[Premium Article] So Many Insane Plays - Drafting Type Four With Steve Menendian

[Smmenen]

http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/article/14698.html

This article has been a long time coming.

I really hope you guys enjoy this!!!!!!!!!!!!


Stephen

[JACO]

Steve, nice article, as usual. I've actually played quite a bit of Type 4 over the past couple of years, and was wondering a couple of things.

1) In pack 1, you first pick Word of Seizing, and explain the strength of Split Second. In my playgroup Split Second spells are pretty good, but Tooth and Nail is one of the most game ending spells, and might be passed over for something like Desertion, Spelljack, or Decree of Silence. That's it (we don't play alternate casting cost spells are free). You can easily see how much more broken your deck would have turned out had you drafted Tooth here, rather than just a strong card like Word of Seizing. Personally, I tend to first pick counterspells, as I too dislike creatures, so I would have taken Dismiss over Word of Seizing as well.

2) Also, how in God's name does Exclude make it to 13th, and you don't pick it?! Countering something like Hypnox, Myojin of Night's Reach, Kaervek, or Arcanis is extremely important, and it cantrips! It's definitely one of my favorite counterspells in the stack.

3) How is Planar Portal not the pick in slot 3 of pack 3? That is the most busted artifact in my stack, and is pretty much always a first pick (I don't play Door to Nothingness, as it's particularly cheap). It, more than any other card besides probably Tooth and Nail, wins so many games by itself.

4) Do you guys normally pack draft or Rochester draft? We normally Rochester (probably 80% of the time), and pack draft or do something else to mix it up once in a while.

I'll just finish up by saying that I would have picked the following draft slots the same as you:
Pack 1: 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 15
Pack 2: 6, 8, 10, 11, 12, 15
Pack 3 (in light of the Glarecaster drafting): 1, 2, 4, 6, 9, 11, 13, 14, 15

I guess that kind of highlights the different play and drafting strategies that make Type 4 such a blast every time I play, and especially when I play with people outside my group and see how different people value the cards differently. I'm looking forward to the next article.

[Smmenen]

I'm glad you enjoyed it!

Rather than answer your questions first, I'm going to let my teammates take a stab at it (to generate discussion) and then answer them!

However, with respect to question 4, we almost always pack draft now.

Back in 2000-2001 when we first came up with the format, we always Rochester Drafted.  It was this way until probably mid-2004, when we started doing pack drafts and just random deck splits more often.

In the last two years, I'd say, we 100% pack draft.

It goes much faster and leaves some surprising ambiguity in terms of figuring out who has what. 

[Hi-Val]

Since Steve asked teammates to respond, I'll toss my hat in : )

1. I think it's Steve-level [adjective-ly][adjective] (we'll go with patently ridiculous) to pass up Tooth, especially if you are working on crafting Glasticore. It's a great winning card. Word of Siezing is amazing at the same time, however. I'd tend towards it because especially in larger group games, it's far less of a target than Tooth and Nail would be.

2. Exclude is busted, but from what I remember in that pack, it was the twelve days of Christmas.

3. I agree that Portal is crazy, but this was a 7-player game. I had the chance to take it and passed it. The size really played in. With 45 card decks and draw/search, you can deck yourself pretty easily. Secondly, PP is a huuuuuuge target, and getting 2 activations out of it makes you the biggest target in the pond. Third, in a 7-player game, you can be reasonably sure that someone is cooking artifact removal, which will be aimed at Portal if it hits. People will sometimes try to tag on retaliatory damage for even attempting PP. I prefer to lay low.

4. We pack draft. Rochester is fun but lots of people make it take a long time!

Large games have a different draft dynamic than 4-player games. I'm more inclined to try ballsy stuff in smaller games because I'm more likely to get away with it, but in larger ones, the goal is to stay alive first of all. I'm really enamored with Infernal Spawn of Infernal Spawn of Evil as a kill condition. Things like Eternal Dragon and Scion of the Ur-Dragon are really low picks, all things considered, and you can often end up letting them table. ISOISOE will crank out 4-8 damage just in general shuffling, and with focused strategies, it'll do more. It's also really, really innocuous. I know Kevin Cron loves killing people with Infernal Spawn of Evil because it's consistent and there's just about zero ways to stop it.

