Wait, so, each player can only take 1 tri-land tops? Or are you adding a <Triland of Choice> card to your main cube to be traded in after-draft? Sorry, my brain's fried tonight
sharzad (safra's cube)
- Thread starter safra
- Start date
Wait, so, each player can only take 1 tri-land tops? Or are you adding a <Triland of Choice> card to your main cube to be traded in after-draft? Sorry, my brain's fried tonight
All this time I assumed you two knew each other cuz you're online at similar times of day and have mentioned that you have a person with whom you do 2 player cubing!
Dom Harvey
Contributor
...people HAVE sigs?!
Chris Taylor
Contributor
There are PEOPLE?
Okay in all honestly, now lucas can find the link to my customs as well
Hey, it's time for my OGW patch, which has been live on CubeTutor for a lil bit but hasn't been written up here yet. RavebornMuse's new patch post is so good it reminded me to write this up here before the GP. Yeah, GP Vancouver is at the end of the month, and so if you mostly pay attention to these patch notes because you like my prerelease reports, you'll have to wait until Dom and I scrub out together next week.
I took the advantage of the patch to make a few non-OGW-related fixes to my environment, detailed below:
notable cuts (cool cards or ones that have been in for 3+ patches):
I took the advantage of the patch to make a few non-OGW-related fixes to my environment, detailed below:
- Mystic Confluence gets cut as it's literally always been a 3-for-1 stabilizer. If it couldn't Unsummon I'd be stoked about that but as soon as you get into counterspell-unsummon-unsummon territory it's just too much mana advantage to come back from the next turn. I've tried this multiple times, with multiple decks facing each other, and Mystic Confluence always heralds the end of the game. That's not a stabilizer, that's a finisher, so it leaves my environment.
- I'm going down to one Champion of the Parish, like RBM did. He's cool and good but Stromkirk Noble aggro has been a real meta call in my environment (i think i'm at like 45% Human creature saturation??) and Champion stares him down pretty poorly. The Wx Human aggro decks have plenty of other t1 plays, several of which are beginning to outpace my duplicated aggro 1, so it's no longer my duplicated aggro 1. Whether I'll go to 2 Mardu Woe-Reaper of Soldier of the Pantheon at some point remains to be seen but double Parish Champ is underwhelming at 360.
- I really want to run all 10 dual creature lands but good golly was that a rough proposition to cut. I'm running two Mutavault instead to help pay
costs, and it makes up for the slight tribal hit losing a Champ caused. In testing I was able to draft 3 colourless lands in a WB Deadguy-style deck, exactly where I'd like to see a few of the more pushed Eldrazi. If I add more mana rocks at some point I'll reinvestigate my Eldrazi presence. - Reanimator gets a little push; I'm still interested in big reanimation being a four-mana play, because I have all these two- and three-mana draw-discard spells to set them up. I've gotten over my Meren apprehension though, and tried to shine up some of green's enchantment offerings to boot. Ramp and Reanimator should be cousins in my environment, and I've added a couple of dragons to reward them both, also providing a few high-end Pod targets.
- I'm going up to two copies of Path to Exile. I wanted another good white piece of removal, and I like what Path does for my environment - make players think carefully about their basic land allocations. Another removal spell is good for my environment; it being Path to Exile is even better. A second Magma Jet comes in too.
- My reactive 4s and 5s hit harder in Mystic Confluence's wake; a few spells that were good but a turn or two too slow got cut on a trial basis.
- I really like this 'iconic characters ft their namesake spells' thing I've been doing with walkers/oaths and elder dragons/commands. Almost feels like my custom set is developing a lore or backstory organically. I run a lot of Legends lately and it's kinda fun!
notable cuts (cool cards or ones that have been in for 3+ patches):
Did a shaky grid draft with Dom, here's the decks. I lost a bunch.
I didn't get enough lands but lucked out on consistency anyway with like 7 basics. The games were usually me getting off to slow starts and failing to come back from Pia and Kiran + Karakas or Whirler Rogue shenanigans. I definitely think I could've drafted tighter, and deserved the losses, but it was fun regardless!
Dom Harvey
Contributor
After getting brutalized at Goldeneye I was eager for revenge!
