voice chat will never happen. Sadly the MTGO crowd is nowhere near mature enough. It ould be like a lobby of 15 year olds on Halo 3 with an endless supply of cocaine.
If you're looking for a solution to the Firewalker, it's all about Ratchet Bomb. and of course, it can handle plenty of other things beside just that guy.
I referred to the actions associated with calling someone out as pedantic. It is different. name calling would be: Hey X, you are Y.
I think A is B is not name calling, it is describing a general condition. I could just as easily, and was, be pointing the finger at myself.
This is about approach - there is, more than likely, no right or wrong. Some people - and I don't know/care who, am not going to scroll up - decided picking up on the mistakes was the best approach. My approach was to address the meaning of the document (and it wasn't like I didn't criticize it). I think, given it is a magic article not an english report, that addressing the magic analysis is pertinent.
Naturally this is about preference, not about correctness.
Is there any irony involved in taking exception to me criticising the approach taken to criticism of the article, particularly given my criticism is about how the approach to criticising the article may not have been helpful? (Damn did I just write that horrible sentence?)
I don't know...how do you feel about calling someone something often taken as a pejorative such as "pedantic."
In terms of dealing correctly with someone who is not a native English speaker writing an article in English I do not find it particularly pedantic to publicly offer proof reading services.
pedantic is such a silly word though really. Words are interesting, and can be used to open doors to meaning etc. Lots of words are so powerful they represent more, through implication, than they do in literal meaning. Pedantic is one of those, because even when we are being so, we don't want to be labelled so.
As a teacher, if I was going to give someone feedback about something like the above, I'd do it in a more private way. The equivalent of a pm or email in our context. Confidence is an important part of good writing. Taking risks, or being 'less self-conscious' leads to better writing, imho.
Curious on the name calling question, have I said or done anything to suggest I'd have anything wise to add on the subject?
"(I think it is a bit pedantic to point out mistakes in others work...)" well sure if your only purpose is to attack the work and not support the artist/writer etc. Otherwise it can lead to improvements and leaps and bounds worth of inspiration. Tis a fine line I know. :) But what do you call someone who name calls?
Pff for poor grammar and spelling. I am an english teacher, and choose to ignore it. Perhaps others should too. (I think it is a bit pedantic to point out mistakes in others work...)
I get the budget thing :) Fetches can often be better than duals in classic, given prevalence of wasteland.
Remand is good for tempo, if you are trying to get big snake as your win con, rushing into the snake, and protecting seems to be the best strategy. The Mystic package is better suited to a control build.
I'd still suggest going more fetch/filter, big snake - Rancor it or Beserk and win off the snake.
The mystic package gives you redundancy, add the new sword, and you have all colours covered for evasion in any case - or just win of trample rancor.
Not so sure about that. I've been watching Wasteland because I need them, and during/after the last NIXTIX tempest events they didn't budge 1 ticket. =( I think there's a lot of hording going on because as you said, there is no really good reason why an uncommon, albeit from a large expansion, should be $30!
I guess I'll have to stay a casual MTGO player because there's no way I'm paying $30 for a friggin MTGO uncommon.
Oh man, I sold my extra Wastelands a week too early. Missed out on a few bucks. Well, that and Lotus Petal will come down after this weekend's TSE sealed. There will be a ton of them opened.
Forcing is at its best at a table where you know the other players tendencies. This is why you often hear about it on the PT where people often know at least something about each other. Online you can decide ahead of time to force white, but if the random to your right in n 8-4 decided the same thing then you are boned, which is why I like to read the table a little more online than go into a draft with preconceived notions.
Thanks for another quality draft and video. Can't wait to see you start drafting SOM because I have done very well at M11 drafting at FNM but have not done very well at SOM drafting yet.
Excellent comments from a small child and RoninX. I agree that you might be undervaluing Acidic Slime in your calculations. I also agree on Companion over Wolf and on giving Water Servant consideration.
With that said, green was definitely the color to go with in this draft. That was pretty insane how late you saw a Slime. Yes, in retrospect Green Black was probably the best way to go. But you would have had to have seen the future in order to have gotten in on that with confidence.
I tried to tell you last time bro, you can't force it. (that's what she said) Although, this time I think you were a little better with your picks to be honest. Wx aggro is a very good strategy to try and draft. Obviously you got cut though. Core Set limited is something that takes a ton of getting used to because the overall evaluation of cards is hard to determine outside a vacuum. That being said, I'm excited to see you try SoM. Good Luck in the future.
