Acidrakken - ISD #1

(Acidrakken makes his blog debut.  WHAT UP DUDE!?!)


Acidrakken's RAREDRAFT

Went 2-1, lost in the "finals" of a Swiss queue.

JoostdB ISD #1

(Lets give a warm welcome to JOOSTDB!)

http://www.raredraft.com/watch?d=31qmz

Once again, embedding is still disabled.  Sorry about that.

This deck went 2-1 in a Swiss queue losing in the "finals."

MrFishy's ISD Draft #1

Hello there everyone. I had a draft recently where my deck building process very nearly went to time due to what I felt to be a very difficult evaluation of cards and determining what to cut. I would be very interested to hear how anyone else might have put together a deck with what I had.

Notes:

So clearly BR aggro was open this draft as I was picking up playables on every single wheel. (The only non-land card not shown is a Make a Wish). For probably the only time I was in a position where I was overloaded with possibilities and struggling to figure out what to cut. I knew I wanted to be as aggressive as possible with this deck and wrestled with the following questions.

-Do you play 17 lands or go to 16? Is there any validity to going even lower?

-With an aggressive curve what would your top end look like? Which of the 5+ CC cards are strong enough to include?

-The removal package felt very weak, at least in terms of ability to reach out and deal with threats, is it worth it to splash for the Bonds of Faith? The flashback on Ancient Grudge?

-You have 7 'normal' zombies, is this a deck that wants the Unbreathing Horde?

-Do you run the sacrifice package of Altar's Reap/Disciple of Griselbrand/Traitorous Blood?

-Do you run the run the 'dome' burn package of the 2 Bump in the Nights?

-What ratio of creatures to spells do you run?

-Is the Curse of Stalked Prey actually a good card for this deck's play style? Or is it a greedy infatuation with a rare?

Two items to consider.

-Olivia Voldaren was a miracle P3p2 pick up, the pack average otherwise and the transform card was missing. I took this to mean that somone snagged a Garruk (turned out to be a Mayor of Avabruck).

-While black and red were ridiculously open, many mid-level cards that I would have played did not end up wheeling. (Diregraff Ghoul/Traitorous Blood/Pitchburn Devils/Harvest Pyre/Corpse Lunge/Village Cannibals). And other then one Harvest Pyre I never saw a single red burn spell, so at least one other player was in each of my colors.

This was the deck I finally ran:

Decisions:

-I wanted to be dropping as many creatures as fast as possible so I went down to 16 lands, with an even split given my desire to be to get one-drops and double color cost spells in each color down as reliably as possible.

-With lower land, difficult casting costs and a need to be on the play as much as possible I decided there was no way I could splash, even for a strong card like Bonds.

-Likewise I couldn't add a forest for Ancient Grudge, and cut it from the deck as a side board consideration. Night Terrors also felt like it should only be considered from the sideboard if I absolutely need a silver bullet for something.

-With 7 zombies it didn't feel likely that Unbreathing Horde would be very strong, and so was cut. How relevant have people found its damage prevention ability? 

-I removed the Typhoid Rats/Manor Skeleton/Riot Devils/Altar's Reap/Disciple of Griselbrand as not being aggressive enough for this deck. 

-I knew I wanted to keep the Ghoulcaller's Chant in for cheap recursion, sufficient zombies for value, and the possibility of my deck NEEDING Olivia to win games.

-At this point I really started to struggle, I saw strength in playing everything I had level on one level or another.

-With my mana base I really wanted to avoid anything with more then 4CC. Night Revelers and Scourge of Geier Reach, while strong cards, seemed like slow vanilla beaters. At this point I felt the deck was going to win by putting the opponent on the back foot as FAST as possible, and decided to give up the later game inevitability.

-I kept the Mokrut Banshee and the Into the Maw of Hell in despite their cost as I thought they were too strong as removal spells to cut. However this did cause me to have uncastable cards in my hand at points.

-I finally ended up losing the Bump in the Night's, even though they seemed a perfect fit for this deck. I was getting close to losing a critical mass of creatures and need to cut spells. I thought that the combination of 4 falter effects (Nightbird's Clutches and Crossway Vampire), many early drops to get in for incidental damage, and the Curse of Stalked Prey to transition them from early to late game would end up being more consistent then an early all-in creature damage + burn plan.

-The lack of sacrifice outlets made Traitorous Blood lose a lot of value to me, despite seeming a very strong finisher card in an aggressive deck like this. Also the possible weakness of Curse of Stalked Prey giving the opponent back a stronger creature led me to cut it.

-This left me with 2 cards that I still needed to cut. I figured I could take out one of the Ghoulraisers because I wanted more aggression then a 2/2 for 3 CC, and infinite recursion, while awesome in a deck that would suicide creatures, was less valuable then other card combinations. Lastly I cut the Tribute to Hunger, I felt I couldn't go lower then the 16 creatures I had, and thought of all the cards I had left TtH was the most likely to lose value if my deck's plan started to go wrong.

The deck ended up playing exactly like I had hoped (and feared). I went on the play any time I got the choice, and ended up winning the draft going 6-1-0 total.

M1G1: I first Mulliganed a hand of 4 mountain, Curse of Stalked Prey, Dead Weight, and Rotting Fensnake and ended up keeping my second 1-land hand of Swamp, 2x Dead Weight Markov Patrician, Rotting Fensnake, and Nightbird's Clutches hoping that I could clear opponent's early game with the Weights and use the Patrician to recover any lost life. Only got a second land 4 turns later, much too late.

