The Ultimate Quest Mode Thread

[Fizanko]

Currently 30-5 with this deck on main world :

Fire Elves | Open

1 Bogardan Firefiend|HOP
1 Bow of Nylea|THS
1 Bramblewood Paragon|MOR
1 Chandra, Pyromaster|M14
1 Elvish Archdruid|M11
1 Elvish Champion|9ED
1 Elvish Mystic|M14
1 Experiment One|GTC
1 Flamekin Harbinger|LRW
1 Forced Adaptation|GTC
3 Forest|NPH|1
8 Forest|NPH|2
1 Giant Growth|M11
1 Golden Hind|JOU
1 Gruul Guildgate|DGM
1 Gruul Keyrune|GTC
1 Gruul Signet|ARC
1 Hellkite Tyrant|GTC
1 Hellspark Elemental|CFX
1 Heroes' Bane|JOU
1 Kodama's Reach|MMA
1 Lightning Elemental|9ED
1 Llanowar Elite|INV
1 Molten Birth|M14
8 Mountain|NPH|1
4 Mountain|NPH|2
1 Multani's Harmony|PLS
1 Nessian Courser|THS
1 Presence of Gond|C13
1 Roc Hatchling|WTH
1 Shock|M14
1 Skirsdag Cultist|DDK
1 Skyshroud Archer|STH
1 Sporemound|M14
1 Thallid Germinator|MMA
1 Titanic Growth|M15
1 Traitorous Instinct|RTR
1 Triumph of the Hordes|NPH
1 Wildfire Cerberus|JOU
1 Yisan, the Wanderer Bard|M15
1 Zhur-Taa Druid|DGM

Yisan, the Wanderer Bard is really great.

Heroes' Bane can be helpful with achievements

[Fizanko]

AS i'm starting to have some very nice cards with good synergy, i have attempted a white/black deck for healing and hurting.
To my surprise it seems to work, won 5 times in a row against medium AI opponents.

Still hope to find some appropriate cards to improve it from rewards or spellshop so i would depend on a bit less luck in card orders for some combo to work, but so far it seems to be solid.

Healing hurt | Open

1 Ajani's Pridemate|M15
1 Angelic Skirmisher|GTC
1 Archangel of Thune|M14
1 Bloodrite Invoker|ROE
1 Child of Night|M15
2 Daggerdrome Imp|RTR
1 Death Grasp|C13
1 Debt to the Deathless|DGM
1 Divine Favor|M14
1 Ephara's Radiance|BNG
1 Fiendslayer Paladin|M14
1 Font of Vigor|JOU
1 Guardian of the Gateless|GTC
1 Indulgent Tormentor|M15
1 King Macar, the Gold-Cursed|JOU
1 Mark of the Vampire|M14
1 Master of the Feast|JOU
1 Necromancer's Covenant|ARB
1 Nyx-Fleece Ram|JOU
2 Ordeal of Heliod|THS
1 Orzhov Cluestone|DGM
1 Orzhov Guildgate|DGM
1 Orzhov Guildgate|GTC
2 Phalanx Leader|THS
8 Plains|NPH|1
4 Plains|NPH|2
1 Sangromancer|MBS
1 Sanguine Bond|M14
1 Silverblade Paladin|AVR
1 Soul Warden|EXO
1 Soulmender|M14
2 Sphere of Safety|RTR
1 Sungrace Pegasus|M15
1 Suture Priest|NPH
6 Swamp|NPH|1
4 Swamp|NPH|2
1 Vizkopa Guildmage|GTC
1 Whip of Erebos|THS

And got me another achievement


edit : looks like medium AI "Amphibian" has a lot of life gaining tricks, he got to 40+ , until my excellent King Macar, the Gold-Cursed did some very good work to deal with the life gaining creatures of the AI
So i could drop his lives and get this :


edit 2 :
Wow, the deck got me to complete a 25 win streak (of course i improved it a bit since) , that had started with my previous deck, happy as i got a draft token :


and some nice cards i didn't had yet, one of them going to complement my deck nicely too


very slightly updated deck, not yet included this Elspeth Knight-Errant i just earned and didn't checked yet the spellshop to see if something new could fit

