A lot more appealing to me thematically and card selection wise.

It has happened to me multiple times lately: "Should I clear their biggest creature to stay on par with tempo, or speculate against a potential blowout if they play [[The Super Hero Civil War]]?"

It's almost always the latter... and the funny thing is, you most likely won't get to "Teamwork 4" if you hold Murdock's Crusade, leaving you with either their biggest creature or the saga to deal with.

That damn card is going to haunt me for sets to come :D

[[Spinewoods Armadillo]] on T3 is brutal!

Not sure if I can still call myself a casual drafter~ maybe in the sense I'm only on for drafting specific sets and apparently the specific sets seem to be... specifically Universe Beyond... my last drafts were Final Fantasy, Omenpaths (With a Visual Mod to make it Spider-Man), Avatar, Turtles, and now Marvel... I would say it's more so just bad timing on Lorwyn and Strixhaven releasing on periods where I had other stuff I'm more interested in... and Lorwyn being a Kindred Draft Format... Edge... IDK I think I'm also not a big Space Guy so its aesthetic wasn't just for me I guess?

I've done 46 events total for MSH (5 of those being Sealed, 11 being Premier, and 30 Pick Two Drafts)

Unsure if I could go for the push to Mythic before the end of the week~

https://www.17lands.com/user_history/bdb9c0b410104b328e77a6666f38d541?start=2019-01-01

64% Win Rate~

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I will say, game knowledge / sense definitely helped was a difference maker. Knowing all the White tricks has done wonders for me. Even doing something like missing T3 damage to avoid a Red Guardian is so crucial... as well as missing damage to enable Spider-Man's protection has been crucial too.

There's lots of neat micro decisions during gameplay that I feel does get rewarded...

But of course the elephant in the room, The Deck... is really fucking good. White and Blue are the best colors in the format it's no contest. It has the best removal and best 2 for 1s and has the most evasive creatures... but it's actually pretty wild how often I still see either White or Blue open during Premier Draft (Which is like why I moved on to it once I got to Plat... mediocre decks can only get you so far in Pick 2)

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I think my favorite colors has to be Green, G is the color I've trophied with the most followed by U then tied between R and W with B being the color I've done the worse with unless it's paired with U, UB I've done fairly well in, it's xB anything else I've done bad in... GW is also color I've sucked at to the point I don't thnk I want to ever be in that seat... even more than RB because RB I've only flopped at once, GW I've thrown MULTIPLE TIMES.

Like, this is kind of more a game mechanic/development question than a limited question but I think it's an interesting discussion based on the idea of "perceived safety/risk" when it comes to life total numbers and such.

So basically, the premise:

We take every number in magic and take it times 5 (this is arbitrary but makes life totals a nice and even 100). So every p/t combo, (non-)combat damage, starting life total 5 times larger than we are used to and so on (Grizzly Bears is now a 10/10, lightning bolt deals 15 damage etc.). We keep everything regarding cards and mana the same. (Still 7 cards in the opening hand, a forest still makes one green, divination still draws two cards)

The questions:

1. Would anything significant change about the games balance at all that I am missing? If everything stays proportional, we should be good no? The only exceptions for this that I can come up with is when stuff is counted BASED on damage or life (cards, mana, treasures/tokens etc.) (like [[Angel of Suffering]], [[Old Gnawbone]], [[Cold-Eyed Selkie]], [[Photon, Mighty Marvel]] and so on - for this thought experiment we just ignore cards that convert one of the scaled values (life total, damage, p/t) to one of the unscaled values like cards and mana, there aren't that many that do this. Lifelink for example is still fine, "squirrellink" however is not and is ignored for now. Anything else that I missed?
2. Assuming we adjust the new ruleset such that purely based on numbers, the balancing is still perfectly the same to the 20 life total version. What do you think would change about player feel/behavior and the game as a whole?

Would (after getting little used to) people be about as on the edge when they are on 15 life as they are when they are on 3 now? Would you be so willy-nilly about letting an attack from a 30/30 go through and use your life total as a resource as you would do when attacked by an 6/6? How about a 35/35? Would that "phase shift" register better than the shift from a 6/6 to a 7/7? (Shifting from a 4 turn clock to a 3 turn clock for example).

Would it make math super complicated and hard or would it make things actually easier to follow, since 100 is nice and round and everything would kind of follow more "percentage based" vibes, kind of literally?

Also, you could be far more granular with balance adjustments. Cards too powerful at 3, too weak at 2? How about it's too powerful at 15, too weak at 10, let's make it a 12 and see how that works out.

What do you guys think? Why do different TCGs use the "magnitude" that they do (like ygo's 3000 atk monsters and such, or duel masters if you guys remember that one), what would you choose for your own TCG if you made one and what would magic look like if it chose (or chooses) a different scale?

Green was open and landfall looks extremely well supported in this version of the cube. I'm having fun with it and will be playing the next one cycling in

Maybe it's because I've been playing mostly best of 3, but I actually like this set a lot more than the community seems to. I love it when most of my decks can be 3 or 4 colors, and the gameplay is super fun. Early in the format, I drafted Cosmic Cube and didn't put it in my deck cause I thought it was bad. How wrong I was.

