f13.net

On a design level, what are core elements that give the game its depth?

Edit: Bah You guys aren't going to post.

Table games are best when they allow players to make interesting choices. Some interesting choices I can think of:
Deck composition tension between low cost and high cost.
Deck composition tension of single color versus multicolor.
Deck composition tension of combos.
Targeted removal. Who do I nuke?
Big one-time combos. Do I do it now or wait?

It's just kind of a tough question to answer. 

I guess if I had to boil it down I would say Magic has a lot of depth because there is lots of player interaction, not only in combat.  I think it does that particular thing better than any other card game. 

There are lots of other things it does well that are interesting, but most of them depend on the concept of player interaction being possible at pretty much every moment.

From what I remember of playing it, the depth was in your deck planning and the timing of your play.

For spikes, unintentional tension.

I do not, for a minute, believe that Magic was designed to have the tension it has at high level play. Twilight Struggle was certainly designed like that (where every choice has ramifications), but Magic had to grow into it.

At the design level, we're talking specifically about the way cards interact, rather than how people use them. Sure, tweaking is done after testing, but a majority of the design itself is around making cards that (either apparently/obviously - see elves, slivers, etc, or secretly/quietly - see blue/white/black or red/green/black color pie bleed) work together.

If you want specifics, I can give specifics, but I'm actually a little blurry on the actual answer you're looking for. Design yields one result, but emergent gameplay reveals a very different one.

I guess I am interested what gives MtG its sizzle (game design wise) when we've had so many tcg come and go.  It's like if MMO market is stuck on EQ1 for all these years.

In terms of longevity I'd say its a combination of the release of quality expansion sets (generally), the prevalence of Friday Night Magic, and Pro Tour which has kept the  high quality players interested.   I think they've only been on the current schedule of expansions since 2009, but it has kept things quite interesting and works really well with the Standard format.  Modern is also an exciting format, but I think only became an official format in 2011. 

Back in the 90s, it was pure innovation and first to the market.

Post 2003 or so, it's the general cohesiveness and balance.

Magic cards now, for the most part, don't even resemble ones in the past. It's nothing really like the MMOG market, at least not how you thought about it. It's the same, game, but it's not. Magic in 2010+ is World of Warcraft to 1994's Magic/EQ1.

The core (Diku, for the sake of your analogy), is proven. Card draws have enough randomness to feel good, but not variance isn't so high that it always feels awful.

I feel like, if you took a deck of cards from Revised and put them up against, say, a tier 2 deck from 2011 - you'd immediately understand.

IMO the resource system is the "secret sauce" of Magic. There are a lot of card games with individual cards similar to Magic, but the resource system is the differentiating factor.

The resource system is simple, elegant and does a lot of good stuff.

1. The total amount of resources available matters
2. Resources don't bank, which means that deck pacing and cost distribution really matters
3. Resource colors matter, which means deck colors and colored cost (for example 1BB vs 2B) matter a lot as well.


Both of these are tied to the resource system.

A lot of games have problems with coming up with organic reasons to discourage multiple colors. In Magic it's extremely organic - you can run as many colors as you want, but the more colors you run the more probability of getting screwed or the more you need to accommodate that somehow. It's also a continuous function, rather than any sort of hard rule or cutoff. There's a very natural tension between more colors giving you more possibilities but being less consistent.

A lot of games struggle with this - ideally there is a downside to using a bunch of colors, but how that is implemented is often very inelegant.

Beat me to it, the land/mana system is the most important thing, I think. My biggest worry about Hex is that simplifying mana will make the game a lot weaker.

I'll also throw in that from a design standpoint, they really have engaged in designing for the different game formats so that no matter what kind of player you are or playstyle you prefer, there's something for you. 

