FNM Paper Draft Report - May 15, 2015

Something I've been hoping for for a while now finally happened, and I think it's all the better for having happened later in the drafting process. I opened a Sarkan Unbroken. I've wanted to draft around him in Dragons since I saw him, but I think if I'd had him pack one, he would have likely skewed my draft in an unfavourable direction. As it stands, I was already solidly U/G when I opened him, and picking up a couple of pieces of fixing was easy.

The main deck was actually built around an entirely different rare, obscuring aether. It came to me midway through the first pack when I'd already chosen several blue morphs, and I decided to go all in.

There are a good many playable morphs in green, and adding the chance of having a blue one, my opponent never knew what I was going to flip up. On top of that, I always seemed to have something to do with my mana. I even got to use Obscuring Aether as a surprise blocker in one game, because my opponent forgot about it.

The draft was kind to me in other ways. Sometimes you're right in

the right colours that noone else at the table is drafting. In this case, no one was in blue/green. I got passed Yasova Dragonclaw, and Shorecrasher Elemental, both of which made fine additions to the deck. I've played with Yasova before, and the fact that you can repeatably steal one of their better creatures is a great boon.

I'd never played with Shorecrasher Elemental before, but  I was pretty sure it would be a bomb. It's not quite an Aetherling, but it does a good impression of one, and it worked super well in my morph deck.

The real star of my deck was a bit unexpected. I had two Salt Road Ambushers, and they worked with the Obscuring Aether quite well. The fact that I got to put my morphs down a turn early, and then when I started flipping them up, they got two extra counters, meant I was well ahead of the other guy. 

One more auto-include was the Battlefront Krushok. With megamorph putting counters on all my creatures, the krushok made it impossible for my opponent to double block. Throw in a pair of Whisperer of the Wilds, and I ended up dropping a whisperer on turn two, two morphs on turn three, flipping up Ambushers by turn four, and turn five either dropping a Krushok or flipping up another morph, I had made an overwhelming board state before my opponent could do much to stop me.

Now, a word on Sarkhan Unbroken. He's a fine planeswalker, even without his ultimate ability. Most of the time I cast him, he ended up reading "Put a dragon into play, then next turn put another dragon into play", which is fine for five mana. The real advantage of any planeswalker is making your opponent nervous. Twice I got to create a dragon and then just let Sarkhan die, which was the equivalent of gaining three to seven life. It was good, but I wouldn't have tried too hard to include him if the deck hadn't supported him so well already.

Here's a look at the whole deck.

In the end I went 3-1, which was perfectly acceptable considering I lost in the finals to a red/black deck, and even that was in three games. Another fun week of drafting behind me, I can't wait to see what next week brings.

Thanks for reading,

-Step.

Draft #48 "The Elusive Rare Draft" - May 15, 2015

It's time for the Dragons of Tarkir rare draft! The only problem is that these rares are so rare, they're downright camera shy!

So you might notice that the video is a little short this week. We've been plagued by recording issues and hardware failures recently, and this draft is no different. After the client crashed twice, I decided that playing the games was more important than recording the video. All I managed to record was the draft.

I don't know whether this is common knowledge or not, but here's something you may not know about MTGO. When you don't submit your deck in time for the rounds to start, MTGO automatically puts all your cards, as well as enough land to play them, into the deck. This results in an 81 card deck, which you'll be given automatically for the first game of each round. Hilarity ensues. Go ahead and watch the draft, then come back if you want a break down of how the rounds went.

So this started out as a rare draft, and it could have been a really good one. The rares we had weren't the greatest, but they weren't absolutely unplayable, and for the most part they stayed right in two colours. The result was a fairly strong Dromoka deck with a black splash for removal. Picture of the final deck below:

After the crash, we ended up losing all three of our first games, though not as badly as we might have expected. Myth Realized is not a bad one drop. Several times we got it up to four or five counters, and it won us the second game of the round we actually won. Basically, it's a fine mana sink, and it shares some of the bonus of dash creatures in that it can't be targetted by creature removal on the opponent's turn.

Obscuring Aether was also useful in a way I didn't expect. We didn't actually have any Megamorphs in the deck, and I thought it was going to be one of those rares I never wanted to draw, but dropping it on turn three, getting a counter on Myth Realized, and then having a surprise blocker for our opponent's morph was well worth the card. 

