Cards I'm considering: Chapel Geist, Villagers of Estwald, Makeshift Mauler, Moon Heron, Rage Thrower
Lots going on in this pack. I can reasonably see first picking any of the 5 cards I listed. I immediately rule out Rage Thrower, because although it's good, it's still not a compelling enough reason for me to draft red. I kind of simultaneously dismiss Moon Heron and Makeshift Mauler, because either one would leave a blue card, Mauler would kind of cause me to lean towards a specific deck, and Moon Heron is just plain uninteresting. That leaves Villagers and Chapel Geist. They are both pretty strong 3 drops in good colors, and could lead to what I feel are strong, aggressive decks that tend to succeed in this format. I think these cards are both of similar power level, so from here it was a preference pick for me.
I chose Geist in the end because it's good in both G/W and U/W (probably my two favorite decks in this format so far), it's evasive, and it doesn't encourage skipping a drop to flip it (which I'm loathe to do with the aggressive decks I prefer in this format).
There's a decent chance I got this first pick completely wrong. If you have a different take on it, I'd love to hear it.
My Pick:
Pack 1 pick 2:
Cards I'm considering: Hamlet Captain, Voiceless Spirit
Not much happening in this pack. The rare is missing. I also notice the Interloper in addition to the Spirit and the Captain, but I kind of dismiss it because I didn't want to be B/W. Thinking about it in retrospect, that's foolish because Chapel Geist is good but it's not a compelling reason to stay white, so taking the vampire wouldn't necessarily have forced me to play B/W.
Nevertheless, I was deciding between Hamlet Captain and Voiceless Spirit. I chose Hamlet Captain because I feel like 2 drops are extremely valuable in this format, G/W is always fine deck to draft, and I didn't want to start my draft by clogging my 3 slot.
Again, I'm not confident in either of these decisions and I'm super curious to hear opinions about them.
My Pick:
Pack 1 pick 3:
Cards I'm considering: Mausoleum Guard, Spidery Grasp
I'm already in the G/W mindset. I've been starting to like Spidery Grasp more and more, but the name of the game in this format is creatures, and guard is a good source of them.
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Pack 1 pick 4:
Cards I'm considering: Geistcatcher's Rig
Ugh, poopy pack. I guess I'm happy there's a card in it as powerful as Geistcatcher's Rig, but although that card is powerful, I hate taking it because I hate the idea that I haven't won the game before turn 6 (or more accurately, turn 19 when I finally draw my 6th land)
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Pack 1 pick 5:
Cards I'm considering: Doomed Traveler, Village Bell-Ringer
Another low-quality pack. I love to ring bells, but I also love guys that come out early in this format.
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Pack 1 pick 6:
Cards I'm considering: Spidery Grasp
ANOTHER crappy pack. I think the grasp is the best card in it, so I take it.
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Pack 1 pick 7:
Cards I'm considering: Mulch
Well, my G/W deck isn't going too well, but it's not like I'm giving up any insane cards or anything.
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Pack 1 pick 8:
Cards I'm considering: Somberwald Spider, Feeling of Dread
Finally, something that resembles playable. I'm not too thrilled about spider in my aggro G/W deck, but he's serviceable. I think about Feeling of Dread for a second, but decide that I'm not in blue and don't even see any blue streaming, so it won't be worth it.
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Pack 1 pick 9:
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Pack 1 pick 15:
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Pack 2 pick 1:
Cards I'm considering: Travel Preparations, Avacynian Priest, Midnight Haunting
Wow, what a pack. Lots of good cards for G/W in here. It's almost like they weren't spread out in the packs and just all concentrated in here.
I love Haunting and Priest is always a solid removal-esque card, so I consider them both, but I do really feel like Travel Preparations draws are what makes the G/W deck such a force. You can seriously just play any 2 drop on 2, any 3 drop on 3, then prep up on 4 and be way ahead.
My Pick:
Pack 2 pick 2:
Cards I'm considering: Travel Preparations
I should probably consider the Geist because I actually don't have many creatures at this point, but having 2 travel preps goes a long way towards giving your deck some curveout nutdraw consistency.
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Pack 2 pick 3:
Cards I'm considering: Butcher's Cleaver
I always have trouble finding spots to take equipment. I feel like the creatures are too important in this format, so cards like Cleaver always get pushed back in my mind. Still, the only creature alternative to it hear is Boar, and I'm not thrilled by it.
