Draft Formats Through History – Part 1
by David Crewe
I jumped on MODO a few weeks ago and was happy to see that Mirrodin-Darksteel-Fifth Dawn drafts were being offered. I quickly hunted down the appropriate packs for an exorbitant price and played a couple of drafts. I expected to have a lot of fun – and I did have some – largely because Mirrodin was really the era I came into my own as a player, particularly in draft. So I had fond memories of drafting the Block.
Or did I? Thing is, Fifth Dawn is so bad in that format. You go from two sets in a row focusing on aggressive/midrange decks generally built around artifacts, with equipment often playing a large part. And, all of a sudden – five colour decks! Sunburst! The new mechanics being pushed by Fifth Dawn didn’t fit at all well with Mirrodin or Darksteel, and made three set block a significantly worse format to draft than either triple Mirrodin or Mirrodin-Mirrodin-Darksteel.
This got me thinking. Writers often wax lyrical about the benefits of Constructed formats gone past, where set X really changed the metagame by introducing card Y… but this kind of conversation never seemed to happen with draft. People just draft whatever’s in front of them. MODO never offers first set or first set/second set drafts of older sets – it’s only ever the full block, as though the other draft formats never existed.
So, without further adieu, a chat about draft formats and how the second and third sets changed them, starting with my own personal experience at Onslaught.
Onslaught Block
Onslaught was the first concerted effort to develop a tribal set, and it was fairly successful. A number of tribal decks made an impact in Constructed, notably Goblins. Tribal had an effect in Draft too, but not as much as you might think – Morph was the defining mechanic. You needed to be playing Gray Ogres on turn three or you would not be winning – 2/3s were just nuts!
Anyway, triple Onslaught was a potentially great draft format largely ruined by a couple of small elements:
Sparksmith
and
the pit fighter legends
These were cards that would just dominate games. A turn two Sparksmith followed by another random Goblin would beat pretty much anybody. Pit fighters didn’t necessarily wreck games as badly, but they ensured that if you wanted to win a draft you needed to be either Black or Red, packing removal to deal with opposing Sparksmiths or bombs.
This was tempered a little with the introduction of the next two sets. I actually hate Legions as a set, but it did improve the draft format, largely by virtue of ensuring less Sparksmiths were opened (Timberwatch Elf also singlehandedly made Green a much more attractive colour to draft). Scourge was an excellent set that pushed the tribal theme further with the Warchiefs and – like Legions! – made sure there were fewer Sparksmiths opened at a table.
So, I think added additional sets to Onslaught block significantly improved the draft format, but in many ways it was because of seeing less of the cards in the first pack, rather than seeing more of the Legions/Scourge cards.
Mirrodin Block
Mirrodin has left a nasty taste in the mouth of many Constructed players who couldn’t handle the heat of Affinity, but I’m a big fan of the block. The artifacts theme was well executed, and suited the change to the new card face well.
The set was really interesting for draft. Artifacts meant that you could often end up four picks into a draft with no coloured cards in your pile yet – a good thing if you’re good at reading signals! Equipment was probably the defining factor – creatures were generally pretty low quality, with Fangren Hunter a powerhouse – but if you strapped Bonesplitter to something, it didn’t matter so much that it was just a “crappy 1/1.”
Triple Mirrodin was a great format, in my opinion. I used to draft Black every. single. draft – not because it was the best colour, but because it was the worst, and people knew I loved it. So I’d often be the only heavy Black drafter at a table, and it kept paying off. I loved the format.
Still, Darksteel arrived not a moment too soon. Towards the end of triple Mirrodin, the “spellbombs” deck was discovered. Basically you drafted a Black/x artifact-based deck, with as many Disciples of the Vault and Spellbombs as possible – the aim being to cycle your way to victory, burning them with the Disciples. It was quite degenerate if people weren’t aware of it, but fortunately Darksteel turned up, taking away a pack of Disciples and Spellbombs and crippling the archetype.
Darksteel really balanced the format well. Blue and Black, weaker colours in Mirrodin, got a boost, evening the overall power level of the colours effectively. The themes from Mirrodin were carried over well – Affinity for Artifacts cards were largely replaced by Modular creatures, but it was still more than possible to focus your deck’s strategy around having a lot of artifacts. And there was Grimclaw Bats! Mirrodin-Mirrodin-Darksteel is probably my favourite ever draft format.