Two of the other games were won either by Olivia Voldaren directly or by my opponent having to play around her while ignoring my other guys, the others were won by the combination of curving small guys out with repeated falter and recursion effects and growth from the Curse of Stalked Prey. I nearly always ended up siding out Into the Maw of Hell for Tribute to Hunger, the 2nd Ghoulraiser, or an extra Mountain.

Even with the strong wins I still wonder if this was the best deck I could have made. What would you have done?

Yablo's ISD Draft #1

(Yablo is here for an INN Draft!  I can't embed because rare draft embedding is currently turned off... sorry to be creating extra browser windows)


http://www.raredraft.com/watch?d=30inh

Ended up going 1-2 but I thought I had a pretty solid draft, must have been the play.  Any comments I could get off the site would be appreciated.


Thanks!
Yablo


(Also, sorry about the huge delay!  I was having some formatting issues from the new blogspot layout.)

Zvazda's ISD #5

R1G1 - I curved out.  Walking Corpse into Chapel Geist into Abattoir Ghoul into Midnight haunting.  He didn't stand a chance.  I got him to 2 and he psuedo stabilized but a top decked blazing torch took care of that pretty fast.
R1G2 - Won!  (replay got lost)

R2G1 - Lost (replay got lost)
R2G2 - He played a Elder of Laurels, but we were able to fly over his head with  a chapel geist, and the abbatoir ghoul + blazing torch made it so he couldn't actually block our abbatoir ghoul.  He tried to stabilize with creepy doll but Avacynian Preist took care of that pretty fast.
R2G3 - Lost (replay got lost)

R3G1 - Lost (replay got lost)
R3G2 - Facing Red/Black Aggro.  His Furor of the Bitten on a bloodcrazed neonate was easily handled by our rebuke.  And the juggy was easily handled by victim of night.  He geistflamed our patrician  and one of our midnight haunts.  He then played an olivia into a totally reset board... Yipes.  It was OK because of our Rebuke, though :).  After that Chapel Geist got brimstone volleyed... but we were able to flashback an unburial rites to get him back and throw down our Silverchase fox.  He topdecked a Kessig Wolf which we promptly tribute to hungered and cracked in for the win.
R3G3 - Lost (replay got lost)


I dunno why we MTGO has been so bad about replays lately.  Anyone have any insight to this?

Listen Along with Zach!


21 - Adele - Yes, I do listen to popular music on occasion... Some of it I even enjoy!  I think this album is quite good.
Lady In the Dark - This is a Kurt Weill show from 1941.  It is the rare musical from before Oklahoma! that is worth listening to but this score is truly sensational and I'm happy everytime it shows up on my Ipod.
Best That I could Do - This is a John Melloncamp best of collection.  I normally avoid best of collections but somehow this one ended up on my computer.

knrhenry ISD #1

(Knrhenry makes his blog debut!)

This deck 1-2'd in the swiss queue.

Oraymw's INN draft #3

Commentary:

To be honest, this draft was pretty ridiculous. I got passed all of the removal, and ended up with eight potential cards for the final slot.

As for the play, it really wasn't difficult to win the games. Basically, I just played a few zombies, and then killed everything that got in the way.

Round 1 was vs. a decent UW aggro deck. One of his biggest problems was relying on Cloistered Youth. Turns out that an Unholy Fiend with Claustrophobia is not an asset. I did this to his creatures in both games, and it just made it too easy for me to race him.

Round 2 was vs. RG aggro, and the games were pretty close. He had Devil's Play, which got me down to 1 life in both games, but I managed to pull squeak out the wins anyways. Of course, in the second game, he had to mull down to four. Against him, my main strategy was to keep chaining Ghoulraisers, which just gave me so much card advantage that he couldn't compete. He was banking on a lot of things like Harvest Pyre and Ambush Vipers which don't do very well against a continuous stream of Ghoulraisers.

Round 3 was vs. WG aggro. Basically, he played large creatures, and I killed them with the greatest of ease.

Zvazda's I Draft #4

This deck was pretty removal light, but I felt very good about all the fliers.  I didn't think it was quite 3-0 worthy... but it got there anyway.

I feel like the draft portion was very tight, as was my play.

Here's the deck:

Listen Along with Zach


Blood Money - Tom Waits - This album is very interesting.  It's a rock concept album based on the play Woyczeck.  Tom Waits... is... well eccentric.

The Lion King (Soundtrack) - I find the soundtrack from the original disney movie greatly preferable to the original broadway cast.

Asturiel's ISD Draft #4

Here's the deck I submitted

Here's the deck I found myself boarding into, taking out the armored skaab because I have that much synergy with them and my deck had plenty of mill.

This was a draft that didn't go quite as I planned, I went 1-1 with a bye which disappointed me but whatever. There was the obvious signalling thing that you'll see in the draft, white WAS open and I should have seen it. But alas the deck wasn't too bad, I had fun with it and I look forward to being able to draft INN online again because of it :)

Zvazda's ISD Draft #3

MTGO is being very bad about saving games lately so I don't have any game recaps.  Suffice to say we went 1-2 losing to much better decks (including the blue tempo deck we passed and didn't have a chance against).

Listen Along with Zach


Ten Summoner's Tales - Sting - This is my favorite Sting album and not just because it has Fields of Gold, which reminds me of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip - the saddest cancellation since Firefly.

Artificial Heart - Jonathan Coulton - Thank goodness I ran so good on music on this disappointing 1-2 daft.  Seriously, if you haven't heard this album yet, go get it.  Then go get everything else JoCo has done and listen to that.

