EPTOn another topic, got to draft OTJ block last night, nothing quite like destroying half your lands and discarding your hand for value plays
super fun format. Magic: The Gathering - Page 404
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DarthXX
Australia998 Posts
On another topic, got to draft OTJ block last night, nothing quite like destroying half your lands and discarding your hand for value plays super fun format. | ||
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DEN1ED
United States1087 Posts
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cLAN.Anax
United States2847 Posts
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Cel.erity
United States4890 Posts
On June 28 2013 10:29 micronesia wrote: My issue is with how you are valuing the number of gates you need to make it worth playing it. Obviously, the benefit of vigilance (as well as additional toughness) is very situational. There are times when you would be willing to spend 5 mana to give all your creatures vigilance even with no gates, and others where you wouldn't be willing to pay 1 mana. How do you determine the value of things like these? I'm not going to say you guys are wrong, but there's really no way for me to determine this other than through subjective experience. I guess that's magic. Yeah, there are a lot of variables, but the same rule of evaluation applies to everything: even something as simple as a 2-mana 2/2 is really good in certain formats, unplayable in others. Vigilance in general is much better on flying creatures, and in this format, so is extra toughness, because air stalls can occur between armies of 2/2 flyers. The odds of you caring whether your centaur is a 3/3 or a 3/4 vigilance are pretty much zero, because all of the 4-toughness creatures blank it either way, and it can be double blocked by all of the same things. | ||
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The Great Taste
389 Posts
Common Bond is also very good in an aggressive strategy, it helps to break through various walls such as Gatekeepers. Instead of this deck or cutting Blue as others suggest, I think there is potential for a 5 colour deck, with red as the main colour. Not sure how the mana would work but I'd imagine you can get it done with 4 gates, 3 cluestones and a keyrune. There's a lot of premium removal in Warleader's Helix, Annihilating Fire, Mugging, Auger Spree, Trostani's Judgement and Clan Defiance, backed up by other removal such as Devour Flesh and Runner's Bane. There's a good amount of walls with Voidwielder, Lobber Crew, Hired Torturer, Doorkeeper and Jelenn Sphinx in addition to 3 Gatekeepers. Bombs are Ruric Thar, Skymark Roc, Clan Defiance and I suppose just bigger creatures. | ||
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Audemed
United States893 Posts
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Azuzu
United States340 Posts
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Judicator
United States7270 Posts
Edit: Can't you guys just handover packs to someone trustworthy and organize it outside of MtGO's queue. | ||
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BlueBird.
United States3890 Posts
On June 29 2013 06:39 Judicator wrote: There are much better ways than MtGO queuing. Edit: Can't you guys just handover packs to someone trustworthy and organize it outside of MtGO's queue. Yes you could there are lots of player run events on mood | ||
micronesia
United States24761 Posts
Here is the deck I just built in draft: ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/mVYSl2I.png) Obviously nobody can tell me how good of a job I did drafting without seeing what my choices were, but I am hoping this deck looks more solid than the last one I shared. I'm so psyched I got a voice, whether or not it comes out in my games. edit: may as well share how it goes... game 1 I had a good start with getting out tokens and populating them, but I suddenly got mana flooded midgame.. I had 15 cards left in my deck and 1 was a land! Eventually my opponent brought out mirko and I had no way to deal with it. I swapped out the centaur healer for the aerial predation, however in game 2 I drew no green mana the whole game. My first five lands were all plains, and mirko came out and started milling my forests, as well as my aerial predation. I tried to block with an aerial maneuver but the strongest creature I had out was a 2/2 so I couldn't kill Mirko. What a crazy match. Waiting for round 2 | ||
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Cel.erity
United States4890 Posts
On June 29 2013 10:41 micronesia wrote: FNM would be fun except I go to the real life event haha. Here is the deck I just built in draft: Obviously nobody can tell me how good of a job I did drafting without seeing what my choices were, but I am hoping this deck looks more solid than the last one I shared. I'm so psyched I got a voice, whether or not it comes out in my games. edit: may as well share how it goes... game 1 I had a good start with getting out tokens and populating them, but I suddenly got mana flooded midgame.. I had 15 cards left in my deck and 1 was a land! Eventually my opponent brought out mirko and I had no way to deal with it. I swapped out the centaur healer for the aerial predation, however in game 2 I drew no green mana the whole game. My first five lands were all plains, and mirko came out and started milling my forests, as well as my aerial predation. I tried to block with an