Coldsnap: The WORST Limited Format EVER | Magic: the Gathering | Nizzanotes #47

[@NizzahonMagic]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/oWGzeZyboKethLc I didn't think about it when I made the video, but someone in the comments asked if there was a Coldsnap draft video on the channel - and there is! It is pretty old, but it is a 4 Surging Flame draft, so a good example haha.

[@iamtheV0RTEX]

Every time I see a Magic content creator explain what a "block" is I age another year. I still feel like standalone sets are the hip new thing.

[@ianunderwood1678]

When Cold Snap came out they intentionally designed the set this way for draft. Their reasoning was that since it was a small set you'd be seeing the same cards over and over anyway, so they should lean into it and make it a part of the experience, make you excited to see the same card repeatedly. Obviously it didn't turn out very fun, but it was an intentional part of the limited design.

[@TransformersTalkRAW]

I thought it was fun.

[@hallorette5059]

Hot take: I loved coldsnap. I admit I only played it a few times. I could see it getting old after too many drafts. But you haven’t lived until you’ve rippled into a ripple spell into another ripple spell.

[@riccardocalosso5688]

Well, with a little luck, I'll be able to do that, since i put thrumming stone in my muldrotha deck. Running 36 persistent petitioners is bound to give some... Interesting results!

[@Sauvenil]

@@riccardocalosso5688 I bought a box hoping to get Thrumming Stones and Counterbalance, and I got three of each as well as two or three Scrying Sheets. I considered it a win. But yeah, Thrumming Stone is something ridiculous to abuse.

[@Topaz542]

I only drafted it once playing a UB Ripple Control deck and had a bit of fun. My LGS used to do throwback paper drafts before covid and the second to last one they did was Coldsnap. I came 2nd and had a decently good time though i can absolutely see it getting very old very fast

[@OnePointSafety]

Nothing ever made me happier than my limited 8 copies of surging dementia

[@Sauvenil]

@@OnePointSafety That would be just nasty if you managed to draft all 8 - almost an instant win because it probably wipes out their hand every time you cast it.

[@LinkThinks]

This was the first set I ever drafted! I would've been 9 years old at the time, and I remember going with my older brother up to a fairly small game store that was near my grandparents' place for a Cold Snap release day draft. Neither of us had any idea what draft was, and I was a good amount younger than anyone else there. That said, I somehow placed third with (IIRC) a Red/White deck, although I remember being confused about the rules around snow lands at the time. Coming back to Magic and getting into limited years later, it was pretty funny to hear the general opinion of Cold Snap as a draft experience. I wouldn't say I have fond memories of the format, since I only played it once to begin with, but I DO have fond memories of placing third despite being so young. That was cool. Thanks for making this history video, Nizzahon!

[@rashakor]

Ice age block was before Mirage. Only if you substitute Cold Snap to Homeland you have a real Complete Ice Age block after the Mirage block.

[@justinleandoer6821]

I love limited history and any limited content. I'd watch every limited nizzanotes video.

[@tefnutofhoney2832]

Id love to see ice age/coldsnap/alliances get a remaster for draft. Modern horizons 2 almost half counts because it made snow relevant

[@Deris76]

The biggest issue with Baldur's gate is that it's Alchemy exclusive. Unless you are playing Alchemy or Historic (two of the least played formats), those cards go to waste. I personally did a couple of drafts mostly cause I'd perform fine in it, so it was scratching the drafting itch, but I got bored of it. White/Red/Black are insanelly pushed compared to green or blue, which also leads to its downfall.

[@CoL_Drake]

as many limited players dont play standard as well that issue exist always ...

[@Deris76]

@@CoL_Drake Thing is, if you put the time into draft, it's possible to collect most of the card you'll need for diet pioneer or historic brawl.

[@NizzahonMagic]

There are lots of Limited only players who are playing the format a ton. I think the fact content isn't doing well is less because of Alchemy, and more because it isn't a paper set. So yeah, less people interested on the whole. The format is just average at best, though.

[@stefanoriva1738]

I'm with you on this. I play both constructed and limited, and this set is useless.

