When to fight

I had a minor 'level-up' revelation listen to Owen on a recent Limited Resources. Marshall was talking to him about the fallacy of falling in love with an early pick and Owen pushed back a little. His reasoning was that at the pro-level you need to do more than just reliably draft decent cards, you need to go out of your way to 'manufacture' a bomb. His example:

Maybe it'll turn into a beautiful, peaceful butterfly.

If this card was just slotted into an average deck, it would be mediocre to bad. But if you build around it, it can be really really powerful, Game-endingly powerful. Hell, it turns Diabolic Tutor into a playable card. Cards that are powerful, that can end the game, are really rare. Anything you can do to increase your abilities to have one in your deck, other than opening one, is vital.



Which makes it all the more important not to give up on a win-condition. For example, here are my P1P1 from my last two drafts.

 

The Aerial Responder is a strong 3-drop and plays well in nearly any white deck, probably a B-/B. Oviya brings inevitability to a game. A mana-sink in a format with almost zero mana-sinks, she is incredibly powerful. While I wouldn't put her at a bomb, as she doesn't immediately stabilize, she is a strong A-.

So let's imagine a pick 1/pack 2 of the following
  

What's the pick? Here is where the 'fight for your bombs' heuristic I think comes into play. Padeem is an amazing card that asks very little of you and grants *a lot* of card advantage. Both Skywhaler's Shot and Hunt the Weak are pretty solid removal; for the purpose of this exercise let's say they are equal strength. With a P1P1 Aerial Responder, I would take Padeem whereas with Oviya I would stay on color with Hunt the Weak.

Why the difference? Oviya is worth fighting for: even if both my upstream neighbors are in green I would *probably* scramble for green and try to make it work with just pack 2 passing-right. By contrast, the Vampire Lighthawk is nice and utilitarian but doesn't break the game open the way Oviya does. Taking a higher ceiling card like Padeem, especially since this means your upstream drafter is almost certainly not in blue (what, did they take a foil Gearhulk instead?) probably has a higher E.V. for the draft.

My normal drafting philosophy is to take Best Card Available for the first four to five picks, completely ignoring whatever I've taken before. This has served me well, kept me from falling in love with my p1p1, taking what's open, and building a better limited deck. However, much like Senior Week, there's a time and a place to fall in love with your p1p1. More than just a great 2-3 drop or solid removal, when there is a card that can win you the game, fight for it.