Some standouts I remember were Izzet ( ) Thopters, Selesnya ( ) Renown, and Golgari ( ) Elves. Origins was a fresh take on the core set formula that I really liked at the time.

Generally acceptable game lengths where not every match lasts 15+ turns and nearly goes to decking.

Build-around uncommons and rares like Burning Vengeance, Spider Spawning, and Zenith Flare that let you do things that feel just plain unfair with the right drafting and deckbuilding.

Mana sinks and commons that fight lacking mana are crucial since players won’t always draw the perfect number of lands and good formats lack frequent “non-games.”.

Dynamic gameplay where players aren’t immediately out of the game if they fall behind.

“Fun” is a subjective judgement with lots of room for personal interpretation and debate, but some common claims on what’s fun are: All players are at least partially interested in having a good time!

Deep Draft Environment with Lots of Playablesīurning Vengeance | Illustration by Raymond Swanland This goes for both main deck-able ones like Burn the Accursed and Eaten Alive as well as cards you shouldn’t really be main decking like the clutch Plummet. So the best Limited formats tend to have few rares that can’t be answered with (correctly timed) common removal spells. “ Plummet your Liesa, Forgotten Archangel” feels even better than winning a game when she lives, at least for me! What a good format needs is answers to those cards, and generally the more the better. This complaint isn’t entirely unreasonable, but having cards that tower above others and raise the stakes can be fun. I’m sure we can all recall the bad beat stories we’ve heard: ”I had my opponent dead on board but they played Liesa, Forgotten Archangel and it was all over, man! When will WotC stop printing stupid rares!?” Liesa, Forgotten Archangel | Illustration by Dmitry BurmakĪ common novice complaint about Limited (particularly Sealed) is the relationship between game play and bomb rares. are a bit better than other options as long as they aren’t the only viable thing you can do. So it’s fine if certain archetypes, commons, etc. This also meant that cards like A+ Greenwarden of Murasa and Woodland Wanderer were far more likely to be passed to you! In Battle for Zendikar, for instance, green was considered far worse than the other colors. Intelligent drafters can also “self-correct” for sets anyways. Here’s an extreme example: a set of 300 Grizzly Bears with different flavor texts (60 in each color) would be perfectly balanced but miserable to play.

Perfect balance is practically impossible and may not even be desirable to begin with. This archetype was both the best on its own merits and the best for splashing rares. Forgotten Realmsis a good (bad?) example of this with Rakdos ( ) Treasure. Players can quickly get bored of drafting a set if you don’t have this crucial component to a format. All five colors should be playable and there should be several viable 2-color archetypes with the others not falling too far behind. Woodland Wanderer | Illustration by Vincent ProceĪ good draft format should be fairly balanced.

Forgotten realms mtg archetypes