[@stevenrhodes8338]

I think I'd be cool to see Nizza do throwback drafts if they have them on mtgo

[@ulrichs.3228]

2:30 Is old Ice Age (w/ Homelands) really counted as the second block, not the first? I'm pretty certain that Mirage and Visions were released after Ice Age and Alliances.

[@NizzahonMagic]

Mirage was the first time there was block draft/sealed or block constructed, but Ice Age was the first block.

[@garethbain9125]

It was.

[@SeanLarsDogma]

Thanks for this. This was the time when I wasn’t playing. I started in Ice Age and stopped after Urza block. I then resumed during Alara. Quick note: Ice Age came out before Mirage.

[@christopheryoung2874]

I started playing with Ice Age myself

[@terryprentice9657]

I think he meant Ice Age became a block retroactively after Mirage block came out. There are no blocks before that, although I suppose you could consider Limited/Unlimited, Arabian Nights & Antiquities a "block" and Legends, The Dark & Fallen Empires another "block", but they were never drafted that way, AFAIK.

[@SeanLarsDogma]

@@terryprentice9657 Ice Age, Homelands, and Alliances were a block.

[@terryprentice9657]

@@SeanLarsDogma Ice Age was made a block retroactively after Mirage block, so it could rotate out as a block. There never was a block Standard for Ice Age block and it was never drafted as a block.

[@SeanLarsDogma]

@@terryprentice9657 I do not remember any Ice Age block draft tourney. You’re right.

[@riccardocalosso5688]

Recently we had a dragon maze draft. It was both miserable and fun, due to being one of those small sets, and it was the first time my deck had a 8x of a card

[@SirZapdos]

Gatecrash was a large set though

[@riccardocalosso5688]

@@SirZapdos my bad, it was dragon maze , not gate crash. I'll correct my comment!

[@guybuckridge7326]

Coldsnap was my first limited format experience and I did have fun but I'd say I played just enough to get the most out of it before moving on. Winning with 6 Krovikan Mist was pretty hilarious.

[@Monechetti]

I drafted the hell out of Krovikan Mist, too. It gets goofy quickly because, in my experience over dozens of Coldsnap drafts was that nobody else drafted them

[@gerudo4sale861]

Take a shot every time Nizzahon says "155 cards". You'll have q good time

[@abcdefghijkl5408]

I had to pump my stomach!

[@terryprentice9657]

I ran out...

[@brickcast7986]

17:33 Comparing "Priest of Ancient Lore" to "Tymara's Enforcer" kind of says it all about the color balance of Baldur's Gate

[@joelmonteiro1419]

Just a note: in the second cycle, the carda check all graveyards, not just yours. I went to the Coldsnap pre-release and drafted it a few times. The white deck was completely bonkers thanks to Kjeldoran War Cry. Another mistake from this set, imo, was Counterbalance. For about 2 or months, it was in Standard alongside Sensei's Divining Top. Completely miserable experience.

[@Sauvenil]

I continued the Counterbalance into Lorwyn with Faeries. Not as ridiculous but still good with Faerie Harbinger and that champion faerie both with flash. Also the champion faerie had Mana Short vibes so it was pretty control-ish.

[@Igor369]

I miss blocks so much... standard does not feel cohesive anymore

[@TheWeatherLightCafe]

Love you content! These cards are really hard to read tho, would love a larger size when you talk about them.

[@Sauvenil]

We did an Ice Age Block draft once after Coldsnap came out - it was pretty cool. One pack of each set - the Alliances packs were expensive though. Coldsnap might have been the worst limited format, but it was in Standard longer than any other set that I know of and was such a solid core to run a deck on. SOOOO powerful.

[@terryprentice9657]

How did you compensate for the fact that Alliances only has 12 cards in a pack?

[@Sauvenil]

@@terryprentice9657 We all just opened it second?

[@terryprentice9657]

@@Sauvenil how many people were in the draft?

[@Sauvenil]

@@terryprentice9657 somewhere between 16 and 30 people? Not terribly big.

