The LiquidLegends Lounge - Page 1650

I open a weak pack and get passed a strong one, I end up with the GW uncommon out of it, and pick 3 is Oketra's Monument, so clearly going a good start for creature-based GW. We even open maybe 5 Unwavering Initiates out of pack 1, I take 2 on the wheel. Pack 1 looks decent and I mainly need to focus on more exert creatures, some tricks/removal (cartouche of strength pls) and hopefully 2-3 teamwide buffs to get a very focused deck.

Pack 2 goes pretty badly because despite my colours being clearly open (and R is too), there's again the syndrom of "here's 3 cards you'd pick highly in the same pack, then 3 packs with only filler", so I even pass 2 Cartouches of Strength (P2P1 Prepare // Fight, later Scaled Behemoth) so despite the great cards opened I have a bunch of mediocre stuff 'cause of shitty card spread. On the plus side I've got 3 Fan Bearers and even passed 2 more so far.
P3P1 is Trial of Solidarity over... a 3rd cartouche, because fuck me right? and the rare was Glyph Keeper, as in "you'd switch to U and force it if this wasn't pack 3." I nab Rhonas' Monument right after, then a couple tricks since I'm not going to get any removal.

On paper I can get the nuts, playing 2x Fan Bearers, Trial of Solidarity, Ahn-Crop Champion, both monuments in my colours, and 4+ creatures for 2- and 3-drops. I'd play G Cartouche over the W one or Mightly Leap tho.

Match 1 vs UR spells
I walk all over him game 1 because I cast Rhonas' Monument turn 3 and he stumbles a bit. I even manage to play 2 creatures turn 5.
Game 2 is slower but I can count of my Fan-Bearers to tap his flyers and punch in. His Winds of Rebuke mill a Javelineer, and his Enigma Drake ends up as 4/4 or 5/4, so if his deck wasn't a bit slow maybe he'd have had more of a chance. Game 1 was disgusting tho.

Match 2 vs UB cycling
My left neighbour, to whom I passed the Glyph Keeper.
Game 1 he mulls, keeps a 1-lander, scries bottom, plays Glyph Keeper turn 5, I lose (I had Oketra's Follower but he just played a Cartouche of Ambition to make sure I couldn't trade twice, and once embalmed he bounced it).
Game 2 I'm stuck on 3 mana, with Oketra's Monument but only one plain and a bunch of W creatures. I take a lot of damage from the UB flyer + cartouche of ambition, then Anointer Priest + Monument gives me back 5-6 and I use 2 Fan-Bearers to help Unwavering Initiate + cartouche of solidarity go through. My opponent had Glyph Keeper again but it took him awhile to hit his 5th land and I was kinda pressuring by then so he played something else. In the end I managed to force chumps and finally hit the 6th land for Scaled Behemoth and he scooped (only took 10+ turns).
Game 3 I keep a 3-lander with only plains, have some G cards in hand, he plays Glyph Keeper turn 5 again and the 4th land is the 15th card of my deck, yay.
TL;DR even with the on-colour Trial in the pack it turns out this format is dumb enough that cutting an off-colour bomb is probably still better for your deck.

Match 3 vs UGb ramp
Game 1 he floods out. Playing 17 lands, Naga Vitalist, Bounty of the Luxa, 2x Gift of Paradise and that rare mana dork is a bit too much.
Game 2 I mirror the previous round and keep a 3-lander (of plains), it takes me 5 turns to find another land and I'm already as good as dead by then.
Game 3 is dumb with lots of lands for him and a bunch of tricks and trial and monument for me but I keep bricking on creatures so I do stuff like Prepare for my 3/2 to kill his 2/3 blocker, or skip turn 5 because he picks up the rare mana dork from Benefaction of Rhonas and I have a quarry Hauler (he did play it and put the counters on it so I killed it for "free")... in the end said Benefaction revealed 5 spells, so despite us drawing the same % of lands (ie. too much, I'm at slightly above half lands and still bricking on creatures) I get off better. Also having several embalm creatures (though he exiles a couple) lets me have more attackers so I can finish him off. Sad game from both sides.

Fun fact: the GW uncommon died before a full turn had passed whenever I played it, usually exiled. Mirrors yesterday.
The draft was won by a BG guy to my left, with 2x Trial of Ambition, 2x Cartouche of Strength (when I get buttfucked by pack spread somebody's got to reap the "rewards"), a couple rares like the B removal one, he also had the BG aftermath spell, and decent creature. Basically he got gifted great B pack 2 ('cause his right neighbour was B too), and got several solid G cards from these few packs that had my payoffs all clumped up. Pretty jading.

- FRF I was too new and my pool was truly busted (looking back at Abzan Charm, Suspension Field and W Siege a year later and I needed a double take).

- BFZ block I was too new, I remember having more fun with OGW 'cause my BFZ pool was weird and I got run over by RG landfall curveouts all day long (you guys even got surprised at me saying RG was prob the weakest archetype)
- SOI was great, a bit durdly, and tribal, but tribal didn't matter too much that if your pool didn't have one you'd be screwed.

- EMN... Brisela+Tamiyo+Dark Salvation+Ever After if I wanted to go BW reanimate, and pretty good G for midrange curveouts. The next day 11 humans, Heron's Grace Champion, Lone Riders and Ironclad Slayers with Lunarch Mantles+equipments (I think this one was stronger than the absurd bombs 'cause it was more consistent/faster). I can't really talk about the format itself.

- KLD was fun, but I think that's mostly because we all looked at our sweet build-arounds and durdly combos, rather than jam all the freighters and curveout on our opponents. I had a consistent+bomby pool (BG with rhinos and peemas and stuff splashing Disintegration, Confiscation Coup and Saheeli's Artistry) that bombed out due to variance'd to the extremes, other pools were bad to the point where I had issues finding the playables, without anything worth splashing to make up for it, so again that's not representative.
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- AER had ~30 people each time, both had all decks in the top6-8 be either Gx, Bx or (always 2 in the top3) BG. I only saw 4-5 decks play U or W, and only one person over both events was in UW. Kind of says a lot, Tusker and Snake dominated when people opened them.

- AKH had people do well off of mill or Approach decks, so there's clearly room for it. My personal experiences were forcing UR 'cause my good colours didn't have enough playables and I had a bomb in each of these colours, and it was enough 'cause I also played a bunch of draw, then having shitty pools that got run over, including with the "4x Rhonas' Monument on turn 3 in 5 games" pre-release.
Format is super bomby so too much variance between pools and it's easy for one of the players to just not play if the other draws his bomb.