"Preparation: RavniKhans" - September 29, 2014

We just can't wait until Khans of Tarkir comes out on MTGO, but I've only been able to draft it in paper once, plus the pre-release sealed, and Tams hasn't done it at all. How to build a viable deck with a solid mana base is going to be the question for the next three months, so to prepare ourselves for a new multicoloured set, we decided to do one last sealed pool of the last one before it cycled.

I believe we did succeed in building the correct deck, right up to our 18th land. There were a couple of serious misplays which I'm only going to touch on, as the mechanics of RTR aren't going to be relevant going forward.

The bloodrush mechanic is one which both Tams and I have used numerous times, but never in a limited environment. We never really drafted RTR, and only used the cards for constructed deckbuilding. Bloodrush cards slotted right into our aggro decks, and so we never even considered using it defensively. 

If you're familiar with this mechanic (or if you watched our match), you will know that Bloodrush targets only "attacking" creatures, which after reading the cards  hundreds of times, we completely missed because it never came up.

The other thing I want to mention is the land. Coming into another multicolour set, I want to stress the fact that you should really consider running 18 land in your deck. Even though we lost at least one game to flooding, I still feel it was the right choice. We would have lost even more games if we'd been missing one of our colours.

I think that's all for now. Come back on Friday evening when we post our very first Khans of Tarkir draft.

Thanks for watching, and we'll see you next time,


-Step.

Khans Release FNM Report

Hey Fellow Drafters!

It's release day, and I'm just back from my first ever Khans of Tarkir Draft. I can report that this set is as fun to draft as it is to play, and even though I decided to go a different way, the clans are easy to work with.

I had expected that with everybody in at least three colours, signalling was going to be a nightmare, but based on my sample, it didn't look that different. As a matter of fact, there was so much fixing floating around, that switching colours halfway through the draft was easy.

Let's talk a little about strategy. My plan when drafting this set is to choose a clan early, and then draft two colours from that set heavily. That way you'll hopefully end up with a good two colour deck with a splash, and the fixing is there to support it.



I decided early in pack one to go Mardu (that's white, black, red), and drafted black and white heavily. Unfortunately, someone to my left was drafting Abzan (white, black, green), so black and white dried up in pack two, but near the end of pack one it became evident to me that blue was way open. The result, after three packs, was an Esper (remember the Shards of Alara?) deck with a red splash.

In several games this deck did a good imitation of blue fliers, while in others it looked like the black white aggro rush. Weave Fate and Dig Through Time are nice late game pulls to refill your hand, and as I was running eighteen land, I generally got to cast another spell at the same time.

 I also had some good sideboard options. I had three counters, in case I came up against a slow deck full of big things. I had a board wipe, though with the number of creatures in my deck, it wasn't really an option, and I had an erase, which actually came in handy against my opponent who had two Singing Bell Strikes.

Where the deck fell apart, was in the long game against bigger things. I had very little (read: no) removal, and if I couldn't get in in the air, I was quickly looking at a stalled board.

My final record for the evening was 1-2, and each round went to three games which tells me that I was probably on par with the other drafters.

We'll have our first Khans draft for our channel up next Friday, but if you can't wait, I suggest you head to your local card shop and see if there's a pod that needs an eight!


Thanks for reading, and we'll see you this Friday,


-Step.

"Departure from Ravnica" - September 23, 2014

The hype is high for Khans of Tarkir, and in preparation for another multicolour set, we say farewell to the last multicolour set. What better way to say goodbye to a block than to rare draft it!

We ended up with nine rares and a mythic, and even though we only ended up playing half of them, I thought the deck looked pretty good.

From a play perspective, this was another example of why we shouldn't draft late at night. It was only nine thirty when we entered the queue, but as RTR block is on the way out, sometimes the drafts don't fire. It was 11:30 before we actually started drafting, and midnight before we began playing.

Something Marshall Sutcliffe has brought to Magic is his attitude toward Poker. He's said that if you're going to play like a professional, that means always giving your best. If you're tired, or under the weather, or just not feeling your best, then don't play.

Round one went fine, but we made some pretty clear mistakes in round 2. I'm still not sure we could have won the round, but not swinging in until we had enough to deal lethal damage would have been a much better choice than sacrificing our board to Teysa.

