I think Melty and myself did way more hate drafting than usual people (I instigated it in pack 3 )
]His BUG Flash build was all about trying your luck when he had mana open. He had so many things he could do at instant speed; counterspells (Exclude, Counterspell, Silumgar Sorcerer, Counterspell), creatures (Briarhorn, Horizon Chimera) and removal (Death Rattle) and the card to tie is all together. With that many options it was very hard to play around. Build was awesome and seemed to counteract my grindy control plan extremely well.
Games were all very interesting and it was nice that it all game down to the wire in the final game of the final match. I look forward to our rematch in the non-red draft.
I look forward to the next round. Too much Draining Whelk is bad for your health.
It was pretty entertaining to compare our drafts and see how we processed our picks and the opponents picks.
Sometimes we were thinking the same stuff and other times we were way off
Grid drafting was really entertaining for me and i liked to talk stuff through while picking. The draft part is a lot more random i feel, but it's not a bad thing per se, it's just different.
I can't imagine you can go that deep on a certain archetype in this format. Mainly because you won't see that many cards, but also because the opponent can hose you really easily.
I will give streaming a shot at least one more time against Grillo and i will have a better resolution and hopefully better audio for tomorrow.
Also i will try to stream the actual games, although it was REALLY hard for me, since i'm not used to it.
I usually play my matches really fast, but now i almost lost due to time because i have to think what to say before i just play cards.
It was pretty entertaining to compare our drafts and see how we processed our picks and the opponents picks.
Sometimes we were thinking the same stuff and other times we were way off
Grid drafting was really entertaining for me and i liked to talk stuff through while picking. The draft part is a lot more random i feel, but it's not a bad thing per se, it's just different.
I can't imagine you can go that deep on a certain archetype in this format. Mainly because you won't see that many cards, but also because the opponent can hose you really easily.
I will give streaming a shot at least one more time against Grillo and i will have a better resolution and hopefully better audio for tomorrow.
Also i will try to stream the actual games, although it was REALLY hard for me, since i'm not used to it.
I usually play my matches really fast, but now i almost lost due to time because i have to think what to say before i just play cards.
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. There were so many instances where you picked a column where I was certain you would pick a different one. It goes to show you how everyones train of thought is different and you really can't pick your opponent. It was nice to hear your reasoning though and I can understand where you were coming from.
As for the streaming, don't feel like you are forced to do it. I like making the videos for people to look at afterwards, but I feel if I was on stream I would be trying to hard. Checking out comments and trying to talk more. With the videos I can play how I usually play, I just need to talk what is going through my head and that is the only real difference. People may be able to do this with streams as well, but I can't. I guess I just try to hard sometimes.
We should do a youtube double viewer thingy on our drafts that could be entertaining to see. Although we would probably be talking over each other way too much. The matches on the other hand might be good, as I generally only talk on my own turn about the plays I am going to make so that could fill in a lot of the dead air. It could also be really funny to watch me talk about the threat of Draining Whelk, while in your video you are just talking about bluffing holding it up. That would be pretty sweet.
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. There were so many instances where you picked a column where I was certain you would pick a different one. It goes to show you how everyones train of thought is different and you really can't pick your opponent. It was nice to hear your reasoning though and I can understand where you were coming from.
As for the streaming, don't feel like you are forced to do it. I like making the videos for people to look at afterwards, but I feel if I was on stream I would be trying to hard. Checking out comments and trying to talk more. With the videos I can play how I usually play, I just need to talk what is going through my head and that is the only real difference. People may be able to do this with streams as well, but I can't. I guess I just try to hard sometimes.
We should do a youtube double viewer thingy on our drafts that could be entertaining to see. Although we would probably be talking over each other way too much. The matches on the other hand might be good, as I generally only talk on my own turn about the plays I am going to make so that could fill in a lot of the dead air. It could also be really funny to watch me talk about the threat of Draining Whelk, while in your video you are just talking about bluffing holding it up. That would be pretty sweet.
Ah yes, i wrote that in a hurry because i had to go out for a few hours.
I ment i will try making a video not stream!
You are right, making a stream might make you "overplay" or "overthink", so it might be better to just record even if i would get a flat / house where i could get a better internet connection.
In my experience, talking through a draft is pretty easy, but talking through a game resulted in me playing significantly worse than normal. I do feel like this kind of thing is probably trainable, and is something I plan on working on more when I feel like I have the time to devote to it. I also think I just need to get a bit better at the game to be able to hang with a lot of you guys. I've been out of the competitive scene for a minute. Totally agree with the sentiment that folks should make content in whatever format they feel comfortable with. It's all good stuff.