aerial maneuver but the strongest creature I had out was a 2/2 so I couldn't kill Mirko. What a crazy match. Waiting for round 2 Mmm...no offense, but it looks really, really bad. Your creature base is incredibly weak. Oak Street Innkeeper is probably the worst creature in the entire format, and...Trained Caracal, Spire Tracer, Zarichi Tiger, Knight Watch, and Adaptive Snapjaw are all highly suboptimal. Murder Investigation isn't really a playable card, nor is Phytoburst, and I don't think your deck is aggressive enough to warrant Lyev Decree. Finally, you have 3 spells which do basically nothing besides populate, but you don't have enough token makers to justify playing any of them. To be frank, the only cards in your deck that I would usually play in a Selesnya deck are Voice, Kraul Warrior, Centaur Healer, Eyes in the Skies, and sometimes Courser's Accord. | ||
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micronesia
United States24761 Posts
You claim I have too much populate, but also say I shouldn't be using one of my cards that creates tokens. It sounds like you are just telling me not to go selesnya, since it's virtually impossible for me to make a 2 color deck using voice, kraul, centaur healer, eyes in the skies, and courser's accord, and none of the other things I put in. If so that's fine; I can grab the voice as my first pick then just not use it (or maybe splash it), but I wasn't aware that selesnya is that useless in draft. | ||
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Cel.erity
United States4890 Posts
On June 29 2013 11:30 micronesia wrote: Oak is really just a filler creature since I couldn't get enough good creatures from the draft. I wouldn't have even picked it if there was any other relevant card in the pack when it came to me (it was probably the second time around). I have trained caracel and spire tracer because I like having a couple of one drop creatures, and unblockable/lifelink are both nice mechanics (obviously of limited utility depending on what the opponent does). I'm not sure what the problem with zarichi tiger is. Knight watch is helpful because I can populate the knights. Adaptive snapjaw doesn't really match up well but again I needed a creature without having to start splashing other colors, and if you can evolve him a couple of times he becomes very strong. Murder investigation just won me a game when paired with voice of resurgance, phytoburst by itself isn't that good but is great in combination with some other cards (granted, this deck can't really brag about that mechanic, although it was extremely helpful last game combined with the 1 drop lifelink creature). Lyev Decree is helpful since I don't have enough big creatures to power past defenders (since my tokens are 2/2, 3/3, etc). You claim I have too much populate, but also say I shouldn't be using one of my cards that creates tokens. It sounds like you are just telling me not to go selesnya, since it's virtually impossible for me to make a 2 color deck using voice, kraul, centaur healer, eyes in the skies, and courser's accord, and none of the other things I put in. If so that's fine; I can grab the voice as my first pick then just not use it (or maybe splash it), but I wasn't aware that selesnya is that useless in draft. No...I'm really not saying that. Selesnya is currently IMO the strongest guild to draft on MtGO, it's my preferred guild. I just don't think it's possible that your evaluations were correct during drafting if you only ended up with 4-5 playable cards, either that or you were getting cut hard and should've switched colors. If you go to My Documents/Games/Magic Online/Drafts, you can find your draft file and upload it somewhere or paste it here in a spoiler tag, and I'll be able to help less vaguely. | ||
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micronesia
United States24761 Posts
On June 29 2013 11:56 Cel.erity wrote: No...I'm really not saying that. Selesnya is currently IMO the strongest guild to draft on MtGO, it's my preferred guild. I just don't think it's possible that your evaluations were correct during drafting if you only ended up with 4-5 playable cards, either that or you were getting cut hard and should've switched colors. If you go to My Documents/Games/Magic Online/Drafts, you can find your draft file and upload it somewhere or paste it here in a spoiler tag, and I'll be able to help less vaguely. My round 3 opponent had some selesnya cards apparently, so I might have not realized I was 'getting cut hard.' One thing I need to make sure I don't do is overvalue a strong first card pick like voice. I cannot find the folder you are talking about. I have no My Documents/Games. If you tell me how to locate this folder I will try to share the file you are describing. | ||
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Cel.erity
United States4890 Posts
Note: I have no idea how this works with the new client, I still use the regular one. | ||
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micronesia
United States24761 Posts
edit: just want to point out that saying "card x is good, card y is bad" doesn't help as much unless I understand why. I'm pretty bad at figuring out why cards are good or bad since I have very little experience getting feedback outside of just trying out cards. What happens is I find a card very useful and value it highly and it turns out it's not actually a good card. | ||
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Cel.erity
