Sarpadia and the FE Draft

[Xyx]

If a set has high average card quality, at a time when there aren't all that many MtG cards around, it means the average cards is better than most MtG cards in existance. Which it actually was, and so it can't be a contender for the worst set ever.

You could design a set full of cards like Nessian Courser, Cancel and Searing Spear. Every single card balanced and above average! What's not to like? Turns out people would rather have one great card than a box full of above average cards.

Legends had a low percentage of usable cards and lower overall power level, but it was 10X rarer

And that low percentage of cards is 10 times better!

if Legends was as overprinted "everybody has a million Mana Drain" would be a meme.

Its scarcity does not alter the fact that it is arguably too good for Legacy, a statement that cannot be applied to any Fallen Empires card.

Playables being anywhere except common is awful for players, and has nothing to do with set quality (except when it comes to drafting). It's just a sales thing.

I agree 100% here.

Most people who are opening a booster would rather open a booster with a high chance of getting multiple playable cards than a low chance of opening something really broken.

But I have to disagree here. Even if I didn't already have a million Cancels, I still wouldn't want any. But have you ever seen Mana Drain in action?

Well, the chase cards from those old sets were mostly ludicrous

Compared to the "above average" quality of Fallen Empires, definitely.

But since we have an electronic platform where what people remember or don't remember doesn't matter, where you can see for yourself if all the cards work as intended and the thing got properly re-templated, no reason to insist on a meme and miss out on a rather good set. It got screwed over by history, and if all the cards worked it would actually play better on a computer than it did in RL, too.

I suspect some seriously rose-tinted glasses on your part. I obviously believe that the whole "Fallen Empires sux" thing is more than just a meme. I have been there myself and experienced the suckage firsthand. I certainly gave it the benefit of the doubt because I bought two boxes under the assumption that it would be great, like every Magic set ever. Except it turned out to be full of disappointment. This is my personal experience we're talking about here. I'm not just regurgitating some meme. I obviously didn't draft* it but I wasn't comparing it to moxen either.

* Like rarity, Limited is also a sales tool to charge people for stuff that they don't actually want.

But saying it's a bad card, or even that it was, and not worth a second glance, or unused... It's just not true.

We obviously have very different ideas of what constitutes a "bad" card. I myself am perfectly comfortable labeling a card that has seen fringe play (Spore Cloud) as "bad", especially if it doesn't even hold up to other cards that have also only seen fringe play (Tangle, Moment's Peace.)

I don't care if a card technically belongs to the 51st percentile and is therefore part of the best half of cards ever printed. 90% of Magic is bad. I play both competitive and kitchen table Magic, but I still can't find a compelling use for most of whatever is in Standard at the time. The only reason anyone plays with those cards is because they can't do better, either 1) because they're playing Standard (a format in which 90% of Magic is banned), 2) because they're playing Limited (a format literally designed to force you to make do with bad cards*) or 3) because they just started playing and all they have is the Deckbuilder's Toolkit that their parents bought and a pile of draft rejects that a friend gave them. These are all perfectly valid reasons to play with bad cards, but they don't make bad cards un-bad.

* Again, Limited being the perfect excuse for Wizards to keep peddling crap.

Aeolipile is inefficient on-board burn

It's also miles better than Elven Lyre but still not actively good.

If (Conch Horn) was available as part of block or standard with miracles in it, do you really, honestly think it would not be used?

You could craft an environment for basically any card to make par, even One with Nothing. That a card actually could do (or even has done) something sometime somewhere is not compelling evidence by itself.

You do understand Bitterblossom is "good" card, yes? It's very similar to it.

I also understand that Bitterblossom costs a grand total of only 2 mana whereas Homarid Spawning Bed costs 2 + 3 + whatever you paid for the creature you sac.

What faeries do is ideal, you can play them whenever and they have CiP abilities AND they generally have a hefty stats-to-cost disparity because of the flash and the evasion and the whathaveyou. You just sit back, draw-go , play your faeries and casually turn them into vawes of tokens.

Which faeries am I saccing? Vendilion Clique? Mistbind Clique? Scion of Oona?

Used to be a fun casual thing to do with High Tide and Urza's Legacy free dudes, too, if you wanted to play them but didn't want to bore people with more deadly combo shenannigans.

I'm getting a strong vibe of "it's a thing you can do that's fun but not particularly good". While I have yet to meet someone who doesn't like making waves of tokens, the "not particularly good" part troubles me. This perfectly describes my view of the whole Fallen Empires set: you can do some fun things but it's not particularly good.

not everyting lobbed at you was Wrath of God , Swords to Plowshares or Incinerate.

No, some of it was Terror or Control Magic. Or just Lightning Bolt in response to your aura. There's a reason auras have a bad rap.

3 mana black 1/3 stopped a lot of aggro

I'm sure it did, but you didn't see anyone playing Wall of Heat either, and that's twice as big!

If it sounds far fetched, well, you haven't played with or against Armor Thrull back in the day.

It's true that I haven't, but that's because everyone agreed that it was bad.

)Actually, that's not completely true. I have played against it and shown people the error of their ways.)

I also saw some Basal Thrull bashing.

Well, we are talking about a time in which everyone and their mum had Sol Ring, Basalt Monolith, Dark Ritual, Mana Vault...

Deep Spawn was regarded as a good reanimation target because, well, among other things it had hexproof.

I have personally slapped Dance of the Dead on Deep Spawn FTW! This decade, even! At an Oldschool tournament. There may have been Bazaar of Baghdad involved.

Just put an Invisible Stalker down and then (Farrel's Mantle) on him

Again, Invisible Stalker being the good card here.

we did have acess to a lot of Fallen Empires and played it a bunch so we understood the cards themselves a lot better.

Hey now, don't give me that "we understood it better" stuff. My meta also had a lot of Fallen Empires floating around and a lot of people trying stuff out, but aside from the Hymns/Grenades/Orders it just failed to put up results.

while I don't really mind anyone's opinion on anything, somebody being cavalier about the whole FE was horrible is just a red flag for me to attack.

Please accept my apologies for waving red flags. I love hearing your side of the story, though. It's a fresh perspective at the very least.

As for which archetypes allready work, I'm having trouble testing it because I have to figure out which cards the AI keeps not putting into decks.

