I can't really provide you with much advice regarding theory, but I would suggest you record and narrate your drafts (if not your matches as well). Talking to yourself is a good way (I've found) to decide the correct pick and it would also help others know why you took the card you did. Other people on this site can then offer advice about what you picked with more detail and in relation to what you were thinking.
PS: How do you embed videos? I can't for the life of me figure it out. Is it as simple as copying and pasting the embed code given by youtube, or do you need to do something more?
On your next one, if you don't mind that is - I'd love to comment with how I'd pick vs how I'd pick in hindsight. Mostly because I'm finding my hypothetical picks don't match some of the pro-sounding comments here. If anyone had feedback there that'll be cool to. I've literally only done 3 drafts so far, love the format but not the cost, so gotta pace myself until I can nail it :)
I saw a whole bunch of complicated looking stats and graphs on the official forums. It looks like if your in the bad (33% chance of winning) or mediocre (34-65% chance of winning) then the outcome is much the same for Swiss vs 4-3-2-2, but you do get more chances at winning in Swiss. Once you hit the "pro" percentile then 8-4 is the best payout - but it's also likely the competition is also much more fierce.
At least with Swiss, even if your rubbish (like me), you get to play more games :)
I downloaded the mp3 to my itouch today. Hopefully I will get a chance to listen soon and comment on that "Nothing" remark in the Whatcha been playin' section and I look forward to hearing about Keya's modern exploits.
lastsasquatch you are right and that was one the most stupid arguments i ever heard from a wizards employee. the banning process was just a joke and tom showed many times in his previous articles that he does not know much about the competitive game (seriously)
i was hoping you'd elaborate more on 12 posts. After your article i started playing with the deck and i loved it. Great fun. However i think sideboard needs to be revised and i need some suggestions on how to play mirror games.
You can't just make a new fresh format when a meta already exists, all you do is take some decks out and leave others in. People had played with what is essentially this card pool for a long time, the decks are mostly known, it is only an exciting new experience if you have never played old Extended/Overextended.
I agree with your assessment on the ban list LE, although I would have liked to have seen SFM come out to play in a format with Bob and Goyf. I'm confident Jace, MM, BB and Ancestral will all be off the banned list eventually. Jitte will probably come off too, it is barely good enough for legacy these days.
Cards like BB are really not a problem, since not only is Fae not the best deck in the room, but extremely strong hate exists (Mirran Crusader, GSS, Volcanic Fallout).
This format is also sure to have some Ad-Nauseum combo deck with Angels Grace and whatever kill condition it feels like. Ditto there will be a Teachings port, although I don't know what the modern targets will be as I haven't played the card in quite some time.
The show is getting better and better. I still like music, but whatever. I'll let the rest of your fanbase help you to decide that. I am just one marginal dude...
Weird week for constructed. It goes to show that a lot of stuff is viable in Standard right now if you are willing to spend some time with innovating/tweaking. I am happy with the overall health of the general metagame.
RE Modern Question of the week:
It is hard to tell from a theoretical standpoint, which is all that I have thus far, but I think banning Bitterblossom in Modern is a bit ridiculous. Faeries were nerfed when they printed Stag and Volcanic Fallout. While the Fae do have more viable answers available to kill Stags these days, Volcanic Fallout is still a decent stall tactic for red based decks to squeak wins from the Fae. Also one must consider that Faeries were pushed out of the Old Extended metagame because of the prominence of Punishing Fire + Grove of the Burnwillows. If Modern starts to revolve around that interaction, you can bet that any deck with a bunch of x/2's is going to have a hard time ever winning (which is why I think Elves and Glimpse of Nature were also fine in the format).
I don't know, there is probably a bias here from me as well because Faeries is my pet deck. I realize they aren't trying to have a "Previous Standard All Star Ported Deck" format, but the measures they are taking against control strategies are a bit hyperbolic, in my opinion.
Reading your thoughts on the ban list makes me think you didn't read Lapille's article on the bannings for the Pro Tour. First of all, in addition to the community cup ban list, they banned any consistent turn 3 kills, which were the ones that you said made perfect sense. Then they banned mystic, which also makes sense, because it's broken.
He said that scapeshift was dominant, and you said it wasn't, so I've got nothing to go on there, just a differing of opinion.
