MTG Salvation

So what do you think of white in OGW? I'm back from my PR draft, where I had a supposedly 'fair' UR Surge deck that could lead to some blowouts once the surge kicked in. Then I got paired against white and things went downhill. White has so many common/uncommon removal I couldn't keep up. To sum up what I encountered in a single match:

Isolation Zone
Make a Stand
Searing Light
Sheer Drop
Roil's Retribution

So my board was consistently managed, while he'd beat me with semi-vanilla creatures.

Then the next deck I face has the same suite of removal. Needless to say, this was an hard lesson humility.

So, what do you think of white: busted or fair?

Most importantly: does this format rewards mostly removals or is synergy still a thing? (only one draft so far)

I do not think that white is busted at all, and it seems to be one of the least powerful colors in my view. Its removal is good but the white creatures in OGW seem a bit sub-standard overall to me and the ally theme seems a bit underwhelming to me though not at all bad.

White is definitely high on my top colors of OGW, though Black does give it some competition for "best". White's removal suite is part of why it's good. There's also their Cohort creatures grinding to the late game if they're not already beating your empty board, which when coupled with their game busting bombs like Munda's Vanguard, Eldrazi Displacer, and Linvala, the Preserver makes White a scary beast.

As for whether this format rewards removal or synergy more, I would say neither. Removal is removal. It's always good, but as good as it is in OGW, the creature quality is still high enough that one-for-one ing isn't the end of the world. I'm honestly still more scared of the BFZ ones like Sheer Drop and Rolling Thunder even if they're not as aggressively costed just because they could do more than just kill one creature. Synergy is also not as heavily rewarded as in BFZ. To me this format rewards board stalls and coming ahead in board stalls. The three best ways to do that in this format is with Cohort abilities, mana sinks, and bombs, the latter two which are usually tied to colorless mana.

I think white is strong, probably right behind blue in terms of overall strength when you factor in both sets. But I don't think it got better, at least to the point of being busted, with the new set. I don't think replacing Drop/Smite/Reproach with Zone/Light is a dramatic change in power level. White had a lot of good common removal, and still does.

white is determined by channelfireball to be the 2nd weakest color and the weakest color by everyone in the store i was playing with. i played with white/green and was stomped friday night. i had a good deck too. the problem is if a second player is playing white in the pod (which is mostly guaranteed) you wont see isolation zone and shear drop wheel. make a stand, searing light, and roils retribution do roll in my minor experience with ogw. searing light is so meh in my experience its not even funny. they have to attack or block on top of being 2 power or less. in 3 color decks white might be more viable especially with good white multicolored creatures like red/white allies or black/white vampires.

Quote from BillyN831 »

white is determined by channelfireball to be the 2nd weakest color and the weakest color by everyone in the store i was playing with.

Why?

Ours is not to wonder why, ours is but to draft and die...

Basically, CFB and others just want the bragging rights if they're right.

Quote from BillyN831 »

the problem is if a second player is playing white in the pod (which is mostly guaranteed) you wont see isolation zone and shear drop wheel.

At a competent draft table, those cards should never wheel. They are playable to good removal, and are 3rd-6th pick quality.

White is interesting, because generally the card pool got weaker overall. However, some of the best rares in the set are White. And one of the few 'leftover' synergies is Black/White lifegain, which actually got an upgrade with easy ways to gain life on already average creatures. Cards like Kalastria Nightwatch and the uncommon pairing of Bloodbond Vampire/Serene Steward are much stronger than before because you can put together a solid WB removal and creature suite, and then incidentally open or get passed bombs in pack 3.

I will note that I think White will be better in Sealed than draft, but that needs an examination.

Quote from scottjhebert »

Ours is not to wonder why, ours is but to draft and die...

Basically, CFB and others just want the bragging rights if they're right.

lol. I'm not disagreeing with him necessarily, just hoping for some more useful information as to what the reasoning behind those opinions is.

I think the problem with white is that it's common creatures are janky.

Pascal Maynard at http://www.channelfireball.com/articles/the-diary-of-a-pro-player-limited-prep/ believes that white is the best color while red is the worst. I do not like red at all in OGW though I would probably put green below it, and I like blue a lot more than Pascal Maynard does.

I agree with his views though. Green is much better than people think. Blue is scattered and lost a true purpose. green has quality cards in mono and gold according to me.

Could it be that WB is the best archetype/color pair but Wx is bad (or below average)? I had a decent UW fliers deck. GW seems very swingy and dependent on support. Apparently there is some kind of low-to-the ground RW deck but I haven't been able to make it work.

White has the best removal suite so I think it's hard for it to be the worst color on average. As for what actually is the right ranking, a lot of it will have to do with which archetypes end up being the easiest to draft.

Right now the biggest thing I want my decks to be able to address well is 4-power guys. Those tend to be stallbreakers and so I want to keep my opponent off of them. White has a lot of good tools to do that so it's a pretty decent starting place for me.

I believe that archetypes are being over-valued in these comments. Blue may not have a specific focus but just playing good cards (without an archetype) is a valid approach and more so in OGW than in 3xBFZ, and in my view blue's cards are fine overall, although I do not think that it is the strongest color.

I honestly think that the bigger take from the ranking discussion not the ranking itself, but the fact that the power level disparity between the colors has been reduced. As a result, the convention that the most powerful color is the color that is open during draft is true again.