I started by picking up some fetches, a Whirler Rogue, and a Silent Departure, so I was keen to be in blue. I saw some good aggressive cards but in my experience it's hard to get the required amount of solid early plays in grid draft. We forgot to shuffle the lands in properly so we had a clump of blue fetches in the draft, and I took advantage of that: despite being solidly in UR, I was able to 'splash' big Elspeth when I picked it up late. I ended up with a Standard-esque 4C deck, using my 7 fetches and 3 duals to play the best cheap spells and threats across my colours.
G1: I play a Mardu Strike Leader and back it up with removal
G2: Karakas is an all-star here, rescuing Shu Yun from Dragonlord Silumgar and ensuring I can control the DLS vs Elspeth fight while keeping Tasigur at bay
G3: I suspend Ancestral Vision on T1 and feel pretty good, until I miss my fourth land drop and do so again even after resolving Vision. Wasteland shows up next turn and combines with Eternal Witness to do me in
G4: lots of trading until Elspeth shows up again to do its thing
Karakas was borderline busted even though I never had it with P&K
I started by picking up some fetches, a Whirler Rogue, and a Silent Departure, so I was keen to be in blue. I saw some good aggressive cards but in my experience it's hard to get the required amount of solid early plays in grid draft. We forgot to shuffle the lands in properly so we had a clump of blue fetches in the draft, and I took advantage of that: despite being solidly in UR, I was able to 'splash' big Elspeth when I picked it up late. I ended up with a Standard-esque 4C deck, using my 7 fetches and 3 duals to play the best cheap spells and threats across my colours.
G1: I play a Mardu Strike Leader and back it up with removal
G2: Karakas is an all-star here, rescuing Shu Yun from Dragonlord Silumgar and ensuring I can control the DLS vs Elspeth fight while keeping Tasigur at bay
G3: I suspend Ancestral Vision on T1 and feel pretty good, until I miss my fourth land drop and do so again even after resolving Vision. Wasteland shows up next turn and combines with Eternal Witness to do me in
G4: lots of trading until Elspeth shows up again to do its thing
Karakas was borderline busted even though I never had it with P&K
Safra, would you be interested in making a version of your cube specifically for grid drafting purposes? If yes, should it be 5 colors or 4 colors? (And how should the colors be weighted?) What size should it be? (I am thinking with 144 cards used in a grid that the correct population size is 210-270 after any color would be removed.)
I make this suggestion as I believe grid drafting could be even more fun with some tweaks (mostly based on costing and payment):
I make this suggestion as I believe grid drafting could be even more fun with some tweaks (mostly based on costing and payment):
- Additional hybrid and/or generic costed cards could create more tension during drafting (especially when the cards slot into aggressive strategies)
- Addition of City of Brass/Mana Confluence to the main cube could help 3-4c aggro and incur real cost for control/midrange usage
- Utility land draft could be slightly altered to cater to the volatility of grid drafting (maybe add a 3-pick shock dual option, add a 2nd tri-land option, other crazy ideas, etc.)
Oh woah, yes, I would definitely be interested in that. I think it would be best as 5 colours, with an even higher percentage of lands than I'm already running (the ten dual creaturelands would be a snap include) and a bunch of
or (etc) spells to emphasize staying in your colours. City of Brass is a good idea though! Maybe, like, 2-3 of em? Jason mentioned that in his 5c grid drafts he found that decks were loose 4c piles more often than not, but I haven't noticed this myself (yet). It's possible to cut a colour in either an MTGO or paper draft so I think designing for 5 is better than for 4 unless I really want to explore what not having that colour looks like. I'd like to be able to support 4 players as a theoretical max for round-robin games, so 288-330 feels like a good range. I think I'd want maybe, uh, 4 gold spells per guild, and increase the presence of early aggro cards. Some of the marginal hybrid cards might make it in as well. The ULD could definitely be adjusted - it's probably due for it anyway. Very interesting idea and one I'll pursue if we don't get larger drafts going regularly.
This doesn't follow your guidance, but here is a mockup of no-blue, green-black-weighted based on your cube: cubetutor.com/viewcube/47988. I mostly made changes in the low drops and added multicolor/land cards. There is some dumb shit (coughnecrocough) added as well to showcase the color imbalance... and plead the case of strange color makeup. I'm thinking that ULD (sideboard) is "choice of 1st triland", "choice of 2nd triland" and "creature lands = 3 picks" with similar half picks as you have dictated.
