So that was pretty fun. We had 5 drafters (Safra, Myself, Meltyman, Vennythekid and Marwatt) and 4 players (Marwatt had to leave). I decided to record what I was doing, in which I found it hard to talk and actually draft at the same time. I kept holding up all the packs (oops). I'll check out my recordings and post them up to youtube maybe if they don't bore me to tears or the audio is all mucked up.
The fact that I had absolutely no idea what game plan I wanted to go didn't help me either and I ended up in a CoCo 5-colour goodstuff build
Match 1 Game 1 vs Safra
So I keep a hand with 5 lands and see a first turn Birds of Paradise on the other side, which scares me. It doesn't lead to anything early though. I drop a third turn Tidehollow Sculler that I ripped from the top and see this:
So I can see the Jeskai Ascendency/Life shenanigans that is going to occur, but I think I can wind it out. So I take the Solemn to stop a blocker and hope she can't get another coloured source for the Ascendency.
Safra cracks the Verge to get the coloured sources she needs (I forgot about that), swings with delver and passes.
I drop Guul Draz Assassin and Lingering Souls and beats with the Sculler and pass.
Delver then flips off of a Remand (important), Safra does the Ascendency and beats with the delver.
I spend my next turn just levelling up the assassin and killing delver and swinging in with the team, which I realise as soon as I did it was a mistake.
I pass turn and hope not to die to a wall of trees. So Safra casts Life then casts this:
So at this point I assume I am dead, as I know she has the Remand in hand. So she can just Remand the Mox to get 2 more Ascendancy triggers. Instead, it just dies, and a Young Pyromancer comes out. I take 12 to go down to 4. I Kill the Pyromancer on my turn, swing in. Safra untaps, draws and concedes.
You have to love a patented 'Safra Misplay'™.
Match 1 Game 2 vs Safra
Safra gets a turn 1 Young Pyromancer off of a Mox Diamond which is rather scary. I have my Assassin turn 1 to stop it from beating in though. I get to turn 3 Collected Company off a Rattleclaw Mystic to only find a Scavenging Ooze. Which gets to eat one thing before Safra decides it has to go by Bring To Lighting a Path To Exile, which gets me no land, as my only basic is already in play :\
Safra is down to only one card left in hand and I have been struggling for land. I decide to roll the dice with my BBE and come up all 6's.
Safra can only play a Retreat to Coralhelm, so I beat her down to 1. She draws Izzet Charm, loots deep then concedes.
Reflector Mage is awesome. 'Nuff said.
Match 2 Game 1 vs Meltyman
So I heard from the skype chat that his deck had way too much value. I was a little scared, especially when I had to mulligan down to 6. My second turn Qasali Pridemage got Removed Souled which was quite relevant when a Birthing Pod appeared with a Finks in tow. I feel things stared to fall apart on turn 5:
So I can do all sorts of things this turn. I decided to Sculler and sac it to the Helm while the ability was still on the stack. I see all sorts of gas: Jace, Architect of Thought, Vendilion Clique, Glen Elendra Archmage and the card I end up taking Shriekmaw. :eek:
I take the Sower with the helm, which doesn't have the effect I wanted it to have (I didn't get Yasova back, RTFC).
Meltyman then Yasova's the Sower, swings in. Pod's the Finks into a Woodland Wanderer (which is questionable) passes.
I rip a Reflector Mage to return Yasova to my hand and drop the assassin and pass.
Meltyman pods the Wanderer into a Acidic Slime to blow up the helm and drop the Archmage with a blue open and pass.
I Bloodbraid to hope for Lingering Souls or Bone Shredder to stop the faerie assault but get a Porcelain Legionnaire instead and then swing in for no reason. I get beaten down to 3 so I have one more turn. I get Cliqued on my draw step and CoCo in response. It gets countered by the archmage (I forgot about it :|) then concede to the abundance of lethal pixie dust.
