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Da Monk posted:For those of us who feel a little green this article is very good. Thanks for this, as a novice I found it to be a very good read.
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Dec 29, 2010 17:20
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What do you guys think of Painful Quandary as a p1p1? Is it something that could be considered a bomb, or something that could be passed in favor of powerful removal or uncommons, like Arrest or Skinrender? I ask because a friend of mine thinks it's a windmill slam, whereas I've never seen it used to any great effect in draft games. Thoughts?
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Dec 29, 2010 23:53
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And My Fax! posted:What do you guys think of Painful Quandary as a p1p1? Is it something that could be considered a bomb, or something that could be passed in favor of powerful removal or uncommons, like Arrest or Skinrender? It's great against aggro decks that empty their hands immediately and it works fine in some matchups, but it's basically never going to be P1P1 unless the rest of the pack is made up of the shittiest cards in scars. Every time I've had it played against me I haven't given a poo poo and I've basically been able to discard lands while playing around it, or I've had enchantment removal handy to get rid of it immediately.
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Dec 30, 2010 00:05
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And My Fax! posted:What do you guys think of Painful Quandary as a p1p1? Is it something that could be considered a bomb, or something that could be passed in favor of powerful removal or uncommons, like Arrest or Skinrender? Painful Quandary is unplayable dreck. Here is LSV picking up a 10th pick Quandary (pack 3 of an 8-4 draft) and not playing it, despite having some pretty bad cards and playing black. Vidmaster posted:It's great against aggro decks that empty their hands immediately The last thing you want to play against an aggro deck that empties its hand immediately is a 5-drop that doesn't deal with their threats and doesn't affect the board. Ashenai fucked around with this message at 00:19 on Dec 30, 2010 |
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Dec 30, 2010 00:14
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I once got slammed by an opponent who got two of them out at once. Also, it's a pain if you're already mana-screwed. So no, it's not a very good card. It's not as bad as Dissipation Field, I guess. But Field can sometimes be okay out of the sideboard, once you know you won't have to spend the entire game after dropping it playing around their Bleak Coven Vamps/Ichor Rats/Skinrenders/etc.
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Dec 30, 2010 00:19
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Ashenai posted:The last thing you want to play against an aggro deck that empties its hand immediately is a 5-drop that doesn't deal with their threats and doesn't affect the board. Usually the people playing decks like that aren't very good at my LGS, I've found that people with empty hands usually means I have an easy win. I suppose saying "great" is an overstatement, how about "merely kind of decent if your opponent isn't very good" as opposed to straight up mediocre in all other situations.
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Dec 30, 2010 00:25
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And My Fax! posted:What do you guys think of Painful Quandary as a p1p1? Is it something that could be considered a bomb, or something that could be passed in favor of powerful removal or uncommons, like Arrest or Skinrender? I really like Painful Quandary, but it is an awful P1P1. Non-infect black is weak, and Painful Quandary isn't very splashable. Just about any half-decent artifact that keeps you open would be a better first pick.
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Dec 30, 2010 00:27
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Yeah these are all pretty much my thoughts, I just couldn't verbalize them properly. I'll try to convince him to stop losing drafts with that thing.
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Dec 30, 2010 05:24
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Painful Quandary is more playable in 2HG Sealed (since you're doubling who it targets) but otherwise it's crap.
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Dec 30, 2010 17:14
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you can still make junk decks with bombs! This deck fell flat on its face to B/W glint hawk and than infect (then i got a bye!) Can't decide if I should have gone for infect, but this had the worst P1P1 I've had yet.
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Dec 31, 2010 00:45
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snyprmag posted:you can still make junk decks with bombs! That is probably one of the most unfocused drafts I have ever seen, no wonder you made a junk deck. That's the sort of pile where after drafting I would have gone "what the gently caress did I just do?" and then walked away because I at least got a masticore out of it. You definitely need more of a plan when you're drafting scars.
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Dec 31, 2010 04:28
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Vidmaster posted:That is probably one of the most unfocused drafts I have ever seen, no wonder you made a junk deck. That's the sort of pile where after drafting I would have gone "what the gently caress did I just do?" and then walked away because I at least got a masticore out of it. You definitely need more of a plan when you're drafting scars. i seem to do best drafting red artifacts
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Dec 31, 2010 09:02
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snyprmag posted:I normally 3-0 or 2-1 swisses but i had had no idea where to go with these picks. Don't play swiss, bad players play swiss and you will never get better. With bad players you'll either get passed amazing cards and roll them or be drafting with mixed signals and end up with unfocused poo poo.
