Well, they're commons. Commons do not as a rule pull people into colors, or be 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.
I don't think that's a rule at all. You've never been pulled into blue by Eldrazi Skyspawner or into black by Doom Blade? The best of the commons rank highly enough to pull people into colors, and the proportion of those was relatively low. Even setting aside the commons the are competing for title of best in the set, there weren't all that many cards that seemed to lend themselves to accumulating a critical mass of cards for an established archetype. There are also a bunch of cards on the list above that see serious diminishing returns. You just can't run that many Altar's Reaps, Kalastria Nightwatches, Demon's Grasps or Ruin Processors in a deck because of either the way the card is used or the converted mana cost.
On the other hand, if the average number of a given common opened is 2.4, then seeing only 1 of something in the pool is disappointing, but seeing only 2 of something should happen very often. I'm going to look over the list when I have more time and see which cards were badly underrepresented. That's probably at least as important as which second and third tier cards were over opened.
One of the things that I assume most of us start to think about as we get experience with the format is, "What cards do I need to see in order to believe archetype A is open?" If we all have an idea in our mind that cards X, Y and Z are signals that archetype A is open and we see an early copy of X and zero copies of Y and Z, we're going to believe that archetype is being cut upstream. When that looks like it's happening for most of the archetypes, it gets hard for each seat to find its lane. Everybody's job as a drafter is to adjust, but that bar for what you consider a signal about a color is harder to adjust on the fly for some people than others, and even people who feel comfortable adapting that way are liable to make mistakes in the process.
All of that said, I'm assuming the packs we used for the exercise were real packs opened by scottjhebert or someone he knows. As such, this draft is something that could plausibly happen, and the most important information to glean from it is probably how to handle this format when the packs seem weak and the signals seem unclear.
Dorvan: The decks were trainwrecks because too many people tried to be in the same colors, to the detriment of all of them. The trainwreck decks were all trying to play Devoid of some kind, which apparently is the 'default' choice of players when they see mediocre/bad packs. Maybe it shouldn't be?
To be blunt, no one even tried to draft the following archetypes:
You can make the argument that there weren't enough cards to support those archetypes. Even if so, we know that there weren't enough Devoid cards to support the number of drafters that existed.
And just so we are clear, yes, all of the packs used are personally opened by me and recorded. The reason these specific packs were recorded rare first is because these were Japanese packs. Apparently they're packaged differently.
Whichever. I can delay starting the next draft until next Monday as requested.
Also, I am fairly sure that the average number of a given Common in a draft is not exactly 2.4, because that rests on the assumption that all Commons are all equally likely, no? That is incorrect because of Common print runs, and so the number of certain Commons in a draft depends on the number of certain other Commons. Even so, what's the variance around the average? I can't even say without looking at the numbers whether seeing only 1 of a Common is actually 'disappointing' or not.
Also, I am fairly sure that the average number of a given Common in a draft is not exactly 2.4, because that rests on the assumption that all Commons are all equally likely, no? That is incorrect because of Common print runs, and so the number of certain Commons in a draft depends on the number of certain other Commons. Even so, what's the variance around the average? I can't even say without looking at the numbers whether seeing only 1 of a Common is actually 'disappointing' or not.
I'm quite positive that commons are equally common.
(and likewise, there are produced an equal amount of each uncommon, each rare, and each mythic, not counting supplementary products like preconstructed decks)
Sene: Sure... overall. But the distribution of cards in the packs doesn't follow that distribution.
The first common in the pack might be anything. But as soon as you determine the first Common, the probabilities of the other Commons in the pack (at least 2-3 of them) change because of the Common runs. Unless you are telling me that Common runs no longer exist?
The fact that there is an equal number of each Common produced, and the fact that they are not distributed equally in packs, are not mutually exclusive.
Edit: Okay, let us assume that they are all equally likely. 240 Commons are opened (+ a few more from Foils) in each draft. They each have a 0.99% chance to be any particular Common. If we make the assumption of independence (which I think is incorrect, but it certainly simplifies the analysis), that means the variance associated with this is npq, or 2.16. That is very high variance for the average we're showing.