[Mr. Type 4]

I havea lot more to say on this topic but I don't havetime right now.  However, I did want to address the pick of Word of Seizing over Tooth and Nail.

Tooth and Nail would have been AWESOME in Steve's deck.  Especially with all of his pitch magic, it would turn his 2 cardcombo into a one card combo, which is pretty sick. 

HOWEVER - Word of Seizing is a way better card, hands down.  It can be used powerfully on offense to take something good and use it, but more importantly it is amazing on defense to BREAK COMBOS.  If Steve lets Word of Seizing pass he is not only giving away the best card in the pack, but he's giving someone else one of the strongest cards that can mess up his combo.  I disagree with a couple of Steve's picks, but that one's pretty solid, IMO. 

[Necrologia]

Word of Seizing is easily as strong as Tooth and Nail, yet it's virtually guaranteed to resolve due to Split Second. I've seen way more people die to a Word of Seizing on Door, Mindslaver, Goblin Dynamo, or even just a 1,000,001/1,000,0001 Draining Whelk than I've ever seen die to Tooth and Nail. When Tooth and Nail hits the stack it's usually countered, and of the few times it's gotten through, it often dumps a pair of guys that get wrathed away next turn.

Tooth and Nail suffers from people over valuing it, and thus never letting it resolve. Word of Seizing just avoids the entire problem by being uncounterable. In most stacks I'd easily put Word of Seizing in that derf derf first pick category, along with Decree of Silence and the like.

[CHA1N5]

I have to entirely agree with Paul in this assessment:

Tooth and Nail would have been AWESOME in Steve's deck.  Especially with all of his pitch magic, it would turn his 2 cardcombo into a one card combo, which is pretty sick.

HOWEVER - Word of Seizing is a way better card, hands down.

I disagree with a couple of Steve's picks, but that one's pretty solid, IMO.

If I were drafting in Steve's spot, I would have taken WoS in Pack 1, but the whole draft would have gone dramatically differently for me after that:

Pick 2:

Reiterate, Vanish Into Memory, Suffocating Blast, Muddle of the Mixture, Panacea, Grinning Totem, Promise of Power, Venser, Shaper Savant, Cerebral Vortex, Heed the Mists, Terminate, Frazzle, Voidmage Prodigy, Planeswalker’s Mischief

Pick: Panacea

Panacea is innocuous but extremely powerful.   If you have it on the table, people aren’t going to expose themselves by attacking you.    Grinning Totem and Voidmage Prodigy are also high picks here, but Panacea is one of the best defensive cards in the stack.   

Pick 3:
Dwarven Catapult, Genesis, Corpse Dance, Sculpting Steel, Betrayal of the Flesh, Crime/Punishment, Aladdin’s Lamp, Read the Runes, Molder, Armored Guardian, Bringer of the Black Dawn, Smokespew Invoker, Arcanis the Omnipotent.

Pick: Armored Guardian

For me, these two picks go Kai, Genesis/Corpse Dance.

These are chosen with an eye toward both combo finish AND gorilla power (see Anthony Alongi) in the mid/late-game.  I would lean toward Genesis so early in the draft.


I also would have drafted Gifts, Eternal Dragon and Glory in pack 2 ... as well as Survival, Winding Canyons, Fact or Fiction, Firemane, Pulse of the Grid and Jiwari in pack 3. 

