Drafting Again?

Recently lots of people I know have started talking about Magic. James started a new blog where he's mentioned Magic a few times. Matt keeps posting pictures of game stats from online drafts. Randy and Josh through comments on some Starcity threads about coverage. And there's been some Hall of Fame discussion  as well. I was up early this morning and decided to see if I could try out a draft of this crazy new set and blog about it despite knowing next to nothing about the set at all.

For the most part, it worked out fine. I was a little surprised at how expensive the draft was (25 tickets for an 8 man draft seems high to my memory) but I figured it was worth a shot anyway. I knew the set had lots of cool decks you could build if you drafted the right cards. Thallids, or 5 colour green, or rebels, or giants. But I didn't know what cards actually existed let alone which were good for any given archetype. So I pretty much drafted at random. I raredrafted a Blinkmoth Nexus to start, and then took Etched Oracle second and tried to build a green centric sunbursty deck. I was really looking forward to posting the draft itself to get feedback on what other people thought I should have been taking.

That all got shot to hell, however, when I tried to find the log of the draft to send through the parser I used to generate my previous draft posts. It turns out that Magic Online doesn't log your drafts by default. You have to drill down 4 levels deep through menus and buttons to turn that option on, and I hadn't done that yet on this computer. So in terms of being able to generate a draft blog the morning and the $25 was wasted.

It boggles my mind why this is an option. Who is the person that actively wants this feature disabled? Who's hard drive is so small that they can't stand to have a second small file generated each time they draft? I'm not suggesting everyone needs to have it turned on, but that no one needs to have it turned off. Most people probably don't care one way or the other and a few people want it on. That it occupies screen real estate on an option menu seems bad. Options should be for things that some people want on, and some people want off, and that doesn't feel like the case here to me.

I spent some time in the tub this afternoon thinking about how that option got in there and couldn't come up with an answer I really liked. My best guess is that someone coded this feature in on a lark at the request of a friend and to play it safe they added it as an option that was turned off. So if something went terribly wrong with the feature (maybe it wiped out hard drives or something because of a weird bug) the general public wouldn't be hurt by it. And then once it got enough actual use to test it no one bothered to go back and default it to on or remove the option entirely and just force it on. Or maybe there's some good reason for it to exist, and my inexperience with actual software development is keeping me from seeing it. I don't know. But it frustrated me today that it exists like this, and that makes me sad.

At any rate, I ended up not even playing green at all despite drafting 9 green cards including tromp, moldervine cloak, and 2 search for tomorrows. My 2 etched oracles and 2 skyreach mantas also got cut. I ended up playing a UR artifacts deck with some card draw and a lot of 4/4s for 6 or 7. It felt like my deck was full of mediocre cards and didn't have a strong archetype. I guess 2 frogmites and 3 myr enforcers with 11 artifacts is a mediocre try at an affinity archetype? I don't know. (Turns out I had 2 coloured artifacts and a blinky too, so maybe 14 artifacts?)

My deck!

1 Relic of Progenitus
1 Perilous Research
1 Shrapnel Blast
1 Æthersnipe
1 Arcbound Worker
1 Rift Bolt
1 Jhoira of the Ghitu
1 Æther Vial
1 Tribal Flames
1 Epochrasite
1 Faerie Mechanist
1 Frogmite
1 Blinkmoth Nexus
1 Logic Knot
1 Arcbound Stinger
1 Errant Ephemeron
1 Etherium Sculptor
4 Mountain
3 Myr Enforcer
2 Thirst for Knowledge
1 Frogmite
11 Island
1 Glimmervoid
1 Careful Consideration

Sideboard
1 Greater Mossdog
1 Brute Force
2 Skyreach Manta
1 Tromp the Domains
2 Search for Tomorrow
1 Trygon Predator
1 Raven's Crime
2 Etched Oracle
1 Moldervine Cloak
1 Grapeshot
1 Sylvan Bounty
1 Fiery Fall
1 Gleam of Resistance
1 Echoing Courage
1 Kokusho, the Evening Star
1 Thundering Giant
1 Life from the Loam

I joined the first queue that filled up, which was a 4-3-2-2 draft. That was fine by me, because I wanted to have 3 rounds of games to blog about. It wasn't until the end of the first round when I saw that all the losers were eliminated that I remembered that the thing linking the 4-3-2-2 draft and the swiss draft isn't that they both allow 3 rounds guaranteed, it's that they both have substandard prize distributions for people who win a lot. Oh well.

Round 1 - Game 1

My opening hand is I, I, M, Epochrasite, Jhoira of the Ghitu, Frogmite, Perilous Research. I kept, and he played first. My first draw is Ethereum Sculptor. His turn 2 is to suspend Giant Duskwasp. I draw mountain and play sculptor. He plays Drag Down on my sculptor on his turn. I draw another mountain and play Jhoira.  He plays Penumbra Spider. I draw Myr Enforcer. Am I supposed to use Jhoira here? I don't know. He plays Dreamspoiler Witches on his turn and I Jhoira out epochrasite and enforcer. Just you wait 4 turns! I draw Shrapnel Blast (which I got 14th pick I think) and play my 5th land and froggie. His duskwasp comes into play and he cracks me for 7 down to 11 and plays a Stinkweed Imp. I draw an island, play it, and say go. He swings with the team, I research away a mountain into an island and a Thirst for Knowledge, then I chump spider with froggie and sac it to shrapnel his duskwasp. I draw another island, thirst into Errant Ephemeron, Myr Enforcer, and island. I pitch two islands, play a third, and say go. He swings with everything again, I chump with Jhoira and fall to 5. He plays another duskwasp. My team finally comes into play, I draw my 3rd Myr Enforcer, and concede since I can't cast Ephemeron and he has enough flyers to kill me.

Round 1 - Game 2 (sideboard out Jhoira, in Fiery Fall)

I choose to play first. My hand is I, M, Rift Bolt, Thirst for Knowledge, Errant Ephemeron, Arcbound Stinger, and Logic Knot. Any land in the first couple turns and I'm gold so I keep. My first draw is Epochrasite and I suspend ephemeron. He landcycles main phase on his turn 2, getting an island. He didn't play any islands or blue cards in game 1. I draw Myr Enforcer on my turn 3 and play stinger. He has no play on turn 3. I draw mountain and play it. He plays Imperiosaur on turn 4, and I thirst into Relic of Progenitus, Faerie Machinist, and Aethersnipe. I pitch the relic. That's why I'm playing it! I draw mountain and play the machinist which gets me Etherium Sculptor. He swings for 5, plays a 5th land, and says go. Ephemeron comes into play and I draw a mountain which I play. For the record I'm playing 11 islands and 4 mountains and now have in play 1 island and 4 mountains. And have a UU counter in my hand. *sigh* At any rate he might have a kill spell or something so I cast my stuff pre combat since I need affinity to cast it all. Out comes sculptor, epochrasite, and enforcer. I swing with my first 3 creatures and he Death Rattles the ephemeron. He takes 3 making it 15 all. He swings, I chump with epochrasite. He plays Eternal Witness getting back the rattle. I draw island and swing with my team and he chumps enforcer with witness. He plays Drag Down to finish off the enforcer. I bust out Aethersnipe to bounce his 5/5. He replays it on his turn. I draw island and swing for 3 in the air. He plays Giant Dustwasp and says go. I draw another island, Rift Bolt his wasp, and swing with my team. He tries to kill the snipe with the death rattle from before, but I Logic Knot it and he scoops.

