Wizards of the Coast announced a sweet schedule of flashback drafts for 2016. Here’s the post in case you missed it. Basically, they are going to offer a new flashback draft format every week of the year, with breaks when new sets are released. How do they fill up all that time? By offering every draft format that is now Modern-legal. Let’s start with triple Eighth Edition and go from there!
If you ever wanted to try your hand at Champion-Champions-Betrayers draft, you have a chance all week at the end of February. Clear your calendar now! That’s right, they are doing each format, not just the final full blocks. You’ll have to dedicate a lot of time to do a full comparative study of each format iteration, but if you pick and choose your favorites, you’ll do just fine. Considering how many different answers you get when you ask a group of Magic players to name their favorite draft format, this is a welcome approach.
On first reaction, this sounds like great news. Not only do we get a chance to try all of the Modern draft formats, but we also get more copies of staple Modern cards into circulation. For the first time ever, Blood Moon will be a first pick, purely on value. Get those raredrafting fingers ready! You’ll have to wait a few months to get a shot at Scapeshift, but Goryo’s Vengeance will be up for cracking and selling before you know it. Assuming it doesn’t get banned, that is.
Feed me, Seymour!
But then a thought occured to me—I don’t really like flashback drafts. Over the last couple years, I may have done five or six total flashback drafts when they were offered periodically on Magic Online. They don’t interest me. I’m probably in the minority among limited junkies—back when I was jamming with the Team Draft League crew in Brooklyn, everyone else had more enthusiasm for drafting old formats than I did. Unless it’s Innistrad or Modern Masters, I would rather stick with the current set. Why?
Here’s what I love most about limited Magic: Every three months, Wizards releases a set and the Magic world digs in and explores each new draft format. At first we flag the good cards, jam aggressive strategies, play the obvious archetypes, and try out new rares. As we learn the secrets of the format, the draft metagame shifts. Astute players learn the value cards that wheel around the table and plan their drafts around maximizing the value of those eleventh pick gems. Unknown archetypes explode onto the scene and become overdrafted. Weaker decks start to make sense and mastering them rewards the player who reads signals. It’s an exciting and dynamic new world, three or four times a year. It never gets old.
Flashback drafts are more about nostalgia. You join a triple-Mirrodin queue in 2016 and get a glimpse of the past. You do not get a dynamic metagame with seven opponents who are intimately familiar with the format. When you join a Battle for Zendikar 8-4 draft online this week, you know all your opponents understand the format, at least to some degree. Some people follow limited metagame shifts more closely than others, but you generally know what signals could mean in a currently-explored draft format. Flashback drafts offer basically none of this. Maybe half the people in a draft will know the format well from jamming it years ago, and the rest either “heard it was fun to draft Time Spiral” or sort of know what half the cards do.
What does this card do again?
Flashback drafts tend to be popular among long-time players who have drafted for over a decade. The skill gap between Luis Scott-Vargas and Randomdrooler69 is never more pronounced than in an old format where the information gap is massive. If all you want to do is jam powerful cards and crush uninformed foes, flashback drafts are the place to be. They are also great for casual limited fans who want a chance to play with their favorite weak cards once again. You don’t get to cast Dampen Thought in constructed.
Maybe if I had been drafting non-stop since 1998, I’d be an avid flashback drafter. I wish I knew all the cards in Time Spiral off the top of my head the way I do for New Phyrexia and Gatecrash. Had I done the deep dive back when Champions of Kamigawa was the current set, I might be excited to see what the metagame looks like a decade later. But I didn’t start drafting seriously until Scars of Mirrodin block. The total number of drafts I’ve done of formats older than Scars is probably less than twenty. I’ve drafted every set since Scars at least that much, and usually a whole lot more.
So what can I say? I hate nostalgia? It’s hard to flash back something you didn’t get to cast in the first place. Sure, you can mill yourself, but who has time for that in the constant tournament that is life? Even so, I am excited to try my hand at some random old formats. I need to expand my draft horizons. Find holes in your game and fill them. That is the path to greatness, in old formats and new.
Carrie O’Hara is Editor-in-Chief of Hipsters of the Coast.