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By: Felorin, Dr. Cat
Nov 04 2009 5:00pm
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To be the best Magic player possible, I feel one should learn to play as many different styles of decks as possible.  In constructed I lean towards combo decks, decks that have ridiculous amounts of synergy and/or "break" some new card that's come out, etc.  Last year I built a huge deck full of every red card that I thought was A) powerful, B) fit the philosophy of a sligh deck well, C) fun, or preferably all of the above.  It was fun to play, and not only gave insight into how to play that type of strategy - but more importantly, lets me more accurately get inside the head of my opponent when I'm playing against one, and figure out how to outplay them.

Last month I built a 125 card mostly "draw-go" style blue deck, with counterspells and card drawing galore.  I had to go Classic to get in everything I wanted to play with.  Somewhat surprisingly to me, it won a LOT of games in a row before it finally lost.  It's still only lost twice so far.  Maybe it IS true what they've been saying about blue all along!  It does call for a very different mindset and approach to the game, though.  I still remember when I "graduated" from my initial green/white Timmy decks, with their big beasts and Blanchwood Armor, when I thought putting Loxodon Warhammer and Fireshrieker on the same creature was just the coolest.

It happened when I built a wizards deck.  Because tapping dudes to do stuff was so cool.  I had Disruptive Pitmage and Puppeteer and Prodigal Sorcerer and of course, one of my all-time faves, Aphetto Alchemist to allow any of the other dudes an extra activation.  With Seat of the Synod, he can even provide mana acceleration sometimes!  To make it really sick, I threw in Freed from the Real also.  I felt clever about putting that on Alchemist wherever possible, so I could choose which abilities I most needed extra uses out of by untapping him, then having him untap another guy.

The first week or two playing the deck, it almost drove me nuts.  There were so many choices of what I could do; I'd often end up barely losing a game, and seeing that a slightly different play would have kept me alive or even won.  I had never made so many mistakes with the green/white decks in my life!  Rather than giving up though, I worked on learning to get better.  Practicing with that deck probably improved my Magic skills more than most ever have.

I bring all this up, because this week sees me ending up with a style of deck I don't draft very often.  Let's take a look at how it went, and what there is to be learned from it!  This one was a 4/3/2/2 because that's what was about to fire, and because it's a busy week and I know they go a bit faster than Swiss, so even if I make finals I'll be back to work sooner.

 

  Pack 1 pick 1:

  My Pick: Assassinate
 
 

 

Red is the bomb color here.  I want to grab that Capricious Efreet here, and end up getting Vampire Aristocrat with him.  So I can pull that ridiculous trick where you pick just two targets, their bomb and your wimpiest dude, then you sacrifice your wimpy dude and are guaranteed their bomb dies.  In my happy dream world, I also get Siege Gang Commander so I can throw away the goblin tokens each turn, and I draw all 3 of them each game, and magic unicorns bring me cotton candy that's fortified with 12 essential vitamins and minerals.

Meanwhile, back in the real world...  He's still great for 2 out of 3 times you win, and the 1 in 3 time you lose it's your worst guy, whereas you always target the other player's best guys.  But double-red is a heavy commitment to red in our very first pick, and ideally I only want to be in red at a table where just 1 other drafter is, or (in magic unicorn land) none, or if there's two they are immediately to my left and I'm getting lots of great picks.  We don't know if red will be open yet, and worse still we're passing a Pyromancer.  With known opponents I might know whether the other good cards will go first and leave a few people to my left out of red, but against total strangers the guy left of me might value Pyromancer higher than the other good cards, and leave me cut out of red badly in pack 2.  So I'm not taking the Efreet.

Black and White have strong cards in Assassinate and Safe Passage, both excellent.  Wind Drake in blue is merely good, though as the only good card in its color, it sends a stronger signal to the left.  Assassinate is removal, plus mono-black is a really strong archetype if you can get it, and there's no better time to start trying for it than pack 1, if it turns out to be open.  Mind Rot probably won't get picked by the next few players either as they vacuum up the stronger cards, so I resolve to see if I can get the powerful mono-black deck.

 


  Pack 1 pick 2:

  My Pick: Sign in Blood
 

There are no bombs or powerful removal here to pull me out of my mono-black plan, though you can sort of count Cancel as removal.  There is a very solid black card, and no second strong black card so I'm cutting the color decently, letting only a Disentomb go by.  If I had picked anything else it would be the cancel, but card advantage and more consistent draws are quite good, I'm happy with this pick.

  Pack 1 pick 3:

  My Pick: Merfolk Looter
 

Diabolic Tutor and Wall of Bone get some consideration here.  Sanguine Bond and Soul Bleed do not.  The Tutor can be a second copy of your strongest bomb, but I don't know what I'll have yet.  It can also get removal when you need it badly, so it's never dead, but its level of goodness is somewhat deck dependent.  Wall of Bone is decent, but I'd rather have something aggressive or just overall more powerful.  Picking the tutor or wall (I'd take the tutor of those two) helps me keep cutting black, if I want to maximize the returns on the gamble that mono-black will be open.  But Merfolk Looter is really good, and blue/black is good, so I snag the Looter here.  If mono-black options are coming strong, I can afford to be down 1 card on it and maybe even splash for the looter.

  Pack 1 pick 4:

  My Pick: Black Knight
 

This is the first good green card I've seen, at ALL.  It's strong, but not bomby enough to change The Plan.  Turtle's ok but there's three stronger cards in black, so we're gonna keep the mono-black dream alive.  Zombie Goliath is just a big dude, the choice is between Looming Shade and Black Knight.  The Shade is really only at his best if you're mono-black or black with a splash, and even there I've been underwhelmed with him.  He can push a lot of damage through or force chump-blocks, but he eats your mana like crazy to do it, so you're either not playing all your other guys out, or letting him be a 1/1 most of the time.  He's also a sucker for getting caught by red spells or pyromancers (which I passed one of already) unless you hold extra mana open ALL the time, in which case, again, you might be playing out your resources slower.  The Black Knight will really shine against any white, and against non-white opponent's he's still efficiently costed and has first strike.  I love  first strike.  He's the clear pick here.

  Pack 1 pick 5:

  My Pick: Kelinore Bat 
 
Alluring Siren could lure random bears into my Black Knight.  In Magic Unicorn Land.  I don't know what other great blockers the Siren might get to work with - if any, and she's certainly a fragile creature that's no good on her own.  A fair-costed flyer that keeps me in black and keeps players to my left from seeing good black picks is the easy, easy choice here.


  Pack 1 pick 6:

  My Pick: Mind Rot
 

Mind Rot is a perfectly reasonable card to play in M10, and continues The Plan.  The only other good card here is Entangling Vines, unless you're into Bramble Creepers.  And some white drafter should grab that Undead Slayer, just in case they get to play a black player.  (Hey, that's me!)  So now I have two card advantage cards and one card selection advantage (the looter), not too bad.

  Pack 1 pick 7:

  My Pick: Coral Merfolk
 
 

Remember kids, Nancy Reagan always said "Just Say No to Acolyte of Xathrid".  Sometimes you need a bear to fill out your 2 drop slot or get your creature count high enough, so I grab the random Merfolk here.  If anybody takes the Acolyte as a late signal for black, they need help.  Badly.


