Aether Revolt Sealed League - Week 2

Alright boys and girls, it's (past) time for another league report. I've been having trouble getting a handle on juggling all these balls, so it took me a while to get this all together. As a result, you're getting a two for one!

Week one was such a debacle, with what I thought was a pretty strong deck, that I was feeling very unenthusiastic about the prospect of week two. Thankfully, I pulled something from my pack. 

A Renegade Freighter will go in just about any deck, and even though I think I overvalue it a tiny little bit, Bastion Mastadon is a fine card, especially since I'd decided that Esper was the way to go. I should have known all along. Tezzeret was whispering in my ear "get servoes, sac servoes, win", and I should have listened.

After rebuilding my deck with a very light white splash, this is how it looked.

"My god," I thought, "this deck is glorious", but it was time to put it to the test.

Round one, my opponent was one of the few league members who wasn't up on his matches. As such, he was still running his opening tournament deck, and he flooded. Oh well, I won't complain about a pair of free wins, on to round two!

Here was Tams! She also hadn't made it out for week one, and she got stuck on two... And then stuck on three.

Round three came and went, and my opponent never saw his second colour. I'm 3-0, but not exactly the way I wanted to do it.

Oh for the love of Magic! Is this going to be my history for the entirety of this league? Can't we have some good games? Will one of us always be a slave to the mana gods?

Thankfully, round four came with a trio of very close games. Spells were cast, creatures were ended, live was gained and lost. It was exactly the kind of Magic I love to play, and even though I lost, it was the right note to end the evening on. I felt confident in my deck and its capabilities, and I was eager to open another pack to round it out.

Join me next week to find out what was in it, what got changed, and how I did!

Thanks for reading,


- Step.

MTGAER Draft - Aggro or bust!

Alright folks,

It's time for me to talk about a night of magic which was genuinely awesome! Last week's FNM was delightful. On top of drafting a reasonable deck, which we'll get to in a moment, I actually got to play some games of Magic! Aether Revolt has been called a fast format, so I decided to give that a go. Let's start in pack one.

So as you can see, my first pick was a hopeful bid to play Pokemon instead of Magic, but as that didn't come together, I didn't feel bad at all about taking a Daring Demolition second, and seeing what was open. That was the last decent black card I saw in that pack though. More on that later.

Third pick Chandra's Revolution, Fourth pick Aether Chaser, then a Dawnfeather Eagle. All good cards, but nothing terribly exciting. The rest of this pack I spent mostly durdling around trying to find my legs. Honestly, the whole pack was fairly weak. Onto pack two.

Pack two started off with a quandry. I opened a Battle at the Bridge. I thought about taking it and trying to scoop up the black that should have been flowing, since it had been cut so hard in pack one, but alas, I decided on the safer Hungry Flames instead. Caught in the brights, double Welder Automaton, Invigorated Rampage, and another Caught in the Brights soon had me happily running in the agressive direction. A pair of Ospreys made the cut as well, and a Decommission for the sideboard. I was very happy with this pack, but I was even happier when I opened pack three.

Boom! Aetherstorm Roc! I am rewarded for picking up all that sweet white. Also, I decided to take, and play, the Aethertorch Renegade, because I wanted to try it. I managed to pick up a couple of white playables, and a Welding Sparks to round out my removal. I also had to reread Trusty Companion, because I don't think I've ever seen one in a pack before. It actually seemed pretty good in an aggro deck, so I snapped it up.

Here's the deck.

It was a constant question as to whether I should be running the Cultivator's Caravan, but as it was consistently either getting in on turn four, or allowing me to play two spells on turn four, I have come to respect it.

Round one I played against my good friend Garrett, who somehow also drafted a red white (and green) deck. I think my deck was a little better, but not so much that his draws couldn't get him the win. He won in three, and the one game I won was on the back of Aetherstorm Roc. It's a very good card.

Round two I got to play my girl Tams again! She was also also playing red white, though she was splashing blue for a Spire Patrol and a Renegade Thopterist, oh, and a Watchful Automaton. Apparently there was a lot of red and white going around the table.

I don't really remember the games that well, as it was a week ago, and I need to take better notes, but I won that match in three, if I recall, on the back of one of my Welder Automatons. The third game was a race, I know, and she would have won it if I hadn't topdecked the Dawnfeather eagle right after she swung in with all.

