Edge of Eternities Alchemy Draft

I have to dip my toes into an Alchemy Limited set every time one comes out. Edge of Eternities was a format people either hated or hated to love. While I fall into the second category, I understood people's issues. Alchemy is another format that Limited players find problematic, which I don't understand. I get why people are turned off from playing casual formats that aren't supported by any kind of organized play system, as they'd rather keep their eye on the prize and pursue higher-level tournaments. Generally, Limited has long been forgotten in organized play, so the players who love and play mostly Limited are doing it for the love of the game. Alchemy is a remix of an existing format and has made it more fun every time. Adding a midseason twist to a format that I have drafted 100 or more times can only be an upside, but some old dogs don't want to learn the new tricks.

Alchemy fixed one of the bigger problems I had with EoE, which is that the set is too underpowered for all the cool mechanics. If you've ever played Alchemy before, you know the cards are not what anyone would call underpowered. There are a few Constructed plants in there that don't translate into draft, but mostly, the cards are busted.

I started the format off as I always do. I read the cards, drafted a mediocre deck, and got destroyed. I went 0-3 in my first attempt and felt like all I learned was that the Alchemy cards are indeed busted.

That took me to a place where I realized that green, a color well known as the best color in EoE Limited, just got better. I've talked about green before as being a color I'm not willing to fight over. The format's power level is too low to fight for fixing, only to wind up with a multicolor underpowered deck. Once good cards started getting gobbled up early in drafts, I was done fighting over green. The format developed into a place where that was the case with a lot of people. Now, green is considered a solid color and not over-the-top busted.

But then Alchemy came out. Green shot up in power level if you can believe it, and that's because you can reasonably play three-color green decks to scoop up even more powerful Alchemy cards.

Red will largely be the same because of the various Lander cards, allowing you to support splashes of the format's new most powerful cards.

After my epiphany that green will get even stronger, I've been on a green kick and am doing quite well. I started 6-0 in my next two attempts. I couldn't get the clean sweep in either, but I trophied the next two drafts with some interesting green decks.

4c Planets

This deck was an absolute masterpiece. Brood Astronomer, Eumidian Lifeseed, and Volatile Orbit all came to play nearly every long game, and I got to do cool things with planets in every game, including copying Volatile Orbit with Adagia, Windswept Bastion to burn my opponent out slowly.

The various green Alchemy cards not only provided win conditions, but they also provided mana fixing, allowing me to play removal of any color, pick up this Zero Point Ballad pack three, and play it in my deck with no fear.

Games played out more slowly when I had ways to remove the true problematic threats. I realized that some cards, specifically the cheap removal spells, gained a little value because of a few powerful Alchemy cards you'll see more regularly. Typically, this is the case in all Alchemy sets, where the Alchemy cards tend to mostly be threats. Removal becomes more important because the threats are the most powerful cards in the format.

Plasma Bolt, Depressurize, Bombard, all gain a little bit of value, and the mediocre curve-filler creatures should be knocked down a peg. For instance, that Ice Cave Crasher in my sideboard was a card I didn't play at all in EoE because I was getting a higher card quality early in the set's release. As people learned more about the set and my decks became less powerful, I eventually became happy to play Ice Cave Crasher. With Alchemy's release, it's back on my "let's hope I don't have to play this" list.

In fact, having new cards pumped into the set makes you reevaluate each card, especially cards that were on the bottom tier of playable in your decks. Every color will have to make adjustments to this, and in some cases, the way you build your decks will change a good bit.

But let's also talk about how much more power you can get in general because the packs are juiced up. Here's another draft deck where I didn't necessarily have all the Alchemy goods, but I got a lot of rares late because people were taking the more powerful Alchemy cards.

Jund Rares

This deck is more in line with a normal deck, but it was full of sweepers and powerful top-end. I only took one rare I opened, the Battleship, and the rest were passed to me. You can say "how did you get passed The Endstone" or even Thrumming Hivepool, but those cards are tame compared to the best Alchemy cards. Look at Mine Security in my deck. That's a two-mana 3/1 trample, which is not great but playable on its own. However, it puts a zero-mana Flametongue Kavu on top of your deck.

Mine Security is an uncommon, the most common Alchemy rarity you can find. You'll be playing against it probably every draft. With this deck, I learned how strong that card can be with Volatile Orbit because Orbit can find Kavaron, Memorial World with eight counters on it, and the FTK for zero mana can finish crewing it on the same turn. After that, you're off to the races.

This deck also started 6-0 and couldn't get the clean sweep, but we did close out with the trophy.

An awesome thing about Alchemy is how many games you get to play with and against the planets. In the normal EoE format, I often had to decide whether to spend time stationing my spacecraft. In Alchemy, I've been deciding how to station my spacecraft or planets, as I've often had multiple in play.

Overall, as I suspected, Alchemy has only improved the format. If you're sick of EoE Limited but love Limited, I highly recommend the experience. If you hated Edge Limited and couldn't pinpoint why, maybe it was because it felt like a core set power level but with spaceships, and you wanted more meat in the packs. If so, you may like Alchemy.

Regardless, I'll be playing Alchemy on stream while it's available and enjoying every minute.