"Getting Greedy with John" - November 28, 2014

This week's draft comes with an extra special guest. Let us introduce you to John from The Mana Leek. John is a friend of ours, and our local judge. This week he joins us for a wild Mardu draft during which we won some games, learned some lessons, and had an all around good time.

The draft was very entertaining for me. I love to hear other people's opinions of cards, especially the ones I don't like all that much. Round one was just plain fun as we warmed up to a deck full of swift hitters.

The trouble began in round two. Both of our losses came after we made very obvious mistakes. We knew it was a mistake to keep the hand with a single swamp, and even though it looked like it was going to pay off, we just couldn't keep momentum once our opponent gained traction, and we were swiftly defeated.

During game two, we should have known to hold back. We could have waited our opponent out and, once he swung in, stolen one of his creatures to block with, thus two for oneing him, instead of allowing him to almost kill us on the crack back.

In both of these situations, had we just kept our heads and played like professionals, we may have come out on top. Just goes to show you that hot heads start fires, and we certainly got burned.

During round three we almost ended up on the same path. Luckily, we were blessed with a couple of good games and ended up coming out on top.

We'd love to have John back. If you have any comments for him, you can find him via his channel, and as always, you can feel free to leave us comments.

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


-Step.

"Return to Theros" - November 21, 2014

This week, Tams and I decided to take a (short) trip back down memory lane, and try our hands at Theros once again. To our delight, we found it just as we'd remembered, full of fun! We hope you enjoy watching as much as we enjoyed drafting it.

After passing a couple of very good red cards early in the pack, it may have been ill advised for us to move into red as our second colour, but whether or not it was wise, it ended up working pretty well. I was sad that we never got King Macar out. I've only ever seen him come down on the other side of the field, and I'd have liked to try playing him.

That said, we ended up almost in minotaurs. If we had taken the early flurry of horns', we could have had a much stronger deck than we ended up with, but we couldn't have known that. As it stands, I liked the deck. It had a strong midrange curve with a fairly low top end and plenty to do. I hope to draft many more decks like it in the future.

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


-Step.

"Can't Stop the Clock" - KTK, November 14, 2014

So it finally happened. After all this time, even after conceding last week to avoid it, we finally lost a round to the clock. If that doesn't dissuade you from watching, you should be in for a fairly entertaining main event.

As I said, we lost not one, but two rounds to the clock, though one wasn't exactly our fault. A connection issue in round three ate about four minutes of our time.

Despite all that, this draft had a lot going for it. Our deck was strong, and we piloted it fairly well. The one thing that I want to point out about the construction process was the Kheru Lich Lord. I didn't think our deck wanted it, but I wasn't sure. As it turns out, we sided it out in almost every game. Maybe it would have been better to leave him out of the deck to begin with, but I didn't know. If we hadn't run him, we never would have known. I now have a better personal understanding of when that card is good, and when it isn't. To me, that's worth a card.

In round one we made a single bad attack which turned the tide against us. Even then, if we'd played out a creature that turn, rather than waiting until the turn after, we probably would have won the round. Giving our opponent enough of an edge to stall us out was annoying to say the least.

Round two, paradoxically, was both the only round we won, and the round in which I feel we played the worst. If it weren't for our slow playing, I really feel we could have gone 3-0 with this deck, so stay tuned in future while we strive to find a middle ground between "just swinging in" and dragging our feet.

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


-Step.

"Marzan Warriors" - KTK, November 7, 2014

After last week's haiatus, I wasn't surprised that we didn't win much. What did surprise me was the quality of our deck, and the quality of our play. If you're looking for an engaging experience, this draft should satisfy.

We started off open, and then sort of took a left turn into warriors, but not "The Warrior Deck", which is something I'd like to try at some point. What we end up with is a solid deck with a good curve, and very enjoyable to play.

A few things I noticed upon review were that we still talk a lot. As we've finally lost a round to the clock, I've decided to make a concerted effort to make faster play decisions. The flip side of that is that sometimes I run the client on autopilot, and that has left me unable to play a land or make an attack, simply because I "F2" through the option. I really need to clean up these areas of play. Something to work on.

All in all I think the deck was solid, and I'm looking forward to building the next one.

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


-Step.

"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.