Those were all the cards that were banned for being too powerful (note that doesn't include Jace). Then the reason they banned bitterblossom wasn't because of power, but because of public opinion. Modern, for this PT atleast, is supposed to be a fresh, fun, likable format, and too many people disliked playing against faeries in the past to risk having a large amount of the field be fae.
After all these bannings, no blue cards had been banned. If they were going to go through with the rest of the bannings, they had to make sure that blue control decks couldn't just jam the best blue cards and be the best deck in the room, so they banned good blue cards like Jace and visions, and then banned misstep rather than put so much pressure on the aggro decks right out of the gate.
The bannings weren't all due to overwhelming power, just because they wanted all new decks to come out of the pro tour, as what will hopefully be a fun exercise for a lot of people, and very very fun to watch. I for one am on the edge of my seat to see what kinds of decks people end up playing.
Doesn't the Restore Balance deck just lose to an early Ancient Grudge or Hurkyl's Recall? Seems like artifact hate is so powerful that CIPT artifact "lands" are just asking for a beating.
I think what Wizards is trying to do with this banned list is closer to Vintage/Legacy banned lists than to Ext/Std banned lists.
A banned list for Standard/Extended is created in response to problems, a banned list for Vintage/Legacy (eternal formats like Modern) are precautionary, so that's why the list is pretty long (and we could imagine unbannings to happen often, at least, to test the waters).
However, I also think Wizard's wants Modern to have its own identity, part of the problem of the more recent Extended (called Super Standard for a reason) is that they don't want Modern decks to be ported from other formats. That's why Bitterblossom is banned, that's why Valakut is banned.
Cards like Jace and Ancestral Visions, I think, are more to promote deck diversity (all blue decks will probably jam a large number of those cards before starting any decklist in general, I could be wrong but that seemed to be Wizards' reasoning).
What seems to be the priority is that Wizards wants to see decks they haven't seen before. I'm of a similar mindset- what excites me most about your metagame prediction is the Twelvepost deck because I've never heard of that deck before (it's probably too weak for Legacy and impossible to build in Extended) and those kinds of decks are more of what Wizards wants. In general I think people are being too pessimistic about these banned cards- you can't use them, okay. So start thinking, and start brewing.
Chrome mox can not be played with the cascade-suspend combos! I don't think Mox actually needs to be banned and in Overextended many combo decks did not run it. It is actually fairly balanced due to the loss of 1 card, combo decks just tend to prefer rituals which give a mana boost that is larger even though it does not stick around. Mox was not banned in Overextended and the format was fine.
I think you are overreacting to Restore Balance. I do think it is much stronger than Living End as a "substitute" to Hypergenesis but I'm not sure it is unfair, and I doubt it is that much strong that it will be banned. That said, WotC should certainly NOT ban it before the PT. What they pulled off was already bad enough as a pseudo-emergency banning. I do think WotC missed it though, as it is relatively consistent on turn 3. This is one of the flaws of their rushed ban list, although personally I think Restore Balance can stay. Perhaps the best would be actually banning the instant 3 mana cascade spell, making the combo sorcery speed and unban Hypergenesis (the others are sorcery speed and one of them needs a creature to target as well).
Other than that I think you covered almost every deck possibility - perhaps Dredge could be mentioned in the run down as you are presenting options that may not work well enough as well, but you commented on Bridge not being banned in the other part of the article. And I think you may have wanted to emphasize Empty the Warrens and Grapeshot as real alternatives for storm combo (Grapeshot and Swath make an improvised sort of Tendrils).
I think Gifts Ungiven is going to be an important card for the format.
I disagree with aspects of your proposed ban list but perhaps I'll comment on that later.
Looking at your first draft, I appreciate it's frustrating to lose to mana flood and then mana screw and goodness knows MODO seems to suffer a lot from this but I think in this case maybe you can attribute some of it to yourself too?
In the first game, you suffer from mana flood. But! you kept a four land hand and the spells you kept weren't either going to win you the game or help you draw out of it if you didn't draw gas. You should ask yourself what do you need to win with each starting hand. Perhaps a mulligan to six might have been more fruitful?
