Note! Second BFZ Draft start time moved to next Monday.
The first BFZ 8-Way Draft is complete. Attached is the actual draft order for each team.
Below is the final cardlist for each team. Analysis to follow. I am also working on creating draftcaps of each team's choices, since that is probably more readable.
BFZ 8-Way #2 is currently slated to begin Monday, 11/23/2015. If anyone is interested in joining, please let me know.
As far as initial analysis, I think this is a pretty good case study on what happens when people follow conventional wisdom. Everyone avoided Green like the plague in Pack 1, in no small part because Green was weak... in that pack. Team B then moved into Green on the backs of token producers, and was rewarded heavily for it, culminating in a P3P7 Tajuru Warcaller. Another team that sort of bucked the conventional wisdom train was Team G moving in to the BW lifegain deck fairly early on the back of a P1P3 Drana's Emissary. They then drafted 3Kalastria Healers along with many other Allies and other parts.
These were, from my position, the two most coherent decks in the entire draft. All the others seemed to want to draft some form of Ux or Rx Devoid, and there just simply wasn't the cards there to support that many people.
Another very interesting initial point to make was that four teams drafted (correctly, IMO) P1P1 White Rares.
I will have to pass on this one if it starts tomorrow. I've underestimated how busy I am these days I don't want to keep anyone else up. By the way, I suppose we should open the forums up to everyone?
Wow, we (team C) got really screwed by going into red while being fed by someone who also went into red! The packs were really weird (with things like outnumber + stonefury or outnumber + valakut invoker) that made it seems red was open in pack one...
No wonder we ended up with a trainwreck...
But then again, I didn't pick fathom feeder p1p1, which drived the wreck in the first place. Oh well.
Edit: and wow, in p2, they went into black while we were thinking of going into RB... we just made the worst color choices possible?!?
At least I voiced my concern that our colors were not open, so hey, some validation on my reading at least.
Edit #2:, Team E got a nice blue deck, but wow! did team G really get the goodies in WB ally/lifegain! That deck should win on card quality and synergy alone. Goes to show how much getting in the right colors *and* getting synergies really matters.
You guys and Team H rather suffered in that respect. I think a lot of that was, for good or ill, certain deck choices simply were not considered. The pieces for RG Landfall were there, as one example.
Thanks again for running the draft, and while I am amazed at your enthusiasm to begin another 8-way draft immediately, I think that would be a mistake if it means you can't open the forums to everyone. It's nice to see everyone's picks, but the really valuable insight comes from reading everyone's comments and debate about each individual pick. If that means delaying the start of another 8-way for a week or so, I think that would be a good decision.
I don't mind postponing until next Monday, say. I just want to ensure that the next one happens, and if we wait another two weeks, we'll hit the holiday season hard and it will likely derail things.
I think, salmon, what we need to do is move the archive subforum out into its own forum, and move the old ones there so that people can view at their own pace.
I also plan on releasing draftcaps over the next few days which may also help.
Magpie: Yeah, I think something that everyone always underestimates is the highly path-dependent nature of drafts. I want to get to the point that I can get enough data to actually analyze it, and the reason I pushed for duplicate drafts.
Yeah, from team D it was very clear that we were getting cut out of not just R & B but white as well. I went back over our picks more than once and at no time do I feel like there was a reasonable jump off point into green (or any other archetypes). As for RG - exactly 1 (P2) snapping gnarlid was opened, and 1 P2 Grove Rumbler.
I didn't say that there was the best GR Landfall deck out there. When Territorial Baloths are going until 13th pick, there should be a deck or something around them.
There were also several [card]Makindi Sliderunner/card]s that people were taking because they were red creatures.
Also noted that the Archives are already their own forum... does everyone not have access to those?
Our (team H's) deck turned out horribly, which is sort of strange when looking at the color assignments for each seat - in theory, it looks good for us to be U/R in that seat. But somehow it did not work out at all. Were we just unfortunate with how the packs broke, or am I reading things incorrectly?
@Archives: Everyone should have access to those. We're just wary of creating more 8-way subforums. In fact, we're in the process of merging those forums together, only it takes a million years to do so.
@Sene: This seemed like an incredibly weak set of packs in general....it looks like there was barely enough cards at the table for a single UR devoid deck, let alone multiple drafters dipping in to those themes.
@scott: There were late Baloths (really just 2 of them), but the card just isn't that good. Sliderunners, Predators, and Gnarlids are the real drivers of the deck: with 3 sliderunnes, 1 gnarlid, and 2 predators at the table, you've got a below-average amount of key landfall cards available.
On the "the pool was weak" front, there are about 2.4 of each common in a draft pool on average. Here are the commons with 4 or more copies in this pool:
On the "the pool was weak" front, there are about 2.4 of each common in a draft pool on average. Here are the commons with 4 or more copies in this pool:
It may not be a comprehensive analysis, but that's a pretty weak set of cards to be flooding the pool.
Only Reap/Spectrum/Paint are bad there. Then Mind Raker is "meh" but certainly playable. Everything else ranges from average to good depending on your deck.
If you look at the commons as a whole, this group is decidedly below average. None of the top 10-15 commons appears on the list, and I'd call everything else mediocre to situationally slightly above average. Cloud Manta is the only card on that list I'm unconditionally happy to have in my deck.