Don't rely on the AI to build decks! It'll take forever for the stars to align. Much more practical to build the decks yourself, then give them to the AI.

[friarsol]

Stop bickering please. This is a Forge board, not an argue how good or bad someone's favored set is. If we can't do that, I'm going to have to lock the thread.

[dingbat1]

Stop bickering please. This is a Forge board, not an argue how good or bad someone's favored set is. If we can't do that, I'm going to have to lock the thread.

actually, I'm kinda hoping they have this discussion for more sets. I'm learning a lot. Especially when the talk turns to specific cards, and how to play them (or not to play them)

And so far it hasn't devolved into personal attacks, just mere arguing over the efficacy of cards or the quality of sets

[lujo]

Friarsol is right in that bickering will get us nowhere, and the discussion would be heading towards personal easily becuse took positions which are, or seem to be, to a degree subjective. So if I were to attack this position, I would be attacking a concrete person even tough I would say exactly the same things to anyone who took that position.

friarsol, pls, don't lock it, this is ultimately unimportant | Open

We are debating personal views of the game, and in case this wasn't clear:

But I have to disagree here. Even if I didn't already have a million Cancels, I still wouldn't want any. But have you ever seen Mana Drain in action?

To which my answer would be "Yes, and it was clear to me that it was designed by someone who didn't know what they were doing and should have been fired."

And this is essentially what happened, the two guys who made that set never made another one. The main reason why sets shortly afterwards could not have cards like those in them, was because cards like those should never have been made in the first place and WotC were terrified of making more of them. Mana Drain is not a good card, it's the kind a card you play against someone reasonable, and then that someone politely asks you to take those cards out of your deck if you mean to play another game with them.

The main thing about the ancient "meta" is that is was predominantly loaded with cards which were not designed for constructed as we know it. This is why many of them are restricted where they are legal. But even for non-restricted ones, you were literally not meant to ever see 2 of the same rare next to each other as far as people designing them were concerned. This is how Ancestral Recall happened - that's not a "strong card" that's a card designed for a different game entirely, one where every player only ever opens a few boosters or a sealed deck and if the owner of Ancestral Recall grows too tiresome they will lose it to ante eventually. They even knew it was retarded when they made it.

Xyx, and I suppose many players who don't know or understand this, are under the impression that "limited" is the weird, alien, strange format where they make you play bad cards", while constructed is the way things were meant to be done. But it's actually the other way around. When cards Xyx is talking about, like Serra Angel , were being made the assumption very firmly in place was that noone was ever going to have anything remotely like a constructed deck. Even something like "the deck" was unimaginable - it would take someone collecting too many different and specific rares. If you were there with the people playtesting alpha and you told them "This card is bad because Serra Angel exists, and everyone will just put Serra Angel in the decks instead!" - they would laugh at you.

Limited is a recreation of the conditions under which the original core game was conceived. Draft wasn't invented by WotC, it was invented by players spontaneously. Draft came about because one guy would be looking for blue cards, and another guy would be looking for black cards, etc, and it was a way to get more of what you're looking for from opening boosters. Then people would play games with those cards because it was cool and non-degenerate. The cube was originally invented all the way back then in order to play without the cheezy crap and essentially play limited without paying for boosters. WotC started sanctioning draft because it sold boosters, but quickly realized that it was the only way to keep reinventing environments similar to what the original game was intended for.

Constructed with more than one or two "environments" in it was historically always more of a sideshow train-wreck. Many people I know only ever played it when a deck could be made with leftover powerful commons and uncommons from drafts - often times when a red deck had a shot in a metagame or when design mistakes like Flametongue Kavu snuck into uncommon. But you knew what you were doing - you were exploiting your ability to spot a card which should not have been made or older commons and uncommons or even a rare you happen to have look quietly degenerate compared to what's popular and you go in to exploit it. Most cards weren't really meant to be used in constructed, "bad" ones OR "good" ones.

Especially the good ones - most of those are the same thing as Ancestral Recall , parts of a cycle which is more or less ok except for that one card. Or new mechanic misjudgments like Firebolt and Deep Analysis were for flashback. Or just cards obviously made to dominate a metagame or two because people at the time were complaining about a color being bad so WotC threw them a bone (long list). Or they just went and said, let's make a retarded card because I feel like it (too many to list). Or, and these are my favorite, printing errors like Rancour (supposed to cost 2G). Or Skullclamp - it's not a good card, it's something that noone involved making with can explain. Sometimes this happens in limited too, when a common is opressively good, but most constructed is nothing but this, mistakes packed in inordinate frequency or bundled with utility and streamlined to the point of absurdity.

Also, there are things Xyx is just completely wrong about, because it wasn't actually like that in the old days, at least not right away so his attitude really rubs me the wrong way. It's too internety, there's too much "it is known" to it which isn't an attitude from way back then I remember.

Most people absolutely had no clue about the objective value of things back then. Juzam Djinn and Serendib Efreet , for example, were initially seen as junk rares because the "tourney scene" meta was at first about mostly creatureless decks. EDIT: Or because of Walls. Really, no joke, ye olde days were loaded with walls that you couldn't really get through so those two would sit there, do nothing and ping ther owner. Icy Manipulator was a huuuuuuuuge chase, in part because of the rules. Serra Angel was a chase card. People also didn't even necessarily have access to spoiler lists (back in those days the internet was still pretty new) and folks who got playsets of stuff were not guys opening boosters but guys who spoted things ahead of the pack and traded actual junk cards to kids in exchange for rares (rarity wasn't noted, internet was pretty new, I made a pretty penny this way multiple times). Ball Lightning went for 1$ , Thunder Spirit went for 20$. So folks with the attitude he desplays could be swearing by one card before a tourney and laughing at other people for using junk, and swearing by the yesterday's junk the next day when it turned out that it wasn't junk after all. Kitchen tables, effectively limited environments, casual play - that was shaping the prices and often opinions. You could trade Sengir Vampire and Shivan Dragon to casual people for a bunch but noone seriously played them in tourneys. There weren't any official rules for tourney's either, so what the meta was really depended on who was running the tourney - Serra Angel was banned some places, other places Hypnotic Spectre, and Juggernaut was widely considered a powerful card. Banding got a bad rep because people couldn't understand how it works (it's a bit on the broken side for a combat ability). So whenever anyone idealizes "the good old days", take it with a grain of salt - they were a mess of kids, noobs and hustlers flailing wildly and mostly latching onto design mistakes and twisting a game out of it's intended shape.

