Fate Reforged + Khan's of Tarkir = Slow Limited
Limited forum
Posted on Feb. 16, 2015, 5:18 p.m. by miracleHat
This weekend (president's day weekend) I went to a game convention (strategicon for those in LA) and I drafted Fate Reforged along with Khans of Tarkir. I did one draft, and two sealed of the set. It was my first time drafting with those sets, though I was familiar with the strategies and the cards.
I didn't know what to expect, save for the fact that there were going to be a lot of multicolored cards / decks. The first draft was a Mardu Rush deck and I crushed nearly every other deck. I only lost once, and that was when I didn't have any other removal. To give an idea of my rares:
Alesha, Who Smiles at Death + Mob Rule. I didn't realize how slow FRF and Khans was! The guy who got second place, his average cmc must have been higher than 4. I was battling him for first and the first game that we played, this is how his turn order went:
jungle hollows
Blossoming Sands
turn 3 Abzan Banner
turn 4 Brave the Sands and morph
turn 5 he was dead! I had a slow hand, but holy theros even that format was faster!
I then played sealed, abzan aggro / midrange with anafenza + some general boslter thingy... and Palace Siege as a late game push.
The second sealed deck was jeskai headlong aggro rush. 2 Goblin Heelcutter, 2 Seeker of the Way, 4 rares, and combat tricks + removal. It was, "rampage incarnate".
Am I missing something here? Because from those three limited events, FRF is super duper slow!
Totaledcow says... #3
Limited formats are generally slower than constructed anyway, but yeah, I noticed that this block seems particularly slow and bomby. Most of the big flashy stuff can easily find it's way onto the board in a Limited match-up because it's just not fast enough to aggro through.
There are some possible strategies for being faster, but they're very difficult to pull off if you don't get the right cards in your pool or in your draft pod. Most of the faster cards are in KTK, not in FRF, so that's where you gain your speed, but there's complementary abilities in FRF that can make small creatures get bigger (dragonscale general, elite scaleguard, citadel siege). Seeker of the Way, Monastery Swiftspear, Ponyback Brigade, Hordeling Outburst, etc. all make it possible to drive aggro, and there's a lot of Mardu Warriors stuff that also can be very aggressive if the right cards end up in your deck.
In general though, I'd agree that this set is slower in Limited than many sets before, but in some ways this is good. It means if you get lucky and can be very aggro you'll have a high win percentage, and if you don't get lucky, then you're not screwed because the likelihood somebody else is going to be heavy aggro is slim. It makes for a much more varied and interesting tournament format, especially when even bad cards in Limited can change board state considerably if you have the right time to set up the situations where they become good.
February 16, 2015 5:47 p.m.
fluffybunnypants says... #4
No it's a pretty slow and bomb reliant format. Sure, there are some really good commons in the limited environment, but you usually can't go wrong with drafting the bomb rare out of the pack in Limited right now. I first and second picked Ojutai, Soul of Winter (first pick, then had one staring at me in the next pack), if only it would happen to me when it actually mattered.
February 16, 2015 6:04 p.m.
miracleHat says... #5
I will keep this in mind. I was just so surprised.
@fluffybunnypants, I just noticed that you produced your financial article, I can't wait to read it!
February 16, 2015 6:25 p.m.
You battled for second place with someone who plays banners and brave the sands? I dare not think what the other decks were. It seems to me that the competition you faced was also to blame.
February 16, 2015 7:29 p.m.
Totaledcow says... #8
@Boza: I kind of had the same reaction, but I've seen people draft poorly in this format and still win because of getting the best bombs. Because the format is so slow and bomby, sometimes that's all that matters. 1p1p is super-important for FRF/KTK draft.
February 16, 2015 8:22 p.m.
Named_Tawyny says... #9
If they're winning because of what they drafted, they probably didn't draft poorly.
February 17, 2015 7:05 a.m.
Totaledcow says... #10
That's an oversimplification. It's not as simple as saying "I won, therefore I drafted well." Wins can come from a number of factors, especially in this format. There's a serious RNG/luck element related to draws that can affect the game heavily, there's also as I mentioned the bomb element.
If Person A drafts 3 super bombs out of their packs from opening that meld together but draft terribly the rest of the pod for things that will effectively support those bombs and Person B gets unlucky and opens Rally the Ancestors, then Retribution of the Ancients, then Mindswipe. At best, Mindswipe might be playable in the right deck, but it's not good enough in its own right to determine what the rest of your drafts are and in most cases there's better uncommons and commons in the set, like Monastery Swiftspear, Seeker of the Way, or any of the charms for a start.
Now, imagine in this pod that pretty much everybody either gets bomby rares (very likely) and otherwise passes. Person B and Person A play. Overall, Person B may have a better deck and may have drafted better (by which I mean more strategically and technically correct), but Person A manages to get all 3 of their super-bombs off, even though they were struggling the whole game. Person A wins.
Now did Person A win because they "drafted well", or did they win because Person B was unlucky in their packs and/or draws?
These situations don't happen very often in Draft compared to Sealed, because the objective in Draft is to stay on your colors and hopefully find a color that is underutilized as one of those via signaling. But it's totally possible that this will happen, and in this case, you cannot Person A drafted well, even though they won.
February 17, 2015 12:30 p.m.
Ultimaodin says... #11
Totaledcow - Then the other person did not play that well or draft that well as you seem to think. If I can fight through Daghatar and Siege Rhino in draft and win so can Player B if they know what they're doing.
I honestly think losing to their bomb is an excuse where Silumgar is the only exception to the rule due to having hexproof.
February 17, 2015 11:52 p.m.
Totaledcow says... #12
@Ultimaodin
Call it luck, call it RNG, call it whatever you like, but the fact is that there's an element of MTG that factors into game outcomes. You can make better plays, have a better deck, but if you don't get the right draws at the right time, you will lose. Deck construction is mostly about not only picking the right cards, but making sure you have the right ratios to increase your odds of making the right draw when you need it. Knowing this, it should be obvious how Person B could lose. For the sake of my example, assume that Person A and Person B are equally skilled /players/, but Person B is better at drafting.
You and Named_Tawyny are essentially making the same argument. If you win, you drafted well. That's not true though, because it ignores many other variables involved in a game/match outcome besides the draft going in. By saying Person A didn't draft well, I'm not saying they drafted /terribly/, just that they picked worse cards out of packs than they should, or built their deck less efficiently than they could have with what they did pick. These things all play into the odds, drafting better and building a more efficient deck from your drafts increase your odds of winning, but they don't guarantee it. How bomby your bombs are can also play into your odds of winning considerably, if you manage to draw them and get them off.
The current format in particular tends to be slower, so your likelihood of drawing into a specific card is higher, and it tends to be more bomb heavy, so they play a bigger part in the outcome of any particular game/match. That's pretty much all I'm saying.
February 19, 2015 1:50 p.m.
KTKx3 was glacially slow, but I think the addition of FRF has sped the format up. There's less incentive to go three colors now, and there seems to be fewer board stalls.
Might also be a thing where I just draft blue so often now that I just don't run into them as often as I did in KTK.
February 19, 2015 3:10 p.m.
canterlotguardian says... #14
Reminds me of my Rise of the Eldrazi draft days. I usually drafted the Eldrazi that I pulled, but just for trade value. I remember that anyone who actually played Eldrazi that had CMC higher than like Hand of Emrakul or something (or that didn't have an alternate casting cost like the Hand) usually didn't do all that well.
FinchFalcon says... #2
You didn't hit the Jeskai prowess aggro decks. This set can be slow, but it's still got some room for speed.
February 16, 2015 5:34 p.m.