神河当時 - ドラフトのテーマ

Themes
Design tends to move from big to small so I figured that would be a logical order to look at how general design lends itself towards drafting. As such, I’m beginning with the theme. Ever since Invasion block, Magic design has woven a theme into every block. Themes do a number of interesting things for the block. A theme gives a block flavor, an identity, a focus, and a reason to explore niche design areas that might go otherwise unexplored. (I spent another column called “Lions, Tigers and Bears” talking about why R&D does themes if you’d like to read more on this topic.) Most importantly, (well important for this column anyway) themes aid in making draft more interesting.

Why is that? Because themes shift the environment. Drafting is not about just looking at individual card quality. It is about understanding how the cards interrelate. It’s the themes that change this card interaction from year to year. As an example, let’s look at how the themes of the last five blocks impacted draft:

Champions of Kamigawa Block – Champions of Kamigawa was about flavor. Japanese flavor if you want to be specific. But from a drafting perspective, Kamigawa was more about synergy. When flavor takes center stage, the interconnection between similar things becomes important. The spirit world, for instance, tended to play better with itself. If you started to care about splice, you’d better pay attention to Arcane. And if you care about Arcane, you’d best care about the Arcane triggers. The same triggers that trigger off of spirits. Which work very well with spiritcraft. Kamigawa took the entire paradigm of cards having a constant power level and turned it on its side.

As you can see, in each case the theme shifted the draft metagame into a very unique place. Things that never before mattered started to matter. And things that always mattered might not matter so much. Certain archetypes were dashed while others sprung forth anew. The theme keeps drafters on their toes.

引用元
FEELING THE DRAFT Posted in Making Magic on March 14, 2005
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/feeling-draft-2005-03-14

ドラフト特集週間ということで、ドラフトのことをどう考えてデザインするか、と言う話です。

神河ブロックはトップダウンデザイン・フレイバー重視のブロックです。メカニズムにおいては、各勢力の間でのシナジーに反映されます。スピリット（神）における、秘儀・連繫や、スピリットクラフトなどが一例です。

神河に限らず、今では、各勢力にメカニズムやテーマを持たせることが珍しくなくなりました。そうした傾向の源流が神河にあった、とまでは断言できませんが、興味深い流れです。