Alchemy Fixed Aetherdrift Draft

This past weekend, we saw Breach dominate the Modern RC. Modern is in a broken place, which was obvious the second they unbanned Mox Opal. Mox Opal was bound to break something and will likely continue to do so. Banning Mox Opal would be an egregious mistake at this point because of the card's high expense and it would ruin consumer confidence. Now that the cat is out of the bag, we shouldn't try to put it back in, so Underworld Breach has to go.

Limited, however, has been saved! Aetherdrift Limited went from zero to hero with the inclusion of Alchemy cards.

For me, Aetherdrift Limited had a big hill to climb from the start. A set designed around the theme of racing is the antithesis of what I admire in my favorite Limited environments. Racing might be thematic, but it's not my cup of tea if shown in actual gameplay.

While I don't want formats to be super slow, I like games' texture to feel somewhat controllable and be more about interacting and setting up synergies. It emulates the power fantasy from your favorite video game. You build your character up so all the pieces come together, and you see the result in the gameplay. When we're just attacking with above-average stat creatures and ending games as quickly as possible, we never fully see all the cool things a set offers.

Aetherdrift Limited surprisingly didn't feel too fast. In fact, it had a fairly nice pace. It is interactive, has mana sinks that matter, and plays a vital role in how games play out.

Despite this, Aetherdrift missed the mark on synergies coming together in a cohesive matter. Some cards didn't fit any theme, and the mechanics didn't have a ton of overlap. Exhaust and vehicles aren't a cohesive overlap and work poorly together. Exhaust is an awesome mechanic. It adds a powerful one-time use ability on cards at the cost of usually a lot of mana and gives you more options in games. However, when combined with vehicles, it creates these scenarios where you can't spend too much mana that doesn't affect the battlefield. Rather than working together, in many cases, they contradict each other.

The same is true with cycling. If your play on turn two is to cycle and on turn three you play a vehicle, then you've spent too much mana with nothing in play that can block or attack. We live in a Magic world where you can't go too long without affecting the battlefield unless you have a massive comeback spell to cast. It's fine if you have a sweeper to follow up or something that puts multiple creatures in play, but these effect types are rares or mythic rares, which you don't have very often, so you can't afford to have your cards working against each other.

Since overlapping synergies don't support each other and can work against each other, you can't have bricks in packs or the synergies will end up lackluster. You won't have the redundancy you need to make, say, your UR Discard work, even when your color pair or seat is open.

This is largely a reason why green outperforms other colors. Green creatures are so good, and the removal in Run Over is adequate. The power level ends up lower because the synergy rares that are supposed to be focal points end up less powerful than usual, and the core of deep green commons doesn't need any help, but many of your Izzet cards will need help for instance.

How did Alchemy fix this? In the original Aetherdrift, you'd draft a color pair like Azorius and would get maybe one gold uncommon and all the commons you want to set up a nice affinity deck, but the payoff wasn't there. With Alchemy, we get to remove a common from the pack and add, in most cases, a rare power-level card. Not only are the payoffs landing in the right seats because people are fighting over a stronger card pool, but the payoffs end up getting there more often because you have a high enough power level in your synergistic decks.

You're not often drafting around your first pick, and you can pivot during a draft since your deck can still be strong through the alchemy cards. Vanilla Aetherdrift didn't feel like there was much room to find your lane. If you don't take that one strong payoff early, then it's too late. With what almost amounts to an extra rare per pack now, it makes it easier to navigate the draft without wearing blinders.

I noticed a lot of my Twitch community is reluctant to pick up Alchemy because it's garnered a bad name for itself. People are hesitant to change, and Alchemy cards are seen as inorganic because the experience isn't replicated on paper. I embrace Alchemy, as it's a way to change our play experience when our current play becomes stale. Maybe the execution isn't perfect, but in the case of Aetherdrift Limited, I went from almost completely dismissing the format to being excited to open packs. My decks almost always end up fleshed out. If I find the open seat, my decks improve my game plan rather than being a pile of creatures and removal without true synergy.

A small thing I noticed is cards like Road Rage, Grim Bauble, and Lightning Strike underperformed. They're still solid cards, but they weren't nearly as high in the pick order as they'd be in a more traditional Limited environment, which has flipped with the addition of Alchemy. Many Alchemy cards are powerful two-drops that have snowball potential, so the value of a cheap removal has gone up. It's not about sticking to the first big threat anymore. You need to properly draft and build your deck to handle more powerful threats, which creates value from solid cards that are closer to filler than first-picks.

While the world may be focused on what needs to get banned in Modern, my focus is on enjoying a fresh, new Limited environment. More people should give Alchemy draft a try. It made the set above average and made me love it when I only tolerated it before.

Aetherdrift Alchemy is higher powered, but it solved almost all the balancing issues, as you don't feel too far behind drafting a non-green color pair anymore. If you're a Limited lover, you should give it a chance since it's a lot more fun than I expected.