My deck would have been quite different, much more aggressive and more graveyard-reliant.  Steve and I had a very good conversation after I read this about how drafting T4 is so dramatically influenced by personal preference.  I'm all for defense and putting up the proverbial "moat" that Steve references, but the problem is that everyone in my playgroup has adopted that mentality and it is no longer effective.   My playgroup regularly plays with a much larger stack (400+) and 5/6 players.  We have very long games but decking is rarely an issue.  Steve's fundamental approach of defense + combo is SOP for my whole group, so we're all fighting for the same battle when drafting. (and it's impossible to be innocuous during play... everyone is trying to "look innocuous"!)  You can't just play Panacea and rely on it here   Everyone's deck needs power + defense + a strategy.  The picks in our drafting usually start with bombs/win conditions and then move into jockeying for defense/support.

[Mr. Type 4]

Re: Planar Portal

Planar Portal is the nuts in theory, but the issue lies in the value of the card based on it's "resolveablility."  I could probably write an entire article on this subject alone.  I always feel like a Type 4 game has gone awry when a card like Planar Portal is able to activate more than twice.

Some cards are just plain hard to resolve - the biggest offenders are non-instants that screw everyone like Myojin of Night's Reach, Blatant Theivery, Memnarch and home-brew card Jacowned (which mindslavers every opponent, good luck resolving that!) AND ones that potentially could kill everyone like Tooth and Nail.

After those the next category down in terms of "difficult to resolve" would be cards that have just plain amazing effects, ones that probably no one should have like Planar Portal and Tower of Fortunes.  These cards also happen to have the problem of being fragile - if you activate your Portal one time it is likely to be destroyed before you untap it.  Now, I'm not saying that if you resolve PP that you can't use it's powers to help protect it, but that's a challenge unto itself.  The value of PP goes up dramaticly if there is very little artifact removal in the stack, because it becomes a "must-counter", but it still does just that- bleeds a counterspell out of someone.  How valuable is that to you?

Here's an interesting dilemma: would i rather have Planar Portal or Demonic Tutor in type 4?  They typically would do about the same thing, tutor for one card and then end up in the grave yard, but Demonic Tutor would probably be more likely to resolve because no one would be concerned that it could "get out of control".  In most cases I'd rather have Demonic Tutor, except in the way late game when more than half the players are dead and the remaining players have expended a lot of their resources. 

[carlossb]

Would you mind sharing the stack you used for those games?

Thanks in advance.

[Smmenen]

2) Also, how in God's name does Exclude make it to 13th, and you don't pick it?! Countering something like Hypnox, Myojin of Night's Reach, Kaervek, or Arcanis is extremely important, and it cantrips! It's definitely one of my favorite counterspells in the stack.

Counter creatures?

I almost never counter creatures, not even Memnarch.   There is no need to.

Let's go through the ones you listed:

Hypnox: the chance of you getting nailed is much lower than 50% in any given situation.    Hypnox isn't likely to resolve because someone else is probably going to counter it or risk getting hit by it.   Even if it does hit, that thing won't survive very long.   And even fi it does, eventually it will die and you'll get your hand back.   

Myojin: not going to resolve.   Even if it does, the person who played the myojin and blows out the players hand is going to be targeted by the rest of the table.

Kaevek: i couldn't care less about this card.   

Arcanis: i've only seen this guy ever actually activated like a couple of times in the dozens and dozens of t4 games i've played.   I would never counter arcanis.

Countering creatures is weak.

[JACO]

OK, I wanted to wait for most of Mean Deck's responses, because I had a feeling I knew exactly what was going to be said. Predictably, the discussion of passing over something like Planar Portal, or Corpse Dance, or Tooth and Nail, would boil down to basically two things:
1) resolvability
2) making yourself a target with a bomb

I guess in my school of thought, I go about drafting and playing Type 4 with the understanding that every player is going to draft bombs and counterspells and other cards that will simply gain them an advantage so as to make them a target. What this means is that everybody in the game will be a target at one time or another, assuming they are drafting bombs. You wouldn't pass up the chance to draft Desertion or Overwhelming Intellect, so you could draft Counterspell or Cancel, would you? That is the same thing as Planar Portal vs. something like Demonic Tutor.

