the same sorts of decks over and over. The weird "combo" strategies are annoying to play against.
3x MMA: B-: I only played this ~6 times. I liked the various archetypes, but found it to be too bomb-heavy. Certain cards (Shackles, Swords) are basically unbeatable.
DGR: C+: The decks you end up with are cool, but drafting is kind of annoying because you have to pass the cards you really want to take. This is the only format I've ever preferred sealed.
3x GTC: B: Boros, Orzhov, and Simic were all really fun for me to play. And Dimir was pretty interesting. All the guild play out differently enough that although you have only five actual decks they give you diverse archetypes (compare to Theros). It's a bit too fast-paced for me, but I liked how bombs don't really matter because of that.
3x RTR: B+: Just as with GTC, having five really different decks was nice and the guilds are very flavorful and fun. Izzet in particular was a really cool deck to play as you could win out of nowhere with your opponents left scratching their heads. I liked this slightly more because of the slightly slower pace, although Pack Rat keeps it from being an A.
3x M13: A: My favorite draft format. All the colors were incredibly balanced, which makes the drafting experience really fun. The game play was pretty interactive and supported archetypes from aggro to control
3x AVR: D: Only played like 3 times.
DII: B+: Similar to INN. I enjoyed the change of pace.
3x INN: B+: Very flavorful and fun. I don't really like mill as a mechanic so that part was kind of annoying for me.
I wonder how much better Return to Ravnica block draft would have been if we had the old draft order (Instead of DGR - > RGD). It seems as though that would have made the signals easier to read and the fixing and gold cards wouldn't be "wasted" because by the third pack everyone would know the colors they are in.
I'll suppose I'll have to get some friends together and try this.
Battle: DGR was expressly designed with the new draft order in mind. That is, I highly believe that the first drafted set in full RTR block draft would have all ten guilds.
Everyone else: As for online vs. RL play, the real thing is something merl put me onto... if your play group has all similar valuations of cards, drafts tend to be... odd. Full stop.
Multiple teams in the 8-Way Theros Draft have commented that this is the weirdest Theros draft they've ever seen.
More or less, all but one or two teams are drafting the same deck--or at least the same colors--and so most teams are... not getting a fairly good deck.
What's so very interesting are the two decks that aren't having this problem.
My grades are going to be colored by my love for blue, card advantage, removal and creatures that are good at blocking, as well as my own performance with the format, obviously.
Theros - most pros seem to be pretty stoked on this set, but while I think it's decent, I'm not quite that excited about it. Sometimes it's just way too hard to deal with the opponent's random cheap thing that they slap an Ordeal onto. I'm not super impressed by the interactivity of this format, but one thing I really like is the amount of solid sideboard cards you can draft. C+
Magic 2014 - I enjoyed this more than any other Core Set I've played. Of course, this is probably because blue was amazing and I could sit there and draw cards and counter spells all day and win, and it's hard for me to imagine anything more sweet when playing Magic. It did get very stale very quickly, though, as people figured out what's up. C
Modern Masters - I have only ever drafted three archetypes: Blue/Green/Red (1st draft), Goblins (1 time), and Grixis Control (~15 times), but I've enjoyed this format immensely. One thing I can appreciate is when I find my favorite thing to do, and no one else will ever fight me over it! That's Modern Masters to me. This is probably because there are so many archetypes that people can happily do whatever they like. The format kinda had it all, much to my surprise when I first played it. A
DGR - When I saw the Gatekeepers and all the other awesome value cards in Dragon's Maze, I thought this was going to be a much sweeter draft format than it turned out to be. Unfortunately, the fixing and support just weren't quite there, and aggressive two-color decks were still the best. Drafts were kinda messy, in that you often had to force a guild from the first couple of picks and hope it worked out. I still think it was decent fun, but it was a little disappointing. C-
Gatecrash - The format was fun until everyone discovered how great Orzhov was (I actually felt I was a bit unlucky to only go 5-1 on day 2 at the GP I played with this format). Simply put, the format was way too aggressive. Jamming cheap creatures and beating down was really all you could realistically do, and I have a hard time coming up with anything in Magic that excites me less. Few archetypes, too fast games, very dull. D-
Return to Ravnica - RtR also suffered from having few archetypes, but these were at least fairly balanced, and supported both aggro and slightly slower decks. Some of the rare bombs were pretty dumb (I'm of course having a certain small rodent in mind here), but the format was fun overall. I played a lot of Selesnya in the beginning, but enjoyed drafting Izzet more and more as time went on. Also got a GP top 8 and lost playing for another in this format, so it must have been good. B
Magic 2013 - I had a small break from Magic (around 4 months) when this set was released, so I didn't play more than one draft. Can't really say anything about it.