Asturiel's ISD Draft #3

The mana was a bit light, I'm not used to going 16 but I felt like in this deck it was justified. The curve topped at 5 aside from Flashback cards and I couldn't cut another spell for the life of me :) I decided to go with the 2nd rites in the board since I couldn't get myself to cut another creature since I was light on those, and I couldn't see a spell to cut. Maybe the cleaver was the call to cut, but I felt it was quite necessary in the deck. The scarecrow also got the axe since I didn't have any "bombs" to stall to so I needed guys who could turn sideways more than guys to stop them from turning sideways. Le sigh, I don't know. Anyway the deck durdled very well, and when it died while durdling it didn't, but if you let me durdle around, I ground ya out :P

Went 2-1 losing in the finals to a GW travel prep deck. He didn't let me durdle :(

Twantwan's ISD #1

This draft went 1-1

(Everyone welcome Twantwan)

Lobster667's TSP #1

... I feel like I really stuck to my guns in this draft and made a good work of claiming Red to myself early on and only branching out when there was nothing really in my colour. I was kind of surprised at how late some cards were going (the Ivory Giants in pack one, per example), but even then I felt like I did a fine job of abandoning those cards if the support wasn't there.

The deck ended up making the finals, where I lost to another really good R/G deck after winning the first game and narrowly losing the second. I mulled to five in the third game and never got a shot at establishing a board position before I was killed by huge beaters and a suspended flier. It was a really interesting match with a sort-of disappointing finish, but I was still perfectly fine with it, and I won three packs, which is great.

I made some pretty sick plays in the first two matches.. One game, I curved out with Turn one suspend Halberdier, turn two suspend the other halberdier and crack Terramorphic, turn three Totem, turn five Fomori Nomad. My opponent conceded and I never even got to play the Sprout Swarm in my hand!

I did in another game, though. In fact, I got to play it seven times with buyback, and then with 10 creatures on the board to villain's 3, cast it without buyback, then casting the Haze of Rage first with buyback and then without, for a total of five copies. I swung for 67 on turn 10 and obviously absolutely murdered my opponent.

Overall, I had a lot of fun with this draft and with playing the deck. If you want to try your own Time Spiral Block draft deck against it, just catch me on modo, I'm "Diamondeye" on there :)

-Lobster667.

Zvazda's INN Draft #2

I kinda wish I'd played a Diregraff ghoul over something, but I was skewing more towards green than black  What do you think?

All my games got lost :-/  I ended up going 2-1, though.

Listen Along with Zach


Deep Dead Blue - Elvis Costello
Dawn Metropolis - Anamangauchi
Complete Recordings of Bessie Smith - Bessie Smith
Disneyland Soundtracks - This had the disneyland soundtracks, mostly from frontier land.  The highlight of this was the 22 minute complete recording of Fantasmic.  Yes, my roommates looked at me funny.

Fiffo416 ISD Draft #1

(Fiffo sends us his first draft!  Be nice... but not too nice.) 

I ended up with a very aggressive BR deck and won the draft, winning the finals against a perfectly shaped mill deck (with the blue curse in multiples, the 1-mana artifact, the Nephalia UB land, dream twist...). He put me on a very very fast clock, but my deck was even better than his one talking about very fast race-based
scarcely-interactive games :P Innistrad is awesome, by the way.

I feel my drafting was fine except for the tree-of-redemption pick (don't really know what I was thinking)... but would you have drafted differently? Should I have switched to blue seeing that it was so open? Should I have picked the brimstone volley over the demon? Please let me know ^^

Asturiel's ISD Draft #2

This was similar to a deck I split the finals with in my FNM, except that deck was INSANE. One of the few things Ill say is this. 3x Travel Preps, 2x Midnight Haunting and a Instigator Gang. I had 34 playables... yeah....

I didnt think that the mana in this deck was that bad, but I would either fall flat on 1 color so often I found myself questioning the mana base. So this went a 1-2 in the swiss ques...  Yeah...

Penix's INN draft #2

Looking over this draft again, I think there's a solid argument that could be made that I did as much as possible to screw this deck up, but I think it ended up coming together at the end, and I was pretty happy with the final list. From watching the replays, it didn’t have quite as much power as some of the other decks, but it was one of the only 2-colour decks in the whole draft, and it was pretty consistent.

Although it lacked a lot of removal, once I got to four or five mana and above the quality of my cards were pretty great. I didn’t have many insane bombs, but I had a lot of cards that could pretty happily

win the game on their own. Standout performers were the Watchkeep, Grasp of Phantoms, and all of my five-drops. Unfortunately I don’t think I ever even drew the Dragon? So I have no idea how that would

have gone, although I found myself getting to 6-8 mana pretty regularly.

I went 2-0 with this, and then split the finals. Marshall lost in the first round :(

Lobster 667's INN Draft #3

I'm very excited to hear feedback to my (pretty radical) decisions in this draft. The deck ended up winning all three matches of the Swiss draft; The first game was against a really powerful W/U deck that, among other cards, sported the Divine Reckoning I had passed in the draft. I won game one after starting out aggressively and then being reduced to a Vampire Interloper after the Reckoning, but I had him at 4 and was able to kill a defending Moon Heron with a Geistflame+Flashback to win. I actually also got the chance to point a Geistflame at the dome. Seems like an unlikely play, but I still think it was right under the circumstances.

Game two, my opponent stumbled on mana, only playing a Delver of Secrets - I played a Galvanic Juggernaut and untapped it by blowing away any and all defenses he had; He revealed the Wrath to flip his guy but only ever got to three mana, and I killed him very fast (5, 7, 8 damage in three consecutive turns).