Match 2 Game 2 vs Meltyman
I keep a risky two land hand on the play and am instantly rewarded with a third land that allows me to drop a Liliana of the Veil and start grind out some advantage (+1). The next turn it makes Melty sacrifice his freshly cast Baleful Strix and I CoCo into Yasova and Guul Draz Assassin. Then a couple of turns pass, Liliana and the assassin take care of Melty's board and he gets knocked down to 9, so he casts a max Woodland Wanderer. I get to unearth a Liliana discarded Reflector Mage and swing with the Assassin, Yasova and Pridemage for lethal.
Match 2 Game 3 vs Meltyman
I decided to combat the insane card advantage of his deck by putting in my terrible combo of Hermit Druid and Laboratory Maniac taking out the Helm of Possession and Thragtusk (I didn't know what to cut). I mulligan a 1-lander into a 4-lander (no white) plus Hermit Druid and Tidehollow Sculler, it is better than a punch in the face so I keep and scry an unearth to the bottom. I make a mistake on the first turn by not playing my Savage Lands first in case I draw a white source for the turn 2 Sculler, which I do get. However, my Sculler gets Vendilion Cliqued away into another land so all I have is Hermit Druid. Melty gets a Glen Elendra Archmage next turn and I am on a quick airforce clock. I rip a Collected Company and cast it straight away and only hit Reclamation Sage (the rest was 3 lands, Liliana and Rancor). I then sigh heavily and pass. Melty pressures me more by playing Garruk Wildspeaker and Baleful Strix and swinging me down to 12. I swing in at Garruk to make sure I have at least one more turn. Play the Porcelain Legionnaire I drew and pass. Melty swings me down to 7 and I know I have nothing that can really save me at this point so I Hermit Druid so I can maybe I can flashback Lingering Souls, but I accidentally my whole library.
So I get to go out on my own terms, which is pretty sweet. When watching the replay, I did see I put that mountain as the last card from my Collected Company. I never think about the cards I'm putting on the bottom. Maybe from now on I will.
So I ended up going 1-1. Would have liked to play against Vennythekid but time constraints got the best of us yet again (time is such the fickle mistress).
Overall I had a great time. I even got in a couple more games against Meltyman (went 1-1 then the next pairings were up). Deck was fun if not a little too luck based (BBE and CoCo <3). I am getting used to Safra's cube. Fixing is almost waay too abundant which is great, although I don't know if it is something I would draft every time as all the decks I draft seem to end up fairly similar in the end, 4-5 good stuff piles. It probably says more about how I draft than about Safra's cube, but thought it was relevant enough to share. 10/10 would make Safra misplay again.
EDIT: Sorry if the images are too large. I got a new monitor and haven't figured out what best to scale images to for this forum. Next time I'll save some of your bandwidth.
The fact that I had absolutely no idea what game plan I wanted to go didn't help me either and I ended up in a CoCo 5-colour goodstuff build
So I keep a hand with 5 lands and see a first turn Birds of Paradise on the other side, which scares me. It doesn't lead to anything early though. I drop a third turn Tidehollow Sculler that I ripped from the top and see this:
Safra cracks the Verge to get the coloured sources she needs (I forgot about that), swings with delver and passes.
I drop Guul Draz Assassin and Lingering Souls and beats with the Sculler and pass.
Delver then flips off of a Remand (important), Safra does the Ascendency and beats with the delver.
I spend my next turn just levelling up the assassin and killing delver and swinging in with the team, which I realise as soon as I did it was a mistake.
I pass turn and hope not to die to a wall of trees. So Safra casts Life then casts this:
So at this point I assume I am dead, as I know she has the Remand in hand. So she can just Remand the Mox to get 2 more Ascendancy triggers. Instead, it just dies, and a Young Pyromancer comes out. I take 12 to go down to 4. I Kill the Pyromancer on my turn, swing in. Safra untaps, draws and concedes.
You have to love a patented 'Safra Misplay'™.