Avacyn Restored - While I agree that this format was bad and dull, I don't agree that it was completely luck-based or anything - this is actually one of the formats I've excelled at, embarrassingly enough. Anyway, yes. The lack of good ways to stop whatever the opponent is doing, as well as overpowered soulbound creatures and color imbalance made the format an overall trainwreck. D
DII - Dark Ascension was by no means a bad set, but it was a slight letdown after triple Innistrad, since it didn't build upon what that set introduced, and mostly impeded the actual interesting archetypes that were available in that format. It seemed to mostly introduce random creatures rather than fun cards, though I did enjoy drafting around Wolfhunter's Quiver quite a bit. B
Innistrad - Strong set due to the number of very different archetypes available. The fact that Spider Spawning was discovered so late in the format only speaks to its strength. Burning Vengeance was also great fun, and green-white aggro was also a good deck for those who like that sort of thing. I see a lot of complaints about aggressive milling (i.e. Curse of the Bloody Tome, etc), but in my experience that wasn't a real deck anyway. The format grew worse as time went on and everyone started fighting over the cool archetypes, but that's how it goes, I suppose. A
Battle: DGR was expressly designed with the new draft order in mind. That is, I highly believe that the first drafted set in full RTR block draft would have all ten guilds.
I don't doubt that it was designed with the new draft order in mind, I was just curious if people thought it would have been a better environment if it was switched.
Battle: In a word, no. It would have unduly unbalanced the guilds in favor of the RTR ones.
More formally, there would be a higher risk to trying to draft a GTC guild over a RTR guild because of various factors.
Arguably, you can also say the reverse. Someone who wanted to draft, say, Orzhov in GTC could try to cut white and black in RTR to try to get the good Orzhov cards--if any existed--in GTC.
Either way, you are inherently biasing the archetype choices due to draft order.
About the only difference you could say for sure is that the format would probably have been more 'draft good gold cards in first two packs, and then draft your fixing in pack 3'. Which reduces the DGM pack to basically being a fixing pack, and I don't think that's very desirable either.
I disagree. If you look at the excellent way that RGD turned out, with people generally finding their way into three color decks, there wasn't a lot of reason to think that midpack guilds would be disadvantaged.
In any case, I'd much rather get my fixing late, after I know what colors I want to be, than early. It might trivialize the third pack, but it makes the first two packs much more interesting. The biggest problem with DGR as a format was that actually drafting it was super boring because the second two packs offered no real decisions and the first pack offered too many before you knew what was going on.
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.
I know that this thread is specifically about draft, but I would also add that I am overall much more pleased with sealed in Theros than draft. Not that sealed is really good in Theros either, but it seems like a set that is better geared towards fun sealed games.
Puddlejumper: I think you're underestimating the change in structure. Also, I for one did NOT like how RGD turned out in terms of guild balance. "Oh, hey, I'll draft a Ravnica guild, and if that doesn't pan out, I can try for another one" is way too much redundancy for my tastes.
But hey, it's not like my opinion means anything here.
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. 6/10
So there you go, the comprehensive guide to Limited magic.
Modern Masters is a 9/10 format, by the way.
Which I wrote in a rather different setting. Perhaps I should take the time to write a more detailed (& less crude) version...
I know that this thread is specifically about draft, but I would also add that I am overall much more pleased with sealed in Theros than draft. Not that sealed is really good in Theros either, but it seems like a set that is better geared towards fun sealed games.
I totally agree with this. A lot of the problems that people have about THS draft don't come up as much in sealed. Also, I can't remember a sealed format where I've had so many good pools, and so many hard deckbuilding decisions (even though I end up U/G the vast majority of the time anyway, mana curve/bounce city). There's really not too many dead cards in the format, and there's a lot of solid SB cards. I find myself siding pretty hard in this format as compared with a lot of other recent sealed sets.
I opened three Temples in a Phantom last night... FML...
I am finding that green is almost a little too easy in Theros sealed though. In my phantoms, I've been playing green probably two-thirds of the time. Blue is pretty cray too. Red just has too many jank cards, so I wind up playing it the least.
I have a question for people that dislike Theros draft: How much of your opinion of the format is tied up in Wingsteed Rider and/or the Ordeal cycle? I find that if someone puts pants on a T3 rider (even if it's just Chosen by Heliod) I pretty much want to concede on the spot if I don't have an answer in hand - even if I eventually deal with it, they'll have gotten such a huge advantage and I'll have spent so much effort dealing with it that I'm going to have trouble dealing with the next threat. Similar with a T2/T3 Ordeal, particularly if I can't answer it before it goes off. I guess in some sense that's the point of the format, but in another sense it makes the format seem random and not fun.