Another thing Xyx is dead wrong about is why FE ended up overprinted but not selling "as opposed to other sets which people were mad for". Retailers were asking for unrealistic numbers of product from WotC for the previous sets, because WotC couldn't produce enough. WotC didn't have enough money and logistics, it wasn't that the demand was so huge. They also tended to prefer certain retailers, so you had to make your demand look huge not to get overlooked and you'd never get what you asked for but just a % of what you asked for. So retailers got to ordering more and more knowing WotC will only deliver a fraction. But WotC kinda tried a bit harder for The Dark which lead to the Dark being, in retrospect, overprinted at 75 million because WotC were trying to meet what looked to them as a huge demand which actually wasn't necessarily there. I've heard people grumble about The Dark, too (you wouldn't believe what the chase cards there were, Witch Hunter and Angry Mob... Fallen Empires Dwarves were in competitive red lists before Ball Lightning actually got into them. True fact.). For FE WotC thought "All right, let's try to meet the demand." and suddenly retailers found themselves with about, and this is a realistic estimate I think, 40 times more product than there was demand for. Completely uncalled for. And the set turned out to be the one where they pulled their s**t together and printed the more appealing cards at common (as the sets thus far did recieve feedback about the average card pulled from a booster being lousy, so they tried to give people playable commons), but if they printed Alpha Duals in FE those would be cheap as dirt now.

Which explains the low price. If you look at competitive decklists, FE cards are there along with the others, white, red and black. Most cards in the older decklists are either from Alpha or some standouts from Antiquities, with most creatures being a few standouts from the rather blatantly above the curve Arabian Nights. I was peddling playables from FE for years, the demand was there.

Anyway, enough of this. Xyx - ty for the list. There are cards that don't work properly, which is keeping FE from drafting right, and any kind of Sarpadia from making actual sense. Me and you fighting comes down to how either of us perceives limited and constructed and I can't change your mind on this. Ultimately it's our tastes that differ, and what does anyone even care about it...

FE is not my favourite set (that's actually Oddysey which is a hot mess in many regards, but this isn't a topic for talking about my favourite set).

That's all I have to say on the subject of the set and I'll get to the cards and archetypes next post, so please don't lock the thread. I've been trying things out and banding not working right is quite a problem, honestly, and not just for this set.

I've managed to get Thrull Champion into AI decks, the AI seems to be handling it fine. It was disabled but I can't understand why as I haven't seen the AI do anything wildly off-kilter.

If there are bugs with individual cards, and there are and I can confirm a bunch of those from Xyx's list, where do I report them exactly?

[friarsol]

Don't worry, I really didn't want to lock this thread, it just seemed to have gone off the rails a bit and I've seen the two of you interact enough on the board that I wasn't worried about needing to lock it. Just wanted to get things back on point.

I've managed to get Thrull Champion into AI decks, the AI seems to be handling it fine. It was disabled but I can't understand why as I haven't seen the AI do anything wildly off-kilter.

If there are bugs with individual cards, and there are and I can confirm a bunch of those from Xyx's list, where do I report them exactly?

Remove random deck flag is basically a flag that says "The AI can play this card, but this card is really suited for a specific type of deck. A randomly generated deck shouldn't use it."

Remove AI Deck is a flag that says "The AI either a) may use this card terribly causing major play detriments or b) may use this card illegally which is bad" We try to limit how many B cards exist, but there aren't that many AI devs on the team.

For bugs on individual cards you can follow the link in my signature, the short of which is "If you have a beta, post it in the beta thread" "If you are on the svn/snapshot builds, post it in the snapshot thread with the revision number." But you should read the link in my signature anyway, cause it's full of awesome info.

[dingbat1]

I may be wrong, but, here's my thoughts:

The main thing about the ancient "meta" is that is was predominantly loaded with cards which were not designed for constructed as we know it. This is why many of them are restricted where they are legal.

The cards didn't become restricted until after they were released. They had an idea for a cool game, playtested it, realized it was awesome, and released it. Once it got released, and the game got a lot of play, they realized that some cards were way more powerful than intended, and so the restricted list was created to address that unintended imbalance.

Xyx, and I suppose many players who don't know or understand this, are under the impression that "limited" is the weird, alien, strange format where they make you play bad cards", while constructed is the way things were meant to be done. But it's actually the other way around. When cards Xyx is talking about, like Serra Angel , were being made the assumption very firmly in place was that noone was ever going to have anything remotely like a constructed deck. Even something like "the deck" was unimaginable - it would take someone collecting too many different and specific rares. If you were there with the people playtesting alpha and you told them "This card is bad because Serra Angel exists, and everyone will just put Serra Angel in the decks instead!" - they would laugh at you.

I don't think they really thought it through quite that much. They just released cards, and figured people would make decks out of them. That's pretty much the definition of "constructed". The original thought was that the "expansions" would be alternative versions, like block constructed are today. That's why they almost released Arabian Nights with a pink background. The idea for limited came later.
(I actually played in a few competitions in the early days, and the only format in existence was constructed)
My understanding is that limited really only started to take off around the time of ice age / 4th edition.

Constructed with more than one or two "environments" in it was historically always more of a sideshow train-wreck. Many people I know only ever played it when a deck could be made with leftover powerful commons and uncommons from drafts - often times when a red deck had a shot in a metagame or when design mistakes like Flametongue Kavu snuck into uncommon. But you knew what you were doing - you were exploiting your ability to spot a card which should not have been made or older commons and uncommons or even a rare you happen to have look quietly degenerate compared to what's popular and you go in to exploit it. Most cards weren't really meant to be used in constructed, "bad" ones OR "good" ones.

Let's be honest. In the early days, no one thought like that, you just grabbed whatever cool cards you had that you could make a deck with.
Wasn't there even a time where competition rules mandated using cards from several different sets?

Most people absolutely had no clue about the objective value of things back then. Juzam Djinn and Serendib Efreet , for example, were initially seen as junk rares because the "tourney scene" meta was at first about mostly creatureless decks.

