I think your game analysis could be stronger. You don't even mention what your starting hands ever are (and thus the discussion on whether to keep or mull), which is a HUGE part of drafting success.
I think the Call to Mind pick is simply wrong. It's common to see that card go by in late picks, where as Gravedigger doesn't really ever table unless you're the only drafter in black. You were drafting a deck that needed to get incredible value out of the few creatures you had and Gravedigger is about as good as that gets.
With all that said, thanks for the article. Enjoyed it.
I was a bit worried when I saw this posted because I have an article on Card Advantage I've been working on and hope to have finished soon, but I was glad to see this was about more then just that, some good thoughts and a cool deck
I am in a similar boat.. while I always play MTG off and on sometimes a lot more than other times. I can't shake how much more "right" it feels to draft online than IRL. There are always just 8 players (sometimes at IRL draft events some tables have 10 or 6 players, especially at FNM). I always feel I do better online at drafting events and I never feel cheated or swindled (a feeling that I've felt a few times at paper events)
A lot has changed. I really don't like the mythics. I hate being relegated to "cheap" decks because they are simply out of a reasonable price range (20 dollar rares were reasonable, 60+ dollar mythics are not). Not only do they show up less often, now more than ever are they the "marquee" cards of the set. While I like what it does to cards like dual lands, I hate that the entire sets value comes down to just 1 or 2 mythic rares. I really think Ravnica or Time Spiral had good set values. Now you just need to get really really lucky on pulling up those few mythics that make the price of the sets. I really don't think they are that hard to come by, but it promotes just pack cracking than single purchases.
I hate to say it but I agree, the exception being in situational games where any counter swings the game in your favor a counter where none is expected can be devastating. But it still isn't unfair imho. Vial is.
I truly wonder how many people who complain about force of will in Tribal actually own them? I'd imagine somewhere hovering right around zero percent. I've played blue tribes and gone 3-0 with them in the event, and not once did I consider playing FoW. It wasn't about a sense of fairness, it's just because the card isn't good in tribal. I understand that playing against the card makes it seem better than it really is in tribal, but you're far better off in most cases keeping the extra card and just playing hard counters instead.
I was just pointing out the fact after reading the article. The fact that it might be a myth only gives it more value, I think.
It says something about bluffing, when someone like Long was so good at it that it started myths about his feats.
There's also another example about ''sort of'' bluffing and friends, but I can't remember the proper facts. It was a draft Pro Tour, and I think Finkel and a friend were in the same pod, and Finkel open a powerful white rare, but told his friend after that he opened a different white card, then when they played each other he devastated him with the surprise rare.
Whoops, forgot to include that result. In the second pool I ended up going 2-1. It was a hard fought couple of matches and there were some broken pools out there.
I also don't like splashing a third color unless I have no other choice or I have at least 2-3 color fixing cards like Terramorphic Expanse, Expanding Wilds, or the color fixing crystal.
4-booster swiss is very similar to 6-booster swiss in the fact that all decktypes are just as viable in both formats. Milling strategies are better, but if they were non-existant in 6-booster swiss, don't expect them to be all that good in 4-booster swiss.
With so many artifacts in the set, metalcraft will be viable and played no question. The question becomes if the metalcraft cards are good enough to pull you in that direction. My initial feeling is that will depend on how many cheap pieces of equipment, cheap artifact creatures and cheap spellbomb like cards you have. In most circumstances I would evaluate metalcraft cards as though they got the bonus around turn 5.
Obviously with infect/Poison, the more the better, but even if you don't have that many infect creatures, they are still useful.
Hard and fast rules don't work in sealed deck because you're not evaluating whether or not a particular deck will be good. You're evaluating whether or not one build of a deck is better than another. This largely depends on what is in your pool. Sometimes you have to go with weaker cards and strategies simply because that's the best option available to you.
Wow, thanks for the article, I really love 4 booster sealed too and this was a very good read.