In the second game, you suffer from mana screw. But! your deck contains only 4 playable creatures at 3 mana or less and one of them needs two blue. 14 cards in your deck are 4 mana or more, and often require two of one colour. In your draft you need to pay attention to the curve. You needed more cheap creatures. M12 is faster than M11, 2-drops are king!
I really appreciate people responding to this. I am going to continue the series.
Most likely, I am going to do a Swiss next time, just for practice. The vids will be more interesting too.
The person who won this draft was a UB flier deck. Again, not the strongest archetype, but he got all of the awesome blue cards that I passed + Sorin's Vengeance, Sorin Markov, Sengir Vampire, and a Doom Blade...
I am taking everything said here in consideration. I appreciate people hedging a little so it seems as if you are not totally blasting my decisions, but, seriously, until three weeks ago I could count on one hand how many drafts/limited events that I had ever done in 10+ years of playing Magic. I have NEVER cube drafted. No. Really.
So, everything you guys are saying is true and I welcome the honesty, brutal as it might seem. I need to work both on my drafting and my play. I thank the advice that has come forth so far.
I'm not so sure about the judging on Divination. Everyone seems to bash it but I still think it's a pretty awesome card. Whenever I (could) cast it during one of my matches it always felt good, but then again that's because I built my deck to have a strong quality of cards, so my two draws were bound to be good.
I think that might be where Divination's hidden power lies. If your deck isn't great, a Divination might not help you as much, but even still, I think the aggressiveness of this format is a little overhyped and I foresee it slowing down as the format matures.
It's definitely weaker in draft, you have a point there, but I'd still love to have it in a deck that's not too much blue (and may be missing a Merfolk Looter or two). Then again, I don't have much experience, you might be right. I just love drawing cards.
Great topic ... I just tried my first 3 drafts yesterday, I enjoyed it but it turned out to be more expensive than I was hoping. On the plus side I got some great cards out of it (including a Garruk, almost makes up for the expense... almost!).
After the first couple picks I would have gone either Black or Red and stuck to it, very close call and decision probably would have been based on my mood and most recent bad experiences. But after reading the responses, White/Blue would definitely have been the winner - although even now that wouldn't be obvious to me until into the 2nd pack.
It is ok to get a little more greedy in sealed, where the bombs are and removal are more prevalent. It is definitely wrong to splash Divination however, the card is already borderline, and definitely not worth splashing.
Doom Blade and fireball are good because they are going to be answers to just about anything, or with fireball, sometimes win you the game on the spot. There are plenty of decks where an on curve divination isn't even good enough. Is the hope that you play it on curve and draw into more of the lands that help you cast your spells? I honestly don't even like it very much when I am heavy blue. Even the sealed format is aggressive and if you don't build your board turns 1-3 you are probably in trouble against all but the most controlling decks.
Don't ever draft 4-3-2-2, the only time it is OK is when it is the only available option, as will eventually be the case with Scars/M11 once Innistrad roles out.
There are two important aspects to drafting, which is the draft + deck building, and the technical play. I'm not trying to be rude here, but you need help on both, so play Swiss, you will get a ton of practice and you actually get more value in the long run than 4-3-2-2 (11 is less than 12).
8-4, which eventually is all you will draft, is just a different monster entirely. You need to play nice and pass colors appropriately because you need your neighbors in different colors than you if you intend to win, and you need to pick up on signals. You also need to draft either a very consistent deck with 0 splashes, or a very powerful deck that is willing to splash Doom blade/O-ring/Pacifism/Incinerate. It is ok to draft a worthless pile of junk with some aggressive picks every 4 or 5 drafts than it is to draft very mediocre decks and consistently not get to the finals.
8-4's are particularly nice because you don't have to waste time if you get a garbage deck, which happens, and you are rewarded for good drafting and play in the long run. This is the biggest draw over Swiss and Sealed, where having a bad deck/bad pool and having to grind it out for a lot of losses and maybe a pack is brutal.
With the value of mythics/rares in M11, it is impossible to go infinite through 8-4 (or any) drafts, you would need to get to/win the finals in basically half your drafts which is unrealistic for even the best limited pros. If you want value, Sealed is better than draft, but has a huge time commitment. The value of M11 is truly horrendous unfortunately, the most valuable card is worth ~12 tickets, and many mythics are worth 2-4, with Primeval Titan a whopping 6.