CubeTutor is a dubious source of "testing", but I couldn't help myself. Anyway, here are examples of an aggressive deck and a control deck.
CubeTutor is a dubious source of "testing", but I couldn't help myself. Anyway, here are examples of an aggressive deck and a control deck.
test necro
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test aggro
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Hey, I finally wrote up that PT retrospective! Unfortunately, I'm doing it three time zones away from the match notes I took so it's extra anthropological this time. Think of the below as a first draft, which I'll amend once I have my notes with all those delirious biznasty plays I couldn't remember. (critique the fuck out of it, if you want) I went 2-4 drop with an incredibly clunky manabase (6c midrange). It's what kills me in the end and I lose not one, not two, but three games to Crumbling whatsit not playing nice. I deserve all of this for splashing Baloth Null in a Jeskai deck, but I had no illusions of making day 2 so why the hell not, right? I slammed it on turn six literally half my games and couldn't make for dudes or removal.
I get tbere a lil late (sorry, Dom, I thought it'd work out!), and after I eventually find my seat I thiiiink James Turner from those LoadingReadyRun videos (they're local, it's not implausible!) is very, very kind and answers my baby Magician questions from a few seats down the table. Nice dude, I really wish I'd said something.
The Hedron Crawlers give me a bunch of, which I never really find myself wanting, but splashing Baloth Null and Void Snare off Fertile Thicket, Crumbling Vestige, and a Swamp is incredibly stupid. I do it anyway because it's not like long tournaments reward consistent hands or anything.
I'm not too late, though, to get the Stoneforge promo (which I like more than the OG art actually??) but everyone else has already done pool registration, swapped piles back, and started to deckbuild. A judge comes over and gives me the forms, pool, and so on, and the clock is on. I'm not that worried - twenty minutes to build a deck? I can do it in three on modo - but I'm totally unused to these deck registration sheets and fuck mine up not once, not twice, but thrice. I figure I'll never get deck checked (I don't), know I'm the one verifying my own pool, and proceed to build Jeskai midrange. There's five minutes left of the twenty by the time I get my pool registered, which I spend accordingly:
(minutes six and seven, are finding a judge to take my forms, and I still get to the table before my opponent does. I'm not used to being the most punctual player, and decide to use the time to eat half a brownie.) Carrying around all this stuff (cards, playmat, water bottle, lunch, dessert, travel j, headphones, battery charger for my phone) in my nice messenger bag is stupid. On day 2 I lose the food and bring my Cube, too, and that's equally brutal. I can see the appeal of huge backpacks, even if they make you look like a dweeb. Like the loose, voluminous sleeves of European swordsmen, this terrible, terrible look is entirely functional. Who knew!
Round one I'm up against a very polite tournament grinder. A grinder without byes is depressing; an invested one more so. Why is it that these guys are so bad? I 2-0 him in half an hour (t6 Baloth Nulls: two) and we chat about Magic for a little bit; he started in Revised as a kid, and I've probably done a dozen sober drafts in my life since getting blazed and introduced to RTR. In my naivete I even thought it was a great format, though I always forced Boros (Aurelia was my first rare, gotta draft cards for EDH!) and none of us were terribly good.
As I explain this to him, some time during game two, the light sinks out of his eyes. His grinder lifestyle sounds sad enough that I don't feel any worse about it. I'm 2-0 going into round 2, which is, I learn, when the people who know what they're doing start to show up. First, though, it's time for commerce.
There's a few companies represented, and a trio of artists. I consider having Jesper Myrfors sign my Duress, but I don't actually have the right Duress with me, so there's nothing I can do about it. Moving over to the guys with worse business plans, I check out their wares, buy half a dozen cards (mostly OGW includes but also a WL doomsday to replace my shitty Sixth Edition one) and some officially-printed tokens I was missing.
R2 I play a guy (named Kevin i think?) who couldn't be more obviously piscine without sprouting gills. He's playing one colour with a splash, and not very well. He's nice enough though (I let him take a thing back at one point and caution him about his later rounds) and we chat about the event, his experiences with the game, and I also give him a few pointers on his manabase. My own manabase is atrocious but a) I'll probably draw the right cards at the right time anyway, I usually do and b) do as I say not as I do, asshole. 2-0, (4, 0)
Our games and conversation take most of the hour, so I go and cluster by the boards to see who I'm up against next. As a naïf in these affairs, I get there on time - the round doesn't start for another 20 minutes. (I surreptitiously eat a brownie from my bag.) Nobody is talking to anyone, or even on their phones; they're just standing around, and it kinda weirds me out. None of 'em know how to get through throngs of people, and two minutes after the Judge comes by with printouts, I finally just elbow a dude in the ribs and get my table number. The rest of the tournament I use the last dregs of my data plan to load the online pairings for myself and anyone nearby. I don't have any left by the time I leave; smooth, babe.