As for the pools:
pool #1: why didn't you consider splashing red? You didn't need more than one white mana till late, I think you could have splashed at least the Heat Ray. In a 30 card pool you're likely to get singletons pretty often.
pool #2: I don't know if you simply forgot to mention but you also had Hada Spy Patrol among your blue levelers, which is one of the U/W levelers deck staple. Anyway I think going B/G was the right choice, you had a pretty good ramp for a 30 card deck, 2 actual ramp targets. I can't find the results for this deck, did you 3-0ed with that one too?
I loved doing the format snapshots. The problem was they took a lot of time. It took so much time to compile the data for them that it made it so that I wasn't playing much anymore.
So eventually I got to the point where I was reporting on formats I didn't play, and that's just a bad idea. No matter how much data I had, I didn't feel I could adequately report on the format unless I actually had time to play it personally.
If I do anything like that again, it will be strictly a price comparison of the top decks and budget decks for all of the prize supported formats. That would be something I would actually have the time to do and still have time to actually play this game too.
With the upcoming changes to the prize structure on October 20th I'm thinking that might be a good idea.
Ya I felt really stupid in that second game where I misclicked the fling target. It's not the first time I have screwed up the fling interaction though. I think I had another misclick in our match but I can't recall what it was(probably double-clicking 'ok' when I missed the Pyro ping). However, your pool and playskills outshined mine either way. It was still a fun league and congrats on your win!
I agree with single cards. The auction room was great for "lots". If someone wanted to sell 52 brainstorms it was crazy watching people bid. I remember putting up a "lot" of 52 mulldrifters and 74 shriekmaws. I think the ending bid was 9 tickets. It just was fun to put crazy stupid things. I have hung out there the past few days and it just feels differentl. Definitly has lost its mojo
I've read other players' draft recaps but am new to reading yours. This was good stuff, an enjoyable read. I think you were pretty sound with most of your picks, though on the Call to Mind pick (over Mitotic Slime and Gravedigger, the one you were questioning) I think I'd have gone with Gravedigger, and hoped for a few more creatures to add to the complement, particularly those with ETB abilities (you were already in pretty good shape there with double Augury Owl and double Liliana's Specter). Then I would've been bummed at not seeing a single AEther Adept.
Nice article from a fellow clanmate, glad to see you are back. And hey, don't forget about me, I was and still am a auction regular, although the auction room is a ghost town full of mostly greedy people wanting to buy things are stupidly cheap prices. It still baffles me why anyone in their right mind would sell there for a loss instead of to the bots and don't give me that sell to the humans line of crap. Why can't we have an auction room that favors the seller or at least allows them to break even. The room really just seems full of people posting buy ads at prices I laugh at. I so wish the auction room would return back to its glory!!!
Any thoughts on the viability of the themes of SoM in 30 card decks?
If you are going to pursue a metalcraft deck, what is the minimum # of artifacts to run? How many poison sources will you want in a 30 card poison deck? Do you think these strategies are more/less viable in smaller decks than in 6-pack sealed?
Hehe LoTR CCG takes me back a bit. I had boxes of the stuff and never the good cards...opened probably 4 boxes of the first set to no avail. I think I sold the whole shebang for $20 or so. Still it was fun to play with it and relive one of the greatest novels of the 20th century in game form without aid of a mouse or board. (Not quite on par with M.E.R.P.s but :))
Star Wars CCG started out seeming quite interesting and quickly paled. Probably because some of the same spikes winning in M:TG at NG were also dominating the SW tourneys.
My favorite non-magic ccg has to be L5R followed by Jyhad. Both were responsible for countless hours of fun. Shadowfist was kind of fun too in a kooky way and Steve Jackson's Illumnati was a great (if totally broken) multiplayer game before Seidler Di Caton came along.
Thanks for all the kind comments. I loved LOTR TCG. I was even Delaware State Champion in 2003. Won a a replica Shards Of Narsil that I sold for $700. Lotr tcg even was online too. Too bad Decipher went bankrupt because of embezzlement.
As for the auction room just type /join auction in any chat window. Like I said it is a different animal now. Not a whole lot of auctions and most auctions are minimumed near bot prices.
As for Classic cards, I did not think to put that into the article. Unlike Mythics force of will and good classic cards will hold their price. So as your playing it can be an investment. You dont have to worry about your $300 dollar force of will investment rotating out and suddenly becoming worth $30.00.