Tainted Strike gets bonus points in my eyes for being able to fog one of their creatures if need be. In a race situation I see it being a nice surprise. Probably not useful often enough, but you have to admit it feels cool dealing the final 2 points to an opponent via Sign in Blood...similarly I think turing a lost race into a win by making one of their creatures deal no true damage would feel pretty awesome.
Thank you both. I think I have this underlying stigma that drafting a mono-color deck is bad, and I need to get over that. Additionally, I tried to go in with a solid plan and force a deck, which made me blind to pack 2, making me pick the lions over cards that were actually good.
Good vids Jeff. Thanks. I have few comments on your draft strategy.
In particular lets focus on the first 3 picks in pack one. P1P1 you take the best card, it is white. The next best card is the foresee, which you also correctly identify, but passing a second pick foresee is not a huge signal as premium removal will usually be taken over it P1P1. P1P2, bad pack, the lions aren't bad in certain archetypes in this format but taking them P1P2 without having any indication that white (a chronically overdrafted color at the moment) is open (or even open-ish) seems like a much lower EV play than simply taking the most powerful card: the Spider. Note that you pass several blue cards, but nothing that people are usually thrilled to take in the top 5 picks.
I discuss the first two because P1P3 seems a critical pick to me. Once again, not much in white, so either the packs are stacked against you or someone upstream is cutting you both are bummers, but the nature of cutting in pack one often means passing good cards now in order to get more quality later. If you are fond enough of white to try and cut it by taking the lion then taking the palace guard here is an investment in the future. I'm not hugely fond of that line of play, but it can be effective. We'll never know what might have shaped up in packs 2-3 though because you went a different route.
Abstractly the best cards in the pack are 1) Pyroclasm (maindeckable in many strategies, pretty easy to maneuver into a 2-1 and very strong against the consensus "best" archetype), 2) Assassinate (admitedly tier 2 removal but still solid and WB is pretty potent in this format), 3) Waterservant (tangles with almost every other 4 drop ground pounder and has the potential to trade/block almost everything in the set). 4) Spined Wurm (a very solid body without heavy mana requirements). You seem to overvalue the wurm, most packs would have to be pretty awful for a wurm *not* to still be in the pack at P3. You dismiss the 'Servant because of having passed "too much blue" but you've only passed foresee which is not a blazing brand of a signal at P2-3 so this seems like a mistake to me. The servants upside makes it a much more inviting beater to me than the wurm at this stage. You don't discuss Assassinate at all. You seem to be viewing pyroclasm as a hate draft, and while it is true that it is probably at its worst in RW that does not make it unplayable. As importantly you aren't even *sure* that you are RW or even Wx at this early stage. Pacifism could easily be splashed if something else is flowing.
Have you tried Perilous Myr as a solution to Kor Firewalker? I'm also looking at some Geth's Throne Proliferate tactics to quicken up the ultimate for Koth and Chandra's Ultimate abilities.
Hmm, yeah I'm going to have to go with mono green being the right call. As soon as the acidic slime tabled that was a huge signal. Your pick of blinding mage over cudgel troll is definitely defensible but ultimately the troll would have been better. I definitely think that hornet sting over the third slime was crazy. Yeah your five slot was getting crowded, but worst case scenario you cut your basilisk for the slime. You should get plenty of opportunities to pick up a hornet sting. I definitely think you should have taken garruk's companion over sacred wolf as well in pack 3. Ideally you would have taken the llanowar elf over cloud crusader as well, but honestly at that point your decision was definitely defensible and you didn't know green would be so open. Even if going mono green I might have splashed the pacifism and/or the doom blade that you could have snagged in pack 3 -- off 2-3 cultivates such a plan is very reasonable.
The deck you used is too clogged at the 4cc slot. You have a great long term strategy of titans, so the point is surviving until turn six and stopping quick races, and also digging for the bombs. In P2P7 that means I'd have taken Sorcerer's Strongbox above Armored Cancrix. Personally I like Diminish more than Ice Cage because I always draft my decks with a random creature than can remove it. Diminish also throws off combat math in a real pinch situation, and I would have jumped at playing it in the same deck as Prodigal Pyromancer.
The deck I'd have submitted for the draft would be like yours, but
-Armored Cancrix
-2 Canyon Minotaur
-Ice Cage
+Diminish
+Sorcerer's Strongbox
+Bloodcrazed Goblin (it can still block and save you a bunch of early damage)
+Goblin Piker
I talk about non G/B infect builds in the second part of the article, which I've submitted. So you can look forward to that a bit then =)
That said, as far as the actual process of drafting the deck ... I'm not super sure on that one. How many drafters a table can support likely depends on the packs quite a bit. I would guess 2-3 is a reasonable estimate, but it will take a lot of experience to bear that out. I suspect this number will also depend a lot on how viable the non straight G/B versions of the deck are.
