MTG Salvation

i feel so bad for Pieces of the Puzzle.

i love instant and sorcery heavy decks, so i want to like this card and think of a draft deck for me to try and force where it could feel useful.
but i can't get over the fact that it's a Divination that likely will get me only one card at best, which seems awful for three mana.

can you all help brainstorm decks where it does at least something useful, some of the time?
how many instant and sorceries do i need? even if do manage to consistently draw one to two non-permanents with it, in what situations would i be really happy to do so, where i would think "yes! my deck is enabled / works really well now, because i have Pieces of the Puzzle!".

Dorvan, that is a fantastic analysis! very well spoken!

can you illustrate some of this dominance, forcing-the-opponent-to-play-your-game, through a hypotehtical (or anecdotal) illustration?

(i am thinking now that i may not like aggro, because i'm so uneducated/unfamiliar with how good aggro *works*. for example, you mention combat tricks as being part of what creates the pressure for your opponent to either let damage through or to make bad blocks. i have experienced being on the receiving end of this, but until now it wasn't clear to me that this was part of the grease that makes aggro work.)

i want to preface this by acknoweldging that my question here will be difficult to answer, and I'm expecting not many responses. as usual, i'm less asking about the strategy/evaluation kind of analysis that people like to talk about here, and instead am going to ask about a more subjective emotional / experience analysis.

today's card, Murderer's Axe, seems to be a card good for attacking.
it would optimize my enjoyment of the few times i draft in real life, if i could learn to appreciate experiences with deckstyles that i don't currently appreciate. (drafting and playing Magic for me is about wanting cool emotional experiences and quirky deck constructions).

i know i love control, making games go long and blocking the ground.
i know i enjoy trolling with counterspells and discard.
and i know i enjoy drafting sideways decks with bad cards.

but i think i would like to see if i could try to enjoy attacking. i sort of enjoy Red-Blue tempo just because the "triksy" feeling of constantly bouncing or burning a creature, while triggering Prowess and chipping away two or three damage at a time is fun. it feels like i'm getting away with something i really should not be able to get away with. (and plus, there's a bit of a "troll-y" feeling of preventing my opponent from stabalizing).

i had always found it a little boring to go wide (eg White-Green in OGZ) or to have efficient 3/3s for three, etc. white weenie and green efficiency thus tends to feel boring to me. but maybe i need to put more effort in understanding .. the exhilleration Timmies who like these strategies have.

so, can anyone make an attempt to analyse or talk about .. what is fun in aggro, or a deck with +2/+2 equipment? what thoughts or feelings come up when you feel "wow, this is a fun experience!" when you play such decks?

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(i know that analysis based on subjective enjoyment of cool experiences is really hard to talk about. we haven't been given a language or analysis of this in articles, so it's hard to analyse.

for what it's wroth, one point of analysis of subjective experinece .. has to do with "danger". i think i like control and sort of like tempo, because of it's fun to see how i brush with danger.
for control -- it's exciting to get down to 2 or 3 life, and then stabalize. that brush with danger and wondering "how can i pull out of this?" is exhilarating.
for tempo, or HYPER red aggro -- it can be fun to wonder "okay, i have a hand full of bounce -- how can i even make this work?!" or "okay, i have a super aggro hand -- will i find the gas to deal the last couple points of damage?".)

I did one Cockatrice draft, where i was UB madness (and blockers/mill/counterspell). This, plus flash creatuers and lots of counterspells, allowed me to play mostly a draw-go style. (luckily, my opponent wasn't playing werewolves!).

this is just one data point, but it was by far my most valuable player. i was casting all my dig spells primarily to find this card, so i could enable all my other madness stuff i had drafted.

scottjhebert, was it okay for me to join just one draft?

i'm tired of R&D making straight lifegain egregiously bad.
i can't see a reason that Chaplain's Blessing could not have been an instant. especially important if you want to surprise de-transform some opponent's werewolves on their turn! having a surprise "gain five life" would be really fun (but by no means powerful) trick, like Fog, to mess up alpha strikes from your opponent.

i feel like i've had this complaint -- about sorcery speed straight-lifegain -- at least two other times in recent years. they took a fringe playable card that had griefy potential, and made it more or less unplayable, and that makes my bad-card-loving heart sad.

sure!
but i really am afraid of making a commitment for four months. i'm a little commitment-phobic. even if i like the discussion and think i can manage it, i'm probably not going to want to make a four month commitment, so if it will mess things up to let me just do one draft i will most likely want to pass on signing up.

the top post says that this is a four draft commitment.

could i instead just join for one draft, as a trial to see if i can manage it?

i'm curious but hesitant to join because i do not know at all how this works!
it's telling that i, for example, don't understand your explanation -- it sounds counterintuitive that if someone cannot make once per day, that they are on a team that meets *more quickly*.

i'm happy to sit this one out, but is there a link someone can send to me that explains what an 8-way draft is on this forum and how it works?

if i sign up, how often do i have to commit to accessing the internet? is it actually once per day?

as for Rise from the Tides, thanks for reminding me about it.

i do still wish i could redeem Harness the Storm, and that's why I was curious about the math. Yeah, I'm wondering if even getting three copies of a low powered but cheap spell might .. do something useful. (i probably need to make a list of low powered under 3 CMC instants and sorceries in this set, and then see if they suggest any kind of particular deck)

i'm curious to see if that deck with multiple draw and burn spells you suggested might be doable. it sounds like it would be fun if i could get it together!

DSF, i too have trouble remmebering a scenario where i drafted multiple copies of the same spell, and had more than one pair. but, like you said, i wasn't tryiing to pay attentino to that nor was i going out of my way to get that, so i still wonder if there is hope for this to be a bad (instead of almost useless) card.

LSV gave Harness the Storm a 0.0 rating.

i'm trying to think of how likely it could be to make this card less than useless.

there is 2.4 of every common in a draft table of 8, right?
could this card be worth it if i have 3 pairs of instants and/or sorceries in my deck? i am assuming they would have to be low powered cards for this to happen, but i'm still wondering if there is a possible deck idea that could redeem this card?

can anyone do the math to see how likely it is to get 3 pairs of instants and/or sorceries?
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edit: oh man, i didn't even realize that "without paying for its mana cost" is NOT written in the rules text. sigh. i'm a little less excited for this card, now.

can i request people to consider tagging their cards? it'll really help me learn the cards!

thanks for your thoughts and analysis, btw!

may i ask, what do people hope for in the commons?
(that is, if your wishes and dreams could be made a reality?)

and what are you nervous about how the commons would turn out? what could make this set into a disaster, despite the nifty cards we get at higher rarities?