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Dec 31, 2010 10:50
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LCQC posted:Don't play swiss, bad players play swiss and you will never get better.  I don't know about you, but I have yet to be at a sanctioned event that isn't swiss.But hey what do I know it's not like I've been top 4 in every scars tournament since the prerelease in my city or anything, I like swiss so I must suck. 
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Dec 31, 2010 12:43
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apparently you know poo poo-all, because they're talking about online, where good players do 8-4 queues? It's not like real-life FNM where you plop down cross the table from Joey Casual and he starts tilting before the die roll on account of your anime sleeves and man-stank
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Dec 31, 2010 13:22
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Yawgmoth posted:
Very clearly talking about online dude. 
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Dec 31, 2010 13:28
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LCQC posted:Don't play swiss, bad players play swiss and you will never get better. With bad players you'll either get passed amazing cards and roll them or be drafting with mixed signals and end up with unfocused poo poo. This is often true, but getting eliminated makes me feel like I'm pissing money away without even getting much time to enjoy playing. Also, you can still improve your playing skill, even if Swiss queues aren't particularly instructive about drafting.
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Dec 31, 2010 14:56
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http://www.channelfireball.com/articles/channel-tomm-scars-of-mirrodin-draft-1/ This guy, Tom Martell, lost 49 straight SOM drafts. They were probably all 8-4s and if I had a streak close to that I would probably quit magic forever. He is a much better player than I am and he ran that badly. Maybe something is wrong with Scars? I switched to the swiss queues because I go tired of losing first round to some colorless bomb (wurmcoil, masticore, battlesphere, dragon, engine) or infect bomb (hand of the praetors, skittles, plague stinger + axe)
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Dec 31, 2010 15:24
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Depending on when you play, you can end up against scrubs as bad as any Swiss queue in 8-4s. You realize this when you get a fifth-pick Sunblast Angel in your 8-4.
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Dec 31, 2010 17:24
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LCQC posted:Don't play swiss, bad players play swiss and you will never get better. With bad players you'll either get passed amazing cards and roll them or be drafting with mixed signals and end up with unfocused poo poo.  The argument that Swiss Queues are bad for you is just stupid. Unless you are training specifically for a high-level event, it's pointless to dive into the 8-4 queues unless you are willing to throw your cash away. You're going to lose money on MTGO no matter what you do, so I personally want to get the most fun out of the game for the least cost. That makes the Swiss much more appealing than the 8-4 because at least you get three rounds of entertainment and a higher average prize total. As as it has been said before, the 8-4's aren't a reliable source of challenging opponents either.
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Dec 31, 2010 20:02
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Disclaimer: When it comes to online I get a little Karnegally, I want to win dammit.
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Dec 31, 2010 22:51
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Kind of off topic but I want to share my top deck story from my SoM draft the other day. Dude has me crippled. I have no cards in my hand, 4 swamps, 2 forests, and a lone bladed pinions on board. Opponent has at least five creatures on board, one of which is a wall of tanglecord. Sensing my defeat, he attacks with all creatures, leaving me with one life. He also, foolishly is tapped out by playing more creatures. Earlier in the game I had given him 8 poison counters. Top decked a Blackcleave Goblin, played it, attached Pinions, he is tapped out so can't activate the Tanglecords ability. Swung for two poison counters. Moral to the story, now I like Blackcleave in a Poison draft because nobody protects against the possibility.
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Jan 1, 2011 02:35
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I've seen enough games decided by Blackcleave Goblin that I'll usually hedge against it when victory seems otherwise certain. No one wants to play him, but he still makes the cut in plenty of poison decks that need all the infect creatures they can get. Usually that's at the tables where infect was overdrafted, which seems to be every table where I decided to give it a shot, of course.
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Jan 1, 2011 03:07
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I don't remember having too many Infect decks where I had the luxury of not running Blackcleave. Infect creatures are few and precious, and yeah it's the worst one after Vector Asp, but unless it's been underdrafted as hell, you really want to run every Infect creature you can get your hands on.
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Jan 1, 2011 03:20
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MizuZero posted:apparently you know poo poo-all, because they're talking about online, where good players do 8-4 queues? It's not like real-life FNM where you plop down cross the table from Joey Casual and he starts tilting before the die roll on account of your anime sleeves and man-stank  Go eat a dick.
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Jan 1, 2011 12:28
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LCQC posted:Disclaimer: When it comes to online I get a little Karnegally, I want to win dammit. That's fine. There's nothing wrong with the statement at its base. I just refer everyone again to the Limited Resources about managing your bankroll (they even talk about if you are going to be drafting at an extremely high level for an event then you should be in the 8-4 queues). Personally, I'm not willing to put aside the money to be able to comfortably run 8-4s for a long time.
