Conceptually this is cool - but in practice it often generates comments like "After p1p1 pacifism I would have p1p2'd the Azure Drake instead of the lightning bolt because red is awful and blue is amazing."
This is great, but then those two drafts would probably diverge substantially and it is hard not to say, see, if you'd have picked the first drake in P1 you could have gotten two more in pack three (which of course is not necessarily the case). Anyway, just a warning that carrying off that type of draft critique is harder than it would seem.
Dunno if you will feel the same, but how about doing an occasional column featuring the drafts of others, i.e. some of your readers?
I think we all learn better through mistakes, and sometimes we all need someone else to point us at them. Maybe you can see a few matches of voluntary readers and comment on their mistakes (you should have taken Y / when playing this colors try to hatedraft Z when possible) and how would you have builded the deck with the pool they chose at the end.
Anyway it's just my idea, keep on with the good articles!!!
I should caught this editorial oversight. But it's still a good idea to be conservative with your instant-speed spot removal against RG Fling decks. Thanks for pointing this out...personally, I found out the hard way :-)
Awesome in-depth analysis of a draft. I agree with unspeakable. It is rare to get draft analysis that detailed.
I would have taken the Serra Angel over Doom Blade and then gone into white, but that pick is pretty close and certainly defensible.
Other than that, the only picks I disagree on are:
Armored Cancrix over Sorceror's Strongbox, P1, P8;
Leyline over anything P2, P9;
Elixir over Cancel, Preordain, or Nether Horror, P3, P2.
Yes, the box is expensive as far as card draw goes, but Cancrix is even worse.
If they had to trade value, I would take the basic land over any leyline in limited on pick 14.
And I think Elixir is pretty weak when you could add a card like Preordain or a decent creature on color.
I would LOVE to see more draft write-ups like this one. Any chance you could do this shortly after Scars hits?
I would cut one elf before I cut a Ranger, but with three big worms and a fireball I don't see a problem running 17 lands plus 3 elves and two Rangers. The Rangers seem way too good not to run. Every Ranger you play makes it a little less likely your next draw is a land you don't need. So the Rangers actually don't contribute to you getting flooded. And with the high casting cost cards you have in the deck, the likelihood that you get flooded and have nothing to do with your lands seems small to me.
You too will become bitter, MMogg, and soon. After spending Thousands on cards and seeing a thousand players with the same type of collections as yours, who are all going through 6 client crashes a day from replays and trades. Suffering with terrible scrolling in chat, words cutting off when docked, chat jumps when trying to chat while the game room is chatting. The 80% retardation rate amongst ORCS.
Piss in your cereal prize support for Legacy/Classic.
But, yeah Magic is fun anyway you get to play it because we are as Dunkle would put it "Addicts"
And what the hell is this paper thing you speak of?? Gross, man.
Completely agreed with Primeval Titan. I was skeptical to pick him up at first due to his price, but he is such a house its insane. Due to him being awesome my next few pickups are definitely going to be Grave Titan and possibly a Lotus Cobra.
Wow, that was really an in-depth analysis of a draft. One of the most detailed I've read in a long time. I think you pretty much covered every possible aspect of it. I particularly liked your analysis of the table overall, and how your table can sometimes lead to you being doomed, and how MTGO drafts can differ from those in the real world. Good reminder to watch for an open color, though there comes a point where it's hard to know if it's worth switching into it because you've already shipped so much of it.
This was one of those painful drafts that I seem to have all the time where almost every pick was defensible but you just ended up getting on the wrong bandwagon and getting a lame deck as a result.
UB tezzeret does seem fitting. Yes black has been hosed for mono colour walkers. Maybe my idea of budget is quite different than others. In any event bring on black and green walkers! An my apologies for some reason I thought monument was m10.
I usually study the draft very intently and skim the game summaries. So I would say focus on the draft and maybe highlight some situations during the match that may have been interesting, or how your plan worked out.
A tournament report is only as good as the lessons it contains.
I think many tournament report writers make the mistake of writing a tournament report with the goal of showing off their skills to their audience. These kind of reports are very boring to read because they usually offer little insight for the reader and they seem like a braggart talking about how great he is.
Match write-ups are good when they find a way to involve the audience. This can be done in a number of ways including mulligan quizzes, "what would you do?" quizzes, sideboarding quizzes, etc. If you haven't figured it out yet, the point I'm trying to make is that unless you can "quiz" your audience and get them to think critically about a portion of the game, then your match write-ups are not going to seem all that useful or interesting.