  Pack 1 pick 8:

  My Pick: Lurking Predators
 
Zephyr Sprite could be more insurance in case my creature count is low, but it's not good, nor hard to get later if I want one (and I wouldn't want two!)  There's no black, or good cards, so I raredraft.  Plus if I were to move into black/green (not totally impossible) this can be a good card sometimes.  I've seen it show up too late for other people, and I've seen it show up in time and provide huge card advantage - certainly more than the Sprite could ever do.  I snag it here, later I looked it up on MTGOTraders and see it's selling for 10 cents.  And I already have 4 in my collection (now 5).  But hey, free dime!  Anyone wanna trade it for another cheap rare?


  Pack 1 pick 9:

  My Pick: Mind Rot
 
 

I don't mind having two of these.  Three I'd rather avoid, but with two you'll often just draw one & you increase the odds that you got to Rot them once, and sometimes the looter could loot it away.  Plus I don't want to pass usable black to someone who doesn't have a Mind Rot yet, maybe somebody with only 2-3 good black playables might be more willing to move out of it if I starve them for cards. Sprite isn't any more exciting than last pack, only other playable for anyone not making the red/blue Trumpet Blast deck here is the Mastodon.  This table seems full of solid drafters, it looks like in the first pass around the table, the 8 strongest cards were taken (though you could argue Mind Rot over Act of Treason).


  Pack 1 pick 10:

  My Pick: Cancel
 
 

It's nice to see the Cancel wheeled.  Double-blue doesn't fit so well with the mono-black or black-splash-blue plan.  But looking back, given how little black I passed I can't be expecting much black in the second half of pack 1, maybe from that pack I passed with four black cards.  Cancel is a good strong bomb-stopping card to be getting pick 10.  Blue is often a little underappreciated.  Having card advantage cards in the same deck makes 1-for-1s like Cancel better, as well.  Remember that draw-go deck I talked about practicing with, above?


  Pack 1 pick 11:

  My Pick: Soul Bleed
 

So all I get is the Soul Bleed?  Ok, there's at least 2 other black drafters, most likely.  Let's assume Sanguine Bond was rare-drafted, as it's seldom playable in limited.  (And I already own 4 Sanguine Bond, thanks!)  I take the craptastic Soul Bleed, just in case Loser McScrub grabbed that Acolyte and this card might make him REALLY move in on black in pack 2.  Besides, if I get to 22 fantastic black cards in packs 2 and 3, I might run this 23rd to go mono-black.  Nah, I'd splash looter.  Ok, if I get to 21 fantastic black cards...  In Magic Unicorn Land...  Ok, next pick.

  Pack 1 pick 12:

  My Pick: Tome Scour
 

Loser McScrub might get ideas about my blue cards too.  No Tome Scour for you!

  Pack 1 pick 13:

  My Pick: Kraken's Eye
 
 

If I somehow move really heavily into blue, and play against a blue/red deck, I might even think about sideboarding this...  If I have a brain aneurism or something.  I guess I missed an amazing opportunity here to hate-draft Fog.


  Pack 1 pick 14:

  My Pick: Jump
 
 

I'm just proving that I can visually recognize colors, at this point.
 

  Pack 1 pick 15: Swamp

  My Pick:
 
 

There's still 3 of the M10 basic lands I don't have in my collection yet.  This wasn't one of them.


  Pack 2 pick 1:

  My Pick: Weakness
 
 

I really wanted that Child of Night.  Even trading with an enemy bear, he's gaining you extra time with the 2 lifegain.  But Weakness is removal, so I go for that, a little regretfully.  Cancel isn't exciting here, and I could still be mostly black or even mono-black, I want to keep taking it and see how much flows right after I cut a lot of it pack 1.  Off-color the Rhino and Harm's Way are good, but we saw no evidence green or white was heavily open in pack 1. No color has been hugely open in this draft, either the packs are a little lighter on playables, or the drafters are all solid and somewhat evenly divided amongst the colors.  Or maybe both.


  Pack 2 pick 2:

  My Pick: Gravedigger
 
 

Nice green and white here, two quite strong cards in each.  I have some minor black "beef", or the excellent and card-advantagey Gravedigger, so I take him.


  Pack 2 pick 3:

  My Pick: Consume Spirit
 

An embarrassment of riches!  Dread Warlock is Evasion, but E comes after the R in "BREAD" or "BREAK", and we've got removal, removal, removal.  Deathmark only works against some decks, so it's down to Doom Blade or Consume Spirit.  Doom Blade is the better card in the abstract.  Consume Spirit is better if you're mono-black.  It doesn't have as much "couldn't deal enough to kill the creature" problem in mono-black (or black with a small splash), it can kill black guys, and sometimes it's a fireball to the face to finish the game.  More importantly, a key part of the ideal mono-black archetype is getting as many Tendrils of Corruption and Consume Spirit as you can, so that you have so much lifegain other players can't beat you in a damage race situation.  That Child of Night contributes to that plan a little too.  Anyway mono-black isn't ruled out yet, so I gamble on the Consume Spirit.



  Pack 2 pick 4:

  My Pick: Duress
 

More nice green.  I could have jumped into black/green and started out with 4 solid picks - but of course after only 2 out of 15 picks had good green in pack 1, I had no motivation to do so, and my green in pack 3 would probably be wretched.  Unsummon and Negate are reasonable cards.  Duress is a little iffy with two Mind Rot already, but it's not the most terrible card, and I still want that Mono Black, dammit!

  Pack 2 pick 5:

  My Pick: Gravedigger
 

Another Gravedigger is nice - I love when you can chain them for extra card advantage.  Only other card I could use here is the Terramorphic Expanse, which isn't nearly as good.

  Pack 2 pick 6:

  My Pick: Looming Shade 
 
 

And sure enough, I get another chance at a Looming Shade, for all your Looming Shade needs.  He's a common, not too hard to get since he's weak outside mono-black.  Again another pack full of mostly weak cards, were there no deep packs in this draft, or are the other drafters just that efficient?


  Pack 2 pick 7:

  My Pick: Essence Scatter

This pack's more like it.  Plenty of playables, and even a 10 cent raredraft for the raredrafter crowd!  Cool card for the Johnnies, dig 40 cents out of your sofa and just buy a playset to go break in a constructed deck.  The Ranger's really good, I guess green got cut so hard upstream of me that a lot of it's flowing back.  The Oakenform isn't unplayable either.  Enchantments risk a 2 for 1, but that hits hard enough to steal wins against people who can't answer it quickly.  For me there's another looter, or Essence Scatter.  The scatter can get rid of a big dude that wants to kill me, and I already have one looter, so I go to increase the number of actual answers in my deck rather than the number of ways to find them.


  Pack 2 pick 8:

  My Pick: Deathmark
 
 

This should be "live" in a good percentage of my matches, great sideboard removal that couldn't be costed any more efficiently.  When short on playables, I've seen people maindeck these and get away with it, too.
 