Hey, haven't gotten around to the whole article yet, but what I wanted to say doesn't really reflect as much (most people have discussed the actual draft picks).
As for drafting, I think 4-3-2-2's are best if you want to go by efficiency. As a default, it's my preferred choice because you could go 1-1 drop and still have 2 packs for your troubles where as in an 8-4 you don't get anything and it's such a loss (not to mention the morale drop!)
Swiss drafts are obviously best because you have the best chance to win a pack, but it takes a pretty long time and from what I've seen/heard (could be completely wrong on this), you don't really play against great people and it's hard to get your skill level up.
Unfortunately, I can't help you much in M12 draft, I'm having enough trouble doing well myself but good luck in the future!
Yea, looking back at it, I guess I was in a pretty greedy mind state. I think the best way I can rationalize it, is that I was deliberately trying to not build it like I would an SOM sealed (where having like 2 cards of a color is fine because of all the artifacts) but because my white was strong and somewhat numerous and I did have three artifacts, going two colors with a tiny splash would've been fine.
I enjoyed it though, playing all powerful cards (save a Grizzly Bears...ugh) was a blast to play and it makes all topdecks great if you have your colors. I'm just not sure if I'd exactly recommend it, it was hard enough to build, which I doubt I did correctly. But thanks.
this much is true as well. this is why having more eyes on this is helping me to understand. It is abundantly clear to me, as I review these picks that i did not pick up on signaling. Blue was open almost the whole time. I need to memorize pick orders. This much is true.
I also find it difficult when there are multiple playables for your archetype in a pack. How do you grade which is the best pick...I need more practice, but I also need some of this kind of commentary.
thank you for your honesty.
@ attacking the saproling-ready Jade Mage with a 1 toughness wolf, that was one of those punts I was talking about. that was just careless attack.
That is also the kind of thing I am looking for. thanks.
Alright, 8-4s are tougher. But you should Swiss instead of 4-3-2-2: payout's better (12 against 11 in favor of swiss), you get to play 3 matches even if you lose your first and last but not least competition's a little more relaxed so you possibly can draft better decks. Keep it up, nobody gets better without practice. :-)
The biggest thing that sticks out for me is a lack of understanding of existential pick values (i.e., card worths in a vacuum, ignoring what you have and what you've passed/been passed). Until you have a grasp of this, no amount of work on the little things will help, because you'll still be picking all the wrong cards, even if for all the right reasons.
Two examples stick out: 1. P1P3, Lurking Crocodile. That pick is indefensible! It's helpful to have us tell you what you should have taken (if memory serves... Wring Flesh on power level, perhaps Mana Leak if you have a strong preference for U/W), but you need to understand why you chose the card, and then correct that judgment error.
2. Attacking Sacred Wolf into Jade Mage + 2G open. Two things could have caused this:
A) you did not understand that Jade Mage's activation only costs 2G (in which case you cannot possible evaluate it properly at the draft table!) or,
B) you were careless with your attack. This also reflects a lack of understanding of existential card strength. When you see Jade Mage in a draft, you should be thinking about all of its possibilities, including decimating X/1 attackers, a major part of this format. When someone plays it against you, since you have thought of this while evaluating the card in a vacuum, you will think "oh man, I need to deal with that if I ever want to attack with an X/1, or even win on the ground if I don't deal with it soon." Then you will look at your board and think "crap, I have a 3/1 in play that is now neutralized." From existential card evaluation comes in-round contextual card evaluation.
I give this advice from personal experience -- I happen to struggle with existential card evaluation as well. It takes me actually playing games with cards to really understand their true impact(Mortarpod, for example, didn't seem like one of the top cards in the set when I first saw it).
you could have totally been fine being just RW or GW. I personally would have gone RW splash doom blade. You had shock, o-ring, doom blade, fireball, and incinerate, along with 2 serras and Gideon's Lawkeeper. Your removal was kind of nuts.
I had a sealed SOM block that I did well with that was greedy like that though. Sometimes, you just get there.
More on 12 Posts will come next week. But this time the mono Blue version.
And thanks for the comments everyone.