Drafting naturally leads to quizzes because every card you pick is a decision your readers can make along with you.
If you don't want to go the extra mile to make a write-up interactive, then I say, write up multiple drafts and just include a short paragraph on how your matches went focusing on lessons you learned rather than your wins and losses.
hehe ;) Conclusions aren't just conclusions. Shows me to comment without reading.
Yeah I got my Primeval Titan as well and was lucky enough to purchase an Avenger of Zendikar when it was 5 tickets.
Despite the fact that there are some pretty high priced cards for edh, I find it to be worth the investment because the cards are often used in other decks.
Good write-up! I really enjoyed the analysis scenarios you put up for each color. I think we all find ourselves wondering from time to time, whether we were just in the wrong colours in some drafts. Keep up the good work!
Actually, Classic Storm is much stronger than Vintage storm despite not having P9. Classic allows Petal,Mystical,Brainstorm,Ponder and LED to be used unrestricted in conjunction with all the black tutors,Necro and Y Will. Vintage storm cant come close to that type of search and LEDs+Will is batshit insane. Classic Storm is about as "real"as it will ever get.
Best deck in format.
@Nrk- Small Nitpick, Fiatlux ran Gilded Drake in Classic for his white splash Merfs sometime in April.
Congrats on the win and nice lengthy article.
RE Lands: Thanks Solebush, you are absolutely right. This was a tough manabase to figure out, as I wanted to accelerate into Awakener Druids, play a few RR spells, and not get flooded. Essentially there was a delicate balance between enough green sources to reliably hit a turn 1-2 elf(I want at least 10 forests for that), hit RR by turn 5-6(I want at least 7 R sources for that), and I don't want to get flooded, counting elves as essentially blanks. I ended up with 10 forests, 7 R(including rangers), and 15 land + 5 elves = 20 mana sources, which is a bit high but acceptable. If I run any more land than this with all the elves my deck becomes too diluted.
However, as Solebush suggested, I think I should have cut one Sylvan Ranger for a Mountain, to ensure that second land hits. My rationale is that I won't keep a hand without a Forest unless it has 2+Mountains and 2+Red cards, and if I have a Forest then a Sylvan Ranger is almost strictly better than a Mountain. However, the 1/1 body is not worth the trade of drawing a one land hand with a Ranger rather than a two land hand. If I had to remake the mana base I would make it 11 Forest, 6 Mountain, 3 Llanowar Elves, 0 Sylvan Ranger. This way I get less incremental card advantage but won't have to mulligan as much.
I think I got trapped into this headspace where a)I don't have many 2 drops, and b)Sylvan Ranger is always better than a land. In this situation I'm often accelerating straight to 3 drops, and the Ranger is actually not better than a land. Thanks for the great feedback guys!
Llanowar elves is not an "anti LD" card, nor are mana leak, Flagstones (flagstones is quite often used as free mana fixing in doubles), or simply playing accel or low drops.
I would be happy to sit down across from "Gary". I have no problem playing against LD, I never have. I loved (and still love) environments where 'geddon is legal. To me there is a lot of interesting tension involved in playing with and vs. LD. Sometimes you just die to it, this is true. But the same is true for all focused decks.
You may not understand why this is the case - that is fine, but you have to accept it. Moreover you have to accept that I am not alone. You clearly hate LD. That is your prerogative. I am well aware that *you* are not alone.
My whole point is that if *you* are the one who doesn't want to play against something in specific than *you* should not be joining anonymous games - start your own and label it "NO LD!" You'll find a taker in no time.
If we try and get the word out about labeling games then pretty soon you won't have to start your own games, but will be able to find like minded individuals easily without trying to kick those who don't share your definition of casual out of the casual room.
I'd love to do some analysis about what archetypes are under and over drafted. Unfortunately that's a very time consuming process as you have to watch a LOT of replays (looking at all of the decks at the table) and then code the decks correctly into archetypes. It's easy to see which colors in general are over or underdrafted as you can quickly identify what colors each player is running. Archetypes are a lot more complex though for a number of reasons, the most annoying of which is the fact that there are a large number of people who simply don't draft archetypes, so their decks are really hard to classify. Then there are all the hybrid decks (which happens frequently out of necessity if not intention), which are also difficult to classify especially if you only have two or three game replays to watch. In that small of a window you can get a very slanted view of the way a particular deck works as you might see the same 10-20 cards in all of the games and not see the whole other half of the deck.