Casual players get the art work and Timmy cards.
Competitive players get the standard/modern environment, organized play and dream of the pro tour.
Collectors get to speculate and play the secondary market to make money plus chase crap like the Comiccon planeswalkers and the From the Vault sets.
Limited formats help remove a lot of the mr Suitcase effect of pay to win $500 net decks for people who want to compete without breaking the bank.
Multiplayer formats, digital formats (no matter how awful they are), alternate art stuff etc.
Plus a whole secondary market segment for playmats, card sleeves, dice, local LGS involvement, etc

Nowdays, they design to deliberately hit all these various types of players.  How effectove they are is up to debate of course.  WotC didn't start that way, but it's a bit like having an MMORPG with raiding content for hardcores, pve for regular players, and effective auction house "game" for people who like to play the market, a real money component where people can cash out, etc.  It;s quite the balancing act but none of it would work at all unless the base game itself that Garfield designed wasn't such a good game.  That guy managed to hit so many right buttons.

Most attempts to play magic has left me with my dick in my hand 9 times out of 10, so I'm guessing its the slow start up brought on by the resource mechanics I wouldn't want to see in any other card game.

If that happens 9 times out of 10 then you need to build a new deck.

EDIT: weird the forum eat my comments but left the quote

This is the kind discussion I was looking for.

One really important thing in my eyes are targeted spells so players are making meaningful choices during the game. Otherwise you just playing the deck on auto-pilot. I love green thematically but solid green its usually pretty damn boring.  The outcome of a game can decided 3 ways: at deck building time, by the RNG, or by play during the match.
Obviously these lines are fuzzy. #2 seems like a necessary evil in the design. As a designer you would be attempting to maximize #1 and #2.

The resource system and everything that follows it is a big deal and important at the design level, but I still say what makes it a rich experience is more about what happens beyond that. It simply just paved the roads for the latter to happen.

Tons of games have resource management systems that are really just Magic in shitty clothing (FFGs Game of Thrones LCG comes to mind - it's just a clone of Magic, a clone that sucks giant ass.)

Edit: What I'm saying is, games have cloned the resource system, and even a ton of the cards - and they're still not as good as Magic. Trying to pin down that one thing that makes it work is near impossible.

Random thought, but I think one of the other things Magic has going for it is the lack of a license. It seems like 95% of CCG's that get released are licensed products, which I don't think are always suited to this sort of thing (sure there's stuff like Pokemon that did really well, but for the most part). If you're playing a Star Wars CCG, you don't want to play a deck made up of guys like Lobot and the Rancor keeper, you want guys like Luke and Vader who are obviously going to be the rare cards. With Magic, even common cards can be really good and fun to play with, which is part of what makes drafting fun as well.

 :mob:

Depends, does Rancor Keeper cost 1G and soulbond with a dude and give him +2/+2 and trample?

(http://forum.rebelscum.com/photogallery/data/3874/medium/Brooke_Paul_Malakili_04_01_13.jpg)

That image is about as succinct an example as one could give on why so many CCG's suck (and the blurb at the top is also a good example why the Star Wars EU stuff is trash also).

To expand slightly, one of the most important resource concepts that allow good deckbuilders to give themselves the highest chance to win is building an appropriate mana curve for your deck type, especially in limited formats.  If you find yourself often not being able to cast the spells in your hand  b/c you don't have enough mana, that's without question a deckbuilding problem.  Yes, mana screw/flood exists but is much rarer that perceived when a deck is properly built - see this article for info  (http://jtsmtg.tumblr.com/post/3480985388/data-dump-mana-screw-and-mana-flood-how-common-is). It could also be a shuffling issue :)
Plus, people who say things like "i got mana screwed 9 times out of 10" are generally exaggerating b/c it's easier to remember the bad times when that happened and wind it up for sympathy plays. Lots of psychology babble can be applied to magic.  You want to know for certain?  Take notes on your matches.
Oh yeah, appropriate mulligan decisions are very important as well. 

I had to borrow friends decks to play. Overall I simply don't get the appeal. The game feels slow...though that's maybe because my first TCG was yugioh and magic  feels like playing "no rush for 15 minutes" starcraft.

