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By: Felorin, Dr. Cat
Dec 18 2012 11:43am
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  Pack 1 pick 1:

  My Pick:

Bomb, or some other card. Easy choice. I mentally resolve to keep an open mind the next few picks, and be willing to switch if blue/white is cut and something else is wide open. But I hope blue/white will be open. Next drafter will probably take the Voidwielder and go into blue which is unfortunate, but still gotta take the mythic here. There's enough white I should wheel something, probably an Armory Guard.

  Pack 1 pick 2:

  My Pick:

I'm shooting for a flyers deck, so I want one of the two power flyers. While the Impostor's thing is sometimes a drawback, other times it's going to let you shed someone's Stab Wound or Paralyzing Grasp, or just re-use the detain or other ETB effect, so I pick the little Faerie over the Vassal Soul. If I get enough two drops it won't cost MORE than 3 even when I'm not getting extra value.

  Pack 1 pick 3:

  My Pick:

I figure I'm not likely to get a lot of ways to give evasion to Stealer of Secrets - I like Stealer better in an Izzet deck.  Knightly Valor is almost a 2 for 1, and it's good at turning a small to medium flyer into a fast clock. Always happy to take one.  Annihilating Fire is the best card in the pack, but I'm gonna try and stick with Azorius if it keeps flowing.

  Pack 1 pick 4:

  My Pick:

It's still flowing. Azorius needs a critical mass of detain to keep it winning its tempo game with it's slower aerial beatdowns. Getting this guy early is good, I'll be wanting more detain where I can get it.

  Pack 1 pick 5:

  My Pick:

Saber is interesting but I don't know how many 2-color flyers I'll get. Pegasus is a 2 drop that starts the flying beats a turn "early", though they're fairly light beats. Also blocks 2/2s all day, it's a solid card. Armory Guard is useful to stall the ground while winning in the air, but it'll be easier to pick up late than the Pegasus.

  Pack 1 pick 6:

  My Pick:

Gut check. Is this a pack that was unusually light on Azorius cards, or is it being drafted heavily and dried up? I consider the Savage Surge for a possible backup plan of shifting into green, or maybe the Rhino. I decide for now to take the fixer in case I end up splashing a third color in whatever I end up playing.

  Pack 1 pick 7:

  My Pick:

Keening Apparition is good value, with power equal to mana cost for curving out, and a high percentage of the time they have some powerful enchantment (or a nasty one on your bomb) that you can nuke for value later (or just scare them away from playing).  But (Dramatic Rescue is just awesome, with 1001 uses and it usually gets you great value & even tempo one way or three others. Snap pick.

  Pack 1 pick 8:

  My Pick:

I briefly considered Psychic Spiral, but then remembered I'm not stupid. Cancel is ok, but Swift Justice is cheaper and can sometimes be even swingier. So much easier to hold mana open for early, and it even gains you some life!  Yoink.

  Pack 1 pick 9:

  My Pick:

Told you I could get one later! Nothing else here anyway. Looks like this was our only white wheeling from pack 1.

  Pack 1 pick 10:

  My Pick:

Two thirds of the mana is in our colors. Might splash red. In limited though this is mainly "a worse cancel", this is more of a raredraft I guess.

  Pack 1 pick 11:

  My Pick:

See, now I don't really have to splash red.

  Pack 1 pick 12:

  My Pick:

Okay, if I splash anything maybe it's red. This is surely a tempo/racing card.


  Pack 1 pick 13:

  My Pick:

Nothing to see here, run along kiddies!


  Pack 1 pick 14:

  My Pick:

Being in "the color I might splash", this is actually a modest playable and sometimes good, so sure.

  Pack 1 pick 15:

  My Pick:

So, I've got a decent amount of on-color playables, but I'm a little short on creatures and on flyers. Will work on that.

  Pack 2 pick 1:

  My Pick:

I consider for a moment veering into green for the Beastmaster, which is crazy good if you can get a few different ways to pump. But I decide to stay the course. Two drop flier or six drop? I figure it'll be easier to pick up one or two more six drops later than to get good two drops like this, and I need more cheap creatures than big ones, so I go for the Pegasus. Doesn't hurt that I already have one six drop, either.

  Pack 2 pick 2:

  My Pick:

Phantom General is quite good, but my draft has not been heading towards token makers so far, nor have I even seen many passed. I briefly consider Ethereal Armor, but I have no enchantments from pack 1 and it invites two for ones, this is not a card that pays off highly if you don't get more support for the theme. Vassal Soul is fine, but I want enough Detain and here's another lovely Arrester.

