I agree with pretty much all of the above points!
The only one with more details is the lack of fetches. I'm a control deck, pretty much. I don't want damage if I don't have to... since I don't need the fetches for anything (no Searing Blaze, no Geopede, etc), the only 'benefit' isn't near enough for me to accept the possible extra damage from fetching.
I'll have a lot more theory and progress from the decklist in my next week's article! :)
And Goblin Guide is the stone cold nuts for any red deck. He just does too much for so little to not run. Plus, he holds a Collar and defends.
Goblin Guide on D? Hell yeah.
I don't want to "bellyache", but Skittles has won every game I've seen him played in so far. It's too easy to get him to 10 power and or give him shroud. Plus with other infect critters and abilities in play, 10 poison just adds up to damn fast. And Karona forbid there are 2 infect players at the table. If two guys wanted to team up they could easily spend an afternoon bushwacking folks.
Scouting decks isn't hard. At the bottom of your event window, you should see the four pairings listed along with results like 2-0, 1-2, etc. Double-click on any of those lines and it'll pop up a window with the games listed, two or three of 'em. Double-click any game number, and it'll bring up the replay for that game. You can only view matches that are completed, in-progress matches won't let you watch yet.
There's also a button that says "Current Round", you can click it for a dropdown menu to view earlier rounds if you want to look back. All of this is only available until the final round of the draft finishes though, then it all goes away.
With three Auriok Sunchaser, the Liquimetal Coating is actually quite good. It's one thing to say a deck is at 15-16 artifacts total, the number the pros recommend to get consistent metalcraft even in the face of opponents sometimes destroying one or two with removal. But what TURN do you get the metalcraft to start on? This is a fast beatdown deck with a lot of low cost fliers trying to win before my opponent gets their big spells online. If I have a turn 2 Sunchaser, I don't want to activate his metalcraft with a 3 drop artifact, a 4 drop artifact, and a 5 drop artifact.
Consider a start where I get a 1-drop artifact, 2-drop Auriok Sunchaser, 3-drop Liquimetal Coating. Then I can turn one of my lands into an artifact and BAM, I'm swinging for three in the air on turn 3. It will also get me more quickly to 4 artifacts in play, the point at which you can swing with a Sunchaser knowing that your opponent can't just turn it into a 1/1 ground guy with any Shatter effect, and then block it. Any game where I have two Sunchasers out, having quick reliable metalcraft becomes extremely valuable. I sided the Coating out in the final game, along with 2-3 other artifacts, and his deck being so loaded with artifact removal kept me off metalcraft, with two Sunchasers in play. Had they been 3/3 flyers for even a couple turns of the game, I probably would have won.
I agree that infect is risky to jump into. I imagine I'll try it at some point, but all the other archetypes leave you with a more playable deck when they don't come together, in my opinion. The infect deck just has too many cards that aren't playable on their own, but only when you are in a solid poison deck. There are a few though. The poison guy that puts out a -1/-1 counter when it dies is no worse than Fume Spitter, probably a little better. And Darksteel Axe is an ideal card for a poison drafter to get, but if you switch into any other deck later in the draft - hey, Axe is always good! I do anticipate I'll get at least one trainwreck out of trying to draft poison though... Hopefully I'll get some killer 3-0 poison deck too at some point.
Ugh, I don't know, I triple checked and had someone else run over it. No red lines... I'll just have to be more careful next time. Glad you liked it. Also you were the only target I had, secretly I love your format XD.
Nice to see a SOM draft report up so quickly. For a first online draft, things went pretty smoothly, with solid white flowing and two bombs (the golem and the dragon; both better than anything I've opened yet in 4 drafts - why do all of my SOM packs open up with a rare land? whine whine whine...). The only mistake I saw was maindecking the liquimetal coating, since you had no artifact removal other than the dragon and enough artifacts that you were going to be achieving metalcraft pretty effortlessly anyway. Hard to believe a riddlesmith went 14th in a pack - it's a pretty good card, as you noted.