Will it be overdrafted? Maybe, but maybe not. Metalcraft is attracting a lot of attention too, so people may try to force that.
As far as how you actually draft the deck goes, I'd like to get a little more experience before giving any firm advice, but I'd guess that it'll go one of two ways. The most common way is that you'll pick up some solid cards early that could go into multiple archetypes (good equipment, removal, and other power artifacts) and then notice that infect is open and jump in. The other way is if you open an infect bomb such as Skythirix or Hand of the Praetors and decide to just go for it. I think generally you will want to draft the artifact infecters a little more aggressively. Corpse Cur is the best one anyway, but Ichorclaw Myr and Necropede are also very solid. When looking to go into a color I'd prioritize Plague Stinger for Black and Cystbearer for Green. If you are seeing either of those mid-pack then it's a good sign.
It's going to be really interesting to see how people end up evaluating Grasp of Darkness. I'm pretty pessimistic about any non-infect black deck (although I could be wrong), and Grasp is difficult to splash. So if people take it aggressively and then try to go for infect, it could lead to infect being overdrafted. At the same time, people may realize that taking this card pushes them heavily toward a black heavy infect deck and thus devalue it because the card is MUCH narrower in terms of archetype access than most staple black removal spells (like vendetta or doom blade, which you could basically put in any archetype). If that happens, then infect drafters may be able to pick this card up much later than they normally would.
Is there any confirmation that MTGO will be striclty a browser based game. I believe in one of the gamming convention demos over the past year or so the new client was demonstrated and it was mentioned to be a browser client.
yes! going to have to pick up a box of skittles at costco now. or at least cherry pick the skittle packs out of halloween candy crates.
i've been lurking through your whole series, and actually didn't even notice the formatting issues (as i copied and pasted everything into notepad so it looks like a tex-twall anyway). awesome work.
voice chat will never happen. Sadly the MTGO crowd is nowhere near mature enough. It ould be like a lobby of 15 year olds on Halo 3 with an endless supply of cocaine.
Voice chat built into the interface or easily attachable would be great-
Hey Drbenwayy,
Its always interesting to see what's going on in standard, and I appreciate good data.
X-
If you're looking for a solution to the Firewalker, it's all about Ratchet Bomb. and of course, it can handle plenty of other things beside just that guy.
I referred to the actions associated with calling someone out as pedantic. It is different. name calling would be: Hey X, you are Y.
I think A is B is not name calling, it is describing a general condition. I could just as easily, and was, be pointing the finger at myself.
This is about approach - there is, more than likely, no right or wrong. Some people - and I don't know/care who, am not going to scroll up - decided picking up on the mistakes was the best approach. My approach was to address the meaning of the document (and it wasn't like I didn't criticize it). I think, given it is a magic article not an english report, that addressing the magic analysis is pertinent.
Naturally this is about preference, not about correctness.
Is there any irony involved in taking exception to me criticising the approach taken to criticism of the article, particularly given my criticism is about how the approach to criticising the article may not have been helpful? (Damn did I just write that horrible sentence?)
I don't know...how do you feel about calling someone something often taken as a pejorative such as "pedantic."
In terms of dealing correctly with someone who is not a native English speaker writing an article in English I do not find it particularly pedantic to publicly offer proof reading services.
pedantic is such a silly word though really. Words are interesting, and can be used to open doors to meaning etc. Lots of words are so powerful they represent more, through implication, than they do in literal meaning. Pedantic is one of those, because even when we are being so, we don't want to be labelled so.
As a teacher, if I was going to give someone feedback about something like the above, I'd do it in a more private way. The equivalent of a pm or email in our context. Confidence is an important part of good writing. Taking risks, or being 'less self-conscious' leads to better writing, imho.
Curious on the name calling question, have I said or done anything to suggest I'd have anything wise to add on the subject?
"(I think it is a bit pedantic to point out mistakes in others work...)" well sure if your only purpose is to attack the work and not support the artist/writer etc. Otherwise it can lead to improvements and leaps and bounds worth of inspiration. Tis a fine line I know. :) But what do you call someone who name calls?
Pff for poor grammar and spelling. I am an english teacher, and choose to ignore it. Perhaps others should too. (I think it is a bit pedantic to point out mistakes in others work...)
