And I also noticed that the spell-land in the White/Black deck is wrong, I meant to insert Sejiri Steppe for the protection effect not Halimar Depths. And the total card count is wrong too.
Oh my, I definitely need a better proofreading routine. ^_^;
1988 to 1995 was the "16-bit" era of video games? That's my guess.
I like the idea of Mirrodin Besieged cards being "mirrored". Waaaay back in Kamigawa, they toyed with the "day & night" theme for flip cards (Erayo, Soratami Ascendant). Keeping track of whether it was day or night was problematic, so Richard Garfield was asked what he would do. He said he liked the idea of a grunt doing something spectacular and becoming legendary.
In the next podcast/post, will you give your thoughts on the legacy pre-constructed decks that will be sold November 8th?
I strongly disagree that wall sucks against the mirror. It just sits there and essentially fogs half of your life total over a number of turns. I also think the wall is fine against most aggressive dekcs in the format in general, and I will almost always play it in any metalcraft decks I happen to run. That said, I do agree that instill infection is better, but I think the wall is a perfectly defensible choice.
Good cover on the next pauper Infect craze. Just one thing: in the UGb Unblockable Infection list, the sum of the other spells is 22. Which one wasn't supposed to be there? 3x Harrow, maybe?
I think I am already a bit wiser (hopefully) than when I started my first drafts. I really wanted to write the article as close to my experience and thinking during theses first few drafts as possible. That is also why I just included the lessons learnt from just after that drafts.
You can be assured that I am reading quiet a lot about drafting. I am currently also having a closer look at power and toughness of creatures concerning the new infect creatures. But I am not sure yet if I will publish my analysis. I wrote a draft but it does not seem to be that intersting as a read.
During the time it took to finish and publish this article I won a M11 and also a SOM draft (with blue). There seem to be already quiet a lot of articles about good and winning decks. So I am not so sure if I should invest time to write about drafts that I won.
I prefer to see it as 'Sure, you have an RPG and I have a knife. But you know what, I'm so good that I can still beat you, and even if I don't I'll get close enough to make you wake up in the middle of the night with flashbacks of impending blades..'
As I see it, regarding arrest, shatter and the like, the sooner your opponent plays them the better. I'm more than willing to sacrifice one of my threats to protect my bombs (or better threats).
Clone Shell: well, this one is tricky; In my opinion, in limited is mostly irrelevant, unless you have a high creature bomb count it's pretty safe to assume that, in absence of scry effects, there is nothing worthy under it. Still it's just a vanilla 2/2 so I'll probably just wait a bit before doing something. It would be a lot better to cast something bigger and see if your opponent is eager to trade it sending it in battle anyway or play something to block it with, like a Sylvok or Neurok replica. In absence of any of those, I probably won't cry much over a spent Skinrender to remove it. I would be more hesitant to play a Scrapmelter because it can take out bigger threats than Skinrender so I'll probably just take one or even two more hits depending on the board state, of course.
Wurmcoil Engine: simply put, it has to be removed ASAP. In absence of exile effects, a Scrapmelter is the closest best removal you can use against it because it destroys the big one and can take down one of the resulting wurms. The Skinrender is sub-optimal and not much better than a Shatter, still you can shrink it to a more manageable size. It's obvious that you need something to race veeeeery quickly, you need 6 damage every turn to break even.
No waiting strategy is viable against wurmcoil unless you have access to infinite chump material and a good deal of damage dealers.
Regarding your questions: Clone Shell is a tricky creature and what I would do against it depends highly on what the board situation is at that moment. I know I killed one with Galvanic Blast in one game because I had to kill it (to protect my Koth). Luckily nothing bad happened but you should fear the worst of course.
But as I said, before killing Clone Shell I would look at the board, look at what my opponent plays and only then I would decide.
I must admit that Arrest is a horrible card against me. It shuts down almost all my creatures and there is nothing I can do to get rid of it off of my creature. But I have enough win conditions so I don't worry too much about it.
Regarding that Boros deck you describe: No, I wouldn't "waste" my Skinrenders or Scrapmelters early just to get a body onto the battlefield. I would keep them in hand and wait patiently. Being patient while playing Magic is one of the hardest lessons to learn but once you "get there", you will feel that you're already getting better as a player.