We can also directly calculate the probability of only seeing 0-1 of any given Common using the Binomial distribution. The probability that you will see 0-1 of any given Common is 31.2%. I wouldn't characterize that as 'disappointing', but fairly likely.
In the same way, the likelihood you will see at least 4 of a given Common is 21.6%.
Oh, I see what you're saying now. Yes, in that case, you are correct. For example, the information that there are 4 Ruin Processor in the draft does change the likelihood of other commons appearing. I don't know how that changes the probabilities, only that it does. We'd need in-depth information about print runs to be able to predict which commons would appear more due to there being 4 Ruin Processors, but it is certainly possible that it is a print run consisting of overall weaker cards. And, of course, this information alone would not dramatically alter the probabilities.
An outcome can both disappointing and likely; millions of people are disappointed every day when they learn the lottery ticket they purchased is a loser.
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Sene: You and I can disagree about the altering of the probabilities. The Binomial Distribution naturally assumes independence among observations. WotC most certainly has sufficient math/statistics to know this can happen, and really should plan layouts to minimize this for Limited.
I also agree, of course, that we don't have any quantification on the impact. I just know that it does have that impact, and IMO it has a significant impact on the quality of a draft pool.
KoboldCleric: Sorry, I didn't mean to imply otherwise. I guess I should better say that people shouldn't be disappointed that only 1 of a given Common shows up.
Sene: You and I can disagree about the altering of the probabilities. The Binomial Distribution naturally assumes independence among observations. WotC most certainly has sufficient math/statistics to know this can happen, and really should plan layouts to minimize this for Limited.
I also agree, of course, that we don't have any quantification on the impact. I just know that it does have that impact, and IMO it has a significant impact on the quality of a draft pool.
It does. I'm just saying that my example of having knowledge about there being 4 Ruin Processors probably wouldn't alter probabilities dramatically (I'm guessing). On the other hand, if we also knew there were going to be 4 Altar's Reap, 4 Brilliant Spectrum, 4 Goblin War Paint, then I think it'd start impacting the predicted common distribution quite drastically.
I went back through our first pack and I think ending up in one of these archetypes from where we were sitting would've been a stretch, and that's even after first picking a Lantern Scout that theoretically could've predisposed us toward allies. I'd be interested to hear who you think should've moved in on one of those and why.
I think you misunderstood me. The phrase "as a rule" was meant to say that the large majority of commons do not do it, not that no common ever does it. For example, I might say that, as a rule, the temperature in California is around 70 degrees. That doesn't mean it always is, just that that's the expectation. It shouldn't be surprising that the most opened commons are uninspiring because most commons are uninspiring.
Also, I think what scott is trying to say is that maybe Devoid is a bit overdrafted. If you look at the packs with the mindset of current evaluations, then yeah, it looks hard to get into those other decks. But maybe we ought to shift up our evaluations of non-Devoid cards in a meta where Devoid is so popular, and then those decks would start to seem to more open. I'm not saying I agree, because one draft is a super small sample size, but the argument has decent merit.
@scott, Sene: Wizards has consistently made print runs that put cards of a similar quality together. "Stacked" packs and weak packs are a design intent, with the idea that more drafts will end up with decks of a similar power level this way. So when one poor common is over-represented in a pod, the expectation is probably that other poor commons will be as well. This was not a set of packs which were deep in the bottom of the distribution.
DSF: I don't know. Quite honestly, I am trying to make sense of the data; I am not trying to make value judgments--really I am trying NOT to make value judgments--about the draft itself. I can just tell you that everyone jumped on Devoid and several archetypes weren't even considered. Not 'they didn't have the depth to support'. Weren't considered at all.
One reason is, I think, the conduct of Team B. They drafted very earlyEyeless Watchers in Pack 2. Picks 2 and 3. Judging from this forum, that seemed drastically early to do so, even if they wanted to move into Green. It paid off for them, though. Why?
