Draft night #2!

[Matt]

Another Tuesday night draft! We had 18 people, four more than last week, and I am in the 10-man pod.

I opened a pretty poor pack, taking a Spiketail Drakeling. This turned out to be the right pick, as my next four picks in order were Fledgling Mawcor (over Momentary Blink, a tough decision), Looter il-Kor, Think Twice, and Castle Raptors! I proceeded to get passed a TON of good blue and a decent bit of white over the next packs, eventually ending up with 39 of my 45 cards in those two colors. Here's what I played:


2 Knight of Sursi

Whitemane Lion
Looter il-Kor
Errant Doomsayers
Veiling Oddity

Bonded Fetch
Spiketail Drakeling
Fledgling Mawcor
Shaper Parasite

Crookclaw Transmuter

Castle Raptors
Whip-Spine Drake
Lucent Liminid

Jodah's Avenger
Draining Whelk

Think Twice
2 Judge Unworthy
2 Erratic Mutation
Logic Knot
Cancel

11 Island
6 Plains

SB: Imperial Mask
SB: Wistful Thinking
SB: Mesmeric Sliver
SB: Venser's Diffusion
SB: Eternity Snare
SB: Unblinking Bleb
SB: Saltfield Recluse
SB: Aquamorph Entity
SB: Reality Acid
SB: 2 Veiling Oddity
SB: Mana Tithe
SB: Sinew Sliver
SB: Foriysian Brigade
SB: Luminthread Field

//Unusable
SB: Brain Gorgers
SB: Gorgon Recluse
SB: Scarwood Treefolk
and 2 cards that were lost to the mists of time!

My deck had a lot of good cards, but my curve was again a little off - too much action at 3cc. The only SB cards I used were Field, Tithe, and Oddity, none of which really mattered.

R1G1 - Jeremy (G/R)
Game one I kept a hand of 3 Plains, Judge Unworthy, Whip-Spine Drake, and two blue cards. I drew my fourth of six plains, got WSD out and attacking, though eventually it got Ghostfired. I Judged a Giant Dustwasp away, finally finding my first island! By then it was far too late, as Jeremy had a 4/4 fungus and Prodigal Pyromancer and Sprout Swarm going.

Game two I came out strong, but got combat trick-ed (and also just plain fucked up against an on-board Goblin Skycutter) and went down in flames.

Round two against Mike, who was pretty new at this (he was there with his son). I demolished his R/G deck full of bad cards like the storm card that makers fliers unable to block, and similar trash. An Aether Membrane threatened to hold me off in both games, but Crookclaw Transmuter aced it in both. I gave him some advice afterward - suhc as "play Tribal Flames" and some of the combat situations he missed, like not attacking with his Bloodthirsted Bogardan Lancer into my Bonded Fetch for like five turns.

Round three I am paired up against Thomas, who is cool. His R/B deck comes out strong, with a lot of removal, but I eventually use judicious blocks and Judge Unworthy to attrition his large guys away and come in for the win, holding Draining Whelk against any shenanigans. Game two is played basically for fun, as I offered to concede and he "independently" offered to give me half his packs, but I win it again, through an attrition war that leaves him with a Gauntlet of Power and Muck Drubb against my Limind and Whip-Spine Drake (with Logic Knot and Whitemane Lion in hand).

So I went 2-1, though it was reported as 1-2. My two packs gave me Sliver Overlord and Bridge form Below (hot!) and a Yixlid Jailer, which I needed. For his part, Thomas pulled a Korlash, which I understand is a hot card these days.

[Webster]

You would have been a lot better off playing with the saltfield recluse. He is one of the best white commons in planar chaos. The deck you had was very aggresive. I would have replaced cancel, logic knot, and errant doomsayers with luminthread field, venser's diffusion, and a second veiling oddity. Cancel is usually a card that I like running, however, I find it unlikely that you'd be in enough siutations where you'd actually be able to maintain tempo and be able to cast it. I would also change the mana base to 10 plains and 7 islands so you can actually get there with turn 3 spiketail drakeling.

[UR]

This is a TPF draft right? So wasn't your first-pick the Draining Whelk? You mention your first five picks but the Whelk isn't in there...

If you feel your curve is a bit off with 3cc+ cards then you may want to consider playing 18 lands to guarantee you'll have three lands on turn three. An extra plains would also help suspend Knight of Sursi on turn one.

Anyway, I partly agree with Webster in that Saltfield Recluse is definately worth playing. But I'd play him over the Veiling Oddity actually. I feel that this deck can't really take advantage of the Oddity anyway. You can only use him to break a stall really, because you have no fast creatures (and thus I wouldn't count him as a two drop). You will stall out with a deck like this and kill the opponent with quality evastion creatures. Recluse fits that strategy better. Also, the Recluse plays nicely with the Crookclaw Transmuter.

I'd keep the counters in for two reasons. The first (and most important one) is that nobody plays around counters in draft and you'll always trade your counter for something really good and maybe you'll score a 2-for-1 in the process. The second reason is Sprout Swarm. It is a common and it is ridiculous in that decks like these will almost certainly be overwhelmed by it unless you can race it. Countering it is a must because you'll have no other way of getting rid of it.

Venser's Diffusion can be a good card in the right deck. But I'm not so sure that it should replace the Logic Knot here for instance. The best play that I can see you make with it is bouncing your Draining Whelk or Shaper Parasite with Damage on the stack and maybe scoring 3-for-1. That situation seems unlikely however and you'll probably end up bouncing some early threat to take the pressure off. In a situation like that I'd rather have the counter.

In all I'd say you drafted pretty well because the deck looks strong (on paper at least).

[Matt]

Whelk came later. Definitely not first, that pack sucked out loud. Maybe it was 4th over Think Twice but definitely not 1, 2, 3, or 5.

Logic Knot was WAY better than Cancel, again because of curve reasons. I was never unhappy with my land count - I always had enough.

Think Twice never did anything worthwhile. I rarely flashed it back, always having better things to do with my mana, and it just got Delved away two fo the three times I drew it.

[Webster]

Whelk came later. Definitely not first, that pack sucked out loud. Maybe it was 4th over Think Twice but definitely not 1, 2, 3, or 5.

Unfortunately it seems that the playgroup at the store you've been drafting at doesn't include very many good people. Draining whelk should never be seen in a pack with more than 2 cards missing unless it's some nuts pack with disintegrate, sulf blast, whelk, foil whelk. If you're looking to just improve your drafting skills, I'd recommend going to another shop with better players; granted I'm making a judgement based on just how late that whelk came and conceivably the worst three people there that night could have been seated to your right in which case I'd say you got lucky.

Think twice is fine. There's nothing wrong with running it, or even multiples. Outside of combat tricks, there are very few cards that provide true card advantage. There's never been an extra card drawn that I've not liked.

[Matt]

No, I'm afraid they aren't the cream of the crop. But it's only $10 to draft AND less than two blocks from my place, so I doubt any other store is going to make a better place for me.

[Webster]

No, I'm afraid they aren't the cream of the crop. But it's only $10 to draft AND less than two blocks from my place, so I doubt any other store is going to make a better place for me.

Yea, that's pretty a pretty convenient setup you've got there. It'd be pretty hard to find a place worth the travel.