On the other hand, games that don't involve Rider or an Ordeal are pretty fun and interactive. Even uncommon heroic creatures like Favored Hoplite and Phalanx Leader are more OK because they show up less frequently.
I opened three Temples in a Phantom last night... FML...
I am finding that green is almost a little too easy in Theros sealed though. In my phantoms, I've been playing green probably two-thirds of the time. Blue is pretty cray too. Red just has too many jank cards, so I wind up playing it the least.
In sealed, green is really the only color with a very solid creature curve at common, plus it has one of the best commons in the set (Asp), so its pretty easy to fall into it as one of your main colors.
I rarely ever run red either, way too shallow. The only time I run it is if I have multiple Ordeals/Strike/Magma Jet combined with the two solid 4 and 5 drop monstrous dudes. Their 1-3 drop creatures at common are largely garbage, unless you have enough support in white to abuse Heroic.
pizzap: It is very possible that Wizards intentionally delayed the removal in the block so that people could properly assess a Voltron format before the 'dies to removal' argument is overplayed. Again.
It's rather how GTC was an extremely fast Draft 'format' because DGM was intentionally very slow/clunky. I don't think there's been much revelation from WotC on how much they try to balance each draft format as opposed to the entire block draft format...
Theros: B
I like how the games tends to go long, but there allso can be aggresive decks.
M14: C
Found it a bit boring, blue was a bit better than the other colors and that made boring, since you would win if you played blue, and lose if you played against it.
DGM-GTC-RTR: A
Really liked it, there was so many diffrent strategys you could draft, and 5 color good stuff is so fun.
3x GTC: E
Well i hated it, Dimir was allmost totally unplayable, and the format was all about 2 drops.
3x RTR: B+
Liked it and found all the archtypes really fun, there where so many decks there was playables, like the wall deck, and the enchantment deck, it was pretty fun.
M13: B
Liked it, there where some archtypes there where really fun to draft, and it was pretty balanced.
Avacyn Restored: C
There was a bit to much imbalance, some of the colors was to weak, and the removal was way to restictive.
DKA-ISD-ISD: A, make some of the strategyis from 3x ISD harder to build, but it did bring tribal, and black white sacrifce in, so was still really good.
ISD-ISD-ISD: A+ was the first format i drafted and i loved it, found lots of strange decks that where playable, with cards everybody else thought was crap.
Pros: many archetypes. The set rewards tight play and can lead to some pretty neat boards. There are no true "bombs" (jitte, pack rat), the games tend to go long. Blue may have been a bit OP. In 20-25 drafts i can count the number of times i was nonblue on a hand.
Cons- some cards are impossible to play against (sea god's revenge, hoplite+ordeal). Many games are decided by a voltron going nuts.
M14x3 - D
Pros: very niche drafting. I killed someone with millstone once. Abu dant removal, durdling is basic lly required.
Cons: i couldn't seem to do well in the format to save my life . No idea why. This is entirely personal.
DGM-GTC-RTR - B
Pros: niche drafting, but in the end the optimal strat was to pick a guild and stick with it. I just forced 5cc all day, though and the format was okay.
Cons: Tons of bombs, though, and getting cut out of a color pair in p1 was firmly annoying.
3x GTC - F
pros: the simic dinosaurs deck was pretty fun, and the orzhov mirrors were nutty.
Cons: this format was basically zendikar in terms of speed. Boros too stronk, etc. I dislike he fact that dimir was unplayable.
RTRx3 - B+
Pros: good archetypes with a lot of rogue possibilities. Walls, guttersnipe burn, auras. The cards were very flavorful and the abundance of tricks made tight play rewarding.
Cons: pack rat too stronk. Mizzium mortars too stronk. Vithu-gazi guildmage might as well have been a mythic. The gw decks in general tended to be very good. I also 2-1'd a draft on MTGO with 39 swamps and a rat. **** like this should not happen.
M13 - A-
Pros: very entertaining for a core set. It spawned some of my favorite videos (lsv's 5-divination pile. Google it, it's worth a watch) and each color pair seemed like it had a chance. My favorite archetype was gruul aggro. Just force pick all the green/red two drops and centaurs plus the spears and lava ades for reach.
Theros:B:
Some new things.
Sad to see so much scry one. That is a bit weak.
Good amount of tricks which is a new experience.
Auras actually getting played is something new as well but still bouncing / burning in response to a aura being played still wins games.
