General [Format Discussion] Modern Masters is Totally Incredible

[CML]

yeah, it's not a simple problem to solve (recognizing this puts us way ahead of the maximalists) as you don't want to "ban" too much. it's a pretty easy process for me, though -- when i revise i just take out all the cards that people don't pass or don't pick.

chris is right. ghostly prison comes to mind as one such card. in general i am not a fan of cards that either take over the game or are giant blanks, without a nice middle range of effects.

corpsejack menace is a good card yo

 

[Eric Chan]

So I got home, fired up MTGO, and the phantom draft queues were empty.. but the phantom sealed queue had 7 waiting. Yeah, I know, sealed is for chumps, but leaving that bit aside, how would you build this? I could not figure it out for the life in me in the twenty minutes allotted. (Yes, I'm bad at Magic, and not like CML where he says he's bad at Magic and still top 8's SCG opens, in my case I'm very much bad at Magic.)

 

[Miasmir]

The white top end is just too good to ignore, right? And then I think all the other colors have some reasonable filler and get-there ability:
Blue has pestermites, suspends - individually good but not a huge volume of cards
Black has stinkweed imp, drag down, we could maybe be esper with the dreamspoiler witches and the peppersmoke?
Red has war marshals which are great at helping you live to cast valkyries
Green has a deep curve with good value and ramp

so I'm looking at WG first and I think mostly what that's missing is other cheap stuff so I'm looking at the blue too.
Here's a tentative list:
Path to Exile
Otherworldly Journey
Reveillark
Cloudgoat Ranger
Adarkar Valkyrie
Amrou Scout
Thallid
Thallid
Riftsweeper
Kodama's Reach
Nantuko Shaman
Search for Tomorrow
Eternal Witness
Greater Mossdog
Cenn's Enlistment
Penumbra Spider
Sporoloth Ancient
Sylvan Bounty
Tromp the Domains
Woodfall Primus
Riftwing Cloudskate
Pestermite
Pestermite

But you could build it to be quite a bit faster and drop a bunch of threes and fours for more stuff like Kithkin Greatheart and play Bonesplitter. From what I know of the format it's quite slow though and you have to lean on your bombs which in this case are big white beaters and tromp. I like Cenn's Enlistment in grindy long games with tromp but maybe you're already favored in those in which case dropping the curve is better.

Maybe red is a better splash than blue. You get a vivid land and you play war marshals over pestermites, with a Sudden Shock and Fiery Fall which helps because you have nearly no removal. Yeah I think that's better actually, that's how I'd build it.

Kills me to not play Divinity of Pride or Murderous Redcap but the green base just seemed much more solid and consistent than anything else. Plus Eternal Witness + Reveillark is in your pool.

Disclaimer: Never played this sealed format.

 

[Eric Chan]

i went 0-2 with that pool and then got a bye in the last round, that brings me to 2-9 lifetime in Modern Masters Limited matches now

i'm gonna go eat this bag of chips and then lie in bed and think about all the poor life choices i've made that have culminated in this exact set of circumstances

but hey i'm 7-7 in DGR limited lifetime wooooooo

I SAID, WOOOOOOOO

 

[CML]

that pool is LUDICROUS man wtf

GWub not close you have tromp

actually finagling a nice curve out of it seems awkward and im lazy so im not gonna try and build it but some amount of drag downs and acceleration should get you to bombs and overruns pretty painlessly

 

[Eric Chan]

Yeah, I think four colour green was the way to go there, with white and black being the main splashes, and Tromp being the endgame. That lets me play all of the bombs - Valkyrie, Skeletal Vamp, Divinity.

Too embarrassed to say what I actually played and lost in four quick games with

 

[CML]

so this format vastly exceeds in quality every recent draft format, which leads to two thoughts:

it could have been even better. aside from the grossly mismanaged low print run, lack of thoughtseize etc. there existed a few problems within the set itself. the first is the printing of stupid limited bombs for no reason. adarkar valkyrie is one, meloku another, and wasting 5 mythic slots on the KAM dragons is such a ridiculous waste. the steep power curve led to a lack of balance in archetypes (compare cube packs with jace and tibalt to MMA ones with cloudgoat ranger and arcbound worker) -- green-based domain was by far the best thing to do, as you didn't have to play filler reprints and you had absurd bombs in tromp the domains or whatever people passed you. it didn't hurt that kodama's reach is the best draft common ever here.

other sets could be much better. as un NWO ish as MMA is (suspend and thallids are a real pain in the ass at Common) i still think there's gotta be a way to make a rich draft format within NWO.

what do yall think

 

[Miasmir]

I managed to not notice Skeletal Vampire in that sealed pool I blame trying to actually type my answer within 20 minutes.

I have a hard time forming opinions about NWO because it's so inherently not-for-me. A lot of what I like about MMA is only possible outside of NWO; stuff like arcane intersecting with storm intersecting with suspend is only possible with three hard to grok mechanics at common. I guess theoretically it's possible to design elegant and simple mechanics that people play right every time that have that level of pleasing interaction but that sounds hard. Overall just having ten themes shoved at you at once breaks NWO pretty seriously right?

Anyone interested in a set design exercise in which we try to make a small set that plays better in limited than MMA, while nominally following the letter if not the spirit of NWO? One time I tried to design a core set out of reprints only and it was utterly miserable to play due to the huge number of completely unplayable cards.

What are some guidelines we could lay down for how to build sets for limited? Stuff like "Mythics should be playable," sure, but what else?

 

[CML]

design: yep, this is a fantastic idea. make a thread and i'll hop in. i think it'd be trivially easy if we started with MMA and cut about 50 cards but then doing it from scratch would be quite difficult

if NWO is to expand the player base -- and i'm in favor of this! -- then i don't understand why they print hexproof cards that are tournament-playable, or simplify slots above common too, etc.

i kind of like that the mythics in m14 are dismal. i'd rather this than a baker's dozen of bombs, but i don't think the small children agree and i'm fine with making that worthwhile concession to them