Tarkir Dragonstorm: Alchemy - Review

This past week, I was on a bit of a "staycation" since my wife had vacation from work. We spent the days going out with our kids and touching grass. Upon getting back into the swing of things, I was excited to see a twist on a format where my feelings were lukewarm.

Last week, I wrote about how Dragonstorm Limited had so much potential but, for a couple of small design reasons, was an average Limited experience—at least from my perspective.

I gave Aetherdrift a similar final ranking. Despite expecting to hate Aetherdrift, it ended up being average or slightly above average due to some creative and fun design. However, once the Alchemy cards were introduced, the set was incredibly enjoyable for me. It's not an all-timer, but I didn't grow bored with the set.

I'm the type of person who loves Alchemy because I like playing with and against powerful cards in Limited, so I'm biased. You can usually beat the best cards printed if you play well and bury your opponent with good play, drafting, and decision-making. Solving those complex games is my favorite part about Limited.

Alchemy provides more weapons to overwhelm my opponent while giving them more cards that are so powerful it's hard to find ways to beat them. But what can I say, I love the challenge.

In Aetherdrift, you were often able to identify the open lane, but there was still a shortage of powerful cards. You'd often be in the right place at the wrong time.

Dragonstorm had the opposite problem. Its main issue, as illustrated last week, was that archetypes lost their identity because the synergies are too soft, and any player can take any card and shoehorn it into their deck due to the amount of mana fixing. There are a lot of powerful cards, but you never saw them after your first couple of picks. Adding more powerful cards to the mix won't solve it and may just exacerbate the issue.

I spent some time drafting the set, and while Alchemy didn't solve the issue, it improved the format, though not by a substantial amount. Adding more powerful cards at least led to some interesting decisions.

Take a look at my first deck that I managed to trophy with:

There's only one Alchemy-specific card in Desert Cenote, a strong land, but all my spells are from the normal set. However, my deck is still incredibly powerful.

I had some tough picks between some good Alchemy cards and other broken rares, and I ended up taking the cards from the base set. I floated tons of powerful Alchemy cards, which overall leads to more decks looking like soupy sealed decks.

They added some obscenely powerful cards. While that isn't super fun to play against, it's always fun to have a draft here and there where you run over the competition because you ran hot. That's a feeling we all chase playing this game, and I'm fine with that experience existing, even if I'm on the other side. We're not playing chess here.

I wish they'd get back to rebalancing some of the cards and adjusting the format. For instance, in a set like this, once they see what's going on, I wish they'd take more chances and use some of these suggestions to spruce up the format: remove the monuments and Evolving Wilds, and add more double pip, powerful, cheap cards to push people in the direction of being more focused on a tribe rather than scooping up every gold card. This set would have been a good one to rebalance, even if WotC didn't devote a ton of resources to the cause. If they gave me an hour or two, I could come up with some ideas that would have made the format play out differently without ruining the experience.

Regardless, you apply the same rules that you'd apply to normal Dragonstorm. You need removal, you want to shoot for high-powered cards, and card advantage is still king. Yes, Teval, Arbirter of Virtue is a strong card, and while I drew it almost every game, it rarely did more than a normal uncommon solid five-drop and nearly always died. Maybe I connected with it in combat once, but it's doubtful.

You're still taking the bombs and powerful gold cards early and following up with whatever removal or fixing is available. The latter half of the pack is when you fill out the curve with cheap creatures and whatever small stuff you need.

There's no strategy shift. While there are some cards that are difficult to beat, the format is still fun and interesting. It just won't last as long because you're often pushed into these multicolor decks since there's a massive power level difference between the worst and 10th-best cards in your deck, unlike a typical draft format where it's a more marginal power level differential.

Alchemy does freshen up the format, gives you some more things to think about, and has a few more fun draft-arounds to reinvigorate the experience if you've grown bored of drafting midrange multicolor Dragon decks. You can draft those decks, but at least you have a few new fun toys to play with too.

If you grow bored of a Limited format, you can stop playing it, or you can jump back into Alchemy to see if it makes something click for you. It often does for me. Many players these days are old school and don't like "fake" cards, but the cards are interesting and exciting in many cases. You'll see the most powerful cards you could imagine and some of the best-designed cards. For instance, Desert Cenote is so well-designed that I can't help but appreciate the card.

Skip the set if you hated Dragonstorm Limited, especially if you thought it was too bomb heavy. If you thought it was fun and just got bored with it, you should try Dragonstorm Alchemy and see if it freshens it up for you.

I'll continue to play this format for the next week or so, but I'm invited to the MTGO creator program, so I may check out some MTGO formats.

Whatever I choose to do, I'll see you soon.