  Pack 2 pick 9:

  My Pick: Glorious Charge
 
 

I don't care for that Serpent much.  I grab the combat trick so there's one less trick floating around that might be sprung on me in combat - though I don't care too much about that either.  Serpent could have been better to have as sideboard against blue, though I'm thinking blue is my splash at this point which guarantees this guy will be super weak.
 

  Pack 2 pick 10:

  My Pick: Zombie Goliath
 
 

Divination is really good.  But I'm low on creatures, and I hear you need some of those to win, plus this guy's decent sized.  Negate's ok too, but Divination's better if I were to grab a blue non-creature spell here.


  Pack 2 pick 11: Deathmark

  My Pick: Deathmark
 
 

More removal for the sideboard.  Whoever dares draft a green/white deck better look out for me!  These are most fun when they tap out 8 mana for an Enormous Baloth, and you kill it for one mana and have plenty left over to cast other spells that turn as well.  Ok, moving on.


  Pack 2 pick 12:

  My Pick: Negate

I get a Negate anyway.  Good for shutting down the various non-creature bomb spells in the format.
 

  Pack 2 pick 13:

  My Pick: Demon's Horn
 
 

Now I could gain life from  ALL my spells.  And have two less of them!  In mono-black though maybe this actually ups that lifegain plan a little if you're playing another deck that's half or more black?  I bet that Sanguine Bond drafter is fuming that he didn't table this to pair with it.
 

  Pack 2 pick 14:

  My Pick: Swamp
 
 

I'm more than happy to give some guy a chance to waste a deck slot on a lifegain spell.
 

  Pack 2 pick 15:

  My Pick: Wurm's Tooth
 

Huh.  If I collect all five Lucky Charms, can I send them in to the cereal company and get a secret decoder ring or something?  After pack two I am at 7 creatures, so I make a mental note to prioritize playable creatures a little higher in pack 3.

  Pack 3 pick 1:

  My Pick: Jace Beleren
 
 

Dang.  I can't "raredraft" this, because it's in my colors!  I remember him as one of the few rares in M10 that's actually worth 3-5 bucks.  But I evaluate him against the Black Knight, and Gravedigger anyway, and decide he's better.  He provides a huge source of card advantage for a control deck, to go with its removal and counterspells, letting you stop their biggest threats and outrace their smaller ones, ideally.  It looks now like the universe has decided my blue shouldn't be "just a splash", with Cancel and Jace in there.  So be it.  I look him up after the draft and see he's actually up to $8.50 now.  Score!  Well, he is one of the best blue cards ever, and now I have two of him for constructed.


  Pack 3 pick 2:

  My Pick: Drudge Skeletons
 

I briefly drool over the Traumatize.  It's stupid, but with enough stalling power, one Traumatize can mill your opponent in a 40 card format.  But it's one less card that affects board presence for either side.  Ice Cage is excellent removal in some matchups, and something they can nuke cheap or free in other matchups.  The Drudge Skeletons are always "pseudo-removal" by blocking and regenerating, but can't get flyers or do their thing when you're tapped out.  They are better at stopping Mist Leopards if you're Mist Leopard obsessed.  Skeletons are also "shiftable removal" like a Prison Term or a [Blinding Mage].  They can be blocking a bear early on, then start ignoring him and block a Craw Wurm when one shows up for tea later on.  My creature count was low, and control decks love to stall till they can take over, so I snap him up happily.  Ice Cage would be reasonable here too, though, I wouldn't fault anyone for taking it over the Skeletons.

  Pack 3 pick 3:

  My Pick: Doom Blade

This deck is jam packed full of playables for everyone.  It's even finally got that Vampire Aristocrat I want to go with my Capricious Efreet and pull nasty unfair tricks!  Even after the new combat rules weakened his ability, he's still good - but not in a deck as creature light as mine.  Evasion Warlock again loses out to great removal, the Essence Scatter's strong but Doom Blade is one of the best spells period, happy to snap one up.  With so many playables maybe something might even wheel here, let's hope!


  Pack 3 pick 4:

  My Pick: Phantom Warrior
 
 

I need creatures, and I need a way to win, this guy's better than a flyer at putting a clock on them (even if it's a slow clock.)
 

  Pack 3 pick 5:

  My Pick: Cancel
 
 

A second Cancel is quite solid for the control deck we're shaping up to be here.  With card advantage built up, the one spell that can trade one for one with about any spell they can possibly cast is very nice to have.


  Pack 3 pick 6:

  My Pick: Warpath Ghoul
 
 

I don't need another Negate with four counterspells already.  Essence Scatter is more likely to be good in multiples than Negate is.  Wall of Frost is controllish, but I need SOME creatures that actually, you know, hit people.  Also with twin gravediggers, creatures can be used sort of like removal.  Trade with their Canyon Minotaur (or even just make them use up their Giant Growth), then digger the ghoul back and throw him out there again.


  Pack 3 pick 7:

  My Pick: Disentomb
 
 

This could maybe fetch back a gravedigger?  Looking back I think I like the Unsummon better here, I know I'm unlikely to play Disentomb but might play Unsummon  Controlling tempo can be very important for my deck, and sometimes you need to unsummon their fattie then hold up countermagic mana, a 1 for 2 is better than flat out losing (and affordable if you're gaining cards other places).  Also the Disentomb can be dead if they haven't killed any of your creatures so far, unlike the Unsummon which can almost always at least do something.  Or the Gravediggers, which can always at least be an emergency bear.  Wasn't that a 70's TV show, Emergency Bear?
 

  Pack 3 pick 8:

  My Pick: Unholy Strength
 
 

Nothing here for me.  I take this, hoping I won't have to play it ever.  Though maybe I should have kept an open mind about which situations make this Right Gamble To Take, and watched for that in sideboarding.
 

  Pack 3 pick 9:

  My Pick: Serpent of the Endless Sea
 
 

They can only shove a serpent in your face so many times before you have to just take one to be polite.  It is a creature, might use it as a wall or even side it in against another blue player.


  Pack 3 pick 10:

  My Pick: Zephyr Sprite
 
 

See above comments about Serpent.  Though actually at this point, being short on ways to get damage in, I want at least a chance at getting a one turn flyer and getting in 3-5 early damage, and/or using up one of their removal spells on someone wussy.  He can also help stall an enemy flyer deck a tiny bit, but - seriously, dude, where's my Air Elementals?


  Pack 3 pick 11:

  My Pick: Stormfront Pegasus
 
 

Okay, this table definitely has other black and blue drafters, and nobody in red who doesn't have another color they could grab the better cards for.  Looking back 8 picks you can see why they Stormfront Pegasus tabled, this pack was just lousy with good cards.  Too bad none of mine came back.  I take the pegasus so any white player I run into doesn't get that one extra gift to make his deck even better.
 

  Pack 3 pick 12:

  My Pick: Windstorm
 
 

Far stronger than the other cards.  I should have thought about bringing in this and 2-3 forests if I saw someone with enough flyers.  I'm just not at my sharpest playing Magic first thing after I wake up, I miss more details.  But that's often when I have time free.