Well, they had a color, White, that paired well with it. No one else was in Green coming out of the abysmal pack 1 (from a Green perspective). So the thing about Eyeless Watcher is that it's a card that runs well in all the Green archetypes except GR. It's tokens for White, sac fodder for Black, and ramp for Blue. By taking those cards, Team B perpetuated the view that Green 'wasn't worth getting into' for, well, almost anyone. This was the crux of the argument I made at the time that there are cards in the set that have high 'betweenness centrality', to use a Social Network Analysis term, without having high power.
Puddle: I guess. I would have gone the other direction. I assume that they do it the way they do to ensure good decision points in drafts?
Also, in case anyone cares, the 24 packs in this draft all came from the same box.
From our seat, we could easily have ended-up in RW or RG.
I dismissed RW early because it's not an archetype I like, but we would have gotten a much better deck if we did. We switched to RW in the end, based on getting an angelic captain. Obviously, we would have competed with the team that picked the multiple kor 3/1 early. Still, the deck would be better.
We didn't go RG because G was disliked by other drafters (I like RG, personally, and said early during the draft that were I drafting alone, I'd have gone RG) and as was said the packs were weak (so weak pack + weak color doesn't help) but we would have gotten multiple oran-rief invoker, tajuru warcaller, combat tricks and plated crusher. (Plated crushed with the red combat trick giving +3/0 and first strike is basically unkillable, and with other tricks requires deathtouch, which we didn't see much of.)
Gotcha Puddle Jumper, that makes sense. I agree then.
@scottjhebert: I don't think there's anything wrong with you making value judgments. You've already essentially implied that people should have been angling for those archetypes, so I'm just trying to push that part of the discussion forward and see what your thinking is there.
On another note, and I don't mean this in a defensive way, I don't think saying that everyone was going for devoid is really accurate. Our group took an early Eldrazi Skyspawner, but that's because it's a good card, not because it's devoid. It was clear to us from early on that devoid wasn't where we needed to be. It just happens that the cards that were available and jived reasonably well with our controlling/flying strategy were sometimes things like Incubator Drone and Skyspawner.
DSF: Actually, I was hoping people could defend their picks in an ex post facto way. My argument is that the team that went into Green mainly (Team B) seemed to get one of the better decks of the draft, and roughly half of the teams (C, D, and H; possibly A or F) considered their decks trainwrecks. I would like to know if people felt that Team B's deck was better or worse than theirs.
I have a hard time discussing stuff as it happens, because due to the nature of the organization of the draft, I can see everything. E.g., I more or less 'knew' that Team B would end up with their Warcaller before the 3rd pack was opened. I could also see Team G's Lifegain deck coalescing quite early. I mean, really, if I had wanted to play favorites, Team G could have gotten a 14th pick Defiant Bloodlord. I naturally assumed someone would hate draft it before then, and therefore they did in the autopicks. But the point remains.
I know that I am not a Limited player on par with most of the people drafting. (Just the comments regarding Autopicks are illustrative.)
I, personally, am looking for a way to traverse the search space of 'drafting strategy', and currently I am thinking of using network methods to do so. The problem is that I don't have a great deal of data. I am also naturally annoyed that popular analyses like MTGGoldfish's are, IMO, just deep enough to seem correct while not operating nearly on the level it needs to be. They are also concentrating on play vs. draft, which is not the area I care about as much.
From our seat, we could easily have ended-up in RW or RG.
I dismissed RW early because it's not an archetype I like, but we would have gotten a much better deck if we did. We switched to RW in the end, based on getting an angelic captain. Obviously, we would have competed with the team that picked the multiple kor 3/1 early. Still, the deck would be better.
We didn't go RG because G was disliked by other drafters (I like RG, personally, and said early during the draft that were I drafting alone, I'd have gone RG) and as was said the packs were weak (so weak pack + weak color doesn't help) but we would have gotten multiple oran-rief invoker, tajuru warcaller, combat tricks and plated crusher. (Plated crushed with the red combat trick giving +3/0 and first strike is basically unkillable, and with other tricks requires deathtouch, which we didn't see much of.)