Round three was against someone new! I hadn't played against him before, and I always love meeting new people when they come to the shop. He was in blue green fliers, and I remember he had an Aethertide Whale at his top end. The reason I remember this is that he blocked with it and bounced it to his hand several turns in a row on the one game he won. The real highlight for me was in our last game, when I had just enough damage on board to get him under six, and enough energy to use the Aethertorch Renegade to finish him off.

This little aggro deck went 2-1, and I ended up third, which was perfectly serviceable, considering. Join me next week to see what this week's draft had in store, and please come back on Tuesday to check out this week in our Aether Revolt league!

Thanks for reading,

-Step.

Aether Revolt Sealed League Opening Tournament and Week 1

Hey folks,

I know this post is later than promised, but I've just been having so much trouble writing about this pool. I'll get to the cards in a second, and I think you'll see why, but first I want to mention that these articles will be going up on Tuesdays, and they'll be one week behind, starting with the next one. I'm doing this partially to give myself time to reflect on the matches and write good content, and partially so that I don't give away strategy to anyone from the league who may be following this blog. So, now that we're all on the same page, here was the starting pool.

As you can see, the pool is fairly balanced, again. I was excited by my rates, but blue wasn't a particularly deep colour. Green seemed to be my deepest, and yet, it's hard not to want to run a deck with Tezzeret, Tezzeret's touch, and a Mechanized Production. I knew my fixing was excellent, between two maps and two prisms, if I wanted to run a solid three colours, I could.

I really wanted to play Mechanized Production, and if I was going to play blue, there was no way I wouldn't be playing black, so at least for the opening tournament, I had limited options.

The first deck I tried was Esper, buy it seemed low on threats. Next I tried Grixis, which I'd love to play, but again, it didn't quite get there.

Finally, I tried Sultai, and that was the deck I ran for the opening tournament, pictured below.

League consists of four rounds every week, after which you can buy an additional (optional) pack to help make your deck stronger. During the opening tournament, I faced off against a Jeskai bomb fest, and beat it simply by drawing more cards than my opponent. It turns out that playing Mechanized
Production on a Prophetic Prism on turn four is a very good play, especially when your opponent doesn't happen to have artifact or enchantment removal.

Round 2 didn't go quite my way. I got cocky and attacked with a 5/5 prism, when I should have tapped it for the mana I needed to cast two spells in one turn. That, along with forgetting to play a land in game two, meant the end of my hopes to go undefeated.

Round 3 I also lost in 2, partially due to Gonti stealing both my Mechanized Production, and my Tezzeret. In game one, he'd crept all the way up to 32, and taken out my threats. Mechanized Production was pretty much my only win condition, and he played it against me. Game two I Mulliganed to five and drew nine lands in a row. It's hard to tell what would have happened otherwise, but I can say that Gonti is a strong card.

In Round four, my opponent had the opposite problem, as he got stuck on three land in game one, and two land in game two. He was in red white, so we still had something of a game, but he was struggling.

A record of 2-2, and no really meaty games. The wins and losses both came from our decks misbehaving. I was a little frustrated, and very much looking forward to week 1.

In my first extra pack, I opened quite a few playables, which cemented my place in black.

I went through a few iterations on the rest of the deck, and I finally decided to try Grixis, a personal favourite of mine, with a secondary option of playing Green with a splash of white.

So, you'd expect with the addition of higher quality cards, I'd do at least as well in week one as in the opening tournament, yes?

No!

I honestly don't remember the details of the matches, but my deck was flooding out consistently. My fifteen land deck was giving me eight, ten, twelve land a game consistently for the first two rounds. It was extremely frustrating.

It got so bad that I decided to try out my secret weapon, a second deck!

Unfortunately, I neglected to take a picture of it, but it was your basic green stompy with a Caught in the Brights and a Dawnfeather Eagle. This deck actually did better, which is odd because I think its slightly worse, but I also had the frustrating experience of being stuck on two land. Final record, 1-3

After flooding out with my 15 land deck, and stuck on two with my 17 land deck, I was about ready to throw in the towel, but instead, I took my losses and bought my pack.

Join me next week to find out what was in it!


- Step.

When Drafts Go Bad - MTGAER Draft Feb. 11, 2017

 

Step here,

If you follow any of our other projects, you'll have already heard me talk about my draft deck from last week, and how bad it was. The deck I played was bad, but the deck I should have played, could have been competitive.