  Pack 3 pick 13:

  My Pick: Convincing Mirage
 

This card is obviously meant to enable your Bog Wraiths or Emerald Oryxes to kick butt with their landwalk abilities.  Don't worry, it sucks in those decks too.  Interestingly, there is no islandwalk in M10.  This can also serve as really, really bad mana-fixing.  It's only really effective use is when your opponent has only one land of a particular color, and you can color-screw him out of the game. Not for the faint of heart (or the good players).

  Pack 3 pick 14:

  My Pick: Levitation
 
 

This was potentially good in my last blue/green deck.  No good here.


  Pack 3 pick 15: Forest

  My Pick:
 
 

Is it just me, or after reducing the art to card size, don't those birds just look like glitches?  Like worn through spots, or lint on your card, or something.  I'm sure the full-size original painting is lovely though.


This draft converter created by Benjamin Peebles-Mundy.
 

Here's the deck I built.  With only a modest number of playables it didn't take long.

 

With only 2 cards that care about how many swamps I have (Looming Shade & Consume Spirit), vs. four spells with double-blue in their casting cost, I couldn't see running 10 or more swamps, so I went with a 9/8 split.  Indeed, given the value of being able to cast those four spells earlier, and the fact that the two black spells only get a little better with each swamp, I could see a case for 9 islands and 8 swamps, looking back on it.  I could also see a case now for 18 lands, but we'll discuss that later.

All in all, I'm not as excited about this deck as I could be.  I did get to 12 creatures, which is enough with a strong control suite.  More like 11 if you have a low enough opinion of the Zephyr Sprite, but the Gravediggers can potentially add 1 to 3 to that total (3 if I get to chain one into the other).  My removal and card advantage suite is fairly strong, especially the latter.  Six and a half (sorry Looter) of my cards provide card advantage, and Jace and Looter do it over and over again.  What I'm lacking are finishers.  Once I've firmly established control, it's traditional to throw out something like Air Elemental to finish them off quick.  What've I got, Phantom Warrior?  Kelinore Bats?  Or am I going to have to say "I have 2-3 bears out to your 1"?  That's not how you present a fast enough clock to keep them from drawing their way back into the game.

One learning exercise I like to do after a draft, especially one where I suspect I could have done better, is go back through and look at what other colors might have been more open, and also whether I had adequate signals to notice and switch, or would have to have made a lucky guess.  It's easy enough to do.  Just find the text file with your draft picks that MTGO saves (you do have your checkbox on to record drafts, right?), then copy and paste it into this web page: http://www.zizibaloob.com/convert_images.html

You want to look most heavily at the earlier parts of the draft when you do this because A) that's where you would need to have switched for maximum value, and B) if you had been in that other color or colors early on, you would likely have seen more of it in the later packs, because you'd have cut other drafters out of it more.  So what you see in later packs doesn't give too accurate a picture of "what might have been".

So in review, Green had nice playables in round 2 in packs 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 7.  But in pack 1, it was pretty sparse.  Other than pack 4 and perhaps 6, it didn't outshine the options in other colors, and to be in it I would have been picking from things like Elvish Visionary, Emerald Oryx, and Mist Leopard - all playable but unexciting.  Had I taken the fine Stampeding Rhino in pack 4, I might have been open to it in pack 2, with that and the Lurking Predators competing with my 3 blue cards, one of them weak.  Also Rampant Growth could have made the Merfolk Looter quite splashable.  Pack 3 opened up with some goodies too, including a 3rd pick Overrun.  (Who passed THAT?)  I think I can say it doesn't look like a massive blunder to have passed it up, but likely there could have been a reasonable black/green deck I could have ended up with.  Could I have gone blue/green?  The blue wasn't so strong early to make this seem very likely to me, unless I just had a mind to force blue/green and hope it would work out.

Red seems mostly mediocre to me after the first pack Efreet.  I note that I didn't see one single Lightning Bolt or Fireball ever, possibly this table was full of drafters savvy enough to grab those as a splash even if they're not in red.  Which is one of the things that makes red an iffy color to draft.  I also only saw one Seismic Strike.  So I'm reasonably happy I didn't risk jumping into red with both feet.

White dried up fairly quickly in the first pack.  Again I saw some strong white picks in the first few packs going the other way, as the people downstream from me were likewise cut from white.  But the pack 2 white dried up faster than the green did.  Also always remember, it's more important what signals you could read in pack 1 than what signals you sent onwards to your left.  Because what the people to you right don't want, you can get in packs 1 and 3, but what the people to your left don't want, you only get in pack 2.

I think black, blue, and green were my most open colors in this draft, I think there was some competition for the green to my right, but some packs had enough playables for some decent stuff to leak through to me anyway.  I'm not whether the black/green or the black/blue deck would have ended up better overall, or more consistent.  The black/green one would have had better creature density and been easier to play optimally.  The black/blue I ended up with had more card advantage and more ability to play control rather than aggro.  I do think overall the table was probably fairly balanced in terms of numbers of people in each color, and also didn't have as much tendency to let strong cards pass because they don't know any better.  (At least not my immediate neighbors - maybe somebody across the table was getting passed extra goodies, for all I know!)

The hope in any draft is to find underdrafted colors, and put together a deck of above average strength.  I can't say I missed an opportunity to do that here, so I don't think I drafted badly. More likely it was a table where most players drafted reasonably solid decks, and some playskill and luck would determine who would win the matches.

I do think going back and analyzing what other colors you could have gone into is a good exercise for improving your drafting skills, and I'd recommend you all try it sometime!

Game 1, Round 1

Ok, this time we're going to play "Would you mulligan this" with every hand.  Here's my opener for round 1, on the draw, would you keep or mull?

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For me, this is an easy keep.  Of course for me, anything with Looter, Island, and another land is a keeper.  I'd even consider keeping those 3 cards plus 4 saproling tokens that got shuffled in by mistake!  This hand though has a 3rd land, a guaranteed three drop (though we'd rather save it for later), a 4 drop (though we'd rather save it for later, or almost hope our looter gets killed so they can waste a removal spell and we just digger it back).  Also it's got our super-Jace, and the Looter tends to mean we'll get that second island a little sooner than we might otherwise.  I keep!

I drop the Looter, he makes a turn 3 Wind Drake.  Activating the Looter brings me a very welcome Kelinor Bat that could be my 3 drop.  But now I have to discard something.  What would you choose as the discard here?  I didn't realize it at the time, but it turns out the entire game hinged on this choice.  (No pressure!)

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Having been burned in one of my blue/green games (as seen in my first draft article) by "looting away action", and having a land drop still for this turn, I discard one of the swamps, confident I can draw and/or loot into more land.  In hindsight, this play ended up costing me the game.  What I wish I'd done on reviewing this was to ditch the Cancel.  With no second island yet, Jace wanting to potentially get played first when it shows up, and my Mind Rot suggesting my opponent may be out of cards before I have my Cancel ready, I might not miss it much.  However my plan of trading the bat with Wind Drake, playing Gravedigger, then replaying bat is dependent on having four mana, which I'm guaranteed to have on turn 4 if I don't ditch that swamp.

