#189: Right Cards for the right draft decks, MSH Edition

But one perk of the patrons is you can ask question of the week, and I had two.

I only could select one for this week, so, uh, uh, next one is going to happen in the next episode I'm gonna record.

But, uh, this one is, "Do you think color imbalance is a bug or a feature from a set designer's or game designer's perspective?" And in a true content creator style, I'm going to answer it, uh, in a round way.

So I do think there is merits in color imbalance for a game player, and therefore, there are good ways for the game designer to utilize the imbalances, especially in a format like draft, where color imbalance is something that lets players learn the format.

In a perfectly balanced format, you just need to know how to draft because every color is playable, everything is doable, and because of that, you just see what is open, you draft it, and you play.

You need to learn which cards are good and whatnot, but, um, um, there is not much, uh, figuring out, uh, uh, on the, on, around that.

In a, in balanced format, which arguably Marvel Super Heroes is, um, you have multiple ways.

You can either learn how to abuse the system and draft blue-white, which is the best color combination, or you can, and I've seen people do that, learn how to utilize those less drafted colors and build something around it.

Dafor historically was very good in, uh, exactly that, um, uh, limited streamer now, um, a, a full-fledged pro player, uh, Dafor.

Uh, where, for example, in Bloomburrow, where Otter's deck was not good, Dafor just claimed it was the best thing ever and drafted it and trophied regularly with the Otter's deck.

Now, the question is, can anyone replicate Dafor's strategy? Not 100%, I guess, because not many of us are at the level that lets you day two pro tours routinely.

But to some extent, if you know what to look for in those lesser colors, you can learn to do something.

And, and of course, this ties neatly to this episode because we're gonna learn the cards that are maybe underperformers general, but overperformers somewhere.

But there is another thing that I wanted to touch on when the question was asked to me.

And I do think that when we talk about color imbalance, it's convoluted.

I think that we're talking about two different things, and we conflate them into one thing.

I think that there are two different versions of color imbalance.

They often feed each other, but not always, as I'm hopefully going to make a, a, a case for you.

Uh, I think that there is a card file color imbalance, which means that one or two of the colors were made more powerful by the set designers, and that's one thing.

And there is also metagame imbalance, and this thing is not the same.

It means that, yes, colors can be in an imbalance in a draft, uh, environment, but if people draft well, they will take that into account.

More people will draft white and blue, for example, in this set.

Fewer people will draft red.

Because fewer people draft red, maybe those red decks can be powerful enough.

If more people draft white and blue, well, the power of those decks is gonna be diluted between multiple drafters, and because of that, maybe those decks are not going to be as winning as, uh, they should.