Healing Hurt | Open

1 Ajani's Pridemate|M15
1 Angelic Accord|M14
1 Archangel of Thune|M14
1 Bloodrite Invoker|ROE
1 Child of Night|M15
1 Crescendo of War|COM
2 Daggerdrome Imp|RTR
1 Death Grasp|C13
1 Debt to the Deathless|DGM
1 Divine Favor|M14
1 Fiendslayer Paladin|M14
2 Font of Vigor|JOU
1 Indulgent Tormentor|M15
1 King Macar, the Gold-Cursed|JOU
1 Mark of the Vampire|M14
1 Master of the Feast|JOU
1 Necromancer's Covenant|ARB
1 Nyx-Fleece Ram|JOU
2 Ordeal of Heliod|THS
1 Orzhov Cluestone|DGM
1 Orzhov Guildgate|DGM
1 Orzhov Guildgate|GTC
1 Phalanx Leader|THS
1 Pharika's Chosen|JOU
8 Plains|NPH|1
4 Plains|NPH|2
1 Sangromancer|MBS
1 Sanguine Bond|M14
1 Silverblade Paladin|AVR
1 Soul Warden|EXO
1 Soulmender|M14
1 Sphere of Safety|RTR
1 Sungrace Pegasus|M15
1 Suture Priest|NPH
6 Swamp|NPH|1
4 Swamp|NPH|2
1 Tithe Drinker|DGM
1 Vizkopa Guildmage|GTC
1 Whip of Erebos|THS

[lujo]

Guys, are you using pets in quest mode? Or the plant? They seem to skew the balance in favour of the player immensly.

[friarsol]

Guys, are you using pets in quest mode? Or the plant? They seem to skew the balance in favour of the player immensly.

Yes, they are certainly helpful. I'm working on a way to reduce how much they can help especially for early duels.

[Fizanko]

Maybe a possible alternative would be that upgrading a pet/plant would not be possible by buying upgrades in the spellshop, but only happening when you move through a difficulty.

By example, you get the 1/1 base pet and have it like that as long as you face "easy" AI opponents, then when you reach the amount of wins required to have the "medium" AI opponents start to come, your base pet would then upgrade to its level2
the same for the "hard" AI opponent replacing the medium, the pet would upgrade to its level3.

Or just do not make the upgrade automatic and keep it the base 1/1, but each change of difficulty would make the next pet level upgrade available in bazaar

I think this would balance the efficiency of the pet according to the difficulty level.

[friarsol]

Maybe a possible alternative would be that upgrading a pet/plant would not be possible by buying upgrades in the spellshop, but only happening when you move through a difficulty.

Well, leveling and difficulty raising are actually based on different values, but yes. The way I have it in my test code is not being able to buy Pet Level X when you are Level < X. So I need to win 5 times (or whatever) to level up, once I level up I unlock the next purchase point for Pet/Wall. This way you can't spend all your early cash on a 2/1 Hastey pet, drop a Rancor on it, and put a beatdown on your opponent before they even get rolling for lots of early victories.

[lujo]

My experience is that the higher toughness pets, and the plant especially because of wither, break the control decks in favor regardless of difficulty. If the plant did not have wither, the opponent would at least attack you with 2 toughness creatures, this way is doesn't attack you until it's sure it can kill the plant and this is actually... very gamebreaking in theory or in practice.

Because it essentially turns enemy weenies into timewalks for you and having a 1/4 wall which gains you life and which the AI can't attack into, but which has 0 opportunity cost (doesn't cost a card, doesn't cost mana, you don't have to tap out), if it were an actual card would be worth hundreds of dollars.

Think about it, if there was a card which said: "You can only have 1 copy of this card in your deck. Before the game starts you may search your library and put it into play. It has 1/4, wither and taps to gain you life. If it leaves play remove it from the game." it would in the least force a free removal or bounce, and hose any deck which doesn't have removal but does have weenies.

