With Dragon's Maze prereleases happening this weekend, I thought it would be a good time to reflect back on triple Gatecrash as a draft format. We've had a few months of constant gatecrash, one of the most aggro formats they've printed since triple Zendikar, but issues have cropped up with the format, almost all of them controllable by WoTC.
Heavily aggro formats in general tend to be very bad for limited. When you only get 4-7 turns, the luck factor (1) rises. When you only get to play a game with your starting hand and the top 4-5 cards of your library, game factors like proper curving out and proper answers rises. If you cannot draw an answer for that Wojek Halberdiers or Steppe Lynx you'll just lose to it. This doesn't make for a very fun game in the long run. Triple Gatecrash is one of those formats. Games can play out very quickly and snowball out of control if one person curves out perfectly and the other player struggles to find their fourth land. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, but it tends to reward luck over play skill in the long run.
When drafting a heavy aggro format like Gatecrash and Zendikar, one of the most important things to do is figure out what color(s) you're drafting as soon as possible. Since your curve is extremely important, you may have to take that Grizzly bear (2/2 for 2) much higher than any other card just to curve out properly. That leads us into the next part.
The common print runs are heavily skewed towards a specific guild. How many times have you seen the following commons in the same pack? Slaughterhorn, Scab-Clan Charger, Crocanura, Ember Beast. More than once? How about Kingpin's Pet, Syndicate of Tithes and Basilica Screecher together? This is an issue with the print runs. These cards are all printed near each other, causing massive headaches for drafters trying to send signals. How can you signal Gruul/Simic isn't open when you take the Croc and pass Slaughterhorn, charger and Beast? Even worse is the Orzhov pack. All three of those cards are first pickable. You just sent a signal to your opponent its wide open by passing two, the traditional signal number, playable cards in that color combo.
When you combine both horrible signal sending and an aggro format you end up with a pretty bad format. Since its an aggro format and signals and curve are so important and you have packs that are so heavily geared towards a single color combination you end up with what we have now. A format where you end up drafting whatever you open (first bomb) and stick to your guns for better or worse. Sadly this just makes the format a cluster fuck from a decent drafter's stand point.
When you have either one of these, a good drafter can work around it. Heavy aggro? Draft on curve over high drops and win on combat math skills. Horrible print runs? Stick to your guns and know the format, sometimes passing a good card for a better card thats on curve and sending a bad signal is worth it.
Such is life I suppose. We'll see what happens when Dragon's Maze comes out.
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