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MTG Draft: Self-analysis #5

Blogs > EscPlan9
Post a Reply
EscPlan9
Profile Blog Joined December 2006
United States2777 Posts
Last Edited: 2014-10-18 15:32:14
October 18 2014 05:03 GMT
#1
Just came back from FNM at my LGS and went 3-0-1 with this deck (tie due to running out of time). This was my favorite deck I've ever played - 5 color morphs!

Deck
Main deck
[image loading]

Lands
[image loading]

Sideboard
[image loading]

Incase you cannot read from the pictures, deck list below:
+ Show Spoiler +

Creatures (16, with 10 being morphs)
-----------
1 Mantis Rider
1 Bloodfire Mentor
2 Abomination of Gudul
1 Monastery Flock
1 Mystic of the Hidden Way
1 Sage-eye Harrier
1 War Behemoth
2 Canyon Lurkers
1 Glacial Stalker
1 Snowhorn Rider
1 Salt-road Patrol
1 High Sentinels of Arashin
2 Riverwheel Aerialists

Spells (6)
-----------
1 Ghostfire Blade
1 Secret Plans
1 Trail of Mystery
1 Icy Blast
1 Temur Charm
1 Death Frenzy

Lands (18 - 3 trilands, 8 dual lands)
-----------
1 Nomad Outpost (mardu)
2 Frontier Bivouac (temur)
2 Thornwood Falls (simic)
2 Tranquil Cove (azorious)
1 Scoured Barrens (orzhov)
1 Rugged Highlands (gruul)
1 Windscarred Crag (boros)
1 Dismal Backwater (dimir)
2 Swamps
2 Mountains
1 Island
1 Plains
1 Forest

Sideboard
-----------
1 Disdainful Stroke (only really playable one)
1 Taigem's Scheming
1 Smoke Teller
1 Trumpet Blast
1 Defiant Strike
1 Feed The Clan
1 Bloodfire Expert
1 Tusked Collossodon


I know I can't really show how the picks went in much detail. I'll say what I remember:
P1P1 Ghostfire Blade, the only first pickable card there. P1P2 Icy Blast in another otherwise mediocre pack. After that wasn't impressed with the mediocre cards, but there were a lot of dual/trilands going around so started picking up a couple. Then a Trail of Mystery comes and I decide its 5-color morph time. I pick up tons of fixing and morphs but end up with little removal as you'll see above. I get a Secret Plans in pack 2 somewhere.

I also had someone pass me a Mantis Rider in pack 2 (he didn't think it was worth much)! I now have two Mantis Riders I'll be selling online eventually along with some of my other money pickups from local drafts there recently (foil Surrak, foil Narset, Bloodstained Mire, etc).

I know I really forced this one early on, but the first pack picks were underwhelming to start. Still, I think I picked too many dual lands to start with - I should have taken some more morphs early on, or just really good cards in general. With the amount of fixing I had, I could make anything playable (other than like Empty The Pits, and preferably not double mana costed).

Round 1
Don't remember much of the details here. 1st game I flooded out and was uninteresting. He was playing Sultai. 2nd game I had a great start with Secret Plan into morphs, used Death Frenzy to clear two x/2s of his, and dominated the game from then on. Though we both took too long with some decisions, leading us to less than 3 minutes in our final match. 3rd game I probably would have won with decent board presence, 6 mana out in all my colors, and 2 Riverwheel Aerialists and Abomination of Gudhul in hand.

Round 2
Uninteresting game - I just smashed him both games. 2nd game was sick, had Secret Plans, Trail of Mystery, Ghostfire Blade, and 5/5 trampler morph out. Smashed his face quickly and mercilessly.

Round 3
I don't remember much about game 1 other than he had 2 Duneblasts, and an early start with Seeker of the Way and tricks. I countered the 2nd Duneblast with Disdainful Stroke that I forgot to side back out - glad I kept it in. He was playing Abzan, so my Death Frenzy hit very few targets, so I sided it out to have both Disdainful Stroke and Temur Charm in as my possible counters to it, and just kept in mind to not overcommit against him. 2nd game was quick with a Ghostfire Blade and morph after morph and Mantis Rider start.

