Magic: The Gathering C/D

I've played about 30 more sealeds in this format, and it's only gone up in my estimation

yeah it's a good set. not one of the best ever but above average imo.

objectively i think i would agree but personally i don't enjoy it and i haven't been playing it. it's a forgiving environment for high variance strategies, actually i would say welcoming more than forgiving, and while i think every good limited format should allow the dream of going all in on some bullshit, that shouldn't be tier 1. you have to be open to drafting decks where you can just look at your top 10 cards instead of playing the game, and that's not fun for me.

have to admit i only played a couple sealeds right at the release so although it seemed like 'who's got the bombs' i can't give that initial impression too much weight. might give sealed another shot actually. if only to keep me from looking at constructed decks...

I think every small set format has been better than its respective triple large set format since they​ went to the new system, so the bar for Hour of Devastation is high

really? i thought aer sucked

i have played 0 sealed of this format but have a bunch of sealed events coming up so i need to start practicing. i hear that it is good tho

Yeah, I think to some extent the things that make it a flawed-but-good draft format are the same that make it a great sealed one - I feel like a lot of sealed formats end up as midrange vs control vs more midrange, whereas because RW 1/2-drop aggro is so deep it's actually a sealed deck you can play which feels very fresh to me. And the same with combo - you never normally get to build around cool effects in sealed but it feels like cycling means you can a bit more.

MM2017 is the worst sealed format imaginable so I might just be biased that it isn't that.

exert is a really good non-linear aggro mechanic which is what most sealed formats are missing. aggro decks in sealed usually aren't cohesive enough to beat someone who just trades 1 for 1 with your guys, whereas this set has a bunch of cheap common creatures that are hard to trade evenly with.

there's also a bigger thing going on here in the past 5 years where giving green removal has been great for draft but has tended to unbalance sealed in favor of green midrange decks. several things that green does like creature size and color fixing have always been a lot more valuable in sealed than draft, and having fewer answers on average in green/x decks was a counterbalance that's now gone.

Wow that's a great point about green, cider. I've noticed the overrepresentation of green in sealed the last few years but didn't connect it to removal. Was there a good green removal spell in BFZ? That's the only recent format where I think green was not great in sealed (and of course, it was horrendous in draft)

there's also a bigger thing going on here in the past 5 years where giving green removal has been great for draft but has tended to unbalance sealed in favor of green midrange decks. several things that green does like creature size and color fixing have always been a lot more valuable in sealed than draft, and having fewer answers on average in green/x decks was a counterbalance that's now gone.

yeah, just chiming in to say this was an amazing post!

Wow that's a great point about green, cider. I've noticed the overrepresentation of green in sealed the last few years but didn't connect it to removal. Was there a good green removal spell in BFZ? That's the only recent format where I think green was not great in sealed (and of course, it was horrendous in draft)

yeah - moving tail slash-style cards from red to green has always kinda bothered me but its particularly noticeable in sealed. i think w/bfz it wasnt absence of good green removal (nissa's judgement was legit) but that green creatures didnt size that well against the rest of the format because of the eldrazi so it couldnt accrue natural card advantage by simply having the biggest/best creatures.

yeah bfz had a fight card (iirc 3 mana instant) but the problem in that set was that green lost its big creature advantage to Eldrazi. ROE got around this by having green really own ramp (overgrown battlement, ondu giant, growth spasm all good ramp cards at common) whereas the best common in BFZ for ramping into eldrazi is uh Kozilek's Channeler. no green necessary!

Converting one of my stores to an $12 Friday Night Magic with three packs for prize support so I can move inventory - the group that has been coming in has explicitly told my staff that they buy everything online and just want to use my FNM for discount packs and promos. It'll probably kill FNM there until new players crop up but I'd rather just not be open late for it than lose money every week catering to these schmucks.

Suspicious that this game is going to have another hard crash in a year or two - WOTC's unwillingness to set any kind of MAP guidelines has made it all but impossible for the stores where their players play to compete with online retailers.

yeah there's been some troubling signs lately but also Standard is going through an extended rough patch so there's abnormally low demand for singles (and thus product in general) from the current sets

the store i play at has always done $15 FNM with heavy prize support (currently 12 prize packs per 8 player draft pod) and done fine, but they're the only store with adequate play space in the entire city so they can probably do whatever the heck they want.

3 mana wrath, good times

that's actually a 6 mana wrath you've been tricked

I fully expect some kind of shenanigans to circumvent the drawback

then its a 3 + cost of the shenanigans mana wrath

there's really no way around losing a turn's worth of mana when you cast this. i don't think it's gonna be very good.

back during the summer of Goblins I could imagine a 3-mana Wrath being really useful. dunno if there's gonna be a deck like that again.

so I qualified for the pro tour today via rptq...

