Foresee!? Run that card! It's insanely good. I don't wanna sound like a blue addicted control player like shapenaji, but that card belongs in your deck.

Life gain decks are uncommon, if there's a life gain deck, then you might just wanna switch your whole plan over to poison.

Well, if you're going to run Poison, you'll want better poison cards, the ones that just win on their own, and proliferate cards. It's best to stick to one strategy, instead of diversifying. Chained Throatseeker, Blighted Agent, Plague Stinger, Necropede, the black Souleater, Necropede, Corpse Cur, Core Prowler, to name a few.... Viral Drake is a beating.

I just wanted to know because counters and removal are more important in 1v1 than they are in multiplayer, where they're primarily used defensively.

Infect can be nice, but a lot of the non-infect creatures just have better utility. In constructed they'll just have answers for all your creatures. (Unless you're playing the glistener elf, blighted agent turn 2 win decks...),

Blue-Black infect can work though with Phyrexian Crusaders and Inkmoth Nexii.

In general though, unless you specifically build for it, it's a bit too slow.

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Tactics yes, Tact no...

Also if you're playing multiplayer, and want to do poison, you're probably better off with a blue-black proliferate style deck. Run ichor rats, give everyone a poison counter. Run treasure mage to grab contagion engine, thrummingbirds... Everflowing chalice, surge node, enclave cryptologist.

god, thrummingbirds must be amazing in multiplayer, just hit the vulnerable guy.

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Tactics yes, Tact no...

Yes, it is foresee. I looked it up online, and that's exactly the card. I have at least two of them.

I see what you mean about the poison, now. It's not that you were against poison, but just that I don't have that great of poison cards right now. Proliferate cards to go with poison certainly make sense.

The guys I play have many decks. I have the lowest number of cards of any of them, so it's hard to predict what their strategy will be. It just seems that life-giving cards have been a trend, lately.

Although, one guy played a mean combination the other day. It was a strategy to remove the cards in your deck, and the combination of cards he we had thought was an infinite loop, but later looked it up and found out we were wrong: when a player discards a card, they lose (some number of... I forgot how much) life. And then mindcrank (which, incidentally he got from me in exchange for mystical tutor).

We thought that taking a card from your library to your graveyard counted as discarding, but it seems that it is not a discard unless it comes from your hand. Still, he seemed to have a good "card-draining" deck.

By the way, out of curiosity, is foresee always a good card for blue, or do you think it's beneficial for some reason due to the combination of cards that I have put together?

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be immersed

I don't have any of these cards, I think, but this sounds cool.

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be immersed

Oh, he tried Megrim/Liliana's Caress + Mindcrank? Silly. He should be trying Bloodchief Ascension + Mindcrank. That's a true infinite. Just hard to get online.

If you can tell what deck each player is running by the different colored sleeves they use(assuming they sleeve), one way to create some variety and give yourself a fighting chance against their different decks is to make a sideboard of 15 or so cards so that you can swap cards in and out of your deck in between matches to give you a better chance.

While Infect is definitely game-changing (some might say -breaking), I don't think it's great unless you can focus on it fairly hard (say, 2/3 of your creatures-ish? Less, if you have equipment that makes creatures infect). The reason I say this is: imagine that you do half and half. Half your damage goes to poison, half to life. Assuming your opponent cannot remove counters or heal himself/herself, your opponent is at 10 life, 5 poison. This is unfortunate, as your opponent would be dead if all of the damage had been either infect or non-infect. In effect, while poison's a great way to win, you might shoot yourself in the foot if you diversify too much.

-Keep in mind, I don't play much and don't know what I'm talking about.

(unrelated tangent) p.s. When I was a kid, my favorite card was Pirate Ship. Tims were just so cool. Man, I used to be a jerk... oh, wait.

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Someday I want to be strong enough to earn KGS[-].

Foresee basically says that for four mana, you get to take away any bad cards out of your top 4, and either draw two good ones from the remainder, or one to two fresh cards. It does what Blue wants, which is get rid of dead cards and get card advantage. It's hard to ask for more. I wouldn't play it in standard, but in multiplayer, where the action is slower, Foresee is a good way to refresh a poor hand into a much better one.