So I'd love to do some research and analysis as to what colors are under/overdrafted, but don't hold your breath for that kind of analysis for archetypes!
What is missing is a black planeswalker that costs 3 or 4 mana. Every other color has at least one, and they are all quite playable. The problem with Sorin and Liliana is not their power level, it is their casting cost. A card needs to be unbelievably good to make the cut if it costs 5+ mana.
If the LD deck is allowing those intereactions to take place, the deck's not working. A dedicated LD is designed to keep interactions from occurring.
I’ve addressed this elsewhere in this massive set of excellent comments (none of my other articles ever made it to two pages of comments!), but I don’t agree that it’s the responsibility of every non LD player in the casual room to pack their deck with anti-LD cards or to build their strategy around fighting LD. I think that’s a warping of the metagame that is unhealthy for the Casual Room and Magic in general. If this was the kitchen table and you saw Gary get out his LD deck, you’d refuse to play it. It’s not fun. But in the Casual Room we don’t know our opponents and we don’t know what deck they are bringing, so the LD-playing Garys of the world can actually start games.
On the issue of how many lands to go with, personally I always go 17 or 18, but I also always try to draft something that can be a late game mana sink, whether it is fireball, gargoyle sentinel, firebreathing, or whatever.
In this deck, clearly you don't need 18, but 17 seems good.
Paul, I have to disagree with you on Awakener Druid.
Awakener Druid is one of my favorite cards in the format. The Druid wins games by sneaking in damage the turn it comes out. Often available late in a pack; ability to attack with haste for 4 damage. What's not to like? Its main weaknesses are that your opponent can kill it with only 1 damage. But if you can take two Prodigal Pyromancers and a Pyroclasm in your draft, taking those cards away from your opponents, the Druid is probably the number one non-rare card you can get for a deck with green in it. Your opponent can't cheat kill it and actually would have to use a one for one removal spell to kill it. If you happen to draw an elf, you can start attacking with a 4/5 on turn 3.
You are all wrong on the planeswalker front. The color that is getting cheated out of a good planeswalker is Black. Sorin is cool but way too costly, he is not type 1 at all. Garruk and Nissa are both better, and now with Red getting Koth, Mono Black is the only color that does not have a realistic tier 1 planeswalker. I would love to see them get a cheaper Planeswalker and MBC become an option again.
nice draft but as mentioned by the others the land total seems too low.
While the deck still functions with 15 because all your elves the problem to me is more with mulligans. Your deck is pretty strong and so it sems to me you should build to minimize the number of hands you need to mulligan. You can't really keep 1 land hands and you see significantly more of those when running 15 lands than with 17-18. You don't have any splashes here so those rangers lose a lot of their value against most decks (except those running a bunch of x/1s). Without even any equipment or stampede, I don't think ranger is significantly better than basic land in most draws, whereas land is significantly better than ranger when you only have 1 land in your opener. Id cut at least one ranger and probably both for land.
What if they just made plenty of cards that destroyed Mythic Planeswalkers?
And what's with this redirection crap? Think of the design opportunities that targetting planeswalkers allows. For instance, "Electro Blast does three damage to target creature or planeswalker". Or "Volt Bolt does 2 damage to target creature or 4 damage to target Planewalker" Or something like "Static Tremor does 2 samage to each player and Planeswalker"
Let us kill Planeswalkers and then they won't dominate the format so much.
Match writeups are only necessary with decks that are more techy than average, or when facing an opponent that does something unusually noteworthy. crazy board states or important decisions that relate to a pick are also a reason to include a description of at least a certain part of the match
aside from that, I really hate match writeups. I would much rather see more discussion of picks, and of drafting strategies and signal reading.
The big thing that I would like to see is meta analysis: which decks are overdrafted, and which are underdrafted. even in M11, where you just pick the best card in your colors unless you're drafting one of the very few archetypes, patterns emerged. nobody drafted green or red at my local shops. One draft I picked up a pick 7 overwhelming stampede, which is just wrong. recognizing a severely underdrafted deck, and drafting it like mad, I put together quite a streak.
discussion about which cards are over and undervalued can be super helpful in drafting around your opponents.
Conceptually this is cool - but in practice it often generates comments like "After p1p1 pacifism I would have p1p2'd the Azure Drake instead of the lightning bolt because red is awful and blue is amazing."