United States4890 Posts
On June 29 2013 12:15 micronesia wrote: I found 'enable draft recorder' in settings so I'll give that a try. Next time hopefully I can share my drafting process without having to stream or record lots of video. So many cards that seem good/bad turn out to be bad/good lol edit: just want to point out that saying "card x is good, card y is bad" doesn't help as much unless I understand why. I'm pretty bad at figuring out why cards are good or bad since I have very little experience getting feedback outside of just trying out cards. What happens is I find a card very useful and value it highly and it turns out it's not actually a good card. In general: 1-power creatures are bad, especially 1/1's and 1/2's. They don't favorably interact with anything, and the clock they provide is insignificant, so a card like Spire Tracer/Trained Caracal is only good if you have a lot of ways to pump them, or (in Spire Tracer's case), some cipher or something to abuse the evasion. Innkeeper is a 1/2 for 3 with no ability, so that's a no-go. Phytoburst is bad because it's a sorcery. At best it deals 5 damage to them (which already isn't worth a card most of the time, i.e. Scorchwalker/Lava Axe are mediocre commons), at worst they can chump the creature and it doesn't do anything. Murder Investigation is 2 mana for a few 1/1s, maybe, someday, not when you want them. And 1/1s aren't good to begin with, as explained earlier. Selesnya's biggest strength lies in its powerful 3-drops and tricks, and the fact that it gets a lot out of Gatecrash compared to the other RtR guilds. But you usually only want to go into it if you see Selesnya cards getting passed in Dragon's Maze, because RtR is your best pack, and DGR+RtR feed in the same direction. You want to make sure you're getting most of the Selesnya in the first and third packs. | ||
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slyboogie
United States3423 Posts
On June 29 2013 12:15 micronesia wrote: I found 'enable draft recorder' in settings so I'll give that a try. Next time hopefully I can share my drafting process without having to stream or record lots of video. So many cards that seem good/bad turn out to be bad/good lol edit: just want to point out that saying "card x is good, card y is bad" doesn't help as much unless I understand why. I'm pretty bad at figuring out why cards are good or bad since I have very little experience getting feedback outside of just trying out cards. What happens is I find a card very useful and value it highly and it turns out it's not actually a good card. I appreciate your remark on wanting to know why something is "good" or "bad," but have you picked up on some basic elements of Power and Toughness in relation to color and mana cost? For instance, Inn Keeper has one green mana symbol and costs 3 CMC, for this you get a 1/2. Almost every set in Magic history has a 1G (and 1W, often enough) 2/2 creature in it. Often times, that creature might even have an extra little something something. I imagine you haven't been playing for years and years, but with enough drafts, you should start to pick up on the impact of cards played on the turns that they can be played - 1 power creatures usually fail to do enough, barring some supplemental effect, like Llanowar Elf or something | ||
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micronesia
United States24761 Posts
@slyboogie: that makes sense | ||
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slyboogie
United States3423 Posts
On June 29 2013 13:22 micronesia wrote: I think the hardest part about drafting for me is you need to simultaneously be thinking about which cards to take from a booster (which is tough when you are learning how to value cards from three different sets) and also think about what cards are or are not being passed (which is hard since you don't actually know for sure what was taken at all until boosters start wheeling, and it's a lot to try to keep track of). Definitely I'll post a draft file if it is available because I'm only learning so much by watching draft videos since they don't explain most of the things I need to know. @slyboogie: that makes sense Did you just start drafting this Ravnica set? Because I would call this set "advanced." I'm not a great drafter or anything close, I'd say I'm about a 4 out of 10 in limited, 5 on a great day - but I've found this set is particularly difficult for three reasons: 1. Skilled drafters will draft your deck for you. This is probably the most annoying part of the set, if you're sitting next to a very good player to your left, he ends up in control of your destiny almost 20% of the time. If you pick up on it fast, you can craft a plan for packs 2 and 3 but I still occasionally feel at that player's mercy too often. 2. Every semi-okay, thinks-he's-better-than-he-actually-is, player thinks he's 5 color control or something. They monopolize the fixing and premium removal, though this strategy has died out recently, I've noticed, and it's annoying because those decks are rarely all that powerful. 3. Curve is always king, but it's a little less regal in this format DGM-GTC-RTR. In every other format, an aggressive 2-3-4 will put you in a great place to win the game. It's the same in this format, I just find it hard to get those cards in sufficient density/volume to get it done. Oh M14, how I long to see you. | ||
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