General Draft Strategy

Grillo_Parlante

Grillo_Parlante

Contributor
The reason you guys hate 6 mana elspeth is because she is a varient of moat.

I don't know about wildfire; card seems fine to me, and much weaker than elspeth.
 
Eric Chan

Eric Chan

Hyalopterous Lemure
Staff member
I've taken it one step further, and - along with the planeswalkers who make bodies for either zero or positive loyalty - I'm also cutting planeswalkers whose jobs are mainly to prolong the game. Gideon Jura is the prime example of that, but Jace, Architect of Thought is another guilty party, and I'm lumping Kiora, the Crashing Wave into that category too. To be fair, the latter two can be fun in some scenarios, and aren't oppressive towards most opponents, but they almost always serve to draw out games much longer than any four drop reasonably should.

I'm kind of down on planeswalkers, as a whole, and am at my lowest historical planeswalker count at the moment. Not sure if it's just 'planeswalker fatigue', after years of cubing with them, but I'm finding I haven't missed any of the powerful ones that I've cut. Never thought I would become a grumpy ol' curmudgeon, but I find myself siding more and more with the folks on this board that hate everything about planeswalkers since they were first introduced. My position isn't quite as extreme, but it's mostly that, since reducing the total number of planeswalkers, I find that good stuff midrange has taken the biggest hit, while dedicated control decks have received a boost - a slightly unexpected but perhaps not too surprising result, since tap-out decks with lots of four and five drops are where walkers do their best work. Anything to nerf midrange!
 
Laz

Laz

Developer
I think comparing big-Elspeth and Wildfire is kind of odd. Elspeth comes down with no pre-work and instantly stabilises the board, by either killing all of the big threats or flooding the ground, while threatening to end the game, but mostly just gumming everything up. Wildfire requires some setup and has quite severe deckbuilding constraints, and resolving it tends to not serve to prolong the game, but rather rapidly accelerate the game towards its conclusion. Obviously this is not always the case, as Armageddon on an empty board does nothing to end a game (until one player draws 4 lands to the other's zero...).

Interesting to read your perspective on planeswalkers Eric. Do you have any that you particularly like? I am currently pretty high on Liliana of the Veil (though it could be argued that by forcing the game into a low-resource state, she prolongs games), Domri Rade and Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas, but could take or leave the rest of my walkers. They are fun and flashy cards, but for some reason I don't find them as exciting as I have previously.
 
FlowerSunRain

FlowerSunRain

Contributor
Wildfire doesn't require any more prework then Elspeth, kills all of the threats and if you have anything on the board you win the game. If you don't have a threat on board, its still a wrath of god. Maybe if you ran lots of Tarmagoyfs its not, but it kills over 90% of dudes and most of the dudes it doesn't kill cost 6. Obviously Elspeth is the more direct card because it functions as its own win condition and as such its probably "better", but on the scale of "ruining perfectly good games of magic" I find Wildfire worse and if I ran significant amount of artifact mana (p.s. I don't run any) I'd probably say it isn't even that close. Most decks have some out to Elspeth, but a resolved Wildfire is usually immediate game over or an additional 5 minutes of game length because we both have no creatures and 4 less lands.
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
Eric Chan said:
I'm kind of down on planeswalkers, as a whole, and am at my lowest historical planeswalker count at the moment. Not sure if it's just 'planeswalker fatigue', after years of cubing with them, but I'm finding I haven't missed any of the powerful ones that I've cut. Never thought I would become a grumpy ol' curmudgeon, but I find myself siding more and more with the folks on this board that hate everything about planeswalkers since they were first introduced. My position isn't quite as extreme, but it's mostly that, since reducing the total number of planeswalkers, I find that good stuff midrange has taken the biggest hit, while dedicated control decks have received a boost - a slightly unexpected but perhaps not too surprising result, since tap-out decks with lots of four and five drops are where walkers do their best work. Anything to nerf midrange!
Click to expand...
I... kinda agree, which isn't something I would have expected a year ago either. I'm at an all time low as well, running only


Man... Just seven!
 
James Stevenson

James Stevenson

Steamflogger Boss
Staff member
I still run jaby bace, he's great.

I hope this doesn't become another thread where people just list their planeswalkers.
 
Jason Waddell

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
In general, I am hesitant to run PWs that pass this test:

"I have a 3/3 and a 2/2. My opponent plays their walker into an empty board. I alpha strike. Does the walker survive?"

Or worse....
"Can it survive two turns if no other spells are cast by either player?"
 
