Yikes, this pack is awesome. This pick is really hard. Savage Knuckleblade and Abzan Falconer are both incredibly strong and I'm not sure which is "correct" to take. Honestly, I think it might be Falconer.
I took the full amount of time and I was on Falconer until the last second, when I decided that my preference for U/G tempo decks put Knuckleblade over the top.
What would you take?
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Pack 1 pick 2:
This is another great pack that has a wildly different pick based on the selection in pack 1. I can see myself taking Suspension Field if I have Falconer, but since I have Knuckleblade, I'd rather take a green card. Woolly Loxodon is great, but I think Pine Walker is a little more efficient mana-wise for stats that are not that much worse.
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Pack 1 pick 3:
Alpine Grizzly is the type of card that makes this deck tick, but the third pick Frontier Bivouac is necessary given my 3 color first pick.
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Pack 1 pick 4:
I like Awaken the Bear quite a bit but Bring Low is a solid removal spell.
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Pack 1 pick 5:
Savage Punch, on the other hand, is an excellent removal spell, especially in this type of deck.
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Pack 1 pick 6:
I think this pick is closer than it looks. Temur Charm definitely has the widest range of the charms - it can be game winning or it can rot in your hand. Nevertheless, it looks like I'm trying to play a Temur deck, so I can safely play Temur charm.
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Pack 1 pick 7:
Passing all these 2 drops is troubling - the way I like to build my U/G/x decks is with high curveout potential. However, I did just take a Savage Punch and I don't have an Alpine Grizzly yet, so I need to make sure I have enough 4 power guys to have reliable ferocious.
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Pack 1 pick 8:
At this point I don't have that many blue cards, so I'd rather leave blue as the splash color. Besides, I have some Mandrills I need to cast, so a Scout is always welcome.
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Pack 1 pick 9:
Well I just took Scout the Borders, soooo....
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Pack 1 pick 10:
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Pack 1 pick 11:
This is a wonderful gift.
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Pack 1 pick 12:
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Pack 1 pick 15:
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Pack 2 pick 1:
Man this pick was hard. Sidisi is worth 7 tickets. I really want to win the draft though. I think Alpine Grizzly is the pretty clear best card for my deck (except maybe Rugged Highlands).
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Pack 2 pick 2:
Fortunately there's nothing in this pack to distract me from the land.
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Pack 2 pick 3:
Not thrilled about this pack. I don't like Canyon Lurkers or Longshot Squad. I don't love Dragonscale Boon, but it is kind of a nice trick to have in a deck with Alpine Grizzly and a bunch of morphs.
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Pack 2 pick 4:
This pick was hard to make. Jeskai Windscout is awesome (even though I just said I wasn't trying to be heavy blue) and I could definitely use that land. I've played with Tusker before though and he is very hard to stop if he gets going.
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Pack 2 pick 5:
I don't think I want Sultai Flayer here (can't turn on ferocious, is more defensive than offensive) so it's between a third Mandrills and Summit Prowler. I went with Prowler to kind of go easy on my deck's delve demands.
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Pack 2 pick 6:
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Pack 2 pick 8:
I don't have much in the way of flying defense so maybe I wanted Windstorm here.
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Pack 2 pick 9:
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Pack 2 pick 10:
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Pack 2 pick 11:
I actually kinda wanted to play the Longshot Squad, but I'd rather just cut Sultai Charm.
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Pack 2 pick 12:
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Pack 3 pick 1:
My priorities going into this pack were to pick up another Grizzly, at least two 2 drops, and another land. This isn't the perfect 2 drop, but at least it's versatile.
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Pack 3 pick 2:
None of my goals are accomplished with this pick, but at least Arrow Storm is awesome.
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Pack 3 pick 3:
Wow this is an awesome card for me here. My goals are within reach!
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Pack 3 pick 4:
Wish this was Highland Game but I'll take it.
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Pack 3 pick 5:
I don't really want a second Barrage (since the first one will be in my board anyway), don't want Bloodfire Mentor, and can't really use anything besides Howl. I could cut the Chief, I guess, but with Arrow Storm and Savage Punch I thought it might be likely for me to want to try out Howl.
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Pack 3 pick 6:
Super happy to get this here.
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Pack 3 pick 7:
This pick was Witness vs. Incremental Growth. Growth is a tiny bit better than I thought it was when the set first came out (I thought it was pretty bad), but my deck is not all that likely to curve out nicely for it and I don't have any cool outlast creatures to get max val out of it anyway. Besides, Witness is a creature and I always end up low on creatures somehow.
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Pack 3 pick 8:
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Pack 3 pick 9:
It's no Alpine Grizzly but it's close.
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Pack 3 pick 10:
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I'm pretty happy with how this deck turned out. I showed it to Frank Skarren and he referred to it as "schizophrenic, but not necessarily bad." I like what it's doing for the most part, but I guess I can agree that it has a slightly above average clunk rating.
R1
Game 1 I had Horde Ambusher ready to play on turn 2, but my opponent played Secret Plans on turn 2 so I decided I'd hold it back as a morph, because it would otherwise match up poorly against my opponent's inevitable 2/3 morph on turn 3.
I played Bloodfire Expert on 3 while my opponent just played out morphs on 3, 4, and 5. He got aggressive with attacking since I tried to attack into his board (with dragonscale boon up) but he never bit. I fell kinda behind in the race and was planning on piecing some surprise damage together with Valley Dasher, but my opponent unmorphed Sagu Mauler to take me to 5 and then played Roar of Challenge the turn after that to kill me.
Game 2, I played Alpine Grizzly on 3, Scouted into Mandrills on 4, and played Pine Walker on 5. My opponent traded with the Grizzly but took a ton of damage from the other two big guys and eventually a Temur Charm forced them through for the last few points.
Game 3 I had the sickest curve of Valley Dasher on 2 and Savage Knuckleblade on 3 while my opponent struggled to play a fourth land. I drew a Savage Punch to clear out his desperation chump blocker and that was that.
R2
I kept a pretty nice two lander on the draw and missed for 2 turns. My opponent had a Sultai deck that curved Parapet into two morphs and took me to 10 pretty quickly with a Crippling Chill. I got some creatures on the board (including a face down Pine Walker that I really wanted to flip), but I had to trade them off to stay at a high enough life total to not die to his Archer's Parapet. I got Avalanche Tusker on the board and even Savage Punched the Parapet with it, but it couldn't hit his outlast creatures and eventually had to start chumping them (with Hooting Mandrills!) after my Tusker traded for a Bellowing Saddlebrute. I ran out of chumpers and died. I made a pretty bad attack in this game and I think I could have won it in retrospect.
In game 2 I set up a quick Avalanche Tusker and got to eat a Parapet with it, but it eventually died to a Dead Drop. I never made any progress on his life total before that happened and just had nothing to follow up with. I died pretty quickly to a Woolly Loxodon.
So, a round 2 loss. Kind of disappointing because I rather liked this deck. I do kinda wonder how my deck would have turned out if I took Abzan Falconer first.
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