R3 I play this nice dude who's driven up from Seattle with his Legacy squad. I awkwardly ask if he plays with CML, and he goes 'yeah, don't know who that is'. It couldn't have been more awkward if I'd asked him whether or not Humble Pie were good, back in the day.
Brad (I think his name is Brad?) is well-built, with a cute, bushy brown beard and nice clothes, so I don't resent him when I get utterly stomped 0-2. "Wait, that was game two?" I've really got to get better at remembering which game I'm in during these tournaments; see my Origins report for a similar story except that I conceded game two at 16 life and therefore lost the match. Here, though, I'm kept off or for Isolation Zone / Cliffhaven Vampire long enough that he gets there with fliers. 2-1 (4, 2)
Between rounds 3 and 4 I get to talk to a few of his squad; they're pretty interested in filling out my Cube draft when it fires tomorrow, but I never get his number and so that falls flat. I warn him that it's "unorthodox" and he calls another guy over. We spend ten or twenty minutes chatting Legacy brews and the Infect guy and I come up with a real doozy. I've tried to reproduce the beats as best as possible, because I was having too much fun to record:
a. Infect is cool.
b. Legacy Infect is the coolest.
c. Legacy Infect doesn't want Ponder, he argues, because of the deck consistency. I don't actually play his deck but I keep arguing this point for a lil; "maybe not all four", I reach in desperation. Daze, Invigorate, match loss.
d. UG Infect is probably the best Infect build. What else is out there?
e. At this point I start to feel knowledgable again; strictly worse Legacy brews are my fuckin' wheelhouse. I bring up R/G Blazing Shoal infect, which is 'so fast'. I suggest Reckless Charge to make the deck even faster ("Look, dude, you drop the elf, Charge it, and you have the flashback in case you don't Get There.") I think I mention something about Haste being "basically Time Walk".
We're captivated by the idea of this awful Reckless Infect build. I suggest splashing the Blazing Shoal / Progenitus kill ("with Natural Order in the sideboard for grindy decks", I joke), and collectively we reason that Through the Breach / Emrakul dilutes the game plan a hair too much.
Maybe the deck wants Chrome Mox so Progenitus is always live and it can Charge a glistener elf t1. Simian Spirit Guide instead in case you get Surgically Extracted? Maybe it should play Lightning Bolt. Maybe it shouldn't play Lightning Bolt. "Your combo matchup is worse, but you can bring stuff in aggressively post-board, right?"
"You can't play Chalice-"
"Well yeah, of course, but...wait, why not? Don't we have Chrome Mox?"
"It's so bad-"
"yeah, if we're killing with a free spell maybe some REBs, splash for Thalia?"
"You're doing this deliberately at this point.", Brad (Benjamin?) says, and our little charade is over, but the Infect guy has vowed to get the last few cards and run it at FNM for two or three weeks. What a mensch.
r4 I lose both games to mana issues, and go over to check on Dom. He's utterly crushing some guy on-board and finishes him off with Fall of the Titans just after I get there.
"Hey, Dom, can you take a look at my deck? I really don't know the format."
Dom suggests two cuts, both good, and a sideboard strategy I immediately forget to write down.
Between rounds Dom and I go for coffee at a gelato place. There's a Hot Chocolate Festival on and I get a hot chocolate with bourbon in it, for which I pay the princely sum of seven dollars. If I had to be charitable with sizing I'd call it a "small". It's disgustingly good and I hate that I almost feel justified in the purchase. I order before Dom, and the drink was ready while I was still using their bathroom so I have to very, very confusedly collect Dom(outside), my drink(on the counter), and my self-respect(grade ten) in short order.
I lose my next two rounds 1-2 for a 2-4 (6-8) drop. It's late when I get home - fuck, this took way too long for something not held at my house, Cube has spoiled me - and then I have dinner and pass out.
