I'm going to start with a look at a bunch of cards I've found interesting or mis-evaluated by lots of people, or which have some math-y component to tell you how good they are. Let's jump in!
Walker of the Wastes
This is a card that I seem to see getting vastly overrated more or less everywhere. 5 mana for a 4/4 trample is, first of all, not a very good body, I think. And I suppose this is a big chunk of the disagreement, so let's go over it for a bit. 2/3 is a very common body size here. I think it's going to be pretty often that the board will stall a bit with some 2/3s and 2/4s and maybe 2/2s and 2/1s laying around. In those spots, a 4/4 just doesn't do all that much for you - you can attack and trade it for a 2/3, you can leave it back and hold off their team, you can use it in conjunction with a trick to potentially get a blowout, but of course a 3/3 is just as good in all of those scenarios, and to some extent this can be played around. Of course, I would rather have the 4/4 than the smaller creature in these situations, but the far bigger point to my mind is the mana cost. You can only run so many 5-drops, space is at a premium, and I'm going to want the lower curve card just about every time,. Indeed, I think it's usually worse to have too many low drops than it is to have too many high drops. By the way, it's for these reasons that I really don't think Cinder Hellion is very good at all.
With Walker in particular, though, there's some chance of getting paid off. A 5/5 Trample for 5 would indeed be good, as you're reasonably likely to get a 2-for-1 off of it, or at least hold off most anything (5/5 is, as we saw in the last part, bigger than the vast majority of cards in the format - something that wasn't true of 4/4s). And if you can get it any bigger, then it's obviously very, very good. And I think this is the other big problem I am having with other people's evaluation of this card. You're just not going to have enough Wastes to make this realistic. There are 2 common slots devoted to Wastes, which equates to about 4.5 per draft. There's also lots of other colorless sources, and besides the possibility of a couple basic-searchers (Loam Larva and cards from BFZ mostly), you're going to prefer just about every other colorless-producing land basically every time, as they're more or less strictly better than Wastes. Still, the number of repeatable colorless sources is limited, so I wouldn't expect to get more than 2 or 3 Wastes with any kind of frequency. 2 is the point at which I think I would start being ok running the Walker, but I'd need 3 or 4 before I would think it was good. I don't find this very likely, but there you go.
Warping Wail (AKA Eldrazi Charm)
This card is getting a lot of hype for constructed, perhaps rightly so. I'm not always the greatest prognosticator of metagames (even if I do know that prognosticator is a great word). But I do know that it won't be a very good limited card. It does kill a bit under a third of the creatures in the format, but lots of those are unplayable, and several cost 1-2 mana while not being super impactful - you know, ye olde Goblin Piker. In terms of sorceries to counter... well, there just aren't so many that your opponent is likely enough to have one that you can hold this up. Making a Scion isn't going to be worth the card either, though if you do end up running it for whatever reason, having that option can be nice. This is hard to cast, and it just doesn't do much. Keep it in the board, maybe bring it in if they have enough little utility creatures and/or bomby sorceries.
Ondu War Cleric
I think a lot of people fail to realize how good two life per turn is. No, this isn't a great card, but it's very solid, I'll play it every time I'm white.
Searing Light
This removal spell is highly conditional. You need their creature to be attacking or blocking, and you need it to be small enough. These of course limited the usefulness of such a card; you often don't care about creatures that small, and when you do, they're often utility creatures, which are going to be harder to get in combat anyway. Still, as we saw last time, this kills slightly over half the creatures in the format, which is nothing to sneeze at. At 1 mana, I imagine it's going to be fine, but I would never expect it to be great, as you're just not going to get an amazing deal. Definitely better in some matchups (e.g. against walls), so think about it whenever you're sideboarding. Also keep in mind that this can blow out or be blown out by combat tricks.
Grasp of Darkness
A note on this as well as the next card down. You probably aren't going to get to cast this on turn 2 very often, both because getting to BB is hard, and because your opponent probably won't have played anything you want to waste this premium of removal on so early in the game. However, just because you won't want to play it until turn 5 or 6 very often doesn't mean that you're losing out on the value of the 2 CMC: these kinds of things are prime candidates for double-spelling. This plus a three-drop (usually of your other color, I would guess) on turn 5 is going to be game quite often. And it does kill most of the cards in the format (as well as being able to be used as a combat trick against virtually all the rest).
Inverter of Truth
Really not a 4 mana 6/6 flier in the sense that makes you think, since playing it turn 4 is going to be a disaster basically every time. There is a combo here with Corpse Churn, but I don't particularly imagine that's where you want to be. But it's worth noting that if you do play this late, 6/6 flier still outclasses most everything, especially in the air, and you are going to be drawing gas the rest of the game. Not that this is spectacular because of that, but the ability isn't 100% downside (only like 90%).
Visions of Brutality
Obviously, this card tops out at Pacifism - with a few exceptions, they can just choose to not attack and be no worse off than if the card was Pacified (watch out for forced attacks and fight cards primarily). On the other hand, Pacifism is very good, and how much worse is this, really? The biggest thing this card has going against it is that it's a triggered ability - that means that if the creature getting through would mean 'double lethal' the player attacking with it will win, and the one whose Visions it was won't be happy. This can be dealt with via chump blocking, but then, you need a blocker available.
We can look at more normal scenarios, though. To make this worse than Pacifism, that means you must be attacking with the creature. If you're going to do that, you're making the game a race; this is something Aggro decks generally want to do, and controlling decks don't, which suggest that this is a card you'd rather play in an aggro deck than a control deck. However, I don't think it's too bad in a control deck, either - they had to be losing the race fairly badly to still be losing once their best creature is playing for both sides. This problem is especially exacerbated if the control deck has some chump-blockers. A random bear may not often be what you're really looking for in these kinds of decks, but you tend to need some defensive speed, and if you get to turn it into a drain 4 while racing, that's a big game.
