Went 2-1 in this draft, lost in R3.
During the draft process, I felt like I was being pulled in two different directions and only barely managed to pull out a deck with enough playables without dipping into a third color for more than a splash.
Commentary on the games:
R1G1:
Pretty easy keep, Shepherd in hand and the mana to bring him out Turn 2.
Villain seems to be running some kind of four-color monstrosity, though I don't see any green creatures from him. He is stacked with Ashmouth Hound and Village Ironsmith, making it difficult to attack profitably into him. Villain becomes impatient and attacks in with his forces. I pull Evil Twin, copy an Ashmouth, and start blowing up Ironsmiths/Ironfangs and Hounds, get Shepherd flipped and win. I make a pretty bad misplay at one point here, attack with juggernaut, get blocked by Makeshift Mauler, + 2 Ashmouth Hounds. Should have assigned damage to the hounds, then Corpse Lunged the Mauler with the Corpse Lunge in my hand. On the other hand, if I would have done that, the later E.Twin play wouldn't have worked at all.
R1G2: I keep a loose hand after mull to 6, only draw land, Villain gets a quick start, and game is over fast.
R1G3: Hand is suboptimal, but a quick bat, followed by Abbatoir Ghoul keeps Villain off my case. He puts wings on his lone ironfang. I respond by flipping my bat into the 5/5 beater. He Temblors, getting rid of my Abbatoir ghoul. I Ghoulraiser, Village cannibals flipping his Ironfang, Recast Abbatoir and get there on the back of my 5/5 ground based beater.
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R2G1: I've scouted this opponent, and they have a pretty strong UR deck. Kinda concerned, but could get through with tight play. Snap-keep opening hand, with the shepherd + mana combination. More Ashmouth Hound from this Villain, but I'm not worried. Shepherd gets flipped, he's golden. Tribute his early play and get in with the shepherd. He ends up losing Ludevic's Test subject to Desperate Ravings, but gets a mindshrieker online. Then the crabs start coming down, invalidating my big beaters: juggernaut and fensnake. Unfortunately my deck is kind of weak to mindshrieker, lots of stuff piled up at the 4-drop, not much flashback. Villain uses a lot of mana to just activate mindshrieker on me, I suspect is trying to mill me out. I also take a severe beating in the air until I hit spider spawning and use it to hold down the air while my Gatstaf Howler gets in for the last few points of damage.
R2G2: Mulligan to six, but come up with the shepherd again. Some unimportant early stuff happens, but then he keeps pounding 5 drops on me, Sturmgeist, Murder of Crows, Sturmgeist(!?) after I deal with the first one. Not much for it after that. So tired of these drafts where I've got some reasonable deck built out of uncommons/commons (because I open stuff like Rooftop Storm) and get wrecked by someone who opened/got passed multiple *good* rares/mythics.
R2G3: On to game three. Planning on saving E.Twin for Sturmgeist, but Murder of Crows becomes a relevant threat fast enough that I go ahead and grab it with the twin. There's some back and forth, but a 4/4 beater in the skies when the rest of his air force seems absent is good, and I go ahead and put it away. Especially when I'm looting off the incidental other deaths.
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R1G1: Not sure what I could have done differently here. I'm already at a disadvantage because Villain is green and, other than the shepherd (who loses much value against G), has much better green cards than I do. An early trep blade on every guy Villain plays ends up causing me to lose to being decked out.
R2G2: Side in the Naturalize, but not sure it matters, because Villain is still hitting big stretches of my best cards every activation of trep blade, as well as having a flipped Ulvenwald Primordials that I just have no way of dealing with. Even Tribute is unhelpful, because there's always something alongside it to get eaten instead. Spider Spawning holds off the inevitable for a bit, but then I just draw into a brick, and lose.
http://www.raredraft.com/watch?d=31qpi is the draft recording.
ReplyDeleteWhoops! Fixed that for ya.
ReplyDeleteP1P1: I like twin here, too.
ReplyDeleteP1P2: I might be persuaded to pick Dead Weight here but I like the Shepherd pick a lot, too.
P1P4: I like this pick; I think the cards are pretty close, pick-wise, but Abbatoir Ghoul is easier on the colours (1/4 instead of 1/2).
P1P6: That's reasonable. Patrician is probably the right pick but the land is fine.
P1P11: I think the Ghoulraiser is better here. But marginally.
P1P12: I'd say Grotto here - you are looking like you need three colours, right?
P2P2: I like the Bat better here.
P2P3: Silent Departure is really good but I don't know exactly how much blue you have. I'm torn here, but Tribute is fine, I think.
P2P7: Definitely! Also, wow, that's late for Dead weight...!
P2P9: You already have a pitchfork so this is probably fine.
P3P1: I like Moan really much. I think you made the right pick here.
P3P2: Ghoulraiser is better here.
P3P4: ...Amulet? Journey? I dunno.
P3P6: Parallel lives with double Spider Spawning? Get there! :P
Repitition is probably fine. You should've taken the Journey a couple of picks back though...
P3P7: Dream Twist! Man, if you had had that Journey...
P3P8: And another Alchemy? This could've been sweet.
P3P9: Bell would've been fine if you went mill-yourself.
P3P10: Not really, though.
P3P12: You had the chance though.
Regarding commentary on P3P12, I don't think I'd want to even try the UGB self-mill deck without a couple copies of Gnaw to the Bone - you get blown out by any reasonably aggressive deck while setting up without it. Glancing back through the whole draft, I never saw a single copy of that card at any point.
ReplyDeleteP1P2 - After a first pick evil twin... Dead weight!! Even without it... dead weight!!
ReplyDeleteP1P11 - I take the ghoulraiser here
P2P2 - I take another bats over the tribute here
P2P3 - With the fixing already... Silent departure!!
P2P7 - Definitely.
P3P2 - I take the ghoulraiser here.
P3P8 - I probably take the alchemy here.