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Pack 2 pick 4:
Cards I'm considering: Silent Departure
Well, I'm kinda stone dead here. I like Spare from Evil, but I feel like I can get them late if I really want them. Departure is really strong, and I feel like I could splash it if things go bad.
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Pack 2 pick 5:
Cards I'm considering: Prey Upon
I'm so happy to see Prey Upon, since my last few picks haven't exactly been ideal.
At this point I look at my picks so far and notice that I only have like 6 creatures, so I feel like I have to prioritize creatures from here out.
My Pick:
Pack 2 pick 6:
Cards I'm considering: Shimmering Grotto
As I said, I like Spare, but Grotto could really help out my Departure splash. Besides, it would open me up to possibly taking MORE departures, even though I just said I needed more creatures.
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Pack 2 pick 7:
Cards I'm considering: Typhoid Rats, Delver of Secrets
I'm dreaming about adding / switching to blue here...
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Pack 2 pick 8:
Cards I'm considering: Mulch, Sharpened Pitchfork, Spare from Evil
See? You can usually get Spare if you want it bad enough. In this case, I prefer it to Mulch (since I don't have any graveyard gimmicks) and Pitchfork (because I don't even have many humans among my like 4 creatures). I guess I should have looked at Naturalize too, but I feel like Naturalize is a strict SB card whereas I find myself main decking Spare sometimes.
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Pack 2 pick 9:
Cards I'm considering: Chapel Geist, Silverchase Fox
I'm not surprised to see these cards left over from the pack I opened. I loooove 2 drops, so I consider Fox, but the Geist is evasive and he got dat booty.
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Pack 2 pick 10:
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Pack 3 pick 1:
Cards I'm considering: Spectral Rider
I have some Geists at this point, so I'm already probably going to lean heavier on the white. That makes Spectral Knight a slam dunk for me, especially with 2 travel preps. I actually did look at the viper for a second though.
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Pack 3 pick 2:
Cards I'm considering: Silverchase Fox, Essence of the Wild
Here is a controversial pick. I've played against (but not with) Essence before, and he provides a strong effect, buuuut...
-I don't have many creatures still
-I don't have as many 2 drops as I want
-I'm not even that heavy into green, and I already had plans of playing Spectral Knight on turn 2 and splashing blue
-I feel like a more reliable path to victory is to vomit up cheap guys and prepare them for travel, rather than sandbag guys and expose the Essence before vomiting them up
All this leads me to take the Fox. If any of this is moronic, I'd love to hear why, but I'm reasonably confident in this pick.
My Pick:
Pack 3 pick 3:
Cards I'm considering: Chapel Geist, Travel Preparations, Moment of Heroism
I love moment lately, but I probably won't take it over travel prep. They both get pushed to the side though because Geist is a good man, and I need more good men.
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Pack 3 pick 4:
Cards I'm considering: Doomed Traveler, Blazing Torch
Wow, some great cards in this pack that I can't play.
The cards I look at are Doomed Traveler and Blazing Torch. Torch is almost certainly more powerful and a more desirable effect in general, but I'm still just short on guys somehow and I have travel preps to maximize.
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Pack 3 pick 5:
Cards I'm considering: Kindercatch
I thought about playing this guy, pretending he had Essence of the Wild's text every time I draw him, and ticking 1 in the "I guess I was wrong" column for every Silverchase Fox or whatever that could have been a 6/6.
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Pack 3 pick 6:
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Pack 3 pick 7:
Cards I'm considering: Silverchase Fox, Abbey Griffin, Grizzled Outcasts
I'm not tremendously confident that Fox is better than Abbey Griffin, but I know that I love 2 drops in this format. I am, however, confident that both of these cards are better in my deck than Grizzled Outcasts would be.
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Pack 3 pick 8:
Cards I'm considering: Gutter Grime
Apologies to the dude who wanted the double gutter grime deck.
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Pack 3 pick 9:
Cards I'm considering: One-Eyed Scarecrow, Moonmist
I'm done taking Spares. I already have 2.
It's not like scarecrow can attack, so maybe he's worse than Moonmist, but I'm scared of ending up with a deck that has like 9 guys in it.
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Pack 3 pick 10:
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I'm not too pleased with this deck. It never felt like I was in the right colors, but the alternatives were never thrilling either. One of the things I really dislike about this format (aside from the aggression making lots of traditional strategies and ideas less effective) is that one color (red) is generally really awful, and another one (black) is often not very much better. I have to have a really compelling reason to go into red, and I'm super hesitant to pair black with white (which I like drafting the most because it goes pretty well with green or blue). I get the feeling that most people drafting on modo have this same idea, so the blue white and green cards get snatched up really quickly, so the packs rapidly become unplayable during the draft.