Immobilizer Eldrazi
This is one of my favorite cards in the set, from the looks of it, and definitely my pick for sleeper. I'm very hyped about this card, and... nobody else seems to be. First of all, a Piker is just fine. But then you get to activate this, possibly every turn, which seems like a big game. Its ability stops 40% of the creatures in the format from blocking, and more important, these are the creatures that you are usually most annoyed with, as an aggro deck. What's left is likely to trade off, leaving the opponent with even less to deal with the next attack. The ability also works with Menace well. Of course this isn't going to be a bomb, but it's something I'll really be looking for in my aggressive decks.
Maw of Kozilek
This card seems simply quite good to me. 2/5 for 4 mana is solid already, and the activated ability does a lot of work. If it cost generic mana rather than Colorless proper, I think that would make this one of the better commons in the set; as is, it's probably 'only' a very solid, above-average card.
Goblin Dark-Dwellers
I think this card is getting overrated, probably because it's going to be a lot easier to set up in Constructed. If you aren't getting a spell back with this, it's quite mediocre. (Indeed, it was a common in BFZ that was only marginally playable despite having a relevant subtype). Of course, I imagine I would run this with even a few hits in my deck, as it's not that far off even without hitting. But for it to really be good, you want it to be 'on' most of the time, and relevantly so (i.e. combat tricks that the opponent can clearly see coming lose a lot of value). I would guess you would want 4, 5, or even 6 spells that fit this criterion for that to happen reliably. 4 is probably doable, especially if you're looking for them after getting this fairly early, but 6 isn't terribly realistic, given that you're only probably going to have room for 8 non-creature spells max. Definitely I expect this to be a good draft card, but I could also definitely see passing it for good uncommons or even a few of the top commons.
Pyromancer's Assault
These kinds of cards are very typical for red to get as 'build-around-me' thematic deals for red. It seems we get them about one per block - BFZ had one that triggered off colorless spells, Origins wanted artifacts in play, Journey Into Nyx had you triggering off scrying, Innistrad off flashback... there are others. The problem is, unlike 'the red common burn spell' which is almost always at least good and often excellent, these cards vary incredibly wildly in their power level.
This one shocks creature or player. That's good. You can only do it once per turn, which is a little knock, because it means you can't get it to take out something bigger (though potentially you could combine this shock with one of the two spells triggering it to get such an effect). It's also rewarding you for doing something you're going to want to do anyway, which again, is good. I assume you'll be happy with the card if it triggers twice. Any trigger is going to kill less than half the creatures in the format, but it's a big enough chunk that I imagine you'll still have some target usually. Killing two things, even little things, is going to be worth your 4 mana. More will make it very good. Only one is going to be pretty mediocre.
The best case is that you play this and follow up with another spell in the same turn, thus not wasting any potential triggers. Unfortunately, even red doesn't have all that many 1 mana plays, so it will probably be quite late before you could do that. So probably fairly often, you'll run this out there and hope to trigger off multiple things later. The big problem I see with this card is that you need the game to go fairly long for this to work out and get enough value, but you also need cheap spells to trigger it, and you need to not have dumped too much of your hand by the time this gets down, and these things are kind of at odds. So it will be pretty hard in order for this to get working, and then you need a pretty good flow of cards (or enough time to wait to naturally draw enough). I expect most of the time, this card will actually end up being quite bad, but if you can get it online, of course it can be great. I'm more apt to let my opponents be going for that sweetness, though.
Sparkmage's Gambit
Boiling Earth was maindeckable (at least arguably). There are going to be way, way fewer scion-producers now, though, and fewer X/1s in general. *Eldrazi Skyspawner much rarer now cough cough cough*. So you definitely don't want to play this to try to kill things - you need the falter effect to be good, and that means I don't think you should play it very often at all - when you do, it should be because you're really aggressive.
Tears of Valakut
Is this main-deckable? There are 34.6 fliers per draft in the set, which works out to a little more than 4 per player. Some of these are pretty miserable, and you wouldn't really care about killing them anyway. A very few are too big to be taken out by this. So, on average, you're probably looking at 2-3 targets per deck worth hitting. 3 Targets would be enough to play, 2 would be borderline, but the bigger problem is that I think there are probably too many decks with 0-1 targets, so I'd really prefer to start this in the board, and look to bring it in fairly often. Things are a bit different in sealed, where I'd be more likely to play it main, as evasion and removal are both better there.
Elemental Uprising
I expect this to work reasonably like fight cards have in the recent past. It's a spell that's a bit risky, vulnerable to blow out, can get one of their creatures if it's the only thing left to block, or as an ambush blocker, and is limited on size to what it can take out. Having said that, 4/4 is a reasonable size. But this is still probably worse than most of those, because the line of play you often want to take is to kill their thing and attack with yours (hopefully with extra damage coming in, as was the case in Tarkir), which you can't do here. This also has a harder time dealing with evasive threats, which fight spells are usually pretty good at. And of course, it usually effectively costs 3 mana rather than 2. To make up for that, you occasionally get to Boros Charm their face. No, that's not enough to make up for the other deficiencies, but I expect this to be fully playable nonetheless, and to almost always make your green decks.
Seed Guardian
I expect this card to be very very good, one of if not the very best Uncommon in the set. 3/4 for 4 is just fine to start with, getting a 1/1 on death is already good even, and very often you'll be getting a 2/2 or a 3/3, which is getting into the fantastic range. Picking up some ginormous creature on the back end is probably not something you can count on, but you can do some maneuvering, and it won't be super rare anyway. The biggest downside is that so much of the removal here exiles, but even so, this thing will never be bad, and so often it will be SO good.
Reflector Mage
I just want to say, I can't wait for this to join the Cube.
Relentless Hunter
Very very good card. Slam it turn 3, attack turn 4, you're always going to have threat of activation up, it will do a heck of a lot of work for you. Also, you're not limited to once per turn, so later on this is a really good mana sink. I'm not sure that I wouldn't rather have this in play on turn 6 than a 5 mana 4/4 trample, and it costs a whole 2 less mana.