[@sethhale8828]

I loved the Aurochs precon. I added a few cards and it was a beast. No pun

[@Sauvenil]

The precons had stuff like Swords to Plowshares in them... kind of insane.

[@codyjarvis4557]

I thought it was kinda fun tho. I remember my friend Scott getting drunk n drafting a bunch of the burn ripple card. At least 8. It was hilarious. We called him Scott the alcoholic.

[@hawkticus_history_corner]

I never drafted this set, but i did get packs for this and i liked the cards from it. Never got enough snow lands in them so it was hard to use some of the stuff. Pulled a Sek Kuar though. Edit: Ah, Feast of Flesh and Sound the Call, those cards went in every Black and Green deck i made in those colors in high school

[@zipper4146]

I had bought a big box of Coldsnap. I forget the exact product, but it came with a bunch of boosters, and even a novel. In it, it talks about how they designed the duplicate commons explicitly for limited. Because of the small pool of cards, they knew you'd see a lot of doubles, and they wanted those doubles to be beneficial.

[@NizzahonMagic]

Yep, bad idea.

[@doomofthedestiny8065]

Granted my sample size is one, but the one time I cold snap drafted I didn't see any of these, I only lost once to the player who managed to scoop up all the protection from snow stuff. And it netted me third place sadly. I just had a solid black blue snow bounce deck so it basically worked as a tempo deck...

[@adamn.1294]

I've seen people sac the dragon into Chaos Balor on turn 3 in Numot's videos. He never had the removal either.

[@adamgalloy9371]

Even though I started playing at the tail end of block draft formats (during Khans of Tarkir block), I never have actually done a block draft. I'm not sure if this was a common experience or if there was something me and my friends were missing, but it just always seemed inconvenient to draft from multiple sets. We would usually buy a booster box so that we had the packs to draft from and a prize pool, but it wasn't really reasonable to buy multiple boxes for a single draft. Because of that we usually either ignored small sets as far as drafting was concerned or just played subpar limited formats with 3 packs of the small set. Was this a thing for other people or were we just stupid or something at the end and missed a good option?

[@NizzahonMagic]

There were definitely Khans Block drafts, but it was an unusual case. First you drafted three Khans, then 2 Fate Reforged and one Khans, and then 2 Dragons of Tarkir and one Khans. Because of the time travel angle you never drafted all three together. The idea was you were experiencing each timeline I guess.

[@adamgalloy9371]

@@NizzahonMagic I suppose those aren't technically block drafts. I was sort of referring to any draft that required a combination of small and large sets as a "block draft". Since blocks became two sets after Khans anyway, I have even less of a reason to have experienced a full three set block draft.

[@terryprentice9657]

@@adamgalloy9371 Two sets blocks were drafted A,A,B

[@ozzwich]

I play quick draft of arena a lot, and it has been either Baldur's gate or midnight hunt over the past month or so. I switched to playing Jump-In/Jump Start instead. I yhought about just not playing Arena until the influx of forced Alchemy goes away.

[@dalancer]

If the set was closer in size to a medium set, 50-100 more cards that could've helped out the format a lot. A real easy thing they could have done like the recent remaster sets is have a select amount of reprints in it from the whole original block or just the very few best cards from the Homelands set they replaced. That would probably be something that would've made the original players of that block happier. There is probably at least one person who thought "Serrated Arrows" was a cool card. Also this could have counted as R+D doing a draft experiment with a smaller set, and hopefully it taught them some important lessons on how not to suck

[@terryprentice9657]

I wonder how well a true block draft would play (1 Ice Age, 1 Alliances, 1 Coldsnap) How much would Alliances packs having only 12 cards throw off the draft? Edit: you could only draft this with 3 people to make the packs divide equally.

[@lucyspencer9752]

I've heard a lot of awful things about Avacyn Restored limited but I've actually never played it. I would love to see this type of video for that format.

[@kartenspieler0863]

It kind of makes me sad that the discussion about the 155 cards set is just reduced to 10 cards. I would like to know how that worked with the snow-covered lands: was snow just bad or were you aloud to use snow-covered basic lands from outside the draft pool to get your snow synergies?

