You guys are nuts, it absolutely matters what clan you pick. Your going to get a seeded pack of that clan, which means your gonna get mana fixing for those colors. and some common/uncommons of those colors. so clearly the best way to choose a clan is to look at the full spoiler, and go through and add up the colors with the most playable common and uncommons, then the clan with the most playable common and uncommon cards. and whatever three color pair has the highest number of limited playable cards, pick that clan to increase you chances of having decent cards.
When i looked at the spoiler, i saw that white has 12 good limited common and uncommons, blue has 12, black has 13, red has 13, and green has 9. Now these cards are all at common and uncommon levels. so you will be getting most of these. So to increase my chances of getting playable cards, i would pick mardu.
But thats just an example. im still looking at the spoiler and deciding what cards are most playable, and that i will have the best chance at getting.
You guys are nuts, it absolutely matters what clan you pick. Your going to get a seeded pack of that clan, which means your gonna get mana fixing for those colors. and some common/uncommons of those colors. so clearly the best way to choose a clan is to look at the full spoiler, and go through and add up the colors with the most playable common and uncommons, then the clan with the most playable common and uncommon cards. and whatever three color pair has the highest number of limited playable cards, pick that clan to increase you chances of having decent cards.
When i looked at the spoiler, i saw that white has 12 good limited common and uncommons, blue has 12, black has 13, red has 13, and green has 9. Now these cards are all at common and uncommon levels. so you will be getting most of these. So to increase my chances of getting playable cards, i would pick mardu.
But thats just an example. im still looking at the spoiler and deciding what cards are most playable, and that i will have the best chance at getting.
Yep good call- I also am leaning to Mardu on the basis of being able to port into either Green or Blue based on the commons...that and removal wise mardu is in a good position.
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Temur has the best watermark. So that's my choice. Also having a 2-mana bounce spells seems suuuuuper useful for dealing with all the 5-mana blowouts and the general tempo nonsense of Outlast as well as removing its abilities during combat.
You guys are nuts, it absolutely matters what clan you pick. Your going to get a seeded pack of that clan, which means your gonna get mana fixing for those colors. and some common/uncommons of those colors. so clearly the best way to choose a clan is to look at the full spoiler, and go through and add up the colors with the most playable common and uncommons, then the clan with the most playable common and uncommon cards. and whatever three color pair has the highest number of limited playable cards, pick that clan to increase you chances of having decent cards.
When i looked at the spoiler, i saw that white has 12 good limited common and uncommons, blue has 12, black has 13, red has 13, and green has 9. Now these cards are all at common and uncommon levels. so you will be getting most of these. So to increase my chances of getting playable cards, i would pick mardu.
But thats just an example. im still looking at the spoiler and deciding what cards are most playable, and that i will have the best chance at getting.
Thats a good approach, but the problem with it is you put too much stock in uncommons. 73% of your pool will be commons. Only 20% will be uncommon, and 8% rare. (The extra percent is the result of rounding because the prerelease rare gives you a 91 card pool.) This means the commons of a specific color are 3 times as important as the uncommons. My method is to put the commons of each color into 3 groups: Good, Playable, and Bad. I only take into account "bomb uncommons" (Arc Lightning, Incremental Growth). This way, I get a more accurate idea of what I'll actually get.
All good points. The other thing to consider with the commons/uncommons is that some are much better for one clan than another. Mardu does not want to be playing Disowned Ancestor, but I have a feeling it's a pretty strong 1-drop for Abzan. An 0/4 blocker in the early turns that can easily grow large enough to safely block just about every morph out there (and kill ones that don't flip)? Sounds good to me. So if you're just counting the "good" black commons your count is either off for Mardu or Sultai/Abzan, or both.
Looking at strictly commons and uncommons, green seems like the color with the most un/commons that impress me, and blue has the fewest. So I guess that leaves me with Abzan, which was kinda my inclination anyway.