I was against RG. We really didn't see a strong incentive to be green until Grove Rumbler was passed to us P2P4 (we should have taken it in hindsight). I had it as my second choice for that pick behind Swarm Surge because we had moved into RB Devoid, and it would have made a lot of our previous picks far less effective and/or unplayable (Vile Aggregate, Nettle Drone, Dominator Drone, Processor Assault). Even if we had pivoted at that point, I don't think we would have came away with anything resembling a good deck. We drafted a heavy red deck (3 Stonefury) that would have had a lot of difficulty trying to cast the GGG Plated Crusher.
I think there's a better case to be made that we should have moved into white earlier. It wasn't until the late Angelic Captain that we really saw a strong signal there.
Are there any good Green Devoid creatures that [i]don't produce Scions/i]? I can't think of any. That might be why people who go initially for the 'better' Rx Devoid decks avoid moving into Green.
Honestly, though, Vile Aggregate gets good mileage out of Scions, doesn't it?
Are there any good Green Devoid creatures that [i]don't produce Scions/i]? I can't think of any. That might be why people who go initially for the 'better' Rx Devoid decks avoid moving into Green.
Honestly, though, Vile Aggregate gets good mileage out of Scions, doesn't it?
Yeah, I think it would have been more tempting if we saw a Brood Monitor. Starting with that P2P4 Rumbler pack, we didn't see a green scion producer until P3P3 (Call the Scions). If we had moved into green, it would have been the more typical RG Landfall build.
As far as our team went (team E) I'm pretty sure we couldn't have gone anything else but base blue. We got a very good pack 1 and I don't think anything would have changed us from blue after that. We were pretty open to any second color late into pack 2, and I do think black was the correct choice in the end. But even if it wasn't, we would have always been a U/x tempo deck and the secondary color would have mostly been there to fill out the deck. Overall I think the deck turned out perfectly fine. Would have had a little bit of filler but I was overall pretty happy with it.
Also I'd be happy to join the next draft if possible.
Ha, speaking of Team B's P2P2 and P2P3 Eyeless Watcher (very early), that was a complete accident.
After P1P1 Planar Outburst P1P2 Rising Miasma we were hoping for Esper control, but then saw 0 playable blue cards and tried to salvage to BW lifegain. However, by mid pack 1 we noticed even though we were grabbing black and white cards BW lifegain was clearly not open either (apparently because Team G aggressively committed to it early). For pack 1 autopicks we got dumped 4 green cards, some of which were better than our actual picks. It was clear everyone else was avoiding green like the plague. Then P2P1 we opened Greenwarden of Murasa, which we couldn't really pass. By that point, even though we didn't want to be in green, our green picks looked better than our black picks and almost as good as the white ones, so we were open to the idea of switching into BG or GW, figuring we had a trainwreck either way.
Then came the tipping point: P2P2. Only 2 voted that day. I voted Carrier Thrall and Scout voted Eyeless Watcher. A coin flip gave us Scout's pick, and pick 2 Eyeless Watcher it was. P2P3 we saw almost an identical pack (must be from same part of the common print run sheet), minus the Carrier Thrall. Pack was weak overall. Scout replied first voting for Eyeless Watcher, wanting to push us into green tokens. Replying first can often have a lot of sway. 1 person was convinced and seconded Eyeless Watcher. The other voted Oran-Rief Invoker, putting us in green either way. I was indifferent and supported the Eyeless Watcher bandwagon. After that point we were committed to green tokens, and saw it was wide open, so we just went the distance. Maybe Scout can explain the rationale for early Eyeless Watcher at the time?
I think people treated green pretty normally overall, looking at the packs. Green works fine when one person at the table drafts it, and that's actually what we saw here. If any other team had decided to start taking green cards, I'm not convinced they would have ended up with a better deck, although team B probably would have ended up with a worse one, for whatever that's worth...
I didn't really notice the first poster pushing the pick for team E. We had a number of instances in which the card fronted by the first poster was not selected in favor of something else.
