4. Chronicles - if you ever wonder why there is a reprint policy for Magic and an odd list of cards, this set is the reason. With every new set, there are paranoid people complaining about the end of Magic, but this set came out early enough in Magic's history and had enough of an impact that it legitimately could have threatened to end the game. Collectors panicked at the thought that rare cards could become common and values could plummet suddenly. WotC had to assuage fears for years to follow.

3. Fallen Empires - Take a very small set, print WAY too much of it, and include a lot of bad cards and it has the makings of a set that no one wants. I remember seeing packs for $1 and no one would touch it.

2. Homelands - there was a very short, odd time in Magic when you saw Serrated Arrows in the sideboard of tournament lists of decks. Not because any deck had a way to abuse the card or because it was particularly good against certain decks or because you used the counters as card advantage, but simply because the rules required you to include at least 5 cards from every Type 2 (Standard) legal set in your deck. So, people would have five bad Homelands cards in their sideboard as a concession to this rule. Otherwise, there was almost no reason to play Homelands cards in your deck. Most people remember Homelands for three things: Merchant Scroll, Autumn Willow, and very, very bad cards.

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Originally posted by yakusoku:
5. Coldsnap - the TO at my pre-release later would tell us that this tournament had the lowest attendance of a PR ever. You know a set is bad when you had store owners, TO's and judges apologizing. Ohran Viper reached ridiculous prices at the time because people just weren't cracking packs of Coldsnap.

4. Chronicles - if you ever wonder why there is a reprint policy for Magic and an odd list of cards, this set is the reason. With every new set, there are paranoid people complaining about the end of Magic, but this set came out early enough in Magic's history and had enough of an impact that it legitimately could have threatened to end the game. Collectors panicked at the thought that rare cards could become common and values could plummet suddenly. WotC had to assuage fears for years to follow.

3. Fallen Empires - Take a very small set, print WAY too much of it, and include a lot of bad cards and it has the makings of a set that no one wants. I remember seeing packs for $1 and no one would touch it.

2. Homelands - there was a very short, odd time in Magic when you saw Serrated Arrows in the sideboard of tournament lists of decks. Not because any deck had a way to abuse the card or because it was particularly good against certain decks or because you used the counters as card advantage, but simply because the rules required you to include at least 5 cards from every Type 2 (Standard) legal set in your deck. So, people would have five bad Homelands cards in their sideboard as a concession to this rule. Otherwise, there was almost no reason to play Homelands cards in your deck. Most people remember Homelands for three things: Merchant Scroll, Autumn Willow, and very, very bad cards.

1. Urza's block - yes, I'm blatantly cheating here by naming three sets. Live with it. The whole block was a fail in so many ways. Bad testing, bad design, and bad mechanics. Not in the underpowered Homelands way, but in the broken, make Standard unplayable way. Look at the B/R list and see how many cards were printed from this block. Apparently no one figured out that Yawgmoth's Will + Dark Ritual could create broken things. Academy Rector + Yawgmoth's Bargain in the same set was ridiculous. Memory Jar required an emergency ban, so that the moment you opened it, you couldn't play with it, leading to droves of people mailing in their Memory Jars to Wizards to get a new pack. And then there was Tolarian Academy. When people whine about Standard decks being degenerate and broken, I want to point people to the only time in Magic's history that I quit playing. Jund mirrors weren't so fun for people, but at least there was a semblance of interaction and back and forth. Academy mirrors came down the ability to win a die roll and mulligan as little as possible. Turn three and four wins were routine, and there wasn't much you could do about it. You built your Academy deck to be as consistent as possible, with 4 copies of everything and pray that you could win faster than your opponent. It was as much fun as having sex with your girlfriend while she's in another soundproof room.

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I agree with you on all accounts except for #1. While Saga Block might have all but ruined Standard for the time being it was still a hell of a lot of fun to draft, or do a sealed event.

If you going to include an entire block that was just unfun in every way shape and form it HAS to be Masques Block. Even now on mtgo they aren't releasing each set at a time, rather just all the sets crammed into one pack. Why? BC they know it wont sell....and that's digital product! It's not like they can get stuck with it.

That block caused me to quit, as Rebel Chain mirror's in standard was the worst thing imaginable, and drafting or a sealed event was like pulling teeth without some sort of sedative.

Saviors was so far behind anything from around there and the hand size matters theme was horrible that I don't think you can even debate it as number one. When your title cards are two sideboard marvels (pithing needle and kataki) and a colorshifted reprint of a mostly unplayable card (twincast) then you are a really bad set.

Urza's Saga, as covered by yak, was just ridiculous. Limited was silly with nonsense like pestilence at common and constructed was just unplayable due to how overpowered the decks became with the rare lands fueling the most obnoxious metagames (it was more than just one year of it too) ever.

Prophecy was yin to sagas yang. It ended a two year cycle of going from the most broken set since alpha to the crappiest set since alliances. Everything cost approximately 13 mana and did half of what it needed to. I'm pretty sure that the best card in the set was a turtle statue, great set huh?