Not only because it reminded me where we were and where we are now, but also because you mentioned two of my beloved TCG's in the article; SW CCG and LOTR TCG. I could talk about those two games for hours. I even won a local trophy during LotR days; I was good at it:).
Heh, those were the days, eh?
Welcome back by the way. Oh and seperating classifields into bot trade and non-bot trade (aka casual trade), is a good idea. Sometimes I too get lost there.
It's nice to have another player re-joining the community.
I didn't know about any auction room on MODO. I must see it.
I completely agree with you about drafting two mythics in a row - "Those stories are sadly few and very far between". I'm drafting M11 almost every day since the release and the best I oppened was 1 Primeval Titan and a couple of Frost Titan/Grave Titan... But I oppened 15, yes, 15 Temple Bell. Ready to build turbo fog.
I do think that sportsmanship has improved. The bigest change in my mind was hidding the ratings.
It was common, in the old days, for me to check my opponents rating. If they were way below my rating and I lost, I would often start to grummble. I am sad to say that on a rare occasion I even made some dumb comments.
Now I can just assume that they are they are always the better player. I never even look at my own rating anymore. I don't care. This has made me a better player and a better sport.
FOW in tribes allows the player to play more aggressive without the worry of a Wrath or other big sweepers
With Vial it becomes even better
as for losing card advantage having a standstill on the table helps and again with vials even better
Grats on beating Godot whom I would consider one of the more lethal threats in MODO limited. I still think your best build is White Green, but I am not in the league at all so what can I really have to say about it? I agree that ascension/scrollthief isn't really an option for your deck. Kind of like choosing to go 2nd tier on purpose.
Guess card advantage is on the brain, just finished my article and submitted it this morning. I think the articles will co-exist just fine!
And btw, late game harrows aren't bad when valakut is on board, they actually make me smile!
I think your game analysis could be stronger. You don't even mention what your starting hands ever are (and thus the discussion on whether to keep or mull), which is a HUGE part of drafting success.
I think the Call to Mind pick is simply wrong. It's common to see that card go by in late picks, where as Gravedigger doesn't really ever table unless you're the only drafter in black. You were drafting a deck that needed to get incredible value out of the few creatures you had and Gravedigger is about as good as that gets.
With all that said, thanks for the article. Enjoyed it.
I was a bit worried when I saw this posted because I have an article on Card Advantage I've been working on and hope to have finished soon, but I was glad to see this was about more then just that, some good thoughts and a cool deck
I am in a similar boat.. while I always play MTG off and on sometimes a lot more than other times. I can't shake how much more "right" it feels to draft online than IRL. There are always just 8 players (sometimes at IRL draft events some tables have 10 or 6 players, especially at FNM). I always feel I do better online at drafting events and I never feel cheated or swindled (a feeling that I've felt a few times at paper events)
A lot has changed. I really don't like the mythics. I hate being relegated to "cheap" decks because they are simply out of a reasonable price range (20 dollar rares were reasonable, 60+ dollar mythics are not). Not only do they show up less often, now more than ever are they the "marquee" cards of the set. While I like what it does to cards like dual lands, I hate that the entire sets value comes down to just 1 or 2 mythic rares. I really think Ravnica or Time Spiral had good set values. Now you just need to get really really lucky on pulling up those few mythics that make the price of the sets. I really don't think they are that hard to come by, but it promotes just pack cracking than single purchases.
I hate to say it but I agree, the exception being in situational games where any counter swings the game in your favor a counter where none is expected can be devastating. But it still isn't unfair imho. Vial is.
I truly wonder how many people who complain about force of will in Tribal actually own them? I'd imagine somewhere hovering right around zero percent. I've played blue tribes and gone 3-0 with them in the event, and not once did I consider playing FoW. It wasn't about a sense of fairness, it's just because the card isn't good in tribal. I understand that playing against the card makes it seem better than it really is in tribal, but you're far better off in most cases keeping the extra card and just playing hard counters instead.
I was just pointing out the fact after reading the article. The fact that it might be a myth only gives it more value, I think.
