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Post by yugular on Jun 15, 2013 3:38:12 GMT -5
Anyone else tried the format? I am currently in the middle of my first swiss and the format seems fun. Almost every pack has playables to pick and decks seem to be overall good powerlevel. Some decks are very broken like my second round opponent Faeries, it was so good...
My deck is GW midrange boring. Didn't see any interesting cards in picks 1-4 and just picked up value creatures and suspend creatures. Worm Harvest is good with few Terramorphics.
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ckangas
Raging Brainstorm
Posts: 69
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Post by ckangas on Jun 16, 2013 20:45:28 GMT -5
I've drafted a few times. No matter how much you're pushed by the cards, try to avoid both dredge and mill. I ended up going UB with Worm Harvest (so I could mill myself if needed) with 3 mind funerals and good mill/cantrips. The format is simply too slow for it though. I seem to always try mill once before dismissing it in a format. This set is no different. Cards like stinkweed imp and moldervine cloak are great on their own, but I'd avoid trying to make a dredge deck. If you have a lot of dredge cards that are good on their own and a Worm Harvest, go for it...just don't push it too hard in the direction of dredge. Likewide, loam can be pretty good, but don't push your deck too far into abusing it. Affinity can be strong if you get the right cards. There's a ton of good artifacts in the set, and you can hit the level required for the synergy for a lot of the cards. Removal is an issue though, and you'll likely have to go esper for it. Green fatties are pretty hard to deal with otherwise. UB fairies can also be strong, but you really need to play it as a UB flier deck first and foremost. It's good if you see really strong cards for it, but it can have issues with fat green creatures if you lack removal in black. I guess that's the central need of the deck...decent removal/bounce/etc. to deal with the big threats that will be hitting the table turns 4-6. BR goblins is pretty decent, pending on which cards you see in the pool. It can normally get access to strong 1/2 drops and there's lords in the set. BR are good colors for removal...so that helps as well. So far, green has been the big surprise for me. Granted, it has a lot of weak/unplayable cards, but it has access to a lot of cheap 4/4 and 5/5s which are very difficult to deal with in the format. Normally there's a solution for the first one, but not for the third. G/R giants and other 2-3 color decks that include green have been a lot more successful than I would have thought. The trick seems to be seeing enough quality green cards (over the garbage ones) and finding removal. A BG midrange deck that I played against had 3 maelstrom pulses, 3 imperiosaurs and 3 durkwood baloths (that I saw anyways)...which just felt like cheating. Needless to say, seeing that many pulses shores up the weaknesses I was hoping to exploit quite well. It's incredibly expensive to draft though, and out of the 3 drafts I've done, I haven't seen any rares/mythics worth money. I obviously should have tried UB mill in a phantom draft versus the real thing, but oh well - there's a $30 mistake you don't get back . Personally, I think I'll play the phantoms until I get a better hang of the meta...it's very different than drafting most sets.
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Post by Fan of History on Jun 17, 2013 12:34:20 GMT -5
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ckangas
Raging Brainstorm
Posts: 69
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Post by ckangas on Jun 20, 2013 18:31:09 GMT -5
I finally got my first 1st place last night on my 6th draft. I had 4 2-1s before that (I play single elimination not swiss) and well...the horrible experience when I tried dampen thoughts/mill (never again!)
Oddly enough, the deck wasn't particularly strong. It was bant colors with a splash of ramp and some fat bombs and card draw tossed in. Running a few petals is really important since the pool is light on draw. An "okay" deck, but not great. I played against an affinity deck, domain control, and a WR giants/soldiers/rebels deck. None of the three ended up very well either. Weakest deck I had drafted for a while, but I ran into even weaker decks....I suppose that's magic.
MM is a format where knowing what and how to draft seems to get you into 2nd a lot. From there on out, it really seems to be highly dependent on luck. Odds are, one person is going to get really lucky with some bombs they opened up. Someone is going to get some rares and uncommons to match up exactly with what they're drafting and end up with one hell of a deck.
I still think that affinity and BR goblins are the two strongest decks. But there are a *lot* of archtypes that can end up doing well with the right pool. Basically anything outside dredge (which you need to really get lucky with to have a deck that works) is playable. Reading signals is important, as identifying the open archetype is key.
Also, I'd still recommend doing phantom drafts online. I haven't seen anything worth much money yet out of 6 drafts. Outside of goyf, the prices just aren't very high online. If I was paying for "real" drafts, that would be $126 bucks I spent on packs. I've basically been breaking even with phantoms. I'm down a few real tickets and up some cube tickets. It helps that you get a MM booster for first.
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Post by yugular on Jun 23, 2013 14:13:27 GMT -5
As someone who is building collection for eternal formats i disagree with ckangas. The few drafts I played I played with real cards to keep and was able to get so much value.
I am in my 3rd draft now and I have a sick UR deck with white splash. I have about 10 removal spells and rest of the deck are fliers or draw spells.