So as I said I would wait. Surely that also depends on the board position too, but I think I would just draw a card and pass the turn instead of wasting my resources blindly.
Good catch! I had assumed from a first glance, that they'd taken a foil mythic or something over skittles, but an uncommon is missing. Still, it's about the biggest signal you can send!
You played too few lands in those two middle drafts, fixing and acceleration is not a reason to drop your land count, unless you have a lot of it.
Draft 1. I would cut one Preordain for one Excomunicate (if you want Scroll Thief to work you need to use all the available means to clear the way for him :D). Beside that, this is one pretty solid deck.
Draft 2. Don't play Unholy Strengths maindeck, board them in game two if you're playing aggro and your opponent is light on removal. Primal Cocoon is also not so great. So, you kick those out and put in that Plumet with three additional lands. Maybe even switch one of the Boars for Tutor, to find that lone Captivating Vampire.
Draft 3. Cut Volcanic Strength, Thunder Strike(s) and Goblin Tunneler (not so great with that many big creatures).
Draft 4. I don't think you need blue here, but even so, that is more of a reason to play another Ranger for fixing. I would've focused on green/red with all the big stuff + 18 lands. Also Llanowar Elves is not a reason to switch to ramp during draft.
I would suggest to read more articles about drafting. There is one good website: http://draftbetter.com/ where you can read a lot draft examples from MTGO users with (sometimes) detailed explanations of all picks and gameplay.
Btw. I played my first draft yesterday (created account two weeks ago), altough I've been in "Magic: Offline" for quite some time. So I jump into M11 4-3-2-2 and draft a solid near mono black deck (with a light shade of green). Faced a blue/white opponent in round one, and outplayed him, winning game one, but I lose on time in second game because of too much scrying with Viscera Seer and Reasembling Skeleton. :/
I am new to Magic, and loved this article because of the insight it gives me on why and when you sideboard what. This gives me a much better understanding of when and why to do what. I have a burning question though:
What do you do when you face for instance a red / white opponent that plays clone shell, wurmcoil, arrest etc. This opponent isnt playing anything and you have stuff like scrapmelter and skinrender in your hand.
Do you play them, negating the effects from these cards to get an early advantage? Or do you wait so you can get the max. out of those cards and kill something with it? And would you hit the clone shells?
I think that you were right to play a Boros Control deck, but you loss to aggro decks because of the lack of darkstell myr, the 0/1 wall can be pretty amazing in this format, also the lack of arrest in your Boros build was wrong, I think you should have cut 2 koths 1 elspeth and the phoenixes, because you don't have a lot of artifacts to make the metalcraft worth and bulid it with Darkstell myr and arrest. Its only my humble opinion, nice article :)
P1P3 I would have taken the replica, still card advantage and also a creature to chump when needed.
P3P3 The rage is awesome in infect, makes blocking decisions for your opp difficult and if he doesn't block all of your infectors you will certainly get in for 4 poisonus damage.
P3P4 Infection cantrips, wall just sucks against mirror and dies to almost every removal in the format.
P3P6 You don't need to worry about shatter, and the equipment makes your infect guys better.
P3P9 Carrion call nets you 2 infect guys it's clearly the pick there.
Overall good article, keep up the good work :)
"B: Opponent pumps Carapace Forger, killing Cystbearer, while still becoming a -2/1, and Skittles kills Glint Hawk."
Actually this wouldn't happen. The Cystbear wouldn't die under these circumstances, since it has first strike. The Forger would be a -2/1 after first strike damage and even if he Raged it before normal damage, it would only be a 1/3.
I realize it has no relevance to how the match played out since your opponent is always going to kill Skittles but just giving you a heads up in case it comes up again. First strike on Infect is pretty insane.
Great show as always guys, still one of my top series I like to follow.
Now what you need is a grumbly dude that you talk to once and awhile and curmudgeons about anything brought up to him. "So what do you think of the artifact theme in SOM Grumpsa?" -hamtastic, "Horrible. Let me design a set and blow some brains out, I have more creativity in my one remaining testicle than that whole corporate stooge commie devil worshiping company. Where are the chicks in little metal outfits? Hmm? Hrmm? Case made I say." Grumpsa-
Yes Rocket Propelled Grenade > Role Playing Game. :P But yeah those knives are fast. In close Id rather a trusty knife than an unweildy grenade launcher but really who doesn't like big explosions?