  Pack 2 pick 3:

  My Pick:

Again a choice of flyers, both 3 drops. But then I see the Spirit. While it costs more, even flyers and spiders can't block it, plus you get a detain for tempo - this guy is an ideal roleplayer in the Azorius deck, I love this card!

  Pack 2 pick 4:

  My Pick:

There's other playables again, but the flyers are best. Runewing could get the call because of the "draw a card", but getting two bodies, plus the instant speed, and the slight chance of making a knight token with the proliferate (yeah right) are all reasons to go with the Eyes.

  Pack 2 pick 5:

  My Pick:

I still want three drop flyers, I keep passing them for other stuff!  But this is unconditional removal that will sometimes make a bird token as a bonus.  I hear removal is good, dawg!

  Pack 2 pick 6:

  My Pick:

I have been very underwhelmed by Aquus Steed. Teleportal is very splashable, though less needed in a flyers deck, Rest In Peace is a good constructed card. I've been wanting to learn more about how good Downsize is, too, nice pick here.

  Pack 2 pick 7:

  My Pick:

I like these guys a lot.  Easy call.

  Pack 2 pick 8:

  My Pick:

Still don't have as many flyers as I need and Runewing is tempting. But this is removal which I am short on, so I snag another.

  Pack 2 pick 9:

  My Pick:

There we go. Six drop, plus flying, plus detain.  Nice wheel!  The pegasus never would have wheeled.

  Pack 2 pick 10:

  My Pick:

I consider the mediocre two drop - but I have plenty of better two drops, and this is a sweet spell. The extra 5 life can really help a tight race.

  Pack 2 pick 11:

  My Pick:

Nice wheel! Finally getting to use the 3 drop flyer slot.

  Pack 2 pick 12:

  My Pick:

Probably should take the Mizzium Skin here, I want to try it out more. It's like a 1 mana counterspell for removal. But I could see myself maybe playing two of this, and it's uncommon so it's harder to pick up. It is expensive though so I might play only 1. If you get ahead and then can leave this open to protect your lead, you probably win. But with two, you only have 21 cards to get ahead with in the first place, not 22!

  Pack 2 pick 13:

  My Pick:


  Pack 2 pick 14:

  My Pick:


  Pack 2 pick 15:

  My Pick:

This was a pretty good pack, I picked up a number of flyers and some removal! The deck is definitely looking better now, and doesn't need too many good cards to get to 23 playables. From there I can look at swapping better cards in to up the deck quality.


  Pack 3 pick 1:

  My Pick:

Best cards for us here are Skyline Predator and Voidwielder. The former provides us more flying damage and sometimes surprise removal, the latter is cheaper, gets us bounce, and is generally awesome because it can kill any creature token, any creature enchantment, and it can create a massive tempo swing if you bounce their 5-7 mana dude. Plus it blocks 3/3s all day afterwards! This is a great card, and we already have two six drop flyers.

  Pack 3 pick 2:

  My Pick:

Yay more three-drop flyer action! Mana requirements are easier on Tower Drake so I get him for the faster, more reliable start. The griffin will sometimes be a slower card when we start with island/island/plains in play. The four drops are even slower. Arrow is removal but not the greatest removal, and we need more flyers & we need three drops!

  Pack 3 pick 3:

  My Pick:

Here's our four drop flyer with the card drawing, thank you. I want to overwhelm people with flyers fast, going for a huge number of them now is better than having an arrow.

  Pack 3 pick 4:

  My Pick:

Inspiration is nice but I just want to play creatures and tricks until I have no more or my enemy has no more life, and I think I'm going over 23 playables but the guildgate replaces one of my 17 land slots for some guaranteed value. In a two color deck you can skip gates so you don't get the tempo loss of a tapped land, but this will make my color screw games happen even less seldom, so I'll run it. Big help for Isperia, too.

  Pack 3 pick 5:

  My Pick:

Cancel's not exciting when I have two fancier counters, and I was right about Stealers, I didn't end up with many ways to force one through. I've been wanting this tempo-riffic trick and now I've got one.

  Pack 3 pick 6:

  My Pick:

Syncopate is tempting. But I want this deck as fast as possible, and Syncopate takes at least two mana to counter anything. The skin can counter spells for 1 mana if they target my stuff! Which is the biggest thing I want enemy spells not to do. (Well other than a bomb enemy creature.)