Assault Formation, Ojutai's Command, and Shamanic Revelation were utter duds in our deck, though I'll be talking more about Assault Formation when I post my next Constructed article. The real strength of our deck was in our white creatures. There were two games we won just on white aggro. We dropped myth realized, then dragon hunter and obscuring aether, then Dromoka Captain, and we were off to the races. When Dragonscale General came down, it was bolster three and against an empty board, that's a win.

Our deck even had sideboard options. Double Pinion Feast against flyers, and a Dromoka Dunecaster against aggro are both strong, and one game we brought in the Sadist to get value off of a pacified creature, to good success.

All in all, it went about as well as a rare draft should, even with the auto submission. I'm just sorry the videos aren't there to watch. We'll try to get these computer issues figured out so that they stop getting in the way of our recordings, but in the mean time...


Thanks for Watching,


-Step.

Tuesday Morning Makeup Draft - May 12, 2015

Hey guys, sorry about not having a video this past Friday. The computer ate our video files! Despite that, we wanted to get a draft up, so we recorded this on Saturday, and I'm posting it here. We're also going to post a draft as normal this Friday, so don't you worry. This week you just get a double dose of Card Advantage!

In a perfect world, you pick your two colours first thing in pack one, and get to take everything good in those colours, and never have to fight with anyone for the cards you want. Of course, with eight drafters and five colours, it never works out that way.

Keeping that in mind, sometimes there's a bomb rare that just pushes you hard into two colours and you can force it to work for you. That's what we managed here. By the end of the draft, we were so heavily in black/red, that a Kolaghan came to us in the middle of the third pack because no one else wanted it. It's a shame that she didn't come out to play, but with Boltwing Marauder, we didn't really need her.

The games went really well for us, and we ended up with a 2-1 record which I think we earned. Not much else to say really. I guess we'll see you on Friday for another outstanding draft!

Thanks for watching,


-Step.

Draft #47 - "No Impact" - May 1, 2015

This weeks draft found us again in black/red, which is a favourite colour pairing, for both of us in this format. It tends to be highly aggressive and difficult to beat, what with all of the strong dash and supporting cards. As we found out though, that is not always the case. 

We first picked a Pristine Skywise.  Though I generally stay away from pack one pick one two colour cards, as it's generally not the best choice to commit to two colours so early, I still stand by that pick. It's a strong rare that we decided to simply speculate on. If we found white/blue open and viable we would run it, otherwise we would bench it. The only other choices I would have considered were Dragon Fodder, Salt Road Quartermasters or maybe Reckless Imp. That said, we didn't feel we were missing out on much by not choosing one of them.

In pick two Step and I had a differing of opinions as to which card to take- the Ukud Cobra or the Sarkan's Rage. I wanted the creature, Step, the removal. I still think the right choice at this point in the draft was the creature- it's uncommon and really good. A 2/5 with deathtouch for four can be removal, create board stalls, and can get in for damage. I agree that straight up removal is something to prioritize but I felt that a good multi purpose, uncommon creature was the better choice. Re-watching the draft, I still stand by that.

As we moved through the first pack there was the option of picking some decent white cards over the black, which would have set us up for the Daghatar we passed later on, but given that we had no way of knowing that, and the black we chose was fairly solid, I still think we went in the right direction.

Pack three pick one saw Daghatar as our rare. I briefly contemplated suggesting taking it, and hope to pick up a piece of fixing as we had a few drafts earlier. After seeing the Wild Slash though, I figured that a strong piece of removal trumped a admittedly strong card that we'd need to hope to splash in a two colour format. As we moved into the next pick, there was a Wind-scarred Crag that we could have nabbed to splash with, but given that we couldn't be sure we would find one, I still believe that Wild Slash was the better choice for us.

By the end of the draft we created a mediocre red/black deck, that was missing most of the stand out dash cards, and that proved to be a weakness. The R/B decks biggest asset is it's speed, and ours was slower than we would have liked. I will admit that variance was a big issue in some games and we probably would have fared better if our deck had behaved, but still, it just wasn't as strong as we were hoping.

The last thing I want to talk about is Impact Tremors. We only wound up with four dash creatures, though Dragon Fodder would have given us two points of damage to our opponent for the cost of one card, but still, this probably wasn't the optimum deck for this card. Step and I talked about it afterwards and he said a creature would have been better. He's probably right but given that we didn't see Impact Tremors at all, we wouldn't have seen that creature either, so it's really hard to tell if it would have helped in any of our games.

While this wasn't the strongest of decks or the best of drafts, we still had a blast and learned some things, so that, to us, makes it worth while.

Hope you enjoyed the video and thanks for stopping by!

~Tams