In the second match, I played a mirror match against a slightly slower deck. I massacred him game one, but game two I kept a hand with only black mana, three red spells and a Falkenrath Noble (on the draw) and didn't see mountains until quite late, and of course my opponent played a Hanweir Watchkeep on turn three which flipped when I had no 3drop. I stabilized with double nobles plus random dorks when he played the Heretic's Punishment I had passed in favour of a Brimstone Volley in the draft, and he was lucky and blew me out for five before I could force trades to get drains off my Noble. One of the cards the Punishment revealed was Olivia Voldaren, Bomb Royale. So I did a bit of sideboarding and adjusted my play game three - I killed Olivia by ripping my third land after she was cast and Volleyed her, and took the victory after that. It felt good.

In the finals, I knew from replays I was facing a really aggressive White/Red deck with Fiend Hunter, Slayer of the Wicked, Reckless Waif, Moment of Heroism, Brimstone Volley, and a few Bell-Ringers. I was aggroed out game one but managed to take game two despite the opponent opening on an active Reckless Waif. The final game was really exciting and stalled out with an almost empty board and my opponent at 2 (I was at almost 20). After a couple of land draws (I had 14 of my 17 lands at this point) I drew a Ridgewolf that he couldn't answer (15 trample damage is hard to deal with!).

So, I won. And I feel like my deck was pretty good, but that might be ROTty - were my draft decisions right?

Lobster667.

Zvazda's INN #1

I think I play the sensory deprivation over think twice, but maybe I'm insane for that?

R1G1 - I lost this game to a village bell ringer that countered my claustrophobia and a rally the peasants that got cast and flashbacked in the same turn.  Turns out +4+0 is a lot.

R1G2 - This game was looking pretty well in hand with a Turn 2 Grimgrin... but then slayer of the wicked made our day pretty sad and lands off the top didn't help at all.

R2G1 - A turn 2 Lilliana let us dominate, making him discard his whole hand and putting him in topdeck mode and making him sacrifice creatures.  He psuedo stabilized with a doomed traveler, but corpse lunging his final blocker out of the way and crashing in with the red version of our looter gave us the win.

R3G1 - Got lost, but we won.

Thanks for the comments, guys!

Oraymw's INN Draft #2

I jumped into my second Innistrad draft, and ended up with this beauty. This is possibly the most fun deck that I have ever drafted; it felt like I was playing EDH instead of limited.

There are a few neat little combos in there. First of all, it wasn’t hard at all to turn on the Stitched Drakes. Between the Armored Skaabs and the Deranged Assitants, I could always cast the drakes in a timely fashing.

Second was the awesome interaction between Cackling Counterpart and Stitched Drake. Once you play the Stitched drake, you get an instant speed 3/4 flyer for 1UU, and then you can flash it back again at 5UU. Nothing did more work for me than that.

Third is Back from the Brink. I was worried about it, since removing guys from my yard doesn’t interact well with the Stitched Drake, but it’s actually a wash, since playing the Drakes with Back from the Brink doesn’t require exiling anything. Basically, it draws every creature in your graveyard when you play it, and then it turns all future creatures into two-for-ones. I had to play it carefully to make sure I could survive the resulting board position, but from then on, Back from the Brink completely dominated the board.

Fourth is the interaction between Civilized Scholar and either Back from the Brink or Cackling Counterpart. Copies of flip cards cannot transform, but they can untap. This means that if I had a token Civilized Scholar, I could tap him, discard a creature, untap him, and repeat as needed. This could me running through my deck until I found removal, or it could mean drawing as many creatures as I wanted and then playing them from the graveyard with Back from the Brink.

The one thing I would change about the deck is to change the Corpse Lunge for the other Sensory Deprivation.

Well, there you go! Let me know what you think in the comments.

Oraymw article

Hey guys -

If you're drafting Innistrad (and if you're not... why are you here?) you gotta go over and read Oraymw's latest article.  It's an excellent write up and you're throwing away an edge if you don't read it.

-Z

Asturiel's INN Draft #1

(Asturiel (AKA the GOD OF PANTS) makes his debut on the blog.  Lets give it up for the reason we all don't have to wear skirts.)



(an appearance by yours truly down below!!!)

This deck was a disappointing 1-2.

Oraymw's INN Draft #1

This was my first Innistrad draft, but I felt like I had a pretty good handle on the format. There were a few close picks: Victim of Night vs. Prey Upon, or Angel of Flight Alabaster vs. Dead Weight vs. Falkenrath Nobles. But I still feel like I definitely had the best deck at the table.

Round one, I faced a deck with a bunch of Crazed Neonates, and not much else. I should have been able to take the game with my pile of Villagers of Estwald, but unfortunately I had some pretty bad mana problems. The first game, I missed my third land drop, which allowed him to get through with a Neonate + Rakish Heir before I could drop one of the two Villagers in my hand. From there, I nearly stabilized and one the game, but I couldn't get more than 4 mana (one of those was a Pilgrim). In game two, I kept a two lander with a bunch of two drops and Liliana, but I got stuck on two lands. I still nearly pulled out that game, but I couldn't quite pull it off.

Matche two was vs. the guy with Heartless Summoning and Intangible Virtue. Wasn't even close.

Match three was against a pretty solid Red/Green deck, but my tempo was just miles better, and Travel Preparations destroyed him.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with the draft. But... I've been having a lot of bad luck lately with mana problems. I feel like I'm building my decks correctly, but I have still performed poorer in the past two months than I have in years. Is it just a really bad run of variance? Or is it something I'm doing wrong? Take a look at the deck and tell me what you think.

