Khans Drafting 10-11-14

Drafting!
The first pack was pretty unexciting. It was some elaborate three color, non-bomby rare. So I took a very reliable white two drop. After that I take the tri-land (couldn't believe that was passed to me. Works in Abzan obviously but also totally fine double-land in Mardu and Sultai) I snag another tri land and take my favorite 2 drop morph, Horde ambusher. I start to see some key Sultai cards (Scout, & Bitter Revelation) so I pick those up. I'm actually pretty happy with my opening pack, except for the lack of bombs.

 

 

 

Pack #2!! Opening choice is a doozy.

 

 vs

I stare at this for a long time. Stone-cold red bomb vs. pretty solid removal in my color. I flinch and stay in black. Arrrgh! I make LR cry. I guess I'm somewhat rewarding for my steadfastness with a Heir of the Wilds and Rakshasa Deathdealer, two quality two drops. Armament Corps is also pretty close to a bomb (if you squint a little) but I don't have very much outlast in my deck. There's also a fair amount of decent red & mardu cards coming my way... starting to second guess myself...

Round 3:

I'm super happy with my first few: great 2 drop Outlast, a flexible morph and evasion. But white and black are feeling really picked over and there's a lot of red slipping through. Nothing "OMG" but just solid white/red and Mardu tri-color. Should I have gone red? Probably? Maybe? I really liked the rakshasa...



here's my final deck, the four slot is a little too full, the two slot too unreliable with my splash in green being weighted earlier in the curve.

1 drop: Mardu hateblade (1)
2 drop: Rakshasa Deathdealer, Heir of the Wilds, Seeker of the Way, Ainok Bond-Kin (4)
3 drop/Morph: Krumar Bond-Kin x2, Woolly Loxodon, Mardu Hordechief (4)
4 drop: Unyielding Krumar x2, Alabaster Kirin x2, Salt Road Patrol, Longshot Squad (6)
5 drop: Armament Corps, Hooting Mandrils, Swarm of Bloodflies (3)

Spells: Bitter Revelation x2, Debilitating Injury x2, Throttle x1

18 Lands: Tri land x2, Forest x4, Swamp x6, Plains x6
Round 1
Faced off against Peter, running a red/blue/green Temur deck... but it was strangely heavy on the counterspells. In the midgame I was in a bad spot facing Snowhorn Rider with a Dragon Grip on it for 7/5 First Strike and Trampling. Except he was unduly afraid of my morphs and stayed off me for *far* too many turns. Eventually I got my shields up with the Wooly Loxadon and then I was able to grind around him for a win. The second game was even less remarkable as I landed my Armament Corps on curve and that was pretty much game over. Once I figured out that he was running 4+ counterspells it was pretty easy to play around them while he was tapped out. Morphs are also solid at dodging counterspells. We talk a bit afterwards and he was playing a control deck without the sweepers. That's probably not going to cut it.
2-0

Round 2
Playing against Conner running a Mardu deck... except it was all control-y with a bunch of outlast and 4 drops. However in game 1, the mana curve doesn't matter if he drops
  
... by turn 5. That's a lot of pressure! I'm down to six health facing a miserable board state and a 3/4 Abzan Falconer. Having no choice and facing an overrun I Bitter Revelation for an answer... that I pull! Throttle; so good. SO good. The board stalemates with my Rakshasa Deathdealer holding the line with a few random creatures versus an alarming large board with a bunch of 1/1 goblin tokens running around. I start playing very carefully since at 4 life I'm one X spell or counterswing away. But my Rakshasa starts murdering goblins and I establish the board superiority and work him down.

The second game I stayed confidently in control. Checking in at turn 5... the board was totally clear. I cheerfully traded and removed any threats. Eventually I establish my board and just winnow him down.


2-0

Round 3
I am facing off against the Sultai. He has a LOT of graveyard fixing and A LOT of Delve to go with it. We're both building slowly though he stays on five land and mills away two more land. This doesn't fill me with a lot of confidence. We trade blows and we're at 13-18. I think I have him, my Blood Fly is at 9/9 and he only has one flying blocker left and one other creature. Then I make a fatal, careless mistake. He makes a pointless attack and I chump block with my warrior token to make my blood fly EVEN BIGGAR. He then Dead Drops, clearing my board. Next turn he sticks two huge creatures and I'm dead drawing. I was very upset at myself. It was clearly a pointless attack, my health total was just fine. Why block? Against a delve deck no less.