Stormchaser Mage
Another card that I think is being significantly overrated. Again, it's probably a lot better in constructed. In limited 1/3 fliers for 2 are fine, but kind of take-it-or-leave-it. If you're straight 2 color, you'll probably have UR on turn 2 reasonably often, but on the other hand, you're pretty likely to be splashing or wanting colorless now, so you certainly might not. The haste isn't worth so much on a 1 power creature (though I suppose it's not nothing). And then the question is, how good is prowess. It's fine, but while I don't think you'll cut this from your UR deck almost ever, it's not something I'd want to go out of my way for either.
Captain's Claws
I don't understand why people think this card is going to be good. We all realize that Bone Saw is bad, right? A big amount of the time, this is (albeit very marginally) worse than Bone Saw, right? For this to be good, you need to be able to equip it and attack, for your attacking creature to not get eaten, and for the 1/1 created to not get eaten. When this only gives +1/+0, that seems like a fairly tall order. Sure, if it gets going early, it can steamroll a bit, but I am just not seeing that best-case-scenario pop up often enough... I don't think I would run this card in most decks. Of course, it does have synergy with Rally, but in terms of relevant Rally triggers, you're looking about 2 being opened per draft. (Of course this is better than Bone Saw overall, and there will be more decks that want this than want to actually run that card, but I would not be excited by this thing in the slightest.
Stoneforge Masterwork
This, on the other hand, is the real deal. I am not going to run down every tribe, but I really don't need to. What you need to know is there are by my count 64 Eldrazi plus scions per draft, and 54 Allies plus some tokens per draft. I don't expect decks to be as all in one or other as they were in BFZ, but I still generally expect one vs the other to be fairly predominant, meaning that I would guess most decks have at least 10 cards in the same tribe. That, in turn, should make it pretty easy for this thing to give at least +2/+2, at which point it's a Vulshok Morningstar. That might not seem like a crazy thing to you, but I assure you, that's very, very good. If the format ends up leading to board stalls, bigger bonuses will ensue, at which point this card will just win you the game. It's very, very good, possibly the card I would most want to open P1P1 (definitely not the strongest card in the set, but it does leave you open to any deck... probably there are a few others where the power is just too much higher, but this is up there).
Colors
General consensus is that Red is the worst color in the set, followed by Green. People think Black looks the best, probably followed by blue.
I definitely agree that Black is the best color, and by a large margin. But I think I would actually peg Green as second-best, followed by Blue, Red, and White. Having said this, I think the difference between Green and White (2nd-best and worst) is smaller than the gap between Black and Green (best and 2nd). I also don't think that Black is good enough to force in any respect.
It's worth noting that because Green is so bad in pack three, reading it as open late in pack one has much worse pay-off, and isn't really better than cutting it in pack one - you want it to be open in one and two, and care about it less in three. Having said that, there are green cards in BFZ that were totally fine, it's just that the color as a whole didn't come together. It's also worth noting that generically decent to big bodies from BFZ are probably going to be better now, since there's so much less synergy. Broodhunter Wurm is out of the dog house, and Plated Crusher probably moves up to actually being pretty good, since there's just less large things now.
Blue is a tempo color now. The best commons are the tapper, the stays-tapped surge spell, the bounce spell.... It also gets a bunch of fliers. Typical blue I suppose, but it doesn't really have straight defense of big things to hold down the ground at all - you need to be tricky.
Overall Impressions
The format will have significantly less synergy than BFZ. This is not a bad thing, from my perspective. It will be more along the lines of a KTK - there are going to be a lot of mana sinks, no particularly strong themes, but some minor synergies and build-arounds. There won't be nearly as much time to durdle around and do nothing, but the format won't be all-out aggro-blitz like Origins was, either.
You really want to be curving out and impacting the board. There are some aggressive Eldrazi decks out there, the Support mechanic which I think is getting way under-talked-about, and to some extent cohort and surge are both mechanics to push your cost down. This doesn't mean 7-drops are unplayable, but you do need to have some way to survive that long without getting crushed in return, and I don't think you can run 3-4 7s anymore as was not too uncommon in my BFZ experience
Showing posts with label MTGOGW. Show all posts
Showing posts with label MTGOGW. Show all posts
Monday, 18 January 2016
Thursday, 14 January 2016
MTG OGW Limited Analysis Part Deux
This time, I'd like to start with a graph:
As you can see, we have significantly less creatures and sorceries. In return, we get significantly more Instants, and a few more artifacts, enchantments, and lands. There's also a bit less removal than before, while bounce remains the same and planeswalkers remain, as ever, largely irrelevant to limited analyses. We're left asking what these extra cards are, and the answer is more or less straightforward: the number of "utility" cards has gone up, especially in terms of Combat Tricks. It isn't a huge difference, but I expect it's just enough to be noticeable (if they're playable).
The lower number of creatures either means we'll end up playing fewer or, more likely, our bar for what's good enough will go down a little bit. Before, there were 200 creatures per draft. Assuming 15 creatures per deck, times 8 drafters, that gives you 120 creatures being played, or the top 60% of creatures in terms of quality and/or efficiency. Now, we're down to 182, meaning we're up to 66%. That isn't a huge change by any stretch, but my guess is that it will be enough to notice.
Size Matters
More importantly, the kinds of creatures have changed. Before, we had quite a good number of big things floating around; indeed, part of the reason Green was so bad was that, while it normally had the biggest creatures, in triple BFZ, there were a pretty good number of 7+ drop cards anyone had access to. Now, that's not true at all - these cards have all been stuffed up to higher rarities, and some of them now require colored mana. Effectively, the number of truly giant things has been chopped in half - and with fewer scions and less ramp, those 8, 9, and especially 10 drops are looking less castable, further complicating things.
So what qualifies as big now? 5/5 is the top end of normal - there are enough creatures of this size for everyone to average out having 1-2, and only about the largest 3% of creatures exceed that size. In terms of other 'critical size' questions, it's a bit harder to say. 2 is the most common power by by far, and the most common toughness as well, beating 3 toughness by a smidgeon. There are big drop-offs after 3 power and 4 toughness, but enough creatures larger than these that it certainly won't be unusual to have larger creatures.
