We had another casual Gatecrash draft over the weekend, and I ended up going the Boros route this time. There were 11 people in this draft, so it was huge, which gave it a totally different feel. You basically never saw the same pack twice, which was exciting in itself. I don't know that I'd really want to do such a big draft again anytime soon, but the novelty of it was quite fun.
The rare in my first pack was Legion Loyalist, which has the potential for some nasty aggro. Raging Goblin's steroid-addicted older brother can get in some early damage, but he can also make an attack into a brutal stomping for one mana. His crazy Battalion effect is almost like Bloodrush for the team, given his haste. It was a natural pick for me.
As the packs came around, I was able to grab a bunch of pure red cards - Massive Raid, Skinbrand Goblin, Firefist Striker. None of the people to my right were drafting red, so I felt pretty confident in my starting pick. By the end of pack one, I had several Boros cards on top of the pure red stuff (Martial Glory and Wojek Halberdiers), so I had definitely made up my mind.
Pack two settled the issue completely, as my rare was Angelic Skirmisher. I kept grabbing red cards, trying my best to balance removal with a bunch of cheap creatures. The guy to my left even passed another Legion Loyalist, so I felt like I was in pretty good position.
The third pack was initially a downer, as the rare was Biovisionary, a card that had absolutely no place anywhere near my deck. I was kind of disappointed as that meant that my only real bomb was the Skirmisher, and I didn't have much aside from a bunch of 1- and 2-drops. Then the guy to the right passed me a Hellkite Tyrant. The Hellkite's artifact-related ability isn't much use, but as a 6/5 flier, he was an awesome addition to my deck.
In the end, I think I came away with a surprisingly focused Boros deck. I was fortunate to be surrounded by people passing the red stuff, so there were many times that I was able to choose from 3 or 4 red cards. It was a fantastic position to be in.
Anyway, here's the deck I came away with:
Creatures:
2 Legion Loyalist
2 Skinbrand Goblin
2 Firefist Striker
1 Wojek Halberdiers
1 Ember Beast
1 Assault Griffin
1 Cinder Elemental
1 Scorchwalker
1 Viashino Shanktail
1 Nav Squad Commandos
1 Towering Thunderfist
1 Angelic Skirmisher
1 Hellkite Tyrant
Instants:
2 Martial Glory
1 Pit Fight
2 Massive Raid
Sorceries:
1 Mugging
1 Act of Treason
Enchantments:
1 Madcap Skills
Lands:
1 Boros Guildgate
10 Mountain
5 Plains
A couple of notes: I was only running 16 lands, which was a little risky, but I justified it by seeing that the majority of my spells required only 1 or 2 mana, so I was mostly interested in getting lots of little dudes into play. I think my biggest problem was the removal - Massive Raid is really circumstantial (it only works if you have enough creatures), Pit Fight is similarly limited, and Mugging is just sorcery speed, so I couldn't use it for any tricks.
This deck didn't perform as well as I had hoped. I went 2-2 in best-of-threes, readily defeating other aggressive decks, but losing the long game to stalling decks. In those matches that progressed to the late game, I didn't have anything to build up. If I could get the Hellkite or the Skirmisher into play, they'd just be removed with something like Angelic Edict, and I'd be back where I started.
Still, it was a lot of fun, and it gave me some ideas for a Boros constructed deck. We'll see when I get that put together...
Showing posts with label gatecrash. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gatecrash. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Casual Gatecrash Draft - Orzhov 'Till the Sun Comes Up!
In the spirit of continued casual Magicking, the crew from the recent Gatecrash bender got together last night to draft the set again. There were only 7 people this time around, so there was a good chance that the guild of your choice wouldn't get nabbed by somebody else. Unsurprisingly, nobody really went for Dimir, but whatever.
