Monday, September 4, 2017

Final draft of the season, 9-2-17

Given the new birth of my child, I feel confident that this is my final draft of Hour of Devastation. Overall a really great set, thoroughly enjoyed it. Let's see if I can go out with a bang!

Cheer me on Helen!



http://draftsignals.com/draft/-Kt4usbMtebIY1v26KLl



Pack 1

Pick 1


Grind // Dust Ambuscade Steward of Solidarity Puncturing Blow
Not a bad first pack, but no clear bomb. Ambuscade is obviously great, but I have found green hilariously overdrafted. I take the Grind // Dust as I think it has pretty good upside and the floor is merely a 6-mana two for one, which isn't that bad. I don't love taking 'gold' cards first but the options weren't so inspiring to talk me out of it.

Pick 4

Pick 2 was an uncontested Desert's Hold and Pick 3 was a pretty easy Lethal Sting. In hindsight, the fact that there isn't a single white card in the pack isn't a good sign but at the time didn't look alarming.


Liliana's Defeat Shefet Dunes Swarm Intelligence

Oy, what a pile of not-great cards. I take the Defeat though a case can be made for the desert.

Pick 6

Bloodwater Entity Khenra Scrapper Marauding Boneslasher Gilded Cerodon

Uggggh, what a late Bloodwater Entity! This makes me think that blue/red was wide open but this feels dangerously late to completely switch out of two colors into two different colors. If I was, say red/white, then I think I would have done so.

I grit my teeth and grind through the draft sticking to black/white zombies/exert/-1 counters. I think there was pretty clearly another BW zombies drafter at the table given the near total lack of bread and butter


Round 1



Round 2


Round 3


I finish 1-2, which is about where I think this deck belonged. The sweet UW fliers deck in round 2 was--in fact--quite sweet. I had no very reliable way to go around or through the 0/4 walls that he would throw up. The ramp deck in round 3 was more of an even fight, I think I actually had a pretty bad misplay where I killed his 4/4 flier instead of his 4/4 vigilance. So I definitely threw some value away.

Hour of Devastation was a great format. There were plausible archetypes all over the place, from 4-color ramp to agro to a variety of synergy nonsense (UB cycling, UR spells, BW zombies etc.) The format was definitely defined by four toughness creatures

Oasis Ritualist Wall of Forgotten Pharaohs

Any aggressive plan had to come up with a system to punch through these jerks. Note how they also double as win-conditions. I think these were the defining creatures of the format and everything else had to react to the decks they enabled.

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