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By: MarcosPMA, nn
Aug 11 2015 12:00pm
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Hello and welcome to another edition of Sealed Success!  I said last week that I'd be back with a Sealed Daily Event, but those don't exist at the moment!  I forgot that release events were still going on and that daily events wouldn't be back up until this Wednesday.  

Awkward.

Sealed Daily Events will have to wait until next week I'm afraid, but this week I have a couple of Magic Origins drafts for you.  Before that however, I'd like to talk about the format for a bit and give you some of my updated thoughts on it.

You see, draft formats are fluid and free.  Nothing is set in stone and everything can change once 8 players come together and draft.  In the beginning of a format each player is willing to try anything out as long as it gives them a chance to win.  Every color is available for consumption and it is only after the games are played that ideas are formed about the format.  If you win with a particular strategy you're more likely to repeat that again as opposed to a strategy that led you to lose games.  If you repeat this enough times you'll get certain theories about a format that begin to be adopted everywhere.  For example: black was the best color in Theros, Battle Screech was insane in Vintage Masters, Selesnya was the best guild in RTR, etc.  If you discover these ideas early on in a format you have a huge edge against other drafters, but what happens once everybody knows what you know?  Where do you get your edge?  Once you get to this point you find other strategies that you dismissed earlier or didn't discover as a way to defeat the established decks.  This, of course, is called metagaming.  Once this happens you have to reconsider everything you know and try to adapt as you process this new information.

How does this apply to Magic Origins?  Well, for me anyway, my initial assumption was that white was the best color in draft.  I would start my early drafts in white and have success.  As time went on, white wasn't working as well as I wanted to because not only was I fighting against others who wanted to be in white, but everybody else had learned how to play against the white decks.  Now that white was getting drafted more, it meant that other colors would start to be deeper and I could draft those colors and have success even though I perceived them to be weaker early on.  I still think white is the best, but it's not as strong as it used to be.  Maybe at some point in the future it'll get underdrafted and emerge to be a strong color again.  In any case, I expect the format to evolve and change until it is no longer drafted and hopefully I can see those changes and react to them as soon as possible.  TL;DR - Always read the signals and be prepared to change your ideas about a format at any given time.

I still don't know if taking Exquisite Firecraft first pick was the right choice and I feel it's a pick you make based on how you like to draft the format.  You could choose any of the uncommons and try to force those two colors or choose between Firecraft and Reave Soul (as you're taking Firecraft over Prickleboar every time).  4th pick I think I should have taken Ringwarden Owl over Pharika's Disciple.  Ringwarden Owl is likely more powerful than the Disciple and works better with the two red spells I already have.  The only downside to taking Owl is that you're going into blue (which I believe is the weakest color in Origins) and that can affect the power level of your deck.

After pack 1 it's very obvious that I should be in red, but there wasn't much of a signal as to what other color I should be picking.  Green and blue are options but blue isn't an option if you think blue sucks.  White is likely to be overdrafted leaving black and green as options for the second color.

I start out pack 2 with a brief flirtation with blue but after taking 2 Separatist Voidmage the blue dries up quickly and I'm left to take mediocre green cards if a red card isn't an option.  Pack 2 leaves me firmly in red with a green splash that has an option to become another color if I so choose.  However, I'd be losing enough cards from green that I'd be in danger of not making 23 playables if I were to take that option.

Pack 3 I end up in Rg with not a whole ton of removal.  Red was clearly open throughout the entire draft and there was no way I would have drafted anything else, it's the green that I'm not sure about.  I feel like it was a case of the people next to me drafting some combination of G/W/B/U and forgetting that red was a color.  Unfortunately for me either the packs were thin or my neighbors were fighting for every color but red that it left me with no true direction in terms of my second color.  Green felt I was getting passed the dregs of that color but they were decent enough that I had to take them.

In game 2 of my match I shouldn't have thrown away my Exquisite Firecraft for a lowly Timberpack Wolf.  I should've traded his Wolf with my Mage-Ring Bully and saved my removal spell for something more dangerous like the Citadel Castellan that almost beat me.  I understand my thinking of wanting to put pressure on my opponent, but the Mage-Ring Bully isn't going to get me more than a few points of damage before attacking into a bigger creature.  Luckily for me I was able to pull out a tight game (which doesn't speak much for my deck if it's that close while my opponent is on a mull to 5) but came up short in the deciding game.  I don't think that hand is a mulligan and it sucks that I didn't draw lands at the right time.  Oh well.