All good points. The other thing to consider with the commons/uncommons is that some are much better for one clan than another. Mardu does not want to be playing Disowned Ancestor, but I have a feeling it's a pretty strong 1-drop for Abzan. An 0/4 blocker in the early turns that can easily grow large enough to safely block just about every morph out there (and kill ones that don't flip)? Sounds good to me. So if you're just counting the "good" black commons your count is either off for Mardu or Sultai/Abzan, or both.
Actually, I think Disowned Ancestor is a good example of one of those cards that pulls double duty for different clans. Abzan wants it for the reason you stated (plus the ability to add extra abilities on him, like making him a 1/5 with deathtouch or such), but the Mardu really like the fact that he's a one drop that can attack safely well into the late game, thus allowing him to trigger raid with near impunity. He also doesn't require the threat of mana activation to attack into a bear/morph, so that's useful.
I've now made my decision to go Azban. After all, it's my three favorite colors and it looks pretty solid, so why not? Probably has the best of the five mana morph common cycle. To me, outlast looks like the most fun too. And, a lot of my favorite cards for Sultai and Mardu are the black ones anyway, so Azban can use a lot of those too.
All good points. The other thing to consider with the commons/uncommons is that some are much better for one clan than another. Mardu does not want to be playing Disowned Ancestor, but I have a feeling it's a pretty strong 1-drop for Abzan. An 0/4 blocker in the early turns that can easily grow large enough to safely block just about every morph out there (and kill ones that don't flip)? Sounds good to me. So if you're just counting the "good" black commons your count is either off for Mardu or Sultai/Abzan, or both.
Actually, I think Disowned Ancestor is a good example of one of those cards that pulls double duty for different clans. Abzan wants it for the reason you stated (plus the ability to add extra abilities on him, like making him a 1/5 with deathtouch or such), but the Mardu really like the fact that he's a one drop that can attack safely well into the late game, thus allowing him to trigger raid with near impunity. He also doesn't require the threat of mana activation to attack into a bear/morph, so that's useful.
Yeah, interesting point about Raid. I just would worry that if you're using your early drop on a creature that deals no damage you're already falling behind.
I think blue is going to be better than people think. Blue has a lot of great counterspells. Red and white are both pretty nuts. Black is great, but I'm worried about Delve, and black has the worst rares. Green is imo the worst color, it has the worst commons and the rares are not great either.
I'm probably going to go Mardu because they have the nuttiest rares.
Blue is usually good, but not at the prerelease. People usually need a few drafts to figure out blue, because its power tends to be in its reactivity, and people don't necessarily know what to react to yet.
The format looks pretty slow (although I'm not much of an aggro player I must admit) so I'm going with Abzan for both the midnight prerelease and for 2HG Sunday; possibly switch to Temur for the 2HG depending on what my friend takes.
I'm going Sultai, because delve seems like a very fun build around me type mechanic.
I'm surprised Jeskai is as far down as it is. Personally I think its going to be similar to Izzet back in triple RTR and get a lot of hate initially, but turn out to be the better aggro type deck than its main opponent Rakdos, or in this case, Mardu. If only for the reason that Singing Bell Strike, Crippling Chill, and Force Away are all much better than the black options Mardu has for really pushing through damage.
I wantes Sultai, because I love those three colors, but after checking delve I was swayed frofrom it. It is by no way a bad mechanic, but I would use it more limited in a constructed format (I'll most probably use Murderous Cut in Modern).
Most probably I'll play Temor for fun and because of the nice big cards in it and worry about power in constructed.
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I tend to disagree on the green part. It's commons look quite strong to me. The 2/1 Elk will stall opposing morphs and the 6/7 morph guy beats most creatures in combat, even morph rares. The 4/2 bear is fragile, but rewards Temur, Grow Immense will win games out of nowhere and Hooting Mandrils is a 4 mana 4/4 trampler most of the times.
Green doesn't have a lot of common creatures, but the ones it does have are incredibly strong. Alpine Bear trades with most 4-6 drops alone, it has some good 2 drops, and some good reach. What it lacks in quantity, it more than makes up for in quality.
