Good point, I didn't think of that. Kill me with damage to everybody else on the stack - nice call!
Lucky for me he was bluffing - or just joking around. I figured there was a 98% chance he didn't have it from the way he was talking and acting, but I tried to play around it anyway, just in case. I figured I probably had the win either way, so why not?
I suppose even in the case where he had the card, there's some chance he won't see that play to kill all five of us, so it's worth taking the gamble that he won't see it. If you don't have a guaranteed win in Magic - go for the play that gives your opponent the best opportunity to make a mistake.
I will note that I got a chance to play Luis Scott Vargas in a sealed deck SSE event once. And I followed that philosophy - but I assumed I was just going through the motions, and he wouldn't actually make the mistake I left open for him. He didn't. Nice guy, glad I got a chance to play him.
Yeah, I should have mentioned at the beginning, both Chaos and Dark Wars are in Extended format. Thanks for bringing that up!
I think if Wizards starts sanctioning multiplayer formats, Two Headed Giant is the most likely one (they did already try it at one Pro Tour). And Free For All formats are the least likely. It's too hard for them to prevent things like players teaming up and agreeing to split the prizes, then ganging up on people.
Of course in Chaos and Dark Wars, nobody's paying anything to enter. So nobody can be "cheated out of their entry fee", and they just have an "anything goes" policy. (Well, anything but Erayo!) That wouldn't fly so well in a sanctioned event. Since it doesn't cost you anything but your time, maybe you could give it a try sometime?
If you'd have taken the Savage Lands second pick, you'd be in a great position to play 5-color. Plus, your deck would have been amazing, as nobody else at the table was drafting it.
I was just saying when you should have taken fixing during the draft and how it affected your games. Sometimes people won't realize how certain picks in their draft affected their games. I thought you might not have noticed that you could never cast the wild leotaus beacuse you always had caldera hellion.
R1G1: An extra draw for a mountain is in no way better than getting a viscera dragger in play. That will help you much more than the possibility of another mountain.
The one game where you had magma spray and 5 lands plus an uncastable spell is a definite mulligan. You can never afford to keep bad hands.
Felorin bro this is a awesome tourny report and I remember that day I was surprised how your game turned out, I would of been in the finals but meuslix barely took me out before I beat him I was running affinity and had enough kill damage to kill meus and take thanos' down to half his life till he comboed off door to nothingness. All and all Dark Wars and Chaos are awesome events I suggest everyone showing up, you can meet cool people and a awesome time playing.
Chill vs COP:R The reason people play Chill is they don't have access to White mana for CoP:R or even Sphere of Resistance. Otherwise, they'd be all over it. COP:R lets you shut down a lot of cards, and I don't have a fast enough clock to stop my opponent from just killing me slightly slower. It would give me time to find CounterTop, but even that's not perfect. I enjoy COP:R a lot more.
The stealing an echo creature thing makes no sense. I mean, I looked it up and it's the rule, but I can't figure out WHY it would apply that way. It hasn't come into play again. I kind of wonder if whoever did it had a good reason or just didn't like stealing creatures :)
blightning is extremely underrated, and in the 2nd pack if i had 3 removal, i would pick it over magma spray. having 3 is just crazy, most decks in this format are not very fast. to turn 3 and 4 blightning your opponent is usually good game. throw down a 2 drop beforehand and you are simply unbeatable.
I would have taken Vein Drinker if my deck had like 4 or 5 red card and maybe a few green cards. But most cards were just GW so it was impossible to change plans.
About P1P2 I could take the tri land but Ambusher is pretty good and is on color with the first picked tri land.
I was your quarterfinals opponent, and that sure was a great first game. As I remarked after the match, I really should have held that Sudden Shock until I was absolutely certain that there wasn't a 2cc spell on top. After you EOT Topped on my turn, I figured you were setting up your draw step and that it was probably clear to end it right there. Great call floating the 2cc spell!
Regarding stealing creatures with echo- that's actually how it works, in that you pay the echo on the upkeep of the turn it began play on your side, or something to that effect. It was actually bugged previously for a while on modo, when it didn't make you pay the cost if you stole it.
Looking forward to more matches!
I kinda agree on your first 2 packs although I wouldn't take the Blightning that early but you already said that was an error.
P3P3 suprised me. You had little fixing and almost 10 reasonable creatures in red black. I would have tried to stay in 2 colors at this point since by now you only had mosstodon, visionary and wild leotau in green. Very solid cards but not spalshworthy with limited fixing.