Eric Chan

Eric Chan

Hyalopterous Lemure
Staff member
I think it's alright if a five or six mana planeswalker can survive in those situations, as five mana generally represents a considerable investment - Tamiyo has never been a problem around here - but I agree that that's a good litmus test to use for four mana walkers.
 
B

blacksmithy

Chandra is effective, BUT id like her better if she were more like a good tibalt and less like a bad sulfuric vortex.
Nissa is cool and i eventually want a copy, but for a similar effect im pretty pleased with my custom borderland ranger
 
Jason Waddell

Jason Waddell

Administrator
Staff member
Eric Chan said:
I think it's alright if a five or six mana planeswalker can survive in those situations, as five mana generally represents a considerable investment - Tamiyo has never been a problem around here - but I agree that that's a good litmus test to use for four mana walkers.
Click to expand...

Yeah, good point. Do people really "identify" with six mana elspeth, or just play her because she represents good value?
 
RavebornMuse

RavebornMuse

flipwalkers:
Kytheon - extremely nice. Lots of fun to play and play against, and his 'walker side is neat.
Jace - the bee's knees and everybody's fave. Looters are great, and his 'walker side offers a lot of cool lines of play.
Lili - pretty sweet value without being Thragtusky. she flips easily enough, but her 'walker side feels a bit harder to play correctly.
Chandra - a new addition; very cool. I cut Sulfuric Vortex a while back and it's given red a lot of room to breathe. I LIKE that her flip side is a Vortex variant, and we've found her surprisingly enjoyable to play - the "how-do-I-flip-her?" minigame is entertaining.
Nissa - good, but not crazy. her flip side does a bit more than I anticipated, which is nice considering the requirements to flip her.

I recommend them all highly; I ran 4 of them at first and passed on Chandra but she's more fun and enjoyable to play than she looks and we really love her over here, much to our surprise.
 
Diakonov

Diakonov

I've mostly been pulling walkers out lately on the basis of how easy they are to draft and play. Elspeth-6 is a very bland, high value 6-drop. If you're playing white midrange or control, there's virtually no bad time to play it, and there are very few questions about what you should be doing with it. It's just a very boring card, even before you get into all the game stalling implications.
 
Dom Harvey

Dom Harvey

Contributor
Planeswalkers also overpower whatever cute midrange stuff you're trying to build into your environment. I considered messing around with morph/manifest but realized I would have to make some sacrifices: Mastery of the Unseen versus any of the Elspeths isn't a fair fight
 
Eric Chan

Eric Chan

Hyalopterous Lemure
Staff member
Yeah, the vast majority of planeswalkers push towards Good Stuff midrange, and tend to dominate synergy-based strategies all by themselves. I really, really love Garruk Wildspeaker - he's probably my favourite planeswalker design - and while he enables a lot of fun synergy decks, he's almost always grabbed by the first green drafter who sees him, and jammed into some no-plan, value midrange deck. What's even more heartbreaking is that the drafters doing that are objectively correct, as a walker like Garruk represents so much value, and is difficult to remove once he's cast.
 
Mondschwein

Mondschwein

If you people don't like planeswalkers throwing bodies onto the battlefield turn by turn, then how do you think about Curse of Shallow Graves? Is it okay because it has no upside? Compared to Gideon, Ally of Zendikar it costs one less mana, too.

Back to draft strategy: would you people say that cards like Snapcaster Mage and Huntmaster of the Fells are typical first picks? I don't know if I should cut the latter, although in my opinion it often ends as two 2/2 bodies and a lifegain of 2 which isn't too good for a two-coloured 4drop. Its second ability only appears when you don't have anything good enough in hand to play on your turn and its colour combination is a really proactive one, so you rarely play those cards in your opponents turn instead, making you leave at least four mana open just to transform it.
 
Onderzeeboot

Onderzeeboot

Ecstatic Orb
Curse of Shallow Graves is awesome! It's also useless if you're not attacking, so it's much less of a Good Stuff midrange card than most planeswalkers.
 
Aston

Aston

I wouldn't be too happy to first pick either of those - Huntmaster because it's two colours, and Snapcaster because it needs a reasonably high density of spells to function. I could see taking Snapcaster out of a weak pack, since if it does work it is very powerful, but I'd try and first pick almost any mono colour or colourless card over Huntmaster.

As to how strong Huntmaster is, once I'm in both red and green it's one of the cards I most want to pick up. Two 2/2s and 2 life for 2RG isn't an insane rate, but it does put a lot of pressure on your opponent to act on each of their turns, and if it does transform and kill something, it's insanely good value. I think I would rate it behind Bloodbraid Elf for RG, but not by much. I'm not sure what else I would want over it or Bloodbraid in that section.
 
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