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By: mtgo_theater, MTGO Theater
Jun 15 2016 12:00pm
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Welcome to another edition of MTGO Theater! Today we have another Shadows over Innistrad draft, as well as a retrospective looking at the drafts I've done in my last 10 articles.  Enjoy!

Shadows over Innistrad Draft #10


Click to expand visual pick-by-pick of the draft!

 

 

Draft Notes

Overall I think I did well with the picks I made, though the performance of the deck didn't live up to it as you'll see.  I decided Ongoing Investigation and Altered Ego were powerful enough to splash for blue.  I was unsure how much I needed for blue mana sources/mana fixing and decided to include and ended up with 1 Island, Weirding Wood, Fork in the Road, and Woodland Stream.  Not sure if that was the right call and I wonder if only one of either Fork in the Road or Weirding Wood would have been sufficient.

Round 1

First round I faced a red/green deck.  In the first game my opponent got out a Slayer's Plate early and that was a huge help for him.  Ongoing Investigation extended the game for me, though I was never able to come close to having a chance to win and took a first game loss.  Second game was a bit more evenly matched, though Ulvenwald Mysteries gave him the card advantage while I flooded out to lose the first match in two games.

Round 2

In round two I played against a blue/green deck.  The first game started out evenly though my opponent won it in the end as he was able to build out the board with more creatures.  One interesting interaction was with Werewolf of Ancient Hunger.  My opponent attacked with it while it was a 6/6 and I blocked with Kessig Dire Swine thinking it would trade.  However, he cracked a clue to draw a card before damage, bringing it to a 7/7.  It killed my Dire Swine, however my opponent played a land, bringing the creature's power and toughness to 6/6 with 6 points of damage and it was sent to the graveyard.  If that card is on the board you definitely need to take an extra moment consider what could happen as you or your opponent makes plays.

Second game was much stronger for me, and I was able to get out a lot of creatures early without many answers from my opponent.  In the third game, I kept a very slow hand and paid for it - my opponent was much more aggressive and I couldn't keep up, giving me another match loss.

Round 3

For the third round my opponent had a blue/red/black deck.  Nothing much interesting to cover in these games in the 0-2 bracket.  I won the match 2-0 to finish the event with a 1-2.

 

10 Article Retrospective

I wanted to take a look back at my event records over the past 10 articles I've written and to see how I've been doing overall and plan goals I can aim for over my next 10 articles.

Here are my results for each draft:

Format Deck Round of First Loss Record
3x ORI  UG 3 2-1
RAV/GPT/DIS  WBG 1 0-1
3x ORI  UB 1 2-1
3x ORI  WR 3 2-1
3x ORI  WR 2 1-2
3x SOI  BR 2 2-1
3x SOI  UG 1 2-1
3x SOI  UB 1 2-1
3x SOI  BG 1 1-2
3x SOI  WB 2 1-2
3x SOI  WR 1 2-1
3x SOI  WR - 3-0
3x SOI  WG 1 2-1
3x SOI  WU 3 2-1
3x SOI  WuG 1 1-2

I'll dig deeper into SOI specifically since that is the format I'm playing now.

SOI combined match win-loss record: 18-12

SOI swiss record frequency:

Record Count
0-3 0
1-2 3
2-1 6
3-0 1

SOI round of first loss frequency:

Round Count
1 6
2 2
3 1
None 1

So for SOI, while I had a decent overall match win percentage (60%), and the majority of my draft results have been 2-1, I have most frequently had my first loss in the first round on an event (winning the first round only 40% of the time).  If I had played these matches in single-elimination, I would have been knocked out without earning any prizes.  Given my results, in swiss I've won 18 packs, while in 4-3-2-2 I would have won 11 packs, and in 8-4 I would have won 12 packs.  Since the competition would be tougher my record would most likely be even worse in the single elimination formats.  Given these results, I think I will stick to playing swiss events until I can prove that I can win more consistently.  In addition, this lets me get in more games for practice, even if I have a poor match early on.  One thing to note is that 10 drafts is a fairly sample size, but I still like to try to learn what I can to improve.

Looking at the decks I've played, I noticed that I've drafted white as one of the primary colors in my last 6 drafts!  Is it just coincidence or am I forcing myself on that color?  I don't want to overcompensate and not draft white, but by looking at my play history at least I can be aware of the possibility I'm showing a preference to a color to my detriment.

As far as goals for myself, over my next 10 articles I'd like to see:

  • At least two 3-0 results
  • At least a 50% win rate in first round

In article #20 I'll have another retrospective to see if I met these goals.  Thanks for reading/watching!