All in all, I had fun and I feel that was a satisfactory farewell to Ravnica, although there might just be a Monday surprise coming up.

Thanks for watching and we'll see you next time,


-Step.

Khans of Tarkir Pre-release Report - September 21, 2014

Just home from my Khans of Tarkir pre-release and my initial impression is that this set is complex, vibrant, and incredibly fun.

Tams unfortunately couldn't go, but I played all 6 rounds, and I learned a lot about the set.

I chose Temur for my clan and ended up going with my clan colours. Unlike in Theros block, the seeded booster was entirely composed of your on-colour cards, which made it even more likely that you`d be playing your chosen colours.

Despite opening nine pieces of fixing I couldn`t use, it didn`t feel like it diluted my pool at all, and that`s probably because of the seeded pack. I`m reasonably sure that everything in it went into my first deck.

The initial deck seemed to be potent, and with 9, 8, 6 for my mana base, I didn`t think I`d have much trouble, but alas, it was not so. I was generally able to bounce and trade the first couple of things, but I got stuck on 4 mana, or without one of my colours three games in a row. After two match losses, I decided to change my deck. I think now that this was probably the wrong choice, and results oriented thinking, but it felt better to me to do something active to affect a better outcome.

The second deck was not quite as powerful, but far more consistent. I still ended up losing a game because I didn`t draw my first blue source until turn 11, but when I was able to draw land, I was able to play the game quite effectively. 
Embodiment of Spring helped to ramp me a little, and helped me find a mountain, but I wouldn`t call it fixing. Without both a blue and green source to begin with, it wasn`t very useful. Still, it`s a perfect turn 1 play. It can block until up to turn 4 pretty well, and if you want to burn it off on turn 2 to cast a 4 drop on turn 3, it`s a card well spent. 

With a fairly aggressive curve, and with the Alpine Grizzlys trading with four and five drops, I went toe to toe with some pretty heavy decks.

Alpine Grizzlys are also great to trigger the Temur mechanic, `Ferocious`, which checks if you`ve got a creature with power 4 or greater on the battlefield.





The other star of my deck was Clever Impersonator. I never got to copy a planeswalker with him, but on turn four he came down and effectively stopped anything on the other side of the field that I was worried about.

If I didn`t get him in hand until late, or had something better to do on turn 4, he could come down on any turn and copy the best thing running.

 

I won a game with Incremental Growth,
and casting Dig Through Time for two blue mana felt fantastic when I followed it up by playing two spells.

Morph is definitely more of a curve smoother in this set, although I did get my opponent pretty severely when he blocked my Snowhorn Rider with his bear (it may have been a morph creature), and I was able to unmorph it for an additional 3 to his face. There are a few really good morph tricks in this set, but more often then not I just saw it used as a way to make sure that you could cast something, regardless of the mana you have available.


After six rounds, my record was 2-4, and it feels like a cop out to blame my mana, but that`s the plight of the magic player. Overall I had fun and I`m definitely looking forward to drafting this set. A lot of the cards in this set seem really interesting to interact with. I imagine that we`re going to see a lot of four colour draft decks, at least on a splash, but I think the fixing is there to support it. Even the banners might be playable if you have valuable 1 or 2 drops, though I`d still rather not if I could help it.

Thanks for reading,


-Step.

"Sealing M15" - September 19, 2014

This week we say goodbye to M15 in style. We've wanted to do one of those premium sealed events for a while now, and we would have been hard pressed to open a better pool than the one we opened this week. In my humble opinion, it's well worth a watch.

As the second last of the core sets, they really did their work with M15. It may not have been the most exciting set, mechanically speaking, but I feel like it was well balanced, with plenty of good archetypes, and that it had something for everybody. My favourite deck of the lot was probably the Izzet Artifact deck. I love the mix of synergy and cheap removal. I imagine that we'll be seeing that, as well as the convoke strategy played in Standard for a little while.

