Magic: The Gathering C/D

never wound up with much of the Graverobber but yeah I suppose that counts. I dunno, I still feel like they were going for some kind of G/B grave theme but there doesn't seem to be the card that cider is alluding to, something that would be great in that deck but mediocre in anything else. Graverobber and Nemesis of Mortals are decent in any green deck.

that said I do think Tribute mostly plays well. yes it is often an easy choice though I'm often stumped on how to handle the Phaganx Giant.

presumably they're slowrolling some of the GB dredgey stuff for the last set to go alongside the GB god

Interesting, I hadn't thought much about the idea of challenge cards extending the life of the format, but now that I think about it, my favorite draft formats (ROE, Innistrad) have a lot of those that I can remember. Floodtide Serpent, Graverobber Spider, Ragemonger are the only cards at common/uncommon I see fitting that category in BOTG.

btt is really boring idk if its because there arent any gimmick cards at uncommmon or because of the very low power level or how unbalanced the colors are but it hasnt been interesting to draft. its also not actively bad to draft either

one thing that is interesting about theros and now btt is that i tend to have really lopsided #s of commons and uncommons and certain cards i just never, ever cast. its the first set since avacyn restored that i can remember not having any of some uncommons despite drafting it a tonne. i think M13 was the best set in recent memory for allowing every card to be at least niche playable

my issue with it is that there are a bunch of commons that are really similar to theros cards (the small versions of wingsteed & stauch-hearted, the U and B bestows both still give 2 power for 5, red gets more 3 damage removal, etc) so it feels closer to the triple-large format than any other small-large-large i can remember.

i was excited about the inspired mechanic but there just aren't enough cards with it and the ones that do exist aren't quite impactful enough. i wish the blue flier was a 4 mana 2/1 or something. there are just so many good cards at 5 in the format that you can never actually justify playing that guy. same deal with the black 3/3 that gives intimidate.

yeah those two are almost unplayable ime

i think i was 40 theros drafts deep before i got my first copy of decorated griffin, and i still haven't actually cast it

I dunno if I have ever included it in a deck but it's been okay against me in a few games

the card itself is not even bad, it's just the good white decks are all too fast to want it. so it's a good card for bad decks.

whats the best inspired creature - just the sun chaser? i guess its actually the prerelease promo but i have yet to get to play with it. i've also never played the 2/2 since i'd always rather have the 3/4 and that option is pretty much always available. i do like the black 1/3 regen more than most people seem to since it always goes so late but its certainly mediocre.

ok i checked gatherer and the best inspired creature is the kiki-jiki minotaur i had forgotten about him. and about the cycle of make a token uncommons which i dont like at all but am probably underrating.

the red 2/3 that becomes 4/3 is the non-rare inspired creature i've liked the most

the 1ub 2/1 and the one that poops out wind drakes are the best, tho taking the 2/1 1st pick is harder

and yeah kiki jiki @ rare but tbh would rather have wind drake mama a lot of the time

I think the issue is that there's not a whole lot of ways to untap dudes. Crypsis does it but there Heroic and Inspired begin to seem a lot alike. Kiora's Follower is obviously the one you want, but it's two-color. And most of the enchantments that grant tap abilities aren't too great either.

my issue with it is that there are a bunch of commons that are really similar to theros cards (the small versions of wingsteed & stauch-hearted, the U and B bestows both still give 2 power for 5, red gets more 3 damage removal, etc) so it feels closer to the triple-large format than any other small-large-large i can remember.

I noticed this too, it really does not play all that different. The main difference I can discern is that green devotion gets somewhat of a boost (the GG 3/2 and 1GG Oathsworn definitely encourage heavy green), and that G/R feels a lot more viable...in Theros x3 I would only draft GR if I got a Polis Crusher or Xenagos. Also it feels like 1-damage effects like Vipers Kiss and Spark Jolt are more playable, though I wouldn't necessarily want to maindeck either.

gr, gw and to a lesser extent ur and br are still the color combos I prefer to avoid.

i actually like the token maker cycle a lot since they're among the few cards that do things you couldn't do in triple theros

UR is definitely the one I try not to wind up with - I play a lot of blue in this format but generally I find it's best as the secondary color, and Red doesn't make such a great main color either (except in some Boros-type decks). It seems like they intended there to be an instant Scry-based deck with Flamespeaker Adept and Spellheart Chimera but I've just never had success with that, the cards just aren't strong enough to compete. Frustrating because Izzet was nerfed in RTR as well.

BR certainly took a hit with Born - the Minotaurs are generally bad there, the best is another 2/3 for 3. Red seems to get the most out of White now.

yeah having a good minotaur deck depended on having +1 uncommon minotaur lords and getting them like 13th pick cause nobody else wanted that deck. and there are now fewer of them.