Lobster667's INN Draft #2

I was really happy about the deck, even if it kind of lacks bombs and there were a few doubtful inclusions (I feel like the Cobbled Wings are justified, but not everyone might agree). Unfortunately, I ended up going 1-2 after trouncing my opponent in the first match twice with Undead Alchemist + Nephalia Drownyard for insane milling and spawning, basically seeing his whole deck in the process in game one.

In the second match, I played against a pretty aggressive W/G deck, and I was just barely winning a really exciting game one when he played Garruk, which was enough to turn the tide. In game two I boarded in my Night Terrors and the counterspell, but had to mull to five and was mana-screwed (but with the counterspell in hand) when he played Garruk turn four, and I was just overwhelmed after that.

The third match was against White/Red aggro with Charmbreaker Devils plus Brimstone Volley and Nightbird's Clutches. Those games were pretty harsh, and, I am afraid to admit, pretty short.

Innistrad tracking!

Hey guys.  So a la Ryan Spain (AKA Modogodot) I keep meticulous track of my online drafts.  I have uploaded my Innistrad file to Google documents and made it publicly viewable.  Feel free to download it and start keeping track of your drafts.

A few notes - It will tell you your price per draft assuming that you are spending 4 dollars a pack and that you aren't selling any rares.  I'm going to be making a way to track how much we really spend on drafts (including discounted prices) but for now this is what I've got.

For the initial page what I do is every time I draft a new card I will ctrl-x it from Column B to Column A then delete the rarity entry in column C.  It will auto-update and tell you how many of each rarity you have left to draft and how many of each color you have left.  I find this really useful for redeeming, but also very interesting because I can see after 10 or so drafts what cards I might be undervaluing.

Enjoy!

-Z

Smerle's Innistrad Draft #1

(Smerle joins the fray!!)

Was itching to get my Innistrad draft on, so tried out a pre-release draft.  I feel like I made the right picks for the most part, but the plan didn't quite come to fruition during the matches.  Gutter Grime never arrived and I had to use lots of early creatures to fend off aggro early on, which meant losing fuel for the ooze fire.  I still like the thought of this deck, but seems maybe too cute to compete in a format that still seems quite aggressive.  May be better paired with Blue with some card drawing and control.

Went 1-2, the Darkthicket Wolf  + Festerhide Boar winning me the one match.  But when you don't get Grime, Lumberknot, or Moldgraff to the table . . . you lose.  Would still like to play a draft deck match sometime with this and see if it could work.

Penix's INN Draft #1

( Behold those willing to drop 20 tix on a draft!  Thanks guys!!) 

I ended up going 2-1.

I wasn’t sure how many things like Moon Heron (which don’t play into
the themes of the deck, but are solid cards) versus things like Think
Twice (which are pretty good if they get milled, but don’t have a
whole heap of impact) I should play, and I think I might have erred
too much on the side of synergy. Maybe having solid creatures like
Moon Heron or Markov Patrician is just better? You will notice that
the manabase for this deck does not include any plains despite the
fact that the mana requirements aren’t that onerous (aside from
Reaper), and Unburial Rites is great when you can flash it back. That
is because I am a moron and forgot to add plains when I was adding
land. I switched two plains for two islands after the first game of
every match.

Match one was against a pretty aggressive red/green deck. In game one
he hit me down to 1 life, but then I played my demon and a bunch of
zombie dudes and stabilised. Game two I F6ed through my first turn
because I’m a moron, and then lost. Game three I played my demon which
he killed, and I then got it back with Unburial Rites, and then played
Cackling Counterpart on it, with a plains in play to Unburial Rites it
a third time if he killed it again. I won that game.

Match two was against blue/green werewolves and zombies. I got pretty
badly manascrewed both games (in game one I was on three land while he
was on 7-8), and in game two I finally managed to get out the Reaper
(with the help of two Deranged Assistants), but he played two Grasp of
Phantoms (sorcery that puts a creature on the top of its owner
library) on successive turns, then played that red Devil that gets
back sorceries at random, and replayed his Grasp of Phantoms, and then
the next turn got to eight mana which let him flashback Grasp of
Phantoms. It is very hard to win when you get time walked four times,
and so I didn’t.

Match three was against red/white humans. Game one my deck did exactly
what is was supposed to do. I had Deranged Assistant, Armored Skaab
and Forbidden Alchemy to get a bunch of stuff in my graveyard, zombies
to cast and to exile from my graveyard, and a bunch of flashback cards
to get value. I also had a Reaper of the Abyss and Cackling
Counterpart to copy it. He Fiend Huntered my Reaper, but it didn’t
really matter. I won before I was able to flash back Cackling
Counterpart in order to have three demons on the battlefield :( Game
two I mulliganned to six and then got stuck on three land. I played
Armored Skaab and milled four land, which made me very sad. I ended up
having to Forbidden Alchemy for a land. I eventually drew another
couple of land, but all his stuff got bigger when I killed something
(like Thanben Sentry and whathaveyou), which prevented me from
stabilising. Game three I had a turn one Delver into turn two Vampire
Interloper. The Delver flipped on turn four or so, so I was beating
down pretty hard. He eventually got Markov Vampire and Silver Inlaid
Dagger, so was able to gain a bunch of life. I killed his vampire…
somehow, and then he ended up with a 5/5 Juggernaut and a 5/2 equipped
human that dies and gives +1/+1 counters. I was on five, but luckily
had a Markov Patrician to chump with, leaving me at three. I swung in
for the win the next turn.