The same cannot be said, in my mind, for Blue and Red, which suffer from a dearth of common creatures that are more than just okay. Blue has a handful of decently costed flyers, but the majority of the common creatures are either heavily costed for what you get or difficult to manage for the most part. Red gets shafted even harder, where about half it's common creature support an aggro plan and the the rest are far too expensive. Given that there aren't many cheap combat tricks, you won't find yourself trading up much in red, or even being able to make a very aggressive start even. It's removal/reach package is quite stellar for the environment, however.
Basically, both blue and red seem like great secondary/tertiary colors due really strong non-creature spells. Their creature base is anemic, to say the least, and one would have a problem with making them a primary color without a very specific sort of pool.
As for pre-release, from what I've been able to figure from using seeled pool generators:
1. Abzan is a pretty strong wedge to be in. White and Black seem like the deepest colors for limited, and the things green can offer are also good. It's not fancy, but rarely in limited do you want to be, or can be. It's just good creatures at any part of the curve. Arguably the strongest wedge for limited, simply due to an abundance of playable common creatures and spells at all costs and parts of the curve.
2. Mardu is much in the same vein as Abzan, only not quite as strong IMO. That said, given the burn package red provides I can see this being aggro-control in nature, with a good deal of burn to back it up. The common Wedge creatures give incredibly value and reach. I would generally avoid most of the red creatures unless they were exceptional or I need to use them, as they simply aren't as good as their W/B counterparts. Minimizing your requirement for early access to three colors will go a long way, and the burn isn't going to be coming online till turn 4 or 5 at the earliest. THe aggressive creatures just don't provide enough reason to try and push a total wedge of aggressive creatures. Keeping it base W/B will give you a lot more consistency.
3. Sultai. Bring the beats, bring the burn, bring the card advantage. Probably the best color combination to utilize blue's CA engines, it has access to the wide range of Black creatures and removal, green beasts, and blue's CA. Allows you to clog the ground without efficient creatures so you can afford to play the more expensive blue flyers to win it in the air. Hard removal from black allows you to remove any problems, and the card advantage provided by their blue/wedge commons will go a long way to win.
4. Temur. We really are starting to get into wishful pools, really. The best Temur cards are the full-fledged Wedge cards, which doesn't bode well. That said, there is a lot to like still. Green's combat tricks allows some decent value out of red's more aggressive creatures, and it's green creatures are still good overall. Blue actually doesn't provide a lot other than the flyers from sultai, but that's okay as you can still muscle through damage with the tricks. Noticeably lacking from green is common ramp. Granted, getting down some cheap green and red threats and backing them up with bounce, burn, and pump could prove troublesome for opponents trying to keep up with you.
5. Jeskai. To be frank, I have yet to get a sealed pool in the generator that I actually am happy with. The best I've gotten is "merely okay". Being in, IMO, two of the weakest color really goes a long way towards making the wedge seem underpowered. There's a lot of good non-creature spells, obviously, but you really need a strong white creature base to even begin to make this work, and that isn't guaranteed. I forsee a lot of Jeskai players this weekend struggling to make a workable pool. Their flyers are fairly expensive, and they lack solid early drops in blue and red to help defend against looming growth. They have great wedge themed cards, certainly, and great utility spells at that. They sorely lack good creatures. It doesn't help that Prowess is largely on inefficient and anemic creatures, or early drops with very little base power. It's just not going to work well, methinks. Had blue/red had a couple cheaper creatures that were actually very good, I could see the tempo game plan. As it stands, they won't be able to get decent bodies on the board early enough to really use a tempo based strategy. Which leaves them looking like a bad Temur, which can turn those bodies into meaningful threats.
So, in order, that's my thoughts on them. Abzan just seems powerful in general, and the deepest wedge with the highest number of playable creatures, and the widest range of playable non-creatures as well at common. Mardu also seems strong, but I'm less impressed with the red addition for some reason than the green addition. The major difference is that Abzan seems like it can more easily slot into a green creature base and be happy than a red creature base, however the burn component of red is stronger than the combat trick component of Green in general. Sultai and Temur both seem enjoyable with solid game plans. Jeskai, in my eyes, looks almost unplayable without a very good pool.
