Custom Set Draft, 5pm Saturday After the M13 Release Event

[Thomas David Baker]

Custom Set Draft, 5pm Saturday After the M13 Release Event

The set is here: http://mv.bluebones.net/

We need 8 players.

1. Tom

2. Simon

3. Kieran

4. Glenn

5. Paul

6. Nathan

7. James

8. Phil

Want to play?

[Daniel Royde]

Can't do this weekend, would love to another time

[Paul Hodgson]

err, in

[Thom Richardson]

I'd love to but i'm away.  hope this goes well, the set looks awesome.

[Russell Davies]

Would be interested another time, cricket interferes with my Saturdays at the mo...

[Allan Chong]

Hmm, looking a little tight for me, prob not. Definitely up for the next event if any.

[Kieran Symington]

I hope we can get up to the full 8 for this. That would be awesome. I'm sure there will be one or two around on the day if necessary.

[Simon O'Keeffe]

I doubt we will have many problems filling the last slots with people on the day. They might be a little handicapped by not looking at the set beforehand, but we can always outline the themes to new players.

I can't get there early for the actual release event, but I'll aim to get there for around 2pm in case we get to start early or if any last minute cutting and sleeving is required.

EDIT: I'll bring Chaos Badger also

[Thomas David Baker]

Yeah, it shouldn't be a problem but better to get an 8 lined up if we can.

Haven't heard from Ross yet.

[Kieran Symington]

I have it on good authority that he isn't coming on Saturday.

[Ben Titmarsh]

I've got to wait in for an Ikea delivery, which could turn up at any point.  Assuming it's before 5 then count me in!

[Thomas David Baker]

The set, I think, played really really well.  A million miles from "WHAT who made this broken card that doesn't even work?" of our other You Make the Sets.

There were definitely concerns about complex board states that looked a lot like stalls and losing to an Astral Magus-Soul Guardian-ETB creature combo might not have been what most people would define as fun.  And mono R combo made the final of both drafts (although it lost 2-0 in one of them).

In many ways our biggest problem is that we didn't make hardly any unplayable cards.  So rather like Cube you always have a surplus of playables.  I'm really not sure how you fix that (make bad cards on purpose, smaller boosters, make multiple archetypes per color and have lots of cards be bad outside of their archetype?) 

But overall the noises being made were happy noises.  A lot of cards played really well, even the ones that surprised us.  I think my two favorite games that I saw were: (1) Nathan stabilizing on one life, attacking with a lifelinking 18/18 Gluttonous Lark then casting Sue for Peace regenerating his two Dreamriver Boas so they are the only things that survive, and (2) James on 50 life but three cards in library facing Paul on 2 with one card in library but the ability to but Shimmersprite on top and draw it forever.  James drew Rampart Ravens followed by Rise Up so he could attack with his four 1/1 fliers into 3 flying blockers and pump his team so that the unblocked flier did the exactly needed 2 damage.  I also enjoyed making 10 or 12 1/1 Wizards a few times.

[Simon O'Keeffe]

First, a big thank you to everyone who played on Saturday, and everyone who contributed to the set. A special thanks to Kieran for designing tons of cool cards, and Tom for killing all our busted rares and building the Bakerverse.

I had loads of fun playing our set, and I think Portent in particular was really well implemented and balanced. It encouraged careful drafting to ensure you had a good balance between enablers and Portent cards, and wasn't broken at all while providing some nice plays and little tricks to get some subtle card advantage.

White was popular, and we certainly did make lifegain worth concentrating on, but perhaps its inherent problem isn't that lifegain is bad, it is that it creates long drawn out games and board stalls. Gluttonous Lark turned out to be the sleeper card for our set, as a way for the lifegain decks to pro-actively try and end the game.

There is some concern over red still, but I would temper that by saying that we had two drafts with basically only one red drafter, and in that situation it is almost inevitable that their deck will be very strong. Perhaps red is too insular and has too many cards devoted to its core theme, and not enough to attract you in otherwise. I think Tom mentioned another way would be to lower the number of "discard, then draw" cards and make more "discard, then <foo>" where <foo> is some non-card advantage ability. Think of more Duelling Mage style cards.

I still think that the set is perfectly playable in its current state, and I would happily play it again with no changes. I think we would be rash in making a swathe of changes with only two real drafts behind us. It may be that the format self balances a little once it is played more, with multiple people trying to force the red deck, because of its potential power, and therefore lowering the quality of each of their decks.

A note regarding doing our next set, there is loads of art out there for Dragons, Samurai's and busty maidens, so if we can theme our set around those that would make my job way easier, thanks.