This is great, but then those two drafts would probably diverge substantially and it is hard not to say, see, if you'd have picked the first drake in P1 you could have gotten two more in pack three (which of course is not necessarily the case). Anyway, just a warning that carrying off that type of draft critique is harder than it would seem.
Dunno if you will feel the same, but how about doing an occasional column featuring the drafts of others, i.e. some of your readers?
I think we all learn better through mistakes, and sometimes we all need someone else to point us at them. Maybe you can see a few matches of voluntary readers and comment on their mistakes (you should have taken Y / when playing this colors try to hatedraft Z when possible) and how would you have builded the deck with the pool they chose at the end.
Anyway it's just my idea, keep on with the good articles!!!
I should caught this editorial oversight. But it's still a good idea to be conservative with your instant-speed spot removal against RG Fling decks. Thanks for pointing this out...personally, I found out the hard way :-)
Awesome in-depth analysis of a draft. I agree with unspeakable. It is rare to get draft analysis that detailed.
I would have taken the Serra Angel over Doom Blade and then gone into white, but that pick is pretty close and certainly defensible.
Other than that, the only picks I disagree on are:
Armored Cancrix over Sorceror's Strongbox, P1, P8;
Leyline over anything P2, P9;
Elixir over Cancel, Preordain, or Nether Horror, P3, P2.
Yes, the box is expensive as far as card draw goes, but Cancrix is even worse.
If they had to trade value, I would take the basic land over any leyline in limited on pick 14.
And I think Elixir is pretty weak when you could add a card like Preordain or a decent creature on color.
I would LOVE to see more draft write-ups like this one. Any chance you could do this shortly after Scars hits?
I would cut one elf before I cut a Ranger, but with three big worms and a fireball I don't see a problem running 17 lands plus 3 elves and two Rangers. The Rangers seem way too good not to run. Every Ranger you play makes it a little less likely your next draw is a land you don't need. So the Rangers actually don't contribute to you getting flooded. And with the high casting cost cards you have in the deck, the likelihood that you get flooded and have nothing to do with your lands seems small to me.
You too will become bitter, MMogg, and soon. After spending Thousands on cards and seeing a thousand players with the same type of collections as yours, who are all going through 6 client crashes a day from replays and trades. Suffering with terrible scrolling in chat, words cutting off when docked, chat jumps when trying to chat while the game room is chatting. The 80% retardation rate amongst ORCS.
Piss in your cereal prize support for Legacy/Classic.
But, yeah Magic is fun anyway you get to play it because we are as Dunkle would put it "Addicts"
And what the hell is this paper thing you speak of?? Gross, man.
Completely agreed with Primeval Titan. I was skeptical to pick him up at first due to his price, but he is such a house its insane. Due to him being awesome my next few pickups are definitely going to be Grave Titan and possibly a Lotus Cobra.
Wow, that was really an in-depth analysis of a draft. One of the most detailed I've read in a long time. I think you pretty much covered every possible aspect of it. I particularly liked your analysis of the table overall, and how your table can sometimes lead to you being doomed, and how MTGO drafts can differ from those in the real world. Good reminder to watch for an open color, though there comes a point where it's hard to know if it's worth switching into it because you've already shipped so much of it.
This was one of those painful drafts that I seem to have all the time where almost every pick was defensible but you just ended up getting on the wrong bandwagon and getting a lame deck as a result.
This is a great article pinpointing some of the top decks in the format and is a good starting point for anyone looking to jump into these PRE events.
"Like American Control, the deck that one pilot called "Royal Canadian Air Force"
Haha, that's genius.
UB tezzeret does seem fitting. Yes black has been hosed for mono colour walkers. Maybe my idea of budget is quite different than others. In any event bring on black and green walkers! An my apologies for some reason I thought monument was m10.
I usually study the draft very intently and skim the game summaries. So I would say focus on the draft and maybe highlight some situations during the match that may have been interesting, or how your plan worked out.
A tournament report is only as good as the lessons it contains.
I think many tournament report writers make the mistake of writing a tournament report with the goal of showing off their skills to their audience. These kind of reports are very boring to read because they usually offer little insight for the reader and they seem like a braggart talking about how great he is.