I hate that lion soooo much.
Reminds me to much of invisible stalker.
All in all I'm hoping for a regular three block format and if the second set can shake things up some more.
M14:D:
They have not recreated the magic that was the Core Set with bolt / BSA or the magic that was Core Set with the titans.
GTC:F:
Not good and the third set could not make it any better.
AVR:D:
It was so close to being good. Lack of interactivity was frustrating. It had some neat mechanics though.
Wow, people really disliked GTC! I know I'm in the minority here, but I would definitely rate GTC higher than RTR - Pack Rat and Rootborn Defenses and Unleash really hurt RTR in my opinion. In general, I just didn't find RTR's mechanics as interesting as GTC's. I think I was also disappointed that Izzet (my favorite guild) didn't turn out differently. The best Izzet deck seemed to be the aggro Pursuit of Flight deck - wish the Guttersnipe deck or something more like Burning Vengeance would have been the Izzet deck. Unleash was just terrible - putting a counter on a creature isn't an interesting decision.
GTC, on the other hand, had great mechanics all around. I loved playing the Dimir deck - Hands of Binding was like the ultimate tempo card - but obviously Extort and Evolve were great as well.
Of course, neither come close to MMA and triple ISD.
Both of the Limited Resources hosts graded the 2013 sets in a recent episode, the divergences of their opinion from peopleon this are pretty stark especially re M14 and Brian's opinion of Modern Masters, which I would be interested in hearing people's replies to. Here's each host's ranking, with brief reasons:
Marshall:
1) Modern Masters [similar opinion to most in this thread]
2) M14 [Pros: solid limited experience, most colour combinations viable, no real non-mythic "bombs" rewarded strong limited skills, some build around me/synergy potential. Cons: slivers failed, no real agressive deck option]
3) Gatecrash [Pros: Fun mechanics, really enjoyed simic. Cons: Cipher failed, got stale quickly]
4) Theros [Pros: "combat tricks as removal" was interesting, set well balanced between agressive/midrange/control. Cons: very shallow, no build around me or synergy potential outside of the on-rails heroic deck]
5) DGM-GTC-RTR [Pros: none. Cons: a complete mess, in particular fixing - cluestones were simply too bad. The optimal DGM pack strategy of "pick the boring mono coloured card" felt awful]
Brian:
1) M14 [As above]
2) Gatecrash [As above, but particularly liked orzhov as well]
3) Theros [As above, but commended heroic and bestow for being genuinely novel limited mechanics]
4) Modern Masters [Liked the concept but not the execution. Did not enjoy the set due to the highly linear nature of the draft, due to strongly seeded archetypes. He noted that he had personally drafted all of the archetypes in their original form and so was personally disappointed that the set was essentially a mashup of old archetypes rather than trying to create something new. The linear nature of the archetypes meant that the draft gameplay was rarely surprising - the only real skill in the format was identifying the strong decks and then just drafting them. also thought that the very deep packs reduced draft skill (ie you weren't punished for not reading signals, because you still ended with a playable deck)]
5) DGM-GTC-RTR [As above]
I am actually not impressed at all with Theros. The voltron aspect in light of very expensive hard removal is a little bit much. The other day I had a freaking Favored Hoplite up to a 9/11 lifelinker. If you're not in blue, there's really no way to stop that because Sip of Hemlock is too damn slow. I ended at 38 life or something stupid. He was R/G, so no hope whatsoever for him.
I too have noticed that a large number of Theros games end with one player at 30+ life and the other at 0. The set seems conducive to blowouts - whoever's lifelinked voltron survives is the winner.
ISD-ISD-ISD: A
I don't agree that this was the best draft format ever - some of the fast tribal draws were just a bit too unstoppable - but it certainly comes close. Also, much better online than with real cards, because double-faced cards really did cross the line a bit.
Another 'A' for triple ISD, I guess that's the clear consensus. I must be the only one who really didn't like the format, specifically because at least 20% of the time, I'd face at least one opponent per draft who wasn't even playing the same game as I was. They were just throwing their cards into their graveyard as fast as possible and only loosely interacting with the board, on the way to gaining 30 life from their graveyard and then spawning a zillion spiders for the win. Those games were so boring, frustrating, and pointless for me that the mere chance of having to play one took away all of my desire to play the format at all.
Battle: In a word, no. It would have unduly unbalanced the guilds in favor of the RTR ones.
More formally, there would be a higher risk to trying to draft a GTC guild over a RTR guild because of various factors.
Arguably, you can also say the reverse. Someone who wanted to draft, say, Orzhov in GTC could try to cut white and black in RTR to try to get the good Orzhov cards--if any existed--in GTC.
