MTGO Right Seat, Crappy Cards! 2-25-16

Let's review the draft

Link to reviewing the draft can be found here. Probably best for you to follow along there with my notes. Let's try it!

P1P1: Pretty easy first pick with good removal. Not a lot of contenders

P1P2: What a pile of junk. I waffle between Seer's Lantern and Unknown Shores being most likely to take the cut and I take the Lantern for the grindy decks. 

P1P3: Whoa, Endbringer? I windmill slam that baby. Colorless grindathon here we come!

P1P4: this is where I start to look for 'signals.'  P4 Boulder Salvo makes me think red is open. That's some good removal

P1P5: Bushwacker? Red IS open.

P1P6: I don't love Brute Strength (though it's fine) and i start looking for a second color. I think Expedition Raptor is underrated so maybe R/W for the third time in a row.

Next few picks the red completely dried up. Not even second tier playables But now green comes roaring in. Pick 8 Stalking Drone? That's not right. So I move hard into green including a hilarious three Canopy Gorgers in a row. THERE WAS NOTHING ELSE IN THE PACK OKAY.

  

suck it mana curve!

Pretty happy with pack 1, two good removal spells and a decent slate of 2 drops and some game winners. R/G with a colorless splash I... guess is a thing? need to prioritize some colorless sources going forward though.

Inaugural MTGO! 2-16-16 Post-mortem

Look at me all logged in and logging on! This will be a post-mortem, focusing mostly on the big pivot points on the draft as well as some keep/mull decisions I made.

Draft recap here. Feel free to browse before I jump into my conundrums.

Pack 1 Pick 1

  

Taking your tokens to the next level

Check out this Kickstarter!

That's pretty clever, layering classic art on various token templates. I wouldn't have thought that the target demo would be wider than, well, me, but there they are with over a thousand backers! Let's hear it for culture!

Dipping a toe into MTGO

As the new releases tend to do, I've the jonses for more magical cards. So maybe it's time to give MTGO another chance.

Pros: Able to play whenever, and faster
         Better ability to recap drafts and view mistakes

Cons: No physical cards
          No camaraderie.

Draft Report! 2-13-16

Heading down to the Gamma Ray! After some frantic trading for lands (closing in on two more sheets: red/green and black/white) we cracked some packs.

Pick 1

  

A perfect encapsulation of what people are complaining about with Oath. Ruins and Seed Guardian are both fantastic cards that you can do interesting things with... but they aren't unconditional removal good! I take the strike

The bigger, colorless colors (BG, BU, UG)

I'm lumping these three together because these are the colors that will speak to you when you land a sweet colorless rare. Perhaps one of these

 

But also note that the larger colored-colorless also tend to be in these colors. Namely:

  

So on and so forth. These are the decks that will prioritize Wastes, colorless mana symbols, and grinding out the win with some sort of longer term win condition (often a dumb big creature, card advantage, or something similar)

Manafixing (colorless-fixing)

    

Colorless Payoff

     

Traditional Ramp Payoff

 

Increased Value in BFZ