Your path might have been the better one though, since only 3 playable black red creatures showed up in the remaining conflux pack. But its rather hard to predict that.
I would have taken the Shambling Remains above Dark Temper as well since the two color plan came up in my mind during pack 2 and I counted creatures before. But it would have been a hard pick and I can't argue with anyone taking Dark Temper here.
I prefer 8-4 too specially when I'm already experienced with the set and/or when testing for an important event. However I'm still not confortable with Conflux as I haven't done many drafts (been busy with Extended). Also when I played this 8-4 had 0 players waiting.
Also these guides are mostly for MTGO play not for irl MTG. It's important to have guides for both 4-3-2-2 and 8-4 drafts in the site because when people read this and go play their 4-3-2-2 or 8-4, they'll know what to expect.
Maybe the next would integrate some picture to make the look better, but the explainations are really interesting.
Edit : i have a question about the SB. Did you test Chill or Warmth instead of CoP:R ?? CoP:R is a very strong card for many reasons, but it is sometimes greedy in mana. Chill is nice to slow the opponent (very strong vs redstorm ou belcher too), but it does not prevent yourself from taking damage unless you manage to resolve more than one.I tried warmth many time in landstill, and it seems to be very efficient with creature removal backup vs rdw.
CoP:R appears to me as a solid choice, but i am curious to know if you could have better results with these alternatives choices.
Well I dont see how my play style could be that unique since before showing up the article I always pass it trough a couple of well known portuguese players to see If there was some mistake that I should point out in the games. I may have some decisions that most people wouldn't make but reading your comment that almost feels like an insult which I believe was not your intention.
This was a 4-3-2-2 Draft,I always forgot to put it up.The pics are quite diferent,just as I write this I've splited an 8-4 in which the quality of the cards was not even comparable. I'll try to get a couple of 8-4s up since they help and captivate a diferent set of players.
R1G1- I cycle the dragger to maximize the possibility of drawing a mountain.
Yes my deck lacked fixing,as I POINTED out several times during this comments. Still its a gut shot since I would be picking the Sprite instead of removal. Probably I could advocate for that but my deck ended up with such power that I could afford to keep some stuff in my hand.Of course I got lucky several times but still thats part of the game and you have play side along side with it.
I would first like to point out that I completely agree with the format of your article although your video inserts of you playing your draft deck is probably better left out since every player in the game has a different play style. Your play is completely different then most as I could also point out about drafting as well although to many people it helps them out.
Was this a 8-4 or a 4-3-2-2 draft, since some of the picks were kind of brutal although you had 'commented' on the reason behind your picks which is efficient and proves my point that everyone has different views. Yet some of the packs contained odd picks to certain extent and if this is 4-3-2-2 then the relevance behind drafting and suggesting picks is irrelevant since 4-3-2-2 is lacking hard these days.
What is so entertaining about 4-3-2-2 drafts? The player base as well as picks don't teach anything .... the packs that you have reviewed show ridiculously late picks and if people were meant to atleast learn from your drafting then they won't be seeing anything like this in a 'normal' draft.
P1P2: The fact that topan ascetic was not on your radar scares me.
P1P3: Jungle Shrine over tokens. Also, you say you don't rate the grixis battlemage that highly, but your last two drafts say otherwise :)
P2P1: Thunder is a great card...but rafiq is like 5 tix, so it would have been my pick. The thunder is fine.
P2P3: Beetle over necropolis? You NEED the fixing and you still pass it for an easily replaceable card.
P2P5: You still do not have fixing. Naya panorama is fine even if it only gets two colors.
P2P6: Now you get a perfectly on color fixing land and pass it. You really really need fixing. Iguanar is very good, but it's not worth taking over the card that gives your deck consistency. If you had taken some earlier fixing, you can pass the panorama here, but with no fixing you really can't afford to.
P3P3: Probably would take the temper here over the guy you can barely cast.
P3P5: Again passing fixing...
Your deck had some nice cards, but no fixing. With many tough mana requirements, it seems like this powerful deck lacks a lot of consistency.
R1G1: Why did you cycle viscera dragger when you can cast it? What does unearthing it do for you that early in the game? I also noticed 2 wild leotaus stranded in your hand...obviously you needed fixing.