LE
I can't really provide you with much advice regarding theory, but I would suggest you record and narrate your drafts (if not your matches as well). Talking to yourself is a good way (I've found) to decide the correct pick and it would also help others know why you took the card you did. Other people on this site can then offer advice about what you picked with more detail and in relation to what you were thinking.
PS: How do you embed videos? I can't for the life of me figure it out. Is it as simple as copying and pasting the embed code given by youtube, or do you need to do something more?
On your next one, if you don't mind that is - I'd love to comment with how I'd pick vs how I'd pick in hindsight. Mostly because I'm finding my hypothetical picks don't match some of the pro-sounding comments here. If anyone had feedback there that'll be cool to. I've literally only done 3 drafts so far, love the format but not the cost, so gotta pace myself until I can nail it :)
I saw a whole bunch of complicated looking stats and graphs on the official forums. It looks like if your in the bad (33% chance of winning) or mediocre (34-65% chance of winning) then the outcome is much the same for Swiss vs 4-3-2-2, but you do get more chances at winning in Swiss. Once you hit the "pro" percentile then 8-4 is the best payout - but it's also likely the competition is also much more fierce.
At least with Swiss, even if your rubbish (like me), you get to play more games :)
I downloaded the mp3 to my itouch today. Hopefully I will get a chance to listen soon and comment on that "Nothing" remark in the Whatcha been playin' section and I look forward to hearing about Keya's modern exploits.
lastsasquatch you are right and that was one the most stupid arguments i ever heard from a wizards employee. the banning process was just a joke and tom showed many times in his previous articles that he does not know much about the competitive game (seriously)
i was hoping you'd elaborate more on 12 posts. After your article i started playing with the deck and i loved it. Great fun. However i think sideboard needs to be revised and i need some suggestions on how to play mirror games.
You can't just make a new fresh format when a meta already exists, all you do is take some decks out and leave others in. People had played with what is essentially this card pool for a long time, the decks are mostly known, it is only an exciting new experience if you have never played old Extended/Overextended.
I agree with your assessment on the ban list LE, although I would have liked to have seen SFM come out to play in a format with Bob and Goyf. I'm confident Jace, MM, BB and Ancestral will all be off the banned list eventually. Jitte will probably come off too, it is barely good enough for legacy these days.
Cards like BB are really not a problem, since not only is Fae not the best deck in the room, but extremely strong hate exists (Mirran Crusader, GSS, Volcanic Fallout).
This format is also sure to have some Ad-Nauseum combo deck with Angels Grace and whatever kill condition it feels like. Ditto there will be a Teachings port, although I don't know what the modern targets will be as I haven't played the card in quite some time.
The show is getting better and better. I still like music, but whatever. I'll let the rest of your fanbase help you to decide that. I am just one marginal dude...
Weird week for constructed. It goes to show that a lot of stuff is viable in Standard right now if you are willing to spend some time with innovating/tweaking. I am happy with the overall health of the general metagame.
RE Modern Question of the week:
It is hard to tell from a theoretical standpoint, which is all that I have thus far, but I think banning Bitterblossom in Modern is a bit ridiculous. Faeries were nerfed when they printed Stag and Volcanic Fallout. While the Fae do have more viable answers available to kill Stags these days, Volcanic Fallout is still a decent stall tactic for red based decks to squeak wins from the Fae. Also one must consider that Faeries were pushed out of the Old Extended metagame because of the prominence of Punishing Fire + Grove of the Burnwillows. If Modern starts to revolve around that interaction, you can bet that any deck with a bunch of x/2's is going to have a hard time ever winning (which is why I think Elves and Glimpse of Nature were also fine in the format).
I don't know, there is probably a bias here from me as well because Faeries is my pet deck. I realize they aren't trying to have a "Previous Standard All Star Ported Deck" format, but the measures they are taking against control strategies are a bit hyperbolic, in my opinion.
Reading your thoughts on the ban list makes me think you didn't read Lapille's article on the bannings for the Pro Tour. First of all, in addition to the community cup ban list, they banned any consistent turn 3 kills, which were the ones that you said made perfect sense. Then they banned mystic, which also makes sense, because it's broken.
He said that scapeshift was dominant, and you said it wasn't, so I've got nothing to go on there, just a differing of opinion.