Round 1 - Game 3

He choose to go first. My hand is I, I, I, Thirst for Knowledge, Thirst for Knowledge, Careful Consideration, Faerie Machinist. Well, either he kills me early or I will win through sheer number of cards drawn. I keep. I draw Aethersnipe on my first turn and play an island. He has no play but land on turn 2. I draw Shrapnel Blast and also have no turn 2 play. He has Stinkweed Imp and all 3 colours of mana on turn 3. I draw Blinkmoth Nexus and play it. He swings for 1 and has no play. I thirst into Relic of Pregenitus and two islands, pitching the relic. I draw Tribal Flames, play an island, and the machinist which digs up Frogmite. I discard an island at end of turn due to having 8 cards in hand. His turn 5 is a comes into play tapped land. I draw Glimmervoid, play it, and froggie. He has Masked Admirers on turn 6 which is a little scary if the game goes super long. He might be able to match my card draw! I draw island, play it, and carefully consider to draw Myr Enforcer, Fiery Fall, Arcbound Worker, and Errant Ephemeron. I discard island and worker, suspend ephemeron, and say go. He swings for 3 and I'm afraid of the recursion so I don't trade. He busts out Imperiosaur. I draw foil Frogmite. I decide my play is to bounce his 5/5 with my 4/4 and then kill it next turn with one of my 5 damage spells. I also swing with my team to try to clear stinky out of the way for the 4/4. He obliges by trading with my faerie. He then spends his turn Death Rattling my frogmite and Eternal Witnessing it back. In order to have the mana to do this he had to remove stinky from his graveyard. This does kill off glimmervoid though, which is my only source of red mana...

Until I draw mountain, that is, which is my very next turn. I play it and froggie. His turn is Penumbra Spider and Riftsweeper which makes me very sad. My Ephemron only has 2 suspend counters on it. Thankfully he either doesn't know what riftsweeper does or thinks stinky is more important as he shuffles stinky back in. I draw another mountain and play enforcer for 6. He finally replays Imperiosaur. My 4/4 flyer enters play, I draw Logic Knot, and I swing with the flyer. He chumps with the spider. I say go. He swings back with the 5/5 and I decide to hold my removal by double blocking it with aethersnipe and froggie. Snipe dies. He has a second Imperiosaur. I thirst at end of turn into mountain, Epochrasite, and Perilous Research. I pitch Epochrasite. I then draw Myr Enforcer on my turn. I swing with ephemeron, he death rattles, I logic knot. I am a little worried about Tromp the Domains (I passed a second one) so I use tribal flames on his 2/2 leaving shrapnel mana up. He swings with his 5/5 and I again block with a 4/4 and a 2/2. He has Moldervine Cloak for his spider token, which I kill with shrapnel blast and froggie. He plays his last card, Reach of Branches. I research into Rift Bolt and Aethervial, saccing a mountain, and draw island on my turn.

The board state is now me with 7 lands, 16 life, 5 cards in hand, and a 4/4 flyer. He has 9 lands, 14 life, no cards, and a 3/2, a 2/1, and a 2/5 in play. I swing with ephemeron and play vial and enforcer. Then I realize I have 1 mana left over and should have swung with my nexus too. At least I'm noticing these mistakes as I'm playing! He dredges the cloak back making his witness 5/4 and swings with the 3/2 and the 5/4. I kill the 3/2 and fall to 11. He is dead once I use my 2 burn spells in hand (1 on the 2/5 and 1 on his face).

Round 2 - Game 1

I'm on the play and my opening hand is I, I, I, M, Blinkmoth Nexus, Glimmervoid, Aethersnipe. What a terrible hand. I keep. He plays plains and Bonesplitter on his turn. I draw Shrapnel Blast, slap myself in the head for not playing blinky first, and play it on turn 2 instead. He has nothing but land on turn 2. I draw Logic Knot and decide not to swing with blinky in order to keep counter mana up. He land cycles at end of turn but has no play on turn 3 either. I draw Arcbound Worker and play it leaving blast and knot mana up. He plays Cenn's Enlistment on his turn which I decide to counter since that seems good with his equipment. I draw Frogmite, activate nexus, swing for 2, and play froggie. He ditches a land to replay the enlistment from the graveyard. This is the first time I've ever seen retrace in action and it seems awesome. I draw Faerie Machinist, play it to get Myr Enforcer, play Glimmervoid, and activate blinky to swing for 4 after he declines blocking. His turn is equip a token, swing for 3, and play Saltfiend Recluse. I draw Thirst for Knowledge. It looks like this is a game I might be able to win on tempo alone (despite the 6 land and a 6 drop opener) so I bust out snipe on his recluse and swing with the team. This time he trades a token for the worker, and I buff my faerie. He entwines a blinding beam on my 4/4 and cracks for 3. I draw island, swing for 1 with blinky, and play my enforcer. He has Bound in Silence for the enforcer and swings for 3 more. He is now at 9 and I have 9 power in creatures... I know there's an Angel's Grace in the pod as I opened one and he has a white up... Before I can make a plan to play around it he concedes.