But it's important to remember here...  If you made a play that gave you a 90% chance to win, and you hit that 10% patch of bad luck, that doesn't mean you should "learn" not to make that same play again.  Unless there's an alternative play that gives you a 95% chance to win!  IF you made a play that maximized your odds, and then you lost, it was still the best play to make under the circumstances.  That being said, I want to calculate the odds of discarding the swamp causing me problems here.  There are 29 cards left in my deck, 13 lands and 16 spells.  The ideal circumstance for me is if one of the next two is a land, allowing me the turn 4 Gravedigger.  If neither is, I'll likely play Sign In Blood, meaning I at least won't miss my turn 4 land drop unless the next four cards are spells.  So, the odds of no land in the next two cards are 16/29 * 15/28.  The odds of no land in the next four cards are 16/29 * 15/28 * 14/27 * 13/26.  Go go gadget calculator!

Ok, mathematically speaking, there's about a 71.5% chance I make the turn 4 Gravedigger.  Not bad.  20.9% chance I have to cast the Sign in Blood, but then still make the land drop after that, not missing a step in my mana development.  And a 7.6% chance I get no turn 4 land drop.  Guess what happened!  My next four cards were Consume Spirit, Weakness, Assassinate, and Essence Scatter.  Considering the two cards before, and the one following, this was a 7 spell clump of no lands.  These things will come up from time to time.  At the end of turn 4, I was 15 cards into my 40 card deck, and had drawn 4 lands and 11 spells from it.

Should I have been more cautious about making my land drops?  I'm on the draw, so he has a tempo advantage on starting the beatdown, as the control deck (and one with wussy creatures), I need to keep up my tempo no matter  what.  Whether I make the Gravedigger turn 4 is even likelier to matter on the draw, and as it turns out this was a very tempo oriented game and it did matter.  So we're not looking at a 7.6% chance of badness (no land drop) so much as a 28.5% chance of badness (no Gravedigger yet).  That's acceptably high if you have no better play.  But I can have 100% chance of that turn 4 play if I lose one spell.  I've got plenty more spells, and I have Looter and Jace to get me even more later, so I shouldn't be such a big baby.  It's not like I'm throwing away a Craw Wurm like I did in Draft #1.  I think ditching Cancel was the right play.  Especially since HE had a turn 4 Snapping Drake.  Ouch!

Quick alternative universe - what are the odds like if I'd run 18 lands, and gotten the same opening draws to this point?  Then I have a 74.2% chance of the turn 4 Gravedigger, up by 2.7%.  Also the chances of totally missing the land drop go from 7.6% down to 5.7%.  Ok, end alternative universe analysis!

My opponent dropped a Sage Owl and swung with the drake.  I draw Phantom Warrior, and loot into another island, finally!  I drop it, and decide to go for Mind Rot + Weakness.  He's down to three cards now, so I'm likely to get something good & he might potentially go down to 1 card next turn (drop a land + play two spells), or be about to play his best fattie next turn.  Actually he was, I get land + Craw Wurm and definitely could have been facing down that Wurm next turn otherwise.  I consider putting the Weakness on the Snapping Drake, reducing his attack power to 2 next turn rather than 3.  Then I like the idea of getting the Kelinor Bat up to block them both, only I remember it's a 2/1 not a 2/2, and can't block either without a trade.  I Weakness the Owl to slow down the clock, rather than have to do a 1 for 2 to get rid of the Drake eventually.  Might have been something to say for throwing Jace out as a decoy, weakness the drake, and up Jace by 2, that way I might take no damage next turn and buy even more time (and land drop chances), only that way I would have ended up with Craw Wurm out there.  Also worth note would be Assassinating the drake and weakness on the owl, to take no damage next turn.  Or hold back the Weakness and only be under a 1/1 beatdown clock.  As it was, at 15 life I thought I had some time and could take another hit or two from the Drake, since I'd mostly emptied his hand now.

Turns out his remaining card was an Awakener Druid, and with a 4/5 Forest accompanying the Drake I take 7 damage.  Ouch!  I draw another swamp, and loot it away for a Gravedigger - obviously not having learned my lesson yet about hitting land drops rather than clogging up with more spells than I'll have the time & mana to cast before I'm dead.  I play Consume Spirit on his Awakener druid, taking it out and deactivating his ravenous 4/5.  That puts me up from 8 to 9, small comfort.  What would be really ideal is if I hadn't used Weakness on the little owl, this turn I could have kept land 5, put Weakness on the Awakener, and played Gravedigger to fetch Bats to block next turn.  Or Assasinate and Weakness this turn leaves me with nothing but the Owl hitting me.  Remember to conserve your removal for the best targets!  His Drake attacks me down to 6, and he plays out Illusionary Servant.  I Assassinate the Drake, but now I have a new problem.  Looking through my decklist, I've gone through most of my answers that would stop the Servant, but I still have Doom Blade.  What I don't have is much time to find it.  My next two cards are Island and Black Knight, with two big fliers out I ditch the Knight as not likely relevant, and play the island.  Assassinate on the Drake brings my clock up from one turn to two.

Note that if I'd kept my previous land drop, I could be playing Assassinate and Jace here, instead of leaving two useless mana open and getting only one spell off.  Mistakes on earlier turns often propagate the negative consequences through later turns.  The mistakes on the earliest turns, then, tend to be the most crucial.  In, say, a ten turn game, a mistake on turn 8 affects the game state on three turns, 8, 9 and 10.  But a mistake on turn 3 affects the game state on 8 of the 10 turns!  Our game state would be vastly different now had I kept the turn 3 swamp, and much better.  The Jace here from a better play last turn would have a small chance to still turn things around, but not nearly as much as that early extra swamp would have!

He hits me to 3 with his Illusionary Servant, and plays out Centaur Courser, bringing us to this board state.  What's the play?

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None of these ground guys can block Illusionary Servant.  The only play is to run Jace out and draw a card, hoping Doom Blade is on top.

It turns out Swamp is on top.  Now what's the play?

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My first (stupid) thought was Activate the looter, futilely seeing if I can draw Doom Blade, and then die.  Then I actually use my brain.  Doom Blade is an instant.  I throw the swamp out there, of course, then pass the turn.  Looter will block the Centaur first, then loot.  If I draw Doom Blade, I kill the Illusionary Servant and survive, and can throw Warpath Ghoul out there next turn, and I'm still in this!

In actual fact, he plays Overrun, and my Looter finds me an Island.  But at least on my last turn I spotted The Correct Play.

Analysis: It's important to figure out which of the factors in Magic matter more, less, or not at all in each particular game.  Significance of who has the biggest creatures, who has the most creatures, staying out of burn range, mana development, tempo, card advantage, who'll run out of cards first, who has more evasion creatures, who has more removal, etc. can all vary from "the most important factor this time" to "hardly matters at all".  I had clear card advantage here, with 5 cards in hand to his 1, being 23 cards deep in my library to his 15, and both of us with 5 lands and two permanents in play.  But this game was clearly about tempo, getting the early land drops and then playing threats/answers faster than the other guy, which he did.  I didn't realize the supreme importance of keeping my land drops flowing smoothly, and that plus a little bad luck lost me the game.  With tighter play, I could have been prepared for the possibility of 7 landless draws in a row and still won anyway - no sense opening yourself up to risks you don't have to.  But I was looking at an irrelevant risk (losing one spell) as being more relevant than a far more important risk (missing a land drop).

