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By: Gardevi, Lee McLeod
May 11 2011 1:26pm
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Zendikar and Worldwake make up arguably the fastest Limited format ever. Rise of the Eldrazi, intended to be drafted on its own, is the opposite - games are slow and grindy, and there is blocking in involved. So what happens when they're combined? Let's jump right in! 

 Note: This was my first time in a while doing any sort of commentary while I drafted, so if I stutter, fail to explain myself, etc etc, point it out and I'll work on it for the future. I know it gets staticky toward the end of the video where I try to eat my mic, I'll work on improving that. 

Round 1: 

So my first ZWR draft ends in tragedy. This is likely my last foray into ZWR. Why? It reminded me way too much of ZZW. Now, I loved triple Rise draft. It was everything I wanted in a draft format - very open to any theme you'd care to draft, lots of choices in drafting and game play, no truly "wrong" archetypes that are heavily punished by everything in the format around it. Similarly, I'm not a big a fan of ZZW because it seems like every game comes down to racing. No matter which colors you are or what cards you drafted, your plan is to kill your opponent with evasive (or, in the case of green, huge) guys before they can do the same to you. This leaves very little room for slower strategies as they are just overwhelmed by the quicker ones. Thoughts on ZWR:

  • The inclusion of Rise of the Eldrazi does not do enough to slow down the powerhouses of Zendikar and Worldwake. Zendikar has far too many evasive creatures, or creatures that get big with landfall. The cards in Zendikar and Worldwake are suited to getting in a bunch of damage unblocked - like all of the evasive creatures at every turn of the game (Welkin Tern, Vampire Nighthawk, Bladetusk Boar, etc) and cards that give your guys evasion or stop creatures from blocking (Goblin Shortcutter, (Canopy Cutter), (Soaring Seacliffs), etc). This clashes with the Rise of the Eldrazi walls and trumps them solidly. 
  • Packs of Rise of the Eldrazi are both quite strong and absurdly weak. Rise of the Eldrazi is packed with a bunch of cute synergies like the Aura cards (Aura Gnarlid, most prominently), Walls, Spawn token synergies (Brood Birthing, Bloodthrone Vampire, Raid Bombardment, etc), Levelers, the list goes on. The point is that there's not enough cards with only one pack of Rise to give any real support to these themes, making a lot of cards suck. And Rise was not particularly blessed with bunches of good commons - there are tons of garbage littering the pack like Disenchant, Glory Seeker, Eland Umbra, Demonic Appetite, Aura Finesse, Fissure Vent, Perish The Thought; there's too many to mention. This means you will rely heavily on the cards you get from Zendikar and Worldwake to fill up the majority of your deck. 
  • I did say packs of Rise were strong though, so how? Well, the Rise removal suite is quite good. Staggershock, Vendetta, Narcolepsy, Flame Slash, Oust compare very well with the Zendikar removal, which had problems killing creatures with 3 or greater toughness with any sort of efficiency. Levelers, while too unsupported to load up on Venerated Teachers and Time of Heroes, are still very good. They give you things to do with your mana, encourage you to play more lands (which Zendikar loves), and a majority of them gain some sort of evasion (e.g. Knight of Cliffhaven) or make combat difficult for your opponent (e.g. Nirkana Cutthroat). 
  • I'm undecided if Eldrazi should be included in the deck. This format has a weird thing where while I think aggro is dominant, the inclusion of Rise may make them stumble in speed just long enough for a slower deck to claw their way into the game with levelers. However, Eldrazi cost a TON of mana. While I think an Eldrazi should probably make its way into a maindeck, you shouldn't be averse to siding them out if your opponent can overwhelm you before you get a chance to get up to eight mana. 

I was not a big fan of Zendikar limited, so I likely will not try this format again. However, I realize that with only one draft, I may have gotten a flawed perspective on matters. Toolazy2stand seems to think the exact opposite of me, for instance, so I may try my hand at this format again, accepting that I may have gotten it wrong the first time.  But, with MVW and TSE coming up in the draft rooms May 11 through May 18, then New Phyrexia right after that, it seems unlikely I'll have time for ZWR. 

