- Planeswalkers are just plain stupid. I don't know that I've ever won a match against an opponent who resolved a planeswalker against me. One of the two drafts I've won was the time I had a planewalker in my deck. One time I drafted a Jace P3P1 without a blue card yet and lost with it in my board. Maybe I should have played it but he's the worst one so I don't know.
- Titans are almost as stupid. I have managed to lose after playing a titan (grave titan got fireballed) and managed to win a game against one once (grave titan got oblivion ringed). But for the most part it really seems like you just win any game where you cast one.
- Some other mythic rares are almost as good. My opponent just cast a turn 5 6/6 flyer which made his next vampite a 7/7 lifelinker. How am I supposed to beat that? (As I say that I just realize a brutal misplay that could have won me the game. Devouring swarm can prevent the 7 life gain...) (As an addendum, I did just win the game with a final strike while at 1. Because devouring swarm prevented the life gain.)
- When brutal bombs aren't involved the game tends to go to the person with the better curve. Or the person who doesn't stumble on mana.
- Two people with even curves tend to just trade a lot and then the person who wins is the one with the most reusable abilities (jade mage, azure mage, merfolk looter, etc...). Unless someone has a planeswalker and then they win.
- Griffin rider is surprisingly good.
- Double casting cost 2 drops are really awkward on the mana unless you're playing mono.
- Green isn't bad and in fact seems to trump blue with the spiders.
- People keep trying to mill me out with merfolk mesmerist and failing. Except for karma's sake I typed this as someone was casting a mesmerist so of course I get stuck on 2 land for a while and he barely manages to mill me out. This is the same match where I beat the vampire lord in game 1 after saying I couldn't win. He won game 2 with the vampire lord and game 3 with mesmerists...
- Maybe I need to mulligan more.
What I'm learning is that this format is frustrating. Garruk, Gideon, and Sorin all seem to be completely unstoppable. I have yet to face Chandra but she seems ok. Jace doesn't impact the board so he's not a guaranteed win but I have never seen anyone lose a game with him in play so he's still pretty good I guess.
Mythic rares come one in every eight packs. So there will probably be 3 at any given draft table. There are 15 total mythic rares. 5 planeswalkers, 5 titans, a useless 5 mana time twister than I keep opening, vampire lord, a ludicrous green hydra I've yet to play with or against, a 12/12 flying dragon for 7, and an enchantment which gives +4/+4, flying, first strike, and comes back to hand when it dies. I had that once and didn't lose a game when I drew it.
So with 3 mythics at the table, and 14/15ths of them being bombs, should I start focusing on ways to stop them? Do I need to pack my deck with cancels and distresses? The problem then is cancel is practically useless against the fast bloodthirst deck, or the fast white weenie deck. Unless I use it to counter a random dork, but then I lose to the bomb mythic anyway since I don't know who has them. (In fact the time I played with Jace my deck was essentially a fast white weenie deck that happened to have Jace, Wrath, and Mind Control in it for funsies.)
Some games are fair games, some games are won by 1 card. I can't stack my deck against the 1 card because then I lose all the fair games because I have wasted slots. Maybe mana leak is the answer. I'm happy to have it in a fair deck since spending 2 mana countering a random dork is still fine. Blue also has probably the best fair game with merfolk looter and azure mage. But it sometimes feels just too slow since most of its creatures just aren't big enough to have a shot against a stupid fast deck.
All told I'm not sure I even want to play in Nats anymore. The draft format doesn't appeal to me and I have no constructed cards. But it could be me who opens the planeswalker... Wildfire could be awesome again...
1 comment:
I think maybe the key strategy is to keep your colours very open. That generally means focusing on one colour as much as possible in pack one. People did this all the time in Scars block, but it's obviously a lot harder when a lot less than half the set is colourless.
I think I agree that the format, but I think tempo is really important. While most games with Planeswalkers and Titans are one sided, most games don't have a Planeswalker or a Titan, and you can't expect to win a whole draft on the back of one card (you can win 3-4 games on the back of one card, but you are going to have to win the other 2-3 without it, usually).
I don't think the format is very interesting, but base sets rarely are. It's pretty much take the best card while remembering that Aether Adept and Sacred Wolf are both much, much better than you think.
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