It says something about bluffing, when someone like Long was so good at it that it started myths about his feats.
There's also another example about ''sort of'' bluffing and friends, but I can't remember the proper facts. It was a draft Pro Tour, and I think Finkel and a friend were in the same pod, and Finkel open a powerful white rare, but told his friend after that he opened a different white card, then when they played each other he devastated him with the surprise rare.
Maybe someone remembers this story better.
Whoops, forgot to include that result. In the second pool I ended up going 2-1. It was a hard fought couple of matches and there were some broken pools out there.
I also don't like splashing a third color unless I have no other choice or I have at least 2-3 color fixing cards like Terramorphic Expanse, Expanding Wilds, or the color fixing crystal.
4-booster swiss is very similar to 6-booster swiss in the fact that all decktypes are just as viable in both formats. Milling strategies are better, but if they were non-existant in 6-booster swiss, don't expect them to be all that good in 4-booster swiss.
With so many artifacts in the set, metalcraft will be viable and played no question. The question becomes if the metalcraft cards are good enough to pull you in that direction. My initial feeling is that will depend on how many cheap pieces of equipment, cheap artifact creatures and cheap spellbomb like cards you have. In most circumstances I would evaluate metalcraft cards as though they got the bonus around turn 5.
Obviously with infect/Poison, the more the better, but even if you don't have that many infect creatures, they are still useful.
Hard and fast rules don't work in sealed deck because you're not evaluating whether or not a particular deck will be good. You're evaluating whether or not one build of a deck is better than another. This largely depends on what is in your pool. Sometimes you have to go with weaker cards and strategies simply because that's the best option available to you.
Wow, thanks for the article, I really love 4 booster sealed too and this was a very good read.
As for the pools:
pool #1: why didn't you consider splashing red? You didn't need more than one white mana till late, I think you could have splashed at least the Heat Ray. In a 30 card pool you're likely to get singletons pretty often.
pool #2: I don't know if you simply forgot to mention but you also had Hada Spy Patrol among your blue levelers, which is one of the U/W levelers deck staple. Anyway I think going B/G was the right choice, you had a pretty good ramp for a 30 card deck, 2 actual ramp targets. I can't find the results for this deck, did you 3-0ed with that one too?
I loved doing the format snapshots. The problem was they took a lot of time. It took so much time to compile the data for them that it made it so that I wasn't playing much anymore.
So eventually I got to the point where I was reporting on formats I didn't play, and that's just a bad idea. No matter how much data I had, I didn't feel I could adequately report on the format unless I actually had time to play it personally.
If I do anything like that again, it will be strictly a price comparison of the top decks and budget decks for all of the prize supported formats. That would be something I would actually have the time to do and still have time to actually play this game too.
With the upcoming changes to the prize structure on October 20th I'm thinking that might be a good idea.
Ya I felt really stupid in that second game where I misclicked the fling target. It's not the first time I have screwed up the fling interaction though. I think I had another misclick in our match but I can't recall what it was(probably double-clicking 'ok' when I missed the Pyro ping). However, your pool and playskills outshined mine either way. It was still a fun league and congrats on your win!
I agree with single cards. The auction room was great for "lots". If someone wanted to sell 52 brainstorms it was crazy watching people bid. I remember putting up a "lot" of 52 mulldrifters and 74 shriekmaws. I think the ending bid was 9 tickets. It just was fun to put crazy stupid things. I have hung out there the past few days and it just feels differentl. Definitly has lost its mojo
I've read other players' draft recaps but am new to reading yours. This was good stuff, an enjoyable read. I think you were pretty sound with most of your picks, though on the Call to Mind pick (over Mitotic Slime and Gravedigger, the one you were questioning) I think I'd have gone with Gravedigger, and hoped for a few more creatures to add to the complement, particularly those with ETB abilities (you were already in pretty good shape there with double Augury Owl and double Liliana's Specter). Then I would've been bummed at not seeing a single AEther Adept.
