2 related questions pertaining to mid-draft strategy - basically, a "what do you do?" issue. I've been drafting a lot online and I have a real draft tonight so I want to have this squared away.
1) You draft a solid bomb first pick - a Garruk or something of that order. Problem is that green isn't killing it otherwise, and in fact, there's very little good green to be had. Do you force the green for the first pick even though it's going to be hard or do you just splash some forests in and draft the dominant colors?
2) You've been comfortably drafting 2 colors - let's say Red and Blue, and midway through pack 2 you start seeing very playable cards of other colors; e.g. this happened to me last night where i saw 2 doomblades in a row. do you draft the off-color cards to play them, do you hate draft them, or do you just ignore them?
i don't like drafting garbage cards just to conform to color so i was curious.
Both responses are going to have to depend wildly upon what you're seeing in those drafts and what format you're in. There are a few formats where you can conceivably splash a powerful card in an off color without signficantly affecting your primary deck. M14 is not one of them, as the off-color fixing is almost non-existent outside of the rare sliver deck, or you managed to find multiple Darksteel Ingots and don't mind running them.
Even then, I'm talking about splashing a card with a single off-color mana symbol in its cost. Trying to splash something more stringent is just asking for trouble.
1) I've made this mistake so many times it's kind of depressing. It's hard to be objective about the picks available to you when you pull something absurd in pack 1; unless you have really good drafting instincts or just strong discipline, you'll probably bias your picks to support the bomb, even at the expense of better cards in more available colors. You have two choices really: you can either continue to force a color, cutting it off as much as you can pack one even though it might not be providing you with the best playables, and hope to capitalize in pack two when those downstream (hopefully) deliver the goods, or you can try to make the best picks early in pack one and just move where the colors flow.
Again, whether you can support your P1P1 bomb as an off-color splash is going to depend on the format, and how aggressively you draft color fixing to do so.
2) I used to play kind of greedy when I saw stuff like Doom Blade come late; I'd grab them, both as a kind of hate-draft (I know, I know) and maybe thinking to splash them. Splashing removal can be kind of dicey on its own, but it's not unheard of. More likely though, if I've been getting solid Red/Blue and suddenly see a Doom Blade, I'm probably going to ship the Doom Blade and just keep drafting Red/Blue.
If, however, there is nothing else worthwhile in those packs, you can't really hurt yourself by grabbing the Doom Blades. Those were probably dead picks for you no matter what, and who knows? Maybe for whatever reason either Red or Blue suddenly dry up, and you have to move in to black. It's all terribly subjective, however, and there isn't really a single universal answer.
The once exception that springs to mind is Fireball. As a finisher, you can afford to have only a few red sources in your deck to support it, knowing you won't need it till much later in the game. A finisher like that, because it's so light on the color requirement, is probably splashable most of the time.
An important thing to keep in mind with pack 2 decisions is that this is the only time you'll be seeing cards from that direction; if you're not in Black, it's probably because not much good Black was coming your way... which means the next guy isn't black either, so you can expect to see some late black pack 2. However, you probably won't see much pack 3, so be judicious. As Ferenczys said; pick them over garbage, but not playables.
Regarding bombs; depends. I consider a card a bomb if "this resolves=I win." Garruk does not fit this bill, but Jace does. Within this definition, I will strain to play a bomb, simply because it doesn't much matter what else your deck does, provided you can find and resolve it. Garruk and the like (i.e., very very good cards in their decks) are certainly worth trying to draft around, but if the deck isn't there by pick 8-10, it ain't coming.
Also, as a last note, you're going to find drafting IRL a lot easier than MTGO. Online I am the quintessential average drafter; IRL I always place top 2 in every event except huge ones, like GPs.
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1) You draft a solid bomb first pick - a Garruk or something of that order. Problem is that green isn't killing it otherwise, and in fact, there's very little good green to be had. Do you force the green for the first pick even though it's going to be hard or do you just splash some forests in and draft the dominant colors?
I wouldn't splash. You either stick to cutting the colour, or abandon it and run with another colour. Given your specific example, in M14 I like green enough that I'd be balls deep on green from P1P1.
2) You've been comfortably drafting 2 colors - let's say Red and Blue, and midway through pack 2 you start seeing very playable cards of other colors; e.g. this happened to me last night where i saw 2 doomblades in a row. do you draft the off-color cards to play them, do you hate draft them, or do you just ignore them?
It depends what the on-colour cards you have available to you in those packs. If the packs are competely empty (stuff like Tome Scour and Dragon Hatchling then yeah, feel free to hate draft the Doom Blade with an option on audibling into black should you open a black bomb P3. If there's stuff like Sensory Deprivation or Regathan Firecat in there, I would suck it up and take the on-colour playable.
Regarding bombs; depends. I consider a card a bomb if "this resolves=I win." Garruk does not fit this bill, but Jace does.
really? I've only had garruk in one sealed pool, but it won every game that I resolved it in and it wasn't close. the card advantage it brings is bananas if you have a half decent deck otherwise. Even if the board has stalled, if you play 5 more creatures than your opponent it's difficult to not be able to break through at some point.
really? I've only had garruk in one sealed pool, but it won every game that I resolved it in and it wasn't close. the card advantage it brings is bananas if you have a half decent deck otherwise. Even if the board has stalled, if you play 5 more creatures than your opponent it's difficult to not be able to break through at some point.
Garruk is obviously strong, but he doesn't win the game on his own like Jace does. He finds you guys, and then you should be able to ride the extra guys to victory. However, you still need to, y'know, cast the creatures, and they have to be relevant on the given board state (i.e. not a bunch of Rootwallas when you're facing down an Air Servant).
That said, Garruk is bananas, but it's not in the same category as a card like Jace or Primeval Bounty.
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Garruk is obviously strong, but he doesn't win the game on his own like Jace does. He finds you guys, and then you should be able to ride the extra guys to victory. However, you still need to, y'know, cast the creatures, and they have to be relevant on the given board state (i.e. not a bunch of Rootwallas when you're facing down an Air Servant).
That said, Garruk is bananas, but it's not in the same category as a card like Jace or Primeval Bounty.
I'm genuinely curious to get people's actual experiences with the card, because I'm working off a sample size of I think four games here, but while I had thought the bit in bold there would be true before playing with it, I found that it simply didn't in practice. The card advantage you get off him is so big that you end up being able to overwhelm virtually any board state given a reasonable amount of creature quality in your deck. You can just throw guys away because you are drawing every creature in your deck after like 3 activations.
I'm genuinely curious to get people's actual experiences with the card, because I'm working off a sample size of I think four games here, but while I had thought the bit in bold there would be true before playing with it, I found that it simply didn't in practice. The card advantage you get off him is so big that you end up being able to overwhelm virtually any board state given a reasonable amount of creature quality in your deck. You can just throw guys away because you are drawing every creature in your deck after like 3 activations.
He's still not worth splashing. I don't think that Archangel of Thune is worth splashing either, since the effect is
1. some of the time you will be colour screwed for your main colour, and falter before playing your bomb
2. some of the time it will sit in your hand, completely unplayable
3. some of the time you won't draw it
4. some of the time you play it and it's awesome
Now, only (4) is an arguement in favour of splashing for bombs, while (1) and (2) are drawbacks. The thing is, they are quite significant drawbacks if a CC card is the only card of that colour in your deck.
Air Servant on the other hand is emminently splashable because it only costs 4U. I'm more than happy to run an otherwise monoG or monoB deck splashing for a single Air Servant off of 4-5 Islands, while still running 12-13 swamps. That's not enough mana to splash Garruk, because of the double coloured mana requirement.
sorry, i wasn't arguing for splashing garruk (I'm totally on board with the "don't splash double coloured cards" thing), it was more whether he fits the definition of a bomb that you are willing to sacrifice some power for in order to force a particular colour. imo he does fit that bill.
sorry, i wasn't arguing for splashing garruk (I'm totally on board with the "don't splash double coloured cards" thing), it was more whether he fits the definition of a bomb that you are willing to sacrifice some power for in order to force a particular colour. imo he does fit that bill.
I played him in one draft (note, this was early on in the format;) he's very good. Bananas, even. He'll get your deck cranking along and churning out advantage. But he still needs other cards to win the game; by my very strict definition of bomb, he falls just outside in the "totally-windmill-slam" category.
Semantics aside, of course I grab Garruk whenever, because, dolla dolla bills, y'all. But I won't bend a reasonable BR or UW deck around him.
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If I see a 5th pick Doom Blade in this format, I'm taking it. That seems to be a signal to me that black is very open and I try not to be married to my colors until midway through pack 2.
Semantics aside, of course I grab Garruk whenever, because, dolla dolla bills, y'all. But I won't bend a reasonable BR or UW deck around him.
Why do I have to be aside?
I think the biggest difference between a card like Garruk and a card like Primeval Bounty or Jace is how they provide their advantages. Yeah, the format is slow and deliberate enough such that in the majority of circumstances, the card advantage from Garruk is going to win you the game, but it still takes time and resources for the whole process to work its magic. Jace just wins the game on his own for 5 mana, and Bounty makes literally every card you draw for the rest of the game worth about 2-4 mana more than it costs, all for the initial 6 mana investment. The inevitability of both tend to be much more dramatic than Garruk, from what I've seen, which is much more a testament to how bonkers those two are than it is a dig on Garruk. He's still very, very good.