  Pack 3 pick 7:

  My Pick:

Was a little tempted to hatedraft the Launch Party. It's ok though, someone killed one of my creatures with a Launch Party, might even have been this one!  I raredrafted instead.

  Pack 3 pick 8:

  My Pick:

Another Tower Drake, suh-weet! Now I'm nicely loaded up on these guys and should be able to consistently get a lot of flying damage in the air.

  Pack 3 pick 9:

  My Pick:

See? Having a six-drop flyer isn't so hard. Now I have more than I even need. I could swap which one to play based on what I'm facing, or even bring in another for slower matchups where I need more flyers.

  Pack 3 pick 10:

  My Pick:

Okay, now that it's not competing with anything else, I'm happy to have more removal.

  Pack 3 pick 11:

  My Pick:

Nothing here for us.

  Pack 3 pick 12:

  My Pick:

We continue "uncommon-drafting".

  Pack 3 pick 13:

  My Pick:


  Pack 3 pick 14:

  My Pick:


  Pack 3 pick 15:

  My Pick:


This draft converter created by Benjamin Peebles-Mundy. Visit the draft converter today!

 

With 29 reasonable playables even without splashing, I had to make some cuts. I ended up running only one piece of countermagic, since the deck wants to be spending all its mana most turns to win on tempo. Gaining 5 life can help a late-game tempo race though, and if I get ahead in racing I can sit on Fall of the Gavel to guarantee the win. A case could be made for Cancel instead though. I took out both Swift Justice on the theory that my creatures are small, and won't always be able to use it to kill a big attacker - and if I just use it on a 2/1 flyer the lifeswing is smaller than I'd get if I had Big Dudes. I ended up sideboarding them in every time though, one or two should have been maindecked. I started Mizzium Skin to get more used to it and what to expect from it, but I sided it out against green/white low-removal decks and the like. It stayed in against Rakdos!

I left out one 6-drop flyer to keep the curve better, but still have 11 evasive creature cards (counting Eyes in the Skies and Soulsworn Spirit). It also has a reasonable amount of tricks, removal, lifegain, and detain to try and keep tempo in my favor, plus just a few big-defense ground blockers. I'm pretty happy with it overall.

Round 1, Fight!

Game one I kept a dubious 2 island hand with 4 white spells, and got run over by four centaur tokens and a Civic Saber. He had Centaur's Herald, Call of the Conclave, an end of my turn Druid's Deliverance just to get more threats to swing past my Doorkeeper, and finally a Rootborn Defenses in combat to make a fourth centaur. I drew some lands and put up a good fight, but I lost too much tempo waiting for that third land to arrive.

Game two we stalled the ground, and I traded for his 2/2 flyer, but then he got down one of his few blue splash cards in his Selesnya based deck - a Sphinx of the Chimes!

Sphinx of the Chimes

He will ring YOUR bell.

I had a shot at getting rid of it with a 1-for-3 with two small flyers and a Swift Justice. But that wasn't great, and if he had any trick or removal it could be a huge blowout. I decided to wait till I could get out Isperia and use Swift Justice on her, playing it smart. First I used Voidwielder, instead of killing a centaur token that couldn't get through anyway, to buy a turn while hoping to draw into the sixth land and just generally getting hit once less by sphinx and tying up mana.  I did take a hit from 11 to 6, and threw away a tower drake to chump one turn, drawing off Isperia's ability rather than go for the trade. Didn't have to use my trick and risk one of his as my patience rewarded me with a topdecked Paralyzing Grasp to put on his sphinx, and my Sphinx beats took it down a few turns later.

Game Three went a lot easier than the first two, and I got to a 1-0 start!

Pod Analysis

Drafters in each color were a bit unusually distributed. We count splashed colors as one half here.

White: 5

Blue: 3.5

Black: 3

Red: 3.5

Green: 3

It looks like I was in the most fought-over color, and it also looks like this pod didn't get the message about Rakdos being overly sought after!  Let's do breakdowns by guilds until we leave Ravnica, shall we?

Azorius: 2

Izzet: 1

Rakdos: 2

Golgari: 0

Selesnya: 2

Mutts: 1 (Golga-snya green/black/white) 

Round 2, Fight!