Since the AI won't attack into wither, and doesn't seem too keen on removng it even though it's preventing him from attacking with most of his board, it warps matchups immensly, and you don't really feel the difficulty increase at all if you're using it. And that's just the plant, mind you. Guaranteed scry every turn for just 1 mana is about as bad, especially since it's on a 1/3 flying critter which also hoses weenies, but breaks anything that triggers off attacking or dealing damage (like bloodthirst, ninjas and various other things).

Not to mention that using them to easily win with any deck (and that's what they allow you to do), lets you get huge ammounts of money if you're playing shandalar (and you can always do that), since the concept of high prices on cards in old sets is really busted in forge since the cards themselves are not rare or exotic at all, so buying a pet is just a matter of beating up a few guys in shandalar.

The concept of pets, in essence, is fundamentally broken in MTG outside of maybe challenges. It kind of is a "self imposed rule against using" material, ofc, but it's still, it's kind of impossible to balance the game with them in mind, they break too many rules. Not to mention that testing opponents decks with a pet is in many cases going to lead to quest decks being way too strong for people who don't use them, and if you're trying to actually play MtG then you're not going to be using them just like you won't go out of your way to cheat by maindecking broken color hosers and stuff.

In the least bit the wither on the plant and the 3 toughness on the bird are way too good, I haven't tried the others in a while but I can imagine what it's like.

[lazylockie]

My experience is that the higher toughness pets, and the plant especially because of wither, break the control decks in favor regardless of difficulty. If the plant did not have wither, the opponent would at least attack you with 2 toughness creatures, this way is doesn't attack you until it's sure it can kill the plant and this is actually... very gamebreaking in theory or in practice.

Because it essentially turns enemy weenies into timewalks for you and having a 1/4 wall which gains you life and which the AI can't attack into, but which has 0 opportunity cost (doesn't cost a card, doesn't cost mana, you don't have to tap out), if it were an actual card would be worth hundreds of dollars.

Think about it, if there was a card which said: "You can only have 1 copy of this card in your deck. Before the game starts you may search your library and put it into play. It has 1/4, wither and taps to gain you life. If it leaves play remove it from the game." it would in the least force a free removal or bounce, and hose any deck which doesn't have removal but does have weenies.

Since the AI won't attack into wither, and doesn't seem too keen on removng it even though it's preventing him from attacking with most of his board, it warps matchups immensly, and you don't really feel the difficulty increase at all if you're using it. And that's just the plant, mind you. Guaranteed scry every turn for just 1 mana is about as bad, especially since it's on a 1/3 flying critter which also hoses weenies, but breaks anything that triggers off attacking or dealing damage (like bloodthirst, ninjas and various other things).

Not to mention that using them to easily win with any deck (and that's what they allow you to do), lets you get huge ammounts of money if you're playing shandalar (and you can always do that), since the concept of high prices on cards in old sets is really busted in forge since the cards themselves are not rare or exotic at all, so buying a pet is just a matter of beating up a few guys in shandalar.

The concept of pets, in essence, is fundamentally broken in MTG outside of maybe challenges. It kind of is a "self imposed rule against using" material, ofc, but it's still, it's kind of impossible to balance the game with them in mind, they break too many rules. Not to mention that testing opponents decks with a pet is in many cases going to lead to quest decks being way too strong for people who don't use them, and if you're trying to actually play MtG then you're not going to be using them just like you won't go out of your way to cheat by maindecking broken color hosers and stuff.

In the least bit the wither on the plant and the 3 toughness on the bird are way too good, I haven't tried the others in a while but I can imagine what it's like.

while I agree with (almost) everything you said, those pets help you level the field against AI broken stuff. You could face very hard opponents even if your deck isn't fine tuned yet, because the same way a pet sounds broken, so does multiple moxen into Master of Etherium turn 1.

just like going to Shandalar just to rack up some credits and get "free" pets feels like cheating for you, AI very hard vintage decks also feels like cheating for AI, depending on your current pool

[Fizanko]

Remember it's entirely possible to create a quest and disable the "Fantasy" setting that will get rid of all the advantages you could get from the Bazaar, pets included.

