Innistrad Draft (Swiss), 5/1/2012

I was sick of losing so I switched it up to swiss so that I could at least get some games in. This deck felt decent but not amazing. Plenty of removal and some okay early plays, but if I never draw the Skirsdag High Priest then I have no real way to win.

I won the first match against a fairly mediocre blue/white deck, lost the second match by a mile to a very sweet deck with a million werewolves I couldn’t do anything about, and then absolutely crushed my third opponent by combining the High Priest with removal and morbid guys to get a million demons and kill his entire board. That made me feel a little better. Never got to play Devil’s Play despite it being in my hand for the entirety of three separate games and me siding in a second Shimmering Grotto after every game one, which was pretty annoying.

Innistrad Draft (8-4), 5/1/2012

My deck after pack one was looking to be a bit of a crap blue/black monstrocity, so I just decided to go all in on mill. I picked a Curse of the Bloody Tome P2P1, so let it never be said that I am not committed. Anyway this deck sucked and I made terrible mulliganning decisions in my first match (didn’t mull a five-lander or a one-lander) so I was put out of my misery pretty quickly.

Innistrad Draft (4-3-2-2), 13/11/2011

This is basically why I don’t like drafting blue/black decks in Innistrad. Everything needs everything else, you have way too much top end and not enough one or two drops (but you can’t really justifiably cut your five-drop flyers otherwise you have nothing to win with), and it is very hard to make cuts. I ended up having to cut a removal spell here, and I feel like the deck also wanted a second Crab, but I couldn’t fit it in. I did get to play Army of the Damned (mainly because I wanted to cast it at least once in this format), and picked up two other mythics to help with my set redemption, though. 

My first game was with an equally slow red/white deck. Game one it didn’t seem to register when I clicked “yes” for whether I wanted to play first, so I clicked it again, and it mulliganned what was a perfectly fine hand. Then I drew into a one-land hand, and had to mulligan again. Despite that, I drew pretty well, while he got kind of flooded, and killed him with Army of the Damned. Game two I had a very good start with Deranged Assistant, but he neutralised all the threats I ramped into and I milled ALL of my flyers with Deranged Assistant and Armored Skaabs. My game plan was then to get to eight mana to cast Army of the Damned to finish him off, but before I could he cast TWO Rolling Temblor to wipe the board, meaning I couldn’t even cast it and then flash it back to kill him. I drew a million removal spells while he played some Village Bellringers. I attacked for a few every turn with Armored Skaabs and Fortress Crabs, but it wasn’t fast enough to kill him before I decked myself. Game three I again found none of my flyers (which should have been enough to kill him) and instead drew my ground zombies, which couldn’t block his best dude due to his Blazing Torch. I eventually drew enough for Army of the Damned, forgetting that he had (one of his three) Scourge of Geier Reach out. All the zombies gave it a million power, he used the Blazing Torch and some other spell to get rid of my blockers, and then swung for the win. Pretty frustrating, because my deck should have been very well set up against him. All of his dudes were big dumb ground guys that my high toughness creatures should have been able to hold off, and then my flyers should have been able to kill him without fuss, but unfortunately I never got to cast any of them in three games.

Innistrad Draft (8-4), 4/11/2011

I can’t say this is the greatest deck I have ever drafted. I was looking to go into red/black aggro after picking Skirsdag Cultist and Falkenrath Noble as my first two picks, but I don’t think I saw a single playable black card out of my first few picks in each pack. It felt like green was open in pack one, but I wasn’t sure about the other colours. I got a couple of good picks early, but then red kind of dried up, and blue wasn’t good enough for me to want to go into a fifth colour. I ended up with some decent cards (Elder of Laurels, Spider Spawning, and Balefire Dragon), but I have very little removal, and my manabase is terrible. I played so many mountains because I feel it’s important to get the Crossway Vampires online as soon as possible, but the consequence is playing not nearly enough forests to play my green one or two drops, and only playing two swamps means I will likely never get to flashback Sever the Bloodline, and rarely play Falkenrath Noble particularly early.