I played an EDH game with a guy whose general was Skeleton Ship, and he play it out, but had no islands. Took me a sec to notice, but it was pretty hilarious.

These days, all the pingers are white. Prodigal Pyromancer Reprint, and of course there's Spikeshot Elder, Bloodshot Trainee, and Cunning Sparkmage. Back in Alara, there was Blood Cultist, and Vithian Stinger.

Jace and Stoneforge banned?! Whoa... first banning in standard since Ravager Affinity...

What're you going to play now? Is Valakut just going to take over?

Thank god... I mean seriously, those 2 cards basically destroyed the meta.

(Now a lot of people are sitting with Absurdly expensive decks they can't get rid of though, I do feel bad about that)

I'm looking forward to my blue architect ramp, with SFM and Jace out of the meta, I think I can roast some foos

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Tactics yes, Tact no...

I'm gonna try out GR Pod, Turn 1 Birds, Turn 2 Fauna Shaman, Turn 3 Shaman pitching Vengevine for either Priest of Urabask or Superion, whichever I don't have in my hand, but have the other of, then play Priest into Superion, recur Vengevine. Big game!

Trying out my first "booster draft" tomorrow. I'll let you guys know how it goes.

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be immersed

Well, I had written a rather long entry describing what happened in detail, but the post was lost when I had to re-login.

I'll give the short version of the story:

I didn't perform that well. There were four rounds, and I went 0-2 for the first three. The third guy I played gave me some tips, and I won the first game of the last round. But then I lost the next two games.

I asked people for tips after I played. I basically had two comments from different people:
1.) One guy said I spent too much time thinking. I need to know the cards better, he said. In my game against him, we ran out of time, and they gave us each 5 turns. We didn't run out of turns (though I don't know what would have happened if we had).

2.) Another guy said I needed to trim my deck down to 40 cards. I had been using something like 52.

My main strategy in the tournament was to get a lot of poison and flying cards in the draft. Flying cards were part of my strategy because I figured not many people would have them. Poison cards were ones that I wanted just because I want more poison cards.

I went blue-black for colors at the tournament.

The most effective creatures that I had at the draft were the unblockable ones. The game I won was due to these. However, I only had three in my deck.

All in all, I had a pretty good time, and got some interesting cards. Playing in the tournament was just a plus (though I lost).

---

Oh, and the other thing I found interesting at the tournament was that most of the people there shuffled their hand constantly while playing (not the library, but the cards in their hand).

I guessed this was so people couldn't guess the distribution of the cards in their hand.

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be immersed

Drafts are really hard. Once, I knew enough to do draft selection, and could select strategies for any colour of card, but it requires a lot of research and actually caring. These days, when I can be bothered, I make theme decks. The last thing that interested me was a sphinxy artifact creature deck in Alara using the broad range of sphinxes. For a theme deck, it actually did fairly well, but I didn't find anything in the next block to like, so I fell out again.

I miss it sometimes, it is a surprisingly deep game, in spite of the crazy schedule they've moved into. I think the breakneck pace of expansion release is one of the things that keeps me from getting back into the game. Unlike the Old Days (I started playing Waaaaayyyyy back in the Dark. 1994. So long ago) the pace of release seems to have risen sharply sometime around Ice Age.

This makes it hard for me to stay interested, when the deck I've spent time tuning and pruning is worthless almost as soon as it's completed, when the new block comes out. Yeah, I can keep using the old deck for another year or so, but the 'new hotness' is almost always hard to compete with without resorting to the new cards. Granted, this is all standard, I suppose I could play limited or freeplay, but I like a little more structure in my play.

Anyway, I miss Magic, but it's always such a huge money dump for me.. I don't miss it enough to keep playing it.

I can see how this would be a problem. I can't say I've spent a TON of money so far, though. I paid 20 USD for a deck builder kit, and then 12 USD for the booster draft. Other cards were given to me by people I play against at work (I did make two trades, as well)...

So I guess that makes about 32 USD plus tax that I've spent so far. I'd better be careful not to raise the ante too much.