Everytime i start a quest in Ravnica or Innistrad it's what i do to enjoy the balance of those blocks more (as there's no multiple P9 in there) and in which bazaar advantages/pets are overkill then.

[lujo]

Eh, I'm actually in the mood to explore this issue because just the fact that it's there shows that some things probably weren't considered thoroughly enough, even if it's an optional thing. Pets don't "sound" broken, they're so ludicrously broken on a conceptual level that it has always been sort of amusing for me that someone even made them. I've seen it when people who just like programming and like a game figure out how to mod it and then put all sorts of stuff in there, but since they're not designers or often even hardcore enough gamers they just don't know what they're doing.

The only thing I don't care for in the fantasy mode are the pets and the lives bussiness - I like playing best of 5, I like challenges popping more often, and I like to have a way to earn money without having to ante-beat up shandalar guys. So let me say a few things about that first:

The concept of "old" blocks having ludicrously priced cards is currently broken in several ways:
1) you beat up guys in shandalar, the money in the market loses all meaning. Useless but plentiful commons and uncommons which are worth more than useful rares are a stupid idea in forge, and while it's a fun money cheat I'd prefer an actual no-money cheat which didn't require grinding or mess up the drafts.
2) The draft prices for the ludicrously overpriced sets (legends, antiquities, arabian nights, several others) are insane overpriced just because the cards, and especially the basic lands, are overpriced. This means that if you get stuck with one in the pool you NEED stupid ammounts of money to play it, or grind more until it goes away. This doesn't work at all. Especially because:
3) If you DO get into one of those drafts and win, which isn't too difficult, you get, for some reason, something like 30 boosters. That's a whole box of an overpriced set, most of which you'll never play, but you're almost guaranteed a set of all the chase stuff. And once you do this once, you've broken the bank - you can clear out the whole bazzar, and you can enter almost any draft (and challenge rewards look stupid by comparison). Do this once or twice and you're set for life.
4) You can also turn these ludicrous winnings into whatever boosters, too, which makes putting togather a whole set of something else v. easy.
5) If all this wasn't so, the AI opponents decks wouldn't have to be crazy good. I'm actually annoyed at the difficulty levels and the fact that there's a cap after which you unlock harder opponents. I set the easy at 33 wins, medium at 66 and hard at 99, but even that feel awkward. If you're going for a block constructed quest, you can be 50 wins and many drafts into the quest and not be remotely "ready" for medium enemies with stuff from a newer block or one with a different power level. I've got 0 interest in playing against ludicrous pro tour T1 decks, ever, because I have no interest in playing an equally stupid deck, at least in quest mode. You can't pick up the necessary pieces for that easily or quickly enough, and if you pick them up piece by piece you just ruin all the non-stupid difficulty tiers.

And it's sort of the same with pets - sure they help you against a concentration of the worst design mistakes and cross-block / cross-mode sinergies piled up in concentration, but the problem is that they're, by default, WORSE than most of those design mistakes and total overkill against anything that isn't like that. If I could set the easy wins limit to a 100, medium to 200, hard to 300, I'd enjoy it imensly and if I ever needed a pet against anything in those tiers it would simply mean that whoever was designing that tier arsed up.

Why are they worse than even lotuses and moxen?

| Open

Because they are resource free and completely change the game. The fully evolved plant reads as either one or more or all of these at the same time:

"You can play any deck draw-go until you draw enough mana and your win condition and most of the cards the AI can even have in a deck are not a threat to you" or
"You can simply never tap out until you're ready with a control deck, and you need to respond to a lot fewer threats than you otherwise would";
or "Devising a creature based deck the AI can functionally play against you becomes really, really hard";
or "The AI needs more burn to kill you";
or "The AI starts with one or more fewer cards in hand/deck as it'll need to waste removal on something you otherwise wouldn't have, which also means something which might be part of your win condition gets to live and otherwise wouldn't";
or "Diabolic edit reads "Pay 1B spend a card, it doesn't really do what it was supposed to do, any simetrical sac effects aren't very simetrical anymore";
or "You can mitigate the use of several fetches/painlands/shocklands with no real concequence";
or "You don't really have to sideboard or adjust your deck for various matchups to get some of these benefits";
or "You start with at least 3 or more extra life in most matches";
or "If any card is balanced by requireing you to have a creature on the board, it is no longer balanced, even more so because you didn't actually invest anything in game to have a creature on the board";
or "If you're deck would suffer because of a color protection on some opposing critters, as long as it's not pro green, which is actually pretty rare, you're doing good";
or "You get a free multi-purpose/metagame changing permanent on board but you don't have to account for it in deckbuilding, mana base, tapping out, mulliganing, no tempo loss, no card advantage loss, you'll never topdeck it when you need something else, it can't be bounced to the top of your library, etc, etc. Dark Ritual and Moxes and even Black Lotus aren't like that.";
or "The AI will not prioritize this thing because it doesn't really percieve it as a threat, and most removal doesn't actually work on it."

And that's just the plant. If it's even all there is to it, I didn't go into specifics of all the things it lets you do if you actually build to exploit it actively, and not just exploit it passively. But since you can have both it and the pet, it can get pretty bonkers. The pets are marginally less problematic because they are somewhat easier to get rid of via removal, and the AI percieves them as a threat and targets them more than it does the plant (and they don't have wither so they don't lock the board up so hard).

The pets do have their own list of ways they break the game by default, though.

So, I don't really feel obliged to tangle with decks which would require me to have something like that on my side. I don't feel like being able to beat obvious mistakes like skullclamp affinity and such warrants having to use pets. Those decks arent even "very hard" they're just mistakes (and if you build for it you can beat them without even going stupid, back when ravager and skullclamp were meta I had a R/G deck with only painlands at rare which beat several in every tourney.)

TLDR - those things are humongous overkill in any mode. The difficulty increases too steeply anyway and being able to beat someone with those doesn't mean anything. The difference is enormous except in certain matchups (certain board sweepers incidentally take them away, and some decks incidentally bypass them).


What I'd personally like would be the following:

- Ability to play quest fantasy mode with 20 life and no way to increase or decrease it. This just messes up metagames and individual card and strategy balancing for no good reason.
- No limits on how many wins it takes to unlock a tier of opponents, so I can set it to whatever. Even having to do a certain amount of appropriately tiered challenges and/or pay money to advance and definitely confirm it before it happens would be nice.
- Something done to the old sets card prices, draft prices and booster rewards for winning those drafts.
- Something done to the ante mechanism - medium tier opponents are a wealth of expensive lands, and losing a very expensive card means you possibly can't buy it back which is supremely annoying. I'd prefer it if the ante card was selected from an appropriate pool rather than the opponents deck (for various reasons), and if you could ante cards of your choice to match it in price instead of losing random cards mid-match. (I'd keep the ante on personally because I like the idea of winning random cards which aren't in my core pool, but winning them out of decks doesn't work that well).

[Fizanko]

- No limits on how many wins it takes to unlock a tier of opponents, so I can set it to whatever. Even having to do a certain amount of appropriately tiered challenges and/or pay money to advance and definitely confirm it before it happens would be nice.

Maybe a possible solution would be a new "Ascend" button to appear (where there is the Travel button) when you reach the quota of win for advancing difficulty tier, so you can choose to stay at the tier you currently play with, or click the button and get into the next difficulty tier.
This way none would be forced to go play against decks they don't like.
I know nothing to coding unfortunately so i can't help to see if this is even possible or too hard with how Forge is designed.

- Something done to the old sets card prices, draft prices and booster rewards for winning those drafts.

