http://magic.flooey.org/draft/show?id=nQrG7l3YruTcCl9-PrSE5P9dI3w
Sunday, January 28, 2018
Channel CJed doubleheader!
It's a channel C-Jed (or Jhris, depending on your portmanteau of choice) doubleheader! Chris joined me after work for some frantic magic binging and tragic abandonment during mulligan decisions. Let's start with the drama!
http://magic.flooey.org/draft/show?id=nQrG7l3YruTcCl9-PrSE5P9dI3w
http://magic.flooey.org/draft/show?id=nQrG7l3YruTcCl9-PrSE5P9dI3w
Saturday, January 13, 2018
Basic land box
I've finished the first draft of the 'basic land box'. My goal is to have a curated set of lands to fuel an entire draft. 60 lands of each color, six sets of ten. I would choose the lands based off a very complicated algorithm of art quality, personal memory, whether or not I played the set, and such like. I also wanted nice lands, but not so nice that I'm out $50 if someone forgets to give them back to me. Then I ran out of time and frantically mashed a button for the last few. Especially swamps. Fuck swamps and the people who play them. I also tried for a diversity: give each color one full art, some old school, some new school etc. Can't have Rob Alexander for every single one.
Though there is a lot of Rob Alexander.
Tuesday, January 9, 2018
Crappy Rivals metagame preview
It's been a while since we attempted some hard-hitting strategic insight here at magicanotes. Mostly this is good for comedy when viewed at a safe distance. Let's take a peek at some the defining cards of Rivals and see if we can break free of the unabashed aggression of Ixalan.
First, it's worth a quick look at some of the causes of the relentless aggression of XLNx3. First, the quality of the attacking two-drops was simply outrageous. All three of these are common, two-drop that attack with 3 power. They can't even block each other! When combined when comically weak "defensive" options, there wasn't a game plan other than curve out and stomp. Compare the following two cards:
You can squint and see an outline of a plan for the Kinjalli's Caller. Cheap blocker, ramp up to a creature. But the 0/3 was effectively useless. Compare that to the Wall from HoD. 0/4 was a plausible defensive threat and the pinging actually brought some real inevitability for control decks.
Jed's Rule of Thumb: if you're not curving out, then you need a game plan that keeps you alive, increases your resources (mana/card), and provide an end-game threat. If you're going slower, then you need cards that achieve two of these. Otherwise your draws are just too fragile, demanding drawing everything in the proper order.
Let's look at some Rivals!
Guys, these are just the removal options at COMMON. In a small set too, you will see plenty of these. But these are better in every way than what we had in XLNx3. Oblivion Strike is reborn in black, Hunt the Weak is a perennial favorite, same for Claustrophobia. It's possible that our days of being terrorized by One with the Wind are over, or at least more limited.
The two-drops are a lot less terrifying as well. At common, there are no 3-power attackers, thank Crom. There are some evasive options: a red 2/1 menace, a blue 2/1 flier, a green 2/1 with quasi-skulk. So aggression is still an option. But I'm hopeful.
I think these are some decent defenders. I think the Gleaming Barrier is going to grossly overperform. It's still not more than a C+ but it's going to stone a lot of attackers AND leave behind ramp/splash AND help with Ascend. The Knight of the Stampede reminds me a lot of Naga Vitalist from HoD too. A four-drop that ramps you and brings some serious defense to the table.
I'm a little iffy on the relic, doing nothing on turn-3 just for some colorless mana is... unpleasant. But two reasonable options to help enable splashing is nice to see.
In conclusion, I am theorycrafted optimistic that Rivals will be slower. The low creatures look more reasonable and there are some key x/4s that I think will allow a non-curving out deck enough time to survive.
Remember these?
First, it's worth a quick look at some of the causes of the relentless aggression of XLNx3. First, the quality of the attacking two-drops was simply outrageous. All three of these are common, two-drop that attack with 3 power. They can't even block each other! When combined when comically weak "defensive" options, there wasn't a game plan other than curve out and stomp. Compare the following two cards:
You can squint and see an outline of a plan for the Kinjalli's Caller. Cheap blocker, ramp up to a creature. But the 0/3 was effectively useless. Compare that to the Wall from HoD. 0/4 was a plausible defensive threat and the pinging actually brought some real inevitability for control decks.
Jed's Rule of Thumb: if you're not curving out, then you need a game plan that keeps you alive, increases your resources (mana/card), and provide an end-game threat. If you're going slower, then you need cards that achieve two of these. Otherwise your draws are just too fragile, demanding drawing everything in the proper order.
Let's look at some Rivals!