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I don't think that's a rule at all. You've never been pulled into blue by Eldrazi Skyspawner or into black by Doom Blade? The best of the commons rank highly enough to pull people into colors, and the proportion of those was relatively low. Even setting aside the commons the are competing for title of best in the set, there weren't all that many cards that seemed to lend themselves to accumulating a critical mass of cards for an established archetype. There are also a bunch of cards on the list above that see serious diminishing returns. You just can't run that many Altar's Reaps, Kalastria Nightwatches, Demon's Grasps or Ruin Processors in a deck because of either the way the card is used or the converted mana cost.
On the other hand, if the average number of a given common opened is 2.4, then seeing only 1 of something in the pool is disappointing, but seeing only 2 of something should happen very often. I'm going to look over the list when I have more time and see which cards were badly underrepresented. That's probably at least as important as which second and third tier cards were over opened.
One of the things that I assume most of us start to think about as we get experience with the format is, "What cards do I need to see in order to believe archetype A is open?" If we all have an idea in our mind that cards X, Y and Z are signals that archetype A is open and we see an early copy of X and zero copies of Y and Z, we're going to believe that archetype is being cut upstream. When that looks like it's happening for most of the archetypes, it gets hard for each seat to find its lane. Everybody's job as a drafter is to adjust, but that bar for what you consider a signal about a color is harder to adjust on the fly for some people than others, and even people who feel comfortable adapting that way are liable to make mistakes in the process.
All of that said, I'm assuming the packs we used for the exercise were real packs opened by scottjhebert or someone he knows. As such, this draft is something that could plausibly happen, and the most important information to glean from it is probably how to handle this format when the packs seem weak and the signals seem unclear.
To be blunt, no one even tried to draft the following archetypes:
1) W/R Allies/Anything.
2) G/R Landfall
3) G/B Sac
You can make the argument that there weren't enough cards to support those archetypes. Even if so, we know that there weren't enough Devoid cards to support the number of drafters that existed.
And just so we are clear, yes, all of the packs used are personally opened by me and recorded. The reason these specific packs were recorded rare first is because these were Japanese packs. Apparently they're packaged differently.
Whichever. I can delay starting the next draft until next Monday as requested.
Also, I am fairly sure that the average number of a given Common in a draft is not exactly 2.4, because that rests on the assumption that all Commons are all equally likely, no? That is incorrect because of Common print runs, and so the number of certain Commons in a draft depends on the number of certain other Commons. Even so, what's the variance around the average? I can't even say without looking at the numbers whether seeing only 1 of a Common is actually 'disappointing' or not.
(and likewise, there are produced an equal amount of each uncommon, each rare, and each mythic, not counting supplementary products like preconstructed decks)
The first common in the pack might be anything. But as soon as you determine the first Common, the probabilities of the other Commons in the pack (at least 2-3 of them) change because of the Common runs. Unless you are telling me that Common runs no longer exist?
The fact that there is an equal number of each Common produced, and the fact that they are not distributed equally in packs, are not mutually exclusive.
Edit: Okay, let us assume that they are all equally likely. 240 Commons are opened (+ a few more from Foils) in each draft. They each have a 0.99% chance to be any particular Common. If we make the assumption of independence (which I think is incorrect, but it certainly simplifies the analysis), that means the variance associated with this is npq, or 2.16. That is very high variance for the average we're showing.
We can also directly calculate the probability of only seeing 0-1 of any given Common using the Binomial distribution. The probability that you will see 0-1 of any given Common is 31.2%. I wouldn't characterize that as 'disappointing', but fairly likely.
In the same way, the likelihood you will see at least 4 of a given Common is 21.6%.
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I also agree, of course, that we don't have any quantification on the impact. I just know that it does have that impact, and IMO it has a significant impact on the quality of a draft pool.
KoboldCleric: Sorry, I didn't mean to imply otherwise. I guess I should better say that people shouldn't be disappointed that only 1 of a given Common shows up.
I went back through our first pack and I think ending up in one of these archetypes from where we were sitting would've been a stretch, and that's even after first picking a Lantern Scout that theoretically could've predisposed us toward allies. I'd be interested to hear who you think should've moved in on one of those and why.