The good thing is, I'm inexperienced enough that I feel that there is still a lot for me to do with the cards I already have. In other words, I haven't tried out all strategies, yet, so there's still a lot of time for me to try different compilations of the cards that I already have.

If I become really experienced, I might have the desire to buy more cards, but for now, the number of cards I have already is too much for me to process optimally.

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be immersed

Mmm... you played in an NPH BSG SOM draft... that must've been hard, but from what it sounds like, you got some Blighted Agents, aka 007's, so it couldn't have gone too badly.

Here's my general impression of the current draft format, if you're curious. I'm a decent, better than FNM level but haven't top 8'd any PTQ player.

To me, this draft format is all about staying midrange, and tempo. As long as you can keep your opponent on the back foot by aggressively curving out with early drops, you should win.

New Phyrexia: I think Black is the strongest color here, along with red. The reason is all the removal in there. Dismember is ridiculously powerful, and the two proliferate removal spells: Grim Affliction and Volt Charge are excellent. Things with 1 toughness in this set tend to be pretty strong, like Porcelain Legionaire, and Razor Swine, so keeping that in mind, cards like Leeching Bite and Pith Driller get that much better. Viral Drake is amazing, never pass it if possible. The key thing I try to take in this pack are either removal spells like Parasitic Implant, Artillerize, Gremlin Mine, etc, Phyrexian Mana combat tricks like Apostle's Blessing, Mutagenic Growth, Marrow Shards, and 4 mana for 4 power creatures, like Mortis Dogs, and Slash Panther. Tempo cards like Vapor Snag are highly underrated in this format, and I like to pick one up late so that if I'm the beatdown player, and they play a big creature to stabilize, I can simply Vapor Snag to take an extra turn on them and turn my board position into a win. The midrange deck just needs one more swing to win the game. There's just a lot of good stuff in these packs, as long as you have a slight sense of value and pick order, you should be fine.

Mirrodin Besieged: Sticking with the midrange idea, there are lots of excellent cards to help your cause here. Piston Sledge, Rusted Slasher are excellent cards in any deck, especially if you managed to pick up any Mycosynth Wellsprings or Ichor Wellsprings. For a bit of top end, Green has Fangren Marauder as a beatstick and Red has Kuldotha Flamefiend. Green and Red both have great midrange creatures in Tangle Mantis and Ogre Resister. Black has Nested Ghoul and Phyrexian Rager as great additions to the midrange beats and great removal spells in Spread the Sickness, Virulent Wound, and Go for the Throat, Blue has aggressive fliers like Serum Raker, and an excellent tempo card in Quicksilver Geyser. Red had some great removal and two for one potential with Blisterstick Shaman and Burn the Impure, while White has efficient fliers like Leonin Skyhunter.

Scars of Mirrodin: The name of the game is to draft powerful value, removal, mana ramp, and/or efficient beats. Skinrender. Oxidda Scrapmelter. Arc Trail. Galvanic Blast, Grasp of Darkness, Trigon of Corruption, Trigon of Rage, Tumble Magnet, Chrome Steed(if you have the deck), Glint Hawk and Glint Hawk Idol, Slice in Twain, Molder Beast, Barrage Ogre, Acid Web Spider, Razor Hippogriff, Sky Eel School, all decent cards.

Round out into a deck with mostly 3, 4, and 5 drops with decent amounts of removal, and make your turn 3-5 your strongest, take the initiative and keep your opponent from stabilizing with your removal spells. Try to get full value out of 2 for 1s, and take tempo where necessary.

Yep, that was one of the card types I ended up with.



It sounds like you are looking for specific things in the different packs, which is interesting to me. I didn't try to look for any particular thing in any particular pack as much as to try to balance out my deck with creatures and other spells. On one hand, I can justify doing this since I didn't know what would show up in any of the decks.

On the other hand, though, I suppose if you know what you can actually end up getting in a deck, you can make more informed decisions on the cards to select from the packs that you open early.




I'm assuming that you mean cards that are priced at 3, 4, and 5 mana when you mention drops. Your comment about removal is similar to what my third opponent explained to me when I asked him for some pointers. Although, he may have favored removal even more, as he valued it quite highly. He also really recommended cards that did multiple things (eg. artifact creatures that provided a second effect). I assume this is what you mean by 2 for 1s.

