I know I didn’t come up with the pun, but I the shorthand of “all will be 1-drops” is a useful heuristic. Either be fast, or have an answer for fast, but don’t durdle around and then complain when you get trucked. I actually liked this set quite a bit, with one big asterisk.. It felt like a compressed version of the full game, some super memorable games. Including a shocking number of times where I (or opponent) juuuuust nicked the 10th poison counter while sitting at 1 life. Fun times!

Trophies

Even by my standards, that’s a hilariously consistent set of trophy decks. Two UW, three (!) RW, and two RG. Not a swamp to be a seen, and not really a control deck to be see either. As a result, my “Most drafted” are going to be extremely predictable.

Most Drafted

Commons

Why yes, I did love the artifact aggro decks. Why do you ask?

Uncommon

Still with the artifacts! Why leave a winning strategy?

personal lessons

I felt like the gameplay in ONE left very little room for error. Games were short and tight and frankly very very evenly matched. A suboptimal use of mana on turn 2 or 3 could very easily be the difference between winning and losing. Missing an opportunity to attack, bluffing a combat trick, could be the margin. I can play sloppily, trusting on a strong deck to draw me to victory. But there are edges–and leaks–everywhere.

overall record

Bo3: 58%

Bo1: 61%

Summary

I wouldn’t want Magic to always feel like ONE, but I appreciated the variety. Mulling aggressively to ensure early plays, charting out turn-order to optimize mana efficiency, always be aware of the board state and the math of racing… these are fun skills! I think that the “blue control deck” was a late emergence made the gameplay a little more monochromatic than it had to be. Ready to move on, but I would gladly draft it again and take those low, cheap aggressive artifact creatures. Math is for blockers!