I will say this about that deck however: green is not like it was in previous sets.  Green traditionally has been the color with beefy creatures and that's not the case here in Magic Origins.  It's one thing to know that green is smaller because it supports GB Elves, it's another to remember that while drafting and learning how to draft green in this format.  Part of me believe that Vastwood Gorger isn't playable even though it seems like it would be decent here once you stabilize.  Even in other formats I've felt that 5/6 for 6 with a story to tell just wasn't what you wanted.  I don't think I've ever felt happy playing that card, which makes me wonder if there's ever gonna be a format where you want it.  It's not so much that the rate is bad, more so that you want something more impactful when you're trying to stabilize.  There's a lot of cards in the format that can swing a race around and catch you off guard when you're trying to be defensive that just playing a dude feels underwhelming.  It's likely because you're under enough duress when playing defensively that you know you're only a draw step or two from your opponent getting back on the offensive with a trick/removal spell.

 

I don't like blue in Magic Origins, I really don't.  It's more of a defensive color in a world of aggression and it doesn't do that very well.  If I can avoid it, I won't draft the color because of how I feel towards it and how bad I think it is.  That said, I don't see how I don't end up in blue in pack 1.  Sigiled Starfish, Tower Geist, and Sphinx's Tutelage are all good blue uncommons that were passed to me in packs that didn't have better options in the other colors.  I felt the packs were dry in terms of quality cards in other colors, but I couldn't hedge on that being the case and trying to force white or black to try and get paid off in the next two packs.

I very much considered taking Knightly Valor pick 1 pack 2 and abandoning blue or red if white was open.  However, I didn't see any white in pack 1 and while I might be able to see it in pack 2, there's no way I'm getting white cards in pack 3.  Is Knightly Valor worth switching into another color for?  Is it a game winning card?  Yes and no.  +2/+2 and vigilance is a great bonus and lets your creature run over other creatures quite easily, but that's only if you're ahead.  With the cards I had in my pool it was very unlikely that I would be ahead on offense for Knightly Valor to matter.  Gearcrafter is solid if unexciting and going to make my deck if I'm R/x, so I figured I'd take it over a card that I didn't think would be useful with what I had already.  Given that I think blue is open, Talent of the Telepath likely comes back to me if I take something else over it like Enthralling Victor or Maritime Guard, but if I'm going to Tutelage people then having that card is actually good in my deck.

I could have taken Thopter Engineer over Kytheon's Irregulars pack 3 pick 1, but there's no way I'm beating the Irregulars if I let them go.  It's a pick that is likely incorrect, but at the same time I'm not the aggressor so having cards that let me do that don't really help me.  What I need is to survive long enough to win via Tutelage, and there's no way I get to do that if I let that card go.

I won't comment about the games too much since they were basically the same: play Tutelage or die.  My deck could play a defensive role, but it couldn't do it for too many turns without actually having an endgame in mind.  Tutelage let me sit there on defense and play the game in such a way where I could make exchanges that seemed bad as long as they got me closer to the turn where they would ultimately deck.  Tutelage also gives you a way to indirectly deal with bombs/removal they have by not giving them the chance to draw them, which makes their draw step less dangerous for you.  This is why I don't like blue in Origins, the offensive cards aren't good enough for you to be base blue, and the defensive cards are only situationally good as opposed to something like Fog Bank/Wall of Frost which are almost always good.  Blue is a support color and you have to treat it as such.  Yes, you can do well with U/x decks as long as the blue complements the other color into a winning strategy.

Conclusion

I hate blue but I did well with it, so it isn't as bad as I think it is.  That said, my deck wasn't particularly powerful so maybe I just got lucky.  Magic Origins is fast right now and you have to keep up in the early turns, but you can also play a slower game if you get the pieces for it.  Next week I'll be back with an actual Daily Event along with breaking down example sealed pools.  If you have any comments, questions, or concerns leave them in the comments section below!

Thank you for reading/watching!