Wednesday, March 23, 2011

MBS Draft #4-5-6 and bonus MD5 draft

Nothing like the weekly downtime to coax me into finally uploading all the videos I've been accumulating.  I think from now on I'm going to try and upload them one by one and a bit more regularly. Here we go...

MBS Draft #4



Looking back:

Pretty straight forward draft. grab first and second pick bombs and then roll with it. Opening yet another bomb helps too. For the record, I split the final here. Normally with a deck like this I'll play it out but as I mentioned in the video, I was coming off a rough streak.

- Pack 1 Pick 6 should probably have been something other than the carapace, even though it ended up making the cut to help out the myrs (and because I just didnt have anything better). It really didnt fit with what I had in my pile at the time. Something like flayer husk or sylvok lifestaff is much better suited for the myr power up role, though I didn't really have a chance to pick either one up.  Either way, at the time I couldn't really predict i'd end up short a few ideal playables and if I could make the pick again i'd take the 3/3 infector as a potential sideboard card. Just to make it clear, I think I ended up better off having taken the carapace, because it was certainly better than the infector main deck and I was short playables, but that doesn't mean its not a mistake.

- There was way too much filler in this deck, and luckily the power of the bombs more than helped make up for it. It's worth noting I may have ended up with the nuts infect deck, and a lot less filler, but I don't think I could've justified jumping in early enough after getting passed the flamefiend and my pile would have to look pretty awful for me to try and jump into infect after pack 1.



MBS Draft #5



looking back:

- What was I thinking picking the juggernaut over the blue myr?!? It was unlikely to be more than just marginally playable, whereas the mana myr made it much more likely to be able to play all my good cards without having a completely miserable mana base.

- Pack 3 pick 1 was a tough one and I still don't know the correct choice here. Mindslaver is pretty sweet with shimmer myr because you can eliminate their opportunity to prepare for it. And maybe that was the right pick seeing as it was possible that any colored card here had a good chance of not actually making the deck. I think the sky-eel school was the best choice out of the colored cards since taking a red card here means that in order to play it I abandon either the conscience or the rebirth.

- On the topic of abandoning one of my bombs, after rewatching the draft I have no idea at what point I could have abandoned a bomb. I don't really think it was too greedy to stick to the plan of playing the bombs and splashing the red removal. The problem was that I made too many picks that didn't take that plan into account. The worst offender was the not taking the blue myr, as mentioned above. But here are some other ones I'd like to get another stab at:

 Pack2 Pick1: Necropede over Prototype Portal. I still like the portal, and I still think it can be considered an early pick. But here I already have a couple of cards capable of creating huge swings in my board position. I should be focused on making my deck support those cards as well as possible, rather than add a card that may need me to jump through a few more hoops to support. Necropede would be part of the solution whereas the portal is a part of the problem.

Pack 3 Pick 2: Revoke existence over Darkslick Drake. If I had access to a constructed quality mana base with dual lands aplenty then I think I could stand by my pick here. But I've already commited to playing 3 colors with my last pick, do I really want another card with 2 mana symbols in it? It's not even like one card can be said to be strictly better than the other here. With an already rough mana base, I should be erring towards whatever is going to be easier for me to cast.

Pack 3 Pick 6: Disperse or Horizon Spellbomb over Kemba's Skyguard. Take my last comment, and amplify it by 10. I actually don't even think i should have played the skyguard main deck. 2 horizon spellbombs without green mana kinda sucks, but so does not being able to cast your cards. I'm leaning towards disperse with this one.

Adjust those 4 picks and I have a much more stable manabase and I have no need to start trying to mindlessly jam extra artifacts into my deck to "power up" the portal and the juggernaut. Not needing to play extra artifacts could let me cut one for an 18th land (a much needed 3rd mountain).

In summary, I let greed get the better of me here. Splashing a 3rd color is fine, but its often going to limit what else your deck can do. My deck was trying to do way to many other things when it really just needed to be mindful of its mana base.



MBS Draft #6



Looking back:

... and sometimes it all just comes together.

- In case you missed it, picks 7-11 of pack 3 powered my deck up by about 10 levels. Not only did I get the second furnace celebration, but 2 more spellbombs, a kuldotha rebirth and the bleak-coven vampires.

- Even given the result, it's hard for me to say that mirrorworks is actually the correct pick over the ogre pack 1 pick 4, especially since there's a remote possibility it wheels. But sometimes it's a good idea to experiment with rares. That's twice now that i've drafted a deck where mirrorworks was insane (the other wasn't recorded but I allude to it in the video), so I may do some more expermenting in the future when I have the choice between it and a solid but replaceable playable.

- I probably like ichor wellspring more than most. I think its a fine early pick over branching to another color as long as you have a red or white card in your pile. It's more of a cantrip that enables metalcraft otherwise, and I'm rarely metalcraft unless I'm white anyways. Pick 3 would have been a blue card if my second pick wasn't red.

- Boy do I hate Cerebral Eruption. It has to be the worst card-I'll-never-cut-if-its-on-color of all time. I wish I just took the necropede, it would have avoided the heartache that may have shaved a few years off my life. Did I go 0 for 6 before I finally hit (and won the finals)? The worst part is that often if you whiff once you can't afford to risk whiffing again the next turn unless its your only chance.

-I think I'm done taking chrome steed when I'm not white based metalcraft. Theres just not enough payoff for taking artifacts over colored cards when you're not playing white. I guess I couldn't have known it at the time, but liquimetal coating would've ended up being a decent option once there are 2 furnace celebration in the pile.

-I'm sure I made a whole bunch of play errors here. This deck was definitely tough to pilot but thankfully powerful enough to forgive a few mistakes here and there. The thing is there were often just so many different lines of play and even looking back now, its tough to say for sure which was the best option.


Bonus MD5 draft:



This is one of my all time favorite formats. Invasion and Ravnica blocks are up there too. It kind of reminds me of invasion. Mostly stinky creaures, but instead of invasions riduclously powered spells we have mirrodins ridiculously powered artifacts/equipment.

Basically, in this format I very rarely strongly commit to even a first color. I just take premium colored cards regardless of the color as long as they are splashable, and otherwise grab the artifact.

I value good equipment over almost everything. By good equipment, I'm talking viridian longbow, vulshok morning star and leonin bola. And obviously a sword or a skullclamp(!) if I'm really lucky.

I put a strong emphasis on getting rewarded by the last pack. The two important themes in fifth dawn are 1 mana artifacts and sunburst. I generally like to have some cards that enable each of them when going into the last pack, otherwise I can't take advantage of many of the most powerful cards there. This means I sometimes take spellbombs and fixers/mana myrs over cards that are more powerful in a vacuum.

I'm not likely to value creatures very highly early in the draft unless they have a sweet ability (and tapping for mana counts!) or have evasion.

Until next time!

4 comments:

  1. When you have enough gas with Furnace Celebration, like in Draft 2 Match 1 Game 2, you just want to go face face face and ignore all your opponent's creatures.

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  2. MBS draft 6 was really entertaining , one of the best MBS videos I've seen so far
    you could have played more aggressive at certain points though

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  3. MBS #6 = Best draft i have seen so far. Saved an otherwise boring Sunday. Good Job! :D

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  4. Good ones. Any more drafts coming up?

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