DAY TWO
I had two deckboxes of basics, an M14 Deckbuilder's Toolkit, an OGW fat pack, my utility land binder, a whole Multiverse of chaff, cuts, trade stock... also, a couple loose packs, some old promos for prizes, dice, a 'Khans / Dragons' poker chip, and a Paper Tiger/Scissors Lizard/Rock Lobster set. Not that I needed all that for the draft, the only thing that really worried me was the trade stock. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a Magician with their eyes on your binder, and I knew we'd get into it pretty soon.
Of course, an hour and a half later I still didn't have a draft. After getting a few more cards (highlight: a pair of Blue Blasts with what Google Images seems to confirm is Richard Garfield's signature???) out of a 25c box, as well as a foil Russian Celestial Crusader for Dom. "I'm the only one who knows what it does anyway", he laughs) I decide to call it quits.
I went home for lunch, did some work, then got wicked blazed, did the dishes, and bailed on meeting Dom at the cat café (it's raining out, i moaned. get it together, babe!). If I'd hustled a little harder, or been (even) more aggressive in sticking to people, the draft might've come together, but alas. The GP was a fun experience, though, and I got what I wanted out of it (a baby nerd's first hajj, the Stoneforge Mystic promo). As always, thanks for reading!
for dudes or removal.I get tbere a lil late (sorry, Dom, I thought it'd work out!), and after I eventually find my seat I thiiiink James Turner from those LoadingReadyRun videos (they're local, it's not implausible!) is very, very kind and answers my baby Magician questions from a few seats down the table. Nice dude, I really wish I'd said something.
The Hedron Crawlers give me a bunch of
, which I never really find myself wanting, but splashing Baloth Null and Void Snare off Fertile Thicket, Crumbling Vestige, and a Swamp is incredibly stupid. I do it anyway because it's not like long tournaments reward consistent hands or anything.I'm not too late, though, to get the Stoneforge promo (which I like more than the OG art actually??) but everyone else has already done pool registration, swapped piles back, and started to deckbuild. A judge comes over and gives me the forms, pool, and so on, and the clock is on. I'm not that worried - twenty minutes to build a deck? I can do it in three on modo - but I'm totally unused to these deck registration sheets and fuck mine up not once, not twice, but thrice. I figure I'll never get deck checked (I don't), know I'm the one verifying my own pool, and proceed to build Jeskai midrange. There's five minutes left of the twenty by the time I get my pool registered, which I spend accordingly:
(minutes six and seven, are finding a judge to take my forms, and I still get to the table before my opponent does. I'm not used to being the most punctual player, and decide to use the time to eat half a brownie.) Carrying around all this stuff (cards, playmat, water bottle, lunch, dessert, travel j, headphones, battery charger for my phone) in my nice messenger bag is stupid. On day 2 I lose the food and bring my Cube, too, and that's equally brutal. I can see the appeal of huge backpacks, even if they make you look like a dweeb. Like the loose, voluminous sleeves of European swordsmen, this terrible, terrible look is entirely functional. Who knew!
Round one I'm up against a very polite tournament grinder. A grinder without byes is depressing; an invested one more so. Why is it that these guys are so bad? I 2-0 him in half an hour (t6 Baloth Nulls: two) and we chat about Magic for a little bit; he started in Revised as a kid, and I've probably done a dozen sober drafts in my life since getting blazed and introduced to RTR. In my naivete I even thought it was a great format, though I always forced Boros (Aurelia was my first rare, gotta draft cards for EDH!) and none of us were terribly good.
As I explain this to him, some time during game two, the light sinks out of his eyes. His grinder lifestyle sounds sad enough that I don't feel any worse about it. I'm 2-0 going into round 2, which is, I learn, when the people who know what they're doing start to show up. First, though, it's time for commerce.
There's a few companies represented, and a trio of artists. I consider having Jesper Myrfors sign my Duress, but I don't actually have the right Duress with me, so there's nothing I can do about it. Moving over to the guys with worse business plans, I check out their wares, buy half a dozen cards (mostly OGW includes but also a WL doomsday to replace my shitty Sixth Edition one) and some officially-printed tokens I was missing.