R2G1: Pretty greedy keep there. Drew pretty much exactly the lands you needed, and still couldnt cast the wild leotau.
R2G2: This should have been a mulligan. You have 5 lands, magma spray, and once again a wild leotau you cannot cast. When you beetled his guy, the turn after you didnt attack. Were you afraid of a quasali ambusher?
R3G2: You played scourge devil before unearthing the dragger. Small mistake, but it can matter in some games.
I gotta say that caldera hellion won you every game, but you kept some pretty greedy hands, and had multiple times where you couldnt cast some spells.
Congrats on the win though, and keep the articles coming.
There are a few I disagree but most of them are pretty close.
P1P2 Tropan Ascetic
P1P3 Jungle Shrine
P2P3 Crumbling Necropolis
P3P2 Here I'm not sure if Shambling Remains is better than Dark Temper. I just don't have enough experience with it.
P3P3 Here I would take Dark Temper as I value Shambling Remains higher than Scarland Thrinax unless I already have cards that make Thrinax really good (like the other Trinax from shards but your deck does have creatures that want to be sacrificed to Thrinax, just not anything like the other thrinax)
P3P6 I'm not sure but you only had 1 creature costing 5 so the 5/3 would be fine. At this point I don't think you could support Dragonsoul Knight. There was also Suicidal Charge which I still don't know how good it is.
P3P8 Again molten frama vs suicidal charge although this time you already have 1 charge and I don't think having 2 is good.
P3P1 I would never take Rafiq over Resouding Thunder here for the same reasons Andrea mentioned.
Good point, I didn't think of that. Kill me with damage to everybody else on the stack - nice call!
Lucky for me he was bluffing - or just joking around. I figured there was a 98% chance he didn't have it from the way he was talking and acting, but I tried to play around it anyway, just in case. I figured I probably had the win either way, so why not?
I suppose even in the case where he had the card, there's some chance he won't see that play to kill all five of us, so it's worth taking the gamble that he won't see it. If you don't have a guaranteed win in Magic - go for the play that gives your opponent the best opportunity to make a mistake.
I will note that I got a chance to play Luis Scott Vargas in a sealed deck SSE event once. And I followed that philosophy - but I assumed I was just going through the motions, and he wouldn't actually make the mistake I left open for him. He didn't. Nice guy, glad I got a chance to play him.
Yeah, I should have mentioned at the beginning, both Chaos and Dark Wars are in Extended format. Thanks for bringing that up!
I think if Wizards starts sanctioning multiplayer formats, Two Headed Giant is the most likely one (they did already try it at one Pro Tour). And Free For All formats are the least likely. It's too hard for them to prevent things like players teaming up and agreeing to split the prizes, then ganging up on people.
Of course in Chaos and Dark Wars, nobody's paying anything to enter. So nobody can be "cheated out of their entry fee", and they just have an "anything goes" policy. (Well, anything but Erayo!) That wouldn't fly so well in a sanctioned event. Since it doesn't cost you anything but your time, maybe you could give it a try sometime?
If you'd have taken the Savage Lands second pick, you'd be in a great position to play 5-color. Plus, your deck would have been amazing, as nobody else at the table was drafting it.
I was just saying when you should have taken fixing during the draft and how it affected your games. Sometimes people won't realize how certain picks in their draft affected their games. I thought you might not have noticed that you could never cast the wild leotaus beacuse you always had caldera hellion.
R1G1: An extra draw for a mountain is in no way better than getting a viscera dragger in play. That will help you much more than the possibility of another mountain.
The one game where you had magma spray and 5 lands plus an uncastable spell is a definite mulligan. You can never afford to keep bad hands.
If he did have the batwing brume, he could have used it in the end of combat phase to win the game right there.
they are both extended tumultuous. you should check it out Jimb0v who knows you might get addicted to a non sanctioned event :)
Is it Extended? I couldn't figure out what format it is.
Thanks for the article. I would play these in a heartbeat if they were sanctioned. I may check them out even without the sanction.
Felorin bro this is a awesome tourny report and I remember that day I was surprised how your game turned out, I would of been in the finals but meuslix barely took me out before I beat him I was running affinity and had enough kill damage to kill meus and take thanos' down to half his life till he comboed off door to nothingness. All and all Dark Wars and Chaos are awesome events I suggest everyone showing up, you can meet cool people and a awesome time playing.
Thanks for everyone's thoughts!