True, we really didn't know what we were doing. the value of Black Lotus wasn't readily apparent in the beginning. I know I didn't think Moxes were all that. And quirky cards had to show their value before anyone understood. (As an example, I didn't think much about kird ape, until I lost against it).

People also didn't even necessarily have access to spoiler lists

Originally WoC didn't want people knowing even how many cards were in a set.

whenever anyone idealizes "the good old days", take it with a grain of salt - they were a mess of kids, noobs and hustlers flailing wildly and mostly latching onto design mistakes and twisting a game out of it's intended shape.

the good old days the cards weren't as good, but the game was brand new, which made it exciting. We were all noobs back them. There were a lot of design mistakes. And the game's intended shape didn't last very long. (unless the intent was just for WotC to make a lot of money). WotC was still trying to figure out what to do with this wildly successful game, and it took several years for the game to really take shape.

Another thing Xyx is dead wrong about is why FE ended up overprinted but not selling "as opposed to other sets which people were mad for". Retailers were asking for unrealistic numbers of product from WotC for the previous sets, because WotC couldn't produce enough. WotC didn't have enough money and logistics, it wasn't that the demand was so huge.

The demand was bigger than expected, but yeah, this is pretty much all correct. Retailers couldn't get enough cards, so they put in ever bigger orders, hoping to get bigger numbers. (but, as a player, yeah, the old sets sold out pretty darn quick). When WotC ramped up production, retailers actually received the amount they ordered, and were stuck with far more boxes than they could sell

if they printed Alpha Duals in FE those would be cheap as dirt now.

yeah, no, they'd still be in demand. Duals are the best lands ever printed. Sure, they'd be worth a lot less if there were a lot more of them, but they would still be in demand. Most Fallen Empires cards just aren't that special. And the good cards it does have are nowhere near as versatile. I absolutely love goblin warrens, but, it's only useful in a goblin tribal deck. And even then, it's easy to overlook (or not use).

[lujo]

Um, the "limited-constructed" thing, what I was trying to say is that the cards weren't really tested for what the constructed meta's ended up being like. What they were tested for is way more similar to what limited looks like, basically sealed decks with a bunch of boosters and a few adjustments. Not tweaked setlists with 4X thisrare 4X thatrare. EDIT: (That's factcheckable, or at least used to be!) And Fallen Empires was the first one made under the (mistaken) assumption that the average player will get 4 X of each card in a set, or at least have acess to it (see below).

And yes, the "block constructed" thing is spot on - the invention of actual limited later down the road was a godsend for them because they figured out THAT was how they keep stuff apart and less degenerate. This was a huge problem for them, one they didn't know how to really solve, and Ice Age is loaded with reprints because of this. Bascally "draft" is the closest it gets to what the game was orignally imagined to work, and weirdly this hasn't changed at all.

The really funny thing is why FE ended up good for limited. The reason sets sold out really fast was that WotC sent small ammounts to many retailers, and there was a certain elemet of speculators buying up boxes (speculation of the sort was a 90ties thing in genral). So to players it looked like cards were drying up really fast (because individual vendors only got small stocks, and those were often "raided" by speculators), but to WotC it looked like there was huge demand and that people were regularly trying to buy whole sets. But there was complaints that many cards ware garbage (occasionally even insanely good cards, because who could tell? Noobs everywhere! ). So they went and made a set which playes really well if you get the whole set. There's no random wacky chaff in it, every single card is there for a reason (power be damned) and you can make many different decks out of it. Turns out this is how you make a good draft environment! However, this "sunk" the set becuase the people who were buying boxes were mostly speculators who saw that there was no money/trades to be made off the set because the "good stuff was at common". It was a case of early magic actually being more of a novelty bubble than a true sucess.

But let's get to the cards, I promise, no more of this stuff!

EDIT: Just one more thing! You know what blocks Kird Ape all day and then makes something else annoyingly difficult to bolt? Armor Thrull

[dingbat1]

yep, pretty much in agreement.

Not sure if Armored Thrull had been released yet when I was shown the power of the kird ape, but I doubt it would matter. there are plenty of other 3 mana cards that would do the trick, it's just that with a Taiga you've got a 2/3 creature dropping on your first turn. Or more likely turn 1 forest and kird ape, turn 2 mountain and a mad gorilla.


edit: don't get me wrong, I had decks that used thrulls too. I was merely pointing out that until you see something in play, you might not realize how awesome a card/combo is. That was especially true when everyone was a noob and there was no (real) internet. Kird Ape was deceptive because of the prevalence of mono colored decks. Hell, everyone I knew thought channel was a crap card... until we/they learned how to use it with fireball/disintegrate. And I still remember the look on this kid's face when he used it with braingeyser on himself (with a library of leng) and I forked it.
My best deck at the time was fast black/red no creatures. Fireball, disintegrate, lightning bolt, fork, Mana flare, dark ritual, drain life, demonic tutor, and I forget what else. howling mine, I think. earthquake? it's been twenty-something years, I forget. I just remember I usually won pretty quickly. Max the damage against your opponent before s/he brings the big creatures into play. Remove it if you have to.

[Xyx]

Mana Drain is not a good card

But it's also not a bad card. Let's put it in a third category: "too good".

Xyx, and I suppose many players who don't know or understand this, are under the impression that "limited" is the weird, alien, strange format where they make you play bad cards", while constructed is the way things were meant to be done.

I'm not saying that's how Magic started out in 1993, but it is what Magic has been to me ever since *I* started in 1994.

WotC started sanctioning draft because it sold boosters

I can see why they sanctioned it:

• Printing Magic cards is like printing money.
• Printing cards for Standard is like printing money that self-destructs after 18 months.
• Printing cards for Limited is like printing money that self-destructs after four hours!

there are things Xyx is just completely wrong about, because it wasn't actually like that in the old days, at least not right away so his attitude really rubs me the wrong way. It's too internety, there's too much "it is known" to it which isn't an attitude from way back then I remember.

Let's both speak for ourselves. I speak from personal experience, not from whatever I read on the internet (which I didn't even have in 1994.) I also did well at some Oldschool tournaments (which means I have played the 1995 format at a competitive level and with the benefit of two more decades of insight than anybody had at the time.) I also average a 20/2 record when playtesting my own quest worlds. You don't have to be impressed with these credentials, but they should at least illustrate that I'm not completely clueless.