I remember someone suggesting to remove the file "all-prices.txt" from youruserdata\Forge\Cache\db\ to work around very huge price for old sets , maybe doing this can help to get prices more in line with what you gain ingame even for old sets.

edit : managed to get an achievement against the medium AI "Leela" on main world


With my slightly improved white/black deck

Healing Hurt | Open

1 Ajani's Pridemate|M15
1 Angelic Accord|M14
1 Archangel of Thune|M14
1 Bloodrite Invoker|ROE
1 Child of Night|M15
1 Crescendo of War|COM
2 Daggerdrome Imp|RTR
1 Death Grasp|C13
1 Debt to the Deathless|DGM
1 Divine Favor|M14
1 Elspeth, Knight-Errant|DDF
1 Fiendslayer Paladin|M14
2 Font of Vigor|JOU
1 Indulgent Tormentor|M15
1 King Macar, the Gold-Cursed|JOU
1 Mark of the Vampire|M14
1 Master of the Feast|JOU
1 Necromancer's Covenant|ARB
1 Nyx-Fleece Ram|JOU
1 Ordeal of Heliod|THS
1 Orzhov Cluestone|DGM
1 Orzhov Guildgate|DGM
1 Orzhov Guildgate|GTC
1 Phalanx Leader|THS
1 Pharika's Chosen|JOU
8 Plains|NPH|1
4 Plains|NPH|2
1 Sangromancer|MBS
1 Sanguine Bond|M14
1 Silverblade Paladin|AVR
1 Soul Warden|EXO
1 Soulmender|M14
1 Sphere of Safety|RTR
1 Sungrace Pegasus|M15
1 Suture Priest|NPH
6 Swamp|NPH|1
4 Swamp|NPH|2
1 Tithe Drinker|DGM
1 Vizkopa Guildmage|GTC
1 Whip of Erebos|THS

[Fizanko]

I'm on a new quest in which i'm trying to focus on theros-only block cards, but in main world.

I've been trying to build a minotaur-only deck , but it's very hard because it needs "support" cards to make them actually shine, and those minotaur supports are very rare.
I decided to go with a red/black deck (most minotaurs are red, but as i had some nice black cards that could be useful, i went to this dual color)

Fortunately after a lot of duels, i'm starting to get a good Theros minotaur deck going and i hope to improve it with some more lucky rewards.

And to my surprise, i got for the first time since a long while i managed to get a 5 turns win with it


Here's my current deck

Doomed Horns | Open

1 Archetype of Aggression+|BNG
1 Armory of Iroas|JOU
1 Aspect of Gorgon|JOU
1 Baleful Eidolon|THS
3 Deathbellow Raider|THS
1 Erebos's Emissary|THS
1 Everflame Eidolon|BNG
1 Fanatic of Mogis|THS
2 Fearsome Temper|BNG
1 Felhide Minotaur|THS
1 Felhide Petrifier|JOU
3 Felhide Spiritbinder|BNG
2 Flurry of Horns|JOU
1 Font of Return|JOU
2 Gild|BNG
1 Hall of Triumph|JOU
1 Hammer of Purphoros|THS
1 Kragma Butcher|BNG
3 Kragma Warcaller|THS
1 Lash of the Whip|THS
1 Lightning Strike|THS
5 Mountain|THS|1
4 Mountain|THS|3
4 Mountain|THS|4
1 Oracle of Bones|BNG
1 Purphoros's Emissary|THS
1 Purphoros, God of the Forge|THS
1 Ragemonger|BNG
1 Spiteful Returned|BNG
4 Swamp|THS|1
3 Swamp|THS|3
4 Swamp|THS|4
1 Whip of Erebos|THS

[Pux]

Playing main world with only Theros cards as a reward is one of my favourite things to do. I never managed to build a good minotaur deck though. The problem is the lack of bomb-ey cards in that archetype imo.

The deck that usually was my favourite was monoblack-devotion. Your main priority when building it is having 4x Gray Merchant of Asphodel, add some bombs, removal and grave shenanigans and you're good to go. The deck is absolutely hilarious and feels unfair sometimes. You can win regularly without even attacking once, simply through Merchants.