Either way, you are inherently biasing the archetype choices due to draft order.
About the only difference you could say for sure is that the format would probably have been more 'draft good gold cards in first two packs, and then draft your fixing in pack 3'. Which reduces the DGM pack to basically being a fixing pack, and I don't think that's very desirable either.
I disagree with this assessment. I didn't play any DGR at all (I quit Magic for ~8 months when GTC came out) but I drafted 3x RTR alot and back in the day, drafted the entire Ravnica block pretty heavily.
You'd think that the original Ravnica block would have suffered also from what you suggested - that the guild balance would have shifted towards the Ravnica guilds. But in fact what actually happened is that it encouraged multicolor decks. Since the first pack tended to pull everyone into one of the BG, UB, WR, and WG color combinations, and since those color combinations were not available in subsequent packs (at least for multicolored cards), you naturally had to shift into a three color deck when the second pack came around. In fact people anticipated this and so you'd plan what three colors you were going to try to be in while picking cards in the first pack.
I suspect that a RGD order for the RTR block would have had a similar effect: people would take good cards in the guild colors of RTR but would expect that they'd have to have a third color in their back pocket in order to be able to take a guild (or pair of guilds) from GTC as well. I believe this order would actually have done what it seems lots of people wanted the RTR block design to do - make 3+ colored decks the norm.
I too have noticed that a large number of Theros games end with one player at 30+ life and the other at 0. The set seems conducive to blowouts - whoever's lifelinked voltron survives is the winner.
That's interesting, because my experience has been that this only holds true in a couple of situations: (A) when someone has a Whip of Erebos, (B) when someone has a Blood-Toll Harpy and the opponent's deck has no removal, and (C) when someone opens with Wingsteed Rider + Hopeful Eidolon.
In general, though, I find that even with the Voltrons, Theros involves a lot of the classic thrust-and-parry creature combat. Either one person stabilizes/makes a tempo play and starts a beatdown, or both players stall out the board, or it's fliers vs. unblockables and everyone races to the finish. But it's really very rare that someone actually finishes above 20 life.
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Bad things: it's a bit bland. except heroic there are hardly any decks relying on synergy and it's just pick goodstuff and any colors can match. Play can also be a bit too tempo driven which makes it a bit of a racing affair too often. Also dislike the ordeal cycle, it's too high reward high risk but for many decks good enough to play so you get games with a blowout on turn 2 either way.
Good but bland set, i'd give it B+.
3x M14: D: Blue being so good and white being so bad means that drafting isn't very fun. Taking the best card usually means you'll be one of 5 blue drafters and not get anything reasonable. And as a result you see the same sorts of decks over and over. The weird "combo" strategies are annoying to play against.
3x MMA: B-: I only played this ~6 times. I liked the various archetypes, but found it to be too bomb-heavy. Certain cards (Shackles, Swords) are basically unbeatable.
DGR: C+: The decks you end up with are cool, but drafting is kind of annoying because you have to pass the cards you really want to take. This is the only format I've ever preferred sealed.
3x GTC: B: Boros, Orzhov, and Simic were all really fun for me to play. And Dimir was pretty interesting. All the guild play out differently enough that although you have only five actual decks they give you diverse archetypes (compare to Theros). It's a bit too fast-paced for me, but I liked how bombs don't really matter because of that.
3x RTR: B+: Just as with GTC, having five really different decks was nice and the guilds are very flavorful and fun. Izzet in particular was a really cool deck to play as you could win out of nowhere with your opponents left scratching their heads. I liked this slightly more because of the slightly slower pace, although Pack Rat keeps it from being an A.
3x M13: A: My favorite draft format. All the colors were incredibly balanced, which makes the drafting experience really fun. The game play was pretty interactive and supported archetypes from aggro to control
3x AVR: D: Only played like 3 times.
DII: B+: Similar to INN. I enjoyed the change of pace.
3x INN: B+: Very flavorful and fun. I don't really like mill as a mechanic so that part was kind of annoying for me.
I'll suppose I'll have to get some friends together and try this.
Everyone else: As for online vs. RL play, the real thing is something merl put me onto... if your play group has all similar valuations of cards, drafts tend to be... odd. Full stop.
Multiple teams in the 8-Way Theros Draft have commented that this is the weirdest Theros draft they've ever seen.
More or less, all but one or two teams are drafting the same deck--or at least the same colors--and so most teams are... not getting a fairly good deck.
What's so very interesting are the two decks that aren't having this problem.