I get the budget thing :) Fetches can often be better than duals in classic, given prevalence of wasteland.
Remand is good for tempo, if you are trying to get big snake as your win con, rushing into the snake, and protecting seems to be the best strategy. The Mystic package is better suited to a control build.
I'd still suggest going more fetch/filter, big snake - Rancor it or Beserk and win off the snake.
The mystic package gives you redundancy, add the new sword, and you have all colours covered for evasion in any case - or just win of trample rancor.
AND not playing standstill with vial is a crime.
Not so sure about that. I've been watching Wasteland because I need them, and during/after the last NIXTIX tempest events they didn't budge 1 ticket. =( I think there's a lot of hording going on because as you said, there is no really good reason why an uncommon, albeit from a large expansion, should be $30!
I guess I'll have to stay a casual MTGO player because there's no way I'm paying $30 for a friggin MTGO uncommon.
Oh man, I sold my extra Wastelands a week too early. Missed out on a few bucks. Well, that and Lotus Petal will come down after this weekend's TSE sealed. There will be a ton of them opened.
Forcing is at its best at a table where you know the other players tendencies. This is why you often hear about it on the PT where people often know at least something about each other. Online you can decide ahead of time to force white, but if the random to your right in n 8-4 decided the same thing then you are boned, which is why I like to read the table a little more online than go into a draft with preconceived notions.
Keep up the good work.
Thanks for another quality draft and video. Can't wait to see you start drafting SOM because I have done very well at M11 drafting at FNM but have not done very well at SOM drafting yet.
Excellent comments from a small child and RoninX. I agree that you might be undervaluing Acidic Slime in your calculations. I also agree on Companion over Wolf and on giving Water Servant consideration.
With that said, green was definitely the color to go with in this draft. That was pretty insane how late you saw a Slime. Yes, in retrospect Green Black was probably the best way to go. But you would have had to have seen the future in order to have gotten in on that with confidence.
I don't think it was me you said that to, but I /giggled regardless. I can't wait for SoM either, and this will be my last M11 draft article.
I tried to tell you last time bro, you can't force it. (that's what she said) Although, this time I think you were a little better with your picks to be honest. Wx aggro is a very good strategy to try and draft. Obviously you got cut though. Core Set limited is something that takes a ton of getting used to because the overall evaluation of cards is hard to determine outside a vacuum. That being said, I'm excited to see you try SoM. Good Luck in the future.
Tainted Strike gets bonus points in my eyes for being able to fog one of their creatures if need be. In a race situation I see it being a nice surprise. Probably not useful often enough, but you have to admit it feels cool dealing the final 2 points to an opponent via Sign in Blood...similarly I think turing a lost race into a win by making one of their creatures deal no true damage would feel pretty awesome.
Thank you both. I think I have this underlying stigma that drafting a mono-color deck is bad, and I need to get over that. Additionally, I tried to go in with a solid plan and force a deck, which made me blind to pack 2, making me pick the lions over cards that were actually good.
Good vids Jeff. Thanks. I have few comments on your draft strategy.
In particular lets focus on the first 3 picks in pack one. P1P1 you take the best card, it is white. The next best card is the foresee, which you also correctly identify, but passing a second pick foresee is not a huge signal as premium removal will usually be taken over it P1P1. P1P2, bad pack, the lions aren't bad in certain archetypes in this format but taking them P1P2 without having any indication that white (a chronically overdrafted color at the moment) is open (or even open-ish) seems like a much lower EV play than simply taking the most powerful card: the Spider. Note that you pass several blue cards, but nothing that people are usually thrilled to take in the top 5 picks.
I discuss the first two because P1P3 seems a critical pick to me. Once again, not much in white, so either the packs are stacked against you or someone upstream is cutting you both are bummers, but the nature of cutting in pack one often means passing good cards now in order to get more quality later. If you are fond enough of white to try and cut it by taking the lion then taking the palace guard here is an investment in the future. I'm not hugely fond of that line of play, but it can be effective. We'll never know what might have shaped up in packs 2-3 though because you went a different route.