Remove AI Deck is a flag that says "The AI either a) may use this card terribly causing major play detriments or b) may use this card illegally which is bad" We try to limit how many B cards exist, but there aren't that many AI devs on the team.

*cough*Lion's Eye Diamond*cough*

Wasn't there even a time where competition rules mandated using cards from several different sets?

That was because of Homelands, which I will admit is actually worse than Fallen Empires. Wizards wanted to showcase their new set (which was rushed through development under rather peculiar circumstances) on the Pro Tour, and obviously the only way to get the pros to put those cards into their decks was to force them.

When WotC ramped up production, retailers actually received the amount they ordered, and were stuck with far more boxes than they could sell

According to Mark Rosewater, Wizards warned the retailers that this time they would really get the amount they ordered. Not everyone believed it, obviously.

the invention of actual limited later down the road was a godsend for them because they figured out THAT was how they keep stuff apart and less degenerate. This was a huge problem for them, one they didn't know how to really solve, and Ice Age is loaded with reprints because of this.

Again according to Mark Rosewater, Ice Age is full of reprints because it was designed to be something of a core set. I think the same applies to Mirage/Visions.

there was complaints that many cards ware garbage (occasionally even insanely good cards, because who could tell? Noobs everywhere! )

Well, to be fair, some of those insanely good cards (such as Lion's Eye Diamond) actually were garbage at the time. It took the printing of other cards to make them good later on.

You know what blocks Kird Ape all day and then makes something else annoyingly difficult to bolt? Armor Thrull

And all that for the low, low cost of only three mana! Dark Ritual that thing out on turn 1 and you won't even have to take 2-4 damage from that Kird Ape first!

[RumbleBBU]

I would just like to thank everyone involved in this thread for the nostalgia and memories, and the mods for not locking this up even though the thread was not perhaps 100% on topic for this sub-forum.

It is interesting that some consider FE the worst kind of dog exrement ever dropped on MtG players and others consider it a strong and balanced set. Even rarer, these days, to see two such people duke it out (yet in a polite, gentlemanly fashion) on a public forum.

FWIW, I can understand both extremes - to a degree. Fallen Empires had lots of strong, usable cards that did have tournament impact for a good time. It was probably also more 'balanced' than the previous sets that tended to turn up various kinds of broken bombs. OTOH, the lack of such bombs was easy to perceive as 'weakness' compared to the previous sets, especially when many of the key cards were given away as Commons while the higher rarities were rather underwhelming. That and the overprinting factor, compared to the expectations, turned into an unhealthy equation for the set and its fame. Players were expecting more bombs to battle the bombs from the previous sets.

Finally, inspired mainly by this thread, I have decided to start a new Quest: a low-power Quest. Which low-power sets should I use to battle opponents that have access to all power cards? (Read more and pick sets for me, viewtopic.php?f=26&t=19230 )

[dingbat1]

Just to add to that, and my last input.

I liked fallen empires. a lot. Some of my most fun decks contained a lot of FE cards.
But, my powerful / competitive decks barely contained any cards from the set. If I just wanted to beat down my opponent, or when we could use different decks for best out of 3 and I had lost a game, there wouldn't be a single FE card in sight (not even Hymn to Tourach).
But when I played casual, goblin, thallid, and merfolk decks were the order of the day. (no thrulls though. they sucked )

[lujo]

darnit, decent mtg design conversations at are too good to pass up | Open

Mana Drain is not a good card

But it's also not a bad card. Let's put it in a third category: "too good".

What it is is "too powerful". And what I wrote about "this is the kind of card people would just ask you to take out of yor deck, please" - that's an exact assupmtion they were made under! Garfield on Arabian Nights: "As I mentioned, I was worried that with the hurried development of Arabian Nights, the set would be broken or that people would just not want to play against it." and the whole "different card backs" thing was thought up so that it would be easy to remove offending cards. Same aplies to basically anything up to the Dark.

I'm not saying that's how Magic started out in 1993, but it is what Magic has been to me ever since *I* started in 1994.

I know, I know, It's an easy misconception / outlook to develop, becuase limited always looked like throwing money away and I always saw it as an repellently aristocratic/burgoise bit of nonsense that went against my own proletarian background & sensibilities. But FE was cheap as f**k and boxes were raining on me and my playgroup so we "discovered" it, and soon enough invented a form of cube precisely because it was cheap and fun.

But undeniable profitability of sanctioning draft aside, limited really was and has been the main thing once they decided that that was the only way to solve the complexity creep / unintended interaction hell. And for the most part it does that really well, a well playtested set played in draft (or homemade draft, or cube) is kinda the intended MtG experience - "you and a bunch of buddes bought a few boosters each and then traded each other for playables and then you have a tourney". Every draft is a little forge "quest".

Which is a great (potential) thing about Forge. There are sets which were complete blasts to draft each in their own way, but often screwed up in competitive due to some silly runaway mistake or another. Forge is a chance to get to experience those sets the way it was intended, for free. If forge AI could draft things well, two barriers to great limited formats - money and physical availability - disappear.

Also if it can actually be done, I think it could be proven that FE draft (or cube of some kind with just a few utility tweaks such as enchantment removal) has it's place at oldschool tournaments as a prestigious event, because if you have a 93-94 format, FE is THE set to draft, just as it was all the way back then. It's the cheapest to acquire in large enough quantities, has the most inter-set sinergy and depth, has the playables at the appropriate rarities and was the only set (besides maybe the Dark) to have somewhat proper playtesting. Then you can say 93-94 really did have it all, because, well, it did

I also did well at some Oldschool tournaments (which means I have played the 1995 format at a competitive level and with the benefit of two more decades of insight than anybody had at the time.)

I was rather glad when you said you reanimated a Deep Spawn at an oldschool tourney Did they finally let FE officially play with the other kids?

I really despise the whole "pimp factor & elitism" thing because it just furthers old misconceptions, and looking at the format from 20 years of distance tends to blur causations. Circles of protection and walls (even just existing) shaped the actual 93-94 overall & power meta way more than anything else did.

I also average a 20/2 record when playtesting my own quest worlds. You don't have to be impressed with these credentials, but they should at least illustrate that I'm not completely clueless.