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Jan 1, 2011 12:36
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Pinwiz11 posted:That's fine. There's nothing wrong with the statement at its base. I just refer everyone again to the Limited Resources about managing your bankroll (they even talk about if you are going to be drafting at an extremely high level for an event then you should be in the 8-4 queues). Personally, I'm not willing to put aside the money to be able to comfortably run 8-4s for a long time. Yeah, they something like you should be fine with running bad 19 times in row. So with 8-4's you should be willing to "give up" $280. (lose in 1st or second round 20 times) But with swiss you only have to "risk" $94 (lose 20 swiss matches in a row). You are going to lose money either way, but the lower variance on the swiss queues is nice.
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Jan 1, 2011 16:37
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Yawgmoth posted:Yeah you sure showed me, clearly I should use my loving omniscience to know when someone is talking about online versus RL when they use the same terms across the board. I think you just need to take a step back and think before you post. It was very clear in context what swiss was referring to. For magic players, I mean. 
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Jan 2, 2011 04:30
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Played a store draft with 12 man pods, got really weird signals and ended up playing RG metalcraft/barrage ogre splashing Necrogen Scudder with Glimmerpoint Stag & other white defensive cards in the sideboard. Game 1 I knew I was punting because I was mostly-artifact metalcraft and Tel Jihad Fallen is basically the nuts vs. my entire deck. Game 2 & 3 I sideboarded most of my non-removal red (barrage ogre + fodder) for my decent white cards like auriok replica and loxodon wayfayer and all but one of my mountains and the swamp for plains. I don't think I was ever behind in the match after that. Punting the infect matchup game 1 and dominating game 2 & 3 - a pretty decent play
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Jan 2, 2011 19:28
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Hey MTG Limited thread! You guys are awesome, it's fun reading all the different stuff that's out these days, and it's made me want to get back into magic (on a very small, relatively inexpensive level). I've never played in an officially sanctioned tournament, and have really not played competitively beyond just my casual "whatever we had laying around" decks with friends about 10 years ago. I found about 8 decks from 2007ish when I taught my younger brother to play, and so have been using those to re-orient myself with how to play magic. The thing is, now I want to try a draft for the first time. I've found a game shop nearby that does Friday Night Magic drafts for $12, but I have quite literally no idea what to do or how to act. I've read a bit on the new SoM decks and a slight bit about draft strategy, which is fine, but can someone give me some pointers or direct me to a resource that gives some info? I found the rules for tournaments on the MTG web site, but I was hoping for more personal experiences. Anybody want to give me some pointers? 
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Jan 5, 2011 00:20
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Unfortunately the best way to learn is probably just to dive in balls first and give it a shot and keep at it until you're good at it. You may want to take a look at the full Scars of Mirrodin Visual Spoiler, paying special attention to the Uncommons and (especially) the Commons. Obviously you won't get many chances at Rares, so its not really essential to know them, but it's a good idea to know what the good rares are. There's also BREAD, which is the "general baseline" as to how good a card is and whether or not it goes in your deck. It stands for: (with Scars of Mirrodin Examples) Bombs: Cards that win you the game when they hit the table and aren't dealt with (and sometimes, even if they do deal with it!). Wurmcoil Engine, Hoard-Smelter Dragon, Steel Hellkite, Carnifex Demon Removal: Cards that deal with other cards. Arc Trail, Arrest, Slice in Twain Evasion: Cards with some sort of evasive ability on them. Sky-Eel School, Plague Stinger, Kemba's Skyguard Aggresive: Cards that are aggressively costed for their mana costs. Cystbearer Dregs/defensive/bad cards: Relic Putrescence, Whitesun's Passage Keep in mind, this is only a guide line. Especially in expert sets like Scars of Mirrodin very often your pick order should be influenced by something outside of just BREAD. Your deck should have some sort of cohesive theme to it, so make sure you keep that in mind. Also the fact that I put Kemba Skyguard up so high seems kinda weird. There are two major "themes" in Scars of Mirrodin, which are Metalcraft and Infect. Drafting those should