I would GLADLY take and cast Planar Portal over a vanilla Tutor any game, because if it does resolve, and does stick around more than a turn or two, you're going to win the game. The same usually goes for other overpowered cards like Overwhelming Intellect, Tooth and Nail, Myojin of Night's Reach, etc. Not everyone is going to have or be able to play a counter every turn, especially if you and others are baiting with other spells.

Counter creatures?
...Countering creatures is weak.

My stack has tons of instant speed removal, and I don't like countering creatures either. But if you are playing against people who are remotely talented, they are going to attack you and either make you remove their creature, die to it, or counter them in the first place. Let's look at the removal you drafted in your Type 4 stack from the article:
Bane of the Living
Legacy Weapon
Masticore
Prophetic Bolt
Smokespew Invoker
Swords to Plowshares
Wrecking Ball

You've also got these cards to basically stall and prevent creature damage:
Armored Guardian
Forcefield
Glarecaster
Maze of Ith
Crowd Favorites
Panacea

So in your 45 card stack you have 3 instant speed creature removal spells if you include Prophetic Bolt, and the rest of your things can be killed outright, as they are creature or artifact based. I guess I don't understand how you could fail to take repeated combat damage if your opponents force the issue, which they should, knowing your playstyle. I guess we'll find out when the video comes. Personally, if I knew I was going to lose my hand, or knew my opponent was playing a face down Kai or something, I would definitely counter and cantrip that peasant.

PS. If you are in a large ring game, and someone plays Hypnox and it doesn't get countered, there's no way that person is getting there hand back usually (comes into play trigger on the stack, other players kill Hypnox like 90% of the time).

[Mr. Type 4]

Predictably, the discussion of passing over something like Planar Portal, or Corpse Dance, or Tooth and Nail, would boil down to basically two things:

I don't recall Corpse Dance being part of the discussion, but maybe I just missed it when reading.  CD is one of my most favorite cards and I think it should be taken very very highly.  It sure didn't pass by me!

I would GLADLY take and cast Planar Portal over a vanilla Tutor any game, because if it does resolve, and does stick around more than a turn or two, you're going to win the game.

Well, yeah... obviously.  The key here being IF it resolves.

You wouldn't pass up the chance to draft Desertion or Overwhelming Intellect, so you could draft Counterspell or Cancel, would you? That is the same thing as Planar Portal vs. something like Demonic Tutor.

I think the Planar Portal - Demonic Tutor argument is a bit different from picking a more powerful instant over a lesser instant.  Instants by nature, are always resolveable if played at the correct time.  I actually feel a similar way about creatures because there are many good ways of getting a creature into play (although good creatures rarely stick around, but that's another story)  Sorceries, Artifacts and Enchantments, however, are MUCH harder to resolve, and the issues with resolveability are more for those cards.  As far as making yourself a target goes, I don't usually include that as a criteria for making my picks anymore, as you can play cards that put the bulls eye on your face at an appropriate time when it doesn't matter. 

Kevin Cron often refers to cards as when it is appropriate to play them.  Planar Portal is a late game card that is way better in the mid or early game.  If you can resolve that thing early, more power to ya.

Pick 3:
Mystic Snake, Mindslaver, Rout, Survival of the Fittest, Nevinyerrial’s Disk, Myojin of the Cleansing Fire, Decree of Pain, Door to Nothingness, Planar Portal, Mindslaver, Nikol Bolas, Debter’s Nell, Mortify, Winding Canyons

Pick: Mystic Snake

hmmmm....  My pick in this pack would probably be Mindslaver or Rout, but PP is a very solid pick in this pack.  I don't feel like Steve's deck was built to abuse Mystic Snake, so he may be picking that a bit high here.  Actually, in Steve's Deck, Winding Canyons may be the best card.  EOT - Tap Canyons, Glarecaster -channel Arashi?  Maybe he felt that he didn't have enough counter magic at this point in the draft. 

I don't think your logic is wrong, Jaco, it's just that some of these picks are much less cut and dry.  It'd actually like to get a game with you in it sometime, I'm sure it'd be interesting - and you'd probably get to take a lot of the cards you want 5th or 6th pick.