Those were all the cards that were banned for being too powerful (note that doesn't include Jace). Then the reason they banned bitterblossom wasn't because of power, but because of public opinion. Modern, for this PT atleast, is supposed to be a fresh, fun, likable format, and too many people disliked playing against faeries in the past to risk having a large amount of the field be fae.
After all these bannings, no blue cards had been banned. If they were going to go through with the rest of the bannings, they had to make sure that blue control decks couldn't just jam the best blue cards and be the best deck in the room, so they banned good blue cards like Jace and visions, and then banned misstep rather than put so much pressure on the aggro decks right out of the gate.
The bannings weren't all due to overwhelming power, just because they wanted all new decks to come out of the pro tour, as what will hopefully be a fun exercise for a lot of people, and very very fun to watch. I for one am on the edge of my seat to see what kinds of decks people end up playing.
Doesn't the Restore Balance deck just lose to an early Ancient Grudge or Hurkyl's Recall? Seems like artifact hate is so powerful that CIPT artifact "lands" are just asking for a beating.
I think what Wizards is trying to do with this banned list is closer to Vintage/Legacy banned lists than to Ext/Std banned lists.
A banned list for Standard/Extended is created in response to problems, a banned list for Vintage/Legacy (eternal formats like Modern) are precautionary, so that's why the list is pretty long (and we could imagine unbannings to happen often, at least, to test the waters).
However, I also think Wizard's wants Modern to have its own identity, part of the problem of the more recent Extended (called Super Standard for a reason) is that they don't want Modern decks to be ported from other formats. That's why Bitterblossom is banned, that's why Valakut is banned.
Cards like Jace and Ancestral Visions, I think, are more to promote deck diversity (all blue decks will probably jam a large number of those cards before starting any decklist in general, I could be wrong but that seemed to be Wizards' reasoning).
What seems to be the priority is that Wizards wants to see decks they haven't seen before. I'm of a similar mindset- what excites me most about your metagame prediction is the Twelvepost deck because I've never heard of that deck before (it's probably too weak for Legacy and impossible to build in Extended) and those kinds of decks are more of what Wizards wants. In general I think people are being too pessimistic about these banned cards- you can't use them, okay. So start thinking, and start brewing.
Chrome mox can not be played with the cascade-suspend combos! I don't think Mox actually needs to be banned and in Overextended many combo decks did not run it. It is actually fairly balanced due to the loss of 1 card, combo decks just tend to prefer rituals which give a mana boost that is larger even though it does not stick around. Mox was not banned in Overextended and the format was fine.
I think you are overreacting to Restore Balance. I do think it is much stronger than Living End as a "substitute" to Hypergenesis but I'm not sure it is unfair, and I doubt it is that much strong that it will be banned. That said, WotC should certainly NOT ban it before the PT. What they pulled off was already bad enough as a pseudo-emergency banning. I do think WotC missed it though, as it is relatively consistent on turn 3. This is one of the flaws of their rushed ban list, although personally I think Restore Balance can stay. Perhaps the best would be actually banning the instant 3 mana cascade spell, making the combo sorcery speed and unban Hypergenesis (the others are sorcery speed and one of them needs a creature to target as well).
Other than that I think you covered almost every deck possibility - perhaps Dredge could be mentioned in the run down as you are presenting options that may not work well enough as well, but you commented on Bridge not being banned in the other part of the article. And I think you may have wanted to emphasize Empty the Warrens and Grapeshot as real alternatives for storm combo (Grapeshot and Swath make an improvised sort of Tendrils).
I think Gifts Ungiven is going to be an important card for the format.
I disagree with aspects of your proposed ban list but perhaps I'll comment on that later.
Ivo.
Looking at your first draft, I appreciate it's frustrating to lose to mana flood and then mana screw and goodness knows MODO seems to suffer a lot from this but I think in this case maybe you can attribute some of it to yourself too?
In the first game, you suffer from mana flood. But! you kept a four land hand and the spells you kept weren't either going to win you the game or help you draw out of it if you didn't draw gas. You should ask yourself what do you need to win with each starting hand. Perhaps a mulligan to six might have been more fruitful?
