Draft 1-23-16: the one drop of desperation

First ever draft! And we are at Gamma Ray rocking it out. Let's see how we do.

Pack 1 Pick 1

  

Archetype breakdown: green/white support

After piloting green/white in the sealed pre-release, let's break down what drafting this might look like. Also known as a glorious excuse to theorycraft. Onward ho!

Background

First, the biggest question in any Oath of the Gatewatch deck is whether or not it cares about colorless mana. They fall into three camps: zero, sporadic, and recurring. The zero is your normal two color (or splash) deck. Sporadic has cards that benefit from threat of activation or maybe a single high end card (like a splash). Sample cards include

Oathwatch prerelease

Pre-release time! Woo!

Rare Pool

      

Pretty sweet to have three strong rares in the color. A bit unfortunate to have it be the weakest color in Battle but maybe times have changed. Sadly the Tyrant, an A-class bomb, is completely unsupported in red. Black is also weak (despite have two classy red/black golds). I winnow it down to white/blue/green. I eventually settle on trying to build an aggro "CABS" (cards that effect the board state).

Deck

    

   

   

 

 

      

So the deck construction is 5 two drops, 4 three drops, 4 four drops and some high end. 6 spells mostly removal and a combat trick or two. This is the test of whether or not support can walk the walk. Living the dream is pretty straight forward 2-3-4 as follows:

  

So on turn four, you have a 3/3 and a 4/3 that you can turn sideways and smash. Pretty brutal against a goldfish, but what happens in reality?

Game Recap

Forgot my notebook, so I'll fly by the seat of my pants for a bit. Basically my first game was against a nice fellow that tried running three colors and a significant commitment to colorless mana. So he cast very little and I ran him over. Sadly the other two rounds did not go as well, both losing 1-2 with some unfortunate mana flood and/or screw. But that's magic.

But I think the dream is real. Keeping creatures alive early to land subsequent Support works pretty well and pressures opponents lacking strong removal and/or strong defenses.

Awards

MVP

Obviously a 2/3 for 2 is going to be pretty good, but this thing is pretty close to a quadrant all-star with being a 5/6 for 2 mana later in the game. Dangerous card, good card. Definitely worth snatching early.

Biggest Surprise

Unassuming but very good smoother. Gets a land when you want to smooth a draw, otherwise grabs your best creature. Since it tosses the rest to the bottom, it's a great filter too. 10/10, would play again.

Red Alert!

Or should I say *colorless* alert! (#topical). We interrupt our regular programming of irregular posting to bring you this potentially breaking news. I dunno, maybe everyone else has been discussing this for weeks. But they have CHANGED the colorless mana symbol! Behold!

Dungeo and DragoNotes: Reader Email

Well readers it turns out Michael was paying attention and has already replied to our last post, here's what he had to say:

I haven't played since middle school, and am quite interested in what the new editions have to bring. I have to imagine it's even more stats about combat, hearing perception, etc. That stuff is much less fun than the way you resolved your plate armor hearing challenge.

Well Michael, the new edition is a breath of fresh air. They realized that fourth edition was a grave error and now the combat rules and skill check details have taken a back seat to good old role playing. You are encouraged to solve your problems the way I tackled the plate mail issue. And for those that want the rules lawyering there is plenty of room to argue hearing a person in plate mail is 'very easy' not 'easy'.

And as a parting thought. The vibe is very similar to the West End Games Star Wars d6 system. also known as the greatest role playing game system of all time.

Our first post about D&D

So it shouldn't come as a shock to our readership that some of your bloggers are also D&D players. Therefore you probably have been clamoring for us to write a post or two about the new edition of D&D. Well today is your lucky day. You can stop filling our inbox ... Michael.

Today's post is simple. I was working out an encounter and one of the NPCs happened to be wearing plate mail. She was to stumble upon my PC who was busy searching the charred remains of a local tavern. So we needed to check the PCs passive perception (aka hearing) versus the DC of someone wearing plate mail walking down the street.

I had no clue what the DC of plate mail walking is. Does anyone know? I google several permutations of: D&D, 5th edition, plate mail, passive perception, sound, etc. And got nothing.

In the end the show must go on so I decided that hearing someone coming down the street wearing plate mail is 'easy'. Which equates to a DC of 10. Which means your passive perception always succeeds barring a poor Wisdom modifier.

thoughts?

The Un-loved decks: Landfall

Everyone knows the sexy killing machines right now: B/W lifegain, U/R devoid, converge-y allies, U/W flier-pile. However there are other good decks that can be very sweet but they require not fighting another player for key playables. The R/G landfall agro can work but you better not be fighting your neighbor for reasonably powerful red cards as well as someone else sniping high quality, specific uncommons.

Landfall
I think I accidentally discovered a secret: landfall wants to transition to allies late. Early pressure with their powered up 2-3 drops and then try to burst through with allies boosting power. Don't try and a force an expensive landfall creature and you're reducing to topdecking lands to make it happen. Snipe high value cards from underplayed color combos (mostly green) and build a solid in-your-face deck with a couple of late win conditions.