Ok so it’s finals. It’s finals for almost everyone who plays at my Local Gaming Store(LGS) because the ones who aren’t students are teachers.
Weds night draft is usually much bigger than Monday night. My first draft they convinced me to draft because I helped them make a third pod. But I knew most of them wouldn’t be there due to finals, just like I was planning on not being there due to finals. However at 7 ( the draft starts at 6:30) I got a call from The Girl who’s working gift wrap at the store asking if I could come help them make a draft – I told her I couldn’t get there for 20 minutes – it would be 7:30. They said they’d wait.
So since my teammates hadn’t updated our project files, I went.
Preparation – Not a damned thing – I’d been working with pseudocode and object design all day. I had been taking breaks reading magic articles and I’m flirting with the idea of a red burn deck but that’s about it.
Comfort Level – it was fine walking into the store and I wasn’t nervous during the draft itself ( possibly because there was an Olivia Voldaran sitting in my first pick pack ) but the people there weren’t the ones I was expecting. There was someone who had just had a 10 inch portrait of Lilliana Vess in a Mucha like profile freshly tattoed on his leg, and a nice quiet gentleman from Jersey who had travelled about an hour to get there because he’d heard it was a larger crowd. Which it usually – I told him about finals and he asked if there were a lot of colleges around us. I laughed, we specialize in colleges, medical facilities and lawyers around here.
I told him if he was looking for larger groups be should probably come during and after the break.
Results -
Round 1 1 -2
Round 2 2- 0
Round 3 0 – 2
So out of seven games played I won 3.
Pulling Olivia I knew I was going to be drafting red/black, It ended up I was pretty much getting black all to myself
These are the cards I had at the end of the draft
- 1 Typhoid Rats
- 1 Ashmouth Hound
- 1 Bloodcrazed Neonate
- 2 Walking Corpse
- 1 Rakish Heir
- 1 Riot Devils
- 1 Screeching Bat
- 1 Brain Weevil
- 1 Olivia Voldaren
- 2 Skirsdag Cultist
- 1 Tormented Pariah
- 1 Pitchburn Devils
- 1 Stromkirk Patrol
- 1 Dead Weight
- 1 Dream Twist
- 1 Geistflame
- 2 Infernal Plunge
- 1 Purify the Grave
- 1 Altar's Reap
- 1 Curse of the Pierced Heart
- 1 Graveyard Shovel
- 1 Intangible Virtue
- 2 Mask of Avacyn
- 1 Nightbird's Clutches
- 1 Skeletal Grimace
- 1 Spare from Evil
- 1 Cackling Counterpart
- 2 Night Terrors
- 1 Rolling Temblor
- 1 Runic Repetition
- 1 Traitorous Blood
- 1 Trepanation Blade
- 1 Grimoire of the Dead
- 2 Maw of the Mire
- 1 Into the Maw of Hell
- 1 Midnight Haunting
- 1 Cellar Door
- 1 Typhoid Rats
- 1 Ashmouth Hound
- 1 Bloodcrazed Neonate
- 2 Walking Corpse
- 1 Rakish Heir
- 1 Riot Devils
- 1 Screeching Bat
- 1 Brain Weevil
- 1 Olivia Voldaren
- 1 Skirsdag Cultist
- 1 Tormented Pariah
- 1 Pitchburn Devils
- 1 Dead Weight
- 1 Geistflame
- 2 Infernal Plunge
- 1 Curse of the Pierced Heart
- 1 Nightbird's Clutches
- 1 Skeletal Grimace
- 1 Night Terrors
- 1 Rolling Temblor
- 1 Traitorous Blood
- 1 Into the Maw of Hell
- 8 swamp
- 8 mountains
I was a bit worried that I didn’t have a lot of one drops but I had Typhoid rats in my hand. My strategy was to get Olivia in play as soon as possible , with a Typhoid rat in play it’s possible to use infernal plunge to get her out on turn 2 which happened. But JerseyGuy was playing white and had fiend hunter, which Olivia is easily sidelined by. He won that round, but I was happy to have gotten her out so early, it means I built that strategy correctly. The second round she came out on turn 4 and I won that round. The third round I almost had him but he had his control cards in better positioning and I never figured out how to outmaneuver him using the abilities of the cards I had in play. I was one land short the entire time.
Round 2 was the store owner playing a 3 color combo white, green and some black I think. He was mana light at the opening and Olivia coming out on turn 5 pretty much ended the game even though it took a few more draws, on the second one he managed to survive for a while but I had done early damage with vampires and the Skirsdag cultist so Olivia had clearance and plenty of mana to power up and take over. He was creature starved and basically had his creatures for about a turn before I could take them over. He did have things that gave them life. One useful thing I did was stick skeletal grimace on Olivia keeping her pretty safe from direct damage until she bulked up. The other useful thing I did was throw it on Typhoid rats making it a kind of consistent Creepy Doll for 3 mana.
The third round I made a mulligan that I shouldn’t have an paid for it, the second round was longer and I had a better hand than the first but it was newly tattooed guy and he knew the cards way better than I did. I don’t even remember how he beat me specifically but I do remember I ended up without enough answers and was top decking when he did beat me. If I used all my cards without improving my gameboard state enough to win that means I probably made some inefficient trades when he became the aggressor, or I took damage I should have prevented in the early game.
End result, I had fun playing last night. I enjoy the constraints of limited forcing you to use cards, I’m getting better at Infernal Plunge and I’m working on my practical application of card advantage in aggro decks. I didn’t get shut out, while off-put by some of the vibe and suddeness of the night ( and there is a possibility being kept waiting for 10 minutes into a round while tattoo guy finished his trade with someone else messed me up a bit concentration or preparedness wise) I didn't lose my temper, get overwhelmed or feel like I was less competent at the end of the night than at the beginning. As for the last competitor, I think it was just his nature, not a “jedi mind trick”. I have no idea why someone would waste a Jedi Mind Trick on me at this stage of the game anyway. I’m just happy when I can keep track of all the card effecs.
Curse of the pierced heart is lovely – next time I’ll try to get it out early.
I think I’m unlikely to forget the creature sacrifice on Infernal plunge again but I need to keep practicing with it or I might.
No comments:
Post a Comment