The rare in my first pack was Immortal Servitude. Not exactly the bomb I was hoping to set the tone of my draft, but it gave me something worth using. I was then passed a copy of Ooze Flux, which I grabbed in the hopes of shifting into a Simic deck (because I'd been so successful with Simic during our last draft). I've been hoping to use Ooze Flux as a sort of perpetual-oozing machine, so I wanted to try to make that work. Throughout the rest of that first pack, though, it became clear that both green and blue were being sucked up, so I pulled as many Extort creatures as I could.
In my second pack, the rare was Fathom Mage. At this point, I was still hoping for Simic, so I got a couple more Evolvers, but it just wasn't sustainable. I reluctantly shifted my focus to black and white... again. This time it stuck, though, as I was able to get a fair number of Extort creatures and a decent amount of removal. Whenever possible, I tried to get low-costing spells so I would have more Extort options, always prioritizing permanents with Extort over everything else.
Pack three brought a Watery Grave, which I would have rare drafted (for better or worse) even if it hadn't shared colors with some of what I'd accumulated to that point. Fortunately, it gave me a nice option to splash blue for some of the Simic cards I'd hastily drafted, so it wasn't a terrible pick anyway.
In the end, I constructed a deck with just about everything I took that were black and/or white. Despite not having anything particularly sexy, my deck did pretty well (confirming in my mind that Extort can be brutal). Here's what it was:
2 Thrull Parasite
1 Death's Approach
1 Basilica Screecher
2 Gutter Skulk
2 Devour Flesh
1 Slate Street Ruffian
1 Deathcult Rogue
1 Dutiful Thrull
2 Shielded Passage
2 Syndic of Tithes
1 Court Street Denizen
1 Righteous Charge
1 Beckon Apparition
1 Vizkopa Guildmage
2 Kingpin's Pet
1 Immortal Servitude
2 Purge the Profane
8 Plains
8 Swamp
Since my basic strategy was to stall until I could Extort my opponent to death, I would always mulligan if my starting hand didn't have both an Extorter and the appropriate mana to play it. I started most of my games with 6 cards in hand, but I was always able to start extorting by turn 3. From that point on, the goal was just to stay alive; block with my non-Extort creatures and burn as much mana on Extort as I could.
With this modest little deck, I was able to win three best-of-threes, with a game record of 6-1 for the night. My performance confirmed that Orzhov has a powerful limited presence, but I'm still not sure how it'll work in constructed matches. I imagine that the slower, stalling play style will get obliterated by aggressive decks or decent removal, but I'm going to build a deck and what happens.
As a side bonus, we played a couple best-of-three Two-Headed Giant matches. My team won both matches (we switched partners for the second), and it's pretty clear that Extort is God Mode for multiplayer- draining life from each opponent hits twice in Two-Headed Giant, and coupling that with the Vizkopa Guildmage's second ability (any time you gain life this turn, each opponent loses that much life), a single Extort suddenly becomes an 8 life swing. That's a pretty big deal.
Although Simic is still my favorite of the Gatecrash guilds, I think Orzhov just became a close second.
The rare in my first pack was Immortal Servitude. Not exactly the bomb I was hoping to set the tone of my draft, but it gave me something worth using. I was then passed a copy of Ooze Flux, which I grabbed in the hopes of shifting into a Simic deck (because I'd been so successful with Simic during our last draft). I've been hoping to use Ooze Flux as a sort of perpetual-oozing machine, so I wanted to try to make that work. Throughout the rest of that first pack, though, it became clear that both green and blue were being sucked up, so I pulled as many Extort creatures as I could.
In my second pack, the rare was Fathom Mage. At this point, I was still hoping for Simic, so I got a couple more Evolvers, but it just wasn't sustainable. I reluctantly shifted my focus to black and white... again. This time it stuck, though, as I was able to get a fair number of Extort creatures and a decent amount of removal. Whenever possible, I tried to get low-costing spells so I would have more Extort options, always prioritizing permanents with Extort over everything else.