Then Fifth Dawn ruined everything.
First of all, one of the problems with Darksteel was that it didn’t have the late pick support cards for an artifact deck that Mirrodin did – less Spellbombs, artifact lands, etc. This was hardly a huge problem with two packs to go, but with Fifth Dawn providing little support here, there were fewer and fewer reasons to actually focus your decks around the block theme. It’s not that I think you should always have to draft an artifact deck in the artifact block – but it should be a good option!
The main problem wasn’t really the cards that were getting opened less though, but the new cards that Fifth Dawn brought to the table. The push towards “five colour sunburst” decks was just silly, since there was very little support in the first two packs for it. It’s like they shoved in a five colour set they’d had sitting in development awkwardly into the block, and it didn’t work at all. Too often the last pack just didn’t fit the other two packs’ strategy, and it hurt the quality of the draft format substantially.
So, if you’re going to go back and draft this block? Stick to MMD.
Champions Block
This set seems to have gotten a bad rap historically, with people referring to it as the “Masques” of its day – a reference to following up the overpowered Urza’s block with the woefully underpowered Masques block. I don’t think that’s quite accurate, but we’re talking about draft formats here…
I feel like triple Champions was a great format. The whole concept of “Spiritcraft” was pulled off effectively – if you prioritized Spirits and Arcane spells, Soulshift, spiritcraft and Splice onto Arcane would make your deck that much better – but the interactions weren’t broken, and you could easily draft powerful decks without a thought for these interactions.
There were a lot of other things I liked about triple Champions
- The Dampen Thought deck. I think this might have been a deliberate ploy by Wizards, putting a handful of otherwise unplayable commons and uncommons to support this strategy into the set. Regardless, it’s great to be able to, every now and again, play a “rogue” deck in draft. Any format where someone can win with zero creatures in their deck works for me.
- Devouring Rage/Greed. This may just be me, but the option to build a deck full of Spirits and have the option of going “all-in” really appealed to me. It put a lot of emphasis on reading your opponent well – do I go for it now? Do they have anything? – and I love formats that encourage mind games like that.
- Splice onto Arcane was just a damn good mechanic, and you occasionally just got degenerate decks. I recall a deck at GP Brisbane where I had three Kodama’s Might and two Glacial Ray – didn’t lose a game. Another thing I like in draft formats – the ability to actually do something broken once in a while.
I think both Betrayers and Saviors supported this good start well. Betrayers had the Baku to support Spiritcraft, and they were quite successful I feel – it also made White a much better support colour for spirit decks thanks to Waxmane Baku. Saviors, on the other hand, de-emphasized spiritcraft subtly without ruining the deck, and made the Soratami a lot better with the “hand size matters” theme – which made Blue better!
Splice and spiritcraft were less important by the full block, but still played a large part. Dampen Thought was dead, sure, but you expect degenerate decks like that to disappear in a full set block. Besides, it was fun to see it every now and again, but would’ve been annoying if it kept coming up for a whole year!
Overall this block was a real success for draft, and not just because I kept opening Meloku. A complaint could be how broken Umezawa’s Jitte was in Limited, but coming from a block with Skullclamp… broken rares always turn up, and it felt like a real achievement if you could manage to win a game when your opponent played a Jitte. I did it two or three times and they were memorable games!
Ravnica Block
Alara Block and Ravnica block kind of tie together in my mind, and it’s not really surprising – both take the multicoloured theme and run with it, giving “names” and flavour and mechanics and so forth to colour combinations. They did seem to kinda stick – see the latest R/W aggro deck being called “Boros Bushwhacker.”
Ravnica’s design made it really interesting for draft play, since you only had four “guilds” in the big set, then another three “guilds” in the next two. Meaning that you didn’t realistically have all colour combinations available until the three set block. So, how did this affect how drafts played out?
Well, back in triple Ravnica, it basically meant that 90% of the time you drafted one of the guilds – Dimir (U/B), Golgari (G/B), Selesnya (W/G) and occasionally Boros, the aforementioned W/R guild. Sometimes you’d have combinations, like U/B with a dash of Green, and sometimes you’d go way off guild, but generally that’s how it worked.