Round 2 - Game 2 (again siding out Jhoira)

He plays first. I have I, M, Aether Vial, Rift Bolt, Etherium Sculptor, Myr Enforcer, and Careful Consideration which I keep. He suspends Ivory Giant. I draw island and play vial. He plays Rathi Trapper. I draw Shrapnel Blast and play sculptor. He plays Saltfield Recluse. His board is hard to attack through. I draw Frogmite which I play while suspending rift bolt. He says go without a 4th land. I bolt the trapper and he Test of Faith's it. I could blast in response but it'll only have 5 toughness so I can do that later. First I want to get my affinity on. I draw a second Frogmite so I play it and enforcer off of my 3 lands, with a mana to spare. He finds a 4th land and taps out for Cenn's Enlistment. I draw island, shrapnel blast away vial and trapper, and swing with enforcer which gets shrunk by recluse so he takes 2. Giant arrives, tapping my team. He swings for 5 and Bound in Silences my enforcer. I draw Tribal Flames and rather than use it to kill his annoying recluse I decide to consider into island, Epochrasite, Myr Enforcer, and Perilous Research. I have a prime target for that in the bound enforcer but I pitch it and the island. I swing with my team and the recluse means I only do 2 damage. He does 5 back and enlists 2 more dudes. I draw mountain and finally flames the recluse. He shrinks a frog in response. I play out epochrasite and enforcer. Then I swing with my 2/2 and my 0/2. Oops! He decides 2 life is more important than his 2 guys and trades with the 2/2 instead of just killing the 0/2. Note he is at 16, and I am at 10. Then his turn is Blinding Beam. Gee, I wish that 0/2 was untapped and a 2/2... He then Path to Exiles epochrasite and swings for 5. I draw Aethersnipe and thanks to the bonus land from the path I can play it. I decide I need to win fast since every land he draws is 2 more tokens and I'm at 5. So I bounce Ivory Giant knowing full well if he plays it again I lose that turn. But he's 2 mana away from casting it for real and if he does that he isn't enlisting tokens.

My opponent comments that that was the best possible card I could have. I don't know anything about the set and tell him that, but I take his word for it since it seemed pretty hot. He does nothing. I draw Glimmervoid and swing with my team except my 1/2. He takes 10 down to 6. He plays Amrou Scout on his turn. I draw island, swing with the same guys, and he takes 2 down to 4 while chumping with both tokens. He has Bound in Silence for snipe. I draw another island and swing with everyone. He chumps enforcer, uses Otherworldly Journey to save his guy, and falls to 1. I did attack with my 1/2 this time so I might well die if the scout can find 2 more power somewhere. Like, say, a Bonesplitter. He doesn't have it, and concedes.

Round 3 - Game 1

I choose to play first and have an opener of I, M, M, Perilous Research, Thirst for Knowledge, Faerie Machinist, and Myr Enforcer. My opponent mulligans to 6 and only has island on turn 1. I draw island and say go. He plays a mountain and a Mogg War Marshal. I draw another island and say go. He pays echo and swings for 2. I thirst into Rift Bolt, Myr Enforcer, and island and decide to pitch research and island. I draw Aethersnipe on my turn and play Machinist who finds Aether Vial. He has War-Spike Changeling. I draw Epochrasite and play it while rift bolting his 3/3. I swing for 2 in the air. His turn is Reach Through Mists splicing on Dampen Thought and Glacial Ray killing my machinist. Uh-oh. I draw mountain and play vial and enforcer. I think I probably should have held onto vial in case I draw a second thirst. He has no play on his turn. I draw another Myr Enforcer and swing for 5. He double chumps the enforcer, but then using a second Reach Through Mists splicing Dampen Thought and Glacial Ray to finish it off. I'm down to 15 cards in my deck. His turn is an island and go. I play snipe on his remaining goblin token and swing for the fences but my opponent casts Glacial Ray splicing Dampen Thought and Dampen Thought and I'm down to 6 cards in my deck with him having 2 dampens in hand. I make him cast them before conceding in case he shows me more info and he does, by splicing Horobi's Whisper on as well despite not having a swamp.

Round 3 - Game 2

I choose to play first again and have an opener of I, I, I, M, M, Arcbound Stinger, Shrapnel Blast. Probably too slow, but I keep. He has no play on turn 1. I draw Relic of Pregenitus and play stinger. He has no play on turn 2. I draw Thirst for Knowledge and swing for 1. He has no play on turn 3. I thirst into swamp, Errant Ephemeron, and Fiery Fall and pitch the relic. Note I sided in the swamp, fall, and Raven's Crime in the hopes of stopping the dampen engine. I then draw mountain on my turn, suspect ephemeron, and swing for 1. He has a Latchkey Faerie. I draw Thirst for Knowledge and cast it mainphase finding Tribal Flames, Etherium Sculptor, and Frogmite. I decide to pitch froggie instead of 2 lands and play the sculptor. He has no play on turn 5 but land. I draw Logic Knot and swing with just the sculptor. He declines the trade. I then say go. His turn 6 is land and nothing else. I draw Raven's Crime, swing for 2, and go to work on his hand. He ditches island. End of turn he flashes out Pestermite and then swings in for 5. I was trying to not get milled and he's going to kill me with flyers! He prowls out a second Latchkey Faerie and I decide to counter it to deny him the card and to keep the flyers under control. Ephemeron comes into play but he counters it himself with Cryptic Command for a card draw. I draw Blinkmoth Nexus, pitch a mountain to crime him again (pitching Dampen Thought), and swing for just 1. I play blinky and say go. He 7 mana's out an Errant Ephemeron which I hit with Fiery Fall. I draw Glimmervoid and cash that in for a crime (Reach Through Mists). I finally cast flames on his 3/1 flyer (probably should have done that 5 turns ago) and swing for 2. His turn is Stingscourger on my stinger. I draw mountain, cash that in for a crime on his last card in hand. He casts it in response. It was Dampen Thought. So I've saved myself from being milled for 16 by siding in that crime. I have 15 cards in my deck. I replay stinger and swing with my 1/2 into his 2/1 and 2/2. He falls for my trap by blocking with his 2/2. I shrapnel blast his 2/1 saccing my stinger which puts the +1/+1 counter on my 1/2 right away.

His board is empty except land, he has no cards in hand, and he's at 12. I have a 2/3 and a blinky, no cards in hand, and 15 life. He does nothing on his turn. I draw Aethersnipe but have nothing of note to bounce so I just swing for 3. Maybe I should have swung for 2 and played my 4/4? He does nothing on his turn. I draw island and crime him, getting a mountain. I swing for 3. He does nothing again. I draw Jhoira. Huh, guess I forgot to side her out. Oh well, she's a body at least. Swing for 3 and play her. He plays Reach Through Mists and says go. I draw island and cash it in for a crime hitting mountain. He's at 3 and I swing for 5. He dies.