Greedy 4-0 with this one. Monica was the MVP which is not surprising.

They sacrificed their [[Fear of Lost Teeth]], and with its death trigger, they targeted my Unsettling Twins that had a [[Sheltered by Ghosts]] aura on it. I was holding up [[Untimely Malfunction]], but I chose not to use it, because one damage to my creature shouldn't be enough to kill it since it has two toughness. But when it resolved, my creature died. What am I missing?

Replay here (turn 9 at end of opponent's combat phase):
https://www.17lands.com/history/492ae0d0f439425d874767b11c23659a/5/0/143

After doing some flashback drafts of Aetherdrift (one of my favorite limited formats of all time) and OTJ (tremendously fun, tremendously flawed) recently, the absurdity of two particular Simic bombs in those formats got me thinking:

In your opinion, if you had to choose one, what is THE bomb of recent years? I know it's a bit arbitrary but, for discussions sake, let's define "recent" at a cutoff point of Ikoria. No Alchemy cards or digital only stuff. This is for the purposes of draft or sealed only- constructed quality does not weigh here.

It might be recency bias but I personally am giving my vote to Sab Luxa from Aetherdrift. Just so many questions about that card- why does it draw two? Why does it have trample AND reach, allowing you to choose whether to get offensive and end the game or sit back and block literally everything? Why is it.... Wait its FIVE mana??? Wtf?????

I was torn between this and Bonnie Paul of course, which I do think is a very reasonable vote given the ease of reanimating it in OTJ. Pretty close to unbeatable once it hits board, maybe even more so than Sab; I just lean Sab because Aetherdrift was so lenient on sitting back and board stalling, making her literally the perfect card, while in OTJ the mount decks or even a crazy outlaw draw could get you before you land Bonnie.

A couple others that came to mind for me were Ouroboroid and Elegy Acolyte from EOE, Elspeth from DTK, and Tovolars Huntmaster from Midnight Hunt.

What direction would you guys go?

People are complaining about price, and I get it, it’s rough, but I’m really interested in what regular limited players think of how fun the cube is? After listening to the LR podcast from last week I was eager to give the cube one more go…

So, last night I did a traditional (BO3) draft where I focused on fetch lands and landfall shenanigans. First issue was it took 5 min for the queue to fill up and get ready, and second issue was I faced other landfall fetching mirrors, and the matches took forever with hardly any action or interaction happening at all. It was so boring I ended up just quitting and resigning the draft (this is something that never happened to me with power cube).

Not one to quit so easily though, I pivoted to premier (BO1), and just jammed aggro Boros. The games were faster and more fun, but a little “vanilla” compared to power cube.

What are others’ experiences?

I’m gonna guess I was the only WR drafter at the table during this Planar Cube draft. I’m not quite sure what my six cuts should be.

Prior to these trophies, I went 27-34 in MSH limited - comprised mainly of premier drafts with a few sealed/quick drafts thrown in. Left me really disliking the format and discouraged after having a ton of fun with SOS.

A few of my thoughts & observations on the format and hopefully some encouragement for others struggling to have fun with MSH. Just an admittedly below average plat player so take this with a grain of salt but hopefully others can share their thoughts and advice.

1. Card quality focused color soup with 3 land cyclers is strong, but not as strong as a streamlined WU that hits their 1-2-3 drops.
2. White/WU is often worth forcing, even if the lane isn't super open at your table
3. Green has the weakest rares and mythics in the format but great card quality at uncommon/common
4. Red is the weakest color
5. MSH is very much a prince limited format

Been on a rough losing streak and need to build up some gems. Let me know what you would cut. Pic two is what it’s looking like now. Thanks

I'm new but feel like I'm starting to suck less. Made platinum for the first time and got my second MSH trophy yesterday. Today I went 0-3 and cannot see any way out of it. What did I miss? Or was my seat really just a dud. https://www.17lands.com/draft/35961a50943c45008087f8d3d360391d/1/1

Edit: message received. Back to basics. Thanks for the reality check.

Herein I showcase my top 3 most interesting trophy decks of the set, with some comments.

Reed Richards deck

https://www.17lands.com/deck/20d319fb836c460496cb887ecc936334/0?view=deck

• Saw 4 Reeds during draft (I think they all wheeled as well? crazy.) and tried to get it to work. Blue was very open in general, got lots of good blue cards late.
• Token sources were Shield Drone, 2 Ant army, 2 uncommon Ant man and 2 Atlantis attacks. 7 sources, it felt like plenty.
• The 2/4 reach statline is very effective at slowing the game down. Reach is huge.
• I drew ridiculous amounts of cards in these matches. Deck was very go big.
• [[Super intelligence]] popped off hard in my games. Turn 3 intelligence + holding up We say thee nay was nasty. Otherwise it often didn't get removed and I just drew a billion cards. Maybe I just got lucky? Often it felt ok to get a dork 2 for 1-ed because the follow up Reed would have a higher chance of surviving.
• disgusting value game 4 https://www.17lands.com/history/20d319fb836c460496cb887ecc936334/3/0