A good example of this is pack 1, pick 4. Three cards were taken out of this pack before it got to me, and the cards that were left over were:
4 pretty much unplayable cards (Maw, Furor, Purebloods, and Curse),
3 cards that are playable mostly in fringe strats (Apprentice, Mulch, Ravings),
2 green 5 drops that are fine, but usually too expensive for how doofy they are (Outcasts and Scavenger),
1 excellent trick that is half as excellent if you aren't playing both of its colors (Feeling of Dread),
and 1 powerful colorless card that typically kills a guy, but is a bit slow for the format as a whole.
It makes me feel like, to give yourself more options in these packs, you have to be ready to commit to a fringe strat from the first few picks, which is tough because you could be wasting your pick if the cards for your deck just aren't there. I guess you can't end up with a great deck in every single draft, but what I'm trying to achieve by posting my draft choices for critique is to develop a general draft heuristic that leaves me feeling confident about choosing enough playables each time (even if that means abandoning a few of my first picks).
I guess what I'm trying to say is, when the card quality in the packs is crappy overall, every card you draft is an economic decision, and I want to learn how to evaluate them properly. For example, in p1 p6 (another really bad pack overall), one of the most playable cards in the pack is Spidery Grasp, and it kinda matches a color that I'm already taking cards of, but if the best green card I've seen since my second pick is a Spidery Grasp, should that tell me anything about the overall quality of the green I can expect in pack 3? I think the grasp was probably the best card in that pack, so it felt right taking it, but if it further pigeonholes me into a color that will be of lesser quality overall (since it's presumably being chopped by the guy to my right), does that make it a bad pick? Would I have been better off taking Selfless Cathar (a way worse card, but one that matches a color I'm almost certainly playing and lets me continue to read into what other colors might be open)?
Maybe these packs were just bad, but I just can't shake the feeling that a superior drafter would have been able to notice that I wasn't in a good seat for green.
Anyhow, the games.
R1
He has a U/R Burning Vengeance deck.
Game 1, I don't do much besides play a pair of doomed travelers early, and he doesn't do much besides play a desperate ravings on turn 2 and a burning vengeance on turn 3. I draw a travel preparations after he taps out for battleground geist so I power up my travelers, but on his next turn he shuts them both down with sensory deprivation and claustrophobia.
I try to get some kind of offense going with gutter grime and hamlet captain, but I can't really do much else because I keep drawing lands. The only other spell I draw besides the ones I've mentioned is Silent Departure, and I don't have a blue for it, so I eventually just die to his battleground geist.
I board in Urgent Exorcism and Caravan Vigil, and take out a plains and Spare from Evil.
Game 2, I mulligan into a hand with WW, 2 foxes, moment of heroism, and somberwald spider, and my first draw step is Spectral Knight, so I have a pretty good 2 drop offense going. That all goes down the drain when his turn 3 play is Rolling Temblor. I'm stuck on 2 lands, so I play another fox with a hand of doomed traveler, moment of heroism, spider, and pass. He plays burning vengeance, then I get in for 2 and pass (deciding it's better to have moment to defend my only real creature rather than deploy a crappy one). He further confounds my mana screw by playing Into the Maw of Hell. I bounce back with my traveler and a forest, and he starts playing lands and passing.
Long story short, my offense never mounts to anything bigger than a doomed traveler, a chapel geist, and a spider (with no morbid counters), and he ends up combo killing me with Past in Flames, Brimstone Volley and a couple attacks from a Stitched Drake.
Kind of salty way to lose. I don't really like those gimmick decks. My deck wasn't that good, so I guess it's not like I would've beaten a real deck.
I ended up watching the replays because I wanted to see what the other decks were like. From what I saw, the decks that made it to R2 were a black/red aggro deck with two bomby black rares (Bloodgift Demon and the 6 drop with morbid that makes your opponent lose a guy, don't know it's name), the U/R gimmick deck I lost to, another G/W deck that looked dumpy (but was still probably better than mine), and a U/B/g deck with a bunch of tiny crappy creatures and Spider Spawning (which happened to be played by Morgan Douglass). Morgan ended up beating the vengeance guy in R2 and split the finals with the R/B guy, so justice.
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