Draft/Deckbuilding aka “That Girl is Poison”
Round 1: “You Cannot Be Serious!”
Draft/Deckbuilding (again) aka “Left Turn at Albuquerque”
Round 1 (again) “Let’s Not and Say We Did”
As always we want to know what you think. Where did we go wrong? Were we just unlucky? Should we take up tiddlywinks instead?
As of this posting, the first “Draft/Deckbuilding” embedded video calls up the round 1 video instead.
Thanks, Boar….that’s what I get for posting on no sleep. It’s been fixed.
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Thanks for more great draft videos! You asked for feedback, so here comes an essay!
Your first deck kicked ass. Triple Corpse Cur with double Darksteel Axe is a ludicrous beating! It was so tightly focused on the Infect gameplan that deciding to run Ezuri’s Brigade probably wasn’t optimal; he effectively had Defender while you were running aggro. Ezuri’s Archers obviously should have gone in after your first glimpse of the Phoenix, but I think you should have gone bolder and brought in red for Shatter and Bloodshot Trainee, maaaybe switching out the Ichor Rats so you could comfortably run all three colors. The last game is a compelling argument for Carrion Call over Throne of Geth, too.
First game, blocking the Scrapmelter with Corpse Cur seemed like a pure advantage play, but you should have kept the pressure on and forced him to take more poison counters. He would have had to make the same unfair trade a couple turns later on the defensive. Second game, you were pretty hosed! It was worth looking a little foolish playing the Corpse Cur with a Nihil Spellbomb on the table, but it was still probably the right call to force him to spend it immediately. Third game, during his big attack, you could have blocked the Scrapmelter with the Pinion-ed up Contagious Nim and saved yourself 3 damage, which could have bought you an extra turn (if he hadn’t had all those other creatures in hand). It’s usually not wise to throw your only shot at winning in the path of danger, but the only two tricks he could have played to change the outcome were Untamed Might and Instill Infection, both of which would cost you the game regardless of the block.
Other than those quibbles, you played tight. Weak sideboarding calls and bad luck were to blame for the loss.
The second deck was obviously dodgier. Grand Architect is a great first pack first pick; how can you be “not so sure” you’ll have a giant artifact to cast when you have the entire draft to grab one!? Even cranking out the common Razorfield Thresher on turn 4 is pretty impressive! Corpse Cur is still a solid p1p1 over the other choices, but then Inexorable Tide isn’t worth tix and isn’t a good fit for the poison deck you want to be drafting because of the color problems you noted. Blue proliferate doesn’t work, at least until Mirrodin Besieged adds more options to the mix; Thrummingbird is hot, but you’re more likely to end up with Steady Progress and ugly mana. I’m not sold on grabbing Bladed Pinions before you have a base of Infect to stick it on, either, but it is playable outside the Infect deck.
If I wanted to force Infect, I would have taken Corpse Cur, Tel-Jilad Fallen, Pinions or Nim, Painsmith, Nim, Rust Tick, Arbalest, Neurok Replica (which is pretty sweet with Infect if you can afford the blue), Nihil Spellbomb, Blackcleave Goblin, Arbalest, Trigon of Infestation. Cut off Infect aggressively and hopefully scare off the speculators, so you’ll see more rewards in the second pack. Now, there’s a strong argument for reading an “Infect is being cut” signal by the time the Rust Tick showed up and bailing on that strategy. But if you do that, you have to move away strongly and not snatch up the Corpse Cur over the all-purpose Snapsail Glider! The time to make the call on going in or out of the archetype was the middle of pack 1, not pack 2, and that was what crippled your draft. It’s a hell of a call to make in 40 seconds, though, and your build was right for what you had.
First game, attacking with the Strider Harnessed Blistergrub wasn’t wise. Memnite is a big tip-off that Metalcraft shenanigans are coming, but even without that sign, why get in for 3 with a slow hand when he’s coming in for 4? Holding off and threatening to eat a 2/2 is the better move. By the same logic, I think it would have been better at the 13:30 mark to attach the Harness to the Blistergrub and play the Trigon, leaving one mountain available for giving first strike to the Golem. That way he can’t get in for damage without throwing away creatures, you keep both removal spells in hand, and you have the Trigon ready to make his board worse every turn. Second game was tragic, but you can’t be faulted for keeping that hand. Third game, third turn Bladetribe Berserkers followed on turn four by Painsmith and Snapsail Myr would have been very mana-efficient and gotten you swinging in for damage much sooner. Holding out for the Metalcraft bonus on the Berserkers is only worth it if you aren’t sacrificing more than a single good swing. Spending Turn to Slag too early sealed the game. Killing mana Myr is attractive, especially Palladium Myr, but Turn to Slag is how you answer bombs, and he was still sitting on 20 life at that point, so you really didn’t have any pressure to keep up! Which meant he definitely had the time to draw into the lands necessary to play anything that the Palladium Myr was needed for. There’s no guarantee you would have won, because you had one Turn to Slag to answer two bombs, but if you’d played more aggressively with the Berserkers and less aggressively with the Turn to Slag, you would have had a fighting chance.
Don’t let all my nitpicking get you guys down, though! I had a blast watching this and am eagerly looking forward to more. I know this isn’t the last we’ve seen of the Corpse Cur tango!
Thank you for the thorough analysis. You made some great points about the second draft. I think holding the Berserkers was the biggest mistake, although blowing the Turn to Slag on a Myr wasn’t bright either. In my mind, I kept thinking of his Carnifex Demon as a 6/6 that the Slag couldn’t kill. However, he enters play as a 4/4, so my theory was flawed. Our play in game three was indicative of our blood alcohol content…we were sloppy drunks. Again, thank you for the pointers. I think the biggest problem was we were wishy-washy between aggro and defense and, thus, did neither very well.
just me, or do you give your opponents the best luck in the world
…. I feel like I should play you… even if I had the worst deck in the world, I would still end up getting just what I need to win 