Depends on the deck style.  There are plenty of aggro decks who's goal is to dump their hands and win the game in the first 3-4 turns.  Their are combo decks that aim to "go off" by turn 4.  They are also mid-range decks that try to win in turns 4-8, and control decks that prefer a long game. And im just talking out Standard decks; legacy decks could win on turn 2 or sometimes 1! Without knowing both what you attempted to play (and the skill level of your friends for that matter) it's hard to say specifically what your issue was, but it's not the "speed" of magic.  Overall, magic is so much better a game than YuGiOh it's not even funny.

That's relative. Magic has more base mechanics but isn't inherently fun at low levels. Yugioh is fun at low and mid level play but high level play is unfortunately bogged down by their attempts to add more base mechanics that add nothing to the game, besides frustrate everyone playing.

YuGiOh is an unbalanced piece of shit that is nothing more than a money grab from prepubescent weirdos. Fuckme it's awful and at no point "fun." Next topic.

Sure you're never going to pin it down. But surely you could give us some idea what cohesiveness and balance means in the MtG game design.

It consistently ranks at the top 2 or 3, some list has it has number 1. And that's despite the business model being flooding the market with broken cards every four months.

But yes lets go back to what makes magic appeal to manchilds everywhere.

Balance and pureness. And as another comment here detailed, allure for just about every stage of play (though MtG is leaving a lot of money on the table with flawed marketing and inexcusable, subpar online experience).

I believe a big factor in this is the lore being created within/unfolding from the game design as opposed to grafting a CCG onto another story lore (i.e., Star Wars, though I liked the old school game and still have boxes of cards, Star Trek, LotR, etc. all fail). Some of the other defunct titles not tied to a license seemed better to me -- Netrunner, though admittedly I did not play extensively.

Have never even dabbled with Pokemon or Yugioh, so I cannot comment on gameplay in those.

It used to be #1, during Magic's worst years. Magic is now 43 times larger than YuGiOh - at least as of 2009/2010 season. I have no clue how much larger it is now. Probably much larger, given the sales of Magic recently (largest numbers ever, for every set, successively, over the last 6) and influx of little YuGiOh fuckers into the Magic scene.

I don't know what "manchild" has to do with it.

Not coincidentally YuGiOh had it's biggest surge when there was a popular TV show tie-in.  I wouldn't give credit to the game system nearly as much as the marketing for its success.  Even my nephews who are the jockiest of jocks played YuGiOh (and Pokemon the years prior) but have zero interest in M:TG or other CCGs.

The appeal of Magic hits from a lot of vectors.

You have actually playing the game, the card art, the fun of opening packs, creating decks and imagining the decks you'll create, the collection aspect, etc. Actually playing the game was something I didn't enjoy all that much for a long time.

As far as IP goes, I think an IP almost always feels like a short-lived cash-in, and also doesn't lend itself to a game that is eventually going to have thousands of cards. There's only so many minor Star Wars characters you can dredge up before it starts to get stupid. "This guy was in two frames of A New Hope cleaning up some Bantha shit." Cool.

From a hardcore gamer aspect magic will always have it's churn from players who like tcg's but want something more balance than the soul crushing yugioh franchise.  Than its the nerd cred it has built for being so well balanced and being a apart of the 80's merica boom of fantasy/sf that still defines how we see fiction today. And there is the set sides; to start magic you have basically four sides with set themes, which makes deck building rather straight forward, at first anyway, and allow the more genre-savvy to quickly pick up the game from a deck building prospective.

Gotta be honest MedHigh, I dont really understand where you are coming from. 4 sides with set themes?  Deck building being straightforward? WTH are you talking about? Having played both YuGiOh and Magic, there is nothing inherently "better" about YuGioH at all, and comparing low level (aka kitchen table) magic/yugioh vs serious organized play of either is really an apples to oranges comparison.  People are judging the game design elements from the serious level, not what Timmy-and-his-all-dragons-theme deck thinks is fun. 

