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jorael
Guest
Didn't Duelist or Inquest do a battle of the sets back then (prior or during mirage block)? Decks from each set played against each other. The results might be a bit subjective, but if I remember correct, Homelands was the winner. Dry Spell apparantly killed a lot and Autumn Willow kicked ass (so they must have made a G/B deck...).
mtgSalvation still has a few visitors doing a battle of the sets regularly. Fun to read and cool to see how they try to make maximum use of each set. One of the threads worth visiting.
mtgSalvation still has a few visitors doing a battle of the sets regularly. Fun to read and cool to see how they try to make maximum use of each set. One of the threads worth visiting.
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TheCasualOblivion
Guest
Actually, it was a battle of the blocks. Mirage actually won with ProsBloom.
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jorael
Guest
We might mean something else. That or my memory is severly lacking.... :0
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TheCasualOblivion
Guest
The inquest thing was a battle of the blocks. I remember it. Mirage and ProsBloom won.
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jorael
Guest
Was Homelands a part of Ice Age block or a set on its own in that competition? The Homelands deck I mean was made only of homelands....
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TheCasualOblivion
Guest
It was included at least in the fact that it wasn't on its own.jorael said:
The blocks in competition were:
Old School(Arabian Nights thru Fallen Empires)--some weird deck thrown together without much reasoning
Ice Age/Alliances/Homelands--which was a Necro deck, and I think at least included Ishan's Shade
Mirage Block--ProsBloom
Tempest Block--I think it used a goblin-type deck
Urza's Block--Have no idea what deck this was
Masques Block--Used a rebel deck
Oversoul
The Tentacled One
If the Mirage deck got Squandered Resources, then the Urza's block deck should have been able to use its banned cards normally as well, in which case a properly built deck would have totally crushed ProsBloom. If the ProsBloom deck was so great without using Squandered Resources, then that would be different, and something I would find interesting...
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TheCasualOblivion
Guest
The rules of the contest inquest had was banned cards were considered restricted. The ProsBloom deck had 1 squandered resources and the rebel deck had 1 Lin Sivvi. I think the Urza's deck might have had some of theirs as well. I totally forget what that deck was.
Also it wasn't that great of a deck. It lost a bunch of games, but ended up winning the championship rounds.
Also it wasn't that great of a deck. It lost a bunch of games, but ended up winning the championship rounds.
D
dingusinajar
Guest
From the perspective of someone who didn't play beween Fallen empires and Mirrodin...I'd have to Saviors was basically a bleh set for me. It had a few good cards,but nothing that truly got wheels rolling.
Well, this modifies the question a little. It's hard to compare older sets (pre Masques) to newer sets. I would have to automaticaly omit any of the basic sets (post Unlimited) just because they have too many cards from the expansions and quite a few of the "stand-alone" expansions (Ice Age, Mirage, Tempest, etc) depended on basic cards to get by (Dark Ritual, Counterspell, Incinerate), so would that remove them as well?
Still, I think that Ice Age was the worst of the older sets. From the newer sets I didn't like Legions. Sure, it had some great creatures (all creatures, as a matter of fact!), but it took so much of the creativity from the game by practicaly building the decks for you...
-Ferret
"Check out my TOTALLY ORIGINAL Elf deck!"
Still, I think that Ice Age was the worst of the older sets. From the newer sets I didn't like Legions. Sure, it had some great creatures (all creatures, as a matter of fact!), but it took so much of the creativity from the game by practicaly building the decks for you...
-Ferret
"Check out my TOTALLY ORIGINAL Elf deck!"
Oversoul
The Tentacled One
With Ice Age, you have loads of terrible cards and some very good ones. With Homelands, you have a handful of mediocre cards and a bunch of very bad ones. Which one is worse depends on your outlook. In my mind, Ice Age is not the worst set or even the second worst set. But if you exclude its top ten cards, it's easily the worst.Ferret said:
Legions is also very bad. I don't know what counts as "newer." But Legions is definitely one of the worst.
I don't think you have to exclude older sets. Obviously this is a subjective question, but to me, what I ask myself is: did I play (or can I see myself playing) a majority of the cards in the set? If there's a set where I can't see myself playing a whole lot of the cards (greater than any other set), then that set is the worst.
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BigBlue
Guest
Someone could also argue that a powerful set is the worst, as it unbalances the game...
The question isn't which set is the weakest.... it is which set is the worst, which is fairly subjective, making this all about opinion, not quantifiable qualities of a set (not that you can fairly judge the power of a "set" other than a percentage of the cards which are/were tournament worthy.) That is another factor which must be taken into account... For the time, homelands may have been better looking than it does now - based on the fact so many cards we're now used to weren't around... At the time, you sometimes couldn't find even good 'vanilla' cards... I have a friend who likes minotaurs, and thought the set was cool because it gave him more minotaurs to play with...
I can remember being disappointed with Fallen Empires... Mostly due to the BS multiple artwork toy that was so overdone it was never repeated... if they had maybe done a smaller subset of cards with multiple artwork - I think that set would have been "nicer" and that mechanic of doing multiple artwork would have been more welcome... it was simply too overdone in that set... who wanted 3 pictures of High Tide? Heck, who really wanted High Tide, for that matter...
The question isn't which set is the weakest.... it is which set is the worst, which is fairly subjective, making this all about opinion, not quantifiable qualities of a set (not that you can fairly judge the power of a "set" other than a percentage of the cards which are/were tournament worthy.) That is another factor which must be taken into account... For the time, homelands may have been better looking than it does now - based on the fact so many cards we're now used to weren't around... At the time, you sometimes couldn't find even good 'vanilla' cards... I have a friend who likes minotaurs, and thought the set was cool because it gave him more minotaurs to play with...
I can remember being disappointed with Fallen Empires... Mostly due to the BS multiple artwork toy that was so overdone it was never repeated... if they had maybe done a smaller subset of cards with multiple artwork - I think that set would have been "nicer" and that mechanic of doing multiple artwork would have been more welcome... it was simply too overdone in that set... who wanted 3 pictures of High Tide? Heck, who really wanted High Tide, for that matter...
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train
Guest
I think the point Spidey made is really good - can I see myself playing with cards from the set is a great question...
I loved Fallen for the thallids... especially with ways to manipulate those counters now - things can be really dangerous...
as for the sets question - why not develop some sort of ranking system based on power, etc, and let those numbers do the talking... it works for cars, homes, movies and everything else in general, and with a balanced scoring system, should be able to rank sets accordingly...
I loved Fallen for the thallids... especially with ways to manipulate those counters now - things can be really dangerous...
as for the sets question - why not develop some sort of ranking system based on power, etc, and let those numbers do the talking... it works for cars, homes, movies and everything else in general, and with a balanced scoring system, should be able to rank sets accordingly...