I just recently got back into magic twords the end of theros block after a long hiatus, Ive been trying to research and get cards from the sets that I missed, but after looking at the spoilers for dragons maze, why did people dislike it so much? It seems like it has a lot of interesting cards.
Why the hate /tg/?
>>44174451
There's a variety of reasons, but mainly because it came after Return to Ravnica and Gatecrash, which were both very well received sets (Gatecrash a little less so) so in comparison Dragon's Maze was a little underwhelming.
However the fact of the matter was the vast majority of the cards in the set just weren't powerful enough, or efficiently costed enough, to make an impact in Constructed. The split cards were cool but Turn//Burn was the only one that saw any real play as the others just didn't do enough for their mana costs. Likewise for the Maze Runner cycle, they felt more like they were pitched towards Commander than Standard.
Basically while a lot of the cards look big and flashy, in practice they ended up not being as cool as you hoped they would be. Apart from Voice of Resurgence which was just all kinds of annoying and another sign that Wizards had abandoned their original design philosophy towards Mythics and just started treating them more like 'Super Rares.'
>>44175150
So as a primary EDH player, would it be stupid to buy my GF an 80$ box of this for us to play sealed with and then use in EDH decks?
>>44175232
Yes it would actually. Voice is the only card that is actually worth money in this set, so the only way you're likely to get a good deal out of that purchase is if you open two of them, and some number of Shocklands (some of the DGM packs had shocklands in the land slot) which off the top of my head you'd have a roughly 10% chance of happening. You're better off just buying the cards you actually want from DGM and saving yourself like $60. Especially since you're supposed to play DGM sealed along with GTC and RTR, playing it by itself sounds like it'd be god awful.
>>44175232
Why do you want to do that when you can get a box of RTR for $90?
>>44174451
I'm speaking as primarily a limited player, so here's what DGM did for the RTR-block draft format.
3XRTR was great for draft, the guilds were decently balanced and there were no real "trap" strategies (but some were better than others obv.)
3XGTC was slightly worse. Basically, it was too aggro oriented. Wx aggro was great and all other colors ended up having to draft grizzly bears very highly just to be able to stabilize. But GTC was still a decent draft format (or very good if you prefer aggro mirrors in draft).
DGM was meant to knit it all together. It had tons of fixing, but most of it was in the form of the underwhelming cluestones. It had great multicolor cards, but drafting mulitcolor cards in the first pack is always a gamble (the draft order was DGM-GTC-RTR). And it introduced gate-reliant creatures that were mediocre without gates, and great with gates, which encouraged some players to draft gates very highly. In addition to what could be found in the DGM packs themselves you also get the fact that in order to have at least one guild in each pack you need to draft 3 colors (= 3 guilds), which means you needed more color fixing that you did in 3XRTR or 3XGTC The result was that you had to draft fixing and multicolor cards early, and hope things would work out in the later packs. The good fixing (gates) had to be drafted very early, since they, in addition to being the best fixing were also needed for the "gate deck" which some occasionally attempted. Add that to relatively low expected value (except for 2-3 good mythics at the time) and you got a very mediocre final to an otherwise exciting block.
>>44175232
DGM is a small set, playing 6xDGM sealed is pretty bad (though not as bad as 3xDGM draft). 2xRTR, 2xGTC, 2xDGM is vastly superior and actually a pretty fun format.
It's not a very fun sealed format, and you're unlikely to open much of value for your EDH decks.
>>44175958
>in order to have at least one guild in each pack you need to draft 3 colors
I think I can tell why you didn't like full Return to Ravnica block drafts, because you were drafting them wrong. You just picked one guild and drafted it, that's what you were supposed to do. The Gatecrash guilds were generally preferred as you could have a pretty solid deck by the end of pack 2, so you were able to hoover up all the good mono-colour or hybrid cards in pack 3. Going 3 colours was a recipe for disaster in any of the three Return to Ravnica block formats.
I enjoyed DGM-GTC-RTR as a draft format but as you said triple RTR and triple GTC were definitely superior.FUCKING CLUESTONES!
>>44175432
>>44175604
>>44175958
>>44176051
So would it be worth it to buy a box of each? To draft/play sealed with and then use the leftovers for binders/cubes/edh decks?
I'm pretty sure I can get all three boxes for 250$
>>44176895
It probably is actually. Full disclosure, I don't think you will get $250 worth of cards out of those three boxes, but if you're planning to play some Limited with them you'll at least get enough entertainment value out of them. You'll have enough packs to do 4 unique 8-man drafts, and then can just repackage the packs for Sealed/re-drafting if you want.
You will probably get a handful of valuable cards still though. I actually did an RTR draft last week and out of one box there was something like three Shocklands, a Deathrite Shaman, an Abrupt Decay and a Chromatic Lantern got opened. Also it's a really fun format.
>>44176187
I HAVE THE TITLE AND MISFORTUNE TO BE THE OWNER OF AN ACTUAL POUND OF GODDAMN CLUESTONES BECAUSE I WAS FOOLISH ENOUGH TO HAVE MY FRIENDS TALK ME INTO SPLITTING MONEY FOR A BOX AND DRAFTING IT.
MY FIRST AND SECOND PACK CONTAINED TWO, AND MY THIRD PACK HAD THREE. THIS PACK HAD ALSO GRACED ME WITH EMMARA TANDRIS AS THE RARE.At least I won it using Feral Animist with Unflinching Courage. Still, won't make that mistake again,BFZ.
