It’s the newest set and one of the best in a while. This is the game’s 25th anniversary and the set has a History and Nostalgia theme and I love it. Time Spiral was my favorite block and this is a great update to that type of set.
I had been getting bored a little with Magic. The design for draft made it feel like the decks were getting made for you. Dominaria is the first set in a long time where it feels like lots of different things are possible and I have been having a great time building decks. Anyone else playing?
I was really, really excited for Dominaria (I started in 1996 so a lot of my memories go back to that plane). But unfortunately I’ve been super busy with work, coaching little league, and selling our house so I haven’t been able to play yet! There’s a Grand Prix in my area in July so I will definitely play in that but I really need to get some reps in beforehand. It seems pretty sweet though!
Speaking purely as a limited player, it’s a mixed bag. I love sagas. I like the general feel of nostalgia. I like lots of interesting legendary creatures. I like a slower limited format where you can play grindy card advantage games.
But… I have to say the development feels unfinished:
(1) There’s a desperate need for more color fixing. There are enough powerful gold cards that you often end up wanting to splash, and there’s basically only ONE splash enabler that’s any good outside of green. Why no untamed wilds?
(2) There is a wizards theme without enough playable common wizards
(3) There’s a historic theme without enough common or uncommon historic-matters cards
(4) There’s an artifact theme without enough playable common or uncommon artifacts
(5) “Legendary Sorcery” just meaning “a totally normal sorcery in all ways except for a restriction on when you can cast it” is SUCH a cop-out. The word “legendary” means something in magic parlance, and “legendary sorcery” doesn’t take advantage of that meaning at all. Also, why do legendary sorceries require a legendary creature or planeswalker, but not a “historic” card, and not a legendary non-creature? Seems like a flavor fail
So, overall, I’d call it a decent limited environment, but not great.
Just coming back to the game after 15 years, and I’m lovin’ it. (For Max, take a look at merfolk as well as human wizards in standard. There’s a shitpile of them. Plus a number of legendaries.)
I’m using some of my older cards to trade for new stuff, and am just ordering my third fat pack of Dominaria. I’m more of a modern player than standard myself (and not enough tech to compete in legacy), but there’s all kinds of interesting stuff in Dominaria and to a lesser extent in Rivals. I’ve always been a blue player, and especially Merfolk, so things are working out just fine for me. Merfolk Trickster, bay-bee! And I went out and got four Merfolk duel decks to put together a respectable one.
As soon as I get my new gaming rig (this month), I’m going to hit MTGO. I figure I’ll start with Pauper and work my way up.
I think the lack of color fixing is by design. There are so many good (in limited) multi color legends they don’t want you to just draft all of them and play a 4 or 5 color deck.
There’s too many good multicolored uncommons to allow a lot of fixing. Most of the legendary uncommons feel like they were pushed as if they were rares, so throwing in good limited fixing like evolving wilds would mean things would be too splashable. It hurts a limited environment if everyone can craft a four or five color goodstuff deck, because then you never get payoffs for cutting a color.
There are three good common wizards (the two Journeymages are great, as is the Merfolk) and the other ones aren’t so bad that if you start getting Wizard payoffs (like Wizardprowess girl or Naban and some Firefists,) they become quite playable. Wizards suffer from comparison to the tribes in Ixalan whose synergy defined the draft environment, but they’re not terrible.
There’s not enough payoff at common or uncommon to go straight Historic, sure, but there’s a lot of cards that go from unplayable to playable (meaning if you’ll get them late if you want them) if you build a historic matters deck around a couple of the bomby historic matters rares. I’ve gone in on a P1P1 Daring Archaeologist and later picked up a Raff to make those otherwise mediocre D’Avenant Trappers into tempo machines.
I don’t know what you’re talking about here. Skittering Surveyor, Jousting Lance, Bloodtallow Candle, and Juggernaut are all very good cards. Short Sword, Aesthir Glider, and the Voltaic Key and Howling Mine guys are all acceptable playables for limited. And then there’s Icy Manipulator, as well. That’s all without getting into the massively increased playability of a lot of artifacts if you’re going for a historic theme.
I’m 100% with you, here. If you’re going to use a supertype to clarify a general rule, you should keep it consistent. I’m guessing we never see these again.
No, they’ve done away with blocks of sets. They found they couldn’t come up with enough good ideas that linked appropriately, which almost always lead to the third set (and sometimes the second) being stinkers.
Dominaria is a standalone set (there are no more blocks) and I believe the next two sets will be standalones as well until the return of Core Sets in 2018.
I did love some of the two-set blocks, Kaladesh/Aether Revolt and Shadows over Innistrad/Eldritch Moon in particular.
But the Amonkhet and Ixalan blocks both proved underwhelming; in fact I barely played Ixalan at all. (I strictly stick to limited drafts and sealed, so not sure how well they fared in constructed. Also, I am terrible.)
I haven’t played DOM yet but it looks great. Not surprising, given that Richard Garfield usually manages to knock it out of the park with set design.
There’s definitely a middle ground. Ixalan had two playable common 5-color fixers (untamed wilds and that 1-cost artifact that searches), plus at least one in green, plus uncommon duals, etc. That’s a good baseline for a set where you mainly play 2 color and occasionally splash. Why would they print tons of powerful fun gold cards and then make it hard to play them? Normally they’re smart about making sure that the thing you naturally want to do is actually a good idea.
They certainly don’t need to go as far as something like Ravnica block.
The merfolk is uncommon.
Keep an eye out for how often you see someone playing either the red guy that sacs artifacts to shock, or the blue guy that sacs an artifact to draw. I’ve done dozens of drafts and so far it’s zero for both.
The game is now “Creatures; the Gathering”. Spells have generally gotten worse and worse, particularly ones that kill creatures, while creatures continually get better. They’re very focused on making the game about creature combat and not slinging spells. The last time I played Magic was a Modern Master’s draft where I could play a deck with Unearth creatures and Forbidden Alchemy. I managed to get some very late Scourge Devils and Corpse Connoisseur that were exactly what I was looking for. I had a blast playing it, managing to win most of my games, but 2-0, 2-0, 1-2, 1-2 leaves you at 2-2. It helped that I have a ton of store credit that I have no plans on using at the store, since those are some expensive packs to draft from (although I did open something and raredrafted it to get back the store credit it cost). Now it is true that such deck is entirely about creatures other than Forbidden Alchemy, and I cut most of the removal spells from my deck because they sucked and I wanted my creature synergies, so I take a peek at the spoiler for each set to see if there’s something I would enjoy drafting, but lately it’s been rather uninteresting with rather awful mechanics.
The one thing that absolutely made me quit though was the colorless mana symbol and then putting said colorless mana symbol in the cost of things. The entire point to making the symbol was to avoid confusion between generic and colorless mana, but by explicitly putting it in the cost of some things, “colorless” simply becomes another color, emphasized by the fact that they printed a new basic land for it too (Wastes, I think). So basically they added a new color. I vowed a long time ago I would quit and consider them to have “jumped the shark” for me when they added a new color. I kept that vow (mostly, the Modern Masters draft was with all cards originally printed before that point).
The trend towards “creatures matter” has been pretty constant over the past 25 years. Most players like attacking and defending more than coming up with clever spell combos, and now spells are largely used to enhance combat rather than for their own sakes.
As for colorless mana, it’s been around since the beginning, but colorless mana costs have only ever appeared in Gatewatch and have never been used again.
Having threats be stronger than answers was an issue but they have course corrected the last few sets. I would suggest trying playing now. It is much more balanced then, say, Battle for Zendikar.
