This is a place for Limited Resources clan members and podcast listeners to come and get their drafts reviewed and review fellow clan members' drafts.
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Penix M12 #1 - Swiss
(Alright! Let's all give it up for the debut of our most phallic-sounding member: PENIX!)
This draft started as a huge train wreck, but I think I managed to salvage a respectable deck out of it. I ended up going 3-0 due to a combination of luck and how good Merfolk Looter is.
P1P2 - you mean you first picked a black card. I'm OK with the bear, taking deathmark 2nd is pretty sad unless you REALLY want to cut black and I'm not sure wring flesh is worth cutting black hard over. It's not like it's a sorin or grave titan.
P1P3 - I feel like the fleetwing is better than the tormented soul but I'm aware that I might be stupid about this.
P1P4 - I mean this is obviously the pick here, but a rare and uncommon are missing so it's easy to think that the uncommon could have been O-ring and the rare Celestial Mantle, Sun Titan or Gideon.
P1P5 - I like minotaurs here.
P1P9 - given the amount of colors you have picked so far I think you should take the rampant growth here. Gives you more freedom in the future, and increased splashability is one of the main reasons to play green.
P1P13 - Yeah, I would take the ghoul here unless you really wanted to be in red in which case you cut the red card. I think the signals are all over the place and I've agreed with all your picks so far with the exception of the aforementioned rampant growth.
P2P1 - No. Mind Control > Sphinx. It sucks to pass old sphinxy, but you don't pass a mind control here.
P2P2 - I take the super unexciting cuthroat here because now you really want to be blue and you don't want the downstreamers to read the spinx as any kind of signal (I'm not advocating cutting crazy here, but if you are in black you probably aren't playing R, which means your only real bloodthirst guys are the bats or the outcasts (which is an uncommon)
P2P7 - Yeah, I would have taken the golem here, but I don't super hate the divine favor pick.
P2P8 - Your black cards are so unexciting here that I definitely take the vanguard. Your not really beat down, but it trades with a lot I guess.
P2P10 - HOW CAN YOU PASS A SHINY KRAKENS EYE. DOWNSTREAM THEY ARE GETTING TWO KRAKENS EYES!!!!! That's like saying please play blue.
P2P12 - I don't have your picks in front of me so I dunno how close on playables you are... but I take the flashfreeze because at this point I'm thinking UW which has no bloodthirsty guys.
P2P13 - Slam that playable! 7 life! At instant speed! They lava axe you for the win... "whaaaaa?" So good. So good.
P2P14 - See above. What's better than 7 life? 14 life!
P3P1 - Yeah. You're lucky there's no O-ring or something here to make your life difficult... but pharaoh + looter feels like cheating.
P3P5 - Frost Breath is the pick here, I think. It's always good, better on beat down, but also very good with pharoah where it fogs them for two turns (not optimal, I guess) or you get 4 extra draws with a looter in play. Those 4 extra draws can be huge.
P3P8 - I take negate here. Negate has been a huge blowout for me out of the board. Counter overrun, counter fireball, counter outrage, counter pump spell, etc.
P3P10 - I'm not looking at your playables... but if you're gonna be ok you probably wanna hate combust here.
Deckbuilding - not a lot of choices here, but I might play distress over one of the tormented soul since there isn't a ton of bloodthirsting going on.
It sounds like I value Tormented Soul a lot more than you do. I think it performed reasonably well in this deck. You can get Villain once discarding Vengeful Pharaoh to Merfolk Looter after they attack you, but once they know it's there, they just stop attacking and start building up a ground force, and you need something that can get through that. I won a reasonable number of my games with Tormented Souls and Scepter of Empires slowly pinging them to death. In this regard, I'm thinking that I should have been valuing Greatsword more highly than I usually would.
I'm not sure about the Negate pick - that would have meant I would have to maindeck Scepter of Empires, although given what I just said that may not have been such a bad idea. You make a good point about Rampant Growth. Thanks for the feedback!
Glad to see how well you came out of that trainwreck! I usually pick the Mind Rot way above the Greatsword, but you might have a point in the Tormented Soul strategy. Then again, is that just hindsight?
Pharaoh + Double Looter is just... Just wicked. I like pretty much all of your choices here. The colours were really odd at first but there's nothing you can do about that... Was it a Swiss or an 8-4?
Yeah, I think tormented soul is very good but I mark it down when you aren't bloodthirsting. If Tormented soul + greatsword is your win-con, that's certainly not bad because it works fine with your looters :).
Lobster: It's just hindsight, but given I had made pretty much all my picks at that point, it's something I probably should have thought about. This was a swiss.