I feel like this was a really good deck, but I played a lot of pretty
aggressive decks, and found myself winning at pretty low life a lot of
the time. I’m not sure if I built this wrong, if the quality of
archetypes are really close in Innistrad, or just if everyone in the
draft opened very well. I think maybe the fact that I picked up a lot
of synergistic cards led me to play too many do-nothing cards like
Think Twice, whereas if there had have been less graveyard-centric
cards, I maybe would have been happy with playing more solid
creatures.

Cheers
Penix

Lobster667's INN Draft #1

(Lobster brings the limited resources gang our first Innistrad draft!)

The Deck struck me as really good, but I unfortunately went 1-2 with it..:

I (barely) lost my first match to a B/R deck that had some nice creatures (including the Charmbreaker Devils) but was really spearheaded by Heretic's Punishment (the one I opened pack 3) - a card that's gone from mediocre to absolutely awesome in my impression after that game. So what if he had only 10 cards left in his library when he won? He killed two of my creatures every turn without spending cards!

I won my second match pretty handily against another B/R player who didn't really seem to have grasped the game (he failed to kill my Voiceless Spirit with a Blazing Torch and instead attacked into it with a Kessig Wolf with Skeletal Grimace - without any mana up!). He also declined a block to save his hide (three fliers attacking and Selfless Cathar activation visible on board), so that was almost too easy.

My last match was really interesting - I played against a really, really powerful U/B digging deck which splashed Red for the 13-to-everything. I lost the first round to the boardsweeper (guessing he had it after he fetched a mountain but already with my guys on the table). I won the second game on turn six or so in an absolute beatdown (end-of-turn Midnight Haunting into Demonmail Hauberk, swinging for 5 in the air on T4 seems a pretty nice play. Especially when T2 was Cloistered Youth!).

The third game was really long and close, but I ended up losing to the red Wrath followed by a Stitched Drake and a Murder of Crows. I could've played differently (playing a Mausoleum Guard instead of an Unruly Mob, giving me a presence after the Wrath), but I still think his large fliers would have done me in. Oh well.

Some cards that did way better than I think people evaluate them to; Cloistered Youth, Demonmail Hauberk, Heretic's Punishment, Stitcher's Apprentice, Crossway Vampire, Galvanic Juggernaut.

Lobster 667's TSP Draft #1

The format is really intriguing and I'd recommend it to everyone, especially experienced drafters. I had a blast playing (and winning) the matches. I think it's worth noticing that I didn't face any decks playing Black, at all. My first two opponents were W/G and U/G, and both matches were relatively close. The deck I met in the finals was a greedy 3-colour deck of White, Red and Blue. For anyone considering trying the format, I think it's worth recommending being a bit greedy, especially if you get some nice fixing in the first pack (it can have Terramorphic Expanses, per example), and that White and Black are pretty commital colours while the other three are easier to splash or play as a minor colour.

I'd appreciate any and all comments, of course :)

Zvazda's M12 Draft #15

In retrospect I like being less greedy and maindecking the phantasmal bear over the pharaoh.

M1G1 - he got flooded a little, we punished him with a bloodthirsted croc and then when he finally hit a guy who could block it, we frost breathed and crashed in for the win.

M1G2 - he starts off with an aggressive griffin rider into griffin.  We played a crazy control game where we had finally stabilized... only to die when he got enough lands to fireball us out.

M1G3 - we flooded out and his stave off to save his lawkeeper from doomblade was crippling.  We stalled long enough with double frost breath to draw a crocodile and giant spider, which was fine til he hit his fifth land for serra.  GG.

M2G1 - We fact or fictioned into vengeful pharoah which felt really good :).  Also, double looter and Aether adept let us live long enough to just take over the game.  We dropped primeval titan (putting us to 9 from the blood seeker).  He untapped and played warstorm surge.  We unsummoned one guy, doombladed the other, then crashed in for lethal.

M2G3 - This game was really interesting.  We ramped out a primeval titan, but went down to 4 from his hideous visage.

Our next draw was the sphinx, at which point we attacked with titan and passed the turn.  He tried to fling, but we negated it then frost breathed the berserker and tormented soul.  We ripped unsummon and unsummoned the blood seeker allowing us to cast our sphinx.  We crashed in for lethal next turn.

M3G1 - T1 - Birds.  T2 - Adaptive automaton naming spiders.  T3 - bloodthirsted croc.  The croc got him down to 12 before he drew the turn to frog for it, by this time we had the giant-giant spider, merfolk looter and had used the adept to kill his phantasmal dragon.  He ends up stablizing with a trollhided rhino but we finally win with doom blade +double frost breath.

M3G2 - This game we both played a tempo game, with multiple unsummons and aether adepts... unfortunately for villain he didn't get a card draw engine and he couldn't beat the satchel.   He tried to stabilize, but we ended up with all of our lands on the battlefield and satchelling into sphinx FTW.

LISTEN ALONG WITH ZACH


Bartok - Sonata for two pianos and percussion - This piece is amazing and every moment of it is a race to the finish.

Let it Be - Beatles.

Songs from an american Pt. 1 - Everclear.  This is my favorite everclear album.

Once (soundtrack) selected tracks.

Way to Normal - Leak - Ben Folds - before the release of Way to Normal Ben Folds leaked a "fake CD" with a bunch of "bad" songs as a joke for his fans.  Now some of these songs are canonic and are actual concert staples :).

Lobster 667's M12 Draft #3 8-4

Comments on the Deck:
Looks fine, if rather slow. It has an aggressive side too, though, and can start on the dreaded T2 Rider into T3 Griffin every now and then, and it has some decent defenders to lock down the ground in case I'm starting with the DoJ.