[@NizzahonMagic]

You had to draft snow lands, just like Kaldheim

[@vinnythewebsurfer]

I always think about Magic Mic’s podcast and how Evan Erwin described going to a prerelease for it and said it was the saddest prerelease he had ever been to.

[@penguinlust6749]

The Ice Age block was before Mirage -- in case no one else pointed that out.

[@magnesium13]

I love your videos, but I really don't feel interested in the Baulder's Gate videos because I don't play Arena. I play mostly commander in paper, so anything arena exclusive I don't get much out of, especially since I am rather opposed to the Arena-only cards and Alchemy, etc. especially after trying them a few times.

[@jenniferwilliams9612]

Personally, I frequently enjoyed triple small set draft. Usually, those were only available at the prerelease. Maybe my affinity for those drafts was related to the rarity of the drafts at the prereleases, but I don’t know. I think that I only played triple Coldsnap a few times, and I don’t remember it as being bad, but I don’t remember it clearly. Pertaining to the Arena specific draft videos, there are a lot of people who don’t play Arena. I play on MTGO, so that set doesn’t exist for me, and I would bet that there are many others in a similar situation. It isn’t in paper, and it isn’t on Magic Online. So, I think that the Arena only format is too esoteric to have content pertaining to that format be as popular as a format that is available in all Magic venues.

[@NizzahonMagic]

Yep I agree re:Arena-only

[@MakeVarahHappen]

The reason coldsnap is so bad is because R&D explicitly made the decision to not have a fourth set the year Ravnica block came out but then later on the brand team told them they needed a set for the summer slot so they had to bang out set design in a month, the quickest ever for a magic set.

[@Sauvenil]

It's pretty strong too IMHO - the snow lands (Scrying Sheets and Mouth of Ronom) are still great cards, Counterbalance is great if you can tutor, Rune Snag was a beast of a counterspell, and there were some just straight weird cards like Lightning Storm and Braid of Fire and Wall of Shards.

[@sun-does-shine]

At least for me, the issue with baldurs gate content is how many unfamiliar and unexplained keywords there are. Its hard to tell whats going on without a second tab googling

[@monogreen]

Its interesting to make the comparison between Coldsnap and New Capenna. The other thing these 2 sets have in common is that they both came after arguably some of the best limited formats of all time. OG Rav block, neon dynasty and triple innistrad are solidly my top 3 favorite limited formats of all time. NEO pushing out triple ROE draft.

[@fo-ef8qo]

Did you do any vids on double masters 2 limited? not that it's a particularly hot topic in general, but just if you needed ideas, just a thought

[@djkillermemestar1265]

Is there anyway you could do like a video where you do a mock up draft of cold snap

[@NizzahonMagic]

I actually think there is a Coldsnap draft video on the channel.

[@FortOFHobo]

I used altar of baal in BR with steal and sac vs a BW deck that went turn 1 basilisk color. used the provoke to nuke the creatures he had and ended up coming out ahead

[@TransformersTalkRAW]

I was at my Coldsnap pre-release a long time ago. I enjoyed it.

[@rwed13]

Thrumming stone: am I a joke to you?

[@lambdalandis]

I feel like wizards thought that because your deck would have fewer unique cards (due to small set) that they would play into this limitation by having rewards for playing fewer unique cards. They just way over powered it

[@apoena-allnitemusic7203]

I think Mirage was after Ice Ages, not before.

[@asacloutier7530]

I have an ice age block 360 card cube and I’m thinking of adding 60 cards for 4 bonus coldsnap boosters to up the power level if my bros want to..

[@TehFhqwghad]

I recently did a draft of this with my friends over cockatrice. Omg so many awful mechanics for limited and the set is sooo small that you get many copies of the same cards.

[@jonothanthrace1530]

Wizards should have fully committed to the Ice Age Block concept and done a reprint of Ice Age and Alliances so they could all be drafted.

[@matthiasgoldschmidt8134]

The reserved list was probably the reason for them not to do that. Would have been cool though. Some Ice Age cards did get reprints (with new border) in the Coldsnap precon decks.