Oh, I don't think you're clueless at all, just that there are different ways of looking at things.

Wasn't there even a time where competition rules mandated using cards from several different sets?

That was because of Homelands, which I will admit is actually worse than Fallen Empires. Wizards wanted to showcase their new set (which was rushed through development under rather peculiar circumstances) on the Pro Tour, and obviously the only way to get the pros to put those cards into their decks was to force them.

Yeah, Homelands was the cause of that.

To be fair to Homelands it did have it's ok/fine cards, but it was a terrible set and markedly worse than FE. Spectral Bears , Ihsan's Shade , Cemetery Gate , Serrated Arrows , Eron the Relentless , Autumn Willow , Primal Order , An-Zerrin Ruins , Sengir Autocrat , Koskun Falls and Rysorian Badger , not necessarily that order, were fine enough, and there were more playables depending on the level of competition (Broken Visage vas rather well received as a black 2-1 which killed black stuff for a change , and Feast of the Unicorn is well remembered card). EDIT: I'm a doofus and I forgot Merchant Scroll and Memory Lapse (because they weren't immediate hits). Inb4 I get called out for being a noob. Memory Lapse! (I also read somewhere it was stolen from somewhere else and put into Homelands, lol!)

When WotC ramped up production, retailers actually received the amount they ordered, and were stuck with far more boxes than they could sell

According to Mark Rosewater, Wizards warned the retailers that this time they would really get the amount they ordered. Not everyone believed it, obviously.

The numbers that the retailers inflated from already didn't accurately reflect the actual level of demand for things.

Again according to Mark Rosewater, Ice Age is full of reprints because it was designed to be something of a core set. I think the same applies to Mirage/Visions.

They were all (Ice Age and Menagerie) originally designed more or less at the same time, under the philosophy that "core set" cards wouldn't be used one with another. So a "block constructed" structure, more or less. Funnily enough this caused originally unintended circumstances, too, as when that idea finally collapsed people were playing Lightning Bolt and Fixed Lighting Bolt (Incinerate) in the same decks which wasn't necessarily intended (and such).

there was complaints that many cards ware garbage (occasionally even insanely good cards, because who could tell? Noobs everywhere! )

Well, to be fair, some of those insanely good cards (such as Lion's Eye Diamond) actually were garbage at the time. It took the printing of other cards to make them good later on.

Oh, absolutely. I get apoplectic when someone goes FE sucks but High Tide was good. Because you only knew Hight Tide was good for much of anything if you used it to slap down a turn 5 bigass hexproof lobster in FE "limited" which most folks didn't really do. Anything else you powered out would get killed, so would the lobster outside of limited and it was still kinda slow all in all. So, much like Lion's Eye Diamond it was something that broke later.

You know what blocks Kird Ape all day and then makes something else annoyingly difficult to bolt? Armor Thrull

And all that for the low, low cost of only three mana! Dark Ritual that thing out on turn 1 and you won't even have to take 2-4 damage from that Kird Ape first!

If you ritual it out on turn 1, that's not as bad a move as it looks. Who's gonna remove it? You got several potential power plays turn 2, and you can slap down a Hippie on turn 3 but not have it easily moved off the table. Or you could have an annoying 6/5 Juggernaut, or, since Armor Thrul costs only one colored mana you're up for Serendib Efreet which kills Serra Angel , Ernham Djinn who kills Juzam Djinn , etc etc.

It's not the best card ever printed but it a really annoying card depending on your metagame.

Oh, the whole "noone ever played a this or that wall" - that's actually rather far from the thruth. One reason Juzam Djinn and Serendib Efreet or even creatures in general were looked at as junk was that the old meta had a ton of rather efficient walls in it. This isn't bulls**t, Wall of Swords stops most aggro dead, Wall of Air blocks anything , Wall of Bone is somewhat impossible to get off the board , Wall of Stone stops anything that doesn't fly , Wall of Fire is a mana sink on top of also stopping most things , Wall of Brambles regenerates and Wall of Ice also stops whatever , and those are just the alpha ones (Alpha also had Animate Wall in it , because ofc it did). Add to that the Circle of Protection whatever ability to shut anything scary down for 1 mana. Juzam Djinn , Serendib Efreet and especially Erhnam Djinn don't look like they have a serious drawback but they came out right after the main core set and looked rather meh. Erhnam Djinn looked downright suicidal as he'd let the other guy through your wall, wth? Mana Vault was, I kid you not, initially thought of as a bit of a junk rare, because you couldn't really get anything out faster than there'd be a wall in the way.

Goblin Digging Team, of all things, was regarded as a very nice card when it came out.

Also, circle of protection. To semi accurately qoute Garfield "CoP's were there to make sure no color can be too powerful." This is part of both why the crazier bits in Antiquities were so well received and why the tourney meta eventually (or rather quickly) spontaneously degenerated into practically creatureless strategies.

Oh, and Sleight of Mind was popular, too.

---

To the topic at hand:

1) Right, now for those FE archetypes and stuff, I took a look at the constructed decks. Yeah, Xyx was hampered severely by the (lack of proper) implementation for many cards in the set to begin with. This just needs to change, and probably can change.

2) There's a card from the set missing, and that's just a shame. Last time around there were 2, Raiding Party and the rather important Merseine , and Sloth was nice enough to put Merseine in. I whish a miracle happened and it wasn't impossible for someone to add Raiding Party , as silly as it looks. Who knows maybe it allows something else to get in, too.

3) The sixty card deck format is a bit constricting, I think. The constructed decks for Sarpadia with just Fallen Empires in it might really be better off as 40 card decks, to make it easier for particular decks to draw into their theme combinations and such. There seems to be a 60 card limitation of constructed decks for quests worlds, I believe, which is preventing this from being tried out?

4) The strong flavor of the set is misleading, as cards "visually" belonging to one tribe have important interactions where you wouldn't think at first. This makes it a deeper draft than it looks at first glance, but it also confused players back in the day - the art, names and flavor lead them to believe it's a more linear set than it actually is. They rectified this in Lorwyn (also known as "Return to Sarpadia but with a paint job, some templating experience and a decade or so of making mechanics instead of just a year and a half") by making it obvious that it's less linear than it looks.