Theros - most pros seem to be pretty stoked on this set, but while I think it's decent, I'm not quite that excited about it. Sometimes it's just way too hard to deal with the opponent's random cheap thing that they slap an Ordeal onto. I'm not super impressed by the interactivity of this format, but one thing I really like is the amount of solid sideboard cards you can draft. C+
Magic 2014 - I enjoyed this more than any other Core Set I've played. Of course, this is probably because blue was amazing and I could sit there and draw cards and counter spells all day and win, and it's hard for me to imagine anything more sweet when playing Magic. It did get very stale very quickly, though, as people figured out what's up. C
Modern Masters - I have only ever drafted three archetypes: Blue/Green/Red (1st draft), Goblins (1 time), and Grixis Control (~15 times), but I've enjoyed this format immensely. One thing I can appreciate is when I find my favorite thing to do, and no one else will ever fight me over it! That's Modern Masters to me. This is probably because there are so many archetypes that people can happily do whatever they like. The format kinda had it all, much to my surprise when I first played it. A
DGR - When I saw the Gatekeepers and all the other awesome value cards in Dragon's Maze, I thought this was going to be a much sweeter draft format than it turned out to be. Unfortunately, the fixing and support just weren't quite there, and aggressive two-color decks were still the best. Drafts were kinda messy, in that you often had to force a guild from the first couple of picks and hope it worked out. I still think it was decent fun, but it was a little disappointing. C-
Gatecrash - The format was fun until everyone discovered how great Orzhov was (I actually felt I was a bit unlucky to only go 5-1 on day 2 at the GP I played with this format). Simply put, the format was way too aggressive. Jamming cheap creatures and beating down was really all you could realistically do, and I have a hard time coming up with anything in Magic that excites me less. Few archetypes, too fast games, very dull. D-
Return to Ravnica - RtR also suffered from having few archetypes, but these were at least fairly balanced, and supported both aggro and slightly slower decks. Some of the rare bombs were pretty dumb (I'm of course having a certain small rodent in mind here), but the format was fun overall. I played a lot of Selesnya in the beginning, but enjoyed drafting Izzet more and more as time went on. Also got a GP top 8 and lost playing for another in this format, so it must have been good. B
Magic 2013 - I had a small break from Magic (around 4 months) when this set was released, so I didn't play more than one draft. Can't really say anything about it.
Avacyn Restored - While I agree that this format was bad and dull, I don't agree that it was completely luck-based or anything - this is actually one of the formats I've excelled at, embarrassingly enough. Anyway, yes. The lack of good ways to stop whatever the opponent is doing, as well as overpowered soulbound creatures and color imbalance made the format an overall trainwreck. D
DII - Dark Ascension was by no means a bad set, but it was a slight letdown after triple Innistrad, since it didn't build upon what that set introduced, and mostly impeded the actual interesting archetypes that were available in that format. It seemed to mostly introduce random creatures rather than fun cards, though I did enjoy drafting around Wolfhunter's Quiver quite a bit. B
Innistrad - Strong set due to the number of very different archetypes available. The fact that Spider Spawning was discovered so late in the format only speaks to its strength. Burning Vengeance was also great fun, and green-white aggro was also a good deck for those who like that sort of thing. I see a lot of complaints about aggressive milling (i.e. Curse of the Bloody Tome, etc), but in my experience that wasn't a real deck anyway. The format grew worse as time went on and everyone started fighting over the cool archetypes, but that's how it goes, I suppose. A
540 Peasant cube- Gold EditionSomething SpicyI don't doubt that it was designed with the new draft order in mind, I was just curious if people thought it would have been a better environment if it was switched.
More formally, there would be a higher risk to trying to draft a GTC guild over a RTR guild because of various factors.
Arguably, you can also say the reverse. Someone who wanted to draft, say, Orzhov in GTC could try to cut white and black in RTR to try to get the good Orzhov cards--if any existed--in GTC.
Either way, you are inherently biasing the archetype choices due to draft order.
About the only difference you could say for sure is that the format would probably have been more 'draft good gold cards in first two packs, and then draft your fixing in pack 3'. Which reduces the DGM pack to basically being a fixing pack, and I don't think that's very desirable either.
In any case, I'd much rather get my fixing late, after I know what colors I want to be, than early. It might trivialize the third pack, but it makes the first two packs much more interesting. The biggest problem with DGR as a format was that actually drafting it was super boring because the second two packs offered no real decisions and the first pack offered too many before you knew what was going on.
But hey, it's not like my opinion means anything here.
