(It was a Tuesday night and Smerle was going CRAAAAAZY with two drafts in one night. Was his mind muddled form a previous draft? Or was he on a roll, you decide.)
So with my recent winnings keeping me pretty much even, decided to give it another go tonight. This one I think I made some mistakes in pack 1, got lucky with Grave Titan in pack 2, but think I maybe didn't build enough of a defense to support him. Some unlucky card draw made it even more of an uphill battle. The Sphinxes did their job one game to stall things out, but I couldn't get that Consume to knock off the final 4 HP to win. Just really hard to slow things down in this format with most decks so aggro and I didn't have enough removal/tempo in the early game; especially against cheap flyers. 1-2, streak broken. :(
Went 2-1 with this one today, falling to a Garruk combined with unlucky draw (creatures were bottom decked). Really nice curve here as I normally had something playable each turn, be it removal or a tough dude. I even got a token on Sengir! Seems like I made the right picks, just tough luck against Garruk. Also think making that Serra pick was still the right thing to do, as the white flyers didn't have much to compete with.
So last two drafts I'm 5-1, feeling much better after a bad tilt streak. LR is making me a better drafter for sure!!
(Welcome Smerle. Thanks for contributing to the blog! - Z)
Well, the problem is that it looks like an aggressive deck with the exception of that sphinx there. I did end up siding in the two stingerflings instead of the incinerate against the flier.dek. I don't have my game log in front of me, but I think I did end up running into a grave titan in one of my rounds, which explained the sudden cut off of black.
This deck 1-2'd, though I can't remember why. When I have access to my MTGO client again, perhaps I'll go look at some replays and see if I can find any errors I made or if I just drew bad. Also, the deck wasn't that great and I never resolved my sphinx (and only drew it once).
And finally, should it be of interest to anyone I've decided to keep a record of music that I listen to during the draft. While I'm drafting I put my I-pod on random albums. My music collection consists of entirely full albums (I don't have any single songs), but sometimes the full album doesn't make it onto my I-pod and it's just tracks from my favorites list. If the full album didn't make it on, then I'll just say "selected tracks"
The Dvorak Cello concerto played by Jacqueline Du Pre (on the album she also plays the saint-saens cello concerto for those who are listening along at home :). )
Kojak Variety - Elvis Costello. As a huge Elvis Costello fan, and proud owner of his complete discography... I can say that this is my least favorite album of his.
And finally Matthew Morrison's solo album. Television fans will know him from Glee, but Musical Theatre fans know him from Hairspray and The Light in the Piazza.
This draft was kind of interesting. Would you have stuck to your guns like I did? Or would you have diverged?
Similarly, in deckbuilding I went for consistency rather than power (though I think it was plenty powerful). I'm not sure if this is because I've been having a little stint of drawing bad lately. Would you have stuck to the mono-build and sided in the blue? Or would you have splashed blue for looter and unsummon?
This draft is pretty interesting and I'd love to hear what other clannies have to say about it.
I ended up switching my colors at P3P12, if you can believe it. Even when I built the deck, I wasn't entirely sure which option was the best, but RW definitely worked out better in the games, but who knows what the Time Travelling Super Computer would say. Anyway, I'd really like to see what other people would do with this draft.
You heard the man. Let him have it in the comments! - Z
This deck was an interesting 1-2 where I was trying out an experiment... that, as you will see in the draft file, failed. Enjoy. I made this mistake so you didn't have to.
I chose not to maindeck the Companions and only two goblin arsonists... I think these may have been mistakes. Thoughts?
I haven't listened to the podcast yet, but I see from the notes that Marshall has included the link to the blog on the main page. Welcome! And I suggest that you hop on over to the how do I get my draft on the blog page.
(Edited now that I'm out of bed and showered and ready to face the day)
I'll introduce myself: My name is Zach Orts and I've been a limited resources member since near the beginning (episode 6 or 7, I think) and I immediately listened to the whole back catalog. Ryan and Marshall have greatly influenced my Magic game and how I think about gaming in general (even life sometimes too...). As a gamer I like to play games of any sort: board games, video games, card games, etc.. I play exclusively limited and put myself on a budget of 14 dollars a week (which is what I would pay if I were drafting once a week in real life). On a budget like that it's very difficult to make 8-4's work because I would much rather draft 3 times a week than 1 time a week, but maybe a lot more than that if I run good and/or draft a money card. I consider myself a good drafter, though not a great drafter. The draft recaps are there for the perusing so I'll let you be the judge. My MTGO handle is Zvazda and you know me in the clan chat as the guy who is always asking for draft deck matches.
Outside of gaming, I'm a Musical Theatre major and I work as an accompanist, music director and arranger. Most recently I worked as the music intern on Catch Me If You Can on Broadway, which was very exciting for me. Naturally, the musical theatre world and the gaming world don't overlap very much, so I don't have very many real life friends who play magic and none who play seriously enough to draft.
Happy Drafting and I look forward to reviewing all of your drafts!
Well, this deck ended up pretty janky but it ended up 3-0ing I don't see many other deck building choices but maybe I'm overlooking something. And for sideboard all we really have is that deathmark.
This deck did create a situation where I was able to make the most awesome play I've made in M12 thus far.
Do you see the play?
Yeah, that's slaughter cry on a lured acidic slime. I was worried most about deathmark, and slightly less a wring flesh (still would have killed two of his dudes, for a 3 for 3).
Anyway, the moral of this draft is that Overrun is good.
Not many choices here in deckbuilding, though the deck was pretty sweet with all that removal.
I ended up 2-1ing, the round that I lost was to a Furnace Celebration that ended up going off and burning me for the win with artillerize. G3 I had to mull to 6 and lost to caustic hound into phyrexian metamorph! That was pretty sad.
There are quite a few early mispicks and I was in colors that were not flowing. Which is probably why the deck ended 1-2ing. I would love to know when other people would have jumped ship?
This was smack dab in the middle of my streak of 1-2's, again the draft was a bit messy and I see a lot of picks I would have made differently in retrospect.
