This guy has to be the stone blade for aggro decks. It's a curve topper that can finish games out of nowhere. I think the biggest bonus is the fact that he makes walls and small chumpers completely useless. I think this is easily a staple.
Personally, I think that the greatness of Bribery lies not in the fact that you can steal your opponent's best guy, but that you can gain information that would otherwise be completely unattainable. I love getting to play Bribery game 1 because it allows me to game plan accordingly for the rest of the games.
Senor Teeth is just a pimp. It's not just that he's a finisher, but he's also an impenetrable wall and removal spell. I love dropping him in the face of an aggro deck because he's so hard to remove from the board. He can nearly block forever and rarely does he ever trade with a guy and when he does he's usually trading up for a bomb.
Upheaval, what more needs to be said? It's a reset button that actually starts the game over. It can be back breaking because you are completely in control of what you want the board state to look like post heave. I've played some heaves where I've floated, heaved, then replayed almost all the non land permanents from my hand. I've rarely lost a game in which I've played Upheaval.
Here's a question I've been dying to ask:
Why is All Suns' Dawn good?
I've always been underwhelmed with it, especially because my cube is less geared towards 4-5 color decks.
I'm currently using Ultra Pro Matte Reds as my sleeves of choice and I can't say that I'm that pleased with the performance of these sleeves. I find that UPs tend to bend at the corners a lot and shuffling can be very difficult at times. One bonus is that the these sleeves tend to stay cleaner for a longer period of time.
I'm seriously thinking about making the move to KMC's since I'm planning on getting Perfect Fits anyway. I'd get Dragonshields if I could, but Taiwan is in short supply.
As for my storage, I recently procured the new WoW Trading Card game card box for the new Scourge War set and it just looks sweet. I'm that guy who shows up at Magic tournaments rocking WoW sleeves, a WoW playmat with my PTQ top 8 pins in it, and a WoW deck box. I've never really played the WoW TCG but I have to admit that their storage options are much sweeter than Magic's.
I think that Lodestone really made the Naut look much worse in this draft. The Lodestone happens to be strictly better in this situation. I have always been a big fan of Naut as he really advances the aggro decks plan. He's a mana efficient body that puts a lot of pressure on early in the game. It's also no small fact that he gets around every single annoying wall in the format (and there are plenty). I've also noticed that when he's good, he's pretty much the stone blade and when he's bad you just leave him on the bench.
This pick is really tough for me. Rift Bolt can be a 1CC spell or a 3CC spell and the versatility is definitely there. It gives us reach and clears out blockers. Hell's Thunder is a big 4/4 hastey dork for 3 that has evasion. It's really tough but I think I have to give the Rift Bolt the nod.
Arc Lightning should be the pick here. It clears out blockers, goes to the dome, does it all. The champion is good but I think we are pretty solid at the 4 drop spot.
This is how good decks get derailed. Drafters get excited at the shiny powerful card and abandon reason to draft it. I'm definitely guilty of doing this ALL the time and it has cost me more than my fair share of drafts. We've got 2 solid pieces of equipment already (Jitte which no one will contest and Greaves which is amazing in an aggro deck) and going for a third in lieu of an 8th creature is pretty greedy. We know that we are going to wheel another pick outta this pack which could put us up to 10 creatures if the Kami comes back around. I know how great these swords are but Sword of Body and Mind is by far the worst one. If it were SoFI or SoLS it might be closer but I can't imagine wanting something other than a great 1 drop creature.
Am I really one of the only people that thinks Isamaru is nearly the stoneblade here? I can really only think of 2 1 drops that I'd rather have and they are Figure of Destiny and Goblin Guide.
I think the sword and the hound are decent picks here. However, since a lot of the white weenies came back to us in the last pack, I would go with the sword expecting isamaru to table back to us.
That is a valid point but there is a great opportunity to fill our curve with 2 great dudes or one great dude and a removal card. I suppose it could be that I'm just not a big fan of running more than a couple equipment in a deck with less than say 16 guys (and this deck is going to have less than 16 guys).
Isamaru has got to be the pick here. We were looking for one drops and they don't get a whole lot better than this. A red 1 drop would have been better but I think we are solidly in R/W aggro as it is. And as great as the sword is, we've got only 7 guys and we already have 2 equipment that are better than the sword. Also it's worth noting that of all the swords, this is the one that hurts us the least.