Part of the point of the core set is to give you staples for Constructed play for the following year. With the announcement that M16 will be the last of the core sets, I imagine they'll simply fold those cards into the block releases. I'm actually a little sad to see the end of the core sets, as I think this set showed us that the core doesn't just have to be a bland, beginner's release, but a dabbling into the whole tapestry of the Multiverse. In the past, with cards like Odric, Master Tactician, and in M15 with the Soul of Shandalar, we've gotten a glimpse of more of the world(s) than we otherwise would have seen. It's nice to see the resolution of the Dragon's Maze in Jace, Living Guildpact, or see a call back to an older set in Nissa, Worldwaker. The fabric of the Multiverse is intricate, and it's nice to see its complexity represented in a core set.

Still, I understand why they're making the shift, and I look forward to seeing what the future of Magic holds. For now, we're looking forward to Khans of Tarkir. It's paper pre-release this weekend, but still two more weeks until we'll be able to play online. Until then, we'll try to keep things interesting.

Thanks for watching, and see you next time.


-Step.

"Grindclock Aggro" - M15 05 September, 2014

Sorry about this one being a little late, but we had some technical difficulties with the recording. In particular, round three. Despite the video trouble, I hope this draft is as fun for you to watch as it was for us to play.

Garrett joins us again this week for another comedy of errors. After first picking Grindclock, we somehow managed to draft into an aggressive black green deck and beyond all reason, managed to come out on top.

I'm sure it helped that our opponent conceded in the first game at 19 life just because he'd kept a one land hand and hadn't been able to draw into his second. I don't know how to stress this enough, but  Never Concede. Seriously. Unless the clock is an issue and you truly think you're dead, concession is not an option.

The value of sticking with it is well demonstrated by our play in round 2, where we somehow manage to stabilize at 1, and manage to take our opponent from 20 to 3, and forced him to concede instead. It would have been tempting to say "I can't get back from this, all he needs to do is top deck a lightning strike, and we're dead" but instead, we played as well as we could, kept with it, and ended up stealing a win.

We'd like to thank Garrett for coming out and joining us again. Maybe next time we'll draft green the way it was meant to be drafted.

For now, thanks for watching, and we'll see you next time.

-Step.

"Rabblemaster of Predicaments" - 30 August, 2014

This week was a lesson in humility, not that it hurt our win percentage at all. We just learned that maybe we ought to read what's actually on the cards, rather than assuming we know what we do. Despite that, we ended up doing... pretty well. Go ahead and check it out.



There were a bunch of times during play that we misread what cards on both sides of the field did. It's easy to forget part of a card with which you're comfortable, such as Juggernaut. 5/3? Great. Artifact? Sure. Must attack each turn? Fantastic. I didn't want to block with that anyway. Can't be blocked by walls? Doesn't really seem to matter, unless you're making a decision about whether to play out a wall when one's going to be swinging at you.

The point is, we completely forgot about that clause on a card which we've played about a hundred times.

Worse still, I misread a card which I've never played with (i.e. Goblin Rabblemaster). Reading what you want it to say rather than what it actually says can make a huge difference in play style, and it's a mistake which is all to easy to make.

Thank goodness our deck was agreeing with us.

One more thing I want to mention. Even with all the errors, we ended up going 3-0. Making mistakes does not mean you're a bad player. Winning games does not mean you're a good player. Sometimes it's all in the cards, and sometimes you have to scrape every ounce of win out of your brain that you can. Just do your best, and keep doing your best. This game is about improving yourself.

Thanks for watching, and we'll see you next time.


-Step.

Monday Bonus - "Trouble Queue" - September 01, 2014

Something happened a while ago, Tams and I wanted to relax and try drafting without the pressure of being "on" for the camera. We had plenty of those new player points that you get with a magic online account, so we decided to try one of the phantom M14 drafts, well, sealed, well, draft... You're about to view the result. Keeping in mind that when we started, this was never supposed to be shown to anyone, I think it turned out fairly well, and you can let us know if we were entertaining.

I don't know if it was coincidence or just the fact that we were thinking in the same colours, but I was happy not to have to switch between deck types on the fly. The down side was that we had to try to remember what was in each deck. We had a lot of fun, and I think I learned that my reflexes are sometimes as good as my forethought. I wouldn't want to do it often, but I might be convinced to try it again.

Let us know what you think!


-Step.