Actually there was 5 colors to magic. Which to a new comer looks like sides. Its a lot easier to approach a game with a cohesive set of alignments to build on and splice with than to say, yugioh, where a competitive deck is a lot harder to stumble onto. Think the idea of blue theme cards are cool? Buy more blue packs and work out the stuff you need. Btw when was I praising yugioh in that post. Granted I like it more, but I did mention that's its an unbalanced mess and went on to explain why magic has it better. 

If you want to know why magic is good go read a bunch of Mark Rosewater's columns. I'm rather amazed at the level of talent and expertise put into the game. Especially compared to video games, where devs just can't keep their heads out of their asses.

The best I have heard magic's core explained is you get to untap once. You get to draw once. You get to attack once. Each individual rule and card is generally quite simple. It is the complexity and strategy that arises from the core that is the magic.

 

The rules of Magic are actually really complex, I think most people that don't do events or play online most likely play incorrectly. And they keep messing with even pretty basic things, like damage being on the stack, regeneration, etc. Also priority is a mess if you treat it formally.

They've messed with a few core rules like clockwork every three years. However, up until this last set of rules (the Legend Change), they've been universally positive. I'm simply not sold on there being 2 Jace, the Mind Sculptors or 2 Umezawa's Jitte on the table at the same time. Not only is it a failure of flavor, it's a failure of fun.

The fact the game is still fun for casuals even when played incorrectly is a big deal.

Edit: Also, yes, Maro is quite briliiant - at this one thing. Everything else I've ever heard him talk about is just, well, awful.

Jace is playing both sides conflict  :why_so_serious:

It's funny because I don't care about the lore so much as I do the elegance of the last Legendary-Rule. I liked the sort of singularity effect that occurred.

Actually, i think it's a nice mix.  The base rule are pretty simple and straightforward - constructing a deck, paying for spells, the 7 basic card types, the phases of the turn, how you win/lose.  Kids as young as 10 can grasp and play the base game without understanding the higher level stuff.  Where the complexity resides is in the card interactions.  Someone said that for every rule in the base game of magic, there's at least 1 card that breaks it, and that is probably true.  Learning what makes a "good" card or even how to best play your own cards in a variety of circumstances is when people start to move from the base game to the higher level stuff.  There is a learning curve to it, but not one i would say is more complicated than Chess or Go.

BTW, Rosewater just today posted a Design 104 (http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/mm/261) article, which also has links back to his 101, 102 and 103 articles on card design.

The legend rule change is 100% about Commander; I think in that context it was pretty necessary, which turns it into a necessary evil in other formats if you don't want to have diverging rule sets.

Commander already has a divergent ruleset. This was not for commander. This was so they could print more fucking legends, and bad players could play with more legends.

OK, 90% Commander, 5% Jace, and 5% Geist. I think you're underestimating just how much attention Commander gets from them now.

Trust me, as someone with about 40 packs of those stupid sleeves (whole cube is sleeved in Commander's Arsenal sleeves) and playsets on playsets of Scavenging Oozes, I am not. Also, my entire trade binder is foreign language EDH foils (with some constructed stuff here and there).

It was just an unnecessary change made by both their own logic, despite them saying it wasn't for Commander.

I hate every bit of it.

Actually, i always though it was a combo of pushing commander as a format, and giving people more reason to obtain Planeswalkers since now they had a greater chance of being able to actually USE them during the game, rather than treat them as anti-planeswalker spells.  So, call it 10% commander, 10% planeswalker use, 80% "how can we increase demand for legends/mythics".  i.e. really, all about sales in both cases  :oh_i_see:

It's true, there's no reason not to run 4 of anything legendary anymore.

Eh, they're still dead draws a fair amount of the time even with the rule change.

Making something strong more disposable does not make them dead draws. It's far LESS likely to be a dead draw now than it used to be.

For a planeswalker, sure, since you can reset loyalty. For a legendary it's only any different at all if you're expecting to play against people with a lot of copies of it. And in fact I would say it is now more likely to be a dead draw, since when you have one in play and your opponent can't kill yours by playing his own (and vice-versa; you don't need 2 copies of your own to come out with one when he has one in play), you're actually less likely to need that 2nd copy, not more likely.