Regardless of medium, I really like the idea of the two perspectives thing. That's something I pushed really heavily back when the streaming first started up. I feel like that's the biggest thing our content has to offer over "pro" content on the big sites (not the we necessarily compete in the same space)
Went orzhov, which was not what I originally wanted, but the deck was still pretty good. I originally wanted either R/W, B/R aggro, or a G/B reanimator deck. Instead I ended up in value blink city. Deck was hard to play, because I was really relying off of the scry's to keep the cards flowing, and it was always hard to try to figure out how the game state was likely to develop and what I would need. I felt the deck was strong, but I got a little unlucky when the negative variance gods did not punish his 3 color "I only drafted evolving wilds for fixing" deck.
The deck frayed in a few spots: it didn't have quite as much creature density as I would like to support the ninjas, and 1-2 more pieces of removal would have been ideal. He was able to exert enough early pressure and burst damage that wumpas was never good. Basically, I could have some draws develop in a way where he would outpaced my removal, which made it hard for me to exert my time-intensive strategy of value grinding. Though like I said, I was surprised his mana base was cooperating so well with him.
Match 1 was kind of dull, as he mulled to 5 both games and I just killed him. Match 2 I ended up succumbing to a combination of early pressure into burst damage, as I was just out tempoed both games. Games one and two were both really fun. Sadly, game 3 saw me stuck on lands while he got his best draw of the entire set >.<
Once bone shredder and throat slitter showed up it got even more ridiculous. I had to do a couple rule checks during the game, and still ended up accidentally killing my own akroan skyguard.
Game 2 was nuts, and I should have outright lost it, but for a single misplay on melty's part.
I have a strong hand, but turn 3 mangara on his part, targeting my basilica is basically game, if I can't top a non-CIPT land to bone shredder mangara.
I fail to top the land and consider conceding, but pass the turn. He was in such an aggro mindset though that he attacked with mangara and I was able to bone shredder it.
I thought I had stabilized with a master splicer, but a timely prison term opened my board up again.
I ended up in a spot where I figured there was no point trying to play around his burn, and went down to 1 life. My hand was very strong though, and the sort of sequence of events that I needed to come back were occurring. Unfortunately, he had the burn spell /sigh
It still was a very exciting couple of turns though.
I promised I would make a video of the trading process since both the tradee's managed to have problems with my text writeup last time. Hopefully this makes it more intuitive and I don't ramble on too much (this was my second attempt, the first one had way too much dead time for a tutorial video).
I've also put it with the text writeup for future reference. Hopefully it makes all these drafts work like a slick, well-oiled machine.
oh btw, we had a few problems with cloudshift. Just as a reference for everyone in the future.
The cards were
It seems to have a hard time sometimes with commas. It was pretty easy to track down the missing cards, however, because you could just cut and paste the cloudshift list next to your picks on the google sheet. You can just go down the line, and very quickly see where there are cards missing.
I'm gonna be reimplementing it over the next couple weeks ideally so try to hang in there for now. If possible, keep track of anything it misses and be meticulous about scrubbing your own data for false positives generated by human error. That'll help me focus my time/effort on patterns that it genuinely does have trouble with
Okay i finally got time to upload some vids on our draft and matches.
Match 2 and 3 will be uploaded tomorrow. The sound MIGHT have less white noise than these videos, i'm tinkering with audacity at the moment
Drafting:
Match 1:
I'm somehow unable to pronounce Pyre.. why do i say "pure".. why???
Also some other comments are pretty stupid, because i'm just thinking out loud rather than making viable comments, like "he can't exile so i can get Rancor back".. wuut.
Oh well, i hope someone gets something out of these games.
I also wonder how to get the video quality better, i have to get on top of that..
Okay i finally got time to upload some vids on our draft and matches.
Match 2 and 3 will be uploaded tomorrow. The sound MIGHT have less white noise than these videos, i'm tinkering with audacity at the moment
Drafting:
Match 1:
I'm somehow unable to pronounce Pyre.. why do i say "pure".. why???
Also some other comments are pretty stupid, because i'm just thinking out loud rather than making viable comments, like "he can't exile so i can get Rancor back".. wuut.
Oh well, i hope someone gets something out of these games.
I also wonder how to get the video quality better, i have to get on top of that..
All done. I got pretty crushed, losing all three matches and only getting 2 games out of it. Here's my deck:
I thought it seemed pretty good but it only came together really in one game. The green splash might have been greedy, and I sideboarded into straight R/B for games 2 and 3 of the last match.
Hello, my name is Kirblinx and I am an addict. Addicted to mana-fixing and value:
Deck was absolutely nuts. Blinking and reanimating absolutely everything to eek out every slice of value I could. I sided out Slaughter after every game 1 into Flickerwisp as the majority of Aston's threats were black. I kept in the Ghastly Demise mainly to deal with Hissing Iguanar (For an unassuming card it made me sweat a lot).