How much effort is involved in scouting other decks between games? I'm not sure how to do it. It'd be nice to see what other people are playing, and save me the tedium of playing casual decks or doing housework between rounds.
Infect is just one of the several archetypes out there, and is a bit risky to jump into, but I lost to a good red/green infect deck with multiple corpse curs and good removal.
Forget Harem? NEVER!!! although I would recommend forgetting Braids when you build a deck. Tried that once, and the results were not pretty.
Loved the article, although it looks like you turned your spellcheck off. What do you mean Hanna and Mirri's girl time at the spring isn't relevant? Without it we wouldn't have the oh-so-memorable card (Natural Spring).
And my final comment is that you missed the #1 Badass lady in Dominaria. That title belongs to (Mistform Ultimus), cause it can be any lady you want! ROTFLOL!!!!!! sigh
But I spent ages adjusting it, and it never worked last night. I'd delete the original photo (which seemed to work), but when I uploaded my new one, hey presto there was the old one back again.
I did this about 3,000 times last night, adjusting the size of the new image every time to be sure, and gave up when it never worked. And when I log in this morning - whoops there's an oddly warped version of it. Might be because in frustration, the last thing I tried was a ridiculously small version (again, which gave no hint of actually working at the time).
Will try to sort out tonight, in expectation of further frustration. Or I might just join the club and upload a cat instead.
I blame AJ for this one. I was building a deck around a particular combo and mentioned Izzet to him and he straightened me out. I always associate the guildmage with the Desperate Spike combo but sometimes forget that it only works on 2cmc.
RE the cat pic: my dead cat 'Buffy' was a great actress and loved posing. This was my favorite of her pics. Sadly she died of acute renal failure from poison put in her cat food by a manufacturer who never claimed responsibility for the deed. That was at the end of 2006. Anyway I tossed it up there in response to the fellow complaining about odd looking cat pictures in people's avatars.
It is the width/height aspect ratio. If you made either smaller/larger than the amount specified by the site it stretches the photo to compensate. The result is everyone's photo is the same size. The downside is you get stretchy odd looking images.
Well one part is lack of Jaces, but yes the other is for more removal. Without looking at the list I know I have 4 Lightning Bolts and 4 Galvanic Blasts in the deck.
Thanks! I still feel like I won when I go 2-1, though I'm happier with a 3-0. Any type of queue gives you boosters for 2 match wins, that covers most or all of your next draft. Plus I got some sweet rares on top of it!
Our local FNM drafts now give out the FNM foil cards to 1st and 2nd place in each 8 man pod, which is pretty awesome. I'm gonna miss them if I haveta take a job in some other state.
And yeah, I had a blast, going to try and do another draft real soon!
Nice, really enjoyed the write-up. Haven't had a chance to draft Scars yet, so I won't give any ill-informed comments on your picks, besides to say I hope I manage to draft this well when I take the plunge. Unlucky not to win, but you had fun, so that's the main thing.
I was reading the deck creation part with interest, then got to the match reports and saw that they're video only (although at least you made a brief comment about every game). Since I mostly read Pure at work, that means I won't be able to see how the games went. Oh well, hope others can enjoy the full article in all its glory.
Mono red - don't you miss the extra drawing from Jace and the tutoring from Trinket Mage? Or do you compensate with more removal, allowing you to live longer?
What the hell happened to my new photo! Spent ages trying to get the site to accept it last night, to no avail, and this morning it appears to have generated an incredibly low res version! I look deformed. Well, slightly more deformed than I do in real life anyway.
and the more i read your article the creepier it becomes. I see you also had reverberate in your list. And I have a version of the deck you played against in game three...odd
LOL, I actually just got done building a mono-red version of your izzet deck. Like literally an hour and a half ago. Using the same two main win conditions of Molten Psyche and Runeflare Trap. I just aded in Reverberate.