Swing with Thrun, let him die. Play another Thrun. Swing with Geist of Saint Traft to hit with the angel for 4, take out a chump blocker, play another Geist.

Basically, all they did was give Legendary creatures Vigilance. Smooth.

You could do that with them now. I mean, I guess there's a corner case where you could play a 2nd one just to have it be untapped if the first one DOESN'T die, but that seems a little narrow.

I think watching M14 drafts have given me a bit of an insight. The sheer variety of board states give magic its ooph. Say you compare to a game like Solforge or Shadow Era where the board state stays very much narrow.  I think that's where the balance come in bad cards create repetitive board states.

SolForge is missing so many other things that I don't know that board states even enters into the 'why is it so much shittier than Magic' conversation.  :why_so_serious:

SolForge is actual trash.

Who's had experience with Legend of the Five Rings? Opinions?

I played L5R back when it came out, during that sort of honeymoon play EVERY CCG period after Magic hit the scene.

Somehow it still exists today. I did not like it. Maybe it got better?

People joke about Magic players and hygiene.

There's just no comparing Magic players to L5R players or adults that play Yugioh. The worst fanbases.

L5R seemed like the best of the not-Magics that sprung up around that time. It was also different enough in theme and mechanics to feel like sort of its own thing to some degree.

L5R made for a great multiplayer game. 1v1? Not as good as Magic but better than any other CCG I played back in the day. Of course, I thought Magic was more fun in a scrum anyway so YMMV.

Since Magic is in the process of spoiling it's next set release (Theros), i'd just like to mention a few things related.  The set rotation for magic helps keep the game fresh (and of course drives sales); just about every new block (which is 3 linked sets) introduces new mechanics, rules, and story themes.  In this latest set, they've introduced some new keywords (bestow, heroic, monstrosity), some reworked ones (devotion as a redone chroma), introduced a new card type (enchantment artifacts) and brought back a reworked old one (enchantment creatures).  And they decided to reprint a popular older card (thoughtsieze) that was worth like $70 on the secondary market.  Plus the whole thing is Greek themed (again they try to appeal to all kinds of different players).

So every set builds on what you already know, plus introduces some new stuff.  Interestingly, even with all their internal focus on designing well and playtesting, probably only 50% of the new things they try actually turns out ok. Sometimes it just a bad mechanic (the recent cipher keyword for example), sometimes is not because the ability itself is bad, but b/c they don't put it on cards that are good enough to see play, sometimes it's because they dont seem to recognize what's already good in the current standard format and put out something that's ok, but weaker than what players already have access to., etc etc.  It's still an inexact science at best.

For this block, with the whole "enchantments matter" theme is a risk.  Stapling that type on to other cards now opens the door to twice as many removal spells, so like with the bestow mechanic they try to word it in such a way that it's not an automatic two for one they way most creature auras are (i.e. you cast a creature aura, in response i kill your creature, you've lost 2 cards to my 1).  But to counteract this new method to survive normal enchantment removal, they've made the aura ability more expensive then just playing it as a creature, and generally the creatures themselves have not been that exciting so far.

With the cost of bestow, and with the monstrosity mechanic and god cards, it appears they are trying to slow down standard.  But RtR block is not exactly a slow block (hello Burning Tree Emissary), so how will the two sets play well with each other?  As with all new sets. it will be a beautiful, glorious mess that will eventually settle out, right around the time they next set gets released...

The god cards are in no way slow. I think you might want to read them again. Nylea is an indestructible 6/6 for 5 that will never become an enchantment if the player knows what they're doing.

I think the stuff is generally a little slower than the Innistrad stuff it is replacing, but not a lot slower. Don't get fooled by the bestow costs being high, you're playing those things as creatures if you're at that point in the curve when you get one. I am dubious that bestow is going to be a particularly Standard-relevant ability anyway, it seems more of a Limited mechanic; devotion/gods on the other hand are something to watch out for as Schild says. Heroic goes right into whatever the successor decks to Naya humans etc. are. (Although kind of works at cross purposes with the Domri Rade decks...)