The second deck I loved was Blue-white heroes. If you play a T3 Wingsteed Rider into a T4 Hopeful Eidolon, you've most likely won the game. A 4/4 lifelinking flier on turn 4 is just amazing.

Currently, I'm playing with only Shards Of Mirrordin cards. Currently I'm playing a Monowhite Splicer deck

W Splicers | Open

1 Auriok Edgewright|SOM
2 Blade Splicer|NPH
2 Dismember|NPH
1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite|NPH
1 Elspeth Tirel|SOM
1 Etched Monstrosity|NPH
1 Glimmerpoint Stag|SOM
1 Gold Myr|SOM
1 Hero of Bladehold|MBS
1 Inquisitor Exarch|NPH
1 Karn Liberated|NPH
2 Master Splicer|NPH
1 Phyrexian Metamorph|NPH
1 Plains|NPH|1
6 Plains|SOM|1
7 Plains|SOM|2
3 Plains|SOM|3
1 Plains|SOM|4
1 Porcelain Legionnaire|NPH
1 Sensor Splicer|NPH
1 Sword of War and Peace|NPH
1 Tempered Steel|SOM
1 Victory's Herald|MBS
1 Wurmcoil Engine|SOM

I also got one Wurmcoil Engine in a booster pack (as you can see in the deck). Guess what card will be in every deck I build from now on? But seriously, that card is just really broken. I like it

[timmermac]

My external hard drive has officially died, so I've started over and have put Forge on the internal drive. My quest preferences now feature 500 wins per level, so I'm wondering if the new pet purchase restrictions can be made optional. I happen to like my 2/1 vigilance/lifelink wolf pet and my 1/4 wither plant wall.

[lujo]

Yeah, should be optional probably, for people who like it.

Also, I'm having a blast with a Masques/Time Spiral blocks (all 3 sets in both) quest, and can recommend it to anyone looking to explore older sets. Set the difficulty advancement high though, just in case, and the only real caveat is that mana fixing is going to be problematic without ante land snipes.

Time spiral is probably the best fundamental and supplementary block for just about any older block as it features a smattering and development of many of the older block themes, so whatever you branch out into you're gonna have something fun to add to it.

Masques has actually aged rather well, the rare artifacts are sub par (but Time Spiral provides bomby rares), and the strongers stuff is actually bloody strong - you've got "free" spells, rebels, dark rituals, counterspells, various spellshapers, a bunch of cards which are actually great when paired with newer stuff. It's problem was mainly that it didn't play too well with Saga and Invasion and that stuff it does play well with was only really printed later.

The drafts let you figure cards out and are quite different - MMM is a slow and ponderous format which lets you pick stuff up and grows on you once you figure out how to deal with the walls and rebels, PNM is a brutal, fast and deadly format (if played right) which is awesome once you start understanding the cards which look bad but actually aren't (Prophecy is a very cool limited set, and Agent of Shauku is a complete bomb in the right deck). TTT is loaded with all sort of weirdness but lets you build loads of different stuff, and FPT is that times a million - every draft match is like a challenge.

Put togather, if you get into the drafts right they allow you to build interesting decks. If there was more choice in which direction to unlock stuff it would deffinitelly be the best combo as you could really develop your pool in any possible way:

If you wanted to go with spellshapers, madness and flashback you'd branch out into Oddisey and Innistrad. If you wanted to develop the strong blue skies, rebels, mercenaries and such - Lorwyn, for slivers, shadow, suicide black and branching into goblins - Tempest and Onslaught. For cycling - Onslaught and Saga which also develops green and lets you build on echo, which plays well with the free spells and suspend anyway. Saga, Masques and Time Spiral also allow for a MEAN green stompy, and if you want to cheeze that add Mirage (which also has flanking support, some graveyard centric stuff in Weatherlight and general goodies in Visions).

Very, very fun, baciscally most of the stuff you unlock, you'll have some fundament and good general basis, except multicolor blocks which I kind of find boring in general except for the domain mechanic. Still even they have fun stuff and stuff to build upon if you start out this way.