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ckangas
Raging Brainstorm
Posts: 69
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Post by ckangas on Jun 24, 2013 2:12:42 GMT -5
As someone who is building collection for eternal formats i disagree with ckangas. The few drafts I played I played with real cards to keep and was able to get so much value. I am in my 3rd draft now and I have a sick UR deck with white splash. I have about 10 removal spells and rest of the deck are fliers or draw spells. Well, there are 6 cards that get your money back on packs. Goyf 57 Clique 22 Dark C 20 Cryptic C 9 kiki jiki 7 Shackles 7 Elspeth is probably close enough to 7 to count. When compared to a set like Return to Ravnica that has a 27 (sphinx, was 40) ticket card a 20 (angel, was more) ticket card and a 14 (jace) ticket card, I'm not sure how much value you're getting. Yes, MM has lots of 4-5 ticketrares, but R2R has the shock lands and plenty of 2-4 ticket rares. MM is almost twice the price for a booster, so R2R is arguably just as an attractive set to draft, and was much more of one before. Out of 10 games, I've taken 2 firsts, 4 seconds and 2 3rd-4ths. I *might* have broken even doing real drafts, but a lone clique is the only "money" card I've opened in the packs, so I doubt it. And even that I have a good feel for the format, I don't think I'll average better than that in the future. You have to basically average 2nd place to break even. Which is a *heck* of a lot harder to do online in an 8-4 than at your local FNM. Signals are a lot harder to read and send (since you're reading 10 archetypes instead of 5 colors), and while it is a very fun draft format, I find it rewards skill a bit less than a more traditional drafting block (such as M13). Thundercloud shaman pick 5 - I'm totally switching to giants. And then you find that there's a person or two at the end forcing giants (or who opened up a first couple packs that were good for it) and you've just thrown an entire draft away since you don't find out until the end of pack 2 or beginning of pack 3. Likewise, if you try to force an archetype, you're completely dependent on the luck of if others are playing it. Maybe I should try out the draft swiss...perhaps they're filled with casuals/collectors who are rare-chasing instead of focused on drafting. Paper is a different story. The cards are worth significantly more, and drafts at FNM tend to be a *lot* easier with casuals filling the slots. That list of cards that give you your money back is pretty long. If there's a store that lets you draft paper at 7/pack I'd be all over it. But then again, if we were talking about paper, we wouldn't be discussing phantoms. You do get a guaranteed foil, but the odds of getting a mythic foil appear to be about 1/121. I'm not sure how much that shifts things. I should actually crunch the numbers before I give too strong of an opinion. If I get time over the next few days I'll give it a try.
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Post by Fan of History on Jun 26, 2013 5:09:25 GMT -5
Pulled a FOil Vendilion Clique this morning. Have only done 5 drafts (two of them phantom) but I have still lost a substantial amount of tix (having played 3 swiss and 2 phantom) so I am now done with MMA Drafts. They were just too expensive (but so much fun). A 8-6 record in the Swiss drafts means it probably was not my format though
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ckangas
Raging Brainstorm
Posts: 69
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Post by ckangas on Jun 26, 2013 19:03:21 GMT -5
Pulled a FOil Vendilion Clique this morning. Have only done 5 drafts (two of them phantom) but I have still lost a substantial amount of tix (having played 3 swiss and 2 phantom) so I am now done with MMA Drafts. They were just too expensive (but so much fun). A 8-6 record in the Swiss drafts means it probably was not my format though It arguably takes 5 drafts to get a decent hang of a format. I wouldn't feel at all bad about an 8-6 record - especially in your first 5 drafts. I'd say a person needs 10-15 to get a good feel for the format...and more experience always helps. After all, you're still winning more than you're losing. It also takes a time of drafting dampen thoughts/mill or dredge to realize not to do that again. There also seems to be a high level of luck in the format for drafting. Luck is a huge part of magic, and seeing your first land on a hand size of 4 happens everywhere. Yet, the other day I got crushed by someone who forced storm. One of the few times I dropped in the first round in an 8-4. It was pretty disappointing because my 5cc domain deck turned out especially well. Generally speaking, storm is a bad archetype, and it wasn't even open in this case (I didn't see a single storm card table). I'll rephrase that - if you can be absolutely sure storm is open, you seem to have a 50/50 shot of having a good deck, but you're relying on seeing specific uncommons. Still, he got 4 of each of the required uncommons and at least 3 ETW (that I saw in a single game, so probably 4-5). The rest of his deck was filled with arcane cards. He forced an archetype and ended up with nearly a perfect deck. It's just one of those things where 8 times out of 10 you end up with an unplayable deck and drop quickly in the first round. 1 out of 10 you have a mildly playable deck. One out of 10 (well, less than that probably) you get really lucky and get a deck that crushes anything without a direct answer. I've been trying to play 2-3 drafts a night the last few days. I'm normally getting 3/4 half the time and 2nd the other half. Getting first just always feels like a gamble. It happens, but maybe only 1/6 to 1/8 games. Maybe that means I need to stop playing 8-4s.
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