Surprising never had any colour problems (well, when it mattered at least). The War Marshal was also a questionable include, but my two drop slot was just a gaping hole and I thought that Aston would be a quick go wide strategy, so it would conteract it well. I don't know if this ended up being the case, but I never hated seeing the card.
Drafting:
Match 1:
Match 2:
Match 3:
A quick gloss over the games: M1G1:
So you may have seen Aston's comment:
and thought, yeah, it is a decent card. However, MTGO strikes again. Aston uses it once all fine and dandy discarding a land from his hand. The next time he uses it his card stays in his hand. We both wonder what is going on, so Aston just plays the land he should of discarded (so he couldn't use the stormbind again). Two turns later he uses it again and he gets to keep his land in hand again, but just before it hits my turn, I realise my Pelakka Wurm isn't in my hand anymore. Then I realise that Stormbind has been pitching cards from my hand :eek:
Card is indeed 'strong'. Aston concedes the game as he wouldn't have come back from the Wurm, if I had cast it next turn. I also lost a land from the previous activation of Stormbind, which would have allowed me to cast the wurm that turn. So we start a new match with me at 1-0 and hopefully a cleaner run through the rest of these matches.
M1G2:
I rip a Crib Swap just as a Fallen Angel as hit the table. I use it and Aston accidentally sacrifices his Bloodthrone Vampire to itself, loses the Angel and I Ghastly Demise his Hissing Iguanar. This leaves him with an empty board against my 2 2/2's but I slowly keep beating in and playing other cards while he had run out of gas.
M2G2:
I keep this mess of a hand:
Scry a non-land to the bottom, then draw a Throat Slitter. So things aren't looking great but then Aston plays Ravenous Rats, which allows me to discard my Flickerwisp so I can unearth it the next turn. Draw an untapped land, bring back the Flickerwisp to flicker my scryland and see a Selesnya Sanctuary on top (a white source!). Then I just ride the value train. Play Marsh Flitter, ninja it, play it again, Crib Swap the freshly cast Fallen Angel, play Selenia and swing in the air for victory.
M2G3:
This was probably the closest match. There was a lot of army building on both sides. I think the fact I managed to have a Mash Flitter come into play 3 times gave me enough chump blockers to hold off the assault while my air force lead by Selenia got through. Might have to come back to this one to figure out what the key plays were. It was pretty tight.
M3G1:
Aston seems to get flooded this game. He can't put any pressure on and I drop a Palakka Wurm, trade with his entire board then bring it back with an Entomber Exarch to seal the deal.
M3G2:
I mulligan to a 5 land Sylvan Ranger hand. Scry a Persecute to the top and rip it on turn 4 for black hitting a Dread Return and Ink-eyes, seeting a Brimstone Volley and Volt Charge. I get a Codex Shredder and bring back the Persecute to force him to use up the burn. He gets 3 creatures out and goes all in on the Ink-Eyes plan (Dread Returning it). I keep ripping lands while my tiny 1/1's keep Ink-eyes at bay until I can no longer keep blocking it. It gets back my Aven Riftwatcher to buff up his life total and is followed up my a Swarm of Bloodflies and a Spikeshot Elder. It chews through my Marsh Flitter + Tokens and the Swarm beats be down in the air, while my Krosan Tusker and Hooting Mandrils just watch.
MVPs:
These cards always changed the course of the game in my favor when I cast them. Sure Palakka Wurm also does this, but it wasn't as frequent as these cards. I wonder how things would have ended up if Aston had ended up with the Mogg War Marshal, Thopter Engineer and Marsh Flitter. My guess is that it would have been very poor for me
So thats step 1 of what I needed to have happen, now I just need melty to lose hard. Go Aston go!
That deck is magnificent, and more along the lines of what I wanted to draft this week. It was a non-blue week, so I figured those decks would be well positioned. Its good to see that the old G/B/x pelakka wurm deck still has what it takes.
I think you're right about marsh flitter (which would have been great btw in Aston's deck). One of the problems I've had with this style of deck over the past couple weeks, is that it it can be outpaced pretty quickly with wide assertive pressure. Having marsh flitter come down to artificially extend your life total vs. a wide board, gives you the time to setup that crushing recursive late game.
I was victorious, going 2-1, 2-1, 2-0. Meltyman did suffer from a lot of mulligans though, which helped. Here's the deck:
I never got to put Unflinching Courage on Troll Ascetic which was probably just as well given how much Melty didn't like playing against it even without any buffs.
Vods (I have to apologise for the coughing, I've got a bit of a cold. I did try and mute myself whenever it was bad but I think some slipped through)
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