It's late in the format, and we've been through a lot of Dragons of Tarkir, so we felt it was time to try something a little kookie. Alas, best laid plans often do not work out, and what started as a kookie draft quickly turned into something else. Did we make the right decisions? You be the judge.
So it should be pretty clear that we abandoned our stipulation when the second dragon came along, but to be fair, that wasn't until the middle of pack three. It wouldn't have been much of a dragon deck with only two dragons.
What we ended up with was basically a draft that went off the rails. It should be a testament to the strength of red/black in this set that we still managed to go 2-1. Besides the fact that we first picked a situational dud, there just wasn't really much in the first pack. If we'd been drafting normally, we probably could have had a fairly decent blue/black deck (watch the draft to see what I mean), but we weren't giving up on much.
The games were short and entertaining, but not particularly notable.
Truth be told, the format is just getting stale for us, and we'll likely be doing more Modern Masters for the next few weeks. We may even head back to Theros for a quick visit. If any of you out there have any suggestions, feel free to comment. Shoot us a tweet or post on Facebook, and we'd love to try something kookie. In the mean time, we'll keep plugging on.
We're back to the drafting table after an unscheduled hiatus, and ready to try our hand at the latest supplementary product, Modern Masters 2015. Let's see how we did!
Since we couldn't make it to GP Vegas, we decided we at least wanted to draft Modern Masters 2015 once before it left MTGO. I honestly would have preferred to show you the sealed deck that we made while preparing for this draft, as it was a much better deck, but the one we put together here wasn't bad. Our curve was good, and we had lots of options for sideboarding. Running Elesh Norn was probably a mistake, and we knew that at the time. If I'd gotten to first pick Elesh Norn, I would have gone white/green, and tried to pick up as many token producers as I could. In our deck, she was basically flood insurance.
In the first game we didn't really know what we were doing, especially when we kept a bad hand. Five land and no action with our deck was bad, and we should have know it. Besides that, I think the deck would have mulliganed fairly well, so we should have given the deck another chance.
Game two really looked like we were in better shape, until we ran into a bunch of removal. I'd also like to say something about our opponent's deck. I hadn't thought about the synergy between Graft and Proliferate, but in hindsight, it looked like a potent combo. I'd like to try Sultai in this format if I get the chance.
In the other round we actually got to play, we were up against the Spirit deck, and that could have been a lot more trouble than it actually ended up. It was nice to see Elesh Norn make an appearance to win us the final game, but ultimately, this wasn't the deck for her, and we should have known that.
While one round was a bye, this was still technically a 2-1, which means we got our entry fee back, so there may be another one of these in the future. I hope you enjoyed it as much as we did.
Tams and I recently went to a MM2 draft at The Gamer's Emporium, and it was a lot of fun. I didn't open anything of great value (though there was a Tarmogoyf, a Kiki-Jiki, an Ulamog, and a foil Vendilion Clique opened at the table), but the deck I put together was really fun to play. Take a look.
My first pick was a Sunlance, as my rare was of little value. I figured that good removal which fits into at least three decks was pretty solid. Artifacts were being passed to me in great number, and I thought I could get away with affinity. Once I got my second court homunculus and a frogmite almost last pick of pack one, I knew I was correct. As it turned out, someone else at the table was also drafting affinity, but they prioritized blue cards while I snapped up all the good artifacts. Throw in a couple of Narcolepsys and a Arrest, and my deck was a force to be reckoned with.
The one outlier of my deck was the Hearthfire Hobgoblin, but when the Izzet Boilerworks wheeled the table, I decided to include both.
I wasn't sure whether muldrifter, as a five drop, or Qumulox, as an eight drop would be castable with only 16 land in my deck, but as it turned out, I was generally able to play both by the time they ended up in my hand. At one point I cast both in the same turn, which felt fantastic.
Although I tried to draft fairly tight to my archetype, I did end up with a few off colour cards which I thought about playing.
Agony Warp might have been worth splashing for, and I'd considered splashing black for Duskhunter Bat, Vampire Lacerator, and Sign in Blood. I thought about running Electrolyze, since I was already in blue with red fixing, but at the end of the day consistency won out.
I also had a number of artifacts which I decided to leave out, and that decision was a bit more difficult.
Leaving out the Skyreach Mantas was easier after I decided not to splash, as a 3/3 flyer for 5 just wasn't as good as the other things I had going, and ramping off the Cathodion seemed unnecessary since I intended to dump my hand, and extra mana would just go to waste, but I wasn't sure whether a 1/1 for 1 which left behind an artifact was good enough. It would have worked well with Myrsmith, but in the end I decided that triple Court homunculus and a copper carapace were enough one drops, and the rest of my deck was better.
I ended up going 2-1, losing in the finals to some green jank, but I'm satisfied with my play, and the draft was really fun. I'd suggest you give this format a try. Also, look forward this Friday to our online Modern Masters draft, where hopefully we'll open a foil Tarmagoyf and never have to pay for a draft again.
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.
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...
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!
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!