R2 I play a guy (named Kevin i think?) who couldn't be more obviously piscine without sprouting gills. He's playing one colour with a splash, and not very well. He's nice enough though (I let him take a thing back at one point and caution him about his later rounds) and we chat about the event, his experiences with the game, and I also give him a few pointers on his manabase. My own manabase is atrocious but a) I'll probably draw the right cards at the right time anyway, I usually do and b) do as I say not as I do, asshole. 2-0, (4, 0)
Our games and conversation take most of the hour, so I go and cluster by the boards to see who I'm up against next. As a naïf in these affairs, I get there on time - the round doesn't start for another 20 minutes. (I surreptitiously eat a brownie from my bag.) Nobody is talking to anyone, or even on their phones; they're just standing around, and it kinda weirds me out. None of 'em know how to get through throngs of people, and two minutes after the Judge comes by with printouts, I finally just elbow a dude in the ribs and get my table number. The rest of the tournament I use the last dregs of my data plan to load the online pairings for myself and anyone nearby. I don't have any left by the time I leave; smooth, babe.
R3 I play this nice dude who's driven up from Seattle with his Legacy squad. I awkwardly ask if he plays with CML, and he goes 'yeah, don't know who that is'. It couldn't have been more awkward if I'd asked him whether or not Humble Pie were good, back in the day.
Brad (I think his name is Brad?) is well-built, with a cute, bushy brown beard and nice clothes, so I don't resent him when I get utterly stomped 0-2. "Wait, that was game two?" I've really got to get better at remembering which game I'm in during these tournaments; see my Origins report for a similar story except that I conceded game two at 16 life and therefore lost the match. Here, though, I'm kept off
or for Isolation Zone / Cliffhaven Vampire long enough that he gets there with fliers. 2-1 (4, 2)Between rounds 3 and 4 I get to talk to a few of his squad; they're pretty interested in filling out my Cube draft when it fires tomorrow, but I never get his number and so that falls flat. I warn him that it's "unorthodox" and he calls another guy over. We spend ten or twenty minutes chatting Legacy brews and the Infect guy and I come up with a real doozy. I've tried to reproduce the beats as best as possible, because I was having too much fun to record:
a. Infect is cool.
b. Legacy Infect is the coolest.
c. Legacy Infect doesn't want Ponder, he argues, because of the deck consistency. I don't actually play his deck but I keep arguing this point for a lil; "maybe not all four", I reach in desperation. Daze, Invigorate, match loss.
d. UG Infect is probably the best Infect build. What else is out there?
e. At this point I start to feel knowledgable again; strictly worse Legacy brews are my fuckin' wheelhouse. I bring up R/G Blazing Shoal infect, which is 'so fast'. I suggest Reckless Charge to make the deck even faster ("Look, dude, you drop the elf, Charge it, and you have the flashback in case you don't Get There.") I think I mention something about Haste being "basically Time Walk".
We're captivated by the idea of this awful Reckless Infect build. I suggest splashing the Blazing Shoal / Progenitus kill ("with Natural Order in the sideboard for grindy decks", I joke), and collectively we reason that Through the Breach / Emrakul dilutes the game plan a hair too much.
Maybe the deck wants Chrome Mox so Progenitus is always live and it can Charge a glistener elf t1. Simian Spirit Guide instead in case you get Surgically Extracted? Maybe it should play Lightning Bolt. Maybe it shouldn't play Lightning Bolt. "Your combo matchup is worse, but you can bring stuff in aggressively post-board, right?"
"You can't play Chalice-"
"Well yeah, of course, but...wait, why not? Don't we have Chrome Mox?"
"It's so bad-"
"yeah, if we're killing with a free spell maybe some REBs, splash for Thalia?"
"You're doing this deliberately at this point.", Brad (Benjamin?) says, and our little charade is over, but the Infect guy has vowed to get the last few cards and run it at FNM for two or three weeks. What a mensch.
r4 I lose both games to mana issues, and go over to check on Dom. He's utterly crushing some guy on-board and finishes him off with Fall of the Titans just after I get there.
"Hey, Dom, can you take a look at my deck? I really don't know the format."
Dom suggests two cuts, both good, and a sideboard strategy I immediately forget to write down.
Between rounds Dom and I go for coffee at a gelato place. There's a Hot Chocolate Festival on and I get a hot chocolate with bourbon in it, for which I pay the princely sum of seven dollars. If I had to be charitable with sizing I'd call it a "small". It's disgustingly good and I hate that I almost feel justified in the purchase. I order before Dom, and the drink was ready while I was still using their bathroom so I have to very, very confusedly collect Dom(outside), my drink(on the counter), and my self-respect(grade ten) in short order.
