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By: Gardevi, Lee McLeod
Aug 22 2011 8:29am
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 Hey everyone, I'm back! I've been wanting to write this article for a couple of weeks, but they've been busy for me, with U.S. Nationals one week and then Richmond the following week, and then college started back up and I had to fit that back into my schedule. So, a tournament report of sorts of U.S. Nationals (focusing on the draft portion to fit in with the rest of what I've written) for PureMTGO is a little late at this point. The tournament was almost a month ago and my memory of the draft portions is fuzzy at best. But that's okay! I have something else in mind. 


You see, after I qualified for U.S. Nationals by winning NC Regionals, I - like most Magic players, I imagine - procrastinated heavily. I didn't do any testing of any sort until two weeks before the tournament. And once I started testing, I focused solely on Standard, on the grounds that I needed far more practice in Constructed than I did Limited - especially some sort of 'easy' Core Set Limited. The real kicker, though, was that Magic 2012 wasn't on Magic Online yet, and wouldn't be until the Wednesday right before Nationals (which started on Friday). 

So as soon as I got to the hotel in Indianapolis on Wednesday (at around 10pm after changing hotels due to TERRIBLE service), I booted up Magic Online, updated it, and got ready to start drafting M12 for the first time. 

My plan for practicing the draft format was fairly simple. I had about 75 tickets saved up for this occasion, which was the equivalent of about 6 draft sets. My goal was to just blow through these 6 draft sets and find out what didn't work in M12 draft. I had a pretty good idea of what did work - U/W Fliers, R/B Bloodthirst, any aggressive strategy like that. I needed to find out what fringe archetypes people wouldn't draft to were worth playing, what cards weren't as good as I thought they would be, and what rares did in this format (since I usually ignore them when evaluating sets). 

Now, the drafts. I'm not going to provide any sort of pick-by-pick commentary, because my decision trees are inherently flawed - if I wasn't sure between two cards, I took the least safe option. If there was a rare in the pack, I probably took it to try it out. If my colors are strange, it's because I wanted to see how flexible I could make my colors without suffering too much. What does this leave us to learn? Well, basically you get to see some unusual drafts. I didn't try to jam R/B Bloodthirst or U/W fliers every time. If they were open, I took them. Otherwise, I wanted to try other things. 

Also, in the spirit of being competitive, all drafts listed were 8-4s.

Without further ado: 


DRAFT #1


I started off this draft by picking the Dragon, which I figured would be expensive, but nigh unbeatable once it hit the battlefield. Unfortunately, red got cut from me right after that, and I decided I wanted to see how a Griffin Rider deck would work when I picked it around pick 5. Blue opened up and I went into it. I ignored green because I don't think green and white synergize well if you don't go all-in on Sacred Wolves. I ended up with this:


Result: Ended up getting to round 2 and losing to a U/B Aggro deck where I couldn't deal with a Dark Favor'd Tormented Soul

Lessons learned: Furyborn Hellkite is a trap. All the red decks in the format want to be very aggressive and have the game in the bag well before you get to cast this monstrosity. Siege Mastodon, while fine in M11, is nearly unplayable in M12, the format is just too fast. Similarly, Arbalest Elite is a huge mana and time investment which can get blown away by a simple Unsummon (which happened in this draft and I got destroyed for it). Phantasmal Bear and Unsummon should've both been in the maindeck, over the two slow creatures. Griffin Rider is a house if you have enough Griffins, though you need to be careful about traps. I swung in with reckless abandon multiple times and was punished for it severely.


DRAFT 2


This draft started as an exercise on seeing if forcing R/B was viable, as I picked a great (the best?) bloodthirst guy - Stormblood Berserker early over some more powerful options like Pacifism or Sengir Vampire. Then red dried up and I snagged a 'late' Stingerfling Spider on pick 4 - a card I heard was amazing. Then I picked a couple of Phantasmal Bears and didn't know what direction I was taking. I spend pack 2 picking white cards to go G/W Auras, but then abandoned that after opening Frost Titan - a card I'm pretty sure you have to play if you open it. Jace's Archivist came around P3P4 and I grabbed it since it was a rare and could dig for Frost Titan.

draft deck 2

Result: I made it through the first round by finding Frost Titan every game (either by manually drawing it or Windfalling until I got to it. I died in the second round to a Bloodthirsted Lurking Crocodile, and from throwing away Jace's Archivist to his Jade Mage when I didn't really need to - then ran out of cards soon after. 