In the second game, you suffer from mana screw. But! your deck contains only 4 playable creatures at 3 mana or less and one of them needs two blue. 14 cards in your deck are 4 mana or more, and often require two of one colour. In your draft you need to pay attention to the curve. You needed more cheap creatures. M12 is faster than M11, 2-drops are king!
I really appreciate people responding to this. I am going to continue the series.
Most likely, I am going to do a Swiss next time, just for practice. The vids will be more interesting too.
The person who won this draft was a UB flier deck. Again, not the strongest archetype, but he got all of the awesome blue cards that I passed + Sorin's Vengeance, Sorin Markov, Sengir Vampire, and a Doom Blade...
I am taking everything said here in consideration. I appreciate people hedging a little so it seems as if you are not totally blasting my decisions, but, seriously, until three weeks ago I could count on one hand how many drafts/limited events that I had ever done in 10+ years of playing Magic. I have NEVER cube drafted. No. Really.
So, everything you guys are saying is true and I welcome the honesty, brutal as it might seem. I need to work both on my drafting and my play. I thank the advice that has come forth so far.
I'm not so sure about the judging on Divination. Everyone seems to bash it but I still think it's a pretty awesome card. Whenever I (could) cast it during one of my matches it always felt good, but then again that's because I built my deck to have a strong quality of cards, so my two draws were bound to be good.
I think that might be where Divination's hidden power lies. If your deck isn't great, a Divination might not help you as much, but even still, I think the aggressiveness of this format is a little overhyped and I foresee it slowing down as the format matures.
It's definitely weaker in draft, you have a point there, but I'd still love to have it in a deck that's not too much blue (and may be missing a Merfolk Looter or two). Then again, I don't have much experience, you might be right. I just love drawing cards.
Great topic ... I just tried my first 3 drafts yesterday, I enjoyed it but it turned out to be more expensive than I was hoping. On the plus side I got some great cards out of it (including a Garruk, almost makes up for the expense... almost!).
After the first couple picks I would have gone either Black or Red and stuck to it, very close call and decision probably would have been based on my mood and most recent bad experiences. But after reading the responses, White/Blue would definitely have been the winner - although even now that wouldn't be obvious to me until into the 2nd pack.
Hope you post more stories!
It is ok to get a little more greedy in sealed, where the bombs are and removal are more prevalent. It is definitely wrong to splash Divination however, the card is already borderline, and definitely not worth splashing.
Doom Blade and fireball are good because they are going to be answers to just about anything, or with fireball, sometimes win you the game on the spot. There are plenty of decks where an on curve divination isn't even good enough. Is the hope that you play it on curve and draw into more of the lands that help you cast your spells? I honestly don't even like it very much when I am heavy blue. Even the sealed format is aggressive and if you don't build your board turns 1-3 you are probably in trouble against all but the most controlling decks.
Don't ever draft 4-3-2-2, the only time it is OK is when it is the only available option, as will eventually be the case with Scars/M11 once Innistrad roles out.
There are two important aspects to drafting, which is the draft + deck building, and the technical play. I'm not trying to be rude here, but you need help on both, so play Swiss, you will get a ton of practice and you actually get more value in the long run than 4-3-2-2 (11 is less than 12).
8-4, which eventually is all you will draft, is just a different monster entirely. You need to play nice and pass colors appropriately because you need your neighbors in different colors than you if you intend to win, and you need to pick up on signals. You also need to draft either a very consistent deck with 0 splashes, or a very powerful deck that is willing to splash Doom blade/O-ring/Pacifism/Incinerate. It is ok to draft a worthless pile of junk with some aggressive picks every 4 or 5 drafts than it is to draft very mediocre decks and consistently not get to the finals.
8-4's are particularly nice because you don't have to waste time if you get a garbage deck, which happens, and you are rewarded for good drafting and play in the long run. This is the biggest draw over Swiss and Sealed, where having a bad deck/bad pool and having to grind it out for a lot of losses and maybe a pack is brutal.
With the value of mythics/rares in M11, it is impossible to go infinite through 8-4 (or any) drafts, you would need to get to/win the finals in basically half your drafts which is unrealistic for even the best limited pros. If you want value, Sealed is better than draft, but has a huge time commitment. The value of M11 is truly horrendous unfortunately, the most valuable card is worth ~12 tickets, and many mythics are worth 2-4, with Primeval Titan a whopping 6.