Homelands was such a beating that I had to draft it recently as a punishment. Believe me, it is a punishment. Homelands is so bad that it would be like Matt Painter to Ice Age's Peyton Manning (and ice age sucked pretty hard, mind you). The set is literally full of giant walls and attackers with stats like 1/5 and no way to get through for any damage. The only good thing to come out of the set is Apocalypse Chime, so that you can get all that garbage off your table and start over.

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Originally posted by rats60:
Fallen Empires
Homelands
Prophecy
Legions
Saviors of Kamigawa

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Couldn't of said it better myself.

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Originally posted by southparker2002:
Planeshift
Ice Age
Prophecy
Coldsnap
Homelands

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Why Planeshift and Ice Age? Those seemed fine to me.

It really depends on what you mean by worst. From the standpoint of least fun, I'd say (from "best" to worst):

Coldsnap
Cronicles
Saviors
Fallen Empires
Homelands

Homelands was completely undesirable at the time, while sets like Fallen Empires and The Dark were fun, even if not great. I fondly remember playing Thallids and Homarids, but there's little good in Homelands beyond Autumn Willow and Baron Sengir. The tri-lands were a new level of horrid.

Starter, like Portal and Portal2 sets was annoying with the odd terminology (intercepting instead of blocking, etc.), but Starter was just boring. The earlier Portal sets at least had new dragons and some flavor. Maybe it was just the white border, but Starter was lame all around.

The removal of Shivan Dragon from the base set, for me, was a low point as far as base sets go.

I missed the Mercadian Masques block as I quit for a while after Urza's Saga came out, and when I went back to look at Mercadian Masques there was almost nothing of interest. I guess I picked a good time to quit.

Also, multiple art for commons was awesome.

As for bad sets, no one remembers 9th? (maybe it was 8th that was really bad...)

5. Homelands (Dwarven Traders anyone?)
4. 5th Edition (Serpant Generator's anyone?)
3. Chronicles
2. 8th
1. Saga (because it made me quit too...) Tolarian Acadamy, Serra Avatar, Gaea's Cradle..etc, etc.. FAR too insane when it came out! Anyone with the money to spend could be a deck-building "genius". I just remember being so damn angry that it was so overpowering that it made MTG unfun for me and everyone else I played with that didn't have the money to go out and buy booster boxes worth of it.

as for the BEST sets,...

obviously:

1. Alpha/Beta/UNL/REV
2. Saga! =)
3. Tempest
4. AN
5. Ice Age

Everyone hates Ice Age now... but think back to the day when you played the hell out of it and you will remember a very complex set of cards and interactions!

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Originally posted by airwalk:

Also, I feel bad for people that quit during Urza's Block, that was real magic. So much fun broken stuff happening. Memory Jar + Megrim in extended was my favorite deck ever.

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I agree. People bitch that you died on turn 4 because of combo but NOBODY complains about Tempest block were you could die to simple attacks in 4-5 turns on a regular basis after Sleigh decks came around. Cards like Mox Diamond, Aluren, Earthcraft, Cursed Scroll, Scroll Rack, Recurring Nightmare, Intuition, Survival of the Fittest, Volrtah's Stronghold, Tradewind Rider....I could go on. Saga had Pestilence as a common but Tempest had Rolling Thunder, Capsize, and Envicar's Justice....woo how fun being Capsize locked in limited, or recurring wrath, or a fireball that hits all your creatures including yourself as a common. Yea...it's SOOO much better than Saga right?

People hate Saga because of combo, yet a lot of people like it. Turns out if you hate it it was because you probably were just bad at Magic at the time of Saga, or you were too use to the idea of playing a creature everfy turn and turning them sideways. Yes, a lot of degenerate things happened but you had to have a brain in order to go off and win.

I'd rather play in a format were it takes skill....remember the format's with Wild Mongrel? Yea, those were fun. Were any small child could drop it on turn 2 and just destroy you in a heartbeat.

I don't understand how so many people hate an era of Magic were skill was involved.

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Originally posted by daner:
I agree. People bitch that you died on turn 4 because of combo but NOBODY complains about Tempest block were you could die to simple attacks in 4-5 turns on a regular basis after Sleigh decks came around. Cards like Mox Diamond, Aluren, Earthcraft, Cursed Scroll, Scroll Rack, Recurring Nightmare, Intuition, Survival of the Fittest, Volrtah's Stronghold, Tradewind Rider....I could go on. Saga had Pestilence as a common but Tempest had Rolling Thunder, Capsize, and Envicar's Justice....woo how fun being Capsize locked in limited, or recurring wrath, or a fireball that hits all your creatures including yourself as a common. Yea...it's SOOO much better than Saga right?

People hate Saga because of combo, yet a lot of people like it. Turns out if you hate it it was because you probably were just bad at Magic at the time of Saga, or you were too use to the idea of playing a creature everfy turn and turning them sideways. Yes, a lot of degenerate things happened but you had to have a brain in order to go off and win.

I'd rather play in a format were it takes skill....remember the format's with Wild Mongrel? Yea, those were fun. Were any small child could drop it on turn 2 and just destroy you in a heartbeat.

I don't understand how so many people hate an era of Magic were skill was involved.

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__________________
#2 in posts from British Columbia!

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Originally posted by wayne:
Just a thought, worst is rather subjective, maybe we should define it. Worst as in bad set to draft, bad set in constructed, or what?

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