I think you misunderstood me. The phrase "as a rule" was meant to say that the large majority of commons do not do it, not that no common ever does it. For example, I might say that, as a rule, the temperature in California is around 70 degrees. That doesn't mean it always is, just that that's the expectation. It shouldn't be surprising that the most opened commons are uninspiring because most commons are uninspiring.
Also, I think what scott is trying to say is that maybe Devoid is a bit overdrafted. If you look at the packs with the mindset of current evaluations, then yeah, it looks hard to get into those other decks. But maybe we ought to shift up our evaluations of non-Devoid cards in a meta where Devoid is so popular, and then those decks would start to seem to more open. I'm not saying I agree, because one draft is a super small sample size, but the argument has decent merit.
@scott, Sene: Wizards has consistently made print runs that put cards of a similar quality together. "Stacked" packs and weak packs are a design intent, with the idea that more drafts will end up with decks of a similar power level this way. So when one poor common is over-represented in a pod, the expectation is probably that other poor commons will be as well. This was not a set of packs which were deep in the bottom of the distribution.
One reason is, I think, the conduct of Team B. They drafted very early Eyeless Watchers in Pack 2. Picks 2 and 3. Judging from this forum, that seemed drastically early to do so, even if they wanted to move into Green. It paid off for them, though. Why?
Well, they had a color, White, that paired well with it. No one else was in Green coming out of the abysmal pack 1 (from a Green perspective). So the thing about Eyeless Watcher is that it's a card that runs well in all the Green archetypes except GR. It's tokens for White, sac fodder for Black, and ramp for Blue. By taking those cards, Team B perpetuated the view that Green 'wasn't worth getting into' for, well, almost anyone. This was the crux of the argument I made at the time that there are cards in the set that have high 'betweenness centrality', to use a Social Network Analysis term, without having high power.
Puddle: I guess. I would have gone the other direction. I assume that they do it the way they do to ensure good decision points in drafts?
Also, in case anyone cares, the 24 packs in this draft all came from the same box.
I dismissed RW early because it's not an archetype I like, but we would have gotten a much better deck if we did. We switched to RW in the end, based on getting an angelic captain. Obviously, we would have competed with the team that picked the multiple kor 3/1 early. Still, the deck would be better.
We didn't go RG because G was disliked by other drafters (I like RG, personally, and said early during the draft that were I drafting alone, I'd have gone RG) and as was said the packs were weak (so weak pack + weak color doesn't help) but we would have gotten multiple oran-rief invoker, tajuru warcaller, combat tricks and plated crusher. (Plated crushed with the red combat trick giving +3/0 and first strike is basically unkillable, and with other tricks requires deathtouch, which we didn't see much of.)
@scottjhebert: I don't think there's anything wrong with you making value judgments. You've already essentially implied that people should have been angling for those archetypes, so I'm just trying to push that part of the discussion forward and see what your thinking is there.
On another note, and I don't mean this in a defensive way, I don't think saying that everyone was going for devoid is really accurate. Our group took an early Eldrazi Skyspawner, but that's because it's a good card, not because it's devoid. It was clear to us from early on that devoid wasn't where we needed to be. It just happens that the cards that were available and jived reasonably well with our controlling/flying strategy were sometimes things like Incubator Drone and Skyspawner.
I have a hard time discussing stuff as it happens, because due to the nature of the organization of the draft, I can see everything. E.g., I more or less 'knew' that Team B would end up with their Warcaller before the 3rd pack was opened. I could also see Team G's Lifegain deck coalescing quite early. I mean, really, if I had wanted to play favorites, Team G could have gotten a 14th pick Defiant Bloodlord. I naturally assumed someone would hate draft it before then, and therefore they did in the autopicks. But the point remains.
I know that I am not a Limited player on par with most of the people drafting. (Just the comments regarding Autopicks are illustrative.)
I, personally, am looking for a way to traverse the search space of 'drafting strategy', and currently I am thinking of using network methods to do so. The problem is that I don't have a great deal of data. I am also naturally annoyed that popular analyses like MTGGoldfish's are, IMO, just deep enough to seem correct while not operating nearly on the level it needs to be. They are also concentrating on play vs. draft, which is not the area I care about as much.