Round 3 - Game 3 (sided out Jhoira again for something)

He's on the play. My hand is I, I, M, Tribal Flames, Grapeshot, Shrapnel Blast, and Raven's Crime. I think I brought in the grapeshot to deal with all his 1 toughness dudes. I keep since I have my crime. Now I just need some black manas! He does nothing and I draw mountain. His turn 2 is suspend Errant Ephemeron. I am jealous, so I draw mine on my turn and suspend it back. He has Countryside Crusher on his turn which is very scary. I wish I had an artifact to sac to blast him! He had spent a lot of time sideboarding so I'm now worried he's sided out of dampen thought and the stupid crime in my hand won't do anything useful. I draw island on my turn and have no play. His turn reveals Hammerheim Deadeye and then he plays Fury Charm on his ephemeron which brings it out right now. He swings for 7, I'm at 13 and very scared of dying. I draw Arcbound Stinger and play it leaving 2 mana up. My plan is to chump block and sac it to kill something. My opponent then decides he doesn't like winning and plays his deadeye before attacking. No chumping for me! Unfortunately for him the trigger on that guy is not optional. So I sac my flyer to shrapnel blast his giant. He kills his own flyer with his second giant. And he doesn't have mana to pay the echo, so he loses that guy too. I draw mountain and say go. He has stalled on 4 land but suspends another ephemeron. I draw Etherium Sculptor and play it. My ephemeron also arrives this turn and I punch him down to 16. He bounces my ephemeron with Stingscourger. I am sad. I held back a land last turn in case I needed to discard it to crime or thirst or consideration, but now I can't hard cast ephemeron right away if I draw a 7th land. On my turn I draw an island. So I play a land and say go. He echoes his guy and swings for 2. I draw Frogmite, play my 4/4 flyer again, and swing for 1. He has a 5th land and plays Cold-Eyed Selkie. I know he has a 3/1 flying rogue in his hand from his 2nd crusher reveal so I really don't want to let that guy hit me. On my turn I draw Thirst for Knowledge. I play it and draw Faerie Machinist, Arcbound Worker, and Rift Bolt. I pitch froggie, play the worker, suspend the rift bolt, and grapeshot away his board. I swing for 5 putting him at 10 and say go. His ephemeron comes into play swinging which knocks me to 7 and he has no play. I bolt his flyer and follow up with tribal flames to kill it off. I draw another thirst. I play machinist which finds Myr Enforcer. He has Pestermite to tap my 4/4. I swing for 2. He attacks back, I still don't want him prowling, so I trade faeries. He has War-Spike Changeling to gum up the ground. I draw Fiery Fall. I cast thirst into island, Epochrasite, and Perilous Research. I pitch crime and island and play epochrasite and enforcer. Then I swing for 4 in the air, knocking him to 4. His turn is Reach Through Mists and Latchkey Faerie. But now he is tapped out so I use fall to kill the faerie and kill him with ephemeron.


Victory! I had no idea what I was doing, and I got screwed by the client to lose the draft, but I did manage to win the tournament which salvages pretty much the entire entry fee. Woo!

Innistrad Draft 2

Typically when I'm going to do a draft write-up I decide before the draft that I'm going to do one. I don't draft any differently than I normally would but the idea is to not cherry pick drafts that make me look good or which seem interesting. Sometimes drafts are just normal things where I lose in the first round and I want to show them too.

This draft is not one of those. Matt commented on yesterday's draft that he thought the deck was fun and full of powerful cards. At the time he made that comment I was in the middle of another draft that had a deck that was even more fun and had way more powerful cards. It had some really crazy plays so I figured I'd write it up for today. At one point my opponent complained that my first 3 spells were rares and told me to stop playing rares. I told him I still had more to come. (I had 2 more in hand at the time and topdecked another the next turn.)

Buckle up and enjoy the wild ride!

Innistrad Draft 1

Magic Online is running three PTQs for Honolulu this weekend. One Friday, one Saturday, one Sunday. I managed to sleep through the start of the Friday one but I'm going to give the Saturday one a shot. I figured I should play a bit with the interface and such, so I did a draft today. Here's what happened! (This was a 4-3-2-2 draft, for reference.)

FNM Draft 1

Yesterday I headed out to the first FNM of the new Planeswalker Points season. I went to 401 Games which holds a draft for their FNM. At first I worried I'd made a mistake since the room was looking like it was going to be both crowded and sweltering again but once FNM started they kicked all the Yugioh dudes out of the room. Coupled with the extra air conditioner they installed it actually worked out ok.

They ended up getting 25 people and from what I gather that number was not what one would call massively increased. I talked to my opponents after the matches and it seemed like no one really understood the new system or even cared. There was a story about how some dude who used to sit on his rating had come out of the woodwork to play this week; I have to assume it was about me.

At any rate, 25 people meant 2 tables of 8 and a table of 9. I was in the 9, and in fact was stuck out on the end of the table which made for a lot of forced movement when people were getting out for land.

My first pack had 3 realistic choices in it. Jace's archivist which can be a certifiable bomb, gideon's lawkeeper which is an excellent one drop, and chandra's outrage which is a great burn spell. I've become convinced that red is the best colour in M12 and I also believe chandra's outrage is by far the best common in the set. If you manage to hit a 1 drop, a 2 drop, a 3 drop, and then burn out their blocker on turn 4 with an outrage you're pretty much guaranteed to win. It kills pretty much every card in the format too, missing only a kicked Al Gore and the green basilisk at common. My second pack didn't really have anything good in red, sadly. I want to play mono if I can so I took a very questionable card, goblin bangchucker. There was a discussion about that card on Matt V's Facebook wall a couple weeks ago and someone suggested it wasn't bad if you had some toughness boosting enchantments. I decided to try it out, especially since it was going to let me cut red hard. The next guy might think bangchucker is good and that red is open if I pass it! Third pick the only red card was a goblin warpaint. The very card I need to get the bangchucker running! Fourth pick there were no red cards at all. On the plus side there was a thran golem who likes that I'm playing warpaint...

The next few packs had no red cards either. I took a griffin rider to open up a second colour. Then I got an auramancer who fits into my warpaint plan... I rounded out pack one with a goblin anarchist, a  fiery hellhound and 2 more griffin riders. So my deck after pack one is a good removal spell, a couple ok red dorks, and a bunch of very questionable cards.

Pack 2 the only red card of note is a shock. Shock is ok, but there was also a serra angel and I decided I wasn't going to get any red cards in pack 3 so mono was right out and serra is pretty sweet. The next pack along had a chandra's phoenix and an overrun. I might have taken overrun over phoenix if I could throw my white away but with the serra I figured to stick to my guns and take the phoenix. The rest of the packs in pack 2 provided only a roc egg for playable white cards. On the plus side the heavy cutting of red in pack 1 worked out as I got hooked up. I got all 3 of the bloodthirst dudes (berserker, ogre, Al Gore) along with a 7th pick chandra's outrage, a slaughter cry, an act of treason and a fling. I also got a second warpaint.

