2. Varied archetypes to draft (and its corollary - flexible pick orders within each color)
In all the best formats there was a high reward for drafting synergistic decks (spider spawning/burning vengeance in ISD, ramp/spawn/levelers/auras/control in ROE), and/or each color had fully developed aggressive and controlling aspects that rewarded knowing what type of deck you were drafting. In TPF, for example, there weren't as many obvious synergistic archetypes as "eldrazi spawn" or "levelers", but each color was flexible enough to be drafted in either a controlling or aggressive way and could be powerful at either plan. Both of these factors lead to flexible pick orders within each color, where you value cards differently depending on what type of deck you are drafting - which overall leads to a more interesting drafting experience.
I think this gets at the heart of it, and incorporates a lot of other criteria. It's maybe not so important that every color (or guild, shard...) have a control deck and an aggro deck in particular, but it should definitely be the case that there's a tension between making a tempo-focused deck versus a stabilizing-focused deck, which means their power levels should be on the same page. Too many formats are racing formats where the best way to build a deck is clearly aggro and you just fight over the best aggressive cards. There should be mechanisms built in to a set to make hard control decks and slow synergy/ramp-based decks more compelling. Unfortunately, by essentially declaring war on card advantage of any kind at common (not to mention removal) and by pushing hyper-curved creatures, Wizards hasn't made much of an effort to promote that kind of drafting. Racing gameplay isn't the absolute worst, but the aggressive strategies have tended to be so powerful that they've overwhelmed other options, and that's not ideal.
Honestly Auras in general are a big component of this. As everyone knows, a powerful Aura says "Can you answer me in 1-2 turns? If so, I likely lose. If not, I win." They're an inherently swingy mechanic and Wizards has been pushing them hard in Limited recently, not just in Theros. Because they want Auras to be played for whatever reason, they've seen no problem increasing their raw power--which makes them playable and thus more swingy, because more games come down to playing an Aura and either getting blown out and losing or having it go unanswered and winning. Then at the same time Wizards has radically weakened removal options, further upping the playability and swinginess of Auras.
What's really irritating is that they keep making great removal spells--they just put them at rare now. Fortunately I'm not a Constructed player, or that trend would absolutely drive me up the wall, but even in Limited it's a real annoyance because there are still first-pickable removal spells that make a deck really good--but fewer decks have access to them, entirely based on who opens them.
I really don't like power level errata. They done goofed, yeah, but minus errata the card is mearly "really really good." It isn't format warping time vault levels stupid. They should have just left it, apologized, and went on with their lives. Right now it's only a little one, but imagine if they errata'd goyf's toughness to *, or added "activate only as a sorcery" to SFM. I'm serious, they shouldn't abuse errata so readily.
It's not power-level errata, it's fixing a simple templating error. Not really any different from Walking Atlas. The card as printed has a completely unprecedented and broken effect--not necessarily broken in the sense that it would warp a Constructed format, but in the sense that it violates the allowable functionality of a single card. The effect is also completely unintended and doesn't reflect the design. Goyf's 1 toughness was maybe a bad idea, but it's not the equivalent of a simple typo, which this is.
The strange thing is that it doesn't actually refer to Gift itself leaving the battlefield, just the creature. Obviously in practice the Gift can't help but leave the battlefield simultaneously, but are there any possible corner cases where that wouldn't be true?
The wording on this card is very strange. It instructs you to "return it to the battlefield," but it doesn't make any reference to the zone you return it from, or to the zone it's in when the ability triggers. If if it makes its way from the graveyard to another zone after the creature-death trigger is triggered but before delayed upkeep trigger is triggered, what exactly is the reason you don't return it to the battlefield from that zone?
I've been mulling starting a new thread on this. People should be aware that WotC is intentionally weakening removal for limited purposes, especially at common. This trend has been pretty obvious for a while now and has been made explicit by the developers a number of times (see e.g. http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/ld/244). Whether this is a positive change is up for debate (and a very interesting debate indeed), but it's absolutely happening and we should expect it to continue.
Having played just a bit of Magic 2014, what do people think about this set as an introduction to Limited? I ask because that's all the core set is supposed to be -- an introduction for new players. I would argue it's pretty terrible at that for Limited.