Comments on the Games:
Match 1 I won 2-1. In the first game, I went Rider into Griffin Sentinel into Assault Griffin and he just never came back. He won game two, perhaps partially because I don't know a lot about how to play DoJ (I had some good guys in hand and an Egg on the table against his Fireslinger and he was locked on three lands, so I figured I'd Wrath and get aggressive, but he started drawing his lands right there and just got there). I safely stomped him in game 3 and was feeling pretty optimistic about the deck's chances.

Well, in Match 2, I was squashed. I kept a nice 2-lander in round one and never saw another land, trying to fend for myself with a single Stormfront Pegasus against a Black/Red assault that severly punished my mana screw.
In round two, I had to mull a 6-lander and kept a fine 2-lander that had Pegasus, Egg, Griffin Sentinel and DoJ. I started by drawing Incinerate (which I used on a Child of Night) and another Sentinel while villain got a thirsted Berserker into play. When I finally drew my third land, I couldn't keep up. I never got to 4 which would have enabled me to reset the board. I was really sad that I got such a beating out of just bad rips, but that's how it goes every now and then.

Looking forward to Innistrad Online!

Smerle's M12 #4

On the eve of the LR clan making it into the Top 5 list, I decided to take some winnings into the 8-4 and roll the dice.  Ended up with quite a fun and unique BW deck with good early removal and aggressive creatures that I just threw at them to feed the Reaper later on and turn into 3/3 Deathtouch zombies (and Lifelink if mana was up).  First two matches were against very aggressive RW decks (one had 4 Blood Ogres) and I was able to just keep the board clear and then pour on the zombies and end it with Sengir or Serra Angel or a pumped up Shade.  Opponent wanted to play out the finals instead of splitting (had Overrun, Jade Mage, Pharoah, and Markov, no wonder) and it went down to the wire in 3 games with both us under 5 HP.  Opponent just had the right card at the right time to take it home.

Zvazda's M12 #14

The only choice here is whether or not to play the companion or crown over sacred wolfs or blood seeker or plummet.  In retrospect I probably like maindecking the companion over plummet and siding in plummet most of the time.

M1G1 - Versus UW.  We faced down a T1 lawkeeper, a griffin rider on wing with a few griffins and a Pegasus.  We plummeted one griffin, but he aether adepted our sengir vampire who was planning to block out of the way.  When we tried to blow him out with doom blade on Griffin #2 he staved off then we lost.

M1G2 - it looked like he flooded out.  We put the pressure on early.  T2 child of night.  T3 Sacred Wolf. T4 Runeclaw Bear.  T5 Jade Mage.  T6 Plummet Serra.  FTW.

M1G3 - we mulled to 6.  Got stuck on 4 swamps with all green spells and sengir vamp in hand.  When we finally ripped our 5th land to drop sengir... villain mind controlled it and crashed in for lethal.

M2G1 - We kept a pretty greedy one lander, got punished for it and lost.

M2G2 - Replay got lost, but we won.

M2G3 - Replay got lost, but we won.

M3G1 - Replay got lost, but we won.

M3G2 - So this game we beat a resolved overrun.  I think he got a little greedy and cast it too soon because it put us in a fairly good board state afterwards.  I guess he was scared because it was his only card in hand while we had two (gravedigger and land.)  If you're going to survive overrun turns out gravedigger is the card to have!  Also a reassembling skeleton in play soaks up 1 damage for "free."  Top decking gravedigger post-overrun for infinite gravedigger recursion was also nice.  It gave me two infinite blockers to his two dudes.  All the while he's at 8 life, so he can't really attack.  Ripping vampire outcasts gives us some nice breathing room, then we rip into stampeding rhino and things are looking up!  He plays out two dudes (taking two from the blood seeker and going to 6).  We rip doom blade and attack FTW in two turns.

LISTEN ALONG WITH ZACH


With the Beatles - The Beatles second studio album.  Sometimes I get so wrapped up with listening to the late great beatles albums (revolver, sgt. peppers, abbey road, let it be, etc.) that I forget how great and different their early albums are.

Impatient Lover (selected tracks) - Cecilia Bartoli

Universal Truths and Cycles - Guided by Voices -  The thing about having 3100 albums is that sometimes things come up and you wonder what they are and where in the world they came from.  This was like that.  I enjoyed it, though.

The original off-broadway cast of Mayor - If you haven't heard of this 1985 Charles Strouse off-broadway show... that's totally understandable.  I'm fairly certain this marks my first listen to the complete album.

Zvazda's M12 Draft #13

Be warned that this draft was unlucky 13 and the MTGO client crashed halfway through R1.  I wasn't able to restart in time so we never got to see how this deck piloted.  If that bothers you... don't watch this draft.

I don't think there were too many decisions here, but feel free to let prove me wrong in the comments.

Listen along with Zach


We only got one album in because of the shortened draft time
 Marc Cohn's Listening Booth 1970.  Which is a collection of Marc Cohn's favorite songs from 1970 when he was growing up.  I hadn't listened to this album before and found it to be quite a treat.

Zvazda's M12 #12

So I think the deck is pretty sweet, it's a little removal light, but before we ran into tons of white in the games we felt like we had read the signals really well!

Do you get greedy and try to splash the fireball?  I felt like having the consistency was better.  I wish I had played a merfolk over my dignitary, I think.

M1G1 - we came really close, but just couldn't get there against a flameblast dragon.  We pacified it, he unsummoned it, we unsummoned it, he recast it, we aether adepted it, he recast it.  We ripped land and lost.