be relatively easy. Metalcraft just wants all the good metalcraft cards, Chrome Steed being one of the more important cards in that deck I think. Probably going to be W/R or some other variation on W and another color, and you probably want like 15 artifacts if you're going to go heavy into metalcraft. Good artifacts are always a plus obviously, stuff like Trigons and Spellbombs are always good. You want to keep tho colored cards low, so they should be stuff like removal or stuff that supports artifacts (Myrsmith owns in this deck, seriously that poo poo owns) Infect is easy to draft, just take the card that says Infect, and anything that boosts power. Will probably be G/B although I guess you could try for something weird like G/U with proliferate or B/R with Red for removal. However, Infect is pretty shallow, and if one of the guys near you is in infect you may get cut off. You want minimum 12 infect guys. Darksteel Axe, Trigon of Rage, and Untamed Might are all also quite good in this deck. Infect is kinda dumb and easy to draft because you can almost follow a pick order for the Common/Uncommon Infect creatures. It goes something like Plague Stinger, Cystbearer, Tangle Angler, Corpse Cur, Ichorclaw Myr, Ichor Rats, Necropede, Tel-Jilad Fallen, Contagious Nim, Blight Mamba, Blackcleave Goblin, Vector Asp People may disagree with me about this order but I just typed it up really quickly without really thinking about it. It doesn't really matter though since infect is so shallow you more often than not won't even have more than one valid pick in every pack. There are some other viable decks. R/W Equipement with Sunspear Shikari and Goblin Gavaleer is definietly a deck, as is U/X Control-until-you-draw-a-bomb-or-scrapdiver-serpent is good too, just remember to pick a theme and stick to it. Committing is definietly important. You don't want to go balls deep into infect and then switch because half your deck will be doing damage in a different way and then your deck will just suck. EDIT: Channelfireball.com is a pretty good resource for draft videos too. I like watching Luis-Scott Vargas's draft videos, back when I started drafting about half a year ago he really improved my ROE drafting by quite a bit. ChewyLSB fucked around with this message at 01:00 on Jan 5, 2011 |
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Jan 5, 2011 00:57
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http://www.raredraft.com/watch?d=2g2j8 So I did this draft. I got so excited after seeing p1p1 I kind of lost my bearings and didn't draft particularly well afterward. I was wondering if anyone had any advice. I almost went 2-1 but close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. Edit: VVV It is sarcasm. I had no idea what I was doing and my first pick usually gives me a good guideline and so I was just totally lost. Bashez fucked around with this message at 05:20 on Jan 5, 2011 |
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Jan 5, 2011 04:23
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Bashez posted:So I did this draft. I got so excited after seeing p1p1 I kind of lost my bearings and didn't draft particularly well afterward. I was wondering if anyone had any advice. I almost went 2-1 but close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. P1P1 Palladium Myr's good, but nothing to soil your keks about. You sure this is the right draft?
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Jan 5, 2011 05:13
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Bashez posted:http://www.raredraft.com/watch?d=2g2j8 p3 p11 Tangle angler is insane. There were a lot of mixed signals going on there. If you would have gone with infect your deck would have been pretty sweet and had at most 4 Corpse Curs. First pick, I think the Trigon of Rage is more flexible than the myr, and without direction I value cards that can go in multiple archetypes over one's that may be more powerful in the abstract. You could have slid into poison easier.
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Jan 5, 2011 09:39
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areyoucontagious posted:Hey MTG Limited thread! You guys are awesome, it's fun reading all the different stuff that's out these days, and it's made me want to get back into magic (on a very small, relatively inexpensive level). I've never played in an officially sanctioned tournament, and have really not played competitively beyond just my casual "whatever we had laying around" decks with friends about 10 years ago. I found about 8 decks from 2007ish when I taught my younger brother to play, and so have been using those to re-orient myself with how to play magic. MBS prerelease is on the 29-30th Jan, it's very low-level, not-very-competitive and you (and anyone else new to the game or just casual) should go. Format is sealed, with 3 SOM boosters and 3 Phyrexian or Mirran boosters. Its a lot of fun, cheaper than just buying packs (usually), and you get promos!