57% of creatures have power 2 or less. 81% have power 3 or less. Things are far more spread out on the toughness side, with the first several points each adding 15 to 25% of creatures in the format. Toughness overall is a bit higher than power (roughly 10-15%). Compared to BFZ, the average power of creatures is virtually identical (less than 1% difference), while the average toughness is up by a bit under 3%. Of course, these figures are all based on every creature in both formats, and don't necessarily reflect what you'll see amongst playables. The other significant thing to note is that because we can expect more Combat Tricks, and especially because of the Support mechanic, we can probably expect creatures to be a little bit bigger now than these baseline numbers would suggest.
Removal
The amount of removal is slightly down overall. However, as many have noted, the quality of removal is relatively high for recent times. Black and White both get unconditional 4 CMC sorcery-speed removal at Common. These are already being predicted as some of the best commons in the set, with the black one clearly being a little bit better, because it's easier to cast (one colored mana instead of two) and can't be removed later (though there isn't much enchantment removal lying around to start with).
There's still a decent amount of conditional removal, too, of course. Some of the individual cards, I'll want to look at in my next installment, but there is a group of such cards - those that care about toughness - that I think are worth pursuing now. 2 damage (or -N/-2) effects kill 45% of the creatures in the format. 3 damage effects pop that up to 69%, and 4 damage increases it to 87%. Of course, there are the same caveats about creature enhancement and playability as before.
Watch out for more on specific cards as well as overall color balance and impressions soon (hopefully in time for pre-re)!
As you can see, we have significantly less creatures and sorceries. In return, we get significantly more Instants, and a few more artifacts, enchantments, and lands. There's also a bit less removal than before, while bounce remains the same and planeswalkers remain, as ever, largely irrelevant to limited analyses. We're left asking what these extra cards are, and the answer is more or less straightforward: the number of "utility" cards has gone up, especially in terms of Combat Tricks. It isn't a huge difference, but I expect it's just enough to be noticeable (if they're playable).
The lower number of creatures either means we'll end up playing fewer or, more likely, our bar for what's good enough will go down a little bit. Before, there were 200 creatures per draft. Assuming 15 creatures per deck, times 8 drafters, that gives you 120 creatures being played, or the top 60% of creatures in terms of quality and/or efficiency. Now, we're down to 182, meaning we're up to 66%. That isn't a huge change by any stretch, but my guess is that it will be enough to notice.
Size Matters
More importantly, the kinds of creatures have changed. Before, we had quite a good number of big things floating around; indeed, part of the reason Green was so bad was that, while it normally had the biggest creatures, in triple BFZ, there were a pretty good number of 7+ drop cards anyone had access to. Now, that's not true at all - these cards have all been stuffed up to higher rarities, and some of them now require colored mana. Effectively, the number of truly giant things has been chopped in half - and with fewer scions and less ramp, those 8, 9, and especially 10 drops are looking less castable, further complicating things.
So what qualifies as big now? 5/5 is the top end of normal - there are enough creatures of this size for everyone to average out having 1-2, and only about the largest 3% of creatures exceed that size. In terms of other 'critical size' questions, it's a bit harder to say. 2 is the most common power by by far, and the most common toughness as well, beating 3 toughness by a smidgeon. There are big drop-offs after 3 power and 4 toughness, but enough creatures larger than these that it certainly won't be unusual to have larger creatures.
57% of creatures have power 2 or less. 81% have power 3 or less. Things are far more spread out on the toughness side, with the first several points each adding 15 to 25% of creatures in the format. Toughness overall is a bit higher than power (roughly 10-15%). Compared to BFZ, the average power of creatures is virtually identical (less than 1% difference), while the average toughness is up by a bit under 3%. Of course, these figures are all based on every creature in both formats, and don't necessarily reflect what you'll see amongst playables. The other significant thing to note is that because we can expect more Combat Tricks, and especially because of the Support mechanic, we can probably expect creatures to be a little bit bigger now than these baseline numbers would suggest.
Removal
The amount of removal is slightly down overall. However, as many have noted, the quality of removal is relatively high for recent times. Black and White both get unconditional 4 CMC sorcery-speed removal at Common. These are already being predicted as some of the best commons in the set, with the black one clearly being a little bit better, because it's easier to cast (one colored mana instead of two) and can't be removed later (though there isn't much enchantment removal lying around to start with).
There's still a decent amount of conditional removal, too, of course. Some of the individual cards, I'll want to look at in my next installment, but there is a group of such cards - those that care about toughness - that I think are worth pursuing now. 2 damage (or -N/-2) effects kill 45% of the creatures in the format. 3 damage effects pop that up to 69%, and 4 damage increases it to 87%. Of course, there are the same caveats about creature enhancement and playability as before.
Watch out for more on specific cards as well as overall color balance and impressions soon (hopefully in time for pre-re)!
Sunday, 10 January 2016
MTG OGW Limited Initial Analysis
This is once again going to be based off an As-Fan analysis, i.e. I'm going to be talking about the number of each card (and type of card) that will be opened, on average, in a draft (to get numbers for sealed, divide by 4, but note that this is only worthwhile in terms of roughly estimating what will be in other people's pools, since for your own deck, your format is whatever you open). It's worth noting that this is a format that's OGW-OGW-BFZ - that means something very unusual right off the bat about card frequency.
SSB, set size, and Card Frequency
In triple BFZ, Commons appeared 2.38 per draft, Uncommons at .9 per draft, Rares at .40 per draft, and Mythics at .2 per draft.
Now, BFZ Commons are .79 per draft, Uncommons .3 per draft, Rares .13 per draft, Mythics .067 per draft.
Contrast that with OGW Commons at 2.25 per draft, Uncommons at .8 per draft, Rares .34 per draft, and Mythics .17 per draft.
The reason for this, of course, is that OGW has many fewer cards at each rarity than BFZ AND there are twice as many packs of OGW.