Regarding ripping off Harry Potter: The hippogriff is not original to that series. In fact, this creature has been written about since at least the 1500s. Stag is just a name for a deer. So I don't think Wizards is ripping off Harry Potter exactly. They borrow much of their creatures and names from various mythologies, the same way Rowling did in the Harry Potter series.
Regarding tainted strike: It is not insane, but it can be quite good. The thing about infect is that your best chance of sticking your opponent with poison counters is not hitting them with a Cystbearer. You have to have ways to surprise them or get them through outside of combat. This is why proliferate and cards like Ichor Rats and Untamed Might are so good. Tainted Strike can do the same. You attack with one of your noninfect creatures and opponents takes the damage because it is not poison counters. Then you hit him with tainted strike. Occasionally you can even use Tainted Strike as a fog to turn your opponent's would-be lethal damage to you into poison counters so you survive the turn. So while it's not a top pick, in your deck with 4 non-infect guys, I think Tainted Strike would probably have been playable in place of Ratchet Bomb. The Bomb is likely to get destroyed before it can activate. And it is somewhat difficult to use without killing your own stuff when you are running cheap infect creatures.
True I am mixing terms a bit, usually it seems the interest of most is std and while there is cheap introduction in things like dredge/goblins it equates to a relative definition of cheap and some wont be able to drop that much at once, like I said I'm going to look at this in more detail in a later article
No, see, what happened was, the shining excellence from the rest of your article blinded me from the reference to someone as mediocre as myself... yeah... that's what happened.
Yep, that's the one. :)
And I also noticed that the spell-land in the White/Black deck is wrong, I meant to insert Sejiri Steppe for the protection effect not Halimar Depths. And the total card count is wrong too.
Oh my, I definitely need a better proofreading routine. ^_^;
1988 to 1995 was the "16-bit" era of video games? That's my guess.
I like the idea of Mirrodin Besieged cards being "mirrored". Waaaay back in Kamigawa, they toyed with the "day & night" theme for flip cards (Erayo, Soratami Ascendant). Keeping track of whether it was day or night was problematic, so Richard Garfield was asked what he would do. He said he liked the idea of a grunt doing something spectacular and becoming legendary.
In the next podcast/post, will you give your thoughts on the legacy pre-constructed decks that will be sold November 8th?
Not sure why this article was written. Is there an audience for new players who need proof as to running enough lands?
I strongly disagree that wall sucks against the mirror. It just sits there and essentially fogs half of your life total over a number of turns. I also think the wall is fine against most aggressive dekcs in the format in general, and I will almost always play it in any metalcraft decks I happen to run. That said, I do agree that instill infection is better, but I think the wall is a perfectly defensible choice.
Good cover on the next pauper Infect craze. Just one thing: in the UGb Unblockable Infection list, the sum of the other spells is 22. Which one wasn't supposed to be there? 3x Harrow, maybe?
Thanks for the comments everyone. It helps!
Thanks for the feedback.
I think I am already a bit wiser (hopefully) than when I started my first drafts. I really wanted to write the article as close to my experience and thinking during theses first few drafts as possible. That is also why I just included the lessons learnt from just after that drafts.
You can be assured that I am reading quiet a lot about drafting. I am currently also having a closer look at power and toughness of creatures concerning the new infect creatures. But I am not sure yet if I will publish my analysis. I wrote a draft but it does not seem to be that intersting as a read.
During the time it took to finish and publish this article I won a M11 and also a SOM draft (with blue). There seem to be already quiet a lot of articles about good and winning decks. So I am not so sure if I should invest time to write about drafts that I won.
I prefer to see it as 'Sure, you have an RPG and I have a knife. But you know what, I'm so good that I can still beat you, and even if I don't I'll get close enough to make you wake up in the middle of the night with flashbacks of impending blades..'
As I see it, regarding arrest, shatter and the like, the sooner your opponent plays them the better. I'm more than willing to sacrifice one of my threats to protect my bombs (or better threats).
