and I agree. I had more fun drafting M14 than any of the other sets. Gatecrash was super lame. Dragon's Maze was mind melting. Theros was blah. M14 was ... magical! But why?
First let me say that I think the format is much healthier when you are drafting three packs of the same set (cube and grab bag aside, we're talking tournament booster draft here). To illustrate why thing about Dragon's Maze. Gatekeepers were a thing. In particular that green one with gain 7 life was quite good. However the concentration of gates in the subsequent packs was quite low. In order to play with the gimick from Dragon's Maze I had to draft it and the gates heavily in the first pack, then for the rest of the draft that part just disappeared. Of course this effect was exacerbated by the colors of your deck getting set and then making some gates just not useful at all except for the gatekeeper ETB. Basically the point is if you only have one pack then the bloc synergies need to feel real strong otherwise you just feel like you're drafting grab bag (which is cool by the way, but that's a topic for another blog).
More importantly, when the Wizards are building the core sets they agree to only work with known quantities. There of course are some new cards but the mechanical underpinnings and the color philosophy of the set are all well established. Because they understand their tools really well when building a core set they know just what is needed to fix deficiencies in the draft format.
When they make a new expansion it is like Michelangelo working with a digital artwork platform. When they make a core set it is like Michelangelo working in Marble. Which would you rather draft?
No comments:
Post a Comment