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p1p1 is a Garruk's Horde. i hate Green but the pack was terrible otherwise. enough decent green came my way that i ended up married to it.
my packs were bad generally, and the guy to my right was drafting my preferred color (blue), but i couldn't see it because there was so much of my color that enough was getting through.
ended up with some strange small flier/green beatdown w/ blue control deck. lost to my first opponent because he had large fliers and tons of removal (i mean 3 doomblades and 3 of the -1 per swamp card). i didnt have enough counters to deal with all of it.
ended up winning enough of my rounds to salvage the night, but still. Red became strongish in p2 and stayed that way...should have picked it up.
I'm genuinely curious to get people's actual experiences with the card, because I'm working off a sample size of I think four games here, but while I had thought the bit in bold there would be true before playing with it, I found that it simply didn't in practice. The card advantage you get off him is so big that you end up being able to overwhelm virtually any board state given a reasonable amount of creature quality in your deck. You can just throw guys away because you are drawing every creature in your deck after like 3 activations.
I've played him in a pretty terrible sealed deck, but one that also had Primeval Bounty. He gave insane card advantage, but my creatures were so bad that they just couldn't break through (granted, this was against archangel of thune, all 3 rounds).
When opening a really great bomb P1, I'd seriously consider playing its colour as a second colour, even if it's not flowing that well. P2 you can probably pick up enough playables to make it worthwhile, then just play whatever is most open as your first colour.
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1) You draft a solid bomb first pick - a Garruk or something of that order. Problem is that green isn't killing it otherwise, and in fact, there's very little good green to be had. Do you force the green for the first pick even though it's going to be hard or do you just splash some forests in and draft the dominant colors?
2) You've been comfortably drafting 2 colors - let's say Red and Blue, and midway through pack 2 you start seeing very playable cards of other colors; e.g. this happened to me last night where i saw 2 doomblades in a row. do you draft the off-color cards to play them, do you hate draft them, or do you just ignore them?
i don't like drafting garbage cards just to conform to color so i was curious.
thanks
Even then, I'm talking about splashing a card with a single off-color mana symbol in its cost. Trying to splash something more stringent is just asking for trouble.
1) I've made this mistake so many times it's kind of depressing. It's hard to be objective about the picks available to you when you pull something absurd in pack 1; unless you have really good drafting instincts or just strong discipline, you'll probably bias your picks to support the bomb, even at the expense of better cards in more available colors. You have two choices really: you can either continue to force a color, cutting it off as much as you can pack one even though it might not be providing you with the best playables, and hope to capitalize in pack two when those downstream (hopefully) deliver the goods, or you can try to make the best picks early in pack one and just move where the colors flow.
Again, whether you can support your P1P1 bomb as an off-color splash is going to depend on the format, and how aggressively you draft color fixing to do so.
2) I used to play kind of greedy when I saw stuff like Doom Blade come late; I'd grab them, both as a kind of hate-draft (I know, I know) and maybe thinking to splash them. Splashing removal can be kind of dicey on its own, but it's not unheard of. More likely though, if I've been getting solid Red/Blue and suddenly see a Doom Blade, I'm probably going to ship the Doom Blade and just keep drafting Red/Blue.
If, however, there is nothing else worthwhile in those packs, you can't really hurt yourself by grabbing the Doom Blades. Those were probably dead picks for you no matter what, and who knows? Maybe for whatever reason either Red or Blue suddenly dry up, and you have to move in to black. It's all terribly subjective, however, and there isn't really a single universal answer.
The once exception that springs to mind is Fireball. As a finisher, you can afford to have only a few red sources in your deck to support it, knowing you won't need it till much later in the game. A finisher like that, because it's so light on the color requirement, is probably splashable most of the time.
Regarding bombs; depends. I consider a card a bomb if "this resolves=I win." Garruk does not fit this bill, but Jace does. Within this definition, I will strain to play a bomb, simply because it doesn't much matter what else your deck does, provided you can find and resolve it. Garruk and the like (i.e., very very good cards in their decks) are certainly worth trying to draft around, but if the deck isn't there by pick 8-10, it ain't coming.
Also, as a last note, you're going to find drafting IRL a lot easier than MTGO. Online I am the quintessential average drafter; IRL I always place top 2 in every event except huge ones, like GPs.
My Decks:
EDH: Sygg, River Cutthroat , Road to Scion
Grimgrin, Corpseborn
Modern: Polytokes
IRL: Progenitus Polymorph , Goblins
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I wouldn't splash. You either stick to cutting the colour, or abandon it and run with another colour. Given your specific example, in M14 I like green enough that I'd be balls deep on green from P1P1.