Clone Shell: well, this one is tricky; In my opinion, in limited is mostly irrelevant, unless you have a high creature bomb count it's pretty safe to assume that, in absence of scry effects, there is nothing worthy under it. Still it's just a vanilla 2/2 so I'll probably just wait a bit before doing something. It would be a lot better to cast something bigger and see if your opponent is eager to trade it sending it in battle anyway or play something to block it with, like a Sylvok or Neurok replica. In absence of any of those, I probably won't cry much over a spent Skinrender to remove it. I would be more hesitant to play a Scrapmelter because it can take out bigger threats than Skinrender so I'll probably just take one or even two more hits depending on the board state, of course.
Wurmcoil Engine: simply put, it has to be removed ASAP. In absence of exile effects, a Scrapmelter is the closest best removal you can use against it because it destroys the big one and can take down one of the resulting wurms. The Skinrender is sub-optimal and not much better than a Shatter, still you can shrink it to a more manageable size. It's obvious that you need something to race veeeeery quickly, you need 6 damage every turn to break even.
No waiting strategy is viable against wurmcoil unless you have access to infinite chump material and a good deal of damage dealers.
Hi Dopey, I'm glad you enjoyed the article.
Regarding your questions: Clone Shell is a tricky creature and what I would do against it depends highly on what the board situation is at that moment. I know I killed one with Galvanic Blast in one game because I had to kill it (to protect my Koth). Luckily nothing bad happened but you should fear the worst of course.
But as I said, before killing Clone Shell I would look at the board, look at what my opponent plays and only then I would decide.
I must admit that Arrest is a horrible card against me. It shuts down almost all my creatures and there is nothing I can do to get rid of it off of my creature. But I have enough win conditions so I don't worry too much about it.
Regarding that Boros deck you describe: No, I wouldn't "waste" my Skinrenders or Scrapmelters early just to get a body onto the battlefield. I would keep them in hand and wait patiently. Being patient while playing Magic is one of the hardest lessons to learn but once you "get there", you will feel that you're already getting better as a player.
So as I said I would wait. Surely that also depends on the board position too, but I think I would just draw a card and pass the turn instead of wasting my resources blindly.
Hope this helps!
LE
Good catch! I had assumed from a first glance, that they'd taken a foil mythic or something over skittles, but an uncommon is missing. Still, it's about the biggest signal you can send!
You played too few lands in those two middle drafts, fixing and acceleration is not a reason to drop your land count, unless you have a lot of it.
Draft 1. I would cut one Preordain for one Excomunicate (if you want Scroll Thief to work you need to use all the available means to clear the way for him :D). Beside that, this is one pretty solid deck.
Draft 2. Don't play Unholy Strengths maindeck, board them in game two if you're playing aggro and your opponent is light on removal. Primal Cocoon is also not so great. So, you kick those out and put in that Plumet with three additional lands. Maybe even switch one of the Boars for Tutor, to find that lone Captivating Vampire.
Draft 3. Cut Volcanic Strength, Thunder Strike(s) and Goblin Tunneler (not so great with that many big creatures).
Draft 4. I don't think you need blue here, but even so, that is more of a reason to play another Ranger for fixing. I would've focused on green/red with all the big stuff + 18 lands. Also Llanowar Elves is not a reason to switch to ramp during draft.
I would suggest to read more articles about drafting. There is one good website: http://draftbetter.com/ where you can read a lot draft examples from MTGO users with (sometimes) detailed explanations of all picks and gameplay.
Btw. I played my first draft yesterday (created account two weeks ago), altough I've been in "Magic: Offline" for quite some time. So I jump into M11 4-3-2-2 and draft a solid near mono black deck (with a light shade of green). Faced a blue/white opponent in round one, and outplayed him, winning game one, but I lose on time in second game because of too much scrying with Viscera Seer and Reasembling Skeleton. :/
Not sure i would want to be hit by a RPG up close would kinda hurt
Changelings ........bah
and last ... i need the 3 tiks for winning, wash your neighbours car would be quicker and i am sure would net you more than 3 tiks.
Hi!