Control decks in general want to make all their land drops, to more often have mana open for instants on the other guy's turn, to use activated abilities like Drudge Skeletons, to start utilizing that card advantage by playing two spells a turn rather than one, etc.  This deck has a very low curve, with 19 of its 23 spells costing 3 or less, and an average cost of 2.65.  Still, 18 lands would not only make mana hiccups scarcer, it would also ensure getting to 5 or 6 for that double-dipping all the sooner.  So it's worth considering 18 lands for this deck, I think.

Let's play the "two arguments, both valid" game.  With so much card advantage, you don't NEED as many lands, because the extra drawing/filtering (or time, from Mind Rot) will get you to the lands in time more often.  True.  But with so much card advantage, you don't NEED as many spells, because the extent to which you'll draw a little less "action" at 22 spells is more than offset by the extent to which you'll see more cards than your opponent in most games.  (And if Looter's one of them, you can loot away excess lands for spells.)  Also true.

Which is MORE true, or to be precise, more important and relevant?  Well, the first argument is only valid IF you get enough lands to play your card drawing spells.  Worse yet, if you stumble early but then start getting lands, you might find yourself in a situation where you have to be throwing out dudes and removal spells every turn, and don't ever have the time to safely cast the card draw spells for that theoretical advantage you thought you could get.

On the other hand, 18 lands makes you more likely to not stumble early on mana, and to actually get to use your card drawing spells along with your other spells.  So on that basis, it may be the more correct answer here.

For the second game, I sided in both Deathmarks.  I decide not to bring Duress or Negate in for the Overrun, because A) it's the only non-creature spell he showed me, so they might be dead cards, B) I think his Overrun is a little weaker with all the removal and disruption I have, and C) two Cancels and two Mind Rots give me plenty of chances to shut down his Overrun already.  Perhaps I should have thought about that Windstorm, or even Unholy Strength for his Illusionary Servant (and not totally dead if he doesn't draw it - I've seen no bounce spells from him yet, but he might have some.)

Round 1, Game 2

This one turned out to be really fun.  But I won't spoil the details.  Here's my opening hand, the dreaded two lander.  On the play, would you keep it?

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Normally two land hands offer some of the most difficult decisions, as I've mentioned before.  Especially on the play.  But I think this is the most beautiful two-land hand I've ever seen in my life.  I could just kiss it.  Admittedly there's no Looter, but hey, nobody's perfect!  Look at what we do have.  Both colors of mana.  3 of my 5 spells playable.  Two removal.  A two drop dude that will hold off any ground attack during any turns I might be stumbling on mana.  And my two other cards are both card draw, set up so whichever color my third land is, I can play one of them to help get to my subsequent land drops.  I like this hand an awful lot.  Since this is the extra fun game, we'll be doing a number of "You Make the Play" pictures and quizzes here.

I drop a turn 2 Drudge Skeletons, he answers with Deadly Recluse.  Since my turn 2 draw was an Island, I drop it and play Jace.  (Hooray!)  Here's the board so far - do you have Jace pay a loyalty to draw a card, or do you up him by 2 and have both players draw a card?

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This is where I wise up and remember Jace's last ability.  Since I'm on the play, my chances to out-tempo him and mill him are even better.  I've got THREE removal in hand, making his chances of making his limited number of turns save him all the poorer, and my headstart means the extra cards I'll give him will matter less (as do the three removal).  His extra draw on turn 1 just puts him even closer to milling, and even closer to hitting 8 cards and discarding some of the extra stuff he's drawing into.  Plus I have a super blocker out and he just has one wimp on-board so far.  I'm going for the milling plan with Jace!  He'll get a 1 point hit in while my regeneration mana is offline, but Jace can go up twice as fast as that spider knocks him down, so no worries.

Jace draws me a bat.  His spider hits Jace back down to 4 as I expected, then he plays out a Centaur.  I activate Jace again, and have this hand.  What's the best play here? 

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Leaving Cancel mana open, or the option of black to block the centaur and regenerate the Skeletons would be the sucker play.  It means I don't play any of my removal, he can get in for a point on Jace anyway, and I can't play any spells with the two blue.  He'll probably play his spell after combat since he's a solid player, and I won't have cancel mana then.  But if he plays a spell before combat, I still won't be eager to cancel and then take 4 damage on my Jace!  Clearly I want to remove the Centaur.  Weakness won't do.  I can do it now with my sorcery speed Deathmark, or use Doom Blade either now or on his turn.  Use the narrowest possible removal now, save the broader removal for later.  Deathmark only kills his greens, Doom Blade kills his greens and blues, so I Deathmark the Centaur.  Killing on my turn gets around any counterspells, though he didn't show me any in game 1.  Also of the Negates and Cancels I passed, 3 out of 5 tabled back to me, so I don't think this guy (or anyone) was picking them too highly.  Still doesn't hurt to play around it if there's no reason not to.

He hits Jace down from 6 to 5, I'm still gaining on him.  He drops a mountain and has no other play for the turn.  I haven't seen a mountain from him before, could there be burn in my future?  I go up to 7 on Jace, drawing me into a swamp for my 4th land drop.  I pass with four mana up, one to regen and 3 that can cast either of my two instants in hand.

He taps out completely for Air Elemental.  I smirk inwardly at the knowledge that I have TWO ways to nuke it, Cancel or Doom Blade.  Though this is that Air Elemental I would have loved to have for a finisher.  Khaaaaaaan!

I ponder for a moment.  Not the spell Ponder, the mental process for which it was named.  (By the way, at Pro Tour Austin I met & chatted Dan Scott, who did the newest Ponder art for the M10 version.  Nice guy.  I forgot to pull out a Ponder to put in my small group of cards I asked him to autograph, though!)  So, You Make the Play.  Cancel the Air Elemental, let it resolve and Doom Blade it, or just let it live and cast nothing for now?

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I hope none of you seriously considered letting it live!  Sure, we could kill it on our turn, but then we're just wasting mana we could have used earlier, leaving us more available to cast more yummy spells now.  Doom Blade is the correct answer, 'cause it can just answer any creature spell that might threaten Jace, whereas Cancel can answer any creature OR non-creature spell that threatens him, period.  Plus that mountain makes me think the Cancel might be particularly relevant for protecting Jace.  Like a doofus, I use the Cancel anyway, reasoning stupidly that I'm maxing out my efficiency of mana usage.  A minor factor here, but not as important as protecting Jace from a nasty sunburn with SPF Cancel formula!

Like the Lucky Master that I am, Jace draws me my other Cancel next turn.  Score!  I also have a swamp which I drop.  I could Sign In Blood, but I'd just be at 8 cards and have to discard, whereas if I hold 5 mana open I could potentially Doom Blade AND Cancel, which is pretty hot.  I pass, playing more Draw-Go.  Jace is at 9 counters now.  This time he taps out 5 of 6 lands for a Stampeding Rhino, leaving just a Forest open.  I could give you the exact same Doom Blade or Cancel quiz as with the Air Elemental, but the answer hasn't changed and I trust your memory.  This time I trusted the little voices in my head too, and killed it with Doom Blade.  Note that a slightly better play for him would have been leaving the Mountain untapped, bluffing Lightning Bolt mana.  Bluffing Giant Growth, or even keeping mana open for one actually in-hand, does nothing useful for him here.

