Tuesday, December 18, 2012

RTR Sealed #3 - On a scale from 1 to greedy


This is my pool from the 12/18 5PM EST RTR Sealed daily event on Magic Online. I found it pretty challenging to navigate so I decided I'd write about it.




Thursday, November 22, 2012

RTR #4 - First world problems

I haven't been posting very many drafts mostly because I haven't been doing many, and the ones that I do end up doing I feel are not really eventful or instructive in any way (either all my picks are obvious and I clean up with ease, or I get married to my first pick and my colors get cut, then I end up with a bad deck and lose immediately).

This draft is different because I got lucky to go directly into wide open colors, but I had so many good picks available that I didn't really know what to do. It kind of opened my eyes to a skill set that I don't necessarily have yet: how to make decisions when you have a lot more of them than normal.

A good example of this is when you keep a land-light hand on the draw (one that would be unbelievable if you peeled just a single land), but you miss for one or two turns and end up having to discard. At this point in the game you have 8 different choices (which card in your hand to discard) and you have to be really careful not to discard one that you could potentially need to stay alive. I can't remember any exact details, but I have been in this situation more than once in the past few months and I definitely remember not thinking far enough ahead and discarding the wrong card thinking I wouldn't need it any time soon.

This draft isn't exactly that situation, but it's the same general idea: you find yourself with more decisions than you're used to, and making the correct one isn't necessarily obvious. I think this is loosely related to games where you are so far ahead (in cards, on board, etc.) that you start to play sloppy, which might end up with you neglecting the one dimension your opponent can possibly beat you on with the perfect sequence of draws.

Anyhow, the draft:

 Pack 1 pick 1: