Draft #1

  Pack 1 pick 1:





Cards I'm considering: Gatstaf Shepherd Elder Cathar





I like Cathar a lot, and it has the benefit of being the only real white card, but I decide the Shepherd is more powerful, and a Wolf & Orchard Spirit isn't a great signal anyway.

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  Pack 1 pick 2:







Cards I'm considering: Silent Departure, Prey Upon, Makeshift Mauler, Skirsdag High Priest

Prey Upon would match my first pick color-wise, but the High Priest is a pretty strong card if you can make it work, so I decide to go with that. I've heard that this format is more about drafting a deck than powerful cards, and this pick seems contrary to that philosophy, so maybe this pick is wrong and I should have just taken Prey Upon.

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  Pack 1 pick 3:







Cards I'm considering: Abbatoir Ghoil, Makeshift Mauler, Hamlet Captain

I still don't know what kind of deck I want to be yet or what's open. I'd rather make a High Priest deck, so I rule the Hamlet Captain out and it comes down to Mauler vs. Ghoul. I decide to take Mauler because I feel like it's more powerful, and U/B is a color combo I like. Plus, I could get the homunculus maker apprentice guy and that would be good with my High Priest.

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  Pack 1 pick 4:







Cards I'm considering: Skirsdag Cultist, Walking Corpse, Spidery Grasp

I'm not seriously considering the grasp because I probably want to move away from green at this point, so it's Walking Corpse vs. Skirsdag Cultist. I feel like the cultist is kind of late for a powerful card, and it could definitely be a part of a high priest engine, so I decide to take that instead of a crappy 2/2.


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  Pack 1 pick 5:






Cards I'm considering: Scourge of Geier Reach, Walking Corpse

I have 4 different colors in 4 picks, so I'm still not really sure what direction I'll go in yet. I choose the 2/2 over the 5 drop because I'm not sure how good the 5 drop is. Intuitively it feels clunky and slow in this format.


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  Pack 1 pick 6:






Cards I'm considering: Villagers of Estwald

I could still be green, and Villagers is pretty good, so I take it. If I could see the future, I'd have wished I took Nightbird's Clutches. Is it outrageous to take that card here, especially when you aren't sure what colors you are yet?


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  Pack 1 pick 7:






Cards I'm considering: Skirsdag Cultist, Somberwald Spider

I think this is really late for a cultist, so I assume red is a good color to be in and take it.


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  Pack 1 pick 8:






Cards I'm considering: Tormented Pariah, Corspe Lunge

I kind of hate Corpse Lunge, especially if blue isn't one of my colors, so I take the guy.


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  Pack 1 pick 9:






Cards I'm considering: ugh

I don't know what to do in packs like these. Of cards that could be playable to me (Maw, Lost, Bramble) I feel like the Bramble is most likely to end up in a deck of mine, but maybe I'm undervaluing Lost in the Mist. Do these picks matter very much?


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  Pack 1 pick 10:






Cards I'm considering: Ghoulraiser

I'm still not really looking at Nightbird's Clutches, even though I know that card is good enough. I think Ghoulraiser is better here though, especially since I have visions of ghoul-cultist loops.

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  Pack 1 pick 11:







Cards I'm considering: Tormented Pariah, Bump, Night Revelers

Lots of action for a late pack. I think Pariah is probably a better pick, but I hate overloading on guys so I take bump.


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  Pack 1 pick 12:




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  Pack 2 pick 1:






Cards I'm considering: Brimstone Volley

I think this pick is hard to get wrong. I'm pretty sure I want to just be R/B from this point.

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  Pack 2 pick 2:





Cards I'm considering: Ghoulraiser, Kessig Wolf

I have another ghoul and a zombie, so I feel like the ghoul is a better engine-y card than the wolf and take it. I don't like passing invisible stalker, but I think the blue ship has sailed.


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  Pack 2 pick 3:






Cards I'm considering: Brimstone Volley

It's hard for me to imagine what I would take over this card in a deck like this.


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  Pack 2 pick 4:






Cards I'm considering: Ashmoth Hound, Tribute to Hunger

I think the hound is an annoying 2 drop when I play against it, so I take it because I think tribute is kinda poopy. I think this pick sends my deck in the direction of "aggressive R/B with late game cultist cleanups" so I try to keep that in mind for future picks. Looking at the recap, I could have also taken Blazing Torch here. Is that better than Ashmoth Hound?


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  Pack 2 pick 5:






Cards I'm considering: Crossway Vampire, Kessig Wolf

Vampire is more in line with my plan I think, so I take it. It sucks to pass all thsi good blue though.


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  Pack 2 pick 6:





Cards I'm considering: Heretic's Punishment

This is a nice present I think. This card is a bomb right? (I'm not even being silly, I have no clue what's a bomb in this format and what isn't.)

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  Pack 2 pick 7:






Cards I'm considering: Bloodcrazed Neonate

I like 2 drops a lot, especially in decks like these, and the other black cards suck in my deck (except MAYBE altar's reap, sometimes).

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  Pack 2 pick 8:





Cards I'm considering: Feral Ridgewolf

I had a Pierced Heart phase at the beginning of this format, but I grew out of it pretty quickly.

My Stitcher's Apprentice / High Priest deck would have been siiiiik though.


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  Pack 2 pick 9:





Cards I'm considering: Bloodcrazed Neonate, Silver-Inlaid Dagger.

I don't think equipment is very good in this kind of deck, so I take another 2 drop.

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  Pack 3 pick 1:





Cards I'm considering: Bloodcrazed Neonate, Night Revelers, Rolling Tremblor

I almost autopilot picked the 2 drop, but while lamenting how much good blue is available, I notice a second stalker. I normally don't think that Rolling Tremblor is playable in a deck like mine (because it kills most of my guys), but with 2 stalkers lurking around I feel like I'd rather have an outsie chance of beating them than taking yet another 2 drop, so I take the Tremblor.


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  Pack 3 pick 2:





Cards I'm considering: Pitchburn Devils, Morkrut Banshee

Hard pick for me. I think the Banshee is worse than it looks, because it's not easy to trigger morbid. They're both good with my cultists, but I end up choosing Pitchburn Devils because I don't have to feel bad about just running it out without a cultist or another guy dying first.

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  Pack 3 pick 3:






Cards I'm considering: Falkenrath Noble

I think the Noble is way better than any other card I could reasonably take here.

Ugh @ silent departure

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  Pack 3 pick 4:






Cards I'm considering: Dead Weight

Hooray a removal card! I don't need another random loser creature anyway.

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  Pack 3 pick 5:






Cards I'm considering: Night Terrors, Hinterland Harbor, One-Eyed Scarecrow

I almost instantly took the rare, but it's probably only like 1 ticket anyway, and I tried to remember that I'm on a mission to improve at drafting, not offset my losses. When I snap out of it, I consider Night Terrors and One-Eyed Scarecrow for my sideboard, and decide the Scarecrow could be more useful.


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  Pack 3 pick 6:






Cards I'm considering: Feral Ridgewolf, Riot Devils, Unburial Rites

I almost took the rites, but then realized that I can't flash it back, and most of my guys aren't really worthy of reanimation. I've heard that Riot Devils is better than he looks, and I wasn't thrilled about a huge ridgewolf mana commitment in my deck, so I took Devils.

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  Pack 3 pick 7:






Cards I'm considering: Markov Patrician

I don't need another scarecrow that badly.


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  Pack 3 pick 8:






Cards I'm considering: Feral Ridgewolf

I'm unlikely to play it, but I still don't know if it's ever good to cut other things. The only thing worthy of cutting here I think is bell ringer, because it could be used as a combat trick.


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  Pack 3 pick 9:






Cards I'm considering: Bloodcrazed Neonate, Night Revelers

I decide that my deck is very very aggro at this point so I choose to load up on 2 drops rather than take Night Revelers. As far as the 5/1 fensnake goes, I don't like him very much because he trades with cards a lot cheaper than he is, so I hardly ever consider him.



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I think this deck is of better quality than the decks I normally end up with, but still only about average. The two ghoulraisers are kinda crappy with only a single other walking corpse, but I felt like it would be worth trying to get a late game cultist loop going rather than play a ridgewolf or corpse lunge or whatever else.

Round 1:

Game 1, he has T2 Invisible Stalker and T3 Furor of the Bitten + Spectral Flight. I have a pretty aggressive draw, with a drop every turn, but I never draw more than 3 lands and can only do so much. He has enough resistance and I get him to 1 life before dying.

Game 2, he's stuck on 2 lands, but has 2 Reckless Waifs (off a Shimmering Grotto) to stop my 2 Bloodcrazed Neonates. I have a ton of pressure, but he kepes playing cheap equipment spells to keep my Hanweir Watchkeep from flipping. Eventually I run out of gas so I make it flip, and attack him to very low, but eventually he draws more lands and stabilizes with an Invisible Stalker (with Spectral Flight and Moment of Heroism) to go back up to 6 life. It's a sweat for a couple turns,

Game 3, he has T1 Silver-Inlaid Dagger T2 Stalker on the play, and a T4 Bell Ringer for the only thing that would allow the game to be competitive for me, a Markov Patrician. I don't draw more than 3 lands in this game either so I die with a few spells in hand (not like they would have done anything anyway).

I'm pretty frustrated about this game because it was the first draft in this movement I'm trying to start to improve, and I had no interesting gameplay decisions. It feels like the only thing I could have done was take the stalkers myself (since I did see two of them in the draft), but I'm not confident blue was the right color to be in in pack 1, or if it was worth switching into in pack 2, or etc.

One of the reasons it's been hard for me to improve at draft is because I'm not skillful enough to know whether I lost because of just plain beats out of my control (which this match certainly felt like) or if there was something I could have done. It's been a few years since I escaped the "I always do everything right and just get unlucky" mentality, but I never took the next step in draft to figure out just what I'm doing wrong. I think my technical gameplay is very good lately, but I've never been able to draft a good deck, and I feel like it's possible that you can have a large percentage of your gameplay decisions in a draft be correct and still have thrown it during the draft portion.