Random thought, is Harm's Way good enough to see RW decklists? Its essentially a 1 mana lightning helix for 2. I can see it being way too situational or too low impact. I just want to hear people's thoughts on it.
I haven't looked at the promos as much. So far I've only studied the commons and uncommons to get a general idea of the set. I'm just answering the question in general of what looks like the best color for limited.
I think it's black. The set looks very thin on answers and black and red have the most. Also, the set's creatures are a bit lackluster. At C or UC, there aren't too many bomby creatures (like Serra Angel) or spells (like Mind control). This leads me to believe that this format is going to either be dictated on bomb rares opened or deck archetypes with lots of synergy. Outside of the durdly creatures, black is essentially tied with blue and white for evasive creatures (2 of blue's flying creatures need help to be cast or have flying).
On its own, Black looks solid. If every deck was monocolored, I think black would dominate. What I'm paying attention to while learning to draft this set is how important being in an archetype is and what cards are relevant to them. Archetypes I'm paying close attention to is UR artifacts, UG bounce, BW lifegain, Wx tokens along with all the typical aggro and control color pairings (UW flyers, RB Aggro, etc.)
Potential sleepers I think are: Oracle of Bones, Whelming Wave, Hunter's Prowess, Herald of Torment and Perplexing Chimera. If I had to pick one to be THE sleeper pick, I'll go with Oracle of Bones.
There are tokens printed with haste, but it just seems like they don't print anymore new ones. There's the 7/1 trample haste elemental token from elemental appeal and there's the 4/4 red green giant with haste from giantbaiting. There is also a 1/1 haste and a 1/1 flying haste.
I know because I have a token stacks deck and I've been hoping for more haste tokens to add to the deck. I was actually hoping for that 3/1 to have haste because there already is a vanilla 3/1 token (from rakka mar).
IMO, this was one of the best and most diverse standard formats ever. I'm not a huge standard fan and only started played serious competitive magic (mostly limited) since M10 so my opinion may not be the most valid, but let me explain why I think this was the best.
Diversity in decks and card pool.
The most amount of archetypes were possible in this format. With an amazing mana base, ramp, reanimator + self/mill, and a diverse and deep selection of aggro and control cards, you literally could build anything.
Most of my experience with this format was for Innistrad Block, M13 and RTR, which was when it was most diverse. When GTC, DGM and M14 came out, the metagame was still healthy, but definitely started to settle at specific decks.
When RTR came out, there was a new top dog every single week.
Here's a list of decks that had either won a tourney or had been considered Tier 1 at one point of that standard. Zombies (Jund, BG, BR<-which was the best deck before GTC), Reanimator (frites - 4 color BGRW, Junk, BUG, Human), Junk Tokens, Control (Esper - Superfriends and Solar Flare, America, UW, Bant), Midrange (America, UW, Jund, Naya, Dark Naya), Aggro (Naya, GW, RDW), even 5 color with Omniscience. The list goes on and on.
A quick summary of decks for the rest of the format.
GTC
BTE - birthed Naya Humans (blitz)
Boros Reckoner - Anything America (flash, control) along with naya and Aristocrats
Shocklands - Gave Jund a smooth manabase
DGM
Voice - Made Junk decks extremely good while punishing flash decks.
This is where innovation slowed down and it was just upgrades to existing decks. From here on to M14 Junk and Jund had risen to be the 2 dominating decks of the format. It was here where the format finally became stagnant. You can still play plenty of decks though because they were still able to compete.
Major complaint of the format - Thragtusk
While thragtusk was everywhere, it allowed so many strategies to be viable. Aggro, Midrange, Control, Ramp and Reanimator all featured Thragtusk. By the end of RTR standard, where BR Zombies were the king for the last few weeks, aggro had been so good that Thragtusk made those games fair. Without Thragtusk, I believe the format would've been mono BR aggro.
Perfect mana bases, a deep and diverse card pool, 4 large sets, the presence of Thragtusk and Farseek contributed to one of the most diverse and balanced standard formats ever.
Just a couple of random guidelines for limited decks.
[DRAFTING]
CARD EVALUATION
CE is the heart and soul of drafting. The better the drafters are at CE, the better the draft will play out.
One of the best ways to get better is through experience. Draft, draft a lot, ask questions, ask a lot. When a new set is out, people have their assumptions, but there's no real way to know about a card except by playing it.
Another quick way to familiarize yourself is with Pack Poker (if your store plays it). Just watch people pack poker, see what cards are good, see what people dislike.
BREAD (as everyone else here said) is the best way to evaluate cards while drafting.
B - Bombs - A card that will take over the game on its own
R - Removal - Cards that deal with other cards
E - Evasion - Creatures that are hard to block (basically flying or some flying variant)
A - Aggro - Creatures that can attack and apply pressure
D - Duds - These cards don't do anything to help you win or affect the board
I won't go into this any more since almost everyone else here has already spoken about it.
COLORS
Typically, you want to be in 2 colors. Two colors allow you enough flexibility to get what you need for your deck. Two colors are also balanced enough to avoid mana color problems. Depending on the set you are drafting, its possible to be in 1, 3, 4 or even all 5 colors.
After 2-4 picks in, a specific color combination should begin to stick out to you. If you are a pure noob in draft, its best to remain in those colors as best as you can. Experienced drafters will be able to read signals and know when to switch colors.
[DECK CONSTRUCTION]
GENERALLY (not for all cases), you want the following for your deck
DECK COUNT
Deck Minimum: 40
Lands: 17 - This is the typical sweet spot for lands. Lower curve decks (no cards above 5 CMC) could easily get away with 16, sometimes 15 (probably don't want to go any lower then 15). Decks that are more mana intensive (higher curve and/or more colors) can go to 18.
Creatures: 14 -18 - This depends a lot on your strategy. Decks with more or less can work too, but you are stepping out of the comfort zone. Aggressive decks should want to lean to 16-18 creatures to apply continuous pressure. Control (spell oriented) decks can run as low as 13-15. (I peronally don't like being lower then 15.) This is dependent on the quality of spells you have, translated: you better have a lot of removal (7-9).
Spells: 6 - 8 - Again, this depends a lot on your strategy. Control decks can have as many as 10-11 even more. Just msure your non-creature spells are worth it. REMOVAL - this is the most important thing you want in this slot. If the rest of the cards you have is removal, then you have a perfectly fine deck. Combat tricks are fine, I usually like having 1-2 to keep my opponents honest. Card advantage (card draw) and Pumps (enchantments, equipments) are all fine but not necessary.
MANA CURVE
One of the main things to keep in mind when constructing a limited deck is your Mana curve.
There is no typical number guide like 17 lands 23 spells for mana curve since you can't even guarentee seeing cards in these ratios in your draft, but this is how I prefer to be:
Aggro
1: 0-4
2: 4-10
3: 4-8
4: 2-6
5: 0-4
6+: 0-2
You typically want the cheapest efficient creatures you can get. A low curve allows you to play a creature and attack almost every turn. Most of your action should be in your 2-3 slot. Anything CMC 5 or more should be a game ender.
Control plays a slower game so your curve can be stretched higher. You are usually in this strategy because of a late game bomb you drafted. Most of your action will probably lie in the 3-5 slot. Your early spells don't have to be too powerful, just enough to get you to the late game.
When in doubt while drafting, go for the lower CMC card. Fatties are typically easier to come across in draft. Since a Draft deck isn't as consistant as a Standard deck, mulliganing is an issue. It can even mean game over in some cases. Having a lower curve helps with this. Lower curve generally means more hands to keep, which means less mulligans.
TL: DR
Noob drafting rules of thumb
BREAD: Bombs, Removal, Evasion, Aggro, Duds
Stick to 2 colors
17 Lands - 17 Creatures - 6 spells
When in doubt: Cheaper is better
-Disclaimer: This isn't the end all be all rulebook for drafting as every set has their own rules attached with it.
Funniest episode so far. Love the intro (I was actually there and saw you guys taping up Shuhei, now it all makes sense). The new rules segment was hilarious and informative at the same time. Outro scene was funny too. Keep up the good work.
Hopefully you end up at GP: Las Vegas for another great episode.
I think the reason is pretty clearly that with the M13 duals, Innistrad duals and shocks that if they printed new lands in M14 (as they already confirmed they're not doing the M13 ones anymore) then Standard would be a manabase trainwreck for the next 4 months, it's bad (good?) enough as it is and adding even more fixing to it at this point is only detrimental
If you haven't seen this, watch it now. This movie tries to be so serious and is so typical cliche action movie that it's so hilarious to watch. Everything is just so over the top and ridiculous.
A protagonist with only 1 name, can only disarm his opponents by kicking the guns out of their hands (Literally every single time), can out run a motorcycle, and has many amazing lines like, "Pain don't hurt" can only be played by the one and only Patrick Swayze.
If anyone has ever seen MacGruber, Roadhouse was one of the main influences for that movie.
I've always wondered why they never touched NY for GPs. The reason I heard was just the price of venues in NY. Most GPs usually have their venues on the outskirts of the Major city the GP is linked to. (GP Boston/Worcester was just in Worcester, GP Toronto and DC that I've gone to were both atleast 20 mins away from the center of the city).
It may be extremely expensive to put a GP in NYC. All I have to say is that if they ever do put one there, it will auto break the GP attendance record (as long as its not legacy).
I think it's black. The set looks very thin on answers and black and red have the most. Also, the set's creatures are a bit lackluster. At C or UC, there aren't too many bomby creatures (like Serra Angel) or spells (like Mind control). This leads me to believe that this format is going to either be dictated on bomb rares opened or deck archetypes with lots of synergy. Outside of the durdly creatures, black is essentially tied with blue and white for evasive creatures (2 of blue's flying creatures need help to be cast or have flying).
On its own, Black looks solid. If every deck was monocolored, I think black would dominate. What I'm paying attention to while learning to draft this set is how important being in an archetype is and what cards are relevant to them. Archetypes I'm paying close attention to is UR artifacts, UG bounce, BW lifegain, Wx tokens along with all the typical aggro and control color pairings (UW flyers, RB Aggro, etc.)
There are tokens printed with haste, but it just seems like they don't print anymore new ones. There's the 7/1 trample haste elemental token from elemental appeal and there's the 4/4 red green giant with haste from giantbaiting. There is also a 1/1 haste and a 1/1 flying haste.
I know because I have a token stacks deck and I've been hoping for more haste tokens to add to the deck. I was actually hoping for that 3/1 to have haste because there already is a vanilla 3/1 token (from rakka mar).
Chandra - Scarlett Johansson
Jace - Robert Downey Jr
Garruk - mark ruffalo
Gideon - Chris hemsworth
Venser - Chris Evans
Diversity in decks and card pool.
The most amount of archetypes were possible in this format. With an amazing mana base, ramp, reanimator + self/mill, and a diverse and deep selection of aggro and control cards, you literally could build anything.
Most of my experience with this format was for Innistrad Block, M13 and RTR, which was when it was most diverse. When GTC, DGM and M14 came out, the metagame was still healthy, but definitely started to settle at specific decks.
When RTR came out, there was a new top dog every single week.
Here's a list of decks that had either won a tourney or had been considered Tier 1 at one point of that standard. Zombies (Jund, BG, BR<-which was the best deck before GTC), Reanimator (frites - 4 color BGRW, Junk, BUG, Human), Junk Tokens, Control (Esper - Superfriends and Solar Flare, America, UW, Bant), Midrange (America, UW, Jund, Naya, Dark Naya), Aggro (Naya, GW, RDW), even 5 color with Omniscience. The list goes on and on.
A quick summary of decks for the rest of the format.
GTC
BTE - birthed Naya Humans (blitz)
Boros Reckoner - Anything America (flash, control) along with naya and Aristocrats
Shocklands - Gave Jund a smooth manabase
DGM
Voice - Made Junk decks extremely good while punishing flash decks.
This is where innovation slowed down and it was just upgrades to existing decks. From here on to M14 Junk and Jund had risen to be the 2 dominating decks of the format. It was here where the format finally became stagnant. You can still play plenty of decks though because they were still able to compete.
Major complaint of the format - Thragtusk
While thragtusk was everywhere, it allowed so many strategies to be viable. Aggro, Midrange, Control, Ramp and Reanimator all featured Thragtusk. By the end of RTR standard, where BR Zombies were the king for the last few weeks, aggro had been so good that Thragtusk made those games fair. Without Thragtusk, I believe the format would've been mono BR aggro.
Perfect mana bases, a deep and diverse card pool, 4 large sets, the presence of Thragtusk and Farseek contributed to one of the most diverse and balanced standard formats ever.
http://imgur.com/r/magicTCG/7ccn2Ih
[DRAFTING]
CARD EVALUATION
CE is the heart and soul of drafting. The better the drafters are at CE, the better the draft will play out.
One of the best ways to get better is through experience. Draft, draft a lot, ask questions, ask a lot. When a new set is out, people have their assumptions, but there's no real way to know about a card except by playing it.
Another quick way to familiarize yourself is with Pack Poker (if your store plays it). Just watch people pack poker, see what cards are good, see what people dislike.