I untap, and draw into Gravedigger and Black Knight, bringing Jace up to a Spinal Tap pun inducing level of "Ours goes up to eleven".  At this point, there's eight possible answers to the question "Which spell do I play next?"  Half of them I'd be ok with here, and half I think would suck.  Can you identify the four "right" plays and the four "wrong" plays?

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First of all, this was a little bit of a trick question.  While there's 8 spells in hand, you can't cast Cancel with no spells on the stack.  So there's 7 "this spell" answers, and the 8th answer is "Cast no spell at all and pass the turn".  The wrong answers here are Kelinore Bat, Phantom Warrior, Consume Spirit, and Gravedigger.  If nothing goes wrong, next turn Jace nukes his library and we win the turn after.  (Unless he can deal 20 damage to me in one turn!)  Cancel makes sure nothing goes wrong.  If I spend more than 2 mana, or spend ANY blue mana, I can't cast Cancel.  The only thing that really matters here is being able to cast Cancel.

Casting no spell probably wins.  But I have no second instant spell I could cast, so leaving the mana open does nothing.  I don't even care much about regenerating the skeleton, he could chump block the Recluse and die.  I wouldn't let it through, though I could activate Jace with 10 - what if he has Giant Growth?  What if he has a second Growth after my Cancel?  Anyway spending one or two black mana is fine.  Sign in Blood still does nothing relevant - if I draw a second instant or any cool spell, I don't have mana open to cast it until after I've won the game.  Weakness on the Spider means now he needs Naturalize plus a way around my Skeletons (Unsummon?) plus a Giant Growth - plus a second copy of whichever one I counterspell so he can cast it again.  This puts him from needing 3 spells to get around my Skeleton, to 4.  And if he burns up 4 spells just to slow down Jace, leaving no permanent improvement to his board state, I'm really WAY ahead of him at that point!  The Black Knight also requires him to use 4 spells to get anything through me - two unsummons, a giant growth, and a backup for whichever I counter.  Both scenarios are desperately unlikely.  He can't throw two burn spells at Jace unless he has another mountain.  Lightning Bolt and Boomerang would be good for him except oh yeah, when they went from 10th edition to M10 they left Boomerang out.  This man needs a Pithing Needle.  Not likely he has one.  If he has two my plan's done for, but no way, right?  Bolt and needle, I'd want to counter the needle.

So anyway.  The one thing a control deck player likes better than setting up a possible winning play next turn, is setting up for a win with counterspell backup.  I don't have two counterspells, but I have one & it's very likely it will be enough.  He drops a forest, so he has 8 cards in hand (thanks to my Jace) and 7 mana.  Certainly there's some chance he could play multiple spells this turn and try to pull something...  So then there's no more beautiful sight for me than to see him tap ALL seven to play one spell.  I just had to take a picture of it for you.

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More beautiful than a hot fudge sundae, isn't it?  Well if you're a big enough Magic geek it is, anyway.  I cast Cancel and he conceded, seeing the writing on the wall.  It's also good for me that he showed me Fireball, informing my sideboarding for game 3.  For Overrun AND Fireball, I bring in the Negate.  Master of Nuance observation- he could have played Fireball for 5 and left a land open, to bluff Pithing Needle.  This maybe means he only buys two turns instead of three, if I don't have Cancel - and who has two Cancels in their top half of their deck?  It is a big risk, as you're counting on your opponent to even think of Pithing Needle as a possibility, and then be cautious enough to play around it and let Fireball through.  But in otherwise unwinnable situations, sometimes the 1 in 10,000 shot is better than no shot at all.  Of course there's a better than 1 in 10,000 chance I don't have Cancel or Negate as far as HE knows.  Still an interesting thought.

Round 1, game 3

Here's my opening hand, on the draw.  Do you keep, or mulligan?

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Two landers are slightly more playable on the draw.  But where the last two lander was so good, this one is so wretched!  Zero cards are playable until I draw a land.  Sign in Blood and Consume Spirit remain dead if I draw islands.  Looming Shade doesn't do much until I draw into multiple swamps, and neither does the Consume Spirit.  Bat's ok, Mind Rot would rather I wait a couple extra turns for a more damaging strike with less choices for my opponent about what weak cards or lands to ditch.  This is where it matters that control decks like a lot of mana, and I should have had at least two swamps and an island minimum to consider keeping cards like these.

Sadly, I kept this hand - and that could be the whole game report right there, really.  I got a Drudge Skeleton, he got a Runeclaw Bear and Emerald Oryx out.  I drew my 3rd land on turn 4, and played out a Kelinore Bat.  Just in time to get both my critters Fireballed while I had no regen mana open for the skeletons.  I mind-rotted him down to 1 card, and he played out Overrun, hitting me down from 14 to 4 life.  I could only tap out my 3 land for Looming Shade to chump block for a turn.  Turn 7 I draw a Warpath Ghoul I could have used the turn before, throw him out there too late, and I die.  Out of a total of 14 cards drawn, I had 3 land.  Sometimes there's nothing you can do about that.  Statistically the odds are good I'd have gotten a better 6 card hand.  But it might have been worse, and my 5, and I might have lost even with correct mulliganing.  I definitely should have taken at least one mulligan though.

All in all, the deck performed better than my worst fears, and closer to my hopeful expectations (or wishes, at least).  When played well, it had a variety of options to handle what this mostly mid-range deck might throw at me.  Unfortunately, again lots of options means more opportunities to make the wrong play.  And game 1 was tight enough that it would need pretty tight, near-perfect play to win.  Which is not how I performed in that game.  I did run through the replay slowly, working out what my plays could have been each turn if I kept the extra swamp, and it looks very likely I could have stabilized the board with some life left, and started to take over the game with my huge card advantage.  Not 100% certain, but I think that game was winnable.  That and the win I got in game 2 could have put me on to round 2.

I wish this had been a Swiss, so I could have seen how the deck would have performed against other archetypes, and learned more about how to pilot it well.  But I did have fun with this match, learned a LOT from going back through it like this, and I got a nice Jace out of it to boot.  I think he'll be playable across many/most constructed formats for a long while to come.  I'll definitely be trying blue/black or blue/white controllish builds again sometime.  Or hey, maybe if I open a ton of Blinding Mage, Doom Blade, and Harm's Way, there's a black/white control build in my future?  I had a 3-0 in ninth edition draft once with Royal Assassin plus two Master Decoy and an Icy Manipulator.  Sweet!

Thanks for reading this far!  I'd love to hear what you think of some of the closer decisions in the forums.  Especially whether you'd have taken Stampeding Rhino in Pack 1, pick 4.  (Any Rod of  Ruin fans out there?  Surely not over the Rhino!)

