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By: Gardevi, Lee McLeod
Jun 06 2011 11:13am
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 Hey guys! Triple NPH queues went up last Wednesday, and I was on the case!



So, there were some awkward moments of the draft. As I mentioned in the video, it was my first run through New Phyrexia in a draft, so there were bound to be tons of mistakes. Previously, I had only done Sealed with New Phyrexia. However, going into this blind, I figured I'd do all right, because I had a TON of flyers.


(Also, the Mental Misstep was worth a little less than I thought it was, but I was still able to sell it for 2 before the price went down)
Unfortunately, my computer crashed in the middle of recording round 1. It does this far more frequently than I'd like to admit, so any recordings by me are getting to the point where it's rare to actually get a complete product out of them. But, hopefully I can figure out a way to borrow my brother's computer and get things done that way. So instead, I'll just do a traditional "Here's the round video, here's things I did wrong in bullet form" method. 

+ 0:10 - I get to mill him with the Chancellor and get to assume he's playing monoblack, milling a bunch of swamps, a Grim Affliction, and a Reaper of Sheoldred.
+ 0:30 - Maybe I shouldn't have led with the Spined Thopter, because I knew he was going to blow it up with the mine. I think I should've baited the mine next turn with the Trespasser, than stuck Spined Thopter to trade with his own.
+ 0:41 - Time to count the Geth's Verdicts. One...
+ 1:00 - Two...
+ 1:42 - Three. Three Geth's Verdicts, and I'm essentially out of the game. I underrated it in my drafting portion - the card just gets better and better with each subsequent removal spell in your deck.

+ 2:20 - I keep a very iffy 1-lander on the play with a Mycosynth Wellspring. I should've mulliganned this; my curve of this deck is too high to put up a fight when I'm manascrewed.
+ 3:21 - I Volt Charge his Cobra here so as to not get blown out by Mutagenic Growth during his combat.
+ 3:30 - Swarmlord comes out, and the rest of the game is a formality. 


So the first NNN draft ended in failure (my opponent managed to go on to win the draft), but I did a few more. Here are my findings: 

- Black is the best color in the set. Black has TONS of common removal, and all of it is very good. The creatures lack a bit, but this is generally overcome with a second color and/or Phyrexian mana guys like Porcelain Legionnaire and Thundering Tanadon. 
 
- Format is of medium speed leaning towards fast, with some tempo based cards like Vapor Snare, Due Respect, or Geth's Verdict that make it possible to build fast, aggressive decks and not be blown out of the water by a Splicer. Porcelain Legionnaire is a large help in these decks - few cards in the set have more than 3 toughness at the uncommon and common levels. 
 
- Red/white infect is quite good, with a brutal curve of Lost Leonin into Razor Swine into Razor Swine/Ogre Menial into Shriek Raptor. Tempo cards are also good in this deck, especially Due Respect, which can fit into the curve on turn 4 or 5 and make staying alive difficult for your opponent. You also gain the advantage of retaining surprise wins with Mutagenic Growth and Apostle's Blessing. 
 
- There aren't many defensive cards in the set. Cathedral Membrane is uncommon. Past that, you'll mostly be relying on Legionnaires, Splicers, and Swine to stop attackers, all of which are better on offense than defense. 
 
- If you open Triumph of the Hordes, draft your deck around it and play it. It's just like Overrun, maybe even better since you can play high-power creatures several turns earlier with Phyrexian mana. 
 
- Blue is by and large underpowered. The best cards in the color are Blighted Agent, Viral Drake, Wing Splicer & Chained Throatseeker (all for playing well with others) and the really-colorless-card Tezzeret's Gambit. The flyers, while good, are slow for the format and are dominated by the common first strike guys as well as their heavy manacosts mean that they'll usually have to be played as finishers in a more controlling deck, and not just as you would play a UW Skies deck in something like M11 draft. Mostly, I'll be looking for blue to pair up with a red, white, or green poison deck for the good blue poison cards. (Oddly, the black poison cards in this set are worse than the other colors)
 
- Sickleslicer is the only (playable) equipment in the set that isn't rare or mythic; Necropouncer costs too much. Be on the lookout for this guy, as he's quite good. Many of the creatures in New Phyrexia have some sort of ability that makes them formidable in combat (first strike, flying, Necropouncer, infect), and you want Sickleslicer to make your creatures just that much better than each of your opponent's. 
 
- Most of the Chancellors are not good first picks. Especially the green and red ones. 


That's all I have for this time. Happy drafting!
Gardevi on MTGO
@Gardevi on twitter


PS - Also, I wanted to plug a new series of Player-Run Events that's happening every Tuesday night on Magic Online. Gavin Verhey over at SCG created a format called Overextended as a proposed format that's a step down from Legacy, but a step up from everything else (similar to Modern). Last Tuesday was the first of this series, and a whopping 62 people showed up. If I am allowed to brag, I even Top 8'd the event :). Come check out news and more events about the format at http://mtgoverextended.com/. 

3 Comments

Apostle's Blessing by Enjambment at Mon, 06/06/2011 - 12:22
Enjambment's picture
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Considering how high you were on Apostle's Blessing while drafting, I was surprised you didn't use it to save your Legionnaire in game 1!
Pith Driller's trigger is mandatory, so if you Blessing your guy against black or artifact with the Driller on the stack (the cast, not the trigger), he has to target one of his own guys for the trigger. Probably academic, but it would buy you another turn.
Anyway, thanks for the article and the video, though triple NPH is just really not a good format.

I actually did consider it, by Gardevi at Mon, 06/06/2011 - 13:28
Gardevi's picture

I actually did consider it, but I decided not to because I had exactly 1 out (Sensor Splicer) to just survive the following turn, and even then I'm still far behind. I weighed that chance against him knowing I have Apostle's Blessing in games 2 and 3, and then decided I'd rather try to get him with surprise in the next game than to try to claw my way back into this one.

And yeah, I'm done with Triple NPH now that it's out of my system. Time to focus on the real format!

Sucks to lose first round by toolazy2stand at Tue, 06/07/2011 - 00:28
toolazy2stand's picture

Hey man, nice article, just wanted to point out a few things that I would've done differently in the draft (don't give up hope yet! keep drafting triple NPH!).
I think you overvalued the 3/1 fliers, they are good, but I wouldn't have taken the first one over Gremlin Mine (which is good cause everyones playing the Phy-mana creatures)
Second, and you did say this alot, the flip flopping on the colors would've been hard for anyone to pull it out, but I think Pith Driller is stronger than Shattered Angel. The other picks were the third Impaler Shrike over Artillerize. You had the two wellsprings at that point, they essentially become better removal, and same goes for Phyrexian Core over the hated Mycosynth Fiend (though with the 3-colors, it's understandable that it wasn't really considered)

I still think you had a solid deck though, your opponents deck was just nuts (three verdicts!). Thanks for the vids.