The takeaways are that, if you're looking for a particular OGW card, it's going to show up just a little less than a card of equal rarity did in triple BFZ, and, more important, any particular BFZ card is going to be very unreliable to show up. In fact, it's like all the BFZ cards just got up-shifted a rarity (actually they're slightly rarer than that, even). So for instance, any particular Uncommon in BFZ is less likely to show up than any particular Rare from OGW.
Old Synergies Washed Away With Sea Gate
Triple BFZ was generally known to be a pretty synergistic format (though there were some who debated how much this was true). The new format will demonstrably be very very different. Most of the themes of BFZ are supported little to none here. There's 1 life-gain-matters card (an uncommon), absolutely no Processors, no ingesters (though some exile still), and no Awaken (though a few land-creatures), with only two lonely instances of Landfall, and no Converge at all.
OGW Themes
Eldrazi Side
Devoid is one theme which survived and actually increased (in a way). The mostly RB mechanic of caring about when colorless spells were cast or having colorless creatures in play didn't get entirely axed, though it is somewhat less prevalent than it was before - a BFZ pack had about 50% more of this stuff than an OGW pack, meaning the draft will now have a bit over 75% as much as it did before.
Scions are still around, but there are MUCH fewer of them than there were before. In triple BFZ, we could expect about 19 Scion-producing cards opened per draft. Now we're down to only 13 - and half of these, of course, are from the single pack of BFZ that's still around.
The big news, of course, though, is actual factual colorless mana. Not the old 'true colorless' a la Ulamog, but the 'MUST be colorless' of the new Kozilek. The cards with C in their casting cost are all at higher rarities, meaning you only expect to have a bit over 4 opened per draft. However, There are quite a few cards with colorless-required activations: about 24 per draft. These are most frequent in Black, closely followed by Blue; Red and Green clock in at about half of these other two (and White has a lone rare).
In terms of Colorless sources, we're looking at, as mentioned above, about 13 scion-producers per draft, along with about 27 other sources (mostly lands, with a couple artifacts, and a few creatures), for a total of just over 40 colorless sources - and this isn't counting basic-searchers as extra sources (which of course would only work for one of the approximately 4.5 actual factual Wastes per draft). Scions are disproportionately in the BFZ pack, but the other sources are far-and-away more likely in the OGW packs, and that's the lion's share of your chances to get one. This is also worth keeping in mind when you're thinking about whether you need repeated sources of colorless (for repeated activations), or just a one shot (from a cast or ETB trigger or in an actual casting cost). 40 is quite a significant number of sources - split amongst 8 players gets you to about 5 per player per draft, but we can expect some players to have no need for them at all. This is certainly enough for every single player to be able to 'splash colorless', and actually even for a couple players to have it as a 'main color'. The actual effects seem to mean to me that this doesn't really make much sense, but it's good to know that, if you want it, it shouldn't be that hard to get 6 sources for quite a heavy splash. The bigger takeaway is that you probably don't need to prioritize these kinds of cards, they'll be plentiful enough.
A quick note on Wastes: I would try to avoid them, generally. There's a few cards which care about them specifically, but the payoff isn't so great, and then there's also a few which can search out a basic, which make the first one far more valuable than the second, but I wouldn't really be looking for that first one anyway.
Mana Fixing
Very related to the subject of Colorless is that of mana fixing. Many of the colorless sources indeed do both - Unknown Shores, for instance, has never looked quite so good. The amount of fixing overall is way way up - an increase of over 50%. We're now looking at 20.6 cards, on average, of fixing per draft. This is largely the result of a few mediocre commons as well as an uncommon cycle of tap-lands. This really isn't enough for everyone to go three-colors, especially with wanting to splash Colorless and some of these being inefficiently distributed to people who can't use the colors they provide. Having said that, it certainly makes going for 3 colors much more of a possibility if you want it, and 4 or 5 (with colorless, 6?!) colors not completely crazy if you really want to go deep (not that I would recommend it). However, I do expect that most decks now are going to be able to run 2 and a splash (whether that be for a normal color or colorless or, if it's very light, perhaps both) if there is much reason at all for them to do so. Just remember that you need to get that fixing in from your first couple packs, because by the time pack 3 rolls around, it drops down rather significantly.
A last note here is that 20.6 cards is just a smidge over 2/3 of the fixing which came from lands in triple KTK. I think this goes pretty well to support my point of 2-with-a-splash being common. But we'll see - a lot has to do with the payoff.
Mana Sinks
One of the defining features of triple BFZ was that it had a lot of mana sinks. This gives you things to do with your lands, provides flood insurance, is some inherent form of Card Advantage, and I think generally led to a very big chunk of why the format was liked by the players who liked it - generally I've heard people talk about liking the gameplay more than the drafting (which makes sense given that roughly half the archetypes were close to unplayably bad). Overall, we were looking at about 33 mana sink cards per draft in triple BFZ. Now, we have even more, all the way up to 40. However, it's worth noting that a big majority of the new sinks, and indeed a slight majority overall, specifically require colorless mana. So the number of non-colorless sinks is slightly down. Given that I think many, if not most decks are going to want to play a few colorless sources, this probably isn't a big detraction. However, it is something to keep in mind. If you end up not getting or going for those colorless sources, the other mana sinks are going to be at a premium, and those are largely in the third pack.
Non-Eldrazi Themes
Of course, Kozilek and company aren't the only theme of the set. It's also about a bunch of super-friends forming a pact to save the multiverse.... which isn't really going to have any impact on limited at all. Yes, there are some "Planeswalker matters" cards, but they tend to be at rare, and anyway you're unlikely to have a Planeswalker, or especially a 'walker and a card that cares about that. Still, there are other themes from the non-colorless folks (yes, this sounds like a bunch of verbal gymnastics, but think about it for a second...).