[@daniilzadorozhnyy8950]

Loved Coldsnaps vibe. Wish it was a larger set

[@daniilzadorozhnyy8950]

Never played it in limited so that's not what I'm talking about

[@matthewutech5970]

I know you said 'not limited', but it shouldn't be too hard to keep an cold snap vibe without sacrificing limited playability in a purpose built cube. Between Iceage block reprints, coldsnap itself, some time spiral, mh1, & kaldheim; you could possibly make a cube that vibes with the weirdness of coldsnap without having an abysmal limited.

[@Svenburchard]

big up for all the limited content )

[@hobrev]

you also neglected to mention the artifact from Coldnap that made every other card in your deck a collect-them-all card, Thrumming Stone :D

[@NizzahonMagic]

Well yeah, I didn't see a reason to mention a rare.

[@alexmacgregor5265]

I'm pretty bummed to hear that your Baulder's gate videos aren't doing well. I only play paper magic but I've still watched and enjoyed pretty much all of your drafts this format.

[@MilkieBeargames]

My sister hated cold snap. I had taken a break, so missed it

[@oreszteszmurgacs7689]

Reckless Barbarian is not too good, but I don't wish the two(!!!) games where opponents played one on turn two, to sack it for a Chaos Balor on turn three and I lost. Thanks for covering alchemy content too, I don't care for the format, but playing a few drafts is pretty cool!

[@StarkMaximum]

Inb4 comments of "well Coldsnap is when I started playing Magic so actually it's great (because it's nostalgic to me personally and I didn't understand what made it bad)!"

[@stigmaoftherose]

The only ripple card I know of is thuming stone. And that is because it is super degen with dragons approach.

[@ich3730]

thrumming stone with that no limit cleric guy in edh, good times

[@toniskoppelmann8165]

I have played an even worse limited "format". Me and my friend took his box of draft commons and used it as a cube. The power level was so low that colossal dreadmaw was considered a bomb. Also white sucked for some reason

[@craigstuckey319]

Colossal Dreadmaw is absolutely a limited bomb in any draft.

[@hermandeddens7045]

Hi Nizzahon, love your content, great stuff as always, but it seems you weren't playing the game during the time Legions came out ;-). Now THAT was some serious crap. Onslaught was nice, but Legions and Scourge were horrible. Even Fallen Empires was better. That being said, I enjoy snow-themed sets but more realistically, they should/could include some snow stuff in every set. I'm sure Dominaria has some snow peaks somewhere for instance. They can do so much more with snow than that they have done up till now. Cheers, and keep up the good work!

[@NizzahonMagic]

I was playing during Legions, but I am a Goblin fanboy, and was especially so at that age, so I didn't hate it haha

[@kjellegilhustad2095]

Didnt Mirage come after the ice age Block?

[@NizzahonMagic]

Yes, but Mirage was the first time "Block constructed" and "Block Draft" were a thing.

[@lordgreystaff6639]

What a ‘chilling’ title! Also, at least at my LGS anything with Alchemy in it is anathema. And it seems to be getting worse. Multiple players have stopped playing Arena over it. And these aren’t causals. One I have never seen lose a limited game.

[@damian108]

I stopped playing historic and gradualy MTG after 20+ years altogether due to Alchemy

[@Deris76]

@@damian108 It sucks that Baldurs gate has such a negative effect on the community. I've stopped playing historic altogether since the release of Alchemy, and strictly play paper commander

[@ich3730]

@@Deris76 Paper commander with proxy cards is the based way to play. Anything else is just people being suckers :D

[@lordgreystaff6639]

@@damian108 I hate being negative and pessimistic, but I feel that it’s warranted. I hate Alchemy, not on principle, but based on WOTC’s execution. The fact that they just threw a bunch of bad blue AFR cards into this set instead of rebalancing them, exactly what Alchemy was partially supposed to do, shows me that they care more about profit than the game and creating a balanced set. Companies need profit, clearly, but letting excessive greed get in the way of the good of the game and it’s players seems like a mistake. However, for the first time I’m going to weekly FNMs and loving it. So.