Join me on this little adventure, through the mind of a player who is too uncertain, too scattered, and just plain too tired to draft effectively.

First, let me show you the deck I should have played.

This deck looks... Okay, not great, but it certainly looks playable. There's a curve, there's a top end, there are tricks that could get value. Most importantly, it looks like it would be able to cast its spells without too many mana issues.

Now let me show you the deck I actually played.

This is a messy pile of good cards and no fixing in at least one too many colours. It's the deck I ended up with after the drafting process went off the rails and I just rage piled all the good cards with the jank together into some semblance of a deck. I knew from the outset that I was going to lose every game, and that's exactly what happened, but that's not what should have happened.

Where did I go wrong?

To start with, I had had a long week, and I knew I shouldn't be going to play cards in public. I just wasn't mentally prepared for competitive entertainment. If you want a draft to go well, and you're concerned about winning, you need to be sharp, and I was not.

Next, I wasn't as cognizant as I could have been about what the real signals were, and I waffled between two archetypes longer than I should have. The why I'll get to when we walk through the draft... painfully.

Finally, let's talk about rule one of salvaging a draft. When I realized I was in trouble, I should have done two things. First, picked my colours and forced them, and second, always always always take the cheaper playable over the more expensive, if I had a choice. A good curve can make up a lot for lost power level in a draft that goes south.

With that out of the way, let's take a look at the approximate pick order of my pack one.

 

Note: I wanted to figure out just where I went wrong, so I tried to reassemble my draft after the fact. From here on, I'm going to take pictures of the whole draft before I start deckbuilding, as I think this serves as a good learning tool.

As you can see, even pack one was a bit confusing. I started the draft with a choice between Greenbelt Rampager and foil Sram, Senior Artificer. If I hadn't been aware before opening that pack that I was too exhausted to draft effectively, it should have been a tip off. I tilted pretty hard at seeing my draft going green and/or white for the fifth time in as many drafts. I really wanted to draft something different, something interesting, something not what I'd already done a bunch of, and that's the wrong place to start.

I took the rampager, and was hopefully optimistic that I'd be able to go red/green, or something. Second pick I had a choice between an Outland Boar and a Treasure Keeper. I did want to go red/green, but I wasn't willing to commit to a second colour when I had an arguably better colourless card available. The next two picks were probably reversed, now that I'm looking at it. I think when I saw the Barricade Breaker, I'd decided to go all in artifact ramp, and picked up the Druid to facilitate it. Everything seemed to be going well for a while, and then on the wheel I saw an Aether Swooper. I decided to hedge on that, as I overvalue small fliers, and then a late Ravenous Intruder pushed me back toward red. Coming out of the first pack, I decided I was Green/Red. This was my biggest mistake.

Pack two started off fairly well, too. I took the Metallic Mimic mostly just to have it, though I figured it would be fine in Draft, whatever it did. Being passed a Winding Constrictor made me focus in on black. Had I seen late black in the first pack? Could I just move in? It would work well with the one Bandar I already had, and any energy I could pick up. I should just take it and see, I thought.

Getting Treasure Keeper number two, and then a Narnam Renegade made me feel great, but I was still looking for a second colour. Neither black nor red seemed open, and I kept seeing mediocre blue. What I should have been focusing on was the green. The closer I could stay to mono green at this point, the better it would have been. I'd forgotten about ramping, and passed some artifacts which I could have taken. By the end of the pack, I knew I was in trouble.

Pack three had a rare which, if I'd known about, would have made me take the Sram in pack one. At double white, however, Aetherstorm Roc wasn't going to make it into my pile, so I took the Aether hub, because I knew I'd need fixing. I should have remembered that decision when the person to my left passed me a Whirler Virtuoso, but at this point, I thought blue was open, and I also thought I had more good red than I did. Temur energy was my pack three plan, and I was going to pick up every Attune with Aether I saw. This, it turns out, was a bad plan, especially when I passed an Attune to pick up a Filigree Familiar.

By this point, I was just in a silly mood. I was taking "the fun cards" and deciding not to buckle down and win games. The module into module into gearseeker serpent felt good when I picked them, but in the back of my mind, I knew I wasn't going to have a good deck and I was trying to ignore it.