Lessons: Archivist is INSANE. I kept forgetting during that draft that it didn't count only my hand size (a la Tolarian Winds), but the HIGHEST handsize. One trick I completely missed during the draft was stack Hunter's Insight, in response Windfall to draw their handsize, then draw the cards from Hunter's Insight. Milling them out with Jace is also easily reliable - against a slow green deck I boarded in Jace's Erasure on the grounds that if I hit it with Archivist in play, I just won. Most of my non-Titan game wins came from Sacred Wolf/Trollhide, a fearsome combination. Gladecover Scout sucked, and the maindeck Plummet was golden all day - I'd rather start it than sideboard it in every time I see a flier (ie, every game). 
Forcing Bloodthirst didn't pay off, so it's probably something to avoid at Nationals - it appears to be a highly coveted archetype. 


DRAFT 3


I started this draft without a real clear direction - I just took good cards and expected a REALLY good one or a clear signal would just pull me towards one or two colors. Those colors ended up being blue and white, opening an Oblivion Ring in pack 2 alongside a Jace's Archivist... and then tabling the Jace's Archivist


Result: I got destroyed in round 1 by a R/W Griffin Rider/Bloodthirst deck that just outpaced me in every step of the game. 

Lessons: Decks with a bunch of slow cards need some pretty good high end to not flop. Crown of Empires and Rusted Sentinel cannot keep up with a ton of early threats, which this format has. My deck had pretty much only three drops and a couple Bears, so I didn't really do anything until turn 3, whereupon I could only play one spell per turn and was easily outpaced by my opponent's Griffin Riders and Assault Griffins. Two-drops seem to be at a premium in this format - even something like Coral Merfolk is desirable, if only to trade with other 2-drops. I should've played my Stormfront Pegasus just to trade with Griffins and whatnot. 



By the time I had finished the third draft, it was around 2:00 in the morning. I wanted some time to visit GenCon before I was locked in playing at Nationals all day on Friday and Saturday, so I hit the hay in preparation for a day of GenCon on Thursday. :)

I still have a few drafts I managed to do Thursday night right before Nationals, which I'll write about (along with my experience at GenCon) in a follow-up article. 


Thanks for reading!

Lee McLeod
Gardevi on MTGO
@Gardevi on twitter

5 Comments

Thanks for the thought by Zaltar at Mon, 08/22/2011 - 17:40
Zaltar's picture
4

Thanks for the thought processes behind some of the pics. I enjoy the draft format and my hardest time is picking the best possible card. From the 3 drafts you posted it looks like fliers are aplenty and a good way to go. I did a draft recently and the Merfolk Mesmerist was beast. I milled the guy down to about 10 cards but messed up and cast Time Reversal when the match was still slightly in my favor instead of holding on to it. The guy reloaded and finished me off. You would know better than I but the Mesmerist with a Jaces Erasure combo seems like it could do well.

Merfolk Mesmerist is one of by Gardevi at Mon, 08/22/2011 - 19:50
Gardevi's picture

Merfolk Mesmerist is one of those deceiving cards. You think it'd be terrible, because it's associated with mill and all, but it's actually pretty decent. It's no Vedalken Entrancer, mind you, but if there's a board stall and you have a Mesmerist out, it's pretty good value to just start milling them out, and I've won several games that way.

I haven't gone all-in mill yet; the opportunity hasn't presented itself to me.

I hate M12 by apaulogy at Mon, 08/22/2011 - 19:04
apaulogy's picture

I really can't catch a break. I drafted a decent deck finally and lost in the first round to flood. You will see when I submit my M12 Limited Abilities article this week. Gah!

I am interested in seeing how you tackle new formats, and would also like some report on the standard portion of nats if you have it. Still grinding with your build of ascension at this point. The deck is great!!!

Nice write-up, sir. Is your name James or Lee?

My name is both! My first by Gardevi at Mon, 08/22/2011 - 19:58
Gardevi's picture

My name is both! My first name is James, though everyone calls me by my middle, Lee.

I know, I love Ascension! It's my favorite deck in standard right now by a WIDE margin. I did do a writeup of mostly standard over at Starcity, but the article is premium. http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/standard/22555_Ascending_At_US_Nation...

Grats on the high level win. by Paul Leicht at Thu, 08/25/2011 - 22:44
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Grats on the high level win. :) I don't know why I missed this article but grats hope You'll let us in a little bit on how you did it.