I am new to Magic, and loved this article because of the insight it gives me on why and when you sideboard what. This gives me a much better understanding of when and why to do what. I have a burning question though:
What do you do when you face for instance a red / white opponent that plays clone shell, wurmcoil, arrest etc. This opponent isnt playing anything and you have stuff like scrapmelter and skinrender in your hand.
Do you play them, negating the effects from these cards to get an early advantage? Or do you wait so you can get the max. out of those cards and kill something with it? And would you hit the clone shells?
Thanks!
I think that you were right to play a Boros Control deck, but you loss to aggro decks because of the lack of darkstell myr, the 0/1 wall can be pretty amazing in this format, also the lack of arrest in your Boros build was wrong, I think you should have cut 2 koths 1 elspeth and the phoenixes, because you don't have a lot of artifacts to make the metalcraft worth and bulid it with Darkstell myr and arrest. Its only my humble opinion, nice article :)
P1P3 I would have taken the replica, still card advantage and also a creature to chump when needed.
P3P3 The rage is awesome in infect, makes blocking decisions for your opp difficult and if he doesn't block all of your infectors you will certainly get in for 4 poisonus damage.
P3P4 Infection cantrips, wall just sucks against mirror and dies to almost every removal in the format.
P3P6 You don't need to worry about shatter, and the equipment makes your infect guys better.
P3P9 Carrion call nets you 2 infect guys it's clearly the pick there.
Overall good article, keep up the good work :)
Magnetic Mountain is indeed based on an Arabian Nights story as are all the cards/characters in that set.
"B: Opponent pumps Carapace Forger, killing Cystbearer, while still becoming a -2/1, and Skittles kills Glint Hawk."
Actually this wouldn't happen. The Cystbear wouldn't die under these circumstances, since it has first strike. The Forger would be a -2/1 after first strike damage and even if he Raged it before normal damage, it would only be a 1/3.
I realize it has no relevance to how the match played out since your opponent is always going to kill Skittles but just giving you a heads up in case it comes up again. First strike on Infect is pretty insane.
Great show as always guys, still one of my top series I like to follow.
Now what you need is a grumbly dude that you talk to once and awhile and curmudgeons about anything brought up to him. "So what do you think of the artifact theme in SOM Grumpsa?" -hamtastic, "Horrible. Let me design a set and blow some brains out, I have more creativity in my one remaining testicle than that whole corporate stooge commie devil worshiping company. Where are the chicks in little metal outfits? Hmm? Hrmm? Case made I say." Grumpsa-
hehe,
X-
Yes Rocket Propelled Grenade > Role Playing Game. :P But yeah those knives are fast. In close Id rather a trusty knife than an unweildy grenade launcher but really who doesn't like big explosions?
Interesting. Thanks for pointing that out. I made a few comments in reply.
Regarding ripping off Harry Potter: The hippogriff is not original to that series. In fact, this creature has been written about since at least the 1500s. Stag is just a name for a deer. So I don't think Wizards is ripping off Harry Potter exactly. They borrow much of their creatures and names from various mythologies, the same way Rowling did in the Harry Potter series.
Regarding tainted strike: It is not insane, but it can be quite good. The thing about infect is that your best chance of sticking your opponent with poison counters is not hitting them with a Cystbearer. You have to have ways to surprise them or get them through outside of combat. This is why proliferate and cards like Ichor Rats and Untamed Might are so good. Tainted Strike can do the same. You attack with one of your noninfect creatures and opponents takes the damage because it is not poison counters. Then you hit him with tainted strike. Occasionally you can even use Tainted Strike as a fog to turn your opponent's would-be lethal damage to you into poison counters so you survive the turn. So while it's not a top pick, in your deck with 4 non-infect guys, I think Tainted Strike would probably have been playable in place of Ratchet Bomb. The Bomb is likely to get destroyed before it can activate. And it is somewhat difficult to use without killing your own stuff when you are running cheap infect creatures.
True I am mixing terms a bit, usually it seems the interest of most is std and while there is cheap introduction in things like dredge/goblins it equates to a relative definition of cheap and some wont be able to drop that much at once, like I said I'm going to look at this in more detail in a later article
I agree with all your points.
No, see, what happened was, the shining excellence from the rest of your article blinded me from the reference to someone as mediocre as myself... yeah... that's what happened.