Chill vs COP:R The reason people play Chill is they don't have access to White mana for CoP:R or even Sphere of Resistance. Otherwise, they'd be all over it. COP:R lets you shut down a lot of cards, and I don't have a fast enough clock to stop my opponent from just killing me slightly slower. It would give me time to find CounterTop, but even that's not perfect. I enjoy COP:R a lot more.
The stealing an echo creature thing makes no sense. I mean, I looked it up and it's the rule, but I can't figure out WHY it would apply that way. It hasn't come into play again. I kind of wonder if whoever did it had a good reason or just didn't like stealing creatures :)
blightning is extremely underrated, and in the 2nd pack if i had 3 removal, i would pick it over magma spray. having 3 is just crazy, most decks in this format are not very fast. to turn 3 and 4 blightning your opponent is usually good game. throw down a 2 drop beforehand and you are simply unbeatable.
I would have taken Vein Drinker if my deck had like 4 or 5 red card and maybe a few green cards. But most cards were just GW so it was impossible to change plans.
About P1P2 I could take the tri land but Ambusher is pretty good and is on color with the first picked tri land.
Excellent report and congrats on the top 8!
I was your quarterfinals opponent, and that sure was a great first game. As I remarked after the match, I really should have held that Sudden Shock until I was absolutely certain that there wasn't a 2cc spell on top. After you EOT Topped on my turn, I figured you were setting up your draw step and that it was probably clear to end it right there. Great call floating the 2cc spell!
Regarding stealing creatures with echo- that's actually how it works, in that you pay the echo on the upkeep of the turn it began play on your side, or something to that effect. It was actually bugged previously for a while on modo, when it didn't make you pay the cost if you stole it.
Looking forward to more matches!
Resounding Silence -> Thunder....
I really like your deck. Would have taken Savage Lands pack 1 / pick 2 though, but thats my preference.
Nothing to add here besides the fact that you could have taken Vein Drinker and pretty much restart your draft =)
(Vithan Stinger)
Vein Drinker
Resounding Silence
Rockslide Elemental
Bone splinters
Scavenger Drake
Dregscape Zombie
Dragon Fodder
Skeletal Kathari
Cylian Elf
Goblin Razerunners
Hellspark Elemental
Goblinb Outlander
Tukatongue Thallid
Ember Weaver
Exploding Borders
Dragdown
Dragonsoul Knight
Exploding Borders
Fleshformer
Goblin Outlander
[Topan Ascetic]
lol, playable but your deck was better XD
I kinda agree on your first 2 packs although I wouldn't take the Blightning that early but you already said that was an error.
P3P3 suprised me. You had little fixing and almost 10 reasonable creatures in red black. I would have tried to stay in 2 colors at this point since by now you only had mosstodon, visionary and wild leotau in green. Very solid cards but not spalshworthy with limited fixing.
Your path might have been the better one though, since only 3 playable black red creatures showed up in the remaining conflux pack. But its rather hard to predict that.
I would have taken the Shambling Remains above Dark Temper as well since the two color plan came up in my mind during pack 2 and I counted creatures before. But it would have been a hard pick and I can't argue with anyone taking Dark Temper here.
I prefer 8-4 too specially when I'm already experienced with the set and/or when testing for an important event. However I'm still not confortable with Conflux as I haven't done many drafts (been busy with Extended). Also when I played this 8-4 had 0 players waiting.
Also these guides are mostly for MTGO play not for irl MTG. It's important to have guides for both 4-3-2-2 and 8-4 drafts in the site because when people read this and go play their 4-3-2-2 or 8-4, they'll know what to expect.
this a very good report !
Maybe the next would integrate some picture to make the look better, but the explainations are really interesting.
Edit : i have a question about the SB. Did you test Chill or Warmth instead of CoP:R ?? CoP:R is a very strong card for many reasons, but it is sometimes greedy in mana. Chill is nice to slow the opponent (very strong vs redstorm ou belcher too), but it does not prevent yourself from taking damage unless you manage to resolve more than one.I tried warmth many time in landstill, and it seems to be very efficient with creature removal backup vs rdw.
CoP:R appears to me as a solid choice, but i am curious to know if you could have better results with these alternatives choices.
Well I dont see how my play style could be that unique since before showing up the article I always pass it trough a couple of well known portuguese players to see If there was some mistake that I should point out in the games. I may have some decisions that most people wouldn't make but reading your comment that almost feels like an insult which I believe was not your intention.