All said and done, I went 0-3, and didn't win a single game. I'm sure that if I'd built the deck I showed you all at the very beginning of this article, I could have won some games, and had some fun, but there's no way to win when you feel like you've lost, and that was where I was at.

I hope this tale of woe and dispair has helped to teach some valuable lessons. I certainly learned a lot, and now, one week later, I'm feeling good about the experience and what it taught me.

Join me next week when I talk about my next draft experience, which turned out quite a bit better. I promise.

Thanks for reading,

-Step.

Aether Revolt Draft Report 1

Hey guys,

 Due to unfortunate cat related problems, I was unable to make it to the release night for Aether Revolt, so after a very long wait, I was excited to finally get to draft it last Friday. There's a whole big colour pie out there, and so far I'd only really experienced the green side, with a little cameo from white and black. Though I still think blue looks fairly weak as a main colour, there were plenty of decks I'd be excited to try drafting, and I knew I wanted to try blue red, if I got the chance. All that in mind, what should I open?

Sram's Expertise

Of course. Well, plenty of room to try red white shenanigans, or black white, or whatever. Don't marry your first pick, right? Well, out of the next few packs, the pickings were fairly mediocre. I did pick up a Caught in the Brights, and then a Bastion Enforcers just to stay open, but it soon became clear that someone was passing me green. I took a late Lifecraft Cavalry, and an Unbridled Growth to hedge in that direction. I can't say I wasn't unhappy, as I really do enjoy green white, but I was a little worried that I was just playing favourites, and that there was something in the packs I was missing.

Pack two shifted my perspective. Not only did I open a Rishkar, Peema Renegade (my third in as many paper tournaments), but someone on my left passed me a Greenwheel Liberator. If that's not a clear sign and signal, I don't know what is.
 
I had taken a Renegade Rallier at some point, so with three revolt creatures in my pile, I started looking for ways to enable them. The way I see it, playing a mechanic like Revolt is like splashing a colour in that you want to have more ways to enable the ability than you have cards with the ability, and as common wisdom teaches us not to play bad cards to enable good cards, I knew I was looking for effects I'd want to play anyway. I was able to pick up enough that I felt confident in my ability to get revolt, at least on the Cavalry, and I was only playing one card I wasn't sure I liked, but it was also the most reliable enabler, so I took the trade off.

 The real question was, could I splash? I'd picked up a Scrapper Champion almost on the wheel, and I had an Outland Boar from pack one. I'd have been more comfortable with the splash if I'd been able to pick up a Prism or an Attune in the last pack, but with four sources, and judging the power and versatility of the splashed cards, I decided to go for it. If I'd been more cautious and played the Bastion Enforcer and an Acrobatic Maneuver, the deck would have been slightly more consistent, but nowhere near as explosive.
 

The final deck felt reasonably aggressive with a tempo element, which is another way to say it was singularly midrange, which is just the way I like it.

In Round 1 I faced off against a Blue Green deck, full of fliers. I was happy to see Highspire Artisan, especially when, after making a servo with her, I was able to drop Rishkar, and then play Lifecrafter's Gift. It made for a very impressive board, and when my removal showed up, I managed to make a few good swings.

In game two, I didn't have quite as much going on, and his fliers whittled me down before I could stablize.

Game three was swingy, and a lot of fun. It turns out my deck had a pretty good combo, which I

didn't plan, but helped me all the same. I cast Sram's Expertise, and then got to cast Rishkar for free. Alas, I was not the only player at the table with expertise, and my opponent quite devastatingly bounced most of my board to myhand. As I was stuck on four mana, and having put the counters from Rishkar on the servoes, I had no way to compete with his hoard of drakes, and I quickly lost.

Round 2 was interesting, as I played against Tams. I was still riding the energy of three fairly tremendous games in the first round, but Tams and I really don't like playing against each other in tournaments, if only because it means one of us is going to lose, and that means less potential to win prizes, overall.

If you want to read the breakdown of Tams' deck, she's also posting an article here. Suffice it to say, I got all of my removal in both of our games, and it's very difficult to compete against a strong board if you can't keep blockers in place.