I don't want to "bellyache", but Skittles has won every game I've seen him played in so far. It's too easy to get him to 10 power and or give him shroud. Plus with other infect critters and abilities in play, 10 poison just adds up to damn fast. And Karona forbid there are 2 infect players at the table. If two guys wanted to team up they could easily spend an afternoon bushwacking folks.
Scouting decks isn't hard. At the bottom of your event window, you should see the four pairings listed along with results like 2-0, 1-2, etc. Double-click on any of those lines and it'll pop up a window with the games listed, two or three of 'em. Double-click any game number, and it'll bring up the replay for that game. You can only view matches that are completed, in-progress matches won't let you watch yet.
There's also a button that says "Current Round", you can click it for a dropdown menu to view earlier rounds if you want to look back. All of this is only available until the final round of the draft finishes though, then it all goes away.
With three Auriok Sunchaser, the Liquimetal Coating is actually quite good. It's one thing to say a deck is at 15-16 artifacts total, the number the pros recommend to get consistent metalcraft even in the face of opponents sometimes destroying one or two with removal. But what TURN do you get the metalcraft to start on? This is a fast beatdown deck with a lot of low cost fliers trying to win before my opponent gets their big spells online. If I have a turn 2 Sunchaser, I don't want to activate his metalcraft with a 3 drop artifact, a 4 drop artifact, and a 5 drop artifact.
Consider a start where I get a 1-drop artifact, 2-drop Auriok Sunchaser, 3-drop Liquimetal Coating. Then I can turn one of my lands into an artifact and BAM, I'm swinging for three in the air on turn 3. It will also get me more quickly to 4 artifacts in play, the point at which you can swing with a Sunchaser knowing that your opponent can't just turn it into a 1/1 ground guy with any Shatter effect, and then block it. Any game where I have two Sunchasers out, having quick reliable metalcraft becomes extremely valuable. I sided the Coating out in the final game, along with 2-3 other artifacts, and his deck being so loaded with artifact removal kept me off metalcraft, with two Sunchasers in play. Had they been 3/3 flyers for even a couple turns of the game, I probably would have won.
I agree that infect is risky to jump into. I imagine I'll try it at some point, but all the other archetypes leave you with a more playable deck when they don't come together, in my opinion. The infect deck just has too many cards that aren't playable on their own, but only when you are in a solid poison deck. There are a few though. The poison guy that puts out a -1/-1 counter when it dies is no worse than Fume Spitter, probably a little better. And Darksteel Axe is an ideal card for a poison drafter to get, but if you switch into any other deck later in the draft - hey, Axe is always good! I do anticipate I'll get at least one trainwreck out of trying to draft poison though... Hopefully I'll get some killer 3-0 poison deck too at some point.
I hate your photo. That is all.
Gavin Verhey at Star City Games had an article today (on the free side) with a similar deck list.
Sounds like a refresh error. Clear your cache or use another browser to see if it uploaded.
Ugh, I don't know, I triple checked and had someone else run over it. No red lines... I'll just have to be more careful next time. Glad you liked it. Also you were the only target I had, secretly I love your format XD.
Nice to see a SOM draft report up so quickly. For a first online draft, things went pretty smoothly, with solid white flowing and two bombs (the golem and the dragon; both better than anything I've opened yet in 4 drafts - why do all of my SOM packs open up with a rare land? whine whine whine...). The only mistake I saw was maindecking the liquimetal coating, since you had no artifact removal other than the dragon and enough artifacts that you were going to be achieving metalcraft pretty effortlessly anyway. Hard to believe a riddlesmith went 14th in a pack - it's a pretty good card, as you noted.
How much effort is involved in scouting other decks between games? I'm not sure how to do it. It'd be nice to see what other people are playing, and save me the tedium of playing casual decks or doing housework between rounds.
Infect is just one of the several archetypes out there, and is a bit risky to jump into, but I lost to a good red/green infect deck with multiple corpse curs and good removal.