Match 1 Game 2 vs Safra
Safra gets a turn 1 Young Pyromancer off of a Mox Diamond which is rather scary. I have my Assassin turn 1 to stop it from beating in though. I get to turn 3 Collected Company off a Rattleclaw Mystic to only find a Scavenging Ooze. Which gets to eat one thing before Safra decides it has to go by Bring To Lighting a Path To Exile, which gets me no land, as my only basic is already in play :\
Safra is down to only one card left in hand and I have been struggling for land. I decide to roll the dice with my BBE and come up all 6's.
Reflector Mage is awesome. 'Nuff said.
Match 2 Game 1 vs Meltyman
So I heard from the skype chat that his deck had way too much value. I was a little scared, especially when I had to mulligan down to 6. My second turn Qasali Pridemage got Removed Souled which was quite relevant when a Birthing Pod appeared with a Finks in tow. I feel things stared to fall apart on turn 5:
I take the Sower with the helm, which doesn't have the effect I wanted it to have (I didn't get Yasova back, RTFC).
Meltyman then Yasova's the Sower, swings in. Pod's the Finks into a Woodland Wanderer (which is questionable) passes.
I rip a Reflector Mage to return Yasova to my hand and drop the assassin and pass.
Meltyman pods the Wanderer into a Acidic Slime to blow up the helm and drop the Archmage with a blue open and pass.
I Bloodbraid to hope for Lingering Souls or Bone Shredder to stop the faerie assault but get a Porcelain Legionnaire instead and then swing in for no reason. I get beaten down to 3 so I have one more turn. I get Cliqued on my draw step and CoCo in response. It gets countered by the archmage (I forgot about it :|) then concede to the abundance of lethal pixie dust.
Match 2 Game 2 vs Meltyman
I keep a risky two land hand on the play and am instantly rewarded with a third land that allows me to drop a Liliana of the Veil and start grind out some advantage (+1). The next turn it makes Melty sacrifice his freshly cast Baleful Strix and I CoCo into Yasova and Guul Draz Assassin. Then a couple of turns pass, Liliana and the assassin take care of Melty's board and he gets knocked down to 9, so he casts a max Woodland Wanderer. I get to unearth a Liliana discarded Reflector Mage and swing with the Assassin, Yasova and Pridemage for lethal.
Match 2 Game 3 vs Meltyman
I decided to combat the insane card advantage of his deck by putting in my terrible combo of Hermit Druid and Laboratory Maniac taking out the Helm of Possession and Thragtusk (I didn't know what to cut). I mulligan a 1-lander into a 4-lander (no white) plus Hermit Druid and Tidehollow Sculler, it is better than a punch in the face so I keep and scry an unearth to the bottom. I make a mistake on the first turn by not playing my Savage Lands first in case I draw a white source for the turn 2 Sculler, which I do get. However, my Sculler gets Vendilion Cliqued away into another land so all I have is Hermit Druid. Melty gets a Glen Elendra Archmage next turn and I am on a quick airforce clock. I rip a Collected Company and cast it straight away and only hit Reclamation Sage (the rest was 3 lands, Liliana and Rancor). I then sigh heavily and pass. Melty pressures me more by playing Garruk Wildspeaker and Baleful Strix and swinging me down to 12. I swing in at Garruk to make sure I have at least one more turn. Play the Porcelain Legionnaire I drew and pass. Melty swings me down to 7 and I know I have nothing that can really save me at this point so I Hermit Druid so I can maybe I can flashback Lingering Souls, but I accidentally my whole library.
So I ended up going 1-1. Would have liked to play against Vennythekid but time constraints got the best of us yet again (time is such the fickle mistress).
Overall I had a great time. I even got in a couple more games against Meltyman (went 1-1 then the next pairings were up). Deck was fun if not a little too luck based (BBE and CoCo <3). I am getting used to Safra's cube. Fixing is almost waay too abundant which is great, although I don't know if it is something I would draft every time as all the decks I draft seem to end up fairly similar in the end, 4-5 good stuff piles. It probably says more about how I draft than about Safra's cube, but thought it was relevant enough to share. 10/10 would make Safra misplay again.
EDIT: Sorry if the images are too large. I got a new monitor and haven't figured out what best to scale images to for this forum. Next time I'll save some of your bandwidth.