BREAD (as everyone else here said) is the best way to evaluate cards while drafting.
B - Bombs - A card that will take over the game on its own
R - Removal - Cards that deal with other cards
E - Evasion - Creatures that are hard to block (basically flying or some flying variant)
A - Aggro - Creatures that can attack and apply pressure
D - Duds - These cards don't do anything to help you win or affect the board
I won't go into this any more since almost everyone else here has already spoken about it.
COLORS
Typically, you want to be in 2 colors. Two colors allow you enough flexibility to get what you need for your deck. Two colors are also balanced enough to avoid mana color problems. Depending on the set you are drafting, its possible to be in 1, 3, 4 or even all 5 colors.
After 2-4 picks in, a specific color combination should begin to stick out to you. If you are a pure noob in draft, its best to remain in those colors as best as you can. Experienced drafters will be able to read signals and know when to switch colors.
[DECK CONSTRUCTION]
GENERALLY (not for all cases), you want the following for your deck
DECK COUNT
Deck Minimum: 40
Lands: 17 - This is the typical sweet spot for lands. Lower curve decks (no cards above 5 CMC) could easily get away with 16, sometimes 15 (probably don't want to go any lower then 15). Decks that are more mana intensive (higher curve and/or more colors) can go to 18.
Creatures: 14 -18 - This depends a lot on your strategy. Decks with more or less can work too, but you are stepping out of the comfort zone. Aggressive decks should want to lean to 16-18 creatures to apply continuous pressure. Control (spell oriented) decks can run as low as 13-15. (I peronally don't like being lower then 15.) This is dependent on the quality of spells you have, translated: you better have a lot of removal (7-9).
Spells: 6 - 8 - Again, this depends a lot on your strategy. Control decks can have as many as 10-11 even more. Just msure your non-creature spells are worth it. REMOVAL - this is the most important thing you want in this slot. If the rest of the cards you have is removal, then you have a perfectly fine deck. Combat tricks are fine, I usually like having 1-2 to keep my opponents honest. Card advantage (card draw) and Pumps (enchantments, equipments) are all fine but not necessary.
MANA CURVE
One of the main things to keep in mind when constructing a limited deck is your Mana curve.
There is no typical number guide like 17 lands 23 spells for mana curve since you can't even guarentee seeing cards in these ratios in your draft, but this is how I prefer to be:
Aggro
1: 0-4
2: 4-10
3: 4-8
4: 2-6
5: 0-4
6+: 0-2
You typically want the cheapest efficient creatures you can get. A low curve allows you to play a creature and attack almost every turn. Most of your action should be in your 2-3 slot. Anything CMC 5 or more should be a game ender.
Control
1: 0-2
2: 2-8
3: 4-8
4: 4-8
5: 2-6
6+: 2-4
Control plays a slower game so your curve can be stretched higher. You are usually in this strategy because of a late game bomb you drafted. Most of your action will probably lie in the 3-5 slot. Your early spells don't have to be too powerful, just enough to get you to the late game.
When in doubt while drafting, go for the lower CMC card. Fatties are typically easier to come across in draft. Since a Draft deck isn't as consistant as a Standard deck, mulliganing is an issue. It can even mean game over in some cases. Having a lower curve helps with this. Lower curve generally means more hands to keep, which means less mulligans.
TL: DR
Noob drafting rules of thumb
BREAD: Bombs, Removal, Evasion, Aggro, Duds
Stick to 2 colors
17 Lands - 17 Creatures - 6 spells
When in doubt: Cheaper is better
-Disclaimer: This isn't the end all be all rulebook for drafting as every set has their own rules attached with it.
Hopefully you end up at GP: Las Vegas for another great episode.
What he said.
If you haven't seen this, watch it now. This movie tries to be so serious and is so typical cliche action movie that it's so hilarious to watch. Everything is just so over the top and ridiculous.
A protagonist with only 1 name, can only disarm his opponents by kicking the guns out of their hands (Literally every single time), can out run a motorcycle, and has many amazing lines like, "Pain don't hurt" can only be played by the one and only Patrick Swayze.
If anyone has ever seen MacGruber, Roadhouse was one of the main influences for that movie.
Watch it, you cannot be dissappointed.
It may be extremely expensive to put a GP in NYC. All I have to say is that if they ever do put one there, it will auto break the GP attendance record (as long as its not legacy).
Here's a link just in case you didn't see.
And we still have a mythic to come! (just please dont be mythic poop).
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=504156