Removal is BACK
Guys, these are just the removal options at COMMON. In a small set too, you will see plenty of these. But these are better in every way than what we had in XLNx3. Oblivion Strike is reborn in black, Hunt the Weak is a perennial favorite, same for Claustrophobia. It's possible that our days of being terrorized by One with the Wind are over, or at least more limited.
Creatures
The two-drops are a lot less terrifying as well. At common, there are no 3-power attackers, thank Crom. There are some evasive options: a red 2/1 menace, a blue 2/1 flier, a green 2/1 with quasi-skulk. So aggression is still an option. But I'm hopeful.
Defense (clap-clap) Defense (clap-clap)
I think these are some decent defenders. I think the Gleaming Barrier is going to grossly overperform. It's still not more than a C+ but it's going to stone a lot of attackers AND leave behind ramp/splash AND help with Ascend. The Knight of the Stampede reminds me a lot of Naga Vitalist from HoD too. A four-drop that ramps you and brings some serious defense to the table.
More Splash/Acceleration
I'm a little iffy on the relic, doing nothing on turn-3 just for some colorless mana is... unpleasant. But two reasonable options to help enable splashing is nice to see.
In conclusion, I am theorycrafted optimistic that Rivals will be slower. The low creatures look more reasonable and there are some key x/4s that I think will allow a non-curving out deck enough time to survive.
Sunday, January 7, 2018
Building a pauper deck
So some of the mega happy funtime draft friends talked me into building a pauper deck! Here one has two choices.
1) netdeck something that will win
2) try and think of something creative and nostalgic that will lose
Obviously I went with #2. I wanted to return to the glory days of the finest magic card to ever see print.
Ahhh, so good. How does banding and flying work on defense? What happens when it bands with a first-striker again? Let's argue about it until we run out of time during the lunch period. So let's build a white weenie deck!
The core of a white weenie deck is the one-drops. As many one-drops as you can pile in. Searching through gatherer, the following jumped out at me.
That's actually a pretty good spread of one-drops. Elite Vanguard being rare-shifted to common in Eternal Masters is a nice pick-me-up. Ditto for the Pegasus, though it's not a one-drop you want to cast on turn 1, since it won't be able to start attacking in turn two.
Looking for other tasty knights and soldiers to turn on the falcon.
Some fun overlapping synergies. The overpoweredness of the Topan Freeblade is well documented; not often you get rareshifted up to uncommon in a Masters set. The Loyal Cathar is a nice 2-drop that they will have to kill twice. The Legionnaire packs a considerable punch at two mana (I will pay the life 100% of the time).
From here, there are a couple of different ways to go. There's doubling down on Soldier synergies
There is trying to abuse some bounce synergies
For my first draft, I went with keeping the curve as low as humanly possible, so the artifact one-drops seemed like the best fit. Ladies and gentlefolk, I give you the Tiny Tims!
http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/tiny-tims-ww-pauper-style/
1) netdeck something that will win
2) try and think of something creative and nostalgic that will lose
Obviously I went with #2. I wanted to return to the glory days of the finest magic card to ever see print.
Ahhh, so good. How does banding and flying work on defense? What happens when it bands with a first-striker again? Let's argue about it until we run out of time during the lunch period. So let's build a white weenie deck!
The core of a white weenie deck is the one-drops. As many one-drops as you can pile in. Searching through gatherer, the following jumped out at me.
That's actually a pretty good spread of one-drops. Elite Vanguard being rare-shifted to common in Eternal Masters is a nice pick-me-up. Ditto for the Pegasus, though it's not a one-drop you want to cast on turn 1, since it won't be able to start attacking in turn two.
Looking for other tasty knights and soldiers to turn on the falcon.
Some fun overlapping synergies. The overpoweredness of the Topan Freeblade is well documented; not often you get rareshifted up to uncommon in a Masters set. The Loyal Cathar is a nice 2-drop that they will have to kill twice. The Legionnaire packs a considerable punch at two mana (I will pay the life 100% of the time).
From here, there are a couple of different ways to go. There's doubling down on Soldier synergies
There is trying to abuse some bounce synergies
For my first draft, I went with keeping the curve as low as humanly possible, so the artifact one-drops seemed like the best fit. Ladies and gentlefolk, I give you the Tiny Tims!
http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/tiny-tims-ww-pauper-style/
Saturday, January 6, 2018
Pauper IMA draft 1/4/18
To be filed under "I'm just really bad at Magic" I did an IMA draft with the Super Happy Funtime Draft Friends. 10 person pod, so always a little random. The draft just feels absolutely miserable. I feel like I'm forcing U/R spells-matter deck but it's not there, neither does it appear that there is anything else. I get some support in pack 2 but then it vanishes again. I'm getting all ready to blame Helen for ruining my ability to think and then I lay this out:
It was nasty. Let's review the key pieces:
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