Round 3 is always stressful when you're 1-1. I like playing good games, but I tend to get competitive when there are prizes on the line. To my good fortune, my opponent was someone who responds well to healthy competition. We had a good time battling it out, and though the first game was close, I managed to, once again, cast Rishkar off of Sram's Expertise, and follow it up with Lifecrafter's Gift, which thoroughly impressed us both.

In game two, I played Architect of the Untamed for the first time, and though she was promptly

killed, I was glad my opponent didn't then have a removal spell against Scrapper Champion. With Conviction on her, she almost finished the game by herself, as she was threatening 8 damage or more on each swing.

I ended the day at 2-1, which put me in fourth place, and got me one pack, plus a shiny promo! It was a whole lot of fun, but I'm looking forward to discovering what the other parts of the colour pie hold. This weekend is our opening tournament for our Sealed League, so look forward to reading about that come Sunday! For now, you should check out our Sealed deck on MTGO. It's full of good stuff.







Thanks for reading,


- Step.

Tams first Aether Revolt Draft

Hey everyone! 

Boy, it feels like it's been a life time since I've written one of these things, but I'm super excited to be back at it.

I'm coming to Aether Revolt having not done much in Kaladesh, save for a sealed league and approaching this draft, I'd had no real exposure to the cards except for watching Loading Ready Run's Pre Pre Release, so to say I felt lost, was an understatement. That said, I'm always up to jump into an unknown draft format so I gave it a whirl.

My pack one pick one was Winding Constrictor. 

I knew that there was a bunch of stuff that put counters on things, as well as energy floating around, so this looked really strong. I live by the, don't marry your first pick, so I had no issue first picking a two coloured card. 

As I made my way through the first pack I picked up a Scrounging Bandar and a Defiant Salvager, giving me hope that I could make the counters on creatures train roll.

  

By the end of the draft, I had drafted 12 cards that produced counters, in one form or another, and I was thinking I'd hit the jack pot. 

My removal suite was very light, with only one unconditional destroy spell, one fight card, one spell that would take care of 2/2's and a couple of removalish creatures, but my thinking was that I would be Voltroning up my smaller creatures and being aggressive. 

The rest of the cards were ramp, card draw and bigger butt creatures to hold down the sky and ground if I went to the late game. 

Round one was against a blue green deck. In game one we battled back and forth, grinding each other down, painfully slowly, until my opponent came out on top, thanks to a well played counter spell. Game two was pretty much more of the same, again going to turns but finally squeaking out the win, putting down one more creature than I could block.

Round two saw me play Step, something neither of us really like to have happen. I started off strong, dropping a handful of creatures, but his removal found itself in his hand and he removed three creatures in rapid succession. There was just no coming back from that. In game two I didn't fare much better, never able to keep enough threat on the board to make any headway.

Round three showed me the biggest mistake I'd made with this deck, I relied too much on my ability to trigger revolt by attacking into my opponent. Most players will be wise to what seems like an unprofitable attack and won't block. More times than not, I wound up playing creatures for no value and never did get the Constrictor to go off.

I think this would have been a much more successful deck if I'd had other ways to trigger the revolt, such as bounce, or more cards that allowed me to sac my own creatures.

All in all though, it was a really fun night, and a great way to get my first taste of Aether Revolt.

Aether Revolt PreRelease - Part 2

Welcome back!

I know by this point, the PreRelease was a while ago, and we're all looking forward to the first draft of the new set, but I still want to share my Sunday experience, as it will both bolster, and provide contrast to, some of my conclusions from yesterday.

The Pool.

As you can see, the wealth of artifacts in Aether Revolt is even more apparent in this pool. The poblem is that not all of them are good. Still, it makes it even easier to see which of your colours shine and which don't. Blue and red were immediately dismissed, and white wasn't far behind, though I thought long and hard about splashing Deadeye Harpooner. In the end, I didn't feel I had enough fixing, nor ways to trigger revolt to really make it worth the splash.

Thankfully, my rares supported my two deepest colours! And I also had a few good artifacts to round out the main deck, shown below. 

I had some pretty good removal in black, and some really good green or colourless threats, so all that I really needed to do was draw what I needed. We'll see how that went. On to the rounds!

Round 1

It seemed that Esper Control was meant to test me both days. Unlike Saturday's match, where I drew

nothing but land, my Sunday deck rose to the challenge. I did lose the first game, and I momentarily thought that perhaps I'd been foolish not to run my own consulate turret, as my opponent managed to kill Each of my two and three drops in turn, but that's where it pays to read the cards carefully, because the card reads "damage to player". He did manage to win the first game before we noticed anything wrong, and by tapping down my flier with Pacification Array so he could kill me in the air.

