You Make the Draft Set Draft - Aftermath

[Thomas David Baker]

I enjoyed this even more than I thought I was going to, despite most of my cards ending up in sideboards :)

I've put up a full Visual Spoiler here:

http://magic.bluebones.net/ymtdsd/


All cards in one Magic Set Editor file:

everyones.mse-set

[Thomas David Baker]

My "top cards" of the night:

(Saved Kieran from my turn 3 5/5 Trampler by warping us to "creatures without flying can't attack".)	(I can't believe no one played this.)
(Bordering on the completely busted but a really fun card.)

Honorable mentions to the completely busted Magic Madhouse and mostly busted Angel of Starvation.

Most broken card of the night goes unanimously to Wizard's Apprentice, and I think Subjugate comes second.

[Simon O'Keeffe]

I can't safely go through the visual spoiler at work, so I'll check that out later, but some highlights for me:

- transvestite zombies
- split card creatures
- armageddon of bears
- Tabled, and Why is This Still here!
- frog tribal!

We probably need to enforce rarity distribution on peoples submissions. Way too many Mythic style cards. Depends if you want to take this in the direction of a regular set for drafting, or a cube for just the 'best' cards

Another thumbs up for Crap Rare, that made me laugh.

[Amar Dattani]

I think the relevant cards should be put on facebook and tagged.

[Gary Lynch]

Was really fun, looking forward to doing this again. Are we just gonna remove the busted cards, submit a few new ones and use these again?

[Simon O'Keeffe]

I think that is a decent idea. Would be a terrible waste to just start over again.

Another idea is to see if there is the kernal of a set here, some mechanics/themes/ideas that we could expand on to make a more cohesive set.

Gary Lynch said:

Was really fun, looking forward to doing this again. Are we just gonna remove the busted cards, submit a few new ones and use these again?

[Gary Lynch]

GG's, is overpowered at 8 mana.

Park Ritual was funny but also busted.

Rob Stanjer was overpowered, 2 mana more than Mistbind Clique, no drawback and you get to tap their creatures and draw 2 cards.

Magic Madhouse was probably too good.

Natural Light should be a sorcery.

O-Ring on a string was probably too good, never played against it. Perhaps to retain the flavour with out being busted make the ability only playable at sorcery speed.

The 2 mana Ross Miles is to cheap to activate.

The Planeswalker with all 0 abilities seems too good.

Blood Stirrer looks too cheap to play and kick.

Restless Ashes looks like it may be too good as you cant really kill thier creatures. Perhaps add something like, if a creature in a graveyard attacks or blocks exile it.

Wild Transformation should probably cost 1 more.

Zephyr Magus I think was undercosted.

Appart from Molten Lead being on their twice I think the return ability is too good.

The Ukie planeswalker is bonkers, Sleep and they dont untap next turn and the ability to do it again is too much.

Dreambringer should only activate once per turn. Even then it could be too good.

Myr Excavator seems like its too strong if there are several cards with flashback or graveyard abilities.

Rampant thoughts is too cheap, cost 1 less than Teaching for the same effect, also you can kick it for a half price rampant growth.

Hellkite of Annihilation was a bit good, too hard to recover from.

All the cards you could get back from the graveyard instead of drawing a card were too good. I like the idea though so perhaps some sort of edit.

Verdant Walker was too good. Perhaps just making them into 2/2's or something. Attacking next turn with 6 7/7's was too good.

I didnt get to play any of my own cards so other than the rediculous Wizards Apprentice im not sure how they were. I do remember Tom saying my 5/5 bird that didnt fly was good though.


Wow, set reviews are actually hard work. I have a bit more respect for the writers who do this for every card in a new set.

[Thom Richardson]

this was great fun

i think it would be interesting to go through and recost a lot of the cards to make them fair.

i know for instance that all of my cards that return from the graveyard were waaaaay undercosted (subjugate being the worst offender) to the point that i'm not even sure if the mechanic is redeemable.

are people up for going through the spoiler and noting down which cards are fine, which need recosting and which need scrapping altogether?

[Thomas David Baker]

I've made a file with all of everyone's cards in: http://magic.bluebones.net/ymtdsd/everyones.mse-set

Some stats:

Color: 55W, 64U, 55B, 50R, 51G, 3 Colorless, 40 Artifact, 29 Multicolor.
CMC: 9 {0}, 48 {1}, 84 {2}, 88 {3}, 68 {4}, 35 {5}, 20 {6}, 4 {7}, 2 {8}, 2 {9}, 2 {10}.
Supertype: 145 Creature, 72 Instant, 39 Sorcery, 26 Artifact, 23 Enchantment, 22 Legendary Creature, 9 Planeswalke, 7 Land, 6 Artifact Creature, 5 Enchantment Creature, 5 Enchantment Artifact, 2 Legendary Land, 1 Artifact Enchantment, 1 Legendary Artifact, 1 Tribal Enchantment.
Race: 58 Human, 9 Elf, 7 Cat, 7 Dragon, 6 Zombie, 6 Goblin, 6 Horror, 5 Construct, ...
Class: 27 Wizard, 8 Shaman, 7 Cleric, 5 Berserker, 5 Soldier, ...
Longest text length: 75-80 words (Confused Goblin Elf and Awkward)
Keywords: 36 Flying, 18 Haste, 17 Trample, 15 First Strike, 15 Kicker, 10 Flash, 9 Flashback, 9 Cycling, 8 Protection From, 7 Enchant, 7 Equip, 5 Deathtouch, 5 Lifelink, ...
Style: 343 Modern, 9 Planeswalkers, 7 Flip, 3 Split, 2 Planeshifted.

[Simon O'Keeffe]

That is certainly my plan. What we need is a Wizards like Multiverse card DB. Tom can you knock one up? :-)
Looking at some of the cards which people have so far highlighted as overpowered, they are all real card advantage cards, and I think our "set" probably had a much higher concentration than a traditional MtG set.

Thom Richardson said:

are people up for going through the spoiler and noting down which cards are fine, which need recosting and which need scrapping altogether?

[James Mills]

LSV seems to be the only one who does set reviews these days.

Gary Lynch said:

GG's, is overpowered at 8 mana.

Park Ritual was funny but also busted.

Rob Stanjer was overpowered, 2 mana more than Mistbind Clique, no drawback and you get to tap their creatures and draw 2 cards.

Magic Madhouse was probably too good.

Natural Light should be a sorcery.

O-Ring on a string was probably too good, never played against it. Perhaps to retain the flavour with out being busted make the ability only playable at sorcery speed.

The 2 mana Ross Miles is to cheap to activate.

The Planeswalker with all 0 abilities seems too good.

Blood Stirrer looks too cheap to play and kick.

Restless Ashes looks like it may be too good as you cant really kill thier creatures. Perhaps add something like, if a creature in a graveyard attacks or blocks exile it.

Wild Transformation should probably cost 1 more.

Zephyr Magus I think was undercosted.

Appart from Molten Lead being on their twice I think the return ability is too good.

The Ukie planeswalker is bonkers, Sleep and they dont untap next turn and the ability to do it again is too much.

Dreambringer should only activate once per turn. Even then it could be too good.

Myr Excavator seems like its too strong if there are several cards with flashback or graveyard abilities.

Rampant thoughts is too cheap, cost 1 less than Teaching for the same effect, also you can kick it for a half price rampant growth.

Hellkite of Annihilation was a bit good, too hard to recover from.

All the cards you could get back from the graveyard instead of drawing a card were too good. I like the idea though so perhaps some sort of edit.

Verdant Walker was too good. Perhaps just making them into 2/2's or something. Attacking next turn with 6 7/7's was too good.

I didnt get to play any of my own cards so other than the rediculous Wizards Apprentice im not sure how they were. I do remember Tom saying my 5/5 bird that didnt fly was good though.


Wow, set reviews are actually hard work. I have a bit more respect for the writers who do this for every card in a new set.

[Thomas David Baker]

A random collection of thoughts on possible future directions:

1. Other people (Dan, Charlie, possibly others?) would like to join in some future version. I definitely don't want to automatically restrict this to the 8 people that happened to play in the first one.

2. It would be fun to make a proper set with rarities and more than one of cards and that kind of stuff.

3. It would be fun to make a cube where all the cards are interesting and powerful.

4. My cards and to a lesser extent Dan's don't really lend themselves to being part of anything remotely serious. They probably get most of their value from the first play rather than repeat play.

5. It would be fun to make up yet more cards.

6. It would be fun to make this a regular thing.

7. It would be fun to refine whatever we make to the point where you could say to Magic-playing strangers: "hey, play a draft of this with us, it's good".

8. Some of the cards that were invented are really cool. I've pretty much fallen in love with Corrupt Seer and I will still love him when his ability costs 3 life like it should.

9. We threw together some ideas a few weeks back about a possible set. It involved a lot of Wizards. A lot of the cards we played with last night were Wizards.

10. Rob may have been on to something with further exploitation of existing mechanics. Cycling/Madness/Dredge/Unearth/Channel anyone?

11. Something tells me that if we make a set or a cube it should be more Time Spiral block and less M10. Err on the side of too complicated rather than a bunch of well balanced Commons. We don't have the exact same design goals as Wizards R&D.

12. We seem to like Zombies and Wizards.

13. "Next time" we should probably have some rules or some suggested theme or something like that so that we can contrast it with this time and see what works better.

[Ben Titmarsh]

Was gutted to miss this one after signing up, then realising i'd still be on holiday. Count me in for whatever and whenever the next one is.