Constructed Blues

For some reason I don’t play MTG Forge’s constructed mode (all the cards) very often and in fact it is my least favorite mode. When you have all the cards, constructed mode feels fake for some reason. On the other hand sealed and draft games are super fun. Currently my favorite format is sealed since it takes less time and I enjoy playing different color combinations to see what colors are the strongest.

In real life when I played constructed on Magic Online it felt different because I never had all the cards that I really wanted. I never had some chase rare and only a handful of useful uncommons to choose from. For me it was trying to make the best constructed deck with my puny card pool, which is currently how I view limited games. It was exciting to win against a better more expensive deck with lowly commons and uncommons.

Pro Magic players have said time and time again that drafting is infinitely more fun that constructed. Basically constructed is solvable. By solvable I mean that there will be one or more tier 1 decks and the rest are rubbish. Ideally the tier 1 constructed decks would work like rock-paper-scissors. Deck A beats B, B beats C, and C beats A, so it all goes in a circular fashion. If there is only a single tier 1 deck then the format becomes stale. Personally Dragonstorm seemed like the best deck until 10th rolled around, stripping it of Seething Song. Back when Mirrodin was around, Arcbound Ravager decks ruled the roost and were eventually banned. But the damage was already done, sales and tournament attendance was down.

So back to limited games, they have more variety and that is why I love them. (I know there are a variety of alternative formats like peasant, all commons and uncommons, and singleton, where you only have 1 copy of each card.) What formats do you play?