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Jan 5, 2011 09:53
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Bashez posted:Edit: VVV It is sarcasm. I had no idea what I was doing and my first pick usually gives me a good guideline and so I was just totally lost. Oh okay. I've just had a lot of experience with players legit opening a bomb and attempting to force a color, signals be damned, so I assumed that that's what went wrong with yours. Here's a bit of chatter here and there: P1P1: I agree with snypr, Trigon goes into more. However, Palladium Myr makes the underdrafted archetypes (dinos.dec, U/x Control) a lot better, so you're not wrong here. P1P3: I like the Perilous Myr over the Magnet here, but it's close. P1P8: 2 late picks doesn't mean your infect deck's a given: you might want the Nihil Spellbomb as filler (and those once-in-a-blue-moon games where it's relevant) P1P9: You're probably not going to end up playing the BTB here. Flight Spellbomb or Blunt The Assault (for sheer surprise value, since -no one- plays it) P1P11: Withstand Death is a legitimate combat trick in infect, since they really want to trade off with your creatures as much as possible, and you want to keep your guys on the board as much as possible. I'd grab it instead of the blank here. P2P2: You didn't see a lot of Red at all, so Galvanic is probably the correct, easily splashable choice, but Spikeshot is so nice  P2P3: Here's where it went off the rails, I think. I know you have the Angel, but there's no need to take multiple cards with WW in the casting cost, especially aggressive beaters like the Skyguard. Angel is fine, because you generally don't want to drop it until late game, but given how spread out over the colors your picks are, you shouldn't have made the situation worse. Rust Tick, here. P2P4: Artisan over Warden, pretty much always. P2P5: The off-color myr's probably not better than the Necropede. P2P6: Origin Spellbomb or Perilous Myr- if you'd taken the Artisan earlier, the Myr could legitimately have been a late-game threat. P2P7: Trigon of Mending turns on metalcraft cheaper and will keep you alive to cast your Angel. P2P11: Auriok Replica here. P3P1: I know that Turn to Slag looks real good, but as it is you're looking at W/G, splash red. The on-color myr is better for your deck, or even the Dispense Justice if you really want removal. P3P2: Deathmantle, while not ultra great, is good enough over Steed. P3P3: Sylvok Replica is better than the Champion here, with Acid Web Spider and Tangle Angler also worthy of consideration. Remember, you have legitimate reasons to be in green (Slice in Twain, maybe Genesis Wave) P3P6: Molder Beast? P3P7: Ezuri's Archers are a legitimate sideboard card, good for anything between Plague Stingers and Sky-Eel Schools. If you wanted the Tide for other reasons though, then I don't blame you. P3P9: Molder Beast or Ezuri. P3P10-14: Should've stayed in infect  You joked about it earlier, but this is legitimately what happened. You wasted almost an entire pack dithering about because you opened the angel pack two and almost immediately forgot how to draft, taking a bunch of guys with double white in their casting costs and really stretching your mana. If you were going to do infect, you shouldn't have half-assed it, and if you were going to try to ramp into fatties, you shouldn't have half-assed that, either. If you were going to try to metalcraft, you could've picked up more than seven playable artifacts (two of which cost five). Pack two was where you went wrong. Take the Angel, just don't immediately take white cards because you know you're playing white. It's an artifact set, take good artifacts instead. panko fucked around with this message at 14:04 on Jan 5, 2011 |
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Jan 5, 2011 14:01
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MizuZero posted:You joked about it earlier, but this is legitimately what happened. You wasted almost an entire pack dithering about because you opened the angel pack two and almost immediately forgot how to draft, taking a bunch of guys with double white in their casting costs and really stretching your mana. If you were going to do infect, you shouldn't have half-assed it, and if you were going to try to ramp into fatties, you shouldn't have half-assed that, either. If you were going to try to metalcraft, you could've picked up more than seven playable artifacts (two of which cost five). Pack two was where you went wrong. Take the Angel, just don't immediately take white cards because you know you're playing white. It's an artifact set, take good artifacts instead. Very well put. Also, I'm pretty sure I'd take Tick over Skyguard even if I was monowhite.
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Jan 5, 2011 17:28
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I am really, really hoping Mirrodin Besieged and new booster opening order will freshen up things a lot, because gently caress me but I'd rather step into a triple Zendikar draft at the moment than fire up Scars one. And I don't think I've actually drafted at all in a month or so, online or paper.
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Jan 5, 2011 23:57
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Lunael posted:I am really, really hoping Mirrodin Besieged and new booster opening order will freshen up things a lot, because gently caress me but I'd rather step into a triple Zendikar draft at the moment than fire up Scars one. And I don't think I've actually drafted at all in a month or so, online or paper. Fewer unforced trainwrecks would be nice. My theory, and hope, is that with the mirran/phyrexian watermarks MBS will be split in such a way that reading (and sending) signals will be more straightforward. If infect players are partitioned off earlier in the draft, then the two SOM packs will be smoother for everyone. Right now with so many artifacts that work across so many archetypes it's difficult to tell whether that pick 4 or 5 plague stinger actually means anything.
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Jan 6, 2011 00:35
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Why all the Zendikar hate? I heard about Tom Martell's 49 game losing SoM streak and was discussing it on Twitter and he says that even SoM isn't as bad as Zendikar
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Jan 6, 2011 01:14
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