Cohort
Allies are back, and actually in slightly increased density from triple BFZ. There is a BIG difference in how they're going to play, though - Rally was essentially "ally-fall", meaning bonuses for ETB, which on something that happens at sorcery speed, means that you're going to have an aggressive bent to those abilities, in general, and BFZ was no exception to that. It didn't really come together, though, and I think that's largely down to most of the bonuses just being too lousy. The big ones were the green team-pumpers, but green was awful, there weren't many of these, and they were very expensive. Beyond that, double strike was good, and menace was ok, but the pickings overall were pretty slim. Vigilance? Color me meh.
Anyway, this time, we have Cohort. This is a huge huge huge huge change. Cohort requires you tapping two of your creatures, and you can do it at instant speed. This means that it's really going to be a defensive ability - you can both block (or at least threaten it) and activate your Cohort, but you have to choose between activating and attacking. Several of the abilities also promote this control theme. I really think this is going to be something people miss for quite a while - they will assume "allies is the aggro deck", but it most certainly is not.
Ok, so that wasn't really based on the numbers, but there is some math to be done here. First off, how much Cohort is there? A bit over 13 such cards per draft, which is slightly less than the amount of Rally from triple BFZ. If we bear in mind that maybe half the table isn't going to be on Allies basically at all, this leads us to something like 3 to 6 Support cards per Ally drafter, on average, though obviously a lot depends on a number of different factors. How many allies are there to support this? Well, a lot - over 54 per draft, meaning that anyone who is playing Allies should generally be able to get plenty to be able to activate their cohort abilities as long as they can actually get their creatures down (curve) and have them survive. It's also worth noting there's still some Rally floating around, just not that much (and of course, much of it isn't that good).
Support
Then we get Support. Support adds +1/+1 counters to creatures (if it's on a creature itself, they have to go to OTHER creatures). There isn't really that much theme to this, or critical mass - yes, there are a few cards that reference the counters (focused mostly in green), but only a few per draft, so it's not something you should be counting on really. What we DO need for Support to work out are creatures in play to support on. For the record, almost all of the Support in the set is Support 2 - we have one uncommon that gives 3, and one rare that's 6, but the rest are 2. In order to maximize value, that means we need 2 creatures in play. That means we need cheap creatures (and/or changing the order in which we play our cards). How many cheap creatures are there in the set? On an average, per-draft basis, 8.6 1-drops, 41.5 2-drops, 51.0 3-drops, 39.5 4-drops, and we're not talking 'cheap' anymore.
Actually calculating the exact chances for whether or not you hit your curve-out start to be able to get to fully enabling your Suppport 2 by turn N are extremely complicated, as it depends on how many creatures you have at every slot on your curve, how many lands you have, whether your colors are in line or not, whether you're on the play or draw, how you mulligan, etc etc. However, if we make several simplifying assumptions and apply some hypergeometric math, we can get a (very) rough picture of how likely your Support N cards are to being "on" on curve.
For a card like Shoulder to Shoulder, assuming you have it in hand, if we ignore needing lands and mulligans, you're a slight favorite to have it 'on' turn 4 on the play, and a significant favorite on the draw. If we factor having enough lands, you're an underdog on the play and right about even money to get there on the draw. Mulligans probably increase these probabilities very slightly (since you're going to mulligan the low-landers). Realistically, because of things like color-screw and opponent's removal, I would guess that you would be more likely to have about a 1/3 chance to actually get the dream draw here on the play (ok, not the real dream of 1-drop, 2-drop), and a bit closer to 40% on the draw, again assuming that you drew the Shoulder to Shoulder to start with. I imagine that if you get this draw, the card is great, but of course, this is a somewhat unlikely (though not at all unheard of, especially if you draft more cheap creatures) scenario. In a more typical deck, I expect the card to be somewhere between mediocre to fine.
Once you move up to more expensive cards a la Expedition Raptor, the chance that you'll have had enough cheaper creatures goes up quite high, but of course, you're fairly unlikely to have all the land drops on time to actually play the Raptor on curve. More specifically, you're unlikely to have both the creatures to turn a card like this on as well as the lands to play this on curve. By the time you do actually play this card, you're going to be pretty likely to enable it, but of course it's not going to be what you're looking for in a flood.
There are a couple things to note about Support in general. First, you want lots of creatures, and generally cheap ones. Second, the counters get pseudo-haste. Third, it seems very likely that you will at least be able to half-enable the Support; doing more than that is possible but will require some amount of work, or not getting there as "on-curve" as you'd like.
Surge
Surge is another mechanic that encourages you to play cheap cards. Once you add in all spells, you're up to a per-draft average of 17.4 1-CMC spells, 55.1 at 2-CMC, 61.6 at 3-CMC, plus Bone Saw. There are just over 14 cards per-draft with Surge, all in Blue and Red. Thus, if you're in one of these colors, you're probably looking at roughly 2 such cards, assuming they're good enough to make the cut (if you're in both colors, it looks closer to 4). That probably isn't really enough to draft around. The (rarity-weighted) average cost-reduction is 1.85-worth of CMC. Basically, this means you shouldn't really be holding things back in order to enable surge later on (with the possible exception of some of the cards like Crush of Tentacles that give you a bonus when surged). Also, you're going to generally want 2-drops (or the 1 CMC cantrips, or one of the few good 1 CMC other spells) in order to do your enabling. Verdict: nice, but don't go out of your way; there is no surge deck.
Miscellany
I'll be back soon with more on creature size, removal, and maybe colors soon.
SSB, set size, and Card Frequency
In triple BFZ, Commons appeared 2.38 per draft, Uncommons at .9 per draft, Rares at .40 per draft, and Mythics at .2 per draft.
Now, BFZ Commons are .79 per draft, Uncommons .3 per draft, Rares .13 per draft, Mythics .067 per draft.
Contrast that with OGW Commons at 2.25 per draft, Uncommons at .8 per draft, Rares .34 per draft, and Mythics .17 per draft.
The reason for this, of course, is that OGW has many fewer cards at each rarity than BFZ AND there are twice as many packs of OGW.