On a note about the pack, I think we can wheel one of the other red cards in this pack. The pack is sufficiently deep and I think there's a good chance that we get another great pick on the wheel. Hopefully it's the Hearth Kami or the Javelin.
In my experience, going into a 3rd color for a splash, in cubes, is what leads to an inconsistent deck. Cubes are normally assembled to allow for consistent focused strategies that punish people for greed. It is really tempting to dip into black but I believe that staying focused is how we will, ultimately, win this draft. Consistency is paramount.
On a different note, here are some of the cards I'd definitely like to see in our deck:
Goblin Guide
Figure of Destiny
Lightning Helix
more 1 mana guys
more 1-2 mana burn spells
I'd most like try and focus on laying my hands on spells/creatures that are in the 1-3 CC range. I feel that our top side is already pretty full and we need to be able to resolve cheap spells under our Winter Orb.
The wall is a fine addition but it's value goes down the more you play. It's not a very good draw at most times in the game. The dream scenario is to Cruel into one while Jace is in play, but really at that point you are winning anyway. In my 9 matches this weekend, I resolved him twice. Once to get back Cruel and the other time to get back a Double Negative. All the other times, I shuffled it back into my deck with See Beyond or Jace + fetch.
Pyromancer's is a pretty sweet card, but I would have to drastically change to deck to play with it. I toyed with the idea of just making a Pyromancer deck but in the end I found it to be way to inconsistent. You really want to be taking advantage of cards like Time Warp etc if you are playing Ascensions.
Yea.. if I had an answer to that card, I win the tournament for sure. It's pretty sad losing to just one card but sometimes your deck is so good vs. the field that you lose against that one thing. Not to say that Ascension is at all fringe... I just didn't think about it since I'm not a fan of that card by any means.
Senor Teeth is just a pimp. It's not just that he's a finisher, but he's also an impenetrable wall and removal spell. I love dropping him in the face of an aggro deck because he's so hard to remove from the board. He can nearly block forever and rarely does he ever trade with a guy and when he does he's usually trading up for a bomb.
Upheaval, what more needs to be said? It's a reset button that actually starts the game over. It can be back breaking because you are completely in control of what you want the board state to look like post heave. I've played some heaves where I've floated, heaved, then replayed almost all the non land permanents from my hand. I've rarely lost a game in which I've played Upheaval.
Here's a question I've been dying to ask:
Why is All Suns' Dawn good?
I've always been underwhelmed with it, especially because my cube is less geared towards 4-5 color decks.
I'm seriously thinking about making the move to KMC's since I'm planning on getting Perfect Fits anyway. I'd get Dragonshields if I could, but Taiwan is in short supply.
As for my storage, I recently procured the new WoW Trading Card game card box for the new Scourge War set and it just looks sweet. I'm that guy who shows up at Magic tournaments rocking WoW sleeves, a WoW playmat with my PTQ top 8 pins in it, and a WoW deck box. I've never really played the WoW TCG but I have to admit that their storage options are much sweeter than Magic's.
Am I really one of the only people that thinks Isamaru is nearly the stoneblade here? I can really only think of 2 1 drops that I'd rather have and they are Figure of Destiny and Goblin Guide.
That is a valid point but there is a great opportunity to fill our curve with 2 great dudes or one great dude and a removal card. I suppose it could be that I'm just not a big fan of running more than a couple equipment in a deck with less than say 16 guys (and this deck is going to have less than 16 guys).
On a note about the pack, I think we can wheel one of the other red cards in this pack. The pack is sufficiently deep and I think there's a good chance that we get another great pick on the wheel. Hopefully it's the Hearth Kami or the Javelin.
On a different note, here are some of the cards I'd definitely like to see in our deck:
Goblin Guide
Figure of Destiny
Lightning Helix
more 1 mana guys
more 1-2 mana burn spells
I'd most like try and focus on laying my hands on spells/creatures that are in the 1-3 CC range. I feel that our top side is already pretty full and we need to be able to resolve cheap spells under our Winter Orb.
Pyromancer's is a pretty sweet card, but I would have to drastically change to deck to play with it. I toyed with the idea of just making a Pyromancer deck but in the end I found it to be way to inconsistent. You really want to be taking advantage of cards like Time Warp etc if you are playing Ascensions.