GRATS!

great job dude!

niiice

its the japan one next month? or the one after that?

bunch of big announcements coming this week about the Future Of Magic and all that

Awesome news, iatee!

great job iatee! what format? which PT did you qualify for?

it's kyoto. I qualified with sealed. idk if I can actually make it because it's so soon + a 14 hour plane trip in both directions and I just started a new job / already taking a bunch of pto. hopefully either my boss is really excited for me and wants me to take even more pto...or I can defer the invite.

had a good pool with a masterpiece attrition and gideon. then in the t8 draft I had a very good rg deck with hazoret and a great curve. only had to win one match in the t8 and curved out into hazoret twice.

Attrition! good lord that must have been good in sealed

had the same trouble when I won a PTQ for Barcelona several years back, and the PT was scheduled right after my already-booked 10 day vacation. basically had an 20-minute conversation with my boss where I had to explain MTG and the Pro Tour and by the end, he let me take the time off. best of luck convincing your boss of the same - the free trip to Kyoto alone seems too good to pass up

maro's article is up, big change this time is they're getting rid of small sets entirely and having 3 large sets and a core set each year

I think every small set format has been better than its respective triple large set format since they​ went to the new system

me too...

fwiw i think that was mostly happenchance. there's no reason eldritch moon needed the pack of SOI cards to be great, in fact they kind of felt disconnected because investigate went away and the werewolf mechanic changed.

and i don't think AER was appreciably better than KLD in the end, just a little different.

my theory is they are too full-on with the applying the particular set themes and the dilution of BBA is a material benefit to gameplay

but anyway, i am pretty unmoved by the changes, seems like fixing a problem that didn't exist but we'll see what they do with it.

It feels a bit like they are continuing to flail from one fix to another, trying to find something that sticks. I'd be relieved to see fewer changes at some point.

I appreciate them being proactive at least instead of waiting for sales to drop off before making changes. I think their massive effort on focus testing has paid off, and might be the reason why the game is still alive today.

That said I'm curious as to what this'll do to design. One thing I really liked about small sets is how they'd expand upon the mechanics in new and interesting ways that would influence Limited in neat ways (for example, introducing non-mana morph costs).

yeah I am losing faith in them recently Moodles. doesn't the idea of regimenting all sets to be drafted alone go against what Maro is saying, that they want the flexibility to suit the design ideas they have? it precludes the possibility of unique draft formats like 3xRTR vs RTR-GTC-DGM. but whatever, I'm sure that two more years down the line they will break this rule too

I'm not sure why they need to announce a structure at all - they were happy enough to break the large-large-small model as needed since Lorwyn. maybe just say, hey we're gonna have four sets a year

I am also for them being proactive btw, but this change feels like a walkback for the most part

oops should be large-small-small. WotC is making me confused, obv

marvel naturalized

I'm glad, way overdue. I actually think Marvel was the real problem card way back when they did the initial banning. Now can we unban copter and mage, pretty please?

Was kind of hoping Dredge and Death's Shadow would be hit, but I guess not today.

i don't think standard unbans are a thing that will ever happen. mayyyybe theres a chance they unban copter at rotation if there's enough removal for it in the format by then.

I'm not sure why they need to announce a structure at all

Exactly. I really dug the period where there were a few blocks in a row that were structured in unique ways. I don't know why they can't just wing it according to the needs of the set. I don't think it's controversial to say some worlds deserve multiple sets and some don't.

Was kind of hoping Dredge and Death's Shadow would be hit

do you think either of these is actually too powerful? seems like modern is in an ok spot right now. on a related note, i spotted our resident professional tourist iatee hanging out in the 5-0s for the mtgo modern competitive league with dredge.

dredge is really powerful and somewhat problematic in that it often turns matches into the question "did you draw your sideboard card in your opening hand" - it has less ability to play around dedicated hate than other decks and ignores a much higher % of maindeckable/non-dedicated hate than other decks

i doubt it has the numbers to justify a ban right now though.

i'm also not yet convinced that death's shadow has ban-worthy performance, we've seen time and time again these thoughtseize decks secretly struggling to crack 50% winrate below the highest levels of play, while being upheld as the Best Deck because pro players love them for the balanced matchup profile.

haha I have another 5-0 they didn't put up. dredge and death's shadow are both fine I think, dredge is soft to unfair decks and can always be hated out - I've found it very easy to get 3-2s and 4-1s but hard to get 5-0s because somebody out there is prepared. death's shadow...I think it's a cool card - I think it opens up a lot of different builds, it's kinda the delver of secrets in legacy. there are lots of ways to interact with a one mana creature, most people should be playing them anyway.

the decks I think are problematic are counters company and storm, both of which can win on t3 pretty frequently. the old company decks were more interesting than a fast infinite mana combo, and the old storm deck didn't have easy deterministic kills. overall modern does seem to be in a better place than it has been for a while though, like death's shadow is the fair deck that needed to exist to go toe-to-toe with all the busted crap everywhere.

also valakut and tron should be banned or they should give us a better ghost quarter

no you can't take my valakuts away from me again...