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By: Cheater Hater, Vincent Borchardt
Mar 04 2015 5:02am
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I like puzzles, and I also like Magic design. As such, with the recent resurgence of Masters sets (Modern Masters, Vintage Masters, and soon Modern Masters 2015) where most or all of the cards are reprints of already existing cards in some range, you can try to guess what cards are going to be in the set based on what cards can be reprinted or need to be reprinted.

If you're reading this, you may ask: “How is it design to guess what rares will be reprinted? Isn't that just finance talk?” What makes what I'm doing better is that I go beyond just predicting rares and mythics, and instead try to craft an entire set: every common and uncommon, even the ones no one cares about, as well as the rares destined to be bulk. If we look at the set as a whole, we can start to craft a limited environment, which then lets us guide how to integrate all the important reprints in the set. For a Masters set where you have thousands of cards to choose from, you can guide the themes to include your desired reprints—as a simple example, if you wanted to reprint Noble Hierarch in Modern Masters 2015, you would need other cards with Exalted in the set. However, for an introduction to the concept, you would want to start with something simpler, and thankfully Wizards has provided the perfect testing ground for designing reprint sets.

Tempest Remastered is a very interesting set—clearly designed as an attempt to put more Wastelands into circulation, it isn't going to do much if the set isn't good enough to get people to actually draft it. As such, Wizards has said they are applying the same level fine-tuning they did to Vintage Masters (which while not as good as the original Modern Masters, it certainly was much better than the original attempt to get old cards on Magic Online), which should mean we get something much better than the original Tempest block draft. While a redesign of many of these old sets is bound to be better by default (since Wizards has a much better idea of what they're doing now than they did 15+ years ago), Tempest Remastered has many more challenges than a normal Masters set has:

  1. Much smaller card pool
    Tempest block has 629 cards in it, and Tempest Remastered will use 269 of them, which is about 42% of the card pool. As a comparison, Modern Masters's card pool includes six blocks, three core sets, along with some extras like Eventide, Coldsnap, and Time Spiral's timeshifted sheet. If we estimate the card pool at 4200 cards (600 cards a block, 6 blocks+a seventh for the other stuff), Modern Masters used 229 cards, which is only about 5% of the card pool. As such, the Tempest Remastered team had a lot fewer options to choose from while crafting Tempest Remastered.
    Corpse Dance Dominating Licid Boil
  1. Confusing/outdated cards

    As mentioned earlier, while Tempest was one of the first sets designed for limited play, we were still in a transitional phase with regard to some modern design principles. For example, while Banding had finally been removed from the game after Mirage block, Tempest block still has cards that rely on graveyard order, which isn't desired for a new set. In addition, to fill the confusion void left by Banding's departure, Tempest had Licids, which few players knew how to play, and are even harder to play well. Finally, Tempest had many, many color hosers—cards like Chill, Choke, and six Circles of Protection do not lead to a fun limited environment.
    Rolling Thunder Charging Paladin Soltari Trooper
  1. Unbalanced power level

    Obviously Tempest block was not up to the balancing level of current sets—Rolling Thunder should have never been common for example. Thankfully a lot of the overpowered cards can be solved either by cuts or by rarity shifts. The more pressing problem comes from the other side of the spectrum, mainly that creatures are generally horrible. Tempest block makes this problem worse since many of the efficient creatures have Shadow, which is a problematic mechanic in itself—it leads to non-interactivity, which is a poor trait for a limited format. Of course, you can cut a lot of the bottom tier of cards, but we still have to fill a decent creature curve in each color.
    Rats of Rath Horned Turtle Mounted Archers
  1. Too few commons

    The idea that there should be more commons than uncommons than rares is a relatively recent innovation in Magic set design. Tempest block only contains 220 commons, which is just 35% of the total number of cards in the block. Tempest Remastered contains 101 commons, which is 40% of the (non-basic lands) in the set. This is a problem since it means we have to keep more of the commons on average (assuming rarity changes will balance each other out), which means the quality of the average common is lower (especially since we're upgrading the top tier of commons), which means decks will have to struggle more for playable cards. This is made worse since each pack of Tempest Remastered only has 10 commons in it, compared to the 11 commons in the packs in Tempest block.
    Canyon Drake Convalescence Whim of Volrath
  1. Too many bad rares

    On the surface, this feels like it should be a simpler problem to solve, but it's deceptively difficult. Tempest block contains 198 rares, 32% of the total number of cards in the block. Tempest Remastered only contains 68 rares and mythics, 27% of the cards in the set. In addition, a lot of these cards need to stay at rare if they're included at all due to either complexity or power level, so there aren't many opportunities for downgrades. The obvious answer is to cut a lot of the chaff, but that's not the entire story. We still need to find 15 mythics to headline the set. Some of them are obvious (Time Warp, Sliver Queen, Mox Diamond), but you won't get to 15 that way.

Overall, this is a very interesting puzzle indeed, even though there are fewer pieces than the usual Masters set. While I don't have the space to go over every single design decision today, I can give you a link to my first attempt at the set, and go over some of the big-picture designs decisions I made. To start with, here are the links to my Google Drive account, where I'm keeping my copies of the set for the time being, as well as a big-picture look at what I'm changing:

Set List (alphabetized)

Design Spreadsheet

 

What's Missing:

  • All the color hate

  • Licids

  • Graveyard order matters

  • Non-Sliver gold cards

What's Not Common Anymore:

  • Shadow creatures

  • en-Kors

  • Almost all Spikes

Dauthi Slayer Spirit en-Kor Spike Colony

Of all of these decisions, the one that probably raises some eyebrows is my decision to move Shadow out of common. I should note that this is an experiment to increase interactivity and smooth out the power level at common. I also haven't removed the keyword from common entirely: Heartwood Dryad and Shadow Rift are both at common to help the two colors without as much removal. Other than that, there shouldn't be many other surprises—the non-Sliver gold cards mainly fell out due to lack of space, while the en-Kors are too powerful for common (especially since I've weakened the non-damage removal in the set). Another experiment is keeping most of the Spikes out of common—this is based on reducing complexity, and is another change I could reverse after more testing.