I find core set Limited formats to be very frustrating. There's not a lot of skill involved. Most games that aren't decided by the shuffler are just "whoever gets the biggest threat to stick wins." That's pretty much it. The whole format is a complicated game of Go Fish where you name a threat and your opponent has to name an answer or he loses. Actual strategies are few and far between, and most of them are glaringly obvious (like the new Slivers-With-No-Downsides).
Can you give some concrete examples of situations or cards that represent a contrast in strategic complexity (as opposed to surface complexity, like verbosity or number of keyworded mechanics)? between recent core sets and recent expert expansions? Your main issue seems to be with bombs, but I'm not sure bombs--which are an intrinsic evil in Limited formats, to be sure--have been overrepresented recently in core sets as compared to expert sets.
Besides, recent core sets actually seem a little better equipped than expert sets when it comes to decent removal at lower rarities, which are one of the principal ways to smooth out a bomby format. As well, and partially for the same reason, core sets seem to be better suited to actually building control decks instead of endless aggro or midrange fests.
I think it's very easy to overlook how deep and complex the strategy of the game can be with relatively simple cards, provided they interact with each other in interesting ways. Adding multiple keyword mechanics and complex effects definitely makes things more interesting, but not automatically more challenging or more enjoyable.
Offering is a mechanic which would fit the concept of gods perfectly.
People are forgetting that we aren't looking for a mechanic that fits the concept of gods perfectly as currently concepted. MaRo explicitly stated that the mechanic has been given a flavor overhaul. Offering is an example of a mechanic whose flavor is already a perfect match for gods, so paradoxically it's not a good candidate to be the returning "fixed" keyword.
They also updated the rules for delve... is no one going to speculate about that one?
The section on Delve states: "Once we worked out the details of convoke, changing delve in a similar manner was natural." This indicates that Convoke was the original focus, with Delve being modified later as a byproduct.
Today's rules update bulletin contains a fairly substantial (from a rules perspective) change to Convoke, making it an alternative-cost ability instead of a cost-reduction ability. While it's not conclusive by any means, you have to wonder if this newfound attention paid to the rules is related to a potential revival of the keyword.
As discussed elsewhere, Convoke would appear to be a flavor home run for Theros and is an acknowledged favorite of MaRo, one that he's promised we'll see again. I'd call the rules update a small but significant point of evidence in its favor as a candidate for Theros's returning mechanic.
As well, this is pure tea-leaf reading, but Tabak says when talking about how the inspiration for the rules change came about: "I don't remember exactly how the conversation started, but..." You can take that however you want, but at the very least it's not inconsistent with being a careful, casual way to sidestep the issue of why the rules are getting a makeover. It's also the only update to a non-evergreen keyword in this bulletin (the Delve changes are stated to have been the logical next step of the initial Convoke change).
OK, I might be wrong about the card but we're ignoring the original point of this thread. The idea of a self-milling / recursion deck.
I still think that idea is crazy because there are not enough genuine rewards for it. Even if you wheel a Drown in Filth, congrats you crafted your strategy around turning a BG sorcery from questionable to probably-actual-removal. Yay?
This is not a "niche archetype." It's just Golgari. All the incentives you need for self-milling are on Scavenge cards. If they weren't good enough to play in Golgari in 3x RTR, I don't see how anything has changed.
On that I basically agree. It would be a niche archetype if some cards shot up in value inside it, but as you say, you basically still just want to play good Golgari cards. Morgue Burst is cute and (I think) a good card, but you don't really need an enabler for it. Drown in Filth and Rot Farm Skeleton are both meh cards that do see a nice boost in value once you combine them with Scavenge and each other, but it's not like they create a deck.
I think one of the bigger issues, just like in RtR, is that the Scavenge mechanic is good in the abstract but the cards it's printed on are mostly bad. You're looking at Dreg Mangler, Sluiceway Scorpion, Thrashing Mossdog, and Golgari Decoy (plus 2 rares) as the cards you'd be happy to play absent heavy Scavenge synergy, and two of them are uncommon. Kurozda Monitor, Terrus Wurm, Zanikev Locust, Drudge Beetle, and Slitherhead all range from "okay" to terrible. Also, Mossdog is the only non-rare Scavenger that you will have the chance to pick up before the third pack.