I'm pretty happy that our team (Team B) ended up with at least a plan, even though the plan isn't too great (GW Eldrazi Scions isn't something you often see). So glad we got paid off with the Tajuru Warcaller.
On the "the pool was weak" front, there are about 2.4 of each common in a draft pool on average. Here are the commons with 4 or more copies in this pool:
It may not be a comprehensive analysis, but that's a pretty weak set of cards to be flooding the pool.
Only Reap/Spectrum/Paint are bad there. Then Mind Raker is "meh" but certainly playable. Everything else ranges from average to good depending on your deck.
Mind Raker doesn't pull you into black and often won't make the cut even if you are black. Cloud Manta, Fortified Rampart and Eyeless Watcher are pretty good, but none of these are really exciting.
Commons make up the vast majority of spells in a limited deck. If the pool of commons is poor, that seems like at least part of the puzzle in explaining the number of train-wreck decks in the draft.
But everyone was seeing the same poor commons. It isn't like one team was seeing all excellent cards while everyone else was getting chaff. The ability to signal doesn't stop with the 10th best common or something.
...but the decks weren't really train-wrecks in the sense that people were majorly in the wrong colors, but in the sense that there are lots of "pile of mediocre cards" decks. That can happen because of bad signal reading, but it this case it looks like at least part of the explanation was that there simply weren't many good decks to be had in the pool. That's what I was saying, not that poor card quality means that signalling doesn't exist.
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The first BFZ 8-Way Draft is complete. Attached is the actual draft order for each team.
Below is the final cardlist for each team. Analysis to follow. I am also working on creating draftcaps of each team's choices, since that is probably more readable.
BFZ 8-Way #2 is currently slated to begin Monday, 11/23/2015. If anyone is interested in joining, please let me know.
Team A
Foil
Foil
Team B
Foil
Team C
Team D
Team E
Team F
Foil
Team G
Team H
Foil
As far as initial analysis, I think this is a pretty good case study on what happens when people follow conventional wisdom. Everyone avoided Green like the plague in Pack 1, in no small part because Green was weak... in that pack. Team B then moved into Green on the backs of token producers, and was rewarded heavily for it, culminating in a P3P7 Tajuru Warcaller. Another team that sort of bucked the conventional wisdom train was Team G moving in to the BW lifegain deck fairly early on the back of a P1P3 Drana's Emissary. They then drafted 3 Kalastria Healers along with many other Allies and other parts.
These were, from my position, the two most coherent decks in the entire draft. All the others seemed to want to draft some form of Ux or Rx Devoid, and there just simply wasn't the cards there to support that many people.
Another very interesting initial point to make was that four teams drafted (correctly, IMO) P1P1 White Rares.
Edit: And while I understand if you need to bow out, three (3) weeks of my running this had been while I was on travel for business.
No wonder we ended up with a trainwreck...
But then again, I didn't pick fathom feeder p1p1, which drived the wreck in the first place. Oh well.
Edit: and wow, in p2, they went into black while we were thinking of going into RB... we just made the worst color choices possible?!?
At least I voiced my concern that our colors were not open, so hey, some validation on my reading at least.
Edit #2:, Team E got a nice blue deck, but wow! did team G really get the goodies in WB ally/lifegain! That deck should win on card quality and synergy alone. Goes to show how much getting in the right colors *and* getting synergies really matters.
You guys and Team H rather suffered in that respect. I think a lot of that was, for good or ill, certain deck choices simply were not considered. The pieces for RG Landfall were there, as one example.
I'm in for a 2nd draft; this one left me unsatisfied.
UR Blue-Red Control
Modern:
UBR Grixis Control
UWR Jeskai Control
I think, salmon, what we need to do is move the archive subforum out into its own forum, and move the old ones there so that people can view at their own pace.
I also plan on releasing draftcaps over the next few days which may also help.
Magpie: Yeah, I think something that everyone always underestimates is the highly path-dependent nature of drafts. I want to get to the point that I can get enough data to actually analyze it, and the reason I pushed for duplicate drafts.
There were also several [card]Makindi Sliderunner/card]s that people were taking because they were red creatures.
Also noted that the Archives are already their own forum... does everyone not have access to those?
@Archives: Everyone should have access to those. We're just wary of creating more 8-way subforums. In fact, we're in the process of merging those forums together, only it takes a million years to do so.
@scott: There were late Baloths (really just 2 of them), but the card just isn't that good. Sliderunners, Predators, and Gnarlids are the real drivers of the deck: with 3 sliderunnes, 1 gnarlid, and 2 predators at the table, you've got a below-average amount of key landfall cards available.
It may not be a comprehensive analysis, but that's a pretty weak set of cards to be flooding the pool.
Only Reap/Spectrum/Paint are bad there. Then Mind Raker is "meh" but certainly playable. Everything else ranges from average to good depending on your deck.
Mind Raker doesn't pull you into black and often won't make the cut even if you are black. Cloud Manta, Fortified Rampart and Eyeless Watcher are pretty good, but none of these are really exciting.
It's true that the most represented commons are below average. I'm not sure that means much, though, in terms of strategy or whatever.