General Your favourite Draft formats/blocks

[Erik Twice]

Back when I played MTG draft was not as popular as it is now. Most players around me played different forms of Constructed but we only indulged in Limited a couple times, most notably for Ravnica's release.

And Ravnica was great. In fact, it seems to be one of the best regarded sets of all time for Limited and does seem great just from re-reading the cards. So I keep wondering. What other Limited experiences have I missed? What are your favourite draft formats and why?

 

[Onderzeeboot]

There's four that stand out to me. In no particular order, they are...

1. Triple Khans of Tarkir
Both morphs and wedges were really well integrated into this format. Tons of fun to draft, with a lot of guesswork (what does your opponent have...?)

2. Triple Rise of the Eldrazi
This format was quite genius, and really, really different from usual retail draft formats. It's way slower and grindier than most, and one of the really fun things is that the weirdest cards turn out to be playable in the format. Stuff like Raid Bombardment, Vent Sentinel, Mnemonic Wall, and Totem Hartebeest. It's probably the format where Glory Seeker is at its worst (it's funny that I just lauded 3x KtK, which has to be the format where Glory Seeker is at its best). Anyway, speaking about formats with weird playable cars...

3. Triple Innistrad
This format is gas. Even after weeks of drafting it, pros were finding new strategies! Burning Vengeance and Spider Spawning have to be the sweetest build arounds ever to be viable in a draft format. A format that had really good aggro decks no less! Intricate, balanced, super sweet.

4. The final one is Kaladesh, which I found fun both on its own and with Aether Revolt. This block had so much going on in limited, and I played my coolest draft match ever with this set. I was doing side events at GP Rotterdam a few years ago, and made the finals with a sweet WB value deck running maindeck Panharmonicon. My finals opponent copied it with Saheeli's Artistry, and went to town with a Whirler Virtuoso and an Era of Innovation. Except, I had an overwhelming board position, so he had to keep chumping with his thopters, never amassing enough to profitably attack me, until at long last he found a key removal spell and I succumbed to a thousand paper cuts over the next few turns. When the dust settled, my ride, who said goodbye at the start of the round to go watch the top 8 draft, checked in on me to ask if I was ready to go. Turns out the t8 completed the draft portion of the draft, including deck construction, and were just about to start their first matches. Because these side events have no time limit, we had slogged it out for one and a half ours, and barely finished game one! Needless to say we decided to split the money (slightly in his favor, he did win game one after all), because after that epic game one, either game two was going to severely disappoint, or finishing the game would take another 1.5 hours, and we didn't feel either was a desirable outcome

 

[japahn]

I never played triple ROE or triple INN! Both were during a long break and I had neither money nor an LGS around to draft anyways at the time.

Killing a Goldfish had some cool write-ups about drafting environments, they are very opinionated but entertaining. The Kill reviews: Innistrad block is super interesting to read.

Kaladesh was this funny environment that, when played casually without much concern with win rate, is a lot of fun. However, the format was pretty much solved and the optimal strategy turned out to be... force aggro.

Recently, limited formats have been really good on average. Hour of Devastation, Dominaria, and War of the Spark were great.

What I want to talk about though is Triple Ixalan. Triple Ixalan is famously hated, but is probably the limited format I've played the most, and I have fond memories of it. Why?

• Aggro is the only deck.
  • Card evaluations are completely warped.
  • Most cards that look like bombs still lose to curving out Raptor Companion into Territorial Hammerskull. Or Tilonalli's Knight into Frenzied Raptor. Or Shaper Apprentice into Vineshaper Mystic. Or Queen's Bay Soldier into Skymarch Bloodletter.
  • Combat is the center of the games: combat tricks and combat math are much more important than usual.
    • Memorizing combat tricks matters a lot.
    • Multiple blocking tactically matters a lot.
    • Combat blowouts are what wins games.
    • Attacking with the right creatures is mandatory. Not attacking is scooping.
  • Mind games over the combat tricks are amazing.
    • Towards the end of the format, Skulduggery was so often expected that everyone was playing around it. It was so good that if you kept leaving one back mana up, you didn't even need to pick it to get value out of it.
    • Risk management starting on turn 2.
    • Lots of incentive to bluff tricks with bad attacks.
• Most picks are obvious, but the few ones that aren't are the difference between a great and a lousy deck.
• Almost half the cards are unplayable: you will have to play some and make the most of them. Maindecking Dual Shot and Crushing Canopy was unthinkable at first, and usual towards the end. Demystify went from a useless last pick to an important last pick.
• UG Merfolk is clearly the best deck: in a decent table it will be split in two and end up being mediocre.
• Calcano went 3-0 in 2017 World Championship building around 3 unplayable Blight Keepers and 4 unplayable Swashbucklings.
• Learn to mulligan or perish.

It's the most Spike draft format by a mile.

 

[Peter LaCara]

DOMINARIA is the most beautiful mainline Magic set that I've ever drafted. It's got everything you could ever want out of a Magic set. Slow, grindy value engines! Weird sideways aggro strategies! Combo! Goofy build-arounds! 5c nonsense! It's the only set I've bought gems on Arena to play more of because I ran out of gold.

 

[Erik Twice]

Dominaria was fun. I'm surprisingly good at it compared to other formats, probably because it resembles older Magic in playstyle. It's surprisingly diverse and the cards are generally well-designed. There are also not any game-ruining bombs that come to mind and there's a lot of variety in both decks and play.

The only issue is that it's a bit bland and the historic subtheme doesn't quite work. But the cards are great. The Sagas are some of the best Magic designs in a while.

 

[genericco]

Hour of Devastation draft. Tons of fun to draft, challenging games, a million secret archetypes to discover. Here's a token/embalm-matters deck for example

 

[ravnic]

One that is missing here is Time Spiral, especially the full block experience. I mean, yes, Sprout Swarm destroyed many decks in this slow, grindy meta, but when this didn't happen it was incredibly fun. You had so may mechanics and themes smashed together, which made it so exiting to sit down for games with the cards, because you could never really guess what your opponent was doing. Time Spiral was the best way of crazy and I love that weird thing.