Zak Dolan's 1994 World Championship Diary

[Spiderman]

That may be true. Perhaps it's the ever-changing nature of creating cards and expansions; if Fallen Empires or Homelands (just to give two examples) had "stronger" cards like today's sets, they would have been more prevalent in tournaments (not counting the "contrived" tourneys like the first Pro Tour where you had to have 5 cards from every expansion). Perhaps WOTC raised the bar on themselves in terms of how many "chaff" cards are in current expansions versus past. And/or they've learned what works and what doesn't in the 10+ years since those expansions <shrug> Could be a variety of factors that comes down to the perceived notion that the themes in today's expansions force you to play them in Standard tourneys

 

[Oversoul]

Yeah, older sets did have more chaff. While every set has some chaff, it seems that expansions didn't cut back on it until around the Mirage/Tempest era. I don't think that this must necessarily correlate with "forced" synergy. The Rath Cycle didn't consist of as much chaff as sets like Fallen Empires or Ice Age (although I guess "chaff" is a relative term) and wasn't dominated by pre-ordained card interactions (or were they just more subtle?).

Urza's block certainly had a lower percentage of chaff, and didn't suffer from this problem, then again, it had other problems that most players consider to be much, much worse...

 

[Spiderman]

My point wasn't that the number of "chaff" cards (which I agree is subjective) correlates to the amount of "forced synergy" in an expansion, but rather expansion/card creating has become more "polished" or "advanced" since back in the day that things change. Number of perceived "chaff" cards may drop. "Forced synergy" might be the order of the day (currently). Storylines that trace through multiple blocks were in, and now out.

Stuff like that.

 

[Oversoul]

"Forced synergy" might be the order of the day (currently).

If that's the case, does it hurt deckbuilding?

 

[Spiderman]

I don't know enough of today's environment to definitively say, but the optimist in me says "no" to "barely"

It might make it slightly easier to build a deck with the cards that obviously work well together, but on the other hand it's still a challenge to build a deck NOT using those cards (or using them minimally) that's good.

 

[jorael]

I find it more enjoyable, having synergistic sets. A card like like Ire of Kaminary (red arcane instant, does damage equal to the number of arcane spells in your graveyard) makes it challenging to create an arcane deck.

A card like Ideas Unbound is arcane too, but has sooo many uses outside this block that it is easy to use outside the 'forced synergies' available in block. So enough options are open for deck builders.

I find it cool how for example kamigawa-block supports the spirit tribe. There were spirits before this block, but now you can really make a spirit deck in any color you want. Yes, Long-Forgotten Gohei is good with that, so that is easy to see, but is it good enough to include? And which spirits to include? Enough choices to be made...