I lose my next two rounds 1-2 for a 2-4 (6-8) drop. It's late when I get home - fuck, this took way too long for something not held at my house, Cube has spoiled me - and then I have dinner and pass out.
DAY TWO
I had two deckboxes of basics, an M14 Deckbuilder's Toolkit, an OGW fat pack, my utility land binder, a whole Multiverse of chaff, cuts, trade stock... also, a couple loose packs, some old promos for prizes, dice, a 'Khans / Dragons' poker chip, and a Paper Tiger/Scissors Lizard/Rock Lobster set. Not that I needed all that for the draft, the only thing that really worried me was the trade stock. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a Magician with their eyes on your binder, and I knew we'd get into it pretty soon.
Of course, an hour and a half later I still didn't have a draft. After getting a few more cards (highlight: a pair of Blue Blasts with what Google Images seems to confirm is Richard Garfield's signature???) out of a 25c box, as well as a foil Russian Celestial Crusader for Dom. "I'm the only one who knows what it does anyway", he laughs) I decide to call it quits.
I went home for lunch, did some work, then got wicked blazed, did the dishes, and bailed on meeting Dom at the cat café (it's raining out, i moaned. get it together, babe!). If I'd hustled a little harder, or been (even) more aggressive in sticking to people, the draft might've come together, but alas. The GP was a fun experience, though, and I got what I wanted out of it (a baby nerd's first hajj, the Stoneforge Mystic promo). As always, thanks for reading!
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
Love it
Hey Lab Maniacs! I added twenty custom cards (5.5%) to my Cubetutor list - if you could take the time to draft it so I can get more data I'd really appreciate it!
Just did a draft; this is what I came away with. Probably not optimal, I'm still working on my drafting skills. Seems fun, though. Idea plant seems like a pretty ridiculous card.
Brainstorm = Idea Plant
Leonin Squire = Shrine Maiden
Prohibit = Archmage Prodigy
Brainstorm = Idea Plant
Leonin Squire = Shrine Maiden
Prohibit = Archmage Prodigy
slovakattack's draft of Sharzad on 23/02/2016 from CubeTutor.com
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Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
Haha, awesome. I recently cut Grim Bargain to make room for Mindmelter, since I also added Oath of Jace. Good to see it will still see play, as that hurt a little
Also yay @ Pick the Wrong Fight and Veteran Chronarch, those are definitely two of my most beloved designs! You really picked these from all over the web, didn't you? Wait... Pick the Wrong Fight is missing artist credit and has a different expansion symbol. Is that thing now in three cubes? Wait, wait, that's the old wording that makes Human Monk tokens instead of plain Monk tokens o_O I'm amazed (and honored)!Anyway, I'll give it a whirl later, when I'm not working
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
Just did a draft and saw a surprise custom; Banisher Priest isn't marked as a custom card. Checked a bit more. Searing Blood (Drown in Lava) isn't marked either (and hey, that's another design of mine, with different art and slightly tweaked text (I like the change from "player" to "planeswalker"!), that I loved but "had to" cut, in this case because RR is hard to support in a 3-color themed cube). I might actually re-borrow that idea at if Fiery Confluence proves to be a bit too much.
if Fiery Confluence proves to be a bit too much.
Chris Taylor
Contributor
Haha, awesome. I recently cut Grim Bargain to make room for Mindmelter, since I also added Oath of Jace. Good to see it will still see play, as that hurt a little
Anyway, I'll give it a whirl later, when I'm not working
I cut my version actually
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
Dom Harvey
Contributor
The Abandoned cycle is really cool!
ee tee ay:
also, how has Noyan Darling been for you?
ee tee ay:
UW Lark from CubeTutor.com
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also, how has Noyan Darling been for you?
He's good but I'm not in love with him. The Abandoned lands are a Chris T design, and I just loved them when I drafted his cube. It's uncanny how well they fit here imo.
Noyan Dar has been fine but not overwhelming. He leads to bigger Pyromancer decks, which have been fine, but I feel like maybe D-lord Ojutai should come in for him?
OZB: I love those cards, they've been great (Drown in Lava particularly, which (success!) isn't always cast for 'choose both'). Thanks! I'll catch the artist credits tonight.