This deck did surprise me, though! I ran very well in mana, and basically always had the right lands to cast my spells. There were a tonne of cards that worked very well together, including Rakish Heir, Crossway Vampires and Falkenrath Noble, and having Elder of Laurels and Spider Spawning in an 18 creature deck doesn’t hurt, either. I won both of my first rounds 2-1, with each match being very very close. My first opponent had a pretty good blue/white deck with Grimoire of the Dead. Unfortunately most of his white spells kind of worked against him, and weren’t great on the battlefield or in the graveyard. My second opponent was playing a green/black/white deck with Skirsdag High-Priest. Game one he managed to get the High-Priest going, whereas game two I had turn 3 Rakish Heir turn 4 Falkenrath Noble turn 5 Crossway Vampire. In the last game he got the High-Priest going, but I was able to get the Skirsdag Cultist out before he could start making demons. It turned into a race with his flyers against my Rakish Heir that was growing every turn, but luckily I had Spider Spawning to fog for a turn, and then had a Harvest Pire to get rid of his chump blocker and swing for the win. I feel like I was pretty lucky to get to the finals with this deck, but as long as the mana was okay, the deck plays pretty nicely! I split the finals BTW, I didn’t want to push my luck.

Innistrad Draft (8-4), 29/10/2011

I had a bunch of decent black here, but didn’t get as much red as what I was hoping. Some of the aggro red vampires or red removal spells would have put this deck over the top, I think. As it was all of my red spells were pretty sweet, but the mana base couldn’t really support a turn one Reckless Waif or turn three Kruin Outlaw.  

I won game one of the first match fairly comfortably, narrowly lost game two (I got the opponent to five and got down Rage Thrower with a couple of other dudes, but he drew Smite the Monstrous for it and then attacked for the win), and then got mana screwed in game three and lost. I think I kind of punted game three. I had two Bumps in the Night in my hand so I decided to be kind of aggressive and try to get in some early damage, but I traded away too many early creatures and then never drew land to cast my bigger drops. Given I had Reaper from the Abyss in my hand, I may should have just stayed back and tried for the long game. I may have still lost, but it would have given me another couple of turns.

Innistrad Draft (8-4), 28/10/2011

I pretty much forced green/white humans after picking an Angelic Overseer P1P1 and Ulvenwald Mystics P1P2. White seemed open enough to get some decent dudes and removal, but I’m pretty sure the guy to my right was in green/red werewolves, because I didn’t see a whole lot of double-faced cards come around in packs one and three. This deck seemed pretty good. I had only one very good game finisher, but the curve is good enough that I figured I might just be able to aggro some people out.

And aggro them out I did! I went 3-0 (my final opponent refusing to split). The Dagger was absurdly good and won me about half the games, with Angelic Overseer winning most of the other half. The one game I drew Sever the Bloodline, I didn’t have the swamp to cast it, but luckily the compromised mana base from having swamps didn’t hurt me in any game. I only lost one game in the draft, which was due to flooding out. I don’t know if this is just running good or if a consistent curve really is this important in Innistrad - for a lot of games my opponents didn’t do too much in the first three turns, while I tended to curve out on them.

Innistrad Draft (Swiss), 16/10/2011

I made a couple of mispicks in this draft, but not a whole lot, I think. Blue was pretty open from the beginning, with a reasonable amount of black and white coming around, but black just had the better cards. I first picked Cackling Counterpart over Murder of Crows, which has to be wrong, but I wanted to try out the rare (edit: actually now that I realise it has flashback, there’s no way Murder of Crows is better than that). I wasn’t sure how many things like Moon Heron (which don’t play into the themes of the deck, but are solid cards) versus things like Think Twice (which are pretty good if they get milled, but don’t have a whole heap of impact) I should play, and I think I might have erred too much on the side of synergy. Maybe having solid creatures like Moon Heron or Markov Patrician is just better? You will notice that the manabase for this deck does not include any plains despite the fact that the mana requirements aren’t that onerous (aside from Reaper), and Unburial Rites is great when you can flash it back. That is because I am a moron and forgot to add plains when I was adding land. I switched two plains for two islands after the first game of every match.

Match one was against a pretty aggressive red/green deck. In game one he hit me down to 1 life, but then I played my demon and a bunch of zombie dudes and stabilised. Game two I F6ed through my first turn because I’m a moron, and then lost. Game three I played my demon which he killed, and I then got it back with Unburial Rites, and then played Cackling Counterpart on it, with a plains in play to Unburial Rites it a third time if he killed it again. I won that game.