Match write-ups are good when they find a way to involve the audience. This can be done in a number of ways including mulligan quizzes, "what would you do?" quizzes, sideboarding quizzes, etc. If you haven't figured it out yet, the point I'm trying to make is that unless you can "quiz" your audience and get them to think critically about a portion of the game, then your match write-ups are not going to seem all that useful or interesting.
Drafting naturally leads to quizzes because every card you pick is a decision your readers can make along with you.
If you don't want to go the extra mile to make a write-up interactive, then I say, write up multiple drafts and just include a short paragraph on how your matches went focusing on lessons you learned rather than your wins and losses.
hehe ;) Conclusions aren't just conclusions. Shows me to comment without reading.
Yeah I got my Primeval Titan as well and was lucky enough to purchase an Avenger of Zendikar when it was 5 tickets.
Despite the fact that there are some pretty high priced cards for edh, I find it to be worth the investment because the cards are often used in other decks.
Good write-up! I really enjoyed the analysis scenarios you put up for each color. I think we all find ourselves wondering from time to time, whether we were just in the wrong colours in some drafts. Keep up the good work!
Actually, Classic Storm is much stronger than Vintage storm despite not having P9. Classic allows Petal,Mystical,Brainstorm,Ponder and LED to be used unrestricted in conjunction with all the black tutors,Necro and Y Will. Vintage storm cant come close to that type of search and LEDs+Will is batshit insane. Classic Storm is about as "real"as it will ever get.
Best deck in format.
@Nrk- Small Nitpick, Fiatlux ran Gilded Drake in Classic for his white splash Merfs sometime in April.
Congrats on the win and nice lengthy article.
RE Lands: Thanks Solebush, you are absolutely right. This was a tough manabase to figure out, as I wanted to accelerate into Awakener Druids, play a few RR spells, and not get flooded. Essentially there was a delicate balance between enough green sources to reliably hit a turn 1-2 elf(I want at least 10 forests for that), hit RR by turn 5-6(I want at least 7 R sources for that), and I don't want to get flooded, counting elves as essentially blanks. I ended up with 10 forests, 7 R(including rangers), and 15 land + 5 elves = 20 mana sources, which is a bit high but acceptable. If I run any more land than this with all the elves my deck becomes too diluted.
However, as Solebush suggested, I think I should have cut one Sylvan Ranger for a Mountain, to ensure that second land hits. My rationale is that I won't keep a hand without a Forest unless it has 2+Mountains and 2+Red cards, and if I have a Forest then a Sylvan Ranger is almost strictly better than a Mountain. However, the 1/1 body is not worth the trade of drawing a one land hand with a Ranger rather than a two land hand. If I had to remake the mana base I would make it 11 Forest, 6 Mountain, 3 Llanowar Elves, 0 Sylvan Ranger. This way I get less incremental card advantage but won't have to mulligan as much.
I think I got trapped into this headspace where a)I don't have many 2 drops, and b)Sylvan Ranger is always better than a land. In this situation I'm often accelerating straight to 3 drops, and the Ranger is actually not better than a land. Thanks for the great feedback guys!
Llanowar elves is not an "anti LD" card, nor are mana leak, Flagstones (flagstones is quite often used as free mana fixing in doubles), or simply playing accel or low drops.
I would be happy to sit down across from "Gary". I have no problem playing against LD, I never have. I loved (and still love) environments where 'geddon is legal. To me there is a lot of interesting tension involved in playing with and vs. LD. Sometimes you just die to it, this is true. But the same is true for all focused decks.
You may not understand why this is the case - that is fine, but you have to accept it. Moreover you have to accept that I am not alone. You clearly hate LD. That is your prerogative. I am well aware that *you* are not alone.
My whole point is that if *you* are the one who doesn't want to play against something in specific than *you* should not be joining anonymous games - start your own and label it "NO LD!" You'll find a taker in no time.
If we try and get the word out about labeling games then pretty soon you won't have to start your own games, but will be able to find like minded individuals easily without trying to kick those who don't share your definition of casual out of the casual room.
Thanks for the comments everyone, keep em coming!
I'd love to do some analysis about what archetypes are under and over drafted. Unfortunately that's a very time consuming process as you have to watch a LOT of replays (looking at all of the decks at the table) and then code the decks correctly into archetypes. It's easy to see which colors in general are over or underdrafted as you can quickly identify what colors each player is running. Archetypes are a lot more complex though for a number of reasons, the most annoying of which is the fact that there are a large number of people who simply don't draft archetypes, so their decks are really hard to classify. Then there are all the hybrid decks (which happens frequently out of necessity if not intention), which are also difficult to classify especially if you only have two or three game replays to watch. In that small of a window you can get a very slanted view of the way a particular deck works as you might see the same 10-20 cards in all of the games and not see the whole other half of the deck.