*strictly worse than Azure Drake, which is itself janky even by limited standards, and in many ways the worst four-drop in Alpha. I'd actually argue it's worse than Hill Giant, which with Centaur Courser, you know what that means.
*again, it's funny how green only gets this once Serra Angel becomes iconic of "Wait, this was once too strong?"
*bad Vampire Nighthawk for one more mana, or Deadly Recluse for two more mana, take your pick.
*um yeah, if you're at four mana and playing infect, you're either dead or soon will be
*no thanks, I'd prefer Wild Nacatl.
*marginally better than Durkwood Boars.
I… are you for real here? Every one of these evaluations is patently wrong and/or based on this really bizarre idea that a card can’t be good if there are cards that are better. You’d “prefer Wild Nacatl”--do you pass Searing Spear because you prefer Lightning Bolt? Meanwhile… Azure Drake, janky by limited standards? Azure Drake worse than Hill Giant (which even contradicts your own rubric, since Drake is evasive)? And did you ever actually play M13 Limited? Sentinel Spider was clutch. And all of this is meant to lead up to the conclusion that you just shouldn't ever play Green, because it doesn't have flyers or hard removal so it must be bad. I really can’t tell if you’re being serious.
The variability is huge -- no doubt about it. If you don't want variability, definitely don't run Drown.
I guess I think more of the upside than you do. Yes, it can miss. But if it misses, that means you put a bunch of non-lands in the graveyard. Normally bad, but if you have enough Scavenge that could actually be good. Getting a Scavenge card in the graveyard is like drawing an Aura spell.
I'm not sure how many Scavenge or graveyard effects you need before it becomes good, but at some tipping point it becomes "Either kill a guy or load up your graveyard with choice targets" for 2 mana.
So... why exactly would you think that card wouldn't wheel? You say its downside is "normally bad," but that in a particular deck it could be moderately useful, assuming a threshold number of synergistic cards. That sounds like the epitome of a card that you expect to wheel. Given that the card will be in Pack 1 (meaning most people at the table won’t have an archetype fixed yet) and is patently not first-pickable, nor powerful enough to demand that you play its colors, it seems exceedingly unlikely that it won’t make its way around the table. I think Bateleur is right--it's a fringe playable card that's an enabler for a fairly niche archetype. It's also nothing like an Edict.
Morgue Burst's value is totally determined by the speed of the format. If the format is slow enough, then it's just an excellent card. Saying it needs to be used with Bloodrush is overly cute; the 2-for-1 is enough on its own and there shouldn't be a problem setting it up. Semantics makes the good point that it's exactly the kind of card a midrange or controlling deck needs to put it over the top. It doesn't take much at all for it to dramatically swing the board in your favor. If somehow this format is another tempo format (which seems unlikely), it is too slow of a card, but if there's any breathing room to make late-game plays this card is thoroughly valuable.
I think this gets at the heart of it, and incorporates a lot of other criteria. It's maybe not so important that every color (or guild, shard...) have a control deck and an aggro deck in particular, but it should definitely be the case that there's a tension between making a tempo-focused deck versus a stabilizing-focused deck, which means their power levels should be on the same page. Too many formats are racing formats where the best way to build a deck is clearly aggro and you just fight over the best aggressive cards. There should be mechanisms built in to a set to make hard control decks and slow synergy/ramp-based decks more compelling. Unfortunately, by essentially declaring war on card advantage of any kind at common (not to mention removal) and by pushing hyper-curved creatures, Wizards hasn't made much of an effort to promote that kind of drafting. Racing gameplay isn't the absolute worst, but the aggressive strategies have tended to be so powerful that they've overwhelmed other options, and that's not ideal.
What's really irritating is that they keep making great removal spells--they just put them at rare now. Fortunately I'm not a Constructed player, or that trend would absolutely drive me up the wall, but even in Limited it's a real annoyance because there are still first-pickable removal spells that make a deck really good--but fewer decks have access to them, entirely based on who opens them.
Okay, this is a sloppy and pointless rant. /rant
It's not power-level errata, it's fixing a simple templating error. Not really any different from Walking Atlas. The card as printed has a completely unprecedented and broken effect--not necessarily broken in the sense that it would warp a Constructed format, but in the sense that it violates the allowable functionality of a single card. The effect is also completely unintended and doesn't reflect the design. Goyf's 1 toughness was maybe a bad idea, but it's not the equivalent of a simple typo, which this is.