Match two was against blue/green werewolves and zombies. I got pretty badly manascrewed both games (in game one I was on three land while he was on 7-8), and in game two I finally managed to get out the Reaper (with the help of two Deranged Assistants), but he played two Grasp of Phantoms (sorcery that puts a creature on the top of its owner library) on successive turns, and then played that red Devil that gets back sorceries at random, and replayed his Grasp of Phantoms, and then the newt turn got to eight mana which let him flashback Grasp of Phantoms. It is very hard to win when you get time walked four times, and so I didn’t.

Match three was against red/white humans. Game one my deck did exactly what is was supposed to do. I had Deranged Assistant, Armored Skaab and Forbidden Alchemy to get a bunch of stuff in my graveyard, zombies to cast and to exile from my graveyard, and a bunch of flashback cards to get value. I also had a Reaper of the Abyss and Cackling Counterpart to copy it. He Fiend Huntered my Reaper, but it didn’t really matter. I won before I was able to flash back Cackling Counterpart in order to have three demons on the battlefield :( Game two I mulliganned to six and then got stuck on three land. I played Armored Skaab and milled four land, which made me very sad. I ended up having to Forbidden Alchemy for a land. I eventually drew another couple of land, but all his stuff got bigger when I killed something (like Thanben Sentry and whathaveyou), which prevented me from stabilising. Game three I had a turn one Delver into turn two Vampire Interloper. The Delver flipped on turn four or so, so I was beating down pretty hard. He eventually got Markov Vampire and Silver Inlaid Dagger, so was able to gain a bunch of life. I killed his vampire… somehow, and then he ended up with a 5/5 Juggernaut and a 5/2 equipped human that dies and gives +1/+1 counters. I was on five, but luckily had a Markov Patrician to chump with, leaving me at three. I swung in for the win the next turn.

I feel like this was a really good deck, but I played a lot of pretty aggressive decks, and found myself winning at pretty low life a lot of the time. I’m not sure if I built this wrong, if the quality of archetypes are really close in Innistrad, or just if everyone in the draft opened very well. I think maybe the fact that I picked up a lot of synergistic cards led me to play too many do-nothing cards like Think Twice, whereas if there had have been less graveyard-centric cards, I maybe would have been happy with playing more solid creatures.

M12 Draft (Swiss), 26/9/2011

I first-picked a Furyborn Hellkite over Incinerate, which can’t be right, but mythic rare! And then second-picked a Vengeful Pharaoh, which isn’t the best combination. Combining those with two Gorehorn Minotaurs and two Drifting Shades made my mana very terrible. I think red/white is probably the colour combination that is hardest on the mana in M12, and this deck is the perfect example of why. Blue ended up being very open in pack two (an Aether Adept wheeled! The two blue cards I have there were picked up p2p9-p2p13 or so), but at that point I had a couple of Gorehorn Minotaurs, and it didn’t really seem worth switching. 

I ended up going 2-1, narrowly losing to the guy that eventually won the draft. My mana ended up doing reasonably well, with my only problem being not being able to cast the Hellkite in the one game I drew it because I didn’t have enough mountains in play. I also won two games where I mulled to five in this draft, which were both very satisfying. 

M12 Draft (4-3-2-2), 18/9/2011

Black seemed to be fairly open, so after getting a first pick Archon of Justice I just kept taking it. I’m not sure if it’s worth playing the white cards here; I maybe should have just tried to pick up a few more playables so I could play all swamps. In the games I had I didn’t have many mana problems, though, so maybe it’s not a big deal. Anyway I lost in the first round against some shitty deck because life sucks.

M12 Draft (4-3-2-2), 10/9/2011

I think it’s worth playing blue for double-Looter? I don’t remember what was in those packs anymore; maybe I would have been better off taking some durdles over them and just going mono-black. Again I was seduced by the idea of Looter and Pharaoh. I was really really happy with this deck, but I got undone in the first round to a combination of not the best draw, a reasonable opponent, and a couple of horrendous play mistakes by me. This is why I hate 4-3-2-2s (well, that and the terrible EV).