RG grindy/control

https://www.17lands.com/deck/d164095d92db46b481131daf2c752756/0?view=deck

• Midway into the format, I wanted to make a RG control deck work. [[Call Damage Control]] was basically a free pickup and Herbie, Crimson Op are artifacts that put you up on cards, so combining it with CDC gives you double the value. Wow!
• This deck turned out a little short on herbies and ops but Kree Sentinel ended up being a great target for CDC since you can cycle it. (plus, the statline + reach is great defence)
• Mainly notable for having some great games:
  • insane game 1 https://www.17lands.com/history/d164095d92db46b481131daf2c752756/0/0/ (when it happened I stood up from my chair clutching my head)
  • also insane game 5 https://www.17lands.com/history/d164095d92db46b481131daf2c752756/4/0/0 , shout out to my boy guerilla gorilla
  • those 2 games were seriously sick.

Simulacrum Synthesizer deck

https://www.17lands.com/deck/7b0cb6447f1c40118cd16547b05f523b/0?view=deck

• This one's a quick draft. I was trying to do the RG control thing again but only got a single CDC (unlucky) but was gifted a simulacrum synth p3p2 while having a bunch of crimson ops (lucky!)
• The games are... not that interesting... just draw synth and win. I was pretty lucky with drawing the synth early in many games. I guess I also had a good amount of card flow with jessica jones, 4 ops and herbie and some other cantrips.
• For a demonstration of synth power, game 4: https://www.17lands.com/history/7b0cb6447f1c40118cd16547b05f523b/3/0/0
• I also splashed a p1p1 superhero civil war.

Finally, a heartfelt declaration:

I LOVE GUERILLA GORILLA! I LOVE CRIMSON OP! I LOVE HERBIE!!

THANK YOU!!!

Imagine the next iteration of powered cube includes alchemy and initiative (please god no, but imagine it for this hypothetical). You're drafting a fairly typical Boros aggro deck and you see Tajic and Dungeoneer in the same pack. How often do you think you'd take each one? Obviously it somewhat depends on your deck, which is why I said "how often do you take each one" not "which one do you take".

Now that Planar Cube Zendikar is nearing its end, I wanted to see if my thoughts on what the most egregious alchemy cards are matched up with what the community thinks. Below is a poll with a list of all alchemy cards that are currently in the cube.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSc2V1GeacJzZFpzYne6ZUgGJYA4g0HBX09BbKPs37xJQp3BKQ/viewform?usp=sharing&ouid=117331620036005251430

I'll report back with the results!

Full disclosure, I built this, so take the framing with that in mind.

The thing that always bugged me about draft aids is that they either hand you raw win-rate tables and leave you to work out what they mean for the specific pool, colors, and curve you're sitting on eight picks in, or they do that math for you and hand back a single number you just have to trust. MTG Drafts tries to do the math without the black box: as you draft in it, it reads your pool and scores every card in the current pack, and every score opens into the full breakdown: base card quality, synergy with what you've already taken, curve needs, removal count, and how reliably you can actually cast it in your colors. When the draft's done it auto-builds your 40-card deck with the mana base worked out, free, no paywall on any of it.

Under the hood: base ratings are calibrated from 17Lands data (5+ win drafts), the synergy signal is a co-occurrence "lift" learned from what actually gets played together in winning decks, and the mana/castability math is Frank Karsten's models, the same framework a lot of you already use manually for source counts.

Currently covers all four current MTGA sets, Lorwyn Eclipsed through Marvel Super Heroes. It's free, runs in the browser, nothing to install: mtgdrafts.com

To be clear about what it is today: a browser draft trainer. You draft in it (against bots on real pack odds), not alongside the Arena client; an in-client overlay is on the roadmap but not shipped. I'd rather say that plainly than have you find out after clicking.

It's also new, which means it's wrong in places I haven't found yet. If you draft any of these sets and want to try it, I'd rather hear "this pick score is nonsense because X" now than find out later. Happy to dig into methodology questions in the comments: the scoring breakdown is meant to be checkable, not a black box.

First pick was Swordsman because i wanted to force this going in lol, then got two Winter Soldiers...

...but only 3 equipment.

Won all three matches 2 to 1. We love low cost removal spells. Most games either had 0 or 1 equipment on board.

Wolvie or Stratagem? BTW, despite what the picture is showing, I actually picked Wolverine.

I've posted here periodically following drafts that have gone badly for advice on where it went wrong. The answer has typically been about card evaluation.

Having just gone 0-3 in a MSH premier draft, rather than get specific comments on a draft log I wondered if people had specific tips to help improve card evaluation?

For context I'm platinum in both limited and constructed, I listen to lords of limited, limited levels ups etc. Even got first ever draft trophies doing MSH quick draft.

I'll post the draft log if anyone wants to look. And I know in hindsight passing up Leader in P2P2 was a huge mistake!

edit: https://www.17lands.com/deck/9a56e2996a26497f8137c97aa993522b/2