All I have is this:
I totally agree with this. A lot of the problems that people have about THS draft don't come up as much in sealed. Also, I can't remember a sealed format where I've had so many good pools, and so many hard deckbuilding decisions (even though I end up U/G the vast majority of the time anyway, mana curve/bounce city). There's really not too many dead cards in the format, and there's a lot of solid SB cards. I find myself siding pretty hard in this format as compared with a lot of other recent sealed sets.
Standard:
RW Boros devotion/Purphoros combo
RGB Jund Midrange
Modern:
WB Martyr.proc
I am finding that green is almost a little too easy in Theros sealed though. In my phantoms, I've been playing green probably two-thirds of the time. Blue is pretty cray too. Red just has too many jank cards, so I wind up playing it the least.
On the other hand, games that don't involve Rider or an Ordeal are pretty fun and interactive. Even uncommon heroic creatures like Favored Hoplite and Phalanx Leader are more OK because they show up less frequently.
In sealed, green is really the only color with a very solid creature curve at common, plus it has one of the best commons in the set (Asp), so its pretty easy to fall into it as one of your main colors.
I rarely ever run red either, way too shallow. The only time I run it is if I have multiple Ordeals/Strike/Magma Jet combined with the two solid 4 and 5 drop monstrous dudes. Their 1-3 drop creatures at common are largely garbage, unless you have enough support in white to abuse Heroic.
Standard:
RW Boros devotion/Purphoros combo
RGB Jund Midrange
Modern:
WB Martyr.proc
It's rather how GTC was an extremely fast Draft 'format' because DGM was intentionally very slow/clunky. I don't think there's been much revelation from WotC on how much they try to balance each draft format as opposed to the entire block draft format...
Interesting post. This would be nice to hear about.
I like how the games tends to go long, but there allso can be aggresive decks.
M14: C
Found it a bit boring, blue was a bit better than the other colors and that made boring, since you would win if you played blue, and lose if you played against it.
DGM-GTC-RTR: A
Really liked it, there was so many diffrent strategys you could draft, and 5 color good stuff is so fun.
3x GTC: E
Well i hated it, Dimir was allmost totally unplayable, and the format was all about 2 drops.
3x RTR: B+
Liked it and found all the archtypes really fun, there where so many decks there was playables, like the wall deck, and the enchantment deck, it was pretty fun.
M13: B
Liked it, there where some archtypes there where really fun to draft, and it was pretty balanced.
Avacyn Restored: C
There was a bit to much imbalance, some of the colors was to weak, and the removal was way to restictive.
DKA-ISD-ISD: A, make some of the strategyis from 3x ISD harder to build, but it did bring tribal, and black white sacrifce in, so was still really good.
ISD-ISD-ISD: A+ was the first format i drafted and i loved it, found lots of strange decks that where playable, with cards everybody else thought was crap.
Pros: many archetypes. The set rewards tight play and can lead to some pretty neat boards. There are no true "bombs" (jitte, pack rat), the games tend to go long. Blue may have been a bit OP. In 20-25 drafts i can count the number of times i was nonblue on a hand.
Cons- some cards are impossible to play against (sea god's revenge, hoplite+ordeal). Many games are decided by a voltron going nuts.
M14x3 - D
Pros: very niche drafting. I killed someone with millstone once. Abu dant removal, durdling is basic lly required.
Cons: i couldn't seem to do well in the format to save my life . No idea why. This is entirely personal.
DGM-GTC-RTR - B
Pros: niche drafting, but in the end the optimal strat was to pick a guild and stick with it. I just forced 5cc all day, though and the format was okay.
Cons: Tons of bombs, though, and getting cut out of a color pair in p1 was firmly annoying.
3x GTC - F
pros: the simic dinosaurs deck was pretty fun, and the orzhov mirrors were nutty.
Cons: this format was basically zendikar in terms of speed. Boros too stronk, etc. I dislike he fact that dimir was unplayable.
RTRx3 - B+
Pros: good archetypes with a lot of rogue possibilities. Walls, guttersnipe burn, auras. The cards were very flavorful and the abundance of tricks made tight play rewarding.
Cons: pack rat too stronk. Mizzium mortars too stronk. Vithu-gazi guildmage might as well have been a mythic. The gw decks in general tended to be very good. I also 2-1'd a draft on MTGO with 39 swamps and a rat. **** like this should not happen.
M13 - A-
Pros: very entertaining for a core set. It spawned some of my favorite videos (lsv's 5-divination pile. Google it, it's worth a watch) and each color pair seemed like it had a chance. My favorite archetype was gruul aggro. Just force pick all the green/red two drops and centaurs plus the spears and lava ades for reach.
Cons: exalted too stronk, nerf, wizards pls.
Some new things.
Sad to see so much scry one. That is a bit weak.