Going into pack 3 I have a serra, an auramancer, and 3 griffin riders. Those guys are not playable with my 0 griffins! My opener has no decent red cards at all but it does have a stormfront pegasus. It isn't a griffin but it does beat down nicely so I run with it. I get a goblin fireslinger pick 2 and a crimson mage 4th or so. No other red cards at all. The white cards, on the other hand, weren't stopping. I got 2 more stormfront pegasus, 2 assault griffin, and a griffin sentinel. I also got a divine favor at some point to go with the bangchucker plan.

As I was building my deck it became clear that I had way more cards than I needed. I could easily cut out either the griffin rider plan or the bangchucker plan. Bangchucker seems terrible and I decided 3 griffins would be enough, so this is what I ended up with...

9 mountain
8 plains
1 goblin fireslinger
1 goblin arsonist
3 griffin rider
3 stormfront pegasus
1 crimson mage
1 stormfront berserker
1 roc egg
1 chandra's phoenix
1 griffin sentinel
1 blood ogre
2 assault griffin
1 gorehorn minotaur
1 serra angel
1 fling
1 act of treason
1 slaughter cry
2 chandra's outrage

I decided my deck was super aggressive flyer beatdown and that roc egg would make for a decent blocker in a race situation and played it over an 18th land. My deck is soooo cheap that 18 lands seemed really excessive. Maybe I should have gone down to 16 even but the colour mix was a little rough and I wanted to be able to hit outrage for sure.

Round One

My opponent is the guy drafting to my right. He is unsurprisingly playing red and is also playing black. We do a bunch of early trading in game 1 and when the smoke clears he has a fireslinger, a scepter of empires and 8 land. I have only 5 land and therefore have 3 more spells which happen to be dudes which are beating him down faster than his pingers can beat me down.

I decide red/black is likely to have enough removal to deal with the griffin riders and side them out. I bring in a warpaint, an auramancer, and a divine favor for them. Game 2 goes similarly to game 1. Some early trades and eventually I end up with a divine favored, blood thirsted berserker getting in for 4 a turn.

Round Two

My opponent this round is relatively new to Magic and hadn't hit the point in learning strategy to realize that you should save your instants for when they're best. He had a jade mage and would make tokens in his main phase, for example. He cast a turn to frog at one point for no game effect. (I think he thought it was a permanent change.) He won the first round with a deck sporting the green and blue mages, frost titan, and two overruns! I got very fast draws against him and really just ran him over with an army of 4/4 flyers in both games as my griffin riders got turned on.

Round Three

I don't remember much about this match. I know chandra's phoenix came home for a lot of damage and got recurred when I burned a creature with chandra's outrage. My opponent was not playing real removal so I did not side out my griffin riders. (He was playing pacifism, and in game 1 he pacified a griffin and then got beaten up by some griffin riders.) I won in two games.

Round Four

Game 1 I'm on the play and start with a pegasus on turn 2. He plays a looter. I beat for 2 and play a griffin rider. He loots and plays an aether adept, bouncing my pegasus. I draw and my hand is now another griffin rider, the pegasus, a slaughter cry, and a stormblood berserker. For some reason I decide to take a risk and beat in with my rider. The plan being if he blocks with his 2/2 I'll be able to kill it with slaughter cry and if he doesn't I get to play a 3/3 and a 2/1. He blocks, I use slaughter cry, and say go. He then beats with the looter and plays Al Gore. I rip an assault griffin and get in with my newly beefed up rider for 4. He cracks back for 5 and plays a belltower sphinx. This shuts down my 4/4 and is too big for my outrage if I ever draw it. I play my 2-drops and say go. He swings with Al Gore. If he has a removal spell I have no good blocks. But I can't afford to just take it over and over and have nothing in my hand or even in my deck to deal with it. I decided to double block with my two 4/4s. He has shock for the assault griffin. I draw and decide to scoop rather than prolong the agony.

If I don't attack on turn 4 and instead just play out a 2/1 and a second griffin rider then I think I win for sure. He can't attack for free with the looter so he can't get out Al Gore. (I think I trade my pegasus for the adept if it attacks, I definitely trade a rider for looter if it does.) I'll keep slaughter cry in hand to use on his 2/5 flyer as well. I didn't know I was going to rip a griffin, but when I did I definitely blow him out if it turns on a pair of 4/4s on turn 5.

He has removal, so I take out the riders. I decide that the looter is too big a problem and bring in the bangchuckers too. I go all the way and bring in 2 warpaint, 1 divine favor, 1 auramancer, 1 bangchucker, 1 thran golem. I take out the three griffin riders, the roc egg, the slaughter cry, and a mountain. Go big or go home!

Game 2 he has a fast start and is beating me down. I have my fireslinger which is slowly whittling him away and also have a pegasus. He plays the 2/5 on turn 5 which is again going to shut me down. On turn 6 he attacks with it, putting me down to almost dead, and plays a chasm drake. Unfortunately for him he is only at 12 and that isn't enough to deal with my 1/1 and my 2/1. End of turn I outrage the new creature, knocking him to 10. I pick him to 9. I warpaint up the pegasus and hit him down to 5. I fling the pegasus at him to 1. And then ping with the fireslinger for the last point.

Game 3 I stall on lands which is pretty bad for me since I also draw a lot of my expensive stuff. The only thing keeping me alive is my griffin sentinel enchanted with warpaint. He has his 2/5 flyer again along with a 2/4 ground dude so we're actually playing a long game without much attacking. I do have fireslinger again who is slowly killing my opponent. He eventually plays out TWO solemn simulacrums and then a jace's archivist. I'm still stuck on 3 land with a full hand so the archivist is probably going to end the game in his favour... But I draw a 2nd mountain on my turn and kill it with an outrage. He ends up bouncing my griffin to get rid of the warpaint but I get my serra out and draw my second warpaint. That's enough to attack through the 2/5 flyer and I have fling to finish it but I'm worried his last card is a counterspell so I just wait and attack for the win the next turn.

4-0 matches, 8-1 games. My deck worked exactly as I was hoping it would. Play some cheap dudes, beat my opponent up, use outrage to blow the game out. Prizes ended up being store credit divided evenly among anyone who went 3-1 or better so there was no monetary benefit for going 4-0. I did get more planeswalker points though! I also got an FNM foil for being 1st overall. Only having 25 people meant 2 participation points so I got a total of 42 points. I wonder if that could possibly be enough... Only being 4 rounds, being small, and not having a top 8 could be too much to overcome...

Magic Nationals 2011 - Day 1

I wasn't 100% on how long it would take for the bus to get to the tournament site, and I wasn't 100% that I had enough cards between Duncan and I for my deck, and I needed to register still, so I built in a ton of extra time into my morning schedule. I set my alarm for 5:30 with the tournament to start at 9. I went to sleep pretty much as soon as I got home from work on Friday so I'd be well rested. 9 and a half hours of sleep apparently wasn't enough as I slept right through the alarm for another hour and a half. 11 hours of sleep definitely put me into the well rested camp, but it did make me worried I wouldn't make it to the site on time.