Regarding the Looter + Pharaoh, yeah, the combo is insane. I once got double Looter + double Pharaoh... that deck was so sweet: http://durdling.tumblr.com/post/9622120198/m12-draft-swiss-31-8-2011-i-feel-like-i-was
P1P2 - you mean you first picked a black card. I'm OK with the bear, taking deathmark 2nd is pretty sad unless you REALLY want to cut black and I'm not sure wring flesh is worth cutting black hard over. It's not like it's a sorin or grave titan.
ReplyDeleteP1P3 - I feel like the fleetwing is better than the tormented soul but I'm aware that I might be stupid about this.
P1P4 - I mean this is obviously the pick here, but a rare and uncommon are missing so it's easy to think that the uncommon could have been O-ring and the rare Celestial Mantle, Sun Titan or Gideon.
P1P5 - I like minotaurs here.
P1P9 - given the amount of colors you have picked so far I think you should take the rampant growth here. Gives you more freedom in the future, and increased splashability is one of the main reasons to play green.
P1P13 - Yeah, I would take the ghoul here unless you really wanted to be in red in which case you cut the red card. I think the signals are all over the place and I've agreed with all your picks so far with the exception of the aforementioned rampant growth.
P2P1 - No. Mind Control > Sphinx. It sucks to pass old sphinxy, but you don't pass a mind control here.
P2P2 - I take the super unexciting cuthroat here because now you really want to be blue and you don't want the downstreamers to read the spinx as any kind of signal (I'm not advocating cutting crazy here, but if you are in black you probably aren't playing R, which means your only real bloodthirst guys are the bats or the outcasts (which is an uncommon)
P2P7 - Yeah, I would have taken the golem here, but I don't super hate the divine favor pick.
P2P8 - Your black cards are so unexciting here that I definitely take the vanguard. Your not really beat down, but it trades with a lot I guess.
P2P10 - HOW CAN YOU PASS A SHINY KRAKENS EYE. DOWNSTREAM THEY ARE GETTING TWO KRAKENS EYES!!!!! That's like saying please play blue.
P2P12 - I don't have your picks in front of me so I dunno how close on playables you are... but I take the flashfreeze because at this point I'm thinking UW which has no bloodthirsty guys.
P2P13 - Slam that playable! 7 life! At instant speed! They lava axe you for the win... "whaaaaa?" So good. So good.
P2P14 - See above. What's better than 7 life? 14 life!
P3P1 - Yeah. You're lucky there's no O-ring or something here to make your life difficult... but pharaoh + looter feels like cheating.
P3P5 - Frost Breath is the pick here, I think. It's always good, better on beat down, but also very good with pharoah where it fogs them for two turns (not optimal, I guess) or you get 4 extra draws with a looter in play. Those 4 extra draws can be huge.
P3P8 - I take negate here. Negate has been a huge blowout for me out of the board. Counter overrun, counter fireball, counter outrage, counter pump spell, etc.
P3P10 - I'm not looking at your playables... but if you're gonna be ok you probably wanna hate combust here.
Deckbuilding - not a lot of choices here, but I might play distress over one of the tormented soul since there isn't a ton of bloodthirsting going on.
Welcome to the blog and thanks for contributing!
It sounds like I value Tormented Soul a lot more than you do. I think it performed reasonably well in this deck. You can get Villain once discarding Vengeful Pharaoh to Merfolk Looter after they attack you, but once they know it's there, they just stop attacking and start building up a ground force, and you need something that can get through that. I won a reasonable number of my games with Tormented Souls and Scepter of Empires slowly pinging them to death. In this regard, I'm thinking that I should have been valuing Greatsword more highly than I usually would.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure about the Negate pick - that would have meant I would have to maindeck Scepter of Empires, although given what I just said that may not have been such a bad idea. You make a good point about Rampant Growth. Thanks for the feedback!
Glad to see how well you came out of that trainwreck! I usually pick the Mind Rot way above the Greatsword, but you might have a point in the Tormented Soul strategy. Then again, is that just hindsight?
ReplyDeletePharaoh + Double Looter is just... Just wicked.
I like pretty much all of your choices here. The colours were really odd at first but there's nothing you can do about that... Was it a Swiss or an 8-4?
Yeah, I think tormented soul is very good but I mark it down when you aren't bloodthirsting. If Tormented soul + greatsword is your win-con, that's certainly not bad because it works fine with your looters :).
ReplyDeleteLobster: It's just hindsight, but given I had made pretty much all my picks at that point, it's something I probably should have thought about. This was a swiss.
ReplyDeleteRegarding the Looter + Pharaoh, yeah, the combo is insane. I once got double Looter + double Pharaoh... that deck was so sweet: http://durdling.tumblr.com/post/9622120198/m12-draft-swiss-31-8-2011-i-feel-like-i-was