M1G2 - this game was super sick.  We o-ringed his dragon, traded a bunch of guys.  We stabilized in the air with our sphinx.  He tried to burn our sphinx, we negated it.  He mind controlled our azure mage, we mind controlled his drake FTW.

M1G3 - this match was a tempo battle.  He had double unsummon plus aether adept plus ice cage.  I had unsummon and frost breath to keep his flameblast from attacking long enough to get him to lethal next turn.  I cast my harbor serpent and am attacking for exactsies in the air and island walk next turn... But a mind control on our harbor serpent was the nail in our coffin.

      This was a bummer match to lose because I felt like if he hadn't drawn flameblast in either of the two games he won he wouldn't have won.  I also felt like I played really tight just to have a chance against flameblast.  Also, maybe I should have sided in the Fireball to have more ways to deal with the flameblast?  What do you think about that?

M2G1 - Well... do you keep this hand?

Here's the thing.  Since watching LSV and Simon I have been a less aggressive muller.  I think Marshall and Ryan tend to err on the side of more aggressive mulling so a couple months ago I was more aggressive as well.  Simon at Modern Magic talks about how much he thinks that extra card is worth and he likes to trust his deck to be good and perform the way he wants it to.  LSV also has taught me be a little more greedy with low on land hands because you are much likelier to rip into the couple lands you need than the steady stream of spells you need to stay in a game if you have a 4 or 5 lander.  The thing with this hand is if we hit any land in two draws we can drop two creatures.  If we draw a plains we get a pegasus.  Then we're hoping to get to our adept, frost breath and chasm drake.  I kept it and ripped 3 lands in a row.   He didn't even stand a chance.

Do you think that hands a keep?

M2G2 - This game had a tricky decision early.  On his turn 3 he attacked with his gideons lawkeeper into my Azure Mage.  I chose to block, thinking I was trading Azure mage for a stave off but it turned out I was trading azure mage for a mighty leap.  I think this was probably a misplay, but I'm not sure about that.  Do you block a lawkeeper with your azure mage when they have 3 open mana on turn 3?
He demystified our O-ring on one of his lawkeepers and it turns out it's really hard to beat two lawkeepers.  We tried really hard and got close, but he stabilized with Serra and ran us over.

M2G3 - Got lost.  But we won.

M3G1 - yeah.  We got greedy and kept a one lander, which turns out is ok when villains deck is really slow and sucks.  And by sucks, I mean has a bunch of crappy low drops plus primeval titan and garruk's horde.  Mind control on garruks horde + lawkeeper to tap the titan + chasm drake allowed us to pull out this ridiculous game.  We were full on control and simply outplayed villain.

M3G2 - T1 - Lawkeeper.  T2 - Pegasus. T3 - Benalish Veteran.  We were slowed down by his elixir and angel's mercy... but that's no big deal and was a perfect example why those cards are bad.  When he finally dropped his primeval titan we had our pacify ready.  Cast assault griffin.  Win with Mind Control, Unsummon and Frost Breath in hand.

LISTEN ALONG WITH ZACH


Music aficionados will have to wait because my buddy drafted over my shoulder again, so I was not listening to music this draft.

Zvazda's M12 #11

This deck ended up a little spotty, but ultimately where I felt it would be pretty good.  I SURE wish I had that incinerate that I misclicked in.  The gameplan was to let quad looters get us to our dragon and grim lavamancer, and sometimes this worked and sometimes it didn't.  I feel like the deck was better than it's 1-2 record, but c'est la vie.

I wish I had maindecked the Cancel over the Tunneler and sided it in almost every match.  Sometimes I sided in the alluring siren instead.

M1G1 - he gets stuck on two lands and our deck performs beautifully to punish him.  Lavamancer into looter, into a bunch of stuff no one cares about... into Volcanic Dragon.  The best feeling was redirecting his last ditch fling effort to try to kill my lavamancer but instead 3 for 1ing him!

M1G2 - This game his draw was pretty clunky with stuff that doesn't affect the board (circle of flames and whatnot).  We get out our fleetwing with a greatsword on him.  After that our manaleaks hold the board for three turns to put him at 5.  He plays a stingerfling spider... and we luckily topdeck frost breath for the win!

M2G1 - This game I might have punted because I played my frost breath during my mainphase like an idiot.    The extra turn might not have been important, but it certainly didn't help!  Also, him O-ringing my dragon was pretty bad.

M2G2 - This game we won thanks to a timely unsummon into cancel for his sengir vampire.  He played his second vamp, but we frost breath (End of HIS TURN this time) for the win.

M2G3 - I had a pretty rough hand: looter and two five drops.  He exploded and punished me for keeping the hand and I couldn't stabilize before I died.

M3G1 - Got lost :'(.

M3G2 - He stabilized with an Aegis angel to stop my fliers from being lethal.  I probably win this game if I had attacked with my looters more times earlier in the game instead of looting.  I'm not sure if it was the right call to have done so, though?

LISTEN ALONG WITH ZACH


Music for Two Pianos - Aaron Copland  - I'd never listened to this album which was a mistake as it was absolutely divine.

Stephen Sondheim's Company in Jazz - the Trotter Trio - Stephen Sondheim is a giant in Musical Theatre with an amazing command over classical techniques and harmonic language not seen very often in Musical Theatre.  The Trotter Trio takes his songs and puts them in a jazz forum.  Quite simply, these albums rock.  This one isn't as good as Sweeney Todd, IMHO, but still great.

Best that I could do - John Mellancamp - Selected Tracks

Joshua Tree - U2