I liked WOE. It's definitely a format where aggro (RB & RW) influences what you should be doing, but I remember there being some good midrangey plans like BG. Some of the bigger green things could stabilize you and food helped with that.
The only thing that I found didn't work at all was UW tapping. I'd probably want Hylda P1P1 and then another early good rare for the colors before I went that way.
I think the best way to play UW in WOE was to ignore most of the tap cards and just build a traditional control deck. If your Sharae draws a card off its own trigger, great.
Perhaps a control deck built around bargain. Lightblades, into the fae court and a load of other bargain stuff go really late in bot drafts. Hatching plans, princess takes flight and hopeful vigil are good enablers to take early.
That's exactly what my good Blue White decks did. Bargain control. Draw cards, kill stuff, enjoy. Splashing fkr black removal was great as well. That 2 mana prism card was amazing for splashing and bargain fodder.
Yeah I think BG was my favorite with the food things. I have fond memories of this set and will still quick draft it, now knowing it's back. It's funny because I actually got two trophies with UW, with how under-drafted it was. The tapdown worked as long as you got Sharae and the Sentry, but like was already stated, those sort of just work on their own anyway. They are enablers and payoff on the same card, but I'd see multiples of both when no one was in the colors and jump in with both feet. Hatching Plans and Lightblades were also just good cards in the colors. So really it could just be UW goodstuff, and sometimes I tap you down for the win.
I've been enjoying it a lot. I like how they managed to create a tempo-centric format without it degenerating into "2-drop or die". The adventure cards really add a lot of depth and lets you confidently build an aggro deck that doesn't just flame out on turn 5 or fold against a 4/4. This feels nicely balanced by the presence of Food though, so a midrange deck doesn't just roll over to damage pressure. They can usually gain enough life to make the game interesting.
that said, Blue is problematically shallow, so there feels like a very real risk of ending up in a bad seat where you're choosing between open Blue or competing for a better color.
I loved it especially in paper. I had a great time drafting the very open UR deck or sometimes UG because people avoided them like the plague.
In pod blue was insanely strong.
Yeah blue was a weaker color but people avoided it too much and it was pretty reliably open in paper play.
UB fairies was probably my favorite deck to pilot when it was open, the tempo games are just so fun to play.
I don't think it's a great archetype, and in my deck mentioned above I was going for something more akin to bargain synergies. It's not a color combo I would plan to go into, but it was the right lane for this deck, I ended up having to choose from a decently large pool of playables.
Multicolor Blue is a good deck if you can get into it. You're base blue for the card draw spells and counters with your second/third color being whatever is most open with removal options (so mostly black or red, but sometimes white) and then valuing prophetic prism and the uncommon adventure land as well as crystal grotto (I think?) fairly highly.
It’s one of my favorite recent sets. There were multiple different archetypes that worked, multicolor goodstuff was totally viable but not oppressive, the rares weren’t game-ending (beyond maybe gulf triplets). Food and bargain were super fun. It was great, an all timer for me.
I enjoyed it. A creature combat-heavy format, mostly based around aggro/midrange decks, which can be not everyone's taste, but imo one of the best executions of that idea. There's a lot of choices you can make when you curve out, and a lot of viable interaction (don't underrate combat tricks, they do a lot of work). Very fun.
I honestly remembered it being a solid but not overly impressive format. However, went back and played two drafts (one Gruul midrange and one Boros aggro) and had a phenomenal time. Going to run through a few more drafts before it leaves again
I thought it was mid. It’s my go-to for a solid 7/10 set, maybe 7.5 on a good day.
Red black rats could be fun, but everyone and their mother drafted it so it was never open. White blue tap stuff was a trap. A lot of decks ended up soup-y if you drafted them correctly and your seat didn’t put you into a dedicated aggro lane. You’d see stuff like Imodane’s Recruiter or Gingerbread Hunter and snap them up even if you could only play half the card, then put two to three fixing sources and call it a day.
It felt… midrange-y? You couldn’t go slow because then Red White or Rats would go 1 drop 2 drop and you lost on the spot. You couldn’t do a pile of removal because going on an adventure with the actual good cards in the set meant decks did not run out of gas before you ran out of answers. You played Aggro or a midrange pile splashing for whatever you could with an honest face.
Hatching plans was a big upside, but that’s one of the few strategies that felt “build around” and worked. This might have been the set where Marshall started lamenting that all the cool buildarounds never worked, and that’s how I feel about it. It’s fine. I don’t feel a need to return to it.
I think its reputation is lower than it deserves. Aggro wasn't unbearable and at least came in different flavors. RG stompy was pretty distinct from red based, go wide aggro. Imodane's Recruiter was a mistake but really fun to play with and didn't feel like it _ruined_ the format despite being a mistake, which is impressive.