The second game was even shorter because he landed a 5th turn


I had one combat to try and Throttle it with some combat damage but he had the counterspell. So that was a very fast game. His deck was pretty stacked but it was slow. The classic deck that would have lost to a 2-3-4 curve out Mardu assault. Give how my deck was neither fast NOR slow, it puttered just enough to lose to it. I am angry that he had two stonecold bombs in Abzan that he splashed for successfully (the ivorytusk and Duneblast) that obviously should have been mine. Obviously. He had crazy mana-fixing. Good for him


0-2

Conclusion
Pretty happy with the 2-1, that felt like where the deck was going to be. I still got a little overly obsessed with staying on my colors when maybe splashing red was a stronger place to be at. Especially with that second pack Crater's Claws. I know Marshall/Brian would have taken it. Reviewing the table, we had a Jeskai, Mardu, Sultai (with the Abzan splash), a messy Temur and a four color mess on my right around Abzan with blue added. There wasn't anything egregiously open but I felt like maybe slipping into Mardu earlier would have been the right thing to do. Hard to say.

MVP

This guy is tits, talk about a quadrant theory all-star. He develops, he defends (so-so, leaving up mana isn't ideal obviously), he finishes, he breaks parity. Can't ask for too much more than that.

Deck Concerns
Breaking it apart, I was far too in love with my 4 drops. I had two of the 4/2 bears that weren't in the deck and I absolutely should have substituted out two four-drops for them. That would also help tilt me a little more towards green though I rarely hurt for mana. Those triple lands are absolute awesome. I think it's actually pretty important to try and regularly hit your 2/3/4 curve out. You don't have to be superstar racing but have some serious board presence to pressure slow decks. Next time I want to be closer to 5 or 6 playable two drops, and 4 or 5 playable three/morphs. This deck also felt very inbetween-y. Not enough outlast to really dominate the end game, though it could break deadlocks nicely.

Other Notes

This is really quite reliable. It did solid work against me, Brian's recap of "counter target spell you care about" is accurate.


Underperformed a little but not a lot. The evasion and 2/3 vigilance is pretty sweet and if I faced more aggro decks I think I might have liked it more.


Not BAD but not great. Takes a little bit to get up and running. Token creature deaths DO impact it, which is nice but not going to win any races with other five slots. A classic "five slot of last resort".


Was very pleased every time I drew this card, even without any real Sultai/delve synergies. Go digging for a card that matters when you know if you want land, creatures, or answers. Two might be on the high end without a lot of delve to benefit from it (especially with how crowded my 4-slot was) but greatly enjoyed. Would play again.

Key cards & Deck Archtypes

My greatest weakness in sealed is I draft a few good cards early and then stick to that plan NO MATTER WHAT comes down the pike. So I'm trying to do some homework and memorize some tells that a particular clan or deck style is open. This is more than just keeping an eye out for Murderous Cut (which everyone loves!) because being passed that late is so blatant, even I can't miss that. I'm looking for key engine cards. These aren't necessarily first picks by any means.

 

Abzan (Outlast)

The Outlast creatures are so good and the mechanic of giving "everything with a +1/+1 counter _____" is SO good that you don't normally see too many of those late. With it being a late game play, Abzan needs to gum up the early game. 

  

Mardu (Horde)

In many ways mardu is the easiest to build because you swarm early and swarm often. There's a fair amount of overlap with Jeskai in the sense that you have small creatures running around with some combat tricks. Still, with the Warrior keyword and some white/black that isn't terribly relevant to the Abzan, here are some good ones.

      

Delve Engine

The Delve cards are really, really good and most decks benefit from throwing in a few. However there are a few cards that really help the Delve engine get going early by populating the graveyard.

  

 

The key "good" delve cards are as follows:
     

Tricks & Tempo (Jeskai)

This seems like the hardest deck to build, but it does offer the clearest "build around me" uncommon in Quiet Contemplation. You need enough tricks to respect Prowess but enough creatures to pull it off. Jeskai creatures aren't the biggest but they do have a fair amount of flying (given how rare it is in the set)
       

Goofy Hearthstone Glitch

Today, I present part two of a very intermittent series:

Not actually a hunter with a mage secret in play, just what happened after I got disconnected from my game and came back after my hunter opponent played his trap. (It was Explosive Trap. It's pretty much always Explosive Trap.)

Let’s talk Khans! Ran down to Gamma Ray Games and the draft was full. But fortunately enough laggards showed up where we went into two draft pods of 6. Juuust in case it wasn’t bonkers enough. I was in the pod that had the newbies. How newbie? Well let me put it this way: one of my draftmates claimed to have "hatedrafted" the following:

Ooooooookay. So this wasn't the strongest competition in the world. Thus blessed with the greatest of advantages (weak opposition) and armed with ~5 hours of Limited Resources but little else, off I go!

 

First Pack

 

(sorry about the crap focus, not sure what happened here) Murderous Cut? No question. That is some premium removal my friends. A second removal falls to me and now I’m focusing on white/black pretty hard (probably too soon. I *always* do that). A passed Treasure Cruise interests me in blue a little but I don’t see a lot of followup. Both black and red look pretty open at this point.