I ended up calling a cab. I didn't have a number for a cab so I searched on the internet and was told to dial 416-TAXICAB and they'd find a cab for me. Great, I called up and they said they'd send a cab over. I went to wait by the street when two cabs from different companies pulled up beside me. Both men clearly didn't have a great grasp of the English language. They were both yelling at me that they were the ones I called. Neither seemed to know where I was going, though one guy did guess the airport. I don't know if the phone number told me what cab company was coming or not, or if they'd even sent just one cab. It was too early to figure it out so I went with the guy who guessed airport. The taxi fare ended up costing about what my deck did, which is sad. I hope that extra hour of sleep was worth it, body.

I get to the site with an hour to spare and run into Duncan in the lobby. Apparently he's staying in the hotel despite living in Toronto. In retrospect taking the bus out and staying in the hotel is probably cheaper than taking the cab multiple times and it certainly allows for more sleep so I may want to consider doing so in the future. At any rate, he'll have my cards down in the site in half an hour. I head over that way to register.

When I get to the registration desk I'm greeted by the distinctive hairstyle of Sleep Yoda to my Sleep Skywalker - Josh Bennett. I sneak up and say boo, he is surprised that I don't have a moustache. Clearly Josh needs to come to Toronto more often since I haven't had a moustache in 9 months. We chat a bit, he asks if I'm feeling confident. I tell him I tentatively cancelled my D&D session on Sunday and actually did some drafts beforehand which about as confident as I can get.

Duncan brings in the cards and everything is there. I sleeve up, write a decklist, and have time to burn so I read some Clash of Kings.

I complained about the setup yesterday so I'm going to gloss over that today. Today is for making fun of my Magic playing!

Round 1 I get deck-checked right off the hop. The match to my right is Valakut vs Valakut. To my left is Valakut vs Cawblade. My deck can't beat Valakut. On the one hand it's good that 3 of the Valakut decks in the field are playing not-me right now. On the other hand maybe Valakut is going to be popular at Nationals and I'm boned. I passed the deck check (yay!) as does my opponent (boo!) and we're off. It turns out my opponent is also playing Valakut. (For those who don't know, Valakut is essentially a combo deck. The namesake card turns mountains into lightning bolts if you have enough of them, and you power both the Valakuts and the mountains out with Primeval Titan. The deck plays a lot of land searchers too like rampant growth. Elves can't win because they side in cheap sweepers and are just a more consistent fast clock.)

I win game 1 since I don't think he was maindecking sweepers and I had a decent draw. Game 2 he ramps up to 7 mana but doesn't cast anything. Clearly he kept a hand with no gas for some reason (probably he had some removal to slow me down) but I had some vengevines and Ezuris and have him on the ropes. Another turn and he's dead. He says something about needing a great topdeck, draws a card, and plays avatar of zendikar which is pretty much a 5/5 dude and 6 3/4 dudes in one card. Suddenly he's not nearly so dead. Two swings later I am, though. I misblock on the first one to guarantee I die to the second one but I don't think I had any possible outs one way or the other and was certainly dead in 3 swings no matter what.

Game 3 is also kinda close but he has a primeval titan on turn 5 which puts the game away. I didn't draw a torpor orb in either games 2 or 3. Also, I mulliganed every game, and twice in game 3.


Round 2 I'm paired up against a straight UR splinter twin deck. He kills me on turn 4 in game 1. I mulligan a mediocre but playable hand in game 2 trying to get a torpor orb. I keep a 6 card hand without one that at least has a mana elf, which he countered with mental misstep (2 life, 0 mana: counter a 1 drop). I end up topdecking 3 torpor orbs in 4 turns. I also get out 2 archdruids and an elf and he pyroclasms for no game effect (they're all 3/3). He scoops when the 3rd orb hits play. Game 3 my 7 card hand has 3 torpor orbs and 0 forests. I'm forced to mulligan, and then again, and don't get a torpor orb. I do actually put out some decent pressure with a fauna shaman and some vengevines and he's dead in a turn. So he busts out an exarch to stunt some of the damage and says he needs to topdeck a twin here to win. He topdecks a twin. He also has a counter for my nature's claim and I am dead. Twin is actually a decent matchup I think, but not when you mulligan 4 times and never draw an orb.

So I'm 0-2, with 8 mulligans thus far. I consider just dropping and leaving but I do like to draft and going 0-2 pretty much guarantees my rating will fail to qualify me in the future. I keep going.


Round 3 I play a guy from New Brunswick who comments, after I roll a 19 to go first, that while he wasn't sure before he is sure now. I must be Ben Page's brother. Once upon a time Jamie was my brother. My opponent is Jeremie Vienneau and is playing UB control. Game 1 he doesn't have a sweeper and I blow him up good. Game 2 he casts Black Sun's Zenith 5 times and gains a lot of life with Wurmcoil Engine. (BBX - Put X -1/-1 counters on all creatures and then shuffle the spell back into your deck.) This includes him using it on turn 3 to kill 3 of my elves. I had chosen to not pump up my joraga treespeaker since I was worried about dismember setting me back a turn. Sigh. Game 3 he doesn't have an early zenith and I kill him on turn 5.

I'm now 1-2. I run into my first round opponent in the bathroom and he says he's also 1-2 now. As if my tiebreakers weren't bad enough! And then my draft pod contains only 7 people, and includes the people at 0-2-1. As foreshadowing I will get paired down in both rounds 4 and 5 to these people. So my tiebreakers will be really, really bad. I pretty much had to run the table from 0-2 to make top 8.

Anyway, draft 1. My opening pack had no bombs and had 3 potential picks in my mind. Sacred Wolf, Griffin Sentinel, or Chandra's Outrage. I went with the removal. I get passed a pack with a Serra Angel and another Chandra's Outrage. Ordinarily I probably would have taken the Serra but I was operating on plan mono colour if I could. Outrage is really, really good since it kills almost any blocker and gets some damage in to the dome as well. And it kills Serra. Red then dries up in a real hurry. I manage to table a fiery hellhound (I think most people will really underrate him. I think he's awesome!) and my on colour picks after pack 1 are:

2 chandra's outrage
2 goblin arsonist
1 fling
1 fiery hellhound

Yeah, only 6 red cards. Not good enough. I also have griffin sentinel (which tabled from my first pack!), swftfoot boots, and a bunch of questionably playable cards. (zombie infestation, rites of flourishing, negate, hideous visage, buried ruin, celestial purge)

In pack 2 I open a fireball. Huzzah! I'd noticed in pack 1 that both white and green seemed to be open but that blue and black were pretty non-existent. As was red, really, but I'm stubborn. The red cards I got from pack 2 were:

1 reverbate
1 fireball
1 bonebreaker giant (which I long-ranged to 13th pick somehow)
1 lava axe
1 slaughter cry
1 act of treason
1 goblin arsonist

I also had manic vandal and combust for my sideboard. The other cards were rusted sentinel, gladecover scout, wall of torches, taste of blood, and guardian's pledge.

