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Sigh: completely in agreement. Now, to try and progress with this: hard-to-evaluate, complex cards make formats trickier to solve. Razormane Masticore has quite a tasty upside, a 5/5 first striker which bolts a creature every turn - but quite a cost, too - it's hard to evaluate, and so in...

Have seen it done in Magic with 2 decks numerous times but never 8. There are other games which have attempted this - e.g. Yomi, Summoner Wars - but the more decks you add the more matchups there are to balance, and when juggling 28 possible combinations it's hard not to end up with some of them...

I think it depends what "this" is. If it's some kind of eternally cycling metagame, no, this is very probably mathematically impossible. If we make changes and see ripples out across the way other cards are valued in the changed format, and a period of players oscillating between over-valuing...

"Opaque" in this instance means "hard to evaluate". It's not hard to evaluate an obviously pushed creature; it's good. It's hard to evaluate cards with drawbacks, unique effects, heavily synergistic cards. It takes time to figure out what they can actually do at their best and how that interacts...

Or, to put it another way: if there is a small number of players playing a selection of decks they're used to, they are at an equilibrium. Change the format substantially enough and you can disrupt this equilibrium and there will be a period of moving to a new equilibrium. Any "oscillations"...

Right, here's the problem: this doesn't happen. Adding one card does not materially change the evaluation of other cards. If I'm playing an Upheaval deck I try not to put O-Ring in it. If I'm not playing an Upheaval deck I grab O-Ring happily. Whether Upheaval was or wasn't in the format...

Are you familiar with the Nash equilibrium? No, because "cycles" don't happen the way they're touted to happen. Nobody, to the best of my knowledge, has made this theory work in practice - partly because it doesn't appear to be proper "theory"; I've seen no-one attempt to put it into a...

Grillo - I don't think you would have presented the examples from cube as you have without the ideas from the video as guidance. Partly I think this because I don't recall ever actually observing an example in real life cubing that worked that way. In other words, I think the data's being...

Now you've made me watch the video. :( Where the heck did he get this notion that in chess you "can't create new strategies"? Having been a competitive chess player in a past life... opening theory runs out, and then you're very much on your own. Practically every game that goes past four...

New pack: Boros GarrisonInfestGreenweaver DruidFertile GroundUtopia SprawlSearing BlazeQuicksandPunishing FireWave of ReckoningMystical TeachingsThree DreamsAEther AdeptXathrid NecromancerCage of HandsSnapping Gnarlid

http://www.channelfireball.com/articles/draft-fundamentals/ Coming from some of the discussion in the metagame balance thread on raw power vs synergy, I find this article an interesting exploration of how Wizards' Limited environments are evolving. To summarise the article, it points out...

Sophist. I'm rarely on there as of the last few months save to play Limited, Pauper got a bit played out for me also. Couldn't brew anything newish that stood a reasonable chance against Delver without being silly. I'd completely forgotten the U/R delver decks from the Treasure Cruise era -...

Yeah, I'd agree with this. I don't think there'll be a single dominant archetype, because of competition, but a small number of them being pulled back and forth would fit with my expectations. Ramp, control, maybe tokens, aggro, etc - "known good" decks people can build nearly on autopilot. (I...

Okay. Thinking about this. Going deeper. I like first picking Flametongue Kavu. Jason likes first-picking Flametongue Kavu. MCMcEmcee likes having generically powerful, obvious first pick cards in the pool, so I'm just going to infer Flametongue Kavu. An obvious, flexible, powerful first...

Do you find that drafters sometimes get a first-pick for an archetype but then fail to find support in subsequent packs? I like the idea of a larger cube, but I'm worried about archetypes being only "half-there" and someone discovering their synergy deck is just a little too low on synergy when...

Back on topic: I agree with FlowerSunRain on pretty much everything. The "solved meta" is a red herring, I think, as is the "rock-paper-scissors" notion. With regard to the first, the "solved meta" of Constructed doesn't manifest the same way in Limited formats: even when Wizards have goofed...

Thanks for the article - it was interesting! One small note though: nobody much was playing Flame Slash when Gurmag Angler arrived as there was no high-tiered red control deck. UR control never recovered from the loss of Cloudpost and quickly became a minor player. Angler itself was bad against...

Raw power unfortunately makes for easy first picks though. It doesn't have to be Grave Titan; Consecrated Sphinx or even Flametongue Kavu will do. I happily grab the most powerful thing I see in the first pack - and I'm stoked about it, because the draft is going well, in a way I probably...

You disappointed me there. I remembered Pauper being Delver-dominated, and this paragraph made me go and look in hopes that that had changed. It hasn't, Delver's still a third of the metagame. The counterspell is still pretty close to the "clear best answer", and Delver runs about ten (six...

Condescend, Dig Through Time and Murderous Cut have sold out. Boo. How about Power Sink, Courier's Capsule and Executioner's Capsule? (Capsules combo off with Trading Post, Kurkesh, Sanctum Gargoyle - also Trinket Mage benefits...)