Nice article from a fellow clanmate, glad to see you are back. And hey, don't forget about me, I was and still am a auction regular, although the auction room is a ghost town full of mostly greedy people wanting to buy things are stupidly cheap prices. It still baffles me why anyone in their right mind would sell there for a loss instead of to the bots and don't give me that sell to the humans line of crap. Why can't we have an auction room that favors the seller or at least allows them to break even. The room really just seems full of people posting buy ads at prices I laugh at. I so wish the auction room would return back to its glory!!!
Any thoughts on the viability of the themes of SoM in 30 card decks?
If you are going to pursue a metalcraft deck, what is the minimum # of artifacts to run? How many poison sources will you want in a 30 card poison deck? Do you think these strategies are more/less viable in smaller decks than in 6-pack sealed?
Hehe LoTR CCG takes me back a bit. I had boxes of the stuff and never the good cards...opened probably 4 boxes of the first set to no avail. I think I sold the whole shebang for $20 or so. Still it was fun to play with it and relive one of the greatest novels of the 20th century in game form without aid of a mouse or board. (Not quite on par with M.E.R.P.s but :))
Star Wars CCG started out seeming quite interesting and quickly paled. Probably because some of the same spikes winning in M:TG at NG were also dominating the SW tourneys.
My favorite non-magic ccg has to be L5R followed by Jyhad. Both were responsible for countless hours of fun. Shadowfist was kind of fun too in a kooky way and Steve Jackson's Illumnati was a great (if totally broken) multiplayer game before Seidler Di Caton came along.
Thanks for all the kind comments. I loved LOTR TCG. I was even Delaware State Champion in 2003. Won a a replica Shards Of Narsil that I sold for $700. Lotr tcg even was online too. Too bad Decipher went bankrupt because of embezzlement.
As for the auction room just type /join auction in any chat window. Like I said it is a different animal now. Not a whole lot of auctions and most auctions are minimumed near bot prices.
As for Classic cards, I did not think to put that into the article. Unlike Mythics force of will and good classic cards will hold their price. So as your playing it can be an investment. You dont have to worry about your $300 dollar force of will investment rotating out and suddenly becoming worth $30.00.
I loved the article.
Not only because it reminded me where we were and where we are now, but also because you mentioned two of my beloved TCG's in the article; SW CCG and LOTR TCG. I could talk about those two games for hours. I even won a local trophy during LotR days; I was good at it:).
Heh, those were the days, eh?
Welcome back by the way. Oh and seperating classifields into bot trade and non-bot trade (aka casual trade), is a good idea. Sometimes I too get lost there.
LE
It's nice to have another player re-joining the community.
I didn't know about any auction room on MODO. I must see it.
I completely agree with you about drafting two mythics in a row - "Those stories are sadly few and very far between". I'm drafting M11 almost every day since the release and the best I oppened was 1 Primeval Titan and a couple of Frost Titan/Grave Titan... But I oppened 15, yes, 15 Temple Bell. Ready to build turbo fog.
Looking forward your next article.
I do think that sportsmanship has improved. The bigest change in my mind was hidding the ratings.
It was common, in the old days, for me to check my opponents rating. If they were way below my rating and I lost, I would often start to grummble. I am sad to say that on a rare occasion I even made some dumb comments.
Now I can just assume that they are they are always the better player. I never even look at my own rating anymore. I don't care. This has made me a better player and a better sport.
Great article.
FOW in tribes allows the player to play more aggressive without the worry of a Wrath or other big sweepers
With Vial it becomes even better
as for losing card advantage having a standstill on the table helps and again with vials even better
But you knew all that anyway....
Blonix is made of massive win, for the record.
So you found happiness and joy in 4 booster Swiss it seems. Sadly that's a format I don't enjoy much :(.
Is there any chance that we could see any of those perfect Format Snap Shots of yours in the (very) near future? They were truly great.
Of course not saying these Swiss ones aren't but... I mean... meh, you know what I ment :).
LE
Grats on beating Godot whom I would consider one of the more lethal threats in MODO limited. I still think your best build is White Green, but I am not in the league at all so what can I really have to say about it? I agree that ascension/scrollthief isn't really an option for your deck. Kind of like choosing to go 2nd tier on purpose.