5) The set has a problem with the lack of artifact and enchantment removal. So does all of early MtG, realistically speaking.

6) The set is designed with the following stuff in mind:

a) Let's give everyone two (or so) different strains of creatures with a plan, and let's make the game about creatures.

Why? | Open

Because game being about op white alpha spells, red burn, black discard, counterspells, artifact ramp and creatures which were either walls or french-vanilla bludgeons seemed like it kind of went off the rails. Which it arguably did. They thought it might be interesting to have set mechanics and the creatures which do things.

b) This means we can't make removal effortless. There is removal in the set, but plenty of it makes you work for it. This does by no means make it all bad removal, and every bit of it is useful as it generally is in drafts.

Removal | Open

Goblin Grenade - kick-ass removal , but requires you to play a goblin , and there's only one common goblin , one uncommon one and an enchantment which needs goblins to make goblins but is too slow. Still, the common goblin is quite playable.

Dwarven Catapult - Is realistically awful , but is still a high, splashable pick , and if you can ramp it a bit and toss it out quickly enough it gets the job done.

Farrel's Zealot and Necrite - you need a way to get them through to the other side, and they kill stuff for you. The ways are there but they're not obvious.

Icatian Javelineers - Straightforward to use , but it and the Dwarven catapult mean that some 1/1 creatures got to be 0/2 instead.

Merseine - Is a straightforward blue tempo play, and it can make untapping a 5+ guy a big pain.

Thorn Thallid - Most of the time good for 1 ping , but with fungal bloom you can sink your mana into it.

Aeolipile - Straightforward, no-nonsense burn for any color, but it's rare. In Lorwyn they made it common (Moonglove Extract), but the context is different.

Hand of Justice - takes having it and 3 more guy on the board and tapping all of them. It's a rather good effect on a hard to kill guy, and it can lock you out, but it takes setting up.

Elvish Hunter - can keep something tapped down for 1G.

Orcish Captain - Can kill all the other persons orcs. Or your orcs.

c) "Evasion is way stronger than people initially thought, so let's not hand it out by default". At first glance there isn't any. This means that the other thing that the gameplay is about is getting your dudes through.

Where's the evasion at? | Open

White offers banding, and in order for white to work it really needs banding to work. Keep in mind, it's not "banding with white" it's "banding" , as in , you band a guy with Mindstab Thrull , Necrite , any Dwarf with the Dwarven Lieutenant sitting behind you or (Dwarven Soldier with that soldier pumping guy now that the creature types have been updated) , anything with Farell's Mantle on it and make the other guy make a choice.

Blue either gets a Deep Spawn out and tramples , or it swarms with Homarid Spawning Bed tokens when Tidal Influence is up. Against islands it has an actual flier in Vodalian Knights , against Mountains it has River Merfolk and against green it has Homarid Shaman.

Red has Goblin Kites and Goblin War Drums , Orgg tramples and Goblin Flotilla is unblockable against blue .

Black doesn't have any evasion. Black benefits from evasion a lot which makes the white banding and all the red shennanigans all the more integral to the set functioning.

Green doesn't have obvious evasion or apparent need for it , as it's the control color. It relies on the regeneration and pump plan with Thalid Devourer and Feral Thalid. What's not obvious is that the Elf plan is, in part, to bait the enemy into blocking your guys and then tapping them down with Spore Cloud, while untaping your guys with Elvish Scout .

Ok, other ways to make your dudes into attackers? | Open

Yeah, there's on-board stuff - Goblin Chirurgeon is fine for regenerating an attacker and so is Draconian Cylix . Balm of Restoration and Elven Lyre let you attack with several people and save the one you want as one-shot effects. Tidal Influence can give you a rather high total damage output if you can time it right, and Tourach's Gate can also let you swing for a bunch if you build for it. Armor Thrull is also an on-board combat trick, and bringing someone back with Soul Exchange off a thrull will often make them larger than anyone else is.

Ranom pings and pumps can be added to combat damage to take something off the board or threaten doing so. Icatian Priest inefficiently pumps power and toughness, but knights and dwarves that go through can do some harm. Battlefield Medic can make things very difficult to kill , Icatian Scout gives anyone first strike.

d) This is a tricky one - "let's make more things play from the board rather than from hand." (Explained a bit in the previous spoiler)

They didn't go for this "religiously" because Spore Cloud is an instant and the signature card for the elves in the set. But there's no Giant Growth and no Counterspell and effectively none of the stuff that seemed unfair to a certain segment of the audience. There are iconic effects around, but they come from permanents. In retrospect, the complaints and feedback which lead to this decision were more about the absurd quality of spells in the early days, and they went a bit overboard in the other direction.

It still drafts well enough but it could easily be paired with a small subset of cards, 3-4 of each color at most to form a Sarpadia cube as it kind of was meant to be used with other cards of it's age, just not necessarily the runaway bombs of it's age.

---

The Archetypes:

Blue comes in 3 varieties:

Spawn/tide | Open

+ Deep Spawn + (Works)
- High Tide - (Doesn't)

And literally whatever else you can put in, except you're counting on the big lobster or several to win it for you so you're looking for defense over offense. The play is turn 5 Deep Spawn , and this is a mean play to make.

Cards you want besides that is:

Vodalian War Machine (purely for defense)
Vodalian Knights (also for defense)
Spirit Shield (obviously for defense)
Vodalian Soldiers (You don't have much choice and they're better on defense than homarids oddly enogh)
Merseine (to slow things down while you draw/play the lobster)
Aeolipile (for a concrete reason)

Having something off color is a bit risky because the plan is to have 5 Islands out turn 5, but let's say there's a splash and maybe an Implements of Sacrifice or maybe a Rainbow Vale to support it:

Icatian Javelineers (same as Aeolipile , to take out any Elvish Hunter)
Goblin Chirurgeon (to keep the lobster alive)
Dwarven Catapult (because you're a ramp deck so this might at least wipe Elvish Hunters or an early play off the board)

Homarid Spawning Bed | Open

- Homarid Spawning Bed - needs to work, obviously.
- Tidal Influence - needs to be played

AI capable of being madly agressive.

Doesn't have to be mono blue and can be combined with other things.

