Ranting About Marvel Draft

The past two weeks have been a blur. The kids are out of school. I went to Canda for Alex Hayne's wedding, one of my best friends in Magic. It's been unbearably hot, especially at the wedding when we traveled to a cabin for the celebration, only to lose power and all utilities, meaning no running water and no electricity, thus no A/C.

Alex was fresh off a finals appearance in the first Team Limited "GP" in years, losing to Tom Martell, another close friend of mine and who I traveled with to the wedding. Ondrej Strasky was also there, my "replacement" on Hayne and Steve Rubin's team.

I've been watching a lot of Magic, more so than recent years. However, I can't get motivated to play this Marvel set, and I've been considering why.

Marvel isn't a particularly bad set. It's a little better than your average cast-creatures-and-attack format, but that's about it. Some recent unpopular Limited sets, like Lorwyn and Bloomburrow, come to mind as comparisons. Yet, Marvel is worse than even the sets that I really didn't like.

In my long lists of complaints about Magic sets, Marvel feels remarkably similar to Spider-Man. The set is all about getting creatures out, protecting them, and ensuring you don't lose to some really powerful creature.

There are a lot of rares that are extremely tough to beat, such as Super-Hero Civil War and Doctor Doom. These cards are tough to interact with and usually end any game that's even a little close. But that's not my issue. My issue is the set stifles creativity.

Comparing it to the criminally underrated Ninja Turtles, you can't do the cute four- and five-color stuff with a consistent payoff. Even if you can, it's tough to find a reason. I've done it when people are fighting over white cards and you get everything else, but the incentive is still not strong enough.

Turtles had Everything Pizza. This set has, well, random bonus sheet cards.

Marvel may not look like it, but it relies heavily on typal synergies, at least in some color pairs, making for boring drafting and gameplay.

The big difference with other creature-heavy Universes Beyond sets, like Turtles and Spider-Man, is they were small releases, sitting at just under 200 cards. I defended their small size, believing they were fun for a week. Marvel was also fun for a week or two, but despite being a full set with almost 300 cards, it felt less diverse and interesting.

Part of the diversity issue with Marvel is that the color balance is off. While I'd argue it's not as bad as many people think, it feels worse on Arena when rankings are involved. You have some people forcing white in pools with seven random players across all ranks who are focused on drafting their favorite colors or characters and don't care about winning and making the best plays. Pairing together all the tryhards leads to monotonous gameplay.

It got me to thinking about why a set like Strixhaven, which also had poor balancing, didn't feel as bad as this set. I figured it out—when a set is balanced to have great mana and three- to five-color decks, you can pivot in several directions to draft a variety of archetypes, such as Sultai with a white splash, Sultai with a red splash, and so on.

You could also draft those same four colors with a heavier emphasis on, say, Temur. Temur with a black splash isn't the same as Sultai with a red splash. While I drafted the same colors, my experience can be different because I'm playing different signpost uncommons, removal, and rares.

In Marvel, we generally focus on two colors, sometimes splashing a busted rare. It feels like a generic core set where synergies apply but aren't crossing over much. It's hard to find a cross synergy for Villains and Heroes, similar to Goblins and Merfolk. When you force people in a direction, all the decks look and play the same, making it feel like fully exploring the set takes far fewer drafts.

How would I go about fixing this? Well, I'm not a designer, and they have limitless restraints I couldn't begin to imagine. For instance, as a UB set, its simple design is inteded as a gateway to get players into the game. Making it too complicated, like Strixhaven, would turn people off. Personally, I'd love to see statistics on player retention for these sets. If I could throw out the need to keep it simple, I'd want players rewarded for having a variety of villains and heroes in different colors.

An example would be that if Loki is in play then Thor gets +1/+1. This could be a global rule that applies whether Thor is under your or your opponent's control. The same kind of thing could be done for The Fantastic Four, Doctor Doom, and so forth.

Rather than having to pick either heroes or villains, you could have the villains and heroes benefit each other when they're in each other's presence, like they're experiencing an adrenaline rush in anticipation for the fight. This doesn't always have to be onboard buffs and could be card advantage, life gain or loss, or anything else.

There are just some quick examples of interlocking synergies rather than pushing players in a specific direction. It's also a way to enliven Marvel on your battlefield for a format like Commander where your opponent may not opt into that world.

Regardless, I felt like I got Magic whiplash with Marvel. Strixhaven was a beautiful spell-focused set that allowed for long-term strategy and planning in the games and a lot of creativity in the drafts. Marvel feels nuts and bolts, just forcing you to find the open color. Hopefully it's blue or white, if not, then you figure it out.

The awesome thing about current Magic is that I took a two-week break from playing because I didn't enjoy a set and I had life stuff to attend to, but the next set is around the corner. It's much easier to take a break these days and miss a set because there are so many new sets you can start fresh. Let's be honest, no one knows all the cards anyway since there are so many of them.

Rant over.