Second Pack

The Scavanger is impossible for me to resist, though I did pass on a rare filter land to take it (b/u) I take some mana fixing but I’m getting alarmed by the amount of green making its way around. Over and over. This was where I should have switched to green. It was really egregious how open it was. My back-half of this draft is almost useless and there was good stuff there.

 

Third Pack

 

Pretty pleased to see Rush of Battle but once again my Mardu colors dry up early. Weaksauce options finish out the pack.

So, for the umpteenth time in a row, I overcommitted to a plan and stuck with it. Final Deck was super vanilla: 17 creatures, 6 spells, 17 land. Also not so great was that I thought I was in black/white, but I was really in black/red with a white splash. Whoops.

Creatures: (1) Firehoof Cavalry, (2) Leaping Master x3, Mardu Skullhunter x2, Valley Dasher, Chief of the Scale, Horde Ambusher, Gurmag Swiftwing, (3) Mardu Hordechief (4) Summit Prowler, Bellowing Saddlemate, (5) Krumar Bond Kin, Canyon Lurkers, (6) Sultai Scavanger

Spells: Rush of Battle, Utter End, Dead Drop, Murderous Cut, Throttle, Mardu Charm

Land: 6 Mountain, 4 swamp, 3 Plains, 2 Bloodfell Caves (R/B), 1 Wind-Scarred Crag (R/W), 1 Scoured Barrens (W/B)

This deck reeked of 2-1 to me. I knew it was going to function (reasonable mana curve, solid mana fixing) and I wouldn’t have cards stranded in my hand. But the board power seems lacking. A few too many 2 drops, not enough scary morphs (only two), and great removal but no good overruns besides a single Rush of Battle. It’ll crush fools who draft poorly but probably lose to whoever drafted all those good green cards that I repeatedly passed on.

Round 1

First match was a mirror match against a fellow Mardu deck. The oddly part is that he was on my left so we spent a lot of time fighting. Very similar cards but I hit my curve and he doesn’t and I win very handily. The second game he stalled at four mana and I stuck my 5/3 morph and that also ended in a hurry.

Round 2

Second game was my right hand draft mate. And he was ALSO in Mardu! Jesus Christ people, get your act together. He landed his 3/3 Flier, then I did, but my removal trumped his non-removal and that was game. The second game was a lot dicier. I kept a 5 lander with only a single morph and a two drop (lacking the right mana) for defense. I am under a ton of pressure and no defenses and I keep flooding mana. I’m whittled down to 7 but eventually stabilize with my 1/2 first striking bat of all things to stop those dumb 1/1 deathtouching. I stick a pair of morphs and then force a double sacrifice with Dead Drop. Now with the time for my 5/2 and 5/3 vanilla morphed creatures I swing him down to 3, then win.
 vs

Ha!

Round 3

Alright, I’m 2-0! Can I break the prophecy? I draw a perfect PERFECT curve out: Leaping Master, Hordechief x2 etc. Suddenly I have 6 creatures on the board facing three walls. Kaboom!

He was able to look at my hand with Dragon Eye Savants, so it wasn’t a blowout, butI gained 18 life and put him down to 4. His creatures were too little, too late and I won at 38 life. Game two? Well the opposite. He missed his land drops on turn three and four and with me swinging reliably for 4-5 damage a turn it was over swiftly.

So three 2-0 wins. I can safely say that this deck way overperformed. I think the final deck especially would have rocked me over the long run. Enough early defenses to slow me down and eventully keep me out of answers. But hey, win the games you should win!

MVPs

Since the game recaps are pretty dull, here are my MVPs

Not a surprise but this guy did an astounding amount of work for me. 2/3 is a great power level in this set to fearlessly attack into morphs and tokens are just dandy too.

Rapidly became my favorite two-drop. I needed just a few more one drops to reliably drop him on curve but playing him on turn 3 rarely felt terrible. Also some free card advantage!

 

Both vanilla morphs punched well above their weight. Maybe that's just normal morphs but it felt great in my deck.

 

Also utterly fantastic. Crippling a key blocker to allow another big swing of my frisky 2/2s without using any mana at all. Yes please!

 

Lessons

1) Try to draft around an opposite pairing and then work to fill in the side color to "fit" a clan. For example, if I stayed heavy in black/red, only Mardu (with white) would fit a three color wedge. Whereas if I'm in black/white both Mardu and Azban (w/ green) would fit.

2) Corollary: the opposite color dual lands are more valuable than friendly dual lands for the same reason.

3) Don't panic about the low end of the curve if you have sufficient morphs. Morphs really define the set: expect a steady stream of 2/2s in all games.

4) There's less removal but the removal that exists is pretty damn good.