As a general note, you should avoid going the full wedge unless you have to. Figure out which two of the three colors are the strongest, have those be your "base", and only go into the third color for best cards. And I would say try to avoid the trap of having too many 1-3 drops in all of your colors. Having 2 green, two white, and two black two drops is much worse overall than 3 and 3. Having a curve of just white/black 1-drops, green 2s, black/white 3s is not a good idea. Your third color should hopefully comprise of cards you want to play a bit later down the road to provide support for the other two.
Or you could hypothetically go 4-5 color goodstuff if your mana supports it.
One thing to keep in mind is that the seeded packs are not actually random. There are only 8 unique configurations possible for each clan, and I would wager that Wizards put some thought into the configurations so you can play your synergies. (For example, in M15 prerelease, I chose red and opened Kurkesh, Onakke Ancient as my non-promo seeded pack rare. In that same seeded pack was a Tyrant's Machine, pretty much the only non-rare card in M15 that synergizes okay with Kurkesh's ability. There was also an Aeronaut Tinkerer and a Scrapyard Mongrel in that pack to encourage me to go artifacts. I don't think that's a mere coincidence.
What I'm saying is, you shouldn't worry too much about not getting Ferocious enablers if you choose Temur.
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When i looked at the spoiler, i saw that white has 12 good limited common and uncommons, blue has 12, black has 13, red has 13, and green has 9. Now these cards are all at common and uncommon levels. so you will be getting most of these. So to increase my chances of getting playable cards, i would pick mardu.
But thats just an example. im still looking at the spoiler and deciding what cards are most playable, and that i will have the best chance at getting.
Yep good call- I also am leaning to Mardu on the basis of being able to port into either Green or Blue based on the commons...that and removal wise mardu is in a good position.
abzan - 8
jeskai - 8
sultai - 10
mardu - 7
temur - 7
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Thats a good approach, but the problem with it is you put too much stock in uncommons. 73% of your pool will be commons. Only 20% will be uncommon, and 8% rare. (The extra percent is the result of rounding because the prerelease rare gives you a 91 card pool.) This means the commons of a specific color are 3 times as important as the uncommons. My method is to put the commons of each color into 3 groups: Good, Playable, and Bad. I only take into account "bomb uncommons" (Arc Lightning, Incremental Growth). This way, I get a more accurate idea of what I'll actually get.
Yeah, interesting point about Raid. I just would worry that if you're using your early drop on a creature that deals no damage you're already falling behind.
I'm probably going to go Mardu because they have the nuttiest rares.
I'm surprised Jeskai is as far down as it is. Personally I think its going to be similar to Izzet back in triple RTR and get a lot of hate initially, but turn out to be the better aggro type deck than its main opponent Rakdos, or in this case, Mardu. If only for the reason that Singing Bell Strike, Crippling Chill, and Force Away are all much better than the black options Mardu has for really pushing through damage.
Most probably I'll play Temor for fun and because of the nice big cards in it and worry about power in constructed.
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Green doesn't have a lot of common creatures, but the ones it does have are incredibly strong. Alpine Bear trades with most 4-6 drops alone, it has some good 2 drops, and some good reach. What it lacks in quantity, it more than makes up for in quality.
The same cannot be said, in my mind, for Blue and Red, which suffer from a dearth of common creatures that are more than just okay. Blue has a handful of decently costed flyers, but the majority of the common creatures are either heavily costed for what you get or difficult to manage for the most part. Red gets shafted even harder, where about half it's common creature support an aggro plan and the the rest are far too expensive. Given that there aren't many cheap combat tricks, you won't find yourself trading up much in red, or even being able to make a very aggressive start even. It's removal/reach package is quite stellar for the environment, however.
Basically, both blue and red seem like great secondary/tertiary colors due really strong non-creature spells. Their creature base is anemic, to say the least, and one would have a problem with making them a primary color without a very specific sort of pool.