 

The main thing I've found while designing the set is that it's a lot harder to craft clear archetypes, mainly due to the lack of options. I have tried to craft one archetype though: Slivers. I've done this by keeping every Sliver in the set (and they'll show up more often due to the set being smaller and there being three packs of the common Slivers), as well as putting all ten dual lands at uncommon (both the allied Cinder Marsh cycle and the enemy Caldera Lake cycle). There are other ideas I want to try, but I want the feeling of the set to sort itself out before I starting trying to force more archetypes.

 

Finally, I'll go over the one thing everyone wants to see from this design: the mythic rares. As I mentioned, it was difficult to try and find fifteen mythic-feeling cards, and some of these choices are in flux (particularly the colorless options). Let's go over them one-by-one:

White:

  • Orim, Samite Healer

    I put a cycle at five legends in the set at mythic in order to fill five slots—it's really difficult to fill the fifteen slots otherwise without some filler. If Modern Masters could use the Kamigawa dragon cycle, I can cheat in the same way—and I also don't need to comment on each member of the cycle.
  • Cataclysm

    A combination Wrath/Armageddon feels mythic to me, especially since there already is a wrath effect at rare (Winds of Rath)

Blue:

Black:

Red:

Green:

Multicolored:

Artifact:

  • Mox Diamond

  • Ensnaring Bridge

    Not a fun card for limited, and one that's in demand for Modern—this is where not having the full picture at Wizards hurts me, since this is a candidate for Modern Masters 2015 as well, and I don't know if Wizards would put it in both sets, and if not, which one it would prioritize.
  • Sphere of Resistance

    Another unfun card, but this should probably be replaced with Grindstone since that's worse, and also worth a lot more—one of the biggest problem is that there are a lot of rare artifacts and lands I want to print, and there isn't room for all of them even though I already have 18 of the rare and mythic slots dedicated to them. If I need to make more room, I can remove the Medallion cycle from rare (either removing it entirely or demoting it to uncommon), but I think it's fine for now.

Land:

  • Wasteland

    Yes, my first variation of the set has Wizards not being nice and putting Wasteland at a rarity indicative of its price. If you think Wizards is planning on being nice, you can swap this with City of Traitors, and I might do so in the next iteration of the set.
  • Volrath's Stronghold

    A pretty mythic-feeling card, and it leads to bad game states in limited as well.

 

Anyway, that's a high-level look at my first draft of Tempest Remastered. If people like the stuff I'm writing, I have many more ideas of stuff I could write. My next article could take one of several different forms:

  • Write one or more follow-ups on Tempest Remastered, going into detail on the commons and uncommons of each color and trying to build the various archetypes you can draft.

  • Take another block and write about what a speculative Remastered set could look like for that block. My gut says that Masques block would be next if this succeeds for Wizards, but I'd take requests on which block to cover next.

  • Jump into the deep end and start talking about Modern Masters 2015. This was actually my first reprint set design, and is on version 6 at the moment. This one is something people probably want to see, but it's also the most complicated to go over (especially compared to a Remastered set with a tenth of the card pool).

Let me know in the comments what you want to see next!  Also let me know if you have any questions about the design process, or about my design of Tempest Remastered.

 

Vincent

6 Comments

@Andrew by Cheater Hater at Wed, 03/04/2015 - 00:32
Cheater Hater's picture

I'm sure everyone hopes that Wasteland is rare (assuming they aren't delusional enough to think it will be uncommon), it's just that Wizards knows that too--then again, they didn't put Force of Will at mythic in Vintage Masters, so maybe they're treating online sets and paper sets differently?

Really, Warmth and friends aren't accessible? They are uncommon and are either fringe cards or playable in Modern (thus able to be reprinted--I don't know if Wizards would want to put Choke in a Modern Masters set, but they certainly could). The only reason Wasteland skyrocketed is because many top-tier Legacy decks wanted it as a 4-of, and it isn't replaceable--that's different from a couple decks wanting 1 or 2 copies as a sideboard option.

Volrath's Lab is really awful by Paul Leicht at Wed, 03/04/2015 - 03:16
Paul Leicht's picture

Volrath's Lab is really awful (fun as a reject rare, but awful) do you mean Volrath's Stronghold?

Volrath lab is an artifact, by Lawnmower Elf at Wed, 03/04/2015 - 03:29
Lawnmower Elf's picture

Volrath lab is an artifact, and features under "land" so this must be a typo. And lab is worth $0.02, hardly mythic.

Yes, that is a by Cheater Hater at Wed, 03/04/2015 - 03:35
Cheater Hater's picture

Yes, that is a typo--obviously I meant the Stronghold. The Lab is in the set, but it's at rare (and mainly exists to help the Slivers theme).

Of course, now the question is how do I get this fixed?

Talk to Joshua Claytor our by Paul Leicht at Wed, 03/04/2015 - 03:57
Paul Leicht's picture

Talk to Joshua Claytor our illustrious and esteemed legendary editor.

I for the volrtaths cards by JXClaytor at Wed, 03/04/2015 - 05:03
JXClaytor's picture

I got the volrtaths cards confused. As I get older I find my memory slipping. I apologize, and it has been corrected in the article.