The takeaways are that, if you're looking for a particular OGW card, it's going to show up just a little less than a card of equal rarity did in triple BFZ, and, more important, any particular BFZ card is going to be very unreliable to show up. In fact, it's like all the BFZ cards just got up-shifted a rarity (actually they're slightly rarer than that, even). So for instance, any particular Uncommon in BFZ is less likely to show up than any particular Rare from OGW.
Old Synergies Washed Away With Sea Gate
Triple BFZ was generally known to be a pretty synergistic format (though there were some who debated how much this was true). The new format will demonstrably be very very different. Most of the themes of BFZ are supported little to none here. There's 1 life-gain-matters card (an uncommon), absolutely no Processors, no ingesters (though some exile still), and no Awaken (though a few land-creatures), with only two lonely instances of Landfall, and no Converge at all.
OGW Themes
Eldrazi Side
Devoid is one theme which survived and actually increased (in a way). The mostly RB mechanic of caring about when colorless spells were cast or having colorless creatures in play didn't get entirely axed, though it is somewhat less prevalent than it was before - a BFZ pack had about 50% more of this stuff than an OGW pack, meaning the draft will now have a bit over 75% as much as it did before.
Scions are still around, but there are MUCH fewer of them than there were before. In triple BFZ, we could expect about 19 Scion-producing cards opened per draft. Now we're down to only 13 - and half of these, of course, are from the single pack of BFZ that's still around.
The big news, of course, though, is actual factual colorless mana. Not the old 'true colorless' a la Ulamog, but the 'MUST be colorless' of the new Kozilek. The cards with C in their casting cost are all at higher rarities, meaning you only expect to have a bit over 4 opened per draft. However, There are quite a few cards with colorless-required activations: about 24 per draft. These are most frequent in Black, closely followed by Blue; Red and Green clock in at about half of these other two (and White has a lone rare).
In terms of Colorless sources, we're looking at, as mentioned above, about 13 scion-producers per draft, along with about 27 other sources (mostly lands, with a couple artifacts, and a few creatures), for a total of just over 40 colorless sources - and this isn't counting basic-searchers as extra sources (which of course would only work for one of the approximately 4.5 actual factual Wastes per draft). Scions are disproportionately in the BFZ pack, but the other sources are far-and-away more likely in the OGW packs, and that's the lion's share of your chances to get one. This is also worth keeping in mind when you're thinking about whether you need repeated sources of colorless (for repeated activations), or just a one shot (from a cast or ETB trigger or in an actual casting cost). 40 is quite a significant number of sources - split amongst 8 players gets you to about 5 per player per draft, but we can expect some players to have no need for them at all. This is certainly enough for every single player to be able to 'splash colorless', and actually even for a couple players to have it as a 'main color'. The actual effects seem to mean to me that this doesn't really make much sense, but it's good to know that, if you want it, it shouldn't be that hard to get 6 sources for quite a heavy splash. The bigger takeaway is that you probably don't need to prioritize these kinds of cards, they'll be plentiful enough.
A quick note on Wastes: I would try to avoid them, generally. There's a few cards which care about them specifically, but the payoff isn't so great, and then there's also a few which can search out a basic, which make the first one far more valuable than the second, but I wouldn't really be looking for that first one anyway.
Mana Fixing
Very related to the subject of Colorless is that of mana fixing. Many of the colorless sources indeed do both - Unknown Shores, for instance, has never looked quite so good. The amount of fixing overall is way way up - an increase of over 50%. We're now looking at 20.6 cards, on average, of fixing per draft. This is largely the result of a few mediocre commons as well as an uncommon cycle of tap-lands. This really isn't enough for everyone to go three-colors, especially with wanting to splash Colorless and some of these being inefficiently distributed to people who can't use the colors they provide. Having said that, it certainly makes going for 3 colors much more of a possibility if you want it, and 4 or 5 (with colorless, 6?!) colors not completely crazy if you really want to go deep (not that I would recommend it). However, I do expect that most decks now are going to be able to run 2 and a splash (whether that be for a normal color or colorless or, if it's very light, perhaps both) if there is much reason at all for them to do so. Just remember that you need to get that fixing in from your first couple packs, because by the time pack 3 rolls around, it drops down rather significantly.
A last note here is that 20.6 cards is just a smidge over 2/3 of the fixing which came from lands in triple KTK. I think this goes pretty well to support my point of 2-with-a-splash being common. But we'll see - a lot has to do with the payoff.
Mana Sinks
One of the defining features of triple BFZ was that it had a lot of mana sinks. This gives you things to do with your lands, provides flood insurance, is some inherent form of Card Advantage, and I think generally led to a very big chunk of why the format was liked by the players who liked it - generally I've heard people talk about liking the gameplay more than the drafting (which makes sense given that roughly half the archetypes were close to unplayably bad). Overall, we were looking at about 33 mana sink cards per draft in triple BFZ. Now, we have even more, all the way up to 40. However, it's worth noting that a big majority of the new sinks, and indeed a slight majority overall, specifically require colorless mana. So the number of non-colorless sinks is slightly down. Given that I think many, if not most decks are going to want to play a few colorless sources, this probably isn't a big detraction. However, it is something to keep in mind. If you end up not getting or going for those colorless sources, the other mana sinks are going to be at a premium, and those are largely in the third pack.
Non-Eldrazi Themes
Of course, Kozilek and company aren't the only theme of the set. It's also about a bunch of super-friends forming a pact to save the multiverse.... which isn't really going to have any impact on limited at all. Yes, there are some "Planeswalker matters" cards, but they tend to be at rare, and anyway you're unlikely to have a Planeswalker, or especially a 'walker and a card that cares about that. Still, there are other themes from the non-colorless folks (yes, this sounds like a bunch of verbal gymnastics, but think about it for a second...).
Cohort
Allies are back, and actually in slightly increased density from triple BFZ. There is a BIG difference in how they're going to play, though - Rally was essentially "ally-fall", meaning bonuses for ETB, which on something that happens at sorcery speed, means that you're going to have an aggressive bent to those abilities, in general, and BFZ was no exception to that. It didn't really come together, though, and I think that's largely down to most of the bonuses just being too lousy. The big ones were the green team-pumpers, but green was awful, there weren't many of these, and they were very expensive. Beyond that, double strike was good, and menace was ok, but the pickings overall were pretty slim. Vigilance? Color me meh.