I still have my eye on being mono red. I have a couple ok artifacts (boots and sentinel) that I can play and I'm not against running wall of torches either. I open my 3rd pack and scan for the best red card. It turns out to not exist. My 3rd pack actually has no red cards at all. It doesn't really have what I'd call playable cards even. I'm left deciding what to hate draft from the two decent cards in the pack: mana leak or arachnus web. I take the web.

Right passes me a Chandra's Phoenix which is pretty insane in my deck with all the domey burn spells. Pack 3 brings with it a real choice... My deck doesn't have a two drop yet, and there's a red mage. There's also an arachnus spinner. 5/7 reach for 6 is pretty ok on its own. The fact that it can search out a pseudo-removal spell in arachnus web is pretty insane. And I just so happened to have hate-drafted one of those with my first pick. I decided that since red was dry in pack 1, and since green was wide open in pack 1, that my mono deck wasn't going to get there. So I should take my bomb. Cards that made my deck from pack 3 after that were:

2 act of treason
1 chandra's phoenix
1 fiery hellhound
1 runeclaw bear
1 titanic growth
1 greater basilisk
1 arachnus spinner
1 cudgel troll
1 arachnus web

The unplayed cards from this pack were wall of torches, manalith, pride guardian, and stave off.

I decided to actually run the fork in my deck. I had 10 spells to fork with it and some of them would be pretty sweet to fork. (Fireball, lava axe, and fling in particular.) I showed the deck to Josh after I'd built it and he thought it looked pretty bad. In particular he held his nose when looking at my 3 act of treasons but I actually thought they were pretty key to the deck. I was all about beating with cheap dudes (though I didn't have very many with 3 1-drops and only 1 2-drop) and then going to the dome. Act of treason goes to the dome with the best of them!


Round 4 I get paired down. I lose game 1 due to drawing lots of acts of treason but no fling or pressure. I do axe him down to 9 but he has a fair amount of life gain in his deck and recovers. (2/1 lifelink dude and drain life in a UB deck) He's playing 42 cards including 2 mind unbounds! I side out 2 of the act of treasons (he had a crown of empires so I bring in the vandal and he's playing blue so I bring in combust). I blow him out in both games 2 and 3, taking 4 damage total between the two games.

Round 5 I get paired down. I don't remember a lot about the games other than I blow him up with cheap dudes and burn. He says after the match that if he'd realized he'd been paired up he would have just scooped which was nice but misguided of him. There's no sense helping me out at the expense of someone else.

Round 6 I don't get paired down! Game 1 features me with 2 goblin arsonists and a mitt full of spells. I get him down to 12 with arsonist swings and he casts a 2/5 flyer. I'm at 16 at this point, but have since burned away whatever was hitting me. I have fork, titanic growth, lava axe, and slaughter cry in hand. And 4 land in play, 2 of each type. I decide to go for it, and swing. He blocks one and I growth+fork the other, hitting him for 9 with the unblocked guy and 1 with the blocked guy, knocking him to 2. He does something to gain some life (sorin's thirst I think, killing my dude). I draw a land and axe him out. Game 2 features Chandra's Phoenix beating him down for a while. He gets low and he decides to thirst it to gain some life. Instead I fling it at him. This prevents him from gaining 2, does 2 itself, and actually gets me the phoenix back into my hand. My hand is full of gas, I'm still at 20, and I topdeck axe to kill him a turn earlier.

My 'terrible' draft deck went 3-0 in matches, 6-1 in games. I only had 1 2-drop but I drew 'da bears' an awful lot of the time and it was very key. I won one game with Arachnus Spider pulling out a web but I forget which one. Act of Treason pounded through a lot of damage as I'd hoped it would and I was pretty happy with the result.


Off to the second draft. I'd recovered to 4-2 but I didn't think any of my opponents were giving me above minimum breakers. (Turns out they were at 41.66% which was more than 5% behind the next worst 4-2.)

First pack, first pick... Inferno Titan. Giddy. Up. I shift into mono-red gear again, though the wheels very quickly come off this time. Here are my red cards after pack 1:

1 inferno titan
1 combust
1 fling
1 reverbate
1 wall of torches

I did not see an actual good red card after my opening pack. I was getting cut, hard, and it was obvious what was going on. But what was I going to do about it? I started taking good cards when I could, but cards in other colours weren't very good either. Here's the rest of my pack 1:

1 crown of empires (good for staying alive to titan)
1 manalith (good with whatever colours I end up playing)
1 wurm's tooth
1 trollhide
1 lifelink
1 guardian's pledge
1 celestial purge
1 auramancer
1 spirit mantle

Now, spirit mantle is actually pretty good and my plan was to probably go RW. My hope was that pack 2 would yield an ungodly amount of red cards since I'd passed pretty much nothing playable the entire pack after the first one and that I'd go white in pack 3.

Pack 2 my choices are between shock and druidic mantle. Shock is pretty good but I figure the mantle will help control the game long enough to get the titan out. I am frankly astonished by how little red comes my way in pack 2. My red cards from this pack are:

1 shock
1 volcanic dragon
1 fiery hellhound
1 goblin fireslinger
1 fling
1 manic vandal

My other cards are:

1 druidic satchel
1 llanowar elf
1 runeclaw bear
1 stampeding rhino
1 vastwood gorger
1 naturalize
1 flight
1 demon's horn

Green had looked pretty open in pack 1 (I didn't take any of it, but I passed a lot of it) and it was coming back in pack 2 as well. White was not, so the couple of good white cards I had in pack 1 didn't look like they were going anywhere. So I went into green when there were no red cards.

Pack 3 was pretty bad for red. My first pick was a crimson mage which is pretty hot but it died out very quickly. The red cards:

1 crimson mage
1 goblin war paint
1 act of treason

Yeah. Sweet. The rest:

2 rampant growth
1 lurking crocodile
1 sacred wolf
1 garruk's companion
1 cudgel troll
1 giant spider
1 greater basilisk
1 fog
1 jace's erasure
1 disentomb


I had some rough choices in the building. I eventually decided to cut out the cute spells this time and didn't play with fork, fling, or act of treason. I did maindeck combust this time. I decided that 70% of the possible two colour decks can get hit by it and since I was playing RG (which can't get hit by it) I'd have pretty good odds of having it be live. It was live all 3 rounds last draft, though I started it on the bench there. My only removal was shock so I figured it was worth the risk. Possibly I should have run the flings to have more removal instead.

