Magic: The Gathering C/D

I've been hearing rumblings that Kaladesh has been a big flop. Is this true? What went wrong? Seems like a pretty good set to me. Are the masterpieces backfiring and causing the set to tank in value?

yeah that doesn't seem right to me

would suck to have sets like this flop while "Return to X" blocks do well, because we all know WoTC pays very very close attention to their bottom line

can't be sure about for constructed but for limited seems to have been generally well received? only ppl i can recall complaining about it are those e.g. pvddr who are convinced it is a one dimensional all aggro all the time format.

lol what its definitely a fine format for control decks, theres no real tempo disasters to be on the wrong end of like aether adept style cards

yeah, I haven't heard people complain about the set, only people saying it wasn't selling well. I have no idea if there's any truth to that though.

it ticks all the right boxes for me - nothing seems too underpowered or overpowered, there are a lot of skill-testing decisions (Fabricate), aggro is good but outside of the Longtusk Cub/Rhino draw it's not overpowering. plus there are a lot of fun rares to build around, like Animation Module and Panharmonicon (which is way better than I thought it was in Limited, since it triggers on every Fabricate and energy creature)

i'd rate it as 'fine' for limited and slightly problematic for constructed (the fact that a bunch of viable standard decks are essentially block constructed decks is worrying me given that there's still another set of this stuff coming. also aetherworks marvel is some real bs)

and by 'fine' i mean better than most recent sets which other than eldritch moon have been uninspiring

so far under the new system both small set limited formats have been significantly better than their parents imo, hoping that continues with aether revolt

agreed. i think ktkx3, ogw/bfz and edm/soi are my clear favourite 3 draft formats since i started playing (c. gatecrash)

kldx3 is not that far off, it has v high heights imo but if i'm not doing something fun with it it feels kinda flat. a big chunk of the format is solid/unexciting curve out decks that can feel p uninspiring. also some high impact aggressive low drop commons and uncommons plus the absence of the kind of smoothing mechanics they have done well with recently, and the scarcity of mana sinks, makes variance seem higher than normal too which harms the overall perception of the set.

yeah i'm not a khans liker as everyone else seems to be, i've just never liked the morph mechanic, and on top of that it had the same issue as old ravnica where the common lands were too good and its not that interesting or fun, at least to me, to just draft a lot of lands.

i've drafted most sets going all the way back to invasion block, but since i started drafting a lot circa scars of mirrodin, the ones that i've had the most fun with are ISDx3, DKA/ISD, M13, THSx3, ORI, EDM/SOI, with an honorable mention to DGM/GTC/RTR sealed which is afaik the only time in the game's history where a sealed format has been significantly more fun than draft.

on top of that it had the same issue as old ravnica where the common lands were too good and its not that interesting or fun, at least to me, to just draft a lot of lands.

yeah that's a big problem with KTK, especially since you're basically forced into a tri-color archetype. but I did love the format since all five of the combos were so well defined, they all had their own unique goals and ways of creating value. it was a slow format but the agro decks had a lot of ways to bust through. thought things got worse when Fate Reforged was introduced and DTK was pretty much a dud, though the dual concurrent draft format thing was pretty cool.

older formats that i enjoy but don't have enough reps to really compare them against the newer sets: invasion/planeshift/apocalypse, 3x champions of kamigawa and champions/betrayers, 3x time spiral, 3x shadowmoor, 3x rise of the eldrazi

for my part i have enjoyed the additional decisions/tensions added by having to draft lands. i liked it in khans and thought it was a good feature of oath too.

cider glad you mentioned thsx3, easy to forget how much fun that was with the subsequent sets really killing that block.

i forced RB minotaurs like every draft

yeah Theros is a good case study in how 2nd and 3rd sets can really ruin a draft format

my issue with drafting lands is that there's too much guesswork in it. I hated passing up good cards for lands because you're afraid you won't get enough, especially when you've got people trying 5-color builds where they just snap up every one they can get.

Man, I love Kaladesh draft, more than most of the formats mentioned here. I love that fun, build-around synergy decks are easy to make and competitive with straight-ahead decks, and the fact that pros STILL disagree on what archetypes are good is pretty remarkable IMO. The flavor of the set matches the gameplay well, and that also adds a little enjoyment value for me. It's my favorite format since ISDx3, I think

have any of you had good RB decks in Kaladesh draft and if so what did they look like?

also has anyone played the competitive draft league since my warning last week? i don't like how you have to lock in your entry fee before finding out how fast the draft queue is filling

R/B is the one combo I don't think I've ever gone into, but there's a good artifact aggro deck there based around Salivating Gremlins, Embraal Bruiser, and Dhund Operative. The uncommon that kills a creature and hits the opponent for 3 is brutal.

i haven't had a good r/b deck. the common creatures are split in half between energy and artifact synergy and kind of meh overall. and the couple times i have tried the lookout/skiff deck i have wanted to quit magic. the problem with aggro (certainly in limited) is how dependent you are on your opening hand and i think however you go with this archetype that factor is even worse, adding in synergy elements as a layer on top of having the exact right mix of early beaters/tricks/removal. too easy to find yourself with just a handful of shit cards.

anyway, i came to ask if anyone has tried the new cube, the one that won the competition. i haven't even looked at it. wouldn't mind trying something different over the holiday weekend and avacyn restored not really calling to me...