My opponent started with a Dryad Militant. But he turned out to not be Selesnya, but rather Azorius splash red, using Militant as a white spell. It also turned out to be one of his best cards! We kept racing, and I was doing ok as he put out a bunch of modest quality playables and nothing really great. I did run my Azorious Arrester into his Hussar Patrol and lost it, but that was about the only value he got. His one bomb he played was a Righteous Authority. Having a Voidwielder in hand and four lands in play, I prayed to topdeck a 5th land and did. So his game-winning enchantment turned into a 6 damage lava axe, effectively.

One turn instead of playing my 6 mana blue flyer, I held up 6 mana for either Fall of the Gavel or Trostani's Judgment, depending on what he played. He cast two spells, both so mediocre I couldn't justify casting either spell! Finally my aerial beatdowns got him from 16 to 12 to 8, as he dug for answers with Inspiration and cycling an Azorius Charm to draw again. I decided not to counter either of those, but just whatever he might draw that could actually matter. I was holding Isperia in hand as unnecessary, using my Fall of the Gavel to protect the win. Finally he cast Lyev Skyknight, and I was going to let it pass with or play the Trostani's Judgment on it and make another bird token, when I realized the detain would up my clock from 2 turns to 3 and give him one more chance to topdeck.  So I countered it. Next turn at 4 life he hit me with overloaded Cyclonic Rift! He knocked me to 8 life, with Lobber Crew available to make it 7. I dropped (Isperia), ready to fall to 2 life and use some of my grip full of removal and detain plus the three extra cards and try to win it. But he just resigned, facing a fatal swing from Isperia he had no answer for next turn, and no way to win on his turn.

Game 2 he put Righteous Authority on his Hussar again, but this time I had Voidwielder and had all the land I needed to cast it, so it turned into a 6 point lava axe. I ended this game on 14 as he never got another way to get damage through. My curve was (Pegasus), Tower Drake, Tower Drake, Soulsworn Spirit on turns 2 through 5. He had the 3/3 detain flyer come out to slow me down a little, but I had Swift Justice so I could swing everybody into it. Then he stalled a little with Azorius Charm on one of my Tower Drakes. I drew the third drake and one or two six mana flyers.

I had kept the Fall of the Gavel in during sideboarding, while making several adjustments, but I was starting to think his deck is so bad he didn't have spells WORTH gaveling. But when he was one turn from dying unless he found something, he tapped out most of his lands and laid Hypersonic Dragon.

Hypersonic Dragon

It's a thing.

Which would have totally bought him at least one more turn, except I decided that was more than worth of Fall of the Gavel, and it was case closed! On to the finals!

Round 3, Fight!

I was up against Rakdos this round, and he led off with a series of 3 power dudes. I traded his Chainwalker for my Faerie Impostor, detained a guy, Paralyzing Grasped a guy, got out two 1/3 pegasi to block his two Grim Roustabouts, and while taking over half my life total to get there, it looked like I had briefly stabilized. Then he had a removal spell. Then more creatures. I just didn't draw enough gas to have any line of play that could have survived.

Game 2 I made one key mistake. He dropped an Ogre Jailbreaker with multiple guildgates in play. I had Soulsworn Spirit out and 5 lands in play.I paid 3 mana to drop a Tower Drake, hoping to double-block and Downsize the ogre. Right after I did it, I realized I should have left two blue mana open, instead of one blue and one white.  I had the Downsize, a Swift Justice useless in this situation, and a Mizzium Skin which would be the perfect response to him going for the blowout with a removal spell.  I considered whether to wait and do it right next turn, but the extra damage & tempo would be very bad, and if I lucked out and he didn't have the removal, it was still good.  Of course he had Auger Spree. I had to decide whether to Mizzium Skin up and still kill the ogre but lose both my guys, or downsize the ogre to save my Tower Drake but let him keep the ogre alive too. I went for the former.

Unfortunately, that left me with no target for my Knightly Valor - which could have put him on a 5 turn clock as well as provided some quality blocking for stuff like his 2/2 regenerator. Only I wanted to either play it on 6 mana to hold Mizzium Skin up, or bait out his removal first - which I clearly had, but I did it wrong!

From there on, I drew mostly lands and he had plenty of gas, and ran me over. But that early 4/3 unblockable might just have been able to race him, if I'd gotten it down and attacking right after killing the Gatekeeper the right way.

So I ended up 2-1, and Rakdos took down this draft. Hope you enjoyed the show, see you next time!

 

1 Comments

My son uses this kind of by CelesteMindy at Sat, 04/13/2013 - 10:57
CelesteMindy's picture

My son uses this kind of game. It is the best game for him. - Scott Sohr