The new planeswalker is cuckoo for ritual puffs.

Yeah, that wasn't a very nuanced explanation.  What I mean by slow regarding the God cards, is not the mana cost per se, but the fact that they are large indestructible creatures once the devotion kicks in, with no built in evasion (other than Thassa, who is basically nuts - a 5/5 for 3 that can make herself or other critters unblockable for 1U).  The whole "big creatures swinging at each other" is generally slower form a magic than in times past, and i could easily see a bunch of indestructible creature stalemates if most people are playing gods.  Course, it still too early to say - the red god is something you may not even ever care if it becomes a creature.  Saw a quote that said "Assemble the Legion and Young Pyromancer?  Meet your god..."

And the new new UB planeswalker hits the table at 3 CMC but it's abilities dont put it on the "fast" track.
And the black god's ability is "1B, pay 2 life: draw a card.  Plus, your opponents can't gain life."  Again, seems aimed at mid-late game max usefulness. 
I actually think combat math will now involve managing your opponents devotion, b/c if you can off a perm with 2-3 colored mana in the cost, you could drop a God right out of creature mode at instant speed.
So I stand by my "slower" comment.

Whats the heck are they doing with the new color kill spells that only affect the same color?  i.e a black kill spell that only kills black creatures; a wihite spell to exile any white perm; a blue counter than only counters blue spells?  Seems like they were trying to get too cute with them.

Erebos is awesome. He's gonna make a fucked up monoblack general for EDH.

The UB planeswalker is an actual piece of shit that may find his place because the meta is so goddamn weird.

Edit: On the hate spells - I'm hoping we see a reprint of Painter's Servant.

The same-color hate spells are to give you something to sideboard in the mirror in a meta that may be pushing mono-colored decks.

I know what they're for. I just like Painter's Servant - and have 4 foils because I play Imperial Painter periodically in Legacy. I believe Xilren knew what they were for also. But he's right, it's really cute, and super narrow. Super, duper narrow. Like, overly narrow unless ONE color dominates the format and that color requires a certain brand of hate.

But Mike Flores likes them!  :why_so_serious:

God I hate Flores. Of course he fucking likes them.

So, lets talk power and cards.

How do you experts, judge how good a card is (lets say, in a set) and how important to that level of power is a complete playable x4 set?

Are the two related? Are some cards powerful even as a single copy?

Whether a card is powerful as a single copy is sort of context-dependent. A traditional control deck, for example, doesn't need to run 4 copies of its win condition, but that card in an aggressive deck might be a 4-of. I think in *most* cases, a card that's strong enough to play is strong enough to play 4 of in at least one deck, and although there are some cards that are probably too expensive to do that with, there aren't many. Even Cruel Ultimatum got 4x-ed in a lot of decks and 7 specific colored mana is just about as expensive as spells get.

Another factor would be tutoring; some cards are only narrowly powerful so in a deck where you can go searching for whatever you want, like a Birthing Pod deck, you might run a bunch of singletons with narrow applications, knowing that you can go get the one you need out of your deck at more or less any time. Equipment in the Caw-Blade deck would be another example. You don't need to run 4 of every sword when you can just go get the one you need to win.

I run 3x Cruel Ultimatum in my Modern Grixis build. That stupid deck is 17-3 and took down a 1k. Ive played modern... 3 times and only because i like snapping back Cruel Ultimatum.

New players often hear about "the rule of 9" which basically just means, pick 9 cards that work well together, jam 4 of each, add 24 lands and you have a deck.  So that the general starting point for folks, but it doesnt take long to start realizing that "rule" is nothing of the sort and often leads to worse decks.  As Ingmar said, evaluating how many of a given card best works in your deck is incredibly context sensitive.  For a blitz aggro deck that wants to consistently vomit out it's hand by turn 3, using 4 of's might still make sense, but even they might have some 2-3 of cards, especially in the sideboard.