Good amount of tricks which is a new experience.
Auras actually getting played is something new as well but still bouncing / burning in response to a aura being played still wins games.
I hate that lion soooo much.
Reminds me to much of invisible stalker.
All in all I'm hoping for a regular three block format and if the second set can shake things up some more.
M14:D:
They have not recreated the magic that was the Core Set with bolt / BSA or the magic that was Core Set with the titans.
GTC:F:
Not good and the third set could not make it any better.
AVR:D:
It was so close to being good. Lack of interactivity was frustrating. It had some neat mechanics though.
GTC, on the other hand, had great mechanics all around. I loved playing the Dimir deck - Hands of Binding was like the ultimate tempo card - but obviously Extort and Evolve were great as well.
Of course, neither come close to MMA and triple ISD.
Marshall:
1) Modern Masters [similar opinion to most in this thread]
2) M14 [Pros: solid limited experience, most colour combinations viable, no real non-mythic "bombs" rewarded strong limited skills, some build around me/synergy potential. Cons: slivers failed, no real agressive deck option]
3) Gatecrash [Pros: Fun mechanics, really enjoyed simic. Cons: Cipher failed, got stale quickly]
4) Theros [Pros: "combat tricks as removal" was interesting, set well balanced between agressive/midrange/control. Cons: very shallow, no build around me or synergy potential outside of the on-rails heroic deck]
5) DGM-GTC-RTR [Pros: none. Cons: a complete mess, in particular fixing - cluestones were simply too bad. The optimal DGM pack strategy of "pick the boring mono coloured card" felt awful]
Brian:
1) M14 [As above]
2) Gatecrash [As above, but particularly liked orzhov as well]
3) Theros [As above, but commended heroic and bestow for being genuinely novel limited mechanics]
4) Modern Masters [Liked the concept but not the execution. Did not enjoy the set due to the highly linear nature of the draft, due to strongly seeded archetypes. He noted that he had personally drafted all of the archetypes in their original form and so was personally disappointed that the set was essentially a mashup of old archetypes rather than trying to create something new. The linear nature of the archetypes meant that the draft gameplay was rarely surprising - the only real skill in the format was identifying the strong decks and then just drafting them. also thought that the very deep packs reduced draft skill (ie you weren't punished for not reading signals, because you still ended with a playable deck)]
5) DGM-GTC-RTR [As above]
I too have noticed that a large number of Theros games end with one player at 30+ life and the other at 0. The set seems conducive to blowouts - whoever's lifelinked voltron survives is the winner.
Another 'A' for triple ISD, I guess that's the clear consensus. I must be the only one who really didn't like the format, specifically because at least 20% of the time, I'd face at least one opponent per draft who wasn't even playing the same game as I was. They were just throwing their cards into their graveyard as fast as possible and only loosely interacting with the board, on the way to gaining 30 life from their graveyard and then spawning a zillion spiders for the win. Those games were so boring, frustrating, and pointless for me that the mere chance of having to play one took away all of my desire to play the format at all.
I disagree with this assessment. I didn't play any DGR at all (I quit Magic for ~8 months when GTC came out) but I drafted 3x RTR alot and back in the day, drafted the entire Ravnica block pretty heavily.
You'd think that the original Ravnica block would have suffered also from what you suggested - that the guild balance would have shifted towards the Ravnica guilds. But in fact what actually happened is that it encouraged multicolor decks. Since the first pack tended to pull everyone into one of the BG, UB, WR, and WG color combinations, and since those color combinations were not available in subsequent packs (at least for multicolored cards), you naturally had to shift into a three color deck when the second pack came around. In fact people anticipated this and so you'd plan what three colors you were going to try to be in while picking cards in the first pack.
I suspect that a RGD order for the RTR block would have had a similar effect: people would take good cards in the guild colors of RTR but would expect that they'd have to have a third color in their back pocket in order to be able to take a guild (or pair of guilds) from GTC as well. I believe this order would actually have done what it seems lots of people wanted the RTR block design to do - make 3+ colored decks the norm.
That's interesting, because my experience has been that this only holds true in a couple of situations: (A) when someone has a Whip of Erebos, (B) when someone has a Blood-Toll Harpy and the opponent's deck has no removal, and (C) when someone opens with Wingsteed Rider + Hopeful Eidolon.
In general, though, I find that even with the Voltrons, Theros involves a lot of the classic thrust-and-parry creature combat. Either one person stabilizes/makes a tempo play and starts a beatdown, or both players stall out the board, or it's fliers vs. unblockables and everyone races to the finish. But it's really very rare that someone actually finishes above 20 life.