Pack three brought a Watery Grave, which I would have rare drafted (for better or worse) even if it hadn't shared colors with some of what I'd accumulated to that point. Fortunately, it gave me a nice option to splash blue for some of the Simic cards I'd hastily drafted, so it wasn't a terrible pick anyway.
In the end, I constructed a deck with just about everything I took that were black and/or white. Despite not having anything particularly sexy, my deck did pretty well (confirming in my mind that Extort can be brutal). Here's what it was:
2 Thrull Parasite
1 Death's Approach
1 Basilica Screecher
2 Gutter Skulk
2 Devour Flesh
1 Slate Street Ruffian
1 Deathcult Rogue
1 Dutiful Thrull
2 Shielded Passage
2 Syndic of Tithes
1 Court Street Denizen
1 Righteous Charge
1 Beckon Apparition
1 Vizkopa Guildmage
2 Kingpin's Pet
1 Immortal Servitude
2 Purge the Profane
8 Plains
8 Swamp
Since my basic strategy was to stall until I could Extort my opponent to death, I would always mulligan if my starting hand didn't have both an Extorter and the appropriate mana to play it. I started most of my games with 6 cards in hand, but I was always able to start extorting by turn 3. From that point on, the goal was just to stay alive; block with my non-Extort creatures and burn as much mana on Extort as I could.
With this modest little deck, I was able to win three best-of-threes, with a game record of 6-1 for the night. My performance confirmed that Orzhov has a powerful limited presence, but I'm still not sure how it'll work in constructed matches. I imagine that the slower, stalling play style will get obliterated by aggressive decks or decent removal, but I'm going to build a deck and what happens.
As a side bonus, we played a couple best-of-three Two-Headed Giant matches. My team won both matches (we switched partners for the second), and it's pretty clear that Extort is God Mode for multiplayer- draining life from each opponent hits twice in Two-Headed Giant, and coupling that with the Vizkopa Guildmage's second ability (any time you gain life this turn, each opponent loses that much life), a single Extort suddenly becomes an 8 life swing. That's a pretty big deal.
Although Simic is still my favorite of the Gatecrash guilds, I think Orzhov just became a close second.
Sunday, February 3, 2013
Glorious Gatecrash Bender
On the weekend of a new Magic: The Gathering set release, my
friends generally have a big release party.
Between us, we spend several hundred dollars buying boxes of booster
packs, and then play all night with various draft, sealed, and mini-masters
matches. Although we’re not terribly
competitive, these casual Magic benders give a great opportunity to experience
a set and think about awesome possibilities in constructed play.
Going into the new set (Gatecrash), I was pretty intrigued
by a couple new mechanics, evolve and cipher, although I was also quite
disappointed by the effects that were attached to cipher cards. It seems like the dual effects of milling and
encouraging dealing damage to a player were fundamentally at odds, and my
experiences in the drafts didn’t prompt me to change my opinion.
Bloodrush sounds like a neat idea, but it feels a bit like a
desperation move; I would usually prefer having a creature than a one-time,
attacker-only Giant Growth, so it only seems relevant if you’re able to win on
the turn you use it or if it buys you an extra turn or two from an opponent’s
onslaught. Extort has a lot of power and
is a great way to burn extra mana when you don’t have extra spells to sling,
but it’s not really my thing. Battalion is
nice, but the fact that it only triggers when you have three creatures
attacking is tricky; you must have good board positioning to get it off, and
your opponent will likely know that you’re building up to it, giving them
plenty of time to apply some removal.
Anyway, my goal going into the first draft was to try to
pull of a Simic (blue-green, that’s where the evolve mechanic lives) deck. My first rare was Unexpected Results, which
is in the right colors and has some interesting implications (getting to play a
big creature for free and trigger evolve seemed really sexy to me), so I was
off to a good start. Here's the deck that I ended up constructing:
7 Forest
6 Island
1 Mountain
The basic strategy was to start the game with either Cloudfin Raptor or Experiment One on turn one, start pummelling my opponent as soon as possible, and evolve my creatures in the most intelligent way I can. Hands of Binding and Last Thoughts get ciphered onto a creature with evasion (Elusive Krasis ideally, but Cloudfin Raptor was another good choice). Pit Fight and Simic Charm are used as removal if absolutely necessary. Rubblehulk is there as a great beneficiary of Unexpected Results, and Verdant Haven and Prophetic Prism are for mana-fixing to play or bloodrush him if desired.