Judging how good a card is can't be done completely in a vacuum.  At a minimum you are comparing it's cost/power to other cards in the same format, but even that doesn't tell the whole story.  Take a simple grizzly bear - 1G for a 2/2 vanilla creature.  If you compare that to a 2G 2/2 creature, it's better b/c i'ts cheaper for the same exact card.  That's easy.  But compare that to a GG 2/2.  Normally, the 1G is "better" b/c you can cast it more easily so it can fit in more decks that use multiple colors.  But, now we need to know what fits our deck better.  For example, in the upcoming Theros block, there is a mechanic called "devotion" which cares about the number of colored mana symbols on the cards you have in play.  Generally, the more matching symbols you have, the more powerful your devotion related spells will be.  If you are utilizing that in your deck, picking the GG 2/2 creature over the 1G 2/2 creature is better b/c it helps advance your plan, despite that fact that double color spells are much harder to splash into a multi-color deck.  But that also means you are probably aiming for a mono color or light splash two color deck rather than full commitment to 2+ colors.  And of course, knowing what sort of lands are available to support multiple colors, how many lands you are running, where this card fits on your curve, what format you are playing, etc all play a role in card selection too.

Short answer, it always varies and many times the correct answers on not only which cards are "better" but also how many copies you want is only revealed by repeated play testing.  Which is another reason so many people just netdeck so they don't have to do that work themselves...  :oh_i_see:

4x Squadron Hawk
4x Jace, the Mind Sculptor
4x Batterskull
4x Mana Leak
4x Stoneforge Mystic
4x Day of Judgment
4x Sword of War and Peace
4x Batterskull
4x Gideon Jura
LAND

Sometimes the Rule of 9 is just fine.

So rarely though. SO RARELY.

Because really, that deck was: 4x Jace the Mind Sculptor, other shit, Lands.

As for how one judges how cards are good. It's simple, just know every single other card in the format. A card is only as good as the meta, so judging a single card on its worth is kind of useless. This is why I haven't posted a single Hex decklist - and won't until we have a full spoiler. I haven't even looked at some of the recent cards because they don't matter... yet.

Ok, so I played in a pretty casual draft with my mates, using the latest release (Theros?). Now I got smashed pretty badly, coming third last and one question which came to mind was: how do you guys go about reading the particular, style for lack of a better word, of a set? I know Schild has talked before about formats being "solved", so is knowing the cards in the set, and the combinations of play that are expected prior to drafting, a big part of drafting well?

Absolutely.  Knowing what draft archtypes generally exist and work well in a given set is very important, if  you dont know the key cards for a given deck style you can easily end up with a pile of cards that just dont work well together.  For example, in Theros draft you can attempt a very fast red-white heroic deck, which means valuing the heroic dudes and enabler spells much differently that if you are going a more control oriented blue/X build, or giant green monsters, or mono black seeking to abuse multiple Gray Merchants...

Also not that sealed and draft do not play the same even with a single set.  If you get a chance go watch the video Ben Stark and LSV did for Grand Prix Oakland (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjl-7p9gC1w) for some nice general strategies on sealed and how it differs from draft.

I'll give that video a go when I get home from work, thank you; I think that I enjoy draft for than I would sealed for a couple of reasons. I don't want to collect physical cards anymore, and I like the challenge posed by the draft format and the unpredictability of it. And, quite accurately, my hardest losses were to something + white aggro (seriously, who thought Gods Willing was a good idea?!  :?).

Forgot to mention, Limited Resources (http://lrcast.com) is a regular magic podcast that is devoted entirely to draft/sealed.  Nice to download and listen too when you are doing other stuff.

One of the guys who hosts it recently posted an article on booster draft basics (http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/li/272) on the mothership too (he has a regular column on limited there).

Also, here's a article on star city on some Theros draft deck types (http://www.starcitygames.com/article/27078_Theros-Limited-Archetypes.html).  Most of the big magic sites have a lot of videos of drafts and articles on card evaluation for each set that comes out.