Homarid Warrior (needs to be played)
Homarid Shaman
Homarid

but also a few

Vodalian Mage (because of the cost)
Vodalian Soldiers (because of the cost and early blocking)

All make fine fodder for the spawning bed. Svyelunite Temple is ok to rush Homarid Warriors out, as is any other sac land if it's two colors.

The point is to just chump and make HSB tokens when the tide is low, and attack when tokens are 3/1 and other unsacced stuff is big from tidal inflence. You're not necessarily in a rush as long as there's not a Thorn Thallid on the other side.

Decent combinations:

- Spore Cloud despite the double cost, to slow things down between tides,

- Icatian Town from white if you can get it for more tokens

- Soul Exchange to bring back a sacrificed Warrior is rather good,
- Armor Thrull is defence and can make a Homarid Warrior even beigger and
- Thrull Retainer on a Vodalian Soldier makes it a rather nice little blocker and on a Homarid Warrior makes it a good attacker.

War Machine Merfolk | Open

Vodalian War Machine - needs to work first.

The design on that thing reads as following: 4 toughness blocker for 3 mana, that's ok, especially in this format. You can tap merfolk to make it attack and also to pump it, which is nice. If it worked on defense you'd get a really big creature for rather cheap and folks would be afraid to attack you, let's kinda prevent that with the "if it dies they all die" clause. And for offense, you still got a rather big vehicle for rather cheap, so better use Svyelunite Priest to make sure it doesn't get hit by anything when it would cost you the board.

The thing is, thogh, it can't really get hit by much - pings and stuff mostly and if you tap enough Merfolk it's not going to be in danger. But still, you can use the priest to make sure (or bait pings which are depletable in the set) or you can use the priest to give the other guys blocker shroud if you see it'll get pumped or boosted for combat somehow.

It's not the best ever plan due to the fact that you can get chump blocked and these guys were obviously made with previously existing cards in mind (War Barge , Lord of Atlantis , Phantasmal Terrain etc.), but it's not unworkable.

You also pick up, if possible,

River Merfolk - which gives you an unblockable guy vs. red
Vodalian Knights - which gives you a nice blocker and a flier vs. blue
Svyelunite Priest - one or two if possible
Vodalian Soldiers - as many as you'd like

And then possibly combine it with:

- Tidal Influence (to make Merfolk dangerous every so often)
- Zelyon Sword (same)

- Goblin Chirurgeon (keeps the war machine alive)
- Goblin Kites (lets you fling Merfolk)
- Goblin War Drums (makes it more difficult to chump the war machine)
- Goblin Flotila (you don't want it on the other side, lol, more evasion)
- Goblin Grenade (to take out a maker)

- Icatian Lieutenant (since the creature type upgrade, pumps Vodalian Soldier)
- Icatian Scout (first strike is nice on the Machine)
- Banding (helps the machine not die, or creates a separate threat)

- Armor Thrull (Early defense, later saves)
- Thrull Retainer (obv.)

- Spore Cloud + Elvish Scout (so you never lose the War Machine on offense)
- Spore Cloud (if you're tapped out and open for attack, it's rather nice)

My format for this is horrifying and unreadable right now and I picked the wrong color to start with, but I'll get into it. Also, need to really cut on the discussion because by the time I got to the stuff the thread's supposed to be about I get tired and messy.

[dingbat1]

I hope you go on this kind of rant for every set. I'm learning a lot.

[Xyx]

I was rather glad when you said you reanimated a Deep Spawn at an oldschool tourney Did they finally let FE officially play with the other kids?

We didn't play '93-'94. We went up to Alliances. Up until that point it's all fairly straightforward "Magic as Garfield intended" (including a surprising amount of mana denial.) After that is Mirage/Visions, which introduces combo decks. But that is just how we do it here. We also allowed reprints and up to 10 proxies so that it was more about actual deckbuilding and strategy and not just raw $$$. I think worldwide it's generally a bit more elitist, with no reprints or proxies. I don't like that.

Memory Lapse! (I also read somewhere it was stolen from somewhere else and put into Homelands, lol!)

Yeah, it's from Menagerie, which spent some time in Development Hell and was therefore subject to minor plundering. It would later be split up into Mirage/Visions.

If you ritual (Armor Thrull) out on turn 1, that's not as bad a move as it looks. Who's gonna remove it?

Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning or Swords to Plowshares interact favorably. I guess even Unsummon, and you can get blown out by any of these except Chain Lightning if you try to put the counter on something. But a better question is... who needs to remove it? It doesn't really apply any pressure and it only scares off X/1s.

The sixty card deck format is a bit constricting, I think. The constructed decks for Sarpadia with just Fallen Empires in it might really be better off as 40 card decks, to make it easier for particular decks to draw into their theme combinations and such. There seems to be a 60 card limitation of constructed decks for quests worlds, I believe, which is preventing this from being tried out?

I dunno, is there? I've advocated 60-card decks for the quest worlds I made because I feel quest mode is closer to Constructed (albeit with a beginner's card pool) than Limited, but I remember one of the devs explaining that it should be 40.

Maybe if you make Sarpadia 2.0, you can load it up with 40-card decks.

4) The strong flavor of the set is misleading, as cards "visually" belonging to one tribe have important interactions where you wouldn't think at first.

For the quest world, I grouped by flavor for the Easy opponents. The Medium opponents have more of a mechanical theme and the Hard opponents don't have any restrictions at all. They just care about winning.

Black doesn't have any evasion.

Order of the Ebon Hand is pretty hard to block, though.

let's say there's a splash and maybe an Implements of Sacrifice or maybe a Rainbow Vale to support it

Would you really recommend either of those? What am I splashing that I would gladly 2-for-1 myself for?

[dingbat1]

For the quest world, I grouped by flavor for the Easy opponents. The Medium opponents have more of a mechanical theme and the Hard opponents don't have any restrictions at all. They just care about winning.

I actually really like this idea. Especially if you're not familiar with a particular set/block/world, starting against flavored cards allows you to really get familiar with the lore while you're busy learning the cards. By the time you get to battle medium opponents, you should be familiar enough to build a decent deck, so it's nice to try it out against different mechanics. And Hard opponents should just be difficult.

I think it's a great approach to designing opponents.
If I ever get the time to really delve into building a quest world, I'll try to do likewise.