So I'd love to do some research and analysis as to what colors are under/overdrafted, but don't hold your breath for that kind of analysis for archetypes!
What is missing is a black planeswalker that costs 3 or 4 mana. Every other color has at least one, and they are all quite playable. The problem with Sorin and Liliana is not their power level, it is their casting cost. A card needs to be unbelievably good to make the cut if it costs 5+ mana.
If the LD deck is allowing those intereactions to take place, the deck's not working. A dedicated LD is designed to keep interactions from occurring.
I’ve addressed this elsewhere in this massive set of excellent comments (none of my other articles ever made it to two pages of comments!), but I don’t agree that it’s the responsibility of every non LD player in the casual room to pack their deck with anti-LD cards or to build their strategy around fighting LD. I think that’s a warping of the metagame that is unhealthy for the Casual Room and Magic in general. If this was the kitchen table and you saw Gary get out his LD deck, you’d refuse to play it. It’s not fun. But in the Casual Room we don’t know our opponents and we don’t know what deck they are bringing, so the LD-playing Garys of the world can actually start games.
On the issue of how many lands to go with, personally I always go 17 or 18, but I also always try to draft something that can be a late game mana sink, whether it is fireball, gargoyle sentinel, firebreathing, or whatever.
In this deck, clearly you don't need 18, but 17 seems good.
Paul, I have to disagree with you on Awakener Druid.
Awakener Druid is one of my favorite cards in the format. The Druid wins games by sneaking in damage the turn it comes out. Often available late in a pack; ability to attack with haste for 4 damage. What's not to like? Its main weaknesses are that your opponent can kill it with only 1 damage. But if you can take two Prodigal Pyromancers and a Pyroclasm in your draft, taking those cards away from your opponents, the Druid is probably the number one non-rare card you can get for a deck with green in it. Your opponent can't cheat kill it and actually would have to use a one for one removal spell to kill it. If you happen to draw an elf, you can start attacking with a 4/5 on turn 3.
You are all wrong on the planeswalker front. The color that is getting cheated out of a good planeswalker is Black. Sorin is cool but way too costly, he is not type 1 at all. Garruk and Nissa are both better, and now with Red getting Koth, Mono Black is the only color that does not have a realistic tier 1 planeswalker. I would love to see them get a cheaper Planeswalker and MBC become an option again.
nice draft but as mentioned by the others the land total seems too low.
While the deck still functions with 15 because all your elves the problem to me is more with mulligans. Your deck is pretty strong and so it sems to me you should build to minimize the number of hands you need to mulligan. You can't really keep 1 land hands and you see significantly more of those when running 15 lands than with 17-18. You don't have any splashes here so those rangers lose a lot of their value against most decks (except those running a bunch of x/1s). Without even any equipment or stampede, I don't think ranger is significantly better than basic land in most draws, whereas land is significantly better than ranger when you only have 1 land in your opener. Id cut at least one ranger and probably both for land.
What if they just made plenty of cards that destroyed Mythic Planeswalkers?
And what's with this redirection crap? Think of the design opportunities that targetting planeswalkers allows. For instance, "Electro Blast does three damage to target creature or planeswalker". Or "Volt Bolt does 2 damage to target creature or 4 damage to target Planewalker" Or something like "Static Tremor does 2 samage to each player and Planeswalker"
Let us kill Planeswalkers and then they won't dominate the format so much.
Match writeups are only necessary with decks that are more techy than average, or when facing an opponent that does something unusually noteworthy. crazy board states or important decisions that relate to a pick are also a reason to include a description of at least a certain part of the match
aside from that, I really hate match writeups. I would much rather see more discussion of picks, and of drafting strategies and signal reading.
The big thing that I would like to see is meta analysis: which decks are overdrafted, and which are underdrafted. even in M11, where you just pick the best card in your colors unless you're drafting one of the very few archetypes, patterns emerged. nobody drafted green or red at my local shops. One draft I picked up a pick 7 overwhelming stampede, which is just wrong. recognizing a severely underdrafted deck, and drafting it like mad, I put together quite a streak.
discussion about which cards are over and undervalued can be super helpful in drafting around your opponents.