Forget Harem? NEVER!!! although I would recommend forgetting Braids when you build a deck. Tried that once, and the results were not pretty.
Loved the article, although it looks like you turned your spellcheck off. What do you mean Hanna and Mirri's girl time at the spring isn't relevant? Without it we wouldn't have the oh-so-memorable card (Natural Spring).
And my final comment is that you missed the #1 Badass lady in Dominaria. That title belongs to (Mistform Ultimus), cause it can be any lady you want! ROTFLOL!!!!!! sigh
But I spent ages adjusting it, and it never worked last night. I'd delete the original photo (which seemed to work), but when I uploaded my new one, hey presto there was the old one back again.
I did this about 3,000 times last night, adjusting the size of the new image every time to be sure, and gave up when it never worked. And when I log in this morning - whoops there's an oddly warped version of it. Might be because in frustration, the last thing I tried was a ridiculously small version (again, which gave no hint of actually working at the time).
Will try to sort out tonight, in expectation of further frustration. Or I might just join the club and upload a cat instead.
I blame AJ for this one. I was building a deck around a particular combo and mentioned Izzet to him and he straightened me out. I always associate the guildmage with the Desperate Spike combo but sometimes forget that it only works on 2cmc.
RE the cat pic: my dead cat 'Buffy' was a great actress and loved posing. This was my favorite of her pics. Sadly she died of acute renal failure from poison put in her cat food by a manufacturer who never claimed responsibility for the deed. That was at the end of 2006. Anyway I tossed it up there in response to the fellow complaining about odd looking cat pictures in people's avatars.
It is the width/height aspect ratio. If you made either smaller/larger than the amount specified by the site it stretches the photo to compensate. The result is everyone's photo is the same size. The downside is you get stretchy odd looking images.
I like having a bit of each in my articles. However in the future I might have a full description of one game or two for those who don't watch videos.
Well one part is lack of Jaces, but yes the other is for more removal. Without looking at the list I know I have 4 Lightning Bolts and 4 Galvanic Blasts in the deck.
Thanks! I still feel like I won when I go 2-1, though I'm happier with a 3-0. Any type of queue gives you boosters for 2 match wins, that covers most or all of your next draft. Plus I got some sweet rares on top of it!
Our local FNM drafts now give out the FNM foil cards to 1st and 2nd place in each 8 man pod, which is pretty awesome. I'm gonna miss them if I haveta take a job in some other state.
And yeah, I had a blast, going to try and do another draft real soon!
Apparently he agrees with you.
Oh and thank you very much for the detailed reply. As I said, I still have lots of things to learn about when it comes to Mono Red :).
LE
Nice, really enjoyed the write-up. Haven't had a chance to draft Scars yet, so I won't give any ill-informed comments on your picks, besides to say I hope I manage to draft this well when I take the plunge. Unlucky not to win, but you had fun, so that's the main thing.
I was reading the deck creation part with interest, then got to the match reports and saw that they're video only (although at least you made a brief comment about every game). Since I mostly read Pure at work, that means I won't be able to see how the games went. Oh well, hope others can enjoy the full article in all its glory.
For a cat, you certainly know your cards.
Mono red - don't you miss the extra drawing from Jace and the tutoring from Trinket Mage? Or do you compensate with more removal, allowing you to live longer?
What the hell happened to my new photo! Spent ages trying to get the site to accept it last night, to no avail, and this morning it appears to have generated an incredibly low res version! I look deformed. Well, slightly more deformed than I do in real life anyway.
Our minds are as one, Shard.
No go on using Izzet Guildmage for copying the combos. Burning Inquiry yes, Molten Psyche/Runeflare Trap no.
and the more i read your article the creepier it becomes. I see you also had reverberate in your list. And I have a version of the deck you played against in game three...odd
LOL, I actually just got done building a mono-red version of your izzet deck. Like literally an hour and a half ago. Using the same two main win conditions of Molten Psyche and Runeflare Trap. I just aded in Reverberate.