It depends what the on-colour cards you have available to you in those packs. If the packs are competely empty (stuff like Tome Scour and Dragon Hatchling then yeah, feel free to hate draft the Doom Blade with an option on audibling into black should you open a black bomb P3. If there's stuff like Sensory Deprivation or Regathan Firecat in there, I would suck it up and take the on-colour playable.
really? I've only had garruk in one sealed pool, but it won every game that I resolved it in and it wasn't close. the card advantage it brings is bananas if you have a half decent deck otherwise. Even if the board has stalled, if you play 5 more creatures than your opponent it's difficult to not be able to break through at some point.
Garruk is obviously strong, but he doesn't win the game on his own like Jace does. He finds you guys, and then you should be able to ride the extra guys to victory. However, you still need to, y'know, cast the creatures, and they have to be relevant on the given board state (i.e. not a bunch of Rootwallas when you're facing down an Air Servant).
That said, Garruk is bananas, but it's not in the same category as a card like Jace or Primeval Bounty.
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Am I the only one that thinks it's a little funny that they printed two 6 mana green planeswalkers in the same set?
I'm genuinely curious to get people's actual experiences with the card, because I'm working off a sample size of I think four games here, but while I had thought the bit in bold there would be true before playing with it, I found that it simply didn't in practice. The card advantage you get off him is so big that you end up being able to overwhelm virtually any board state given a reasonable amount of creature quality in your deck. You can just throw guys away because you are drawing every creature in your deck after like 3 activations.
He's still not worth splashing. I don't think that Archangel of Thune is worth splashing either, since the effect is
1. some of the time you will be colour screwed for your main colour, and falter before playing your bomb
2. some of the time it will sit in your hand, completely unplayable
3. some of the time you won't draw it
4. some of the time you play it and it's awesome
Now, only (4) is an arguement in favour of splashing for bombs, while (1) and (2) are drawbacks. The thing is, they are quite significant drawbacks if a CC card is the only card of that colour in your deck.
Air Servant on the other hand is emminently splashable because it only costs 4U. I'm more than happy to run an otherwise monoG or monoB deck splashing for a single Air Servant off of 4-5 Islands, while still running 12-13 swamps. That's not enough mana to splash Garruk, because of the double coloured mana requirement.
I played him in one draft (note, this was early on in the format;) he's very good. Bananas, even. He'll get your deck cranking along and churning out advantage. But he still needs other cards to win the game; by my very strict definition of bomb, he falls just outside in the "totally-windmill-slam" category.
Marshall Sutcliffe's article mirrors my own thoughts ( though he might be a little stricter than I... or else I still have enough Timmy in me to see Savageborn Hydra as a bomb.) http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/li/251
Semantics aside, of course I grab Garruk whenever, because, dolla dolla bills, y'all. But I won't bend a reasonable BR or UW deck around him.
My Decks:
EDH: Sygg, River Cutthroat , Road to Scion
Grimgrin, Corpseborn
Modern: Polytokes
IRL: Progenitus Polymorph , Goblins
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R Norin the Wary: I've Got a Bad Feeling About This
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RG Borborygmos Enraged: The Breaking of the World
BG The Gitrog Monster: All Glory to the Hypnotoad
WUR Zedruu the Greathearted: Endless Possibilities, One Outcome
WBG Karador, Ghost Chieftain: What's Dead May Never Die
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Why do I have to be aside?
I think the biggest difference between a card like Garruk and a card like Primeval Bounty or Jace is how they provide their advantages. Yeah, the format is slow and deliberate enough such that in the majority of circumstances, the card advantage from Garruk is going to win you the game, but it still takes time and resources for the whole process to work its magic. Jace just wins the game on his own for 5 mana, and Bounty makes literally every card you draw for the rest of the game worth about 2-4 mana more than it costs, all for the initial 6 mana investment. The inevitability of both tend to be much more dramatic than Garruk, from what I've seen, which is much more a testament to how bonkers those two are than it is a dig on Garruk. He's still very, very good.
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p1p1 is a Garruk's Horde. i hate Green but the pack was terrible otherwise. enough decent green came my way that i ended up married to it.
my packs were bad generally, and the guy to my right was drafting my preferred color (blue), but i couldn't see it because there was so much of my color that enough was getting through.
ended up with some strange small flier/green beatdown w/ blue control deck. lost to my first opponent because he had large fliers and tons of removal (i mean 3 doomblades and 3 of the -1 per swamp card). i didnt have enough counters to deal with all of it.
ended up winning enough of my rounds to salvage the night, but still. Red became strongish in p2 and stayed that way...should have picked it up.
I've played him in a pretty terrible sealed deck, but one that also had Primeval Bounty. He gave insane card advantage, but my creatures were so bad that they just couldn't break through (granted, this was against archangel of thune, all 3 rounds).