I ended up playing 17 land along with an elf, 2 rampant growths, the manalith, and the satchel. My goal was to get the mana in play for titan, or to be able to keep activating satchel and crown.


I want to note that over the course of 2 drafts, while trying to play mono-red, I saw exactly one red bloodthirst creature. And I took inferno titan over it. I didn't open or get passed a single other one. Where are you, Al Gore?

Round 7 game 1 featured a turn 1 elf, turn 2 lurking croc against a blue deck. I followed that up with turn 3 cudgel troll (bounced with unsummon). Turn 4 stampeding rhino. Turn 5 volcanic dragon. Yeah, he was dead. Game 2 my hand was fireslinger, rampant growth, volcanic dragon, 4 land. My opponent played out a bunch of cheap stuff and then on his 5th turn activated jace's archivist. By this point I'd had 5 draw steps, all 5 of which were land. And the fireslinger had gotten killed, so I had nothing in play. And now had to discard my 6 drop before I could play it. This gassed up his hand and combined with the dudes he'd already played he beat me down. Game 3 he didn't do a whole lot (I think he stalled on land) and inferno titan put the final nail in his coffin.


I started 0-2 and considered just going home. I'd recovered to 5-2 and felt like I had a pretty decent deck for the next two rounds of draft. So I went home and resolved to come back the next day. Josh told me to bring games so we could play after everything was done. I had a bit of a headache from the endless drone of a room full of people along with just not feeling too happy about the crowds and the smell so I decided to do something mindless when I got home... I booted up Netflix on my Wii and turned on Dude, Where's My Car? It doesn't get more mindless than that! Hilarious movie.

Magic 2012 Draft 3

I wasn't planning on posting this draft so I didn't note any of the game numbers down, but Matt asked for the decklist on Facebook so I figured the best way would be to load up the draft file. As such I don't really have game replays to go over. As a spoiler, I won this draft, and I did so mostly on the back of making creature drops on turns 1, 2, and 3. I didn't actually have many 2 drops but I did draw them an awful lot of the time. I also cast my first pick from pack 2 in practically every game and he was a complete blowout every time. I only drew my first pick from pack 1 once and it turned a game from a sure loss to a win as my opponent had tempo advantage on me and chumpers for my P2P1 dude.

I'm really starting to agree with Sthenno about this format in that focusing on one colour seems strong. Most of the cards are just dorks you trade 1 for 1 anyway, so a second colour tends to not actually add much in terms of power but can screw you out of your pack 3 bombs or just on mana colours. Garruk's Wildspeaker is mediocre in a 2 colour deck but a real beating in mono-green because you'll always cast him on turn 2 if he's in your opener. I had a BG deck that had a black one drop and him in it, along with forest, forest, swamp, but couldn't play them both as a result of the double mana.

Curving out also seems to be really important. Even with this deck the game I lost was when my opponent was on the play and curved out better than I did. (I think Aether Adept was involved. Playing him on turn 3 after having made a 1 and a 2 drop is such a beating.) The problem is there's pretty much no good way to get back from a creature disadvantage. There are no sweepers except wrath. There are no big removal spells that kill 2 dudes. You're pretty much always safe just throwing out more dorks, especially if you have a spell to deal with one big blocker. (Note: Some Planeswalkers and Titans can often deal with multiple dudes in one spell and that's a lot of why they're so overpowered in this format I think.)

At any rate, here's the draft and the deck:

Magic 2012 Draft 2

Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but unless it's not mulliganning properly I'm not sure what it is. So I figured I'd do another draft and see if anyone can point out any glaring flaws...

Magic 2012 Draft 1

I'm back from WBC and Magic Nationals is in less than 2 weeks. While I was gone M12 was released on Magic Online which means it's time to get cracking in terms of getting ready for the draft portion of the event. I played 2 rounds in a prerelease for M12 a few weeks ago and learned more about how much I hate being crammed into a hot, humid room with a bunch of sweaty gamers than I did about the new set. You can sum up pretty much everything I know about drafting M12 in 3 sentences:

• Planeswalkers are awesome
• Green is terrible
• It's a core set so just taking the best card is a good plan

Now, I typically love to draft green even in formats where it is 'terrible' so I'm not going to deliberately avoid green in my testing but it is something I'm keeping in mind. 

I apologize that I haven't come up with a better format to display the cards. I've been meaning to write a slideshow style control that would really clean up the draft summary but when it comes right down to it I'd rather play games than do so. Certainly at this point just getting drafts done and thinking about drafts is way more valuable than screwing around with web code.

Hopefully this works!

Scars of Mirrodin Draft 4

Based on Mark's comment to one of my drafts from last weekend I decided to run an 8-4 draft today with every intention of drafting poison if I could manage it. I used to have a Marsh Viper/Fire Whip deck way back when Weatherlight first came out and have had a soft spot for poison ever since. Here we go...

Scars of Mirrodin Draft 3

I did this 8-4 draft on Sunday as well, immediately after the disaster that was the Ur monstrosity. At Sky's request I doubled the size of all the pictures but they're really not fitting well I don't think. Does anyone know if there's a way to resize the post width on an individual post but not on the entire blog?

Thanks to Matt I can now get around the stupid Magic Online bug which prevented me from replaying some games so I can give more details about all the games even a couple days later. I also commented on my picks themselves.

Scars of Mirrodin Draft 2

There was an online PTQ today which ended up crashing. I wish I wasn't surprised that Wizards still hasn't figured out how to run big tournaments online without crashing. They decided to hand out a lot of free packs to people and hope they wouldn't complain too much, so I went 6-3 and got 9 packs for my efforts. I was unsatisfied and wanted to play more Magic, so I hopped into an 8-4 draft that went a little worse than yesterday's draft...

Scars of Mirrodin Draft 1

I'm going to give something new a try here. Apparently Magic Online now outputs the details of your draft to a text file and a Starcity Games columnist wrote a converter to add images and such. I don't really like the way it looks here, unfortunately, so I may write my own converter or dig further but I figure I'll at least throw this one up for feedback.

I make no claims of being an expert at Magic anymore having played very sporadically for the last few years but I did a few drafts to prepare for Grand Prix Toronto a couple weekends ago so I'm not totally in the dark here.

The page is insanely long, so I'm using a jump.