Switching tracks, I have my Sealed pool from last weekend's prerelease that I'd like to share with y'all and get input on how someone other than myself would build it. 

Please let me know how you'd build this pool and why in the comments section. I'll share how I built the pool next week, along with what I thought of the overall pool. 

Thanks for reading!

Contact me: 
Gardevi on MTGO
@Gardevi on Twitter

2 Comments

I still haven't tried ZWR, by RoninX at Thu, 05/12/2011 - 14:12
RoninX's picture

I still haven't tried ZWR, but I suspect you are probably pretty much dead on in your evaluation.

The recording was also pretty reasonable for a first try at "live". Nice job.

Regarding your limited pool:

* Disclaimer, I am terrible at this when I cannot manipulate the cards, or see all the card pictures.

Seems like a pretty awful pool. Not much removal and not much of a direction. I don't think either Black or Blue is strong enough to support the chancellors you opened, but blue is closer. That said, I would have tried the following WR infect list, fleshed out with a top end of fliers and a few efficient creatures. Not enough removal or bombs to really expect to X-0, but it would probably this deck looks like the most fun to play at a pre-re:

Apostle's Blessing
2x Razor swine
2x Ogre Menial
2x Lost leonine
darksteel axe
arrest
splicer
panic spellbomb
precursor golem
scrapmelter
panther
dragon
exoskeleton
shrine of burning rage
2x spire monitor
2x wellspring
1 Island
9 Mountain
7 Plains

First Thought: Two Chancellors! by phe0bus at Thu, 05/12/2011 - 14:53
phe0bus's picture

First Thought: Two Chancellors!
Second Thought: Black removal is unusually lacking.
Third Thought: Look at all of that red poison

My first thought was “Wow, two Chancellors.” Then I took a look at black and found it pretty lacking in removal and not strong in poison. Blue, likewise has some strong cards but is missing counterspells for the most part. So, I looked at red and saw four new poison creatures and wanted to build around that. But, it is ironically your best poison color, and by a long shot. Not good. Abandon that plan. Red is out, and so is green.

Then I took a look at the artifacts and immediately saw the Golems. Nice. If blue had spells to protect them, that would be the way to go. That is where Apostles Blessing comes in. And, you can add Arrest and the Master Splicer, too. That isn’t much that I would want to take out of white: 1 creature, 1 removal, and two “counterspells.”

Blue looks like the main color, but black is not far off: Luckily, you have the two mana fixing Wellsprings and the “rainbow” Myr.

0-1-Drop
Accorder's Shield
Fumespitter

2-Drop
Leaden Myr
Alloy Myr
M Wellspring(2)
Apostle’s Blessing(2)
Shrine of Burning Rage
Grasp of Darkness

3-Drop
Neurok Replica
Arrest

4-Drop
Chrome Steed
Master Splicer
Mortis Dogs(2)
Parasitic Implant

5-Drop
Golem Artisan
Precursor Golem
Spire Monitor(2)

7 Drop
Chancellors (2)

Lands:
3 Plains
8 Swamps
6 Islands

This is pretty greedy having in the Blue Chancellor. You might use blue for the replica and the flashing 5-drops. You can side in the blue counters if needed. You could take out the blue chancellor for Ichor Explosion, but I'm not so sure that is going to work in this deck. I have the shield in there over the axe bacause your creatures are too weak until you get to the 5-drops. The Steed looks a little out of place, but you you have two artifacts that nobody will want to mess with in the Wellsprings, and you have hidden artifacts in the Golems. What about Conversion Chamber? I'm not sure. Where is the artifact hate in this deck? I don't think it fits. Of course, you could use it to convert from your own graveyard. You might put that in. You could combine that with Culling Dias, even.