Recently, I’ve spent quite a bit of time playing in the 8-4 MSS draft queues on Magic Online, and I come here today bringing you a draft playthrough, so enough with the chatter – let’s get to it!
I then take the pool and put in all of the cards I know I’m going to play for sure:
I decide to leave out one Instill Infection and a Quicksilver Geyser because they are relatively expensive spells and my deck currently only has 11 creatures in it, which is probably too few to justify playing more spells. I slip in a Neurok Invisomancer, Dross Ripper, and Razorfield Rhino into the empty slots to end up with my final deck:
Onto the rounds! For convenience, and so you don’t have to look a giant text wall and try to figure out the game state, I’ve opted to use YouTube videos of replays for the recap of the rounds.
Unfortunately, due to blog limitations, I cannot embed the videos.
Round 1 – vs. Monowhite Battle Cry
www.youtube.com/watch?v=RG8qoTIju4E
+ I avoid trading my Mage until around 1:07 because I can take the damage and then recoup it with the Lifestaff when I trade my Mage. Once he kills the Lifestaff, there’s no reason to keep Trinket Mage around.
+ I did not play my land around 2:09 for several reasons. Firstly, I didn’t want to let him know I just had nothing in hand. Secondly, I wanted to give him the opportunity to think that I could only use Golem for flying and +1/+1, and not have mana to draw a card off the Spellbomb and so I couldn’t or wouldn’t block his Hippogriff. However, since his only combat out would be something like Seize the Initiative, I don’t mind trying to trade a Spellbomb for a 3/3 flier – that’s a good trade in my book.
+3:50: Please do not use your Arrests like this. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with Arresting a Wall, but his draw was not aggressive enough to take advantage of it, so it ended up being wasted removal, since ANY creature stops the Paladin.
Round 2 vs. RB Moriok Reaver
www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cpN0uYrTI8
+ Around 1:28 – I attack here because I know that he will have to dig for answers to stop the Artisan, so he’ll break the Replica at end of turn to save the most mana, leaving him with only 1 creature to my Soliton.
+ Around 2:25 I use the Spellbomb to dig for Swamp to play a turn 3 Crusader. Of course, I don’t actually get to cast Crusader the entire draft. C’est la vie.
+ There’s really no reason not to attack with Moriok Replica before using it around 2:47
+ I cast Golem Artisan before Soliton (3:00) because I know the Heavy Arbalest combo is more powerful than the Artisan and I want him to use Shatter on Artisan so that he doesn’t have it for Soliton.
Round 3 vs. RW Burn
www.youtube.com/watch?v=53lRJu1t_h8
+ I Instill Infection his Leonin Skyhunter (1:00), and this is a misplay. I had planned to Grasp it anyway, and there is no reason to attack with the Drake, especially because I ignored that Mortarpod gives +0/+1 so he can attack back with impunity, and I can’t afford to take more damage because of Mortarpod, which finishes off people more often than you would think.
+ Don’t keep hands like this (2:25). They don’t really do anything. I was punished for this keep by drawing a Lifestaff following by four lands in a row.
Well, that’s all for this time. Leave a comment or tweet at me and let me know what you would do differently, either in the drafting or the actual gameplay.
Happy drafting!
@Gardevi on Twitter