[@Deris76]

@@ich3730 Honestly yea. Personally, I've been a fan of 100$ budget decks, as they have interesting interactions, while staying on the lower power and not ruining yourself for a deck lol

[@jeffr.1681]

Whatever the most recent base set was+two coldsnap would have been much better of a format.

[@strawhataddison]

Whoops, Ice Age and Alliances came out before Mirage. 🙂

[@NizzahonMagic]

Yep, Mirage was the first block constructed/block limited, but not the first block.

[@Fellknauel]

I remember reading an magazine interview long ago that stated those mechanics were put in *because* it would be drafted as a small set, because itbwoumd be easier for players to assemble those name-specific mechanics than in a large set.

[@NizzahonMagic]

Yep, and it was a horrible idea!

[@raphaeldean5801]

To the meta comment at the beginning: Yeah, I watch you and mtgnerdgirl (as far as streaming limited goes), and I think I just watched like 10minutes of hers before I left because I just really dislike the set, completely for its Arena-only design. Edit: I never watched anything from Baldur's Gate from you. I look forward to your Dominaria United drafts. I like to watch drafting streams while I draft, and I don't want to draft Baldur's gate.

[@gerg861]

Sorry, but I am old and bought Ice Age block when it came out, which was definitely before Mirage block.

[@NizzahonMagic]

It was before, and technically a block, but not designed for block constructed/limited

[@sagesmukler9383]

I miss blocks.

[@FearOgre]

I liked it, but ripple was a huge down side of it.

[@jenniferwilliams9612]

MTGO has a War of the Spark flashback draft this week, and God is that a terrible draft format! It is weird, and there aren’t enough creatures, and a lot of planeswalkers. It is a strange format, and imho, a bad one!

[@Lapalolpro]

I actually liked coldsnap. As for me I hated alara (set I dropped MTG for about 4 years).

[@alaraplatt8104]

: (

[@LJSLarssonX1]

I like your Baldur's Gate-videos, but understand if you can't prioritize them. Still hope we'll see Gate-videos occasionally. 🙂

[@funnymcfunfuns1455]

I liked Coldsnap alot

[@dpv007]

"Worst. Format. EVER."

[@deepspacebob2619]

v interesting vid

[@irou95]

I've played only from 2010 but I would say ikoria is the worst limited set of all time

[@thevintagevaluesexperience4302]

Triple Alara Reborn is worse.

[@Zaxophone32]

I'll be honest, I really dislike Alchemy and have no intent of supporting any Apchemy format on Arena. I want to support your content, I've been a fan for a very long time, but Alchemy just doesn't apply to me so I have no interest in watching Baldurs Gate content and have been waiting for different content.

[@CoL_Drake]

for me this Baulder's Gate set is in my top3 ever drafted sets ... its just amazing. even with a worse deck u can win 7 wins cause i feel it rly favors clever play. people do a LOT of mistakes so the better player can win with a way worse deck and people who cant read the text of 2 cards for specialize just should not play mtg xD its like kindergarten level easy xD

[@Scantronimus466]

Are a lot of *average players* actually playing and talking about Alchemy Baldur’s Gate, or is it just the content creators and Arena grinders? Y’know, the people who pretty much have to play whatever WotC craps out on Arena?

[@NizzahonMagic]

I think a lot of Limited only people are playing it, but that's it.

[@Scantronimus466]

I’ve seen a lot of discussion that many *casual* Limited only players are skipping this set - taking a break, doing flashback drafts on Arena, switching to MTGO, etc - and it’s only the spikes, grinders, and content creators actually playing this set.

[@NizzahonMagic]

@@Scantronimus466 Yeah, when I say "Limited only" I am basically talking about the people you mention.

[@ThePhysicalReaction]

ever since the 3set block format was abandoned the game just looks like a cashgrab with people picking and choosing sets to gamble on for lottery cards. terrible. especially terrible considering that the counterfeit cards in recent times are of better quality than american printed one shame hasbro shame mythic poop pile

I loved designing decks for blocks and Iceage block with coldsnap is a really weird and fun design space