There are two things that I don't understand:
1.) How can you control what turn will be your strongest? I typically cast what seems reasonable at a time that I can afford. If turn 3-5 is to be my strongest, does this mean holding back on some spells that I could otherwise cast earlier?

2.) What do you mean by "take tempo"?

As a sidenote, my third opponent, which is the guy that gave me the most tips, mentioned that the deck I built was an "aggro deck". I'm not sure if this corresponds to the strategy that you indicate here (I hadn't intended to make any particular type of deck).

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be immersed

Tempo is about, as I understand it, controlling the flow of the game. Some decks have a 'high' tempo, they develop quickly, and keep the pressure on. Some decks have a low tempo. They seek to slow the game, and develop a win by breaking the opponent's tempo.

Very high tempo decks are refereed to as 'aggro' sometimes, especially if they can't afford to fall behind on the creature count at all.
Very slow tempo decks are often called 'control' decks, in that they focus on counterspells and removal effects that prevent the opponent from getting a clear advantage, while waiting for your powerful game ending spells to come out.

Used to be Five Colour Control (FCC) was the rage on the pro tournament, so they've gimped control lately, cutting reprints of various counterspells and limiting the combinations of control effects, they've essentially 'killed' pure control decks.

In Alara, most of the 'winning' decks that you could easily build in the draft were high tempo aggro decks, centered around some of the ridiculously high damage for cost creatures.

Don't know much about the tempo of various builds in the current expansions.



What Violence means by 'make turn 3-5 your strongest is that you should plan on having enough mana to get mana every turn for the first 4-5 turns, and plan on having enough cards in the 3-5 mana range to make the these turns where your strategy 'gels'.

Also, sometimes it is best to hold back on spells/creatures. If you're playing someone who you suspect has a high removal count, or high counterspell count, you want to draw out some of those cards, and try to get them to drop removal on creatures who aren't your 'big bad', but are big enough to need removed. For instance, if you've got an early 3 power creature, and your opponent doesn't have anything to block him with, and a 5/5 creature in your hand.. Even if you can cast the 5/5 creature, hold off, try to play smaller things, and goad the opponent into wasting his removal on your smaller creatures.

In this same vein, even if you /can/ cast a removal, sometimes it's best to hold off for a few turns, try to get some creatures out instead, and hold off on wasting cards. These sorts of deep tactics require knowing how long you can afford to let your life points drain.

Back when I started, I played a blue red counterspell/ direct damage deck without a single creature in it, and I often managed to win with only 1 or 2 life points left. Or everything fell just right and I won with 20. But the point is, don't feel you have to cast something every turn, especially if you're ahead on the field of creatures.

Learning to recognize who's playing what deck is a skill that requires a lot of research and play. For instance, if you see a red black deck that is slow to pop creatures, fear the removal/direct damage combo.

If your opponent is dropping a hand full of creatures like there's no tomorrow, drop bigger creatures and hold off on using removal spells...

All these sorts of strategies and tricks require you to know your opponent's possibilities, which can be done with card lists and studying pro builds, to see what's popular. A lot of people in draft come in with a few ideas in mind, regardless of what's in the first pack. Those ideas are often influenced by recommended builds online.

Draft can and will screw you, especially if you're not good at reading signals. If you get passed a 'great' card of a certain colour, it means your friend to one side or another didn't want that colour. If you notice after a pick or two that you're not getting anything of colour X, it means he's trying to pull that colour. Learning to read these signals, and effectively pass signals, is one of the hardest parts of high level draft play.

It is, to be precise, a part I suck at, and thus why I don't often play Draft.

I'm impressed you've managed to spend so little on the game so far actually. Usually when I catch the bug, I go buy a box or two so that I don't have to worry about 'having the cards I want' and can build anything I desire.

Hehe. Well, mrs_kirby might also have something to do with it. She says that these days, she is liking go more and more.

I guess it's not fair to claim that that's the only reason. I'm pretty cheap, all in all. For example, I skipped out on our company potluck because they made you pay 5 USD to participate.

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be immersed