Abstractly the best cards in the pack are 1) Pyroclasm (maindeckable in many strategies, pretty easy to maneuver into a 2-1 and very strong against the consensus "best" archetype), 2) Assassinate (admitedly tier 2 removal but still solid and WB is pretty potent in this format), 3) Waterservant (tangles with almost every other 4 drop ground pounder and has the potential to trade/block almost everything in the set). 4) Spined Wurm (a very solid body without heavy mana requirements). You seem to overvalue the wurm, most packs would have to be pretty awful for a wurm *not* to still be in the pack at P3. You dismiss the 'Servant because of having passed "too much blue" but you've only passed foresee which is not a blazing brand of a signal at P2-3 so this seems like a mistake to me. The servants upside makes it a much more inviting beater to me than the wurm at this stage. You don't discuss Assassinate at all. You seem to be viewing pyroclasm as a hate draft, and while it is true that it is probably at its worst in RW that does not make it unplayable. As importantly you aren't even *sure* that you are RW or even Wx at this early stage. Pacifism could easily be splashed if something else is flowing.
Have you tried Perilous Myr as a solution to Kor Firewalker? I'm also looking at some Geth's Throne Proliferate tactics to quicken up the ultimate for Koth and Chandra's Ultimate abilities.
Hmm, yeah I'm going to have to go with mono green being the right call. As soon as the acidic slime tabled that was a huge signal. Your pick of blinding mage over cudgel troll is definitely defensible but ultimately the troll would have been better. I definitely think that hornet sting over the third slime was crazy. Yeah your five slot was getting crowded, but worst case scenario you cut your basilisk for the slime. You should get plenty of opportunities to pick up a hornet sting. I definitely think you should have taken garruk's companion over sacred wolf as well in pack 3. Ideally you would have taken the llanowar elf over cloud crusader as well, but honestly at that point your decision was definitely defensible and you didn't know green would be so open. Even if going mono green I might have splashed the pacifism and/or the doom blade that you could have snagged in pack 3 -- off 2-3 cultivates such a plan is very reasonable.
The deck you used is too clogged at the 4cc slot. You have a great long term strategy of titans, so the point is surviving until turn six and stopping quick races, and also digging for the bombs. In P2P7 that means I'd have taken Sorcerer's Strongbox above Armored Cancrix. Personally I like Diminish more than Ice Cage because I always draft my decks with a random creature than can remove it. Diminish also throws off combat math in a real pinch situation, and I would have jumped at playing it in the same deck as Prodigal Pyromancer.
The deck I'd have submitted for the draft would be like yours, but
-Armored Cancrix
-2 Canyon Minotaur
-Ice Cage
+Diminish
+Sorcerer's Strongbox
+Bloodcrazed Goblin (it can still block and save you a bunch of early damage)
+Goblin Piker
I talk about non G/B infect builds in the second part of the article, which I've submitted. So you can look forward to that a bit then =)
That said, as far as the actual process of drafting the deck ... I'm not super sure on that one. How many drafters a table can support likely depends on the packs quite a bit. I would guess 2-3 is a reasonable estimate, but it will take a lot of experience to bear that out. I suspect this number will also depend a lot on how viable the non straight G/B versions of the deck are.
Will it be overdrafted? Maybe, but maybe not. Metalcraft is attracting a lot of attention too, so people may try to force that.
As far as how you actually draft the deck goes, I'd like to get a little more experience before giving any firm advice, but I'd guess that it'll go one of two ways. The most common way is that you'll pick up some solid cards early that could go into multiple archetypes (good equipment, removal, and other power artifacts) and then notice that infect is open and jump in. The other way is if you open an infect bomb such as Skythirix or Hand of the Praetors and decide to just go for it. I think generally you will want to draft the artifact infecters a little more aggressively. Corpse Cur is the best one anyway, but Ichorclaw Myr and Necropede are also very solid. When looking to go into a color I'd prioritize Plague Stinger for Black and Cystbearer for Green. If you are seeing either of those mid-pack then it's a good sign.
It's going to be really interesting to see how people end up evaluating Grasp of Darkness. I'm pretty pessimistic about any non-infect black deck (although I could be wrong), and Grasp is difficult to splash. So if people take it aggressively and then try to go for infect, it could lead to infect being overdrafted. At the same time, people may realize that taking this card pushes them heavily toward a black heavy infect deck and thus devalue it because the card is MUCH narrower in terms of archetype access than most staple black removal spells (like vendetta or doom blade, which you could basically put in any archetype). If that happens, then infect drafters may be able to pick this card up much later than they normally would.
Someone had to say it!
Is there any confirmation that MTGO will be striclty a browser based game. I believe in one of the gamming convention demos over the past year or so the new client was demonstrated and it was mentioned to be a browser client.
yes! going to have to pick up a box of skittles at costco now. or at least cherry pick the skittle packs out of halloween candy crates.
i've been lurking through your whole series, and actually didn't even notice the formatting issues (as i copied and pasted everything into notepad so it looks like a tex-twall anyway). awesome work.