u/werfmark

The secret to blue in HOB

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Examples of 2 decks that both went 7-0.

Blue is the second best color after Black in this set but Blue is harder to draft.
The draw 2 archetype is very strong but the suggested UW or UG pairing rarely works well I find. The problem is that blue, white and green have good stuff but both are shallow and white/green are mostly dwarves/elves/ferocious, none of which synergize with the good blue stuff. So unless blue is really open if you go UW/UG you'll end up with ~15 cards that work well in the draw 2 archetype and then need to play a bunch of dwarves/elves and mediocre removal to fill it out. It's especially hard to get a good amount of 2-drops which are crucial in this format.

Instead I would suggest to pair blue with black or red usually. You get access to more stuff that actually works well with the strong blue stuff, ie good removal, solid 2-drops, decent equipment that makes those soldiers useful and even some draw stuff (rage into the valley, ragged spear) and sacrifice synergies for your soldiers. Heck even decent graveyard synergies to use with recruit/masters like tidings of war and gollum.
It's probably completely unintended by the designers but red/black both synergize way better with blue than white/green.
Still there can be a few bombs in white/green you do want to play (company or mountain king cards) but most of those are a single white/green pip and 3+ mana. So you just splash those. With recruit and the bilbo's your looting is very good so you can easily splash. Either you find your splash color or if you don't you can just loot away the cards you can't cast.

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u/werfmark — 4 days ago

MSH Limited First week impressions.

First feelings about the format after having played around 20 drafts so far.

White is the best followed closely by Blue, Green is okay, Black mediocre and Red is afwul.

Most themes (heroes, villains, draw 2, +1+1, self-target, attack alone, artifacts, 2 creatures in graveyard, prowess) are not really worth pursuing. Just play the good cards and if you have a bit of the theme going on you can take some payoffs. But the best commons like [[Hero in training]], [[S.H.I.E.L.D. Deployment Drone]] and [[Trickster's Stratagem]] are always great but do help some themes.

The villains and artifact archetypes especially I find weak. Many of the cards that really care about it are very underpowered if you aren't running mostly villain/artifact. But most of the artifacts and villains are really underpowered and the good ones are wanted by everyone not running pure artifact and villain.
Overall i'd really stay out of red and black if possible. Some of the best stuff is splashable and highly picked too much so other players seem to be taking away your goodies and you have to be lucky to get a strong deck together.

White especially is very deep. Note that all commons except Kree commando's and Panther pounce are sitting above Lightning strike now on 17 lands (of course that doesn't mean they are better, just that red and white are massively under- and overperforming respectively).

As pretty much always the man-o-war variant [[Justice, Vance Astrovik]] and put 2nd of the top bounce spell [[Trickster's Stratagem]] are among best uncommons and commons. Connive is secretly very good in the format because it helps with so many synergies (+1+1, draw 2, filling the grave).

Overall I think you want to play a low curve because you're not running out of stuff to do fast. Between power-up abilities, decent draw spells, land activations and some solid equipment you often have lategame.

[[Avenger's tower]] especially deserves a shout-out I think because it's a great manafixer. The things you splash for like [[Jennifer Walters]], [[Monica Rambeau]], [[Tony Stark]] and [[Ka-Zar of the Savage Land]] are all single pip red/green so easy to splash. Some of the color heavy cards like [[Captain America, Super-Soldier]] and [[The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl]] are also cast easier with it. Picking up some duals, a land-cycler or two and Avenger's tower or Villainous Hideout makes splashing the bombs quite easy. The land-cyclers especially combine well with We Say Thee Nay.

Some of the worst trap cards are those that trigger of self-targeting like [[Colleen Wing, Street Samurai]]. I don't think you want to play many tricks and actually use some of the solid equipment like [[S.H.I.E.L.D. Spy Kit]] instead. There are just so many ways to get blown out with those self-targeting cards and their baselevel is really low.

[[S.H.I.E.L.D. Spy Kit]] and [[Rapid Rescue]] get my vote for most underrated cards in the set. The spy kit is a surprisingly solid equipment where the combination between pseudo viligance, scry and decent stat boost just give it enough to make it good. Also helps with tiny synergies as sacrifice an artifact or return something to hand or making sure you still have teamwork up.
Rapid rescue in the right deck is just a solid card selection spell. Suppose you run it along with 6 other non-permanents (easy in white/green/blue as most removal, tricks and card draw are actually enchantment/artifact/equipment) and your fizzle chance is only ~2% while it helps find your bombs and smooth out your land draws.

Finally most stupid card in the set has got to be [[The Sentry, Golden Guardian]]. It's not very good as often it just gets Webbed up or Frozen in Ice but it's stupid how it makes the game revolve around itself. Had it completely demolish me when playing something like Gruul and also instantly won against it with most others. I can't think of any worse card design for limited as it demotes the game to just 'do you have the right removal?'.

Overall imbalance of colors and most decks seemingly just being goodstuff instead of really going for one of the themes make me give this format a B. I like how many games go a decent length without going too long like SOS did but had hoped for more variety in archetypes.

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u/werfmark — 2 months ago