Hey, haven't gotten around to the whole article yet, but what I wanted to say doesn't really reflect as much (most people have discussed the actual draft picks).
As for drafting, I think 4-3-2-2's are best if you want to go by efficiency. As a default, it's my preferred choice because you could go 1-1 drop and still have 2 packs for your troubles where as in an 8-4 you don't get anything and it's such a loss (not to mention the morale drop!)
Swiss drafts are obviously best because you have the best chance to win a pack, but it takes a pretty long time and from what I've seen/heard (could be completely wrong on this), you don't really play against great people and it's hard to get your skill level up.
Unfortunately, I can't help you much in M12 draft, I'm having enough trouble doing well myself but good luck in the future!
Yea, looking back at it, I guess I was in a pretty greedy mind state. I think the best way I can rationalize it, is that I was deliberately trying to not build it like I would an SOM sealed (where having like 2 cards of a color is fine because of all the artifacts) but because my white was strong and somewhat numerous and I did have three artifacts, going two colors with a tiny splash would've been fine.
I enjoyed it though, playing all powerful cards (save a Grizzly Bears...ugh) was a blast to play and it makes all topdecks great if you have your colors. I'm just not sure if I'd exactly recommend it, it was hard enough to build, which I doubt I did correctly. But thanks.
this much is true as well. this is why having more eyes on this is helping me to understand. It is abundantly clear to me, as I review these picks that i did not pick up on signaling. Blue was open almost the whole time. I need to memorize pick orders. This much is true.
I also find it difficult when there are multiple playables for your archetype in a pack. How do you grade which is the best pick...I need more practice, but I also need some of this kind of commentary.
thank you for your honesty.
@ attacking the saproling-ready Jade Mage with a 1 toughness wolf, that was one of those punts I was talking about. that was just careless attack.
That is also the kind of thing I am looking for. thanks.
@pressure: again, go swiss while you learn the format. ;-)
Alright, 8-4s are tougher. But you should Swiss instead of 4-3-2-2: payout's better (12 against 11 in favor of swiss), you get to play 3 matches even if you lose your first and last but not least competition's a little more relaxed so you possibly can draft better decks. Keep it up, nobody gets better without practice. :-)
Hi Andrew,
The biggest thing that sticks out for me is a lack of understanding of existential pick values (i.e., card worths in a vacuum, ignoring what you have and what you've passed/been passed). Until you have a grasp of this, no amount of work on the little things will help, because you'll still be picking all the wrong cards, even if for all the right reasons.
Two examples stick out: 1. P1P3, Lurking Crocodile. That pick is indefensible! It's helpful to have us tell you what you should have taken (if memory serves... Wring Flesh on power level, perhaps Mana Leak if you have a strong preference for U/W), but you need to understand why you chose the card, and then correct that judgment error.
2. Attacking Sacred Wolf into Jade Mage + 2G open. Two things could have caused this:
A) you did not understand that Jade Mage's activation only costs 2G (in which case you cannot possible evaluate it properly at the draft table!) or,
B) you were careless with your attack. This also reflects a lack of understanding of existential card strength. When you see Jade Mage in a draft, you should be thinking about all of its possibilities, including decimating X/1 attackers, a major part of this format. When someone plays it against you, since you have thought of this while evaluating the card in a vacuum, you will think "oh man, I need to deal with that if I ever want to attack with an X/1, or even win on the ground if I don't deal with it soon." Then you will look at your board and think "crap, I have a 3/1 in play that is now neutralized." From existential card evaluation comes in-round contextual card evaluation.
I give this advice from personal experience -- I happen to struggle with existential card evaluation as well. It takes me actually playing games with cards to really understand their true impact(Mortarpod, for example, didn't seem like one of the top cards in the set when I first saw it).
you could have totally been fine being just RW or GW. I personally would have gone RW splash doom blade. You had shock, o-ring, doom blade, fireball, and incinerate, along with 2 serras and Gideon's Lawkeeper. Your removal was kind of nuts.
I had a sealed SOM block that I did well with that was greedy like that though. Sometimes, you just get there.
I like the deck. Good Job.