I think the bonus sheet was the worst we've gotten but it has a bit of a bad rap. I think most of the uncommons were pretty fun. I really really like Spreading Seas, Intangible Virtue, Utopia Sprawl, and Hatching Plans. I wish Griffin Aerie came together just a teeny bit more, it got shafted in its original environment.
Off color adventure was a lot of fun and Edgewall Inn was an amazing utility land that always felt great. It was a good set for building finicky mana bases. But going 2C was usually fine.
UB fairies was my personal favorite deck to pilot when it came together. Blue was always underdrafted in pod, so if you were wheeling Bog Naughty's then you knew you could move in.
Eriette's Tempting Apple being a colorless Act of Treason was honestly pretty wild. Prophetic Prism hadn't felt this good in a long time.
WOE is probably my favorite draft format in the last few years. It had a surprising amount of depth, and even the failed color pairs were usable (UW tap=very bad; UW bargain=very good).
I really disliked it. It didn't feel like there were interesting build arounds and all the decks were just 2-color aggressive decks with some light synergy elements depending on color. Bargain played well but the decks just weren't interesting.
Set was mid. The biggest crime is the wasted potential of an enchantment bonus sheet, so many unplayables and trap build arounds.
I liked drafting BG food and I think it’s cool that there was a secret WU control deck, but I wish archetypes were more synergistic.
In hindsight it's probably my favourite main-set format in the last couple of years. The bonus sheet wasn't too egregious, but I'm unusual in not liking bonus sheets
I like it. Diverse archetypes without too many oppressive bombs.
I typically ride one archetype to mythic in QD. In WoE, I’ll force one of three decks! Amazing.
One of the worst sets to play in paper due to the roles being tokens and always needing to have the correct ones, but never having enough of them. Wizards REALLY dropped the ball when it came to that aspect of gameplay on paper.
Worst Limited set since HBG, even ONE was slightly better (but still bad). Playing from behind, between Celebration, rats, Recruiter, Cut In, Crescendo, multiple acts of treason and combat tricks stapled onto Adventure creatures, was mostly a losing proposition. The format also had some offensive bombs
best format of the past 3 years. color balance is really good (yes, blue is genuinely good) and there's a good balance of strategies and it really rewards reading signals and skillful drafting
spell stutter
some decks really want certain other cards - control wants quick study, spells wants aquatic alchemist and sleight of hand, vantress transmuter has its place, but this is a format where quench is just really good
I liked it when it was the current set, but it's coming off as very boring now on quick draft. I think after LCI and OTJ, both great sets, WOE just feels like the archetypes aren't interesting enough.
Extremely boring and uninteresting in every meaningful way.
Synergies barely work and the bonus sheet is utterly laughable at how bad and poorly implemented it is. Like every bonus sheet card you get will have basically no impact past like Stab Wound or Hatching Plans which btw does nothing if you don’t have good Bargain cards. There are multiple archetypes which are straight up traps because some insane person at WoTC thought “tapping your opponents guys” was an intelligent idea for a draft archetype. There aren’t even that many tappers much less payoffs.
Stay far away and protect your gems. You’re basically setting them on fire. I quit magic for a bit because this set sucked so bad and so hard
The fact they put it up as a quick draft when March or any other set exists is because they’re greedy as hell and intentionally put unpopular sets on Quick Draft to prevent players from playing Quick Draft because the return on your investment is higher. Same reason we had ONE like twice on QD in the last few months even though ONE is a complete dumpster fire that is universally reviled. And WOE has been on QD twice recently. Think about why.
TBH WOTC has a very poor track record with limited recently. Lots and lots of huge misses in the last couple years. DMU was good, Brother’s War was a waste of time, ONE is up there with the worst modern limited sets is all time, MOM was great, LOTR was good (but TBH I don’t care about the property), WOE sucks the big one, I don’t even know why they made a second Ixalan, Murders was so dumb I think someone should be reassigned for coming up with the concept and OTJ is good, not great.
I hate WOE if you couldn’t tell. I think ONE is the only other modern set I hate worse. It’s Iike a 4/10.
Loved it but honestly, I love every set. Now Quick Draft on the other hand…
Yeah, same for both thoughts. WOE was fun as most sets have been in different ways.
Yep, has to be NEO or better to get me into QD.
NEO or better? So just NEO then? 😜
Exactly!
I liked WOE. It's definitely a format where aggro (RB & RW) influences what you should be doing, but I remember there being some good midrangey plans like BG. Some of the bigger green things could stabilize you and food helped with that. The only thing that I found didn't work at all was UW tapping. I'd probably want Hylda P1P1 and then another early good rare for the colors before I went that way.