This was a 4-3-2-2 Draft,I always forgot to put it up.The pics are quite diferent,just as I write this I've splited an 8-4 in which the quality of the cards was not even comparable. I'll try to get a couple of 8-4s up since they help and captivate a diferent set of players.
R1G1- I cycle the dragger to maximize the possibility of drawing a mountain.
Yes my deck lacked fixing,as I POINTED out several times during this comments. Still its a gut shot since I would be picking the Sprite instead of removal. Probably I could advocate for that but my deck ended up with such power that I could afford to keep some stuff in my hand.Of course I got lucky several times but still thats part of the game and you have play side along side with it.
Hello,
I would first like to point out that I completely agree with the format of your article although your video inserts of you playing your draft deck is probably better left out since every player in the game has a different play style. Your play is completely different then most as I could also point out about drafting as well although to many people it helps them out.
Was this a 8-4 or a 4-3-2-2 draft, since some of the picks were kind of brutal although you had 'commented' on the reason behind your picks which is efficient and proves my point that everyone has different views. Yet some of the packs contained odd picks to certain extent and if this is 4-3-2-2 then the relevance behind drafting and suggesting picks is irrelevant since 4-3-2-2 is lacking hard these days.
Thanks
Hello,
What is so entertaining about 4-3-2-2 drafts? The player base as well as picks don't teach anything .... the packs that you have reviewed show ridiculously late picks and if people were meant to atleast learn from your drafting then they won't be seeing anything like this in a 'normal' draft.
8-4 rules!
Thanks
P1P2: The fact that topan ascetic was not on your radar scares me.
P1P3: Jungle Shrine over tokens. Also, you say you don't rate the grixis battlemage that highly, but your last two drafts say otherwise :)
P2P1: Thunder is a great card...but rafiq is like 5 tix, so it would have been my pick. The thunder is fine.
P2P3: Beetle over necropolis? You NEED the fixing and you still pass it for an easily replaceable card.
P2P5: You still do not have fixing. Naya panorama is fine even if it only gets two colors.
P2P6: Now you get a perfectly on color fixing land and pass it. You really really need fixing. Iguanar is very good, but it's not worth taking over the card that gives your deck consistency. If you had taken some earlier fixing, you can pass the panorama here, but with no fixing you really can't afford to.
P3P3: Probably would take the temper here over the guy you can barely cast.
P3P5: Again passing fixing...
Your deck had some nice cards, but no fixing. With many tough mana requirements, it seems like this powerful deck lacks a lot of consistency.
R1G1: Why did you cycle viscera dragger when you can cast it? What does unearthing it do for you that early in the game? I also noticed 2 wild leotaus stranded in your hand...obviously you needed fixing.
R2G1: Pretty greedy keep there. Drew pretty much exactly the lands you needed, and still couldnt cast the wild leotau.
R2G2: This should have been a mulligan. You have 5 lands, magma spray, and once again a wild leotau you cannot cast. When you beetled his guy, the turn after you didnt attack. Were you afraid of a quasali ambusher?
R3G2: You played scourge devil before unearthing the dragger. Small mistake, but it can matter in some games.
I gotta say that caldera hellion won you every game, but you kept some pretty greedy hands, and had multiple times where you couldnt cast some spells.
Congrats on the win though, and keep the articles coming.
There are a few I disagree but most of them are pretty close.
P1P2 Tropan Ascetic
P1P3 Jungle Shrine
P2P3 Crumbling Necropolis
P3P2 Here I'm not sure if Shambling Remains is better than Dark Temper. I just don't have enough experience with it.
P3P3 Here I would take Dark Temper as I value Shambling Remains higher than Scarland Thrinax unless I already have cards that make Thrinax really good (like the other Trinax from shards but your deck does have creatures that want to be sacrificed to Thrinax, just not anything like the other thrinax)
P3P6 I'm not sure but you only had 1 creature costing 5 so the 5/3 would be fine. At this point I don't think you could support Dragonsoul Knight. There was also Suicidal Charge which I still don't know how good it is.
P3P8 Again molten frama vs suicidal charge although this time you already have 1 charge and I don't think having 2 is good.
P3P1 I would never take Rafiq over Resouding Thunder here for the same reasons Andrea mentioned.
Good article! You are becoming a pretty good drafter ;)