All-in-all, this deck did pretty well. I won all four of the best-of-threes that I played, dropping only two games in the process. I found that evolve can be pretty nasty, as I expected. Being able to extend the effectiveness of a one-drop creature well into the midgame is brutal; trading an Experiment One for a Guardian of the Gateless was one of my biggest triumphs. In nearly every game I played, I was able to deal a few points of damage before my opponent got a creature on the board, and then I could effectively stall them with my continually growing creatures until I could outmaneuver them with the cipher spells or smash them with the big creatures. Unexpected Results unexpectedly served as an awesome deck-thinner and mana ramper, making sure that I could use my Nimbus Swimmer to trigger evolve and have a beefy dude with evasion. The game where I stole a couple of lands with Nightveil Specter wasn't too bad, either.
This first draft confirmed that Simic and evolve are beastly. I'm excited to put together a constructed Simic deck, hoping to use the Ooze Fluxes I grabbed to great effect (have that with a few small evolve guys, and it basically becomes "1G: get a 4/4 creature").
The second draft didn't go quite as well for me. There were murmurs from my friends about trying to build Simic decks after seeing how well mine was performing, so I though I'd have to change strategies to survive the drafting process. In this one, my opening rare was Clan Defiance, which is a pretty rockin' removal/burn spell, so I thought I'd go the Gruul (red-green, home of bloodrush) route. Here's my deck:
8 Forest
7 Mountain
There were a few big problems with this draft: first, I was a little bit schizophrenic. While trying to stay in color, I ended up pulling a bunch of evolve creatures and not much removal. That hurt, particularly against an extort-heavy deck.
Second, my win conditions weren't nearly as robust as in my earlier deck. I could hope for evolve to keep me going, but I didn't have any low-costing evolvers to start growing early (a single Experiment One may have changed this deck quite a bit). Aside from that, I was basically ramping into the Ruination Wurm or Clan Defiance, but I never got either of them off.
Third, the most superficial of the problems was a general lack of rares. I only had two in this deck, as opposed to the five I had in the Simic one, so I didn't have as many bombs to drop. I also sacrificed a first pick during the draft; on the second pack, I rare-drafted a Duskmantle Seer, which did absolutely nothing for me when the games started.
The few games where I did find myself in a decent position, I made some bad (or unlucky) decisions: pressuring my opponent when he had tricks to crush me, holding back when he didn't.
Amid the drafts, we did a few games of mini-masters, which meant that I came away with a few other great cards (Angelic Skirmisher is a monster in limited, Blind Obedience is a good way to get yourself slaughtered in a team game, and I think Ooze Flux has a lot of constructed potential).
I really like Gatecrash. Evolve is definitely my favorite new mechanic of the last few years, and I'm excited to see how the Simic cards in the next set play off it. In the end, Gatecrash is a lot more interesting and fun than Return to Ravnica is, at least in limited. I'm excited to see how they all tie together when we start drafting the whole block, but that's a bit down the road.
Amid the drafts, we did a few games of mini-masters, which meant that I came away with a few other great cards (Angelic Skirmisher is a monster in limited, Blind Obedience is a good way to get yourself slaughtered in a team game, and I think Ooze Flux has a lot of constructed potential).
I really like Gatecrash. Evolve is definitely my favorite new mechanic of the last few years, and I'm excited to see how the Simic cards in the next set play off it. In the end, Gatecrash is a lot more interesting and fun than Return to Ravnica is, at least in limited. I'm excited to see how they all tie together when we start drafting the whole block, but that's a bit down the road.
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