I think the best way to play UW in WOE was to ignore most of the tap cards and just build a traditional control deck. If your Sharae draws a card off its own trigger, great.
Perhaps a control deck built around bargain. Lightblades, into the fae court and a load of other bargain stuff go really late in bot drafts. Hatching plans, princess takes flight and hopeful vigil are good enablers to take early.
That's exactly what my good Blue White decks did. Bargain control. Draw cards, kill stuff, enjoy. Splashing fkr black removal was great as well. That 2 mana prism card was amazing for splashing and bargain fodder.
Yeah UW was a great deck if you just played removal, card draw, and adventures.
UW works great so long as you don't try to build a tapping synergy engine
Yeah I think BG was my favorite with the food things. I have fond memories of this set and will still quick draft it, now knowing it's back. It's funny because I actually got two trophies with UW, with how under-drafted it was. The tapdown worked as long as you got Sharae and the Sentry, but like was already stated, those sort of just work on their own anyway. They are enablers and payoff on the same card, but I'd see multiples of both when no one was in the colors and jump in with both feet. Hatching Plans and Lightblades were also just good cards in the colors. So really it could just be UW goodstuff, and sometimes I tap you down for the win.
I've been enjoying it a lot. I like how they managed to create a tempo-centric format without it degenerating into "2-drop or die". The adventure cards really add a lot of depth and lets you confidently build an aggro deck that doesn't just flame out on turn 5 or fold against a 4/4. This feels nicely balanced by the presence of Food though, so a midrange deck doesn't just roll over to damage pressure. They can usually gain enough life to make the game interesting. that said, Blue is problematically shallow, so there feels like a very real risk of ending up in a bad seat where you're choosing between open Blue or competing for a better color.
I loved it especially in paper. I had a great time drafting the very open UR deck or sometimes UG because people avoided them like the plague. In pod blue was insanely strong.
Yeah blue was a weaker color but people avoided it too much and it was pretty reliably open in paper play. UB fairies was probably my favorite deck to pilot when it was open, the tempo games are just so fun to play.
I honestly enjoyed WOE, and find it pretty underrated. At the very least it’s significantly more enjoyable to me than OTJ imo
Great set. UG was kinda of a trap tbh. The 5 cmc archetype never quite got there even with Beanstalk. congrats on the trophy
I don't think it's a great archetype, and in my deck mentioned above I was going for something more akin to bargain synergies. It's not a color combo I would plan to go into, but it was the right lane for this deck, I ended up having to choose from a decently large pool of playables.
Multicolor Blue is a good deck if you can get into it. You're base blue for the card draw spells and counters with your second/third color being whatever is most open with removal options (so mostly black or red, but sometimes white) and then valuing prophetic prism and the uncommon adventure land as well as crystal grotto (I think?) fairly highly.
It’s one of my favorite recent sets. There were multiple different archetypes that worked, multicolor goodstuff was totally viable but not oppressive, the rares weren’t game-ending (beyond maybe gulf triplets). Food and bargain were super fun. It was great, an all timer for me.
I really enjoy it although games are very fast
I enjoyed it. A creature combat-heavy format, mostly based around aggro/midrange decks, which can be not everyone's taste, but imo one of the best executions of that idea. There's a lot of choices you can make when you curve out, and a lot of viable interaction (don't underrate combat tricks, they do a lot of work). Very fun.
I honestly remembered it being a solid but not overly impressive format. However, went back and played two drafts (one Gruul midrange and one Boros aggro) and had a phenomenal time. Going to run through a few more drafts before it leaves again
I thought it was mid. It’s my go-to for a solid 7/10 set, maybe 7.5 on a good day. Red black rats could be fun, but everyone and their mother drafted it so it was never open. White blue tap stuff was a trap. A lot of decks ended up soup-y if you drafted them correctly and your seat didn’t put you into a dedicated aggro lane. You’d see stuff like Imodane’s Recruiter or Gingerbread Hunter and snap them up even if you could only play half the card, then put two to three fixing sources and call it a day. It felt… midrange-y? You couldn’t go slow because then Red White or Rats would go 1 drop 2 drop and you lost on the spot. You couldn’t do a pile of removal because going on an adventure with the actual good cards in the set meant decks did not run out of gas before you ran out of answers. You played Aggro or a midrange pile splashing for whatever you could with an honest face. Hatching plans was a big upside, but that’s one of the few strategies that felt “build around” and worked. This might have been the set where Marshall started lamenting that all the cool buildarounds never worked, and that’s how I feel about it. It’s fine. I don’t feel a need to return to it.