Can you give some concrete examples of situations or cards that represent a contrast in strategic complexity (as opposed to surface complexity, like verbosity or number of keyworded mechanics)? between recent core sets and recent expert expansions? Your main issue seems to be with bombs, but I'm not sure bombs--which are an intrinsic evil in Limited formats, to be sure--have been overrepresented recently in core sets as compared to expert sets.
Besides, recent core sets actually seem a little better equipped than expert sets when it comes to decent removal at lower rarities, which are one of the principal ways to smooth out a bomby format. As well, and partially for the same reason, core sets seem to be better suited to actually building control decks instead of endless aggro or midrange fests.
I think it's very easy to overlook how deep and complex the strategy of the game can be with relatively simple cards, provided they interact with each other in interesting ways. Adding multiple keyword mechanics and complex effects definitely makes things more interesting, but not automatically more challenging or more enjoyable.
People are forgetting that we aren't looking for a mechanic that fits the concept of gods perfectly as currently concepted. MaRo explicitly stated that the mechanic has been given a flavor overhaul. Offering is an example of a mechanic whose flavor is already a perfect match for gods, so paradoxically it's not a good candidate to be the returning "fixed" keyword.
The section on Delve states: "Once we worked out the details of convoke, changing delve in a similar manner was natural." This indicates that Convoke was the original focus, with Delve being modified later as a byproduct.
As discussed elsewhere, Convoke would appear to be a flavor home run for Theros and is an acknowledged favorite of MaRo, one that he's promised we'll see again. I'd call the rules update a small but significant point of evidence in its favor as a candidate for Theros's returning mechanic.
As well, this is pure tea-leaf reading, but Tabak says when talking about how the inspiration for the rules change came about: "I don't remember exactly how the conversation started, but..." You can take that however you want, but at the very least it's not inconsistent with being a careful, casual way to sidestep the issue of why the rules are getting a makeover. It's also the only update to a non-evergreen keyword in this bulletin (the Delve changes are stated to have been the logical next step of the initial Convoke change).
On that I basically agree. It would be a niche archetype if some cards shot up in value inside it, but as you say, you basically still just want to play good Golgari cards. Morgue Burst is cute and (I think) a good card, but you don't really need an enabler for it. Drown in Filth and Rot Farm Skeleton are both meh cards that do see a nice boost in value once you combine them with Scavenge and each other, but it's not like they create a deck.
I think one of the bigger issues, just like in RtR, is that the Scavenge mechanic is good in the abstract but the cards it's printed on are mostly bad. You're looking at Dreg Mangler, Sluiceway Scorpion, Thrashing Mossdog, and Golgari Decoy (plus 2 rares) as the cards you'd be happy to play absent heavy Scavenge synergy, and two of them are uncommon. Kurozda Monitor, Terrus Wurm, Zanikev Locust, Drudge Beetle, and Slitherhead all range from "okay" to terrible. Also, Mossdog is the only non-rare Scavenger that you will have the chance to pick up before the third pack.
I… are you for real here? Every one of these evaluations is patently wrong and/or based on this really bizarre idea that a card can’t be good if there are cards that are better. You’d “prefer Wild Nacatl”--do you pass Searing Spear because you prefer Lightning Bolt? Meanwhile… Azure Drake, janky by limited standards? Azure Drake worse than Hill Giant (which even contradicts your own rubric, since Drake is evasive)? And did you ever actually play M13 Limited? Sentinel Spider was clutch. And all of this is meant to lead up to the conclusion that you just shouldn't ever play Green, because it doesn't have flyers or hard removal so it must be bad. I really can’t tell if you’re being serious.
So... why exactly would you think that card wouldn't wheel? You say its downside is "normally bad," but that in a particular deck it could be moderately useful, assuming a threshold number of synergistic cards. That sounds like the epitome of a card that you expect to wheel. Given that the card will be in Pack 1 (meaning most people at the table won’t have an archetype fixed yet) and is patently not first-pickable, nor powerful enough to demand that you play its colors, it seems exceedingly unlikely that it won’t make its way around the table. I think Bateleur is right--it's a fringe playable card that's an enabler for a fairly niche archetype. It's also nothing like an Edict.