Anyway, this time, we have Cohort. This is a huge huge huge huge change. Cohort requires you tapping two of your creatures, and you can do it at instant speed. This means that it's really going to be a defensive ability - you can both block (or at least threaten it) and activate your Cohort, but you have to choose between activating and attacking. Several of the abilities also promote this control theme. I really think this is going to be something people miss for quite a while - they will assume "allies is the aggro deck", but it most certainly is not.
Ok, so that wasn't really based on the numbers, but there is some math to be done here. First off, how much Cohort is there? A bit over 13 such cards per draft, which is slightly less than the amount of Rally from triple BFZ. If we bear in mind that maybe half the table isn't going to be on Allies basically at all, this leads us to something like 3 to 6 Support cards per Ally drafter, on average, though obviously a lot depends on a number of different factors. How many allies are there to support this? Well, a lot - over 54 per draft, meaning that anyone who is playing Allies should generally be able to get plenty to be able to activate their cohort abilities as long as they can actually get their creatures down (curve) and have them survive. It's also worth noting there's still some Rally floating around, just not that much (and of course, much of it isn't that good).
Support
Then we get Support. Support adds +1/+1 counters to creatures (if it's on a creature itself, they have to go to OTHER creatures). There isn't really that much theme to this, or critical mass - yes, there are a few cards that reference the counters (focused mostly in green), but only a few per draft, so it's not something you should be counting on really. What we DO need for Support to work out are creatures in play to support on. For the record, almost all of the Support in the set is Support 2 - we have one uncommon that gives 3, and one rare that's 6, but the rest are 2. In order to maximize value, that means we need 2 creatures in play. That means we need cheap creatures (and/or changing the order in which we play our cards). How many cheap creatures are there in the set? On an average, per-draft basis, 8.6 1-drops, 41.5 2-drops, 51.0 3-drops, 39.5 4-drops, and we're not talking 'cheap' anymore.
Actually calculating the exact chances for whether or not you hit your curve-out start to be able to get to fully enabling your Suppport 2 by turn N are extremely complicated, as it depends on how many creatures you have at every slot on your curve, how many lands you have, whether your colors are in line or not, whether you're on the play or draw, how you mulligan, etc etc. However, if we make several simplifying assumptions and apply some hypergeometric math, we can get a (very) rough picture of how likely your Support N cards are to being "on" on curve.
For a card like Shoulder to Shoulder, assuming you have it in hand, if we ignore needing lands and mulligans, you're a slight favorite to have it 'on' turn 4 on the play, and a significant favorite on the draw. If we factor having enough lands, you're an underdog on the play and right about even money to get there on the draw. Mulligans probably increase these probabilities very slightly (since you're going to mulligan the low-landers). Realistically, because of things like color-screw and opponent's removal, I would guess that you would be more likely to have about a 1/3 chance to actually get the dream draw here on the play (ok, not the real dream of 1-drop, 2-drop), and a bit closer to 40% on the draw, again assuming that you drew the Shoulder to Shoulder to start with. I imagine that if you get this draw, the card is great, but of course, this is a somewhat unlikely (though not at all unheard of, especially if you draft more cheap creatures) scenario. In a more typical deck, I expect the card to be somewhere between mediocre to fine.
Once you move up to more expensive cards a la Expedition Raptor, the chance that you'll have had enough cheaper creatures goes up quite high, but of course, you're fairly unlikely to have all the land drops on time to actually play the Raptor on curve. More specifically, you're unlikely to have both the creatures to turn a card like this on as well as the lands to play this on curve. By the time you do actually play this card, you're going to be pretty likely to enable it, but of course it's not going to be what you're looking for in a flood.
There are a couple things to note about Support in general. First, you want lots of creatures, and generally cheap ones. Second, the counters get pseudo-haste. Third, it seems very likely that you will at least be able to half-enable the Support; doing more than that is possible but will require some amount of work, or not getting there as "on-curve" as you'd like.
Surge
Surge is another mechanic that encourages you to play cheap cards. Once you add in all spells, you're up to a per-draft average of 17.4 1-CMC spells, 55.1 at 2-CMC, 61.6 at 3-CMC, plus Bone Saw. There are just over 14 cards per-draft with Surge, all in Blue and Red. Thus, if you're in one of these colors, you're probably looking at roughly 2 such cards, assuming they're good enough to make the cut (if you're in both colors, it looks closer to 4). That probably isn't really enough to draft around. The (rarity-weighted) average cost-reduction is 1.85-worth of CMC. Basically, this means you shouldn't really be holding things back in order to enable surge later on (with the possible exception of some of the cards like Crush of Tentacles that give you a bonus when surged). Also, you're going to generally want 2-drops (or the 1 CMC cantrips, or one of the few good 1 CMC other spells) in order to do your enabling. Verdict: nice, but don't go out of your way; there is no surge deck.
Miscellany
- Processors are down from 20.2 per draft to 1/3 of that, 6.8.
- Ingest is similarly down, but other exile effects are only marginally down compared to before.
- Awaken drops from 59.6 cards per draft to 19.8, though there are an additional 4.5 awaken-like cards in an uncommon cycle from OGW. The awaken that is there should be better now (because it's more scarce), but cards like Halimar Tidecaller should be worse.
- The Life-gain deck is gone. Down from 10.2 cards that care about it to 4.2, and from 17.6 actual life gain cards to 12.0 (many of which are green now).
- The Equipment theme is also not really a thing - only 4.2 cards that care about it per draft, 5.6 actual equipment, and many of these cards don't really look very good anyway.
- Converge should be easier to grab, but on the other hand, you really can't count on any payoff, so it's not something you should really be looking for.
I'll be back soon with more on creature size, removal, and maybe colors soon.
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