Still, it was enjoyable, if only because a mill deck was a legitimate – and good – archetype! I won a lot of games off the back of Vedalken Entrancers and Psychic Drains, and there’s just something very enjoyable about grinding out a game where your primary plan is decking, carefully using your resources to make sure they can’t quite deal you enough damage before you deplete their deck.
Milling may be fun, but it does get old after a while playing with and against the same old colour combinations. Guildpact promised to shake things up with three new guilds, but generally you just ended up playing the same old guilds, Dimir, say, splashing Red for Ogre Savant etc. So, Guildpact shook things up a little, but it was still a touch stale…
Until Dissension. Finally, a wide range of decks were available, with no real need to commit to a small range of colour combinations. You generally ended up three colours, thanks to Signets and Karoos, but there was a ton of variety. As fun as Dimir mill decks were, the triple set format here definitely gets the nod from me.
Time Spiral Block
I will preface any discussion of the draft format here by saying that the set, Time Spiral, is probably my favourite Magic set. It’s just a flawless application of nostalgia, along with a strong range of interesting, complex, evocative and powerful cards. The main thing though, is the nostalgia.
Ultimately, for me at least, much of my enjoyment of the game of Magic comes from nostalgia. Whether it’s a card that you can remember thinking was amazing when you first started playing, remembering that first FNM victory, or more importantly, memories of hanging out with other Magic players, travelling… it’s probably not a coincidence that so much time at Grand Prixes or Nationals is spent reminiscing about past events, sharing hilarious stories, etc.
Time Spiral does an excellent job of condensing this element of Magic into one set. The “purple” cards, the cards that are specifically designed to remind you of one or two older cards, the random set mechanics assorted throughout the set – Thallids here, flashback there, Rebel chain here…
Aside from all that, triple Time Spiral was a great set to draft. All the little subthemes achieved exactly what I like to see in a good draft format – little “archetypes” that you could successfully build, but without them being so powerful that you were required to, for example, draft a tribal themed deck. You could exploit a Thallid subtheme, or get a minor Rebel chain happening, and you would be rewarded with certain late pick cards becoming much better in your deck. But there was never any requirement to do this – you could just draft a “good deck” if you felt like it.
Planar Chaos is, in many ways, a much less successful set than Time Spiral. It’s unsurprising given the theme: exploiting the past is easy, making an “alternative present” seem interesting is much more difficult. There were definitely successes – see Damnation – but a lot of the “presentshifted” cards are just kind of boring.
Still, design issues aside, TTP was still a good format. Themes from Time Spiral were carried across – there were still Rebels, still Thallids, etc – and suspend continued to play a large part. It was around this time in the Limited format that I realised just how important suspend was, so credit for Wizards for continuing to support the mechanic with strong Limited cards. Unlike, say, Affinity for Artifacts.
Future Sight was another great set design-wise, although I have a lingering complaint that R&D simply spoke too much about it. I didn’t want to know that we’d never actually get to assemble a Contraption! Similarly the futureshifted theme would’ve worked much better if they’d waited a couple sets before “officially” giving names to deathtouch and reach.
Future Sight did a lot of interesting things for Limited. It had support for earlier themes – suspend, Thallids, Rebels (Bound in Silence! Though fewer Time Spiral packs meant Rebels were rarely relevant) – and had cool combinations of keyworded abilities that made for interesting play decisions – Ichor Slick is a great example.
Sprout Swarm was also a great combination of abilities, but also kind of the fly in the ointment that was TPF draft. Sprout Swarm warped TPF in many ways – if you were playing a ground pounder deck without ways to answer it, you pretty much just lost to the card – and to make things worse you could splash it quite easily into non-Green decks (though it was obviously better in Green decks). I suppose we’re just lucky that it wasn’t in the base set, but this was a common bomb that maybe even eclipses the power of Sparksmith. I dealt with it by drafting nothing but evasive Blue/White decks with maindeck counterspells. Still, it did make for interesting games, as overpowered as it was.
Even considering the mistake that was Sprout Swarm, I overall really enjoyed TPF. Honestly I would happily draft any one of these formats again – I would just make sure I wasn’t drafting Black!
Well, I’ve still got a few Blocks to go, but I’ll take a break for now. Your thoughts, Paper-Gamers?