 

7 Comments

totally agree on the by Fadew (not verified) at Wed, 11/04/2009 - 20:16
Fadew's picture

totally agree on the deathmark, very good card, especially sideboard. However rod of ruin is a good card in m10 drafting. It pops a damage a time helping you block the bigger creatures and finish them off AND removes illusionary servants. the most annoying 3 drop in m10 :)

I like the rod in a deck by Felorin at Wed, 11/04/2009 - 22:29
Felorin's picture

I like the rod in a deck where you know you can stall the board, but in most matchups its mana costs make it too slow. Compare it to a Pyromancer, I always love having those guys, especially in multiples. Might even splash for Pyromancer.

Can we get the title of this changed to "Draft #4"? I put 3 again by mistake!

I love reading draft by Windcoarse at Wed, 11/04/2009 - 23:56
Windcoarse's picture
4

I love reading draft walkthroughs, thanks for contributing!

I think there has been an improvement in content and structure from your previous articles. The article reads very easily, and I really enjoyed the game coverage here.

On the P1P4 I think you made the right call, especially since you were trying to force black. Black Knight is pretty much the best two drop black can hope for. Also, I doubt you'll see another one for your deck. Rhino is a great pick for green, but it is not a reason to draft green. Black Knight easily wins over the rod in my opinion. The rod requires a fair investment before it begins to impact the board for you, the knight impacts the board immediately and for two mana. I might take a rod later, but not over the knight here. It's a very solid critter in a color that has trouble getting them.

As far as your future articles, I'd like to see a screenshot of the final build including cards you chose not to play. This sort of visual helps the readers identify with your thought process during deckbuilding. You did provide us with a full decklist, sideboard and justifications for your deck's build which was all good, but an appropriate picture is worth a thousand words.

Thanks for the article! Your by ghweiss at Thu, 11/05/2009 - 03:36
ghweiss's picture

Thanks for the article! Your enthusiasm is catchy :)

You did a pretty good job with the draft and the game walkthroughs. There are serious problems with your deck construction, though.

The first thing is that you need 18 lands with this deck. No question. It's not even a matter of land-spell ratio (although I'd play 18-22 anyway). The problem is that you want as much Black as possible, but you also have 4 cards that require double Blue. I'm not claiming that you wouldn't have been manascrewed in game 3 anyway, but it did happen.

The next thing is that you should always play Deathmark maindeck. It is live against 7 of 10 possible 2-color pairs, mathematically speaking, and is even less likely to fail when your second color is not Green or White. It also happens to be ridiculously powerful when it works, as opposed to the other color hosers, which are merely okay.

Negate is another card that you should almost always play maindeck, because very few M10 decks have nothing you'd like to stop. I would certainly play it over Cancel when you have less than half Islands.

Zephyr Sprite has no business being in your maindeck. I would only side that in against an opponent with multiple copies of Stormfront Pegasus, Kelinore Bat, Child of Night, Elite Vanguard, or the like. Otherwise it is just too low-impact. I'd rather have 19 lands than play Zephyr Sprite, because there is more value in avoiding land shortage than topdecking a Sprite when you need action.

Therefore, I'd recommend +1 Swamp +2 Deathmark +1 Negate, in exchange for -1 Zephyr Sprite -1 Zombie Goliath -2 Cancel. Goliath is only remotely playable, as it has the annoying tendency to trade for cards that cost less than it. I understand that you wanted a "win condition," and I've played Zombie Goliath many times for that exact reason, but it just doesn't work out often enough.

Good points, but... by Felorin at Thu, 11/05/2009 - 08:34
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I like what you want to put in, and I agree about 18 land and about removing the Zephyr Sprite. But I wouldn't want to take out the Cancels. This deck is very good at generating card advantage, the flip side of that should be then trading 1-for-1 with the opponent's threats until they run out. Which this deck is a little poor at with a weak creature base, spells like Weakness that can't deal with some targets, etc. Cancel is guaranteed to be able to find a target it can 1-for-1 with, often trading up for a higher mana cost spell as well. Essence Scatter is always live as well. I also like the one-of Goliath in there not only because it gives me one more potential answer for a Stampeding Rhino or Craw Wurm, but because with two Gravediggers he gives me the potential to have him trade with two fair-size enemy creatures. I might consider dropping the Coral Merfolk, Warpath Ghoul, or a Mind Rot for Deathmark before I'd drop the Goliath. Though those other two creatures are better for mana curve and early blockers (or early hits if they're slow to play out creatures).

Of those suggestions, I'd feel most comfortable with +1 swamp, -1 Zephyr Sprite. After that, I'd say maybe a Negate or Deathmark swapped in for a Mind Rot taken out - or even both Mind Rot, which is potentially a dead card or just too slow/weak sometimes. The reason I kept out negate and deathmarks in this build is if I'm building up card advantage into a pile of weak-ish cards, I want as much as possible for every card to matter. 1 or 2 dead cards and I might not have enough card advantage to keep up and pull ahead. Two bears can trade with a Craw Wurm, and if I'm more than one card ahead in card advantage at that point, I'm still treading water at the least. If a negate or deathmark pops up when I can't use it, and I pull Weakness against fatties, I'm in trouble. I'd feel a little safer with 1 Deathmark game 1 than two of 'em, for that reason, and the following games either go to 2 or 0 as appropriate. But I could still see taking a chance on 2, as it will probably win more game 1s than it will lose, on average. Since it's so cheap I could also consider something like +2 Deathmark, +1 Negate, -1 Zombie Goliath, -2 Mind Rot (or 1 Mind Rot & 1 Zephyr Sprite, probably better) as at that point, I'm lowering an already low mana curve even further. Though the benefits of 18 land to consistency and to the Consume Spirit and Looming Shade are still relevant.

I think I like +1 Island, +1 Deathmark, and maybe the Negate or second Deathmark for the Zombie Goliath? The Consume Spirit, Looming Shade, and Zombie Goliath are all a little "odd man out" in that most of this deck is trying to get card advantage and mana/tempo advantage by swarming you with 1-3 mana spells and getting to where it could play them two a turn. Spells that want bigger amounts of mana don't fit in with that plan A. Though they do help with having a plan B when the small spells keep me alive but don't finish the opponent off, and the game goes long. If the game goes long enough, I hopefully have "enough" swamps whether I ran 9 or 10, whereas the short game needs that double-blue earlier rather than later, especially if I keep both Cancels in. If I wanted to run the 10 swamps, taking out 1 of the Cancels for Negate helps support that plan - though I still wouldn't want to take out both Cancel, it's so good in this deck!

+1 Swamp, +2 Deathmark, +1 Negate, -1 Zephyr Sprite, -1 Cancel, -1 Mind Rot, -1 Coral Merfolk perhaps?

I still want my +1 Air Elemental, +1 Tendrils of Corruption, +1 Mind Control. But ya gotta play the cards you're dealt, I guess!

Fun Read by SardofKC at Thu, 11/05/2009 - 12:15
SardofKC's picture

I enjoy reading your draft articles, Dr. Cat! I am really new to Magic and drafting and seem to have issues with my play at times so your analysis of your thought process and mistakes really help me to learn.

Thanks! by Felorin at Thu, 11/05/2009 - 13:53
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Glad you enjoy 'em! I'll try to keep finding time to write more.