Aggro in general isn't great in this format. One because red is a shallow color (and I would argue the worst of the five), two because there are a lot of very good midrange creatures - the 2W 3/3 and 2GG 4/4 Trample (with Fabricate) are tough roadblocks to get over. In fact Fabricate in general is bad for aggro since you don't want your opponent dropping two creatures a turn. Plus, there aren't a whole lot of good uncommons to support the archetype. Pretty much all the good aggro decks I've seen were based on dropping a Renegade Freighter and backing it up with combat tricks in order to force your opponent into bad decisions.

I like how they tried to bury AVR flashback week with this new cube

yeah that format was pretty awful, so many all-or-nothing style cards and so little removal, plus the highest concentration of bomb rares I think I've ever seen in a set

i kind of like aggro decks in this format although my draft win % is the lowest its been since origins and i have my worst ever gp performance in this format so my opinion is pretty garbage. i havent drafted a tonne of r/b since i generally prefer pairing either color with white but i have had and played against some good r/b decks. unlicensed disintegration is obv a great card but the tricks in r/b are very strong and can be hard to beat with a lot of the other cards (w/ the exception of select which is such a killer trump) and engender a lot of bad blocks/misplaying by my opponents. i think ive gone 2-1 with every r/b deck ive done. i usually screen shot all my draft decks so i can probably find the handful of r/b decks ive drafted but theyre mostly just traditional aggro decks w/an emphasis on built to smash and the two mana black tricks. i also really like the bat in those decks. fwiw my worst results in this format are still with bad multi-color green decks

cider i played a couple of the competitive draft leagues last night and the average wait was like ~2.5 minutes for a match. cant remember how long i waited for the q but it wasnt that long. actually shorter than the twisted cube league q i played im pretty sure.

ok good to know, when I tried it I waited 10 minutes for my 1-0 match and decided to go back to the other queue after that

re: AVR, there's glimpses of a neat aggro-combo draft format in there, kinda reminds me of shadowmoor a bit, but the execution was so comically poor

yeah they just got so many things wrong - completely nerfing Black for one, then giving it such a weird subtheme (cards that only work if you have one creature in play), stacking Green and Blue with most of all the good stuff, making Red and White both combo and aggro with a bunch of alpha-strike style cards, and to top it off filling it chock full of bomb rares that couldn't be beaten because there was so little removal in the set

but you're right, there is the core of something intriguing in there

I drafted R/B at my first irl Kaladesh draft this past weekend. Went 3-1, the deck was good. I leaned heavily on black cards and vehicles - I still think red is pretty weak in this set, and I was mainly playing it for the 3/3 dragon and Pia Nalaar

AVR had a bunch of problems. Almost no control archetypes to speak of (like triple ZEN). Black was super underpowered, you had to open some key uncommons to make it work. Stupidly powerful commons like Mist Raven and Trusted Forcemage. The theme of the set is barely noticeable in the gameplay. I got the sense that they ran out of time developing it

wondering if my lower win % (and maybe yours lamp) has something to do w/ playing in leagues rather than the format itself

maybe - i had a string of about four 2-0 starts where i got stomped in my third round by insane decks that just wouldnt have been possible in my own draft pod but otoh ive def been the beneficiary of same so i think it averages out. i definitely have more 2-1 finishes than i used to - ive now done like 50+ leagues and 40 of them are 2-1 finishes - but if anything that probably helps my win rate. i just dont think im very good at drafting this format, the traditional sort of midrange 'take the best card' strats i like are just hard to put together because the overall card quality isnt there. amusingly i had a pretty high win rate in AVR when it was the new set (in fact i built my mtgo bankroll on the weird 16/8s the ran during AVR) because i just forced red aggro every draft. my problem in KLD is keep taking arborback stomper P1P1 and getting hooked, no discipline to just take that built to smash...

one thing about leagues is that you miss those free wins you could easily pick up by opponents that just don't show up. if you went 0-2 in a Swiss you'd often get a free win just for showing up.

blow up the board and then cast another spell for free? what could possibly go wrong?

http://www.mtgsalvation.com/cards/aether-revolt/28071-yahennis-expertise

well that is a rather interesting idea

that is pretty good

there's also a new trinket/treasure mage that gets cmc 3 artifacts, which is peculiar

artifact soulshift dude p interesting too, possibly a hint that sacrifice will be a theme, and more onbviosuly that recursion will be expanded on from kld

onbviosuly!

well those are all rares besides trophy mage so can't read too much into them

true

initial guess is that Energy will be back but Fabricate won't

energy and vehicles are obviously being continued. they said they were going to stop dropping major mechanics in small sets since people get mad every time they do it even when it makes sense

and the couple times i have tried the lookout/skiff deck i have wanted to quit magic

so get this...the 4-5x Night Market Lookout decks are apparently very very good

(not necessarily because of the Lookout, but because of the 2cc Subtle Strike/Rush/Die Young at common)

nah i don't buy it. they are so fragile. if everything goes right they look unstoppable but if a single thing goes wrong they are total garbage.

Since we're talking about black commons, every time I draft Dhund Operative, my brain sings it to the tune of Smooth Operator

i played start your engines for the first time last night and it was good!