MRD Tournament - Game commentary/Discussion

[jatill]

Crap. Now I need a plan B.

[Cognis]

My picks are:

Putrid Leech
Bayou
Verdant Catacombs

[aww1979]

Argh! Cognis :p Well, that was the other thing I'd been thinking of doing with my pick last time, grabbing all the B/G duals, but I was hoping that I'd clearly signalled what my deck was going to be. I settled on the spells because I figured in the event that you did exactly what you just did do, I could still settle for basic lands. (fortunately I had no designs on putrid leech hehe)

[monopoman]

Vedalken Shackles
Path to Exile
Cryptic Command

[grinnin]

I feel your pain, my original plan was to do grab Tarmogoyf/Noble or Mind Twist/a tutor. This is where the draft gets fun

[Nicdanger]

Journey to Nowhere
Knight of Reliquary
Armageddon

Juzamjedi is up!

[juzamjedi]

Bitterblossom
Merrow Reejerey
Lord of Atlantis

There are still a lot of good cards left. Unfortunately after looking at my draft I realized I'm intending to be an aggro-control deck that didn't have much aggro yet. Oops. Obviously I am fixing that now!

Aww1979 is up.

[Cognis]

Sorry aww I didn't want to go for lands this early but since I have a 3-coloured deck grabbing dual lands became a priority since basic lands are not such a viable option for me and since RG and RB don't seem to be high on the priority list of others I clearly had no choice but to go for them this early on, there are still good BG lands out there so you can pick them. And yes, now it really starts to be fun but in a way it was good I was way back in the order because if I was among the first I'd have to go for broken blue cards and there is a big crowd for those.

[aww1979]

Well, looking at Shantak and Jatill, who will get to pick 6 cards each before my next pick, I think I'd better focus on colourless and green, since it is unlikely either of them will take any black cards.

So... Garruk Wildspeaker, Platinum Angel, Nevinyrral's Disk

edit: I didn't change my picks, but I just want to say it's possible I may be a bit late picking tomorrow, as I'll be out right away in the morning for a few hours.

[aww1979]

Sorry aww I didn't want to go for lands this early but since I have a 3-coloured deck grabbing dual lands became a priority since basic lands are not such a viable option for me and since RG and RB don't seem to be high on the priority list of others I clearly had no choice but to go for them this early on, there are still good BG lands out there so you can pick them. And yes, now it really starts to be fun but in a way it was good I was way back in the order because if I was among the first I'd have to go for broken blue cards and there is a big crowd for those.

Yeah, no problem. To be honest, I'd probably have done exactly what you did, though I might've waited to take Putrid Leceh, unless you expected me to grab that one, too. (I couldn't care less this draft :p) I can still get some lands like overgrown tomb or savage lands, or wierder stuff like treetop village, but again, as a (planned) two colour deck, I'm not as worried as you are with three colours. I also stayed far away from blue for exactly the same reason you did. Even picking third, I figured while I might be able to snag some nice blue thing off the top, I'd have to fight for every counterspell and card draw, so even from round one I planned to go something nonblue.

I had thought initially that grinnin looked to be going monoblack (still looks that way) and that nicdanger was going white weenie. (but now it's clear he has another plan) I didn't want to compete for white weenie, and so it looked like I could get easiest into red or green, but probably not both. I also figured that I'll probably want a slightly different set of black cards than grinnin, though he's gone down a different path than I thought he'd take, as I was expecting him to go with black weenies, but he took a bunch of midrange stuff like juggernaut, so there might be more overlap than I thought.

[Nicdanger]

We've been keeping up a decent pace, we'll be starting the 9th round on our 10th day of drafting (just less than 1 round per day). At this rate with 16 rounds left we should be finishing up by mid-December, not bad considering we 'started' on the 12th.

I think finishing up before the holidays is a must, if it looks like we're going to fall behind I suggest we increase the number of picks per round towards the end.

[monopoman]

Could we pick a few more then 60?

I think 75 or so would be nice cause there are a few cards that I won't really grab off the bat that I might consider playing after I take a look at my stuff.

I understand the desire to finish before the holidays how about after round 31 we go to 6 picks a draft.

60 picks may seem like plenty but with some of those picks being land it doesn't really let you choose on cards you might have taken late but found that could be very useful.

[aww1979]

Six picks I think is pretty nuts, especially when the end players get to take 12 at once. I don't think we really need to take more than 60, since that doesn't include our basic lands in that 60 (I don't think, anyway) so we'll have some leeway to design our decks anyway. I could see speeding up to 4 cards a round nearer to the end, though. (maybe cards 41-60 could be at 4 cards a round?)

[Nicdanger]

I was thinking 5 at a time, like take picks from 45-60 which would be 5 rounds down to 3 rounds. That would cut a few days worth off our time, but at the rate we're going I don't think we'll need to. I only brought it up so we would have the option later if we need it.

I'd like to stick with drafting 60 cards as stated in the first post unless we have an overwhelming majority wanting to do more. Most of these drafts go for 75 cards, but they're filling sideboards too. Some even don't allow the addition of basic land after drafting, so literally every card you draft is in your main deck or sideboard.

[Cognis]

I think 60 is enough since we can add basics.

@aww: I looked through manalink and Putrid Leech was the only BG card I wanted and was unsure off would you take it, it was a shot in the dark but nevermind since I wouldn't have taken Garruk anyway, maybe later but it wasn't really high on my list of priorities.