As for pre-release, from what I've been able to figure from using seeled pool generators:
1. Abzan is a pretty strong wedge to be in. White and Black seem like the deepest colors for limited, and the things green can offer are also good. It's not fancy, but rarely in limited do you want to be, or can be. It's just good creatures at any part of the curve. Arguably the strongest wedge for limited, simply due to an abundance of playable common creatures and spells at all costs and parts of the curve.
2. Mardu is much in the same vein as Abzan, only not quite as strong IMO. That said, given the burn package red provides I can see this being aggro-control in nature, with a good deal of burn to back it up. The common Wedge creatures give incredibly value and reach. I would generally avoid most of the red creatures unless they were exceptional or I need to use them, as they simply aren't as good as their W/B counterparts. Minimizing your requirement for early access to three colors will go a long way, and the burn isn't going to be coming online till turn 4 or 5 at the earliest. THe aggressive creatures just don't provide enough reason to try and push a total wedge of aggressive creatures. Keeping it base W/B will give you a lot more consistency.
3. Sultai. Bring the beats, bring the burn, bring the card advantage. Probably the best color combination to utilize blue's CA engines, it has access to the wide range of Black creatures and removal, green beasts, and blue's CA. Allows you to clog the ground without efficient creatures so you can afford to play the more expensive blue flyers to win it in the air. Hard removal from black allows you to remove any problems, and the card advantage provided by their blue/wedge commons will go a long way to win.
4. Temur. We really are starting to get into wishful pools, really. The best Temur cards are the full-fledged Wedge cards, which doesn't bode well. That said, there is a lot to like still. Green's combat tricks allows some decent value out of red's more aggressive creatures, and it's green creatures are still good overall. Blue actually doesn't provide a lot other than the flyers from sultai, but that's okay as you can still muscle through damage with the tricks. Noticeably lacking from green is common ramp. Granted, getting down some cheap green and red threats and backing them up with bounce, burn, and pump could prove troublesome for opponents trying to keep up with you.
5. Jeskai. To be frank, I have yet to get a sealed pool in the generator that I actually am happy with. The best I've gotten is "merely okay". Being in, IMO, two of the weakest color really goes a long way towards making the wedge seem underpowered. There's a lot of good non-creature spells, obviously, but you really need a strong white creature base to even begin to make this work, and that isn't guaranteed. I forsee a lot of Jeskai players this weekend struggling to make a workable pool. Their flyers are fairly expensive, and they lack solid early drops in blue and red to help defend against looming growth. They have great wedge themed cards, certainly, and great utility spells at that. They sorely lack good creatures. It doesn't help that Prowess is largely on inefficient and anemic creatures, or early drops with very little base power. It's just not going to work well, methinks. Had blue/red had a couple cheaper creatures that were actually very good, I could see the tempo game plan. As it stands, they won't be able to get decent bodies on the board early enough to really use a tempo based strategy. Which leaves them looking like a bad Temur, which can turn those bodies into meaningful threats.
So, in order, that's my thoughts on them. Abzan just seems powerful in general, and the deepest wedge with the highest number of playable creatures, and the widest range of playable non-creatures as well at common. Mardu also seems strong, but I'm less impressed with the red addition for some reason than the green addition. The major difference is that Abzan seems like it can more easily slot into a green creature base and be happy than a red creature base, however the burn component of red is stronger than the combat trick component of Green in general. Sultai and Temur both seem enjoyable with solid game plans. Jeskai, in my eyes, looks almost unplayable without a very good pool.
As a general note, you should avoid going the full wedge unless you have to. Figure out which two of the three colors are the strongest, have those be your "base", and only go into the third color for best cards. And I would say try to avoid the trap of having too many 1-3 drops in all of your colors. Having 2 green, two white, and two black two drops is much worse overall than 3 and 3. Having a curve of just white/black 1-drops, green 2s, black/white 3s is not a good idea. Your third color should hopefully comprise of cards you want to play a bit later down the road to provide support for the other two.
Or you could hypothetically go 4-5 color goodstuff if your mana supports it.
What I'm saying is, you shouldn't worry too much about not getting Ferocious enablers if you choose Temur.