I was against RG. We really didn't see a strong incentive to be green until Grove Rumbler was passed to us P2P4 (we should have taken it in hindsight). I had it as my second choice for that pick behind Swarm Surge because we had moved into RB Devoid, and it would have made a lot of our previous picks far less effective and/or unplayable (Vile Aggregate, Nettle Drone, Dominator Drone, Processor Assault). Even if we had pivoted at that point, I don't think we would have came away with anything resembling a good deck. We drafted a heavy red deck (3 Stonefury) that would have had a lot of difficulty trying to cast the GGG Plated Crusher.
I think there's a better case to be made that we should have moved into white earlier. It wasn't until the late Angelic Captain that we really saw a strong signal there.
UR Blue-Red Control
Modern:
UBR Grixis Control
UWR Jeskai Control
Are there any good Green Devoid creatures that [i]don't produce Scions/i]? I can't think of any. That might be why people who go initially for the 'better' Rx Devoid decks avoid moving into Green.
Honestly, though, Vile Aggregate gets good mileage out of Scions, doesn't it?
Yeah, I think it would have been more tempting if we saw a Brood Monitor. Starting with that P2P4 Rumbler pack, we didn't see a green scion producer until P3P3 (Call the Scions). If we had moved into green, it would have been the more typical RG Landfall build.
UR Blue-Red Control
Modern:
UBR Grixis Control
UWR Jeskai Control
Also I'd be happy to join the next draft if possible.
After P1P1 Planar Outburst P1P2 Rising Miasma we were hoping for Esper control, but then saw 0 playable blue cards and tried to salvage to BW lifegain. However, by mid pack 1 we noticed even though we were grabbing black and white cards BW lifegain was clearly not open either (apparently because Team G aggressively committed to it early). For pack 1 autopicks we got dumped 4 green cards, some of which were better than our actual picks. It was clear everyone else was avoiding green like the plague. Then P2P1 we opened Greenwarden of Murasa, which we couldn't really pass. By that point, even though we didn't want to be in green, our green picks looked better than our black picks and almost as good as the white ones, so we were open to the idea of switching into BG or GW, figuring we had a trainwreck either way.
Then came the tipping point: P2P2. Only 2 voted that day. I voted Carrier Thrall and Scout voted Eyeless Watcher. A coin flip gave us Scout's pick, and pick 2 Eyeless Watcher it was. P2P3 we saw almost an identical pack (must be from same part of the common print run sheet), minus the Carrier Thrall. Pack was weak overall. Scout replied first voting for Eyeless Watcher, wanting to push us into green tokens. Replying first can often have a lot of sway. 1 person was convinced and seconded Eyeless Watcher. The other voted Oran-Rief Invoker, putting us in green either way. I was indifferent and supported the Eyeless Watcher bandwagon. After that point we were committed to green tokens, and saw it was wide open, so we just went the distance. Maybe Scout can explain the rationale for early Eyeless Watcher at the time?
In the end it paid huge dividends. While everyone else was avoiding green, we managed to knab 3 late Tajuru Beastmaster, P3P7 Tajuru Warcaller, Plated Crusher, Eldrazi Devastator, Grovetender Druids, Inspired Charge and a total of 3 Call the Scions and 3 Eyeless Watcher. I'm not a fan of green, but that's probably as good as Scion beatdown gets.
FTW: And Team F took a P3P2 Brood Monitor, or you would have almost certainly gotten that as well.
It may have been a fluke. But not all flukes are bad.
Sign me up for the next draft. This was interesting.
Thriving: I moved it back to next Monday to both give the admins time to move everything into 'storage' and to give myself a slight break.
Teams will be the same unless people really want differences. I cannot add/remove/modify membership in the teams. Admins have to do all that.
I'd like to take part in the next draft, please.
What I'm Currently Playing:
Vintage:UW Mentor
Legacy:UG Infect
Modern:UX MUD
Standard: N/A