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By: MarcosPMA, nn
Apr 07 2015 12:00pm
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Hello and welcome to another edition of Sealed Success!  The Magic Online Prerelease should be over by now and that means that release events will start soon and we'll be able to do DTK/FRF Sealed.  As always, I don't do the sealed prerelease flights on Magic Online since I don't want to break my record of not giving Magic Online my debit cards in 2+ years, but also because that format won't be relevant once this article goes live.  Whenever possible I like to keep my content as relevant for as long as I can so that you, the reader, can get some use out of it.

Initial Draft Thoughts

I've been thinking a lot about this set, more so than I normally have for any other set.  My first instinct is to think about it in terms of sealed deck, then incidentally picking up on the draft format as I watch the PT and subsequent pro drafts.  This time around, I decided to form my own thoughts of the draft format by looking at the visual spoiler and contemplating how the cards would interact with each other and what kind of strategy you wanted to draft.  The result of this led to these 2 videos on my YouTube channel:

The obvious strategies are easy in the allied colored pairs as you want to draft as much as the clan keyword as possible and focus on the synergies they provide but the enemy colored pairs were a bit harder.  My starting point was to look at the common gold cards in Fate Reforged and see what kind of strategy I could build using those cards as a reference.  BW and RW were fairly easy as you wanted to go wide in those archetypes (something that white easily supports in DTK) so that you could maximize Harsh Sustenance and War Flare, but the other pairs were not as easy.  Grim Contest is just a removal spell and that doesn't inherently give you an archetype, so I figured since you were pairing green fatties with black removal that you'd want a midrange strategy.  Ethereal Ambush didn't really spring an archetype even when you could draft Temur, but at least Cunning Strike gave you a semblance of a tempo card if you were doing UR in FRF/KTK draft.  So UR was tempo, and oddly enough so was UG.  The blue cards you wanted to draft when you were drafting green creatures ended up being bounce spells and/or evasive threats since the other blue cards were control cards that you couldn't use very efficiently.  Hopefully my predictions hold true for the duration of the format, but even if they're wrong then I least can learn from that and better my card evaluations skills and how I predict a format will shake up.

Updating Card Evaluations

Here I want to talk about cards I've seen played and what I've learned about them from my sealed and paper 3xDTK drafts.

I think a lot of people get hung up on the ability and forget that it's a 2/3 for 3 mana.  That's a perfectly fine card!  It'll block/attack into a morph all day and that's not a bad thing to have for 3 mana.  Obviously you still don't pick it very highly but it's not an unplayable either.  Sometimes you just need a 2/3 for 3.

Please stop playing this card.  A draw 3 is usually good, but in the decks that want a draw 3 play less creatures than other decks, which makes those creatures more valuable than they normally would be.  Sure, you can always pitch a bad creature, but why are you playing a bad creature to begin with?  There might be some fringe decks that want this, but the majority of decks don't want it at all.

Unless you're a black based aggro deck, don't draft Reckless Imp.  Since this can't block, it's only good at attacking, which means you must have a deck that wants to attack.  I've seen this guy get drafted in slower decks and every time he's played the player is not happy to be playing it.  He might as well say "Reckless Imp attacks each turn if able".

This card is the real deal.  I didn't think too much of it at the time I saw it, but after seeing it in action I've gained a ton of respect for the card.  Can you imagine this plus a deathtouch creature?  It's not even that bad in aggro deck since you're more than likely racing and this can help swing the race in your favor.

I'm sure there will be more cards that I'll have to update my evaluations on, but for now these are the ones that have stood out to me recently.  Now, with that said, let's draft!

DTK Draft #1

DTK Draft #2

Conclusion

  • I think the first draft went pretty well.  White was fairly open from my right and it was too strong to pass up on.  Getting passed the Sunscorch Regent was icing on the cake.  Seriously, either hate it or have a plan to beat it.  I don't think I've lost a match in this format (sealed + draft) in which I've resolved it.  It's easily my favorite rare of the set right now.
  • When I tried to play around Enduring Victory in the first draft, I think that was the incorrect play.  Since Enduring Victory also works on offense (when the caster is attacking), it doesn't make sense to not attack because at some point I'm going to get into combat and have that be an option for the opponent.  The correct play was to attack first then play Anafenza so that he can't get ahead on tempo with a Contradict.  He's likely to have either a counter or a removal and I'm in no position to play around either.
  • The last round is a bit of a heartbreaker, and I'll leave it up to you to see how it ends.
  • The second draft I think went fairly okay.  White was somewhat open again but my second color was not so clear.  Given how few black spells I ended up playing I wonder if I drafted the wrong secondary color.  Do you think any of the other colors would have been a better fit than black?
  • Round 1 was a bit odd.  I got blown out in Game 1 and it was over pretty quick, Game 2 wasn't really a game and in Game 3 my opponent made a few suspect plays along with missing land drops and it gave me the opportunity to get ahead and win somewhat easily.  
  • I didn't understand why my opponent attacked and did nothing when I hit him from 12 to 7, but now I realize that him blocking was useless since I had Dunecaster in play.  It still doesn't explain why he didn't do anything that turn, unless he just had expensive spells and couldn't cast anything that turn.  Game 2 seemed like it was in his favor, especially since he had Center Soul on his Conifer Strider, but a timely Channel Harm allowed me to stabilize and mana issues kept him from pushing ahead and gave me time to win the game.
  • Round 3 was a delight.  Go watch it!

What do you guys think of the draft format so far?  I personally think white is the best color and that's what I'm looking to draft every time I open my first pack.  It's just too hard to pass up Pacifism and Sandcrafter Mage.  Next week I'll be back with another draft and I'll take a look at PT drafts.

Thanks for reading/watching!