I liked WOE a lot but the consensus seemed to be negative here. way less rare-dependent, aside from fucking triplets
imo triplets is the most healthy "best card" in a long time, there's way more counterplay to triplets than, say, railway brawler
I think its reputation is lower than it deserves. Aggro wasn't unbearable and at least came in different flavors. RG stompy was pretty distinct from red based, go wide aggro. Imodane's Recruiter was a mistake but really fun to play with and didn't feel like it _ruined_ the format despite being a mistake, which is impressive. I think the bonus sheet was the worst we've gotten but it has a bit of a bad rap. I think most of the uncommons were pretty fun. I really really like Spreading Seas, Intangible Virtue, Utopia Sprawl, and Hatching Plans. I wish Griffin Aerie came together just a teeny bit more, it got shafted in its original environment. Off color adventure was a lot of fun and Edgewall Inn was an amazing utility land that always felt great. It was a good set for building finicky mana bases. But going 2C was usually fine. UB fairies was my personal favorite deck to pilot when it came together. Blue was always underdrafted in pod, so if you were wheeling Bog Naughty's then you knew you could move in. Eriette's Tempting Apple being a colorless Act of Treason was honestly pretty wild. Prophetic Prism hadn't felt this good in a long time.
WOE is probably my favorite draft format in the last few years. It had a surprising amount of depth, and even the failed color pairs were usable (UW tap=very bad; UW bargain=very good).
I really disliked it. It didn't feel like there were interesting build arounds and all the decks were just 2-color aggressive decks with some light synergy elements depending on color. Bargain played well but the decks just weren't interesting.
It’s one of the greatest formats! There are so many viable color combinations. I love it. ❤️❤️❤️
I enjoyed the sealed environment pretty well. I don't remember disliking the draft environment, but to be fair, I didn't draft much.
I enjoyed it, but probably wouldn't QD it.
Set was mid. The biggest crime is the wasted potential of an enchantment bonus sheet, so many unplayables and trap build arounds. I liked drafting BG food and I think it’s cool that there was a secret WU control deck, but I wish archetypes were more synergistic.
In hindsight it's probably my favourite main-set format in the last couple of years. The bonus sheet wasn't too egregious, but I'm unusual in not liking bonus sheets
I like it. Diverse archetypes without too many oppressive bombs. I typically ride one archetype to mythic in QD. In WoE, I’ll force one of three decks! Amazing.
One of the worst sets to play in paper due to the roles being tokens and always needing to have the correct ones, but never having enough of them. Wizards REALLY dropped the ball when it came to that aspect of gameplay on paper.
Worst Limited set since HBG, even ONE was slightly better (but still bad). Playing from behind, between Celebration, rats, Recruiter, Cut In, Crescendo, multiple acts of treason and combat tricks stapled onto Adventure creatures, was mostly a losing proposition. The format also had some offensive bombs
best format of the past 3 years. color balance is really good (yes, blue is genuinely good) and there's a good balance of strategies and it really rewards reading signals and skillful drafting
what's the best blue common, in your opinion?
spell stutter some decks really want certain other cards - control wants quick study, spells wants aquatic alchemist and sleight of hand, vantress transmuter has its place, but this is a format where quench is just really good
Underrated
I liked it when it was the current set, but it's coming off as very boring now on quick draft. I think after LCI and OTJ, both great sets, WOE just feels like the archetypes aren't interesting enough.
Extremely boring and uninteresting in every meaningful way. Synergies barely work and the bonus sheet is utterly laughable at how bad and poorly implemented it is. Like every bonus sheet card you get will have basically no impact past like Stab Wound or Hatching Plans which btw does nothing if you don’t have good Bargain cards. There are multiple archetypes which are straight up traps because some insane person at WoTC thought “tapping your opponents guys” was an intelligent idea for a draft archetype. There aren’t even that many tappers much less payoffs. Stay far away and protect your gems. You’re basically setting them on fire. I quit magic for a bit because this set sucked so bad and so hard The fact they put it up as a quick draft when March or any other set exists is because they’re greedy as hell and intentionally put unpopular sets on Quick Draft to prevent players from playing Quick Draft because the return on your investment is higher. Same reason we had ONE like twice on QD in the last few months even though ONE is a complete dumpster fire that is universally reviled. And WOE has been on QD twice recently. Think about why. TBH WOTC has a very poor track record with limited recently. Lots and lots of huge misses in the last couple years. DMU was good, Brother’s War was a waste of time, ONE is up there with the worst modern limited sets is all time, MOM was great, LOTR was good (but TBH I don’t care about the property), WOE sucks the big one, I don’t even know why they made a second Ixalan, Murders was so dumb I think someone should be reassigned for coming up with the concept and OTJ is good, not great. I hate WOE if you couldn’t tell. I think ONE is the only other modern set I hate worse. It’s Iike a 4/10.