Game two was much more one sided. The Untethered Express made an early appearance, and as he spent most of his mana keeping it tapped down, he quickly fell behind on board, especially with me drawing removal. I still think he conceded too quickly, but we both saw which way the wind was blowing.

Game three was much the same. We traded damage for a while, but in the end the Untethered Express ran him over. The one mistake I made was when I saw him leaving mana up to tap something. I was smart enough to try to move to attackers with only my Sky Skiff crewed, but I forgot to use it to crew the express, when he tapped it down. As a result, he drew one more card than he would have. I still won.

Round 2

The Express did it's work once again, and this time, I had Aether Poisoner out early enough that I

could make a Servo to crew the train, and leave the Poisoner back, making the damage completely one sided. Game one was an early blow out.
In game two, it was more of a race, but the train gaining counters as well as the Aetherstream Leopard sucking up random bits of energy made for very strong attacks, with trample.

Round 3 - the rematch!

John-as-always is a smelly, dirty, cheaty-face (love you John), and you should never believe him if he tells you he has a bad deck.
That having been said, our match was very enjoyable. During game one, I

felt like I was on the opposite end of my last match, where I just completely got run over. He started with Narnam renegade into Narnam Cobra, which meant I couldn't attack early if I wanted creatures around to power my vehicles, and then he had a pair of Caught in the Brights which were enough to stop me from stabilising until he ran me over with a revolting Lifecraft Cavalry.

In game two, my mythic lizard (not an innuendo) finally made its first appearance. I had thought about keeping it in hand, so that John wouldn't know I had it, but that would have given him at least one more draw step. I will say this, he never concedes in paper magic. He made me swing in to kill him.

Game three was the game. John started out strong, and drew first blood. Then the train came out and

suddenly he started taking hits to the face. That didn't last long, though, because he managed to disable my train. I was still gaining ground, back up to twenty and all the way up to 25 where I sat, bricking my draws while he flooded the board with servos. Eventually, his cavalry came out and beat me down. Right up until that moment, I had a feeling he thought he was going to lose. In reality, it was just one excellent game of Magic.

Round 4

Nursing my wounds, I sat down against my next opponent, a player I respect and enjoy playing against. I was surprised, then, when he played a turn one Consulate Dreadnought. He then played a two drop into Glint sleeve artisan, Glint sleeve artisan, swing. Being hit for seven on turn four feels powerful, but I knew I had things in my deck which would just kill the Dreadnought, so I didn't want to throw away my board unless I had to. I took the first hit, then started using my small removal to kill things, hoping to strand the Dreadnought without a pilot. Alas, he kept making servos, and eventually he ran me over.



I don't remember the details of the rest of the round, except that I won the next game and lost the third. He told me after the match that he side-boarded the Dreadnought out in game two, thinking I had sided in artifact removal. He was right, but not to the point where I made my deck worse. I simply realized that Natural Obsolescence should have been in my main deck all along. It stayed there for the remainder of the tournament.

Round 5

2-2 record. I was playing for prizes again, and I sat down opposite our resident red/white player. He doesn't force it if the pool doesn't support it, but more often than not when I see him, he's playing red/white.
I knew my deck was favoured to win any long game. Apparently he didn't realise that, as he let me

get six creatures onto the board, and then I dropped my Aetherwind Basker. I had the option of swinging the next turn with a 21/21 trampler. At that point he spent a long time deciding whether or not to concede rather than show me his hand. In the end he let me swing in once and blow up his board, giving himself another draw step, but he conceded immediately after. I think he made the right choice to draw the card.
In game two, he got stuck on two land. He told me that he had an explosive hand, and if he'd drawn a land, he thought he had a pretty good shot, but we'll never know.

A final record of 3-2 put me in 7th place out of 22. Good enough to win a few packs, and again, the point was to play some magic, which I definitely did.

I can't wait to draft this set. Be sure to tune in Saturday, as I'll be writing up a report of my first draft right after I get home from FNM. I hope your PreReleases went well, and as soon as it's available, I hope to see you all in the draft queues on MTGO.

Thanks for reading,


- Step.