3rd game was awesome. I made a couple misplays like using an Icy Blast to try to tap his only guy with reach just to get in a few points of damage, and he just had Dragonscale Boon to untap the guy anyways. I should have saved it later for a mass tapping of his creatures and alpha strike on stall. He ends up stalling the game for a while, I have everything I want out - Secret Plans, Trail of Mystery, Ghostfire Blade, pretty much all my lands, and even when I didn't have Disdainful Stroke in hand I kept leaving up 2 mana and he respected it. I forgot to mention in games 2 and 3 he made me discard two cards with Rakshasha's Secret when I had 3, and discarded Mystic of Hidden Way and High Sentinel, keeping Disdainful Stroke. I just didn't have any answer to that card otherwise and felt I would win if I counter it. I made a misplay by looting with Bloodfire Mentor when my only card in hand was Disdainful Stroke, which I obviously couldn't discard, and ended up discarding an Abomination of Gudhul. That was actually a really bad play because I was down to 5 cards at that point. I ended up winning with 1 card remaining - my finisher was a Temur Charm with "creatures with power 3 and less cannot block" and alpha strike to finish him off (he only had one big creature, Long Shot Squad pumped to 7/7).

Round 4
Had some lucky draws here getting out some great threats, and my Mighty Morphin Squad with some assists from Secret Plan, Ghostfire Blade, and Trail of Mystery did him in both games. He was really mad and wouldn't even shake my hand at the end of the second game. He just swore, said it's a bunch of bullshit his two color deck lost to a 5 color deck and stormed out. Okay... sore loser, whatever man.

Level ups
* I've been following Kenji's Stream a lot lately to see how he's drafting Khans. He almost always forces 4-5 color and is killing it. I've been paying a lot of attention to how he does it. He recently was a guest on Limited Resources podcast to discuss it, and there was some good discussion about it in the Reddit LRcast forum as well.

* I practiced a bunch of times on my Android app Decked Drafter and felt confident I could make it work if the packs looked friendly to 5 colors, and they sure did here so I went all-in on it. (Highly recommend the app for anyone who wants practice drafting and play testing the drafted deck)

* Death Frenzy is really clutch against the decks that would normally be best against me - early aggro decks where I'm just playing tapped lands for a few turns. Not as good as End Hostilities or Duneblast, but any sort of mass removal is really important in my slow-ish deck.

* Ghostfire Blade fits perfectly in morph decks. I already gave it enough praise, and man does it shine in the morph decks. Only costs 1 to equip on morph creature, already have Trail of Mystery and Secret Plans out, I get to draw a card, creature unmorphs to his bigger self, gets +2+2 from ghostfire, +2+2 from Trail of Mystery. Happened so many times tonight and was such a great feeling.

* Trail of Mystery really grew on me. I loved constantly filtering out lands and putting more cards in my hand, and then the additional benefit of +2+2 on flipping up my morphs. Definitely liking this card in morph-heavy decks, especially 4-5 color ones.

* Rakshasha's Secret is really good against my deck. When I'm playing a 5-color deck like this I often will have 3-4 cards in hand and with Trail of Mystery, many lands as well. I need to keep some lands in hand just in case of this.

* I made fewer in game mistakes than usual as I took more time to think about my plays. Regardless, there still were a few mis-steps, but none game-ending. I wish I was able to pick up more strong removal in my deck, but with the 5-color morph priorities it was difficult. You really don't want to be playing stuff like Rite of the Serpent in this deck for removal over fixing or a morph card. Removal that can kill more 1 creature is exactly what you want - Death Frenzy, Arc of Lightning, and of course Duneblast / End Hostilities. Icy Blast also did well here to slow them down or put them out of their misery.

Undefeated TL Tecmo Super Bowl League Champion
Kronen
Profile Blog Joined March 2011
United States732 Posts
Last Edited: 2014-10-18 11:26:48
October 18 2014 11:25 GMT
#2
Although I can't really contribute as I know nothing about Magic, just wanted to pop in and say I like reading your blogs! I especially appreciate the work you do to present all the information in a clear package. Keep up the good work!

Edit: durr cell phone typing...
EscPlan9
Profile Blog Joined December 2006
United States2777 Posts
October 18 2014 14:30 GMT
#3
Wow, can't believe non MTG players would enjoy reading this! Thanks for the feedback! As I said in the first of these series, I am doing these primarily for myself to help me improve as a player. I try to make it as succinct, readable, and enjoyable for the readers as well, though I definitely am tailoring it heavily towards people very familiar with the current MTG meta.
Undefeated TL Tecmo Super Bowl League Champion
JieXian
Profile Blog Joined August 2008
Malaysia4677 Posts
Last Edited: 2014-10-19 07:14:51
October 19 2014 07:14 GMT
#4
*Comment about hearthstone's superiority* :D

jk
Please send me a PM of any song you like that I most probably never heard of! I am looking for people to chat about writing and producing music | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noD-bsOcxuU |
EscPlan9
Profile Blog Joined December 2006
United States2777 Posts
October 19 2014 18:03 GMT
#5
About Hearthstone... I've played it on and off. For about a week I played it a bunch and quickly climbed the ranks. Although it's a far more simplistic game and there are some common skills that transfer over, it still plays out quite differently. Every time I play MTG again I lose interest in Hearthstone though. I liked Arena the most for similar reasons that I exclusively do drafts in MTG, though again, Arena is far more simplistic to draft than MTG. My picks in Arena are also totally independent of others picks and some classes are just better in Arena than others due to class-specific cards.

I haven't found another deck-building game I like a lot. I tried another one I forget the name of a while ago where you placed your cards in Lanes and they leveled up. Didn't really get into it much.

The one thing I really wish would be different with MTG is the mulligan system. I wish it was more similar to Hearthstone where you can pick X cards to shuffle back in the deck, and draw another X cards. At least with KTK mulligans haven't come up as much since I default to 18 lands and there is plenty of fixing.
Undefeated TL Tecmo Super Bowl League Champion
Urth
Profile Blog Joined November 2007
United States1248 Posts
Last Edited: 2014-10-20 03:25:51
October 20 2014 03:19 GMT
#6
I mean if you play mostly limited, MTG is clearly superior to Hearthstone (well, besides the cost). Aside from the reasons already mentioned, you only get 3 choices each time, and there are no color/signalling considerations. You just take the best card, with curve/overall deck considerations. Even with pros, it's not hard to predict 95%+ of the picks. Because the packs are independent, different people's decks also vary widely in power level. Mage clearly has more quality class cards than the others as well.

The Hearthstone mulliganing system wouldn't really work with Magic. Combo decks instantly become OP. I could see a Hearthstone-style mulliganing system working for limited only, though it would be a huge change. I think it'd be really interesting to try though.

Also, kind of unrelated, but I feel like hearthstone could have a second arena with a MTG pack system for draft. This is just something I've been thinking about, and I think this would work out. For instance, have two packs each pick instead of one in MTG. One of the packs is composed of neutral cards, and the other pack contains various class cards. Each pick, you take one from each pack. Perhaps the packs with class cards are smaller and only passed every other pick. Then at the end of the draft, each person can choose whichever class they'd like. If that's too complicated, even just having a single pack with mixed cards like in magic would be more fun than the current arena imo.

Also, I just want to mention, even though the HS client is pretty simple, it is way better than the MODO client, which is really freaking frustrating.

For your actual draft, 4/5 color is pretty strong in general, and I think the deck looks pretty good. Trail of mystery is a really strong enabler. I don't think secret plans is nearly as good as trail, and 4/5 color is fine without either. I only mention the secret plans part, because I've seen Kenji take it very highly, and once abandon multiple picks in the process. He just seems to be obsessed with the card and "forcing" 5 color in general. It's certainly good, but not that good. In the games I saw him actually cast it, it didn't do much. Obviously, Kenji is good, and does well with it, but I still don't think secret plans is that high of a pick.
BY.HERO FIGHTING!!!!
EscPlan9
Profile Blog Joined December 2006
United States2777 Posts
October 20 2014 10:50 GMT
#7
It's tough to say about Secret Plans / Trail of Mystery. Late game both of them are terrible if not almost dead draws, such as if you have almost all your morphs out and unmorphed. Secret Plans +0+1 is only good in the very early game, but the card draw is the main reason to play it. It's much better when combined with some shape of card manipulation, like Trail of Mystery even worked for this by filtering out all my basic lands from the draws. Bloodfire Mentor and Abomonation of Gudhul continue to impress me (with obvious preference to Gudhul) with the looting as well.
Undefeated TL Tecmo Super Bowl League Champion
EscPlan9
Profile Blog Joined December 2006
United States2777 Posts
October 21 2014 05:05 GMT
#8
Just found this video on my YouTube subscriptions, Ari Lax draft viewer as he makes some picks for what would become a 5-color morph deck. He discusses some important things to consider with 5-color as well:



I've been starting to lean heavier towards 4/5 color decks with drafting lately, and prioritizing lands in pack 1 higher than usual. Ari talks about it himself here basically saying "Attacking is really bad in this format, so taking the lands cuts others out of taking some of the more powerful spells and lets you be able to only play the good spells and lands to support them. It makes your deck the only 5 color deck at the pod and everyone else's deck weaker".
Undefeated TL Tecmo Super Bowl League Champion
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