I think roughly 100% of the time I have lost to a minotaur deck they had two of them out. anything less and you just kill the 1st one and are sitting across from 2/3s.

that guy's still my favorite card in the format

minotaurs are rad

breaking the reserve list, just once, for didgeridoo would have been a great idea

fallen empires is such a dope magic set, all i want is a return to sarpadia w/ a real draft format

i realize that didgeridoo was homelands but i had to double check that homelands is in fact on the reserve list (its all the way up to masques! for some reason i thought it was like '93 special) and then i saw that autumn willow is on the reserve list and it got me thinking

yeah fallen empires and homeland had such great flavor and characters, that's why it was painful how much they sucked

i think a little bit of homelands's aesthetic got rolled up into innistrad

ice age is my favorite old set flavor-wise but fallen empires is up there too yeah

i was really bummed to find out that coldsnap was an almost-objectively-poor set gameplay-wise, its still my favorite modern-era set aesthetically just because it's an ice age sequel.

haha i point out the an-hava township/gavony township thing to people all the time now. innistrad def feels like it was the closest to 'return to homelands' we're ever gonna get and its not like i am holding out hope for sarpadian chronicles vol. next but i think its pretty fertile ground, esp for limited. like there are a lot of really good ideas in fallen empires they just got pushed into unplayablility for some reason. i esp like all the different land cycles

yeah it seems like a big missed opportunity and hopefully it doesn't stop them from doing more retro stuff. there is definitely hugeee potential.

xp

Coldsnap still felt better designed than Ice Age and Alliances were. We did a "full block" draft of that once and the other packs were so weak that you'd play nearly every Coldsnap card you got. I agree that the world was one of the coolest (barf) they ever did.

'better designed than ice age' is not the strongest praise

i like how adding the ice age/alliances packs in breaks all the coldsnap mechanics

yeah if nothing else it took the Cumulative Upkeep and Snow Mana concepts and laid them to rest, I think it did both those things well. also it showed why a set needs to be a certain size before draft can really work

90s magic ::sigh::

yeah like i was saying upthread i hope there's a more retro/trad fantasy block in the works since it's been a while since the last one of those. i don't really like ravnica as a fantasy setting at all.

All the complaints about Fallen Empires at the time that I remember were because it was massively overprinted and had all its best cards at common/uncommon, so the cards didn't hold value. Also nothing super broken like Lotus or Moat, so people probably thought it had nothing to add to their stupidly overpowered decks. IMO the designers did a much much better job reducing chaff cards in the set than, say, Legends. I played type 2 (Standard) at the time and many of the best cards available for white and black decks were in Fallen Empires. Homelands I can't really defend tho

i bought a bunch of packs of fallen empires to do a chaos sealed thing w/ some friends and the cards are all slightly underpowered. everything comes into play tapped or falls slightly off curve or has just bad enough stats to not line up w/modern magic but theres so much complexity and interesting cards at common that i imagine it will be at least challenging if not fun to play well in limited.

I started around Ice Age and all I ever knew of Legends was the overpowered stuff like Mana Drain, Moat, Nether Void, Abyss, etc. plus the Elder Dragons of course. I remember going through a guide that had pictures of all the cards much later and being astounded at just how godawful 90% of those cards were. Fallen Empires was the first set I ever bought (I pulled a Deep Spawn) and yeah in context it was quite good!

yeah fallen empires was cool (and cheap) there just wasn't a chase rare, you can't be excited about opening a pack w/ no chase rares

Yeah I'm sure the set design and printing of FE and Homelands was in response to people complaining about how they couldn't afford to buy cards like Moat, Mana Drain, etc, but they're a good lesson in why making sets without chase rares gets even more complaints

Yeah but we'd buy it up b/c it gave us enough to fill out our decks. I remember Alliances was the set that had all the real cool designs and chase rares (Lord of Tresselhorn and Balduvian Horde obviously). Visions was the first set that I thought was really well designed at each level.

Hmm looking at the close release dates of these early sets, now I'm wondering if it WAS a response after all, or just coincidence

xp Yes! Alliances and Visions were my two favorite sets from the time before I quit Magic because it was unpopular among my peers, even though quitting didn't make me any less unpopular

alliances def felt the most groundbreaking w/ horde, free spells, lots of cool lands

yeah there were a lot of really creative and unique cards in that set, much different than Fallen Empires or Homelands which were mostly full of dull creatures. according to the early designers if Alliances hadn't been a big success Magic probably wouldn't exist today. kinda like Tempest where there were more ideas than they had room for.

finally locked in my lion's eye diamond promo and just noticed that next month's promo is force of will - they're really being transparent now about wanting to keep people playing despite the MOCS being suspended

i'm kind of down on all the current competitive formats right now though so grinding out these promos is feeling more and more like a chore, but at the same time my interest in eternal formats is up so i want to get the cards.

I locked mine in as well, wound up taking 46 drafts to do but it was well worth it, now kinda feeling I gotta do it all over again for the FoW

Been doing some Mirage block drafts lately, which is certainly interesting and has a lot of money cards across all rarities. Despite some claims that Mirage block was the first to really be draftable, it's kind of a mess, with a huge imbalance in power level from card to card, and outside of River Boa there really is not a single "over-the-curve" creature - mostly a bunch of 2/2s for 3 with some upside. Still fun though considering I never drafted it back then (I don't think anyone really drafted then. I believe I was like 10.)

sealed was bigger than draft back then (ime)

yeah i feel like booster draft wasn't really a big thing until invasion block which was the first block that was really well balanced for it