Steepleclimb Concluded

Yesterday, we concluded our three-set Cloudpierce block by drafting and playing Steepleclimb . We introduced the set in a spoiler post earlier this month.

Busting open packs

Everyone showed up with their cards printed and trimmed, meaning we had a brief period where we had to sleeve the cards, but otherwise we got started very quickly. We prepared packs each with 1 rare, 3 uncommons, 10 commons, and one non-basic land, and put them into ziplock bags.

As always, it’s really exciting to open packs with very little idea what you’ll be faced with. You have to evaluate the strength of cards with no preconceptions. It kept happening that cards I thought were really strong, and almost picked, would come all the way back around to me…meaning I probably overvalued them!

Games

After drafting and building our decks, we jumped straight into games. We started with a couple of games of Star. In the second game, each player allied with their former enemies and we allowed players to attack their allies (although I don’t believe anyone made use of this flexibility).

Although I enjoyed both Star games, I find multiplayer magic to be quite random and that I end up making fewer interesting decisions. This format didn’t change my perception, but I’m glad to have tried it. In both cases, there was a very slim margin between two different players becoming the victor.

We then moved onto some 1v1 Magic. Personally, I found these to be much more satisfying and often resulted in some really close games.

All players had their cards well represented, and we have decks employing each of the major new mechanics (Living Aura, Auramorph, Infuse, Respire). It was very satisfying to both watch and play.

Decks

Here are some of the iconic cards employed by each of the players, and the colour combination they played.

Next steps

The sets we’ve made so far are a little chaotic, with very little coherence between the mechanics. In Steepleclimb, we had a few niggles:

• Respire works quite badly in combination with Auras
• Having both Auramorph and Living Aura in the same set is confusing
• Having both Auramorph and Morph in the same set is confusing
• Some cards are too strong, and just unfun to play against

We may cherry-pick the best cards from the whole Cloudpierce block to form a block, and play another draft with just these cards. We may also start a new block, learning various lessons from what we’ve already done. For example, by picking a small set of synnergistic mechanics which we may all use. Whatever we decide, I’m looking forward to the next incarnation of our custom Magic efforts!