"MarDerp" - KTK, October 06, 2014

It's finally up! Our original Khans Sealed event. We've been holding on to this one ever since the prerelease.

I'd actually meant to have this one up that very weekend, and then every Monday thereafter, but unfortunately in life, as in Magic, you have to play with the cards you're dealt.

A lot of time and energy lately has gone into another project that Tams and I have on the go (send us an email or find us on twitter if you want details) and we haven't had much time for more than getting the weekly draft up. That isn't likely to change any time in the next month either, because NaNoWriMo is coming up! In any event, we're here to entertain and educate, so let's get things rolling.

While I was reviewing this for posting, I was gratified to see just how much I've learned about the set since this initial event. I'm honestly not sure why we were so scattered that day, but we even forgot that there was a fourth round until two minutes into it.

Even with all that, 2-2 isn't a bad record and I think it was fun to watch. I hope you agree.

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


-Step.

"Sulky Sultai" - KTK, 24 October, 2014

Sometimes, you just have a bad day, and despite not looking like professionals, we've decided to post this draft. After all, we're here to teach.

We'd hoped to go Sultai, and we should have known that this draft was ill fated when it started off by passing a rare in our colours.

In any case, if you want to learn, this draft is full of mistakes and foibles which should prove educational.

Between sending the drafter to our left directly into our colours, not seeing any fixing in our colours, and not wanting to draft this clan in the first place, we ended up with something of a mediocre Sultai deck, and yet there was hope.

There was a time (at the beginning of pack three) which we could have chosen to jump colours in order to play our planeswalker. We could have made the switch into Temur at that point, but it would have been a huge gamble.

 One thing we definitely should have done is paid more attention to the board state.

In round one, I don't think there was anything to do but be on the defensive, but in round two there was a point at which we should have stopped worrying about the Rakshasa Deathdealer, and started racing our opponent. Even if it wasn't likely, the game could have swung in our favour eventually, whereas just taking the hits every turn left us with nowhere to go once we finally had plays to make.

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


-Step.

"Work your Abzan" - October 17, 2014

Good day! This week's draft landed us in the Abzan Houses. Check out whether we managed to Outlast our opponents.

Sometimes playing magic is like farming. You live off the land, and she is a harsh mistress.

Still, even playing through mana issues, it's possible to learn some things. This week we learned that it is a good idea to take a good hard look at the Instant spells in the set so that you know what to look for when your opponent has mana open.

Pretty basic, right? Well it turns out that the simple things are what really improve your game in the long run. Sequencing and knowing every colour, knowing what combat tricks and counter spells are in the set can greatly improve your performance during combat.

As far as set specific information, I had expected from the beginning that expensive creatures were going to be less useful in this set if they didn't have morph, and I can confirm that. The Venerable Lammasu should be a solid curve topper, but with all the Morph creatures which can be dumped onto the field by turn three, having a big thing stuck in your hand just isn't where you want to be.

We've got two clans left to draft (not counting the sealed pool which we've yet to post), and I'm looking forward to trying the all morph deck at some point. This set still has plenty of life in it, and we hope you'll be along with us for this ride.

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


-Step.

"Trouble with Temur" - October 10, 2014

Here we are once more on a beautiful Friday. So far we're three for three on the clans of Tarkir (sealed series forthcoming), and we haven't quite been able to master the speed of the format.

Land troubles aside, I think I've discovered a tendency in myself to devalue my life total. I'm used to playing a deck in Constructed which tends to stabilize around 4. Unfortunately, you can't be assured of stabilizing in a Limited game, and a few more early game trades might have helped us last long enough to get something big out.

I'd also have liked to try taking the red out of the deck in order to add the black. I feel that against an aggressive deck, like the one we faced in round one, it would have proven effective. We could have held down the ground early on much better, but maybe that's best case scenario mentality.

Either way, the deck was at least fun to play with, and I'll look forward to another stint amongst the Temur clan in the future.

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


-Step.

"Which Way to Jeskai?" - October 03, 2014

So here we are! Khans has finally arrived on MTGO, and what better way to celebrate than with a clan themed draft? We may not have quite settled into the new set, but at least it's entertaining!

We very quickly landed ourselves in Jeskai, and it seemed to work well enough, though next time I'd focus a little more on mana fixing earlier in the draft, and probably more non-creature spells. Jeskai may not be as strong as the three more straightforward clans (Abzan, Mardu, and Temur), but the Prowess mechanic is definitely powerful. This was made clear to me in round 1 when we lasted a whole three turns longer than we should have, simply thanks to our prowess creatures.

It would have been much nicer to have been on the offensive with them, but maybe next time.

We fared better in rounds 2 and 3, and at the very least I can say that it was fun. There was some back and forth, and we got to see almost all of the set's mechanics in play. I'm very much looking forward to next week.

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


-Step.

"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.