Holidays

Just letting you all know that the Blog will not be updated over the next few weeks till after christmas as I won't be playing any/much magic in the next few weeks.

Possum in the Back Yard

Bad Draft Plays 101: Suicide Missions

Was playing in a Ravnica Draft last night and drafted a hot agro Dimir deck, with such niceties as:
2x Mark of Eviction
2x Snapping Drake
2x Dimir Guildmage
1x Moroii
1x Vedalken Dismisser
2x Flight of Fancy
1x Clutch of the Undercity
1x Keening Banshee
and the ultimate combo rare for the deck: Followed Footsteps.
Yes I did manage to get the Footsteps onto both the Keening Banshee and the Vedalken Dismisser, although it only triggered when on the Dismisser.
In the first round against probably the best player in Melbourne, David Zhao (his recent results seam to indicate that he is the best player in probably Australia), we'd split the first two games and were heading into the 3rd. My opening hand had both Snapping Drakes, the Dismisser and Footsteps combo. My deck was curving out nicely with a turn 2 Surveilling Sprite (answered with Sparkmage Apprentice #1), turn 3 Terraformer and turn 4 Snapping Drake.
On Zhao's next turn he attacks with the Apprentice, (I've either attacked with the Terraformer or he's already killed it with burn) and I have to decide to block or not. If I'd been thinking properly I would have done a proper risk assessment, if I block I allow Zhao to kill my Drake with a second Apprentice, if I don't block I take 1 damage and don't risk my 3/2 flyer and I know that I'm definitely trying to be the beat down here as I've got a second 3/2 in hand and a Dismisser to drop later to force through extra damage.
As it turns out I blocked and he dropped Apprentice #2.
On my turn I dropped a land and Drake #2 and passed the turn. Zhao then followed suit by repeating his last turn: Attack with Apprentice. Naturally I thought if anything it was safer to block now as he was less likely to have a 3rd Apprentice in hand. So I block, Zhao drops Apprentice #3 and most of my gas is spent, when I eventually play the Footsteps on the Dismisser (actually I must have been a Banshee I think) Zhao top decks a Dogpile and attacks with his 2 creatures to kill it.
If I had of read Zhao better (no easy task) I wouldn't have block with either Snapping Drake so I would have kept 1 and had my Terraformer holding off his 3 Apprentices and 1 Drake left over to give Zhao a 6 turn clock, which from memory probably would have gone all the way.
When I look back over my draft results at CardHeaven I don't feel so bad as most of the time the 1 loss I have that keeps me off winning a draft is against a Good Player, and they don't get much better than Zhao. Other then loosing to Zhao I didn't drop a game in the next 5 I played with the deck, but finished an unlucky 4th (2 boosters to 1st and 1 to 2nd and 3rd, nothing for 4th, and my first pick in the rare draft was just a Heirach) as Zhao failed to win the final. Still my 1 draft win at CardHeaven was by beating Zhao's Splice Mill deck, but that was a 2-0-1 draft win, after drawing round 1.

PS: managed to snag 15 uncommons in this draft, but nothing as good as a Putrefy :(, but I do need more suppression fields.

Uncommon Drafting

The other day I was doing a draft with ~10 people (if my recollection holds) and managed to draft one of the best piles of uncommons I've ever managed. I opened a Moldervine Cloak and Putrefy in Packs 1 and 2. A Darkblask also came past pretty early and by the end of the draft I had in my pile:

Moldervine Cloak
Putrefy
Darkblast
Carrion Howler
Spectral Searchlight
Nullmage Shephard
Ethereal Usher
Netherborn Phalanx
Wojek Apothecary
Telling Time
Flame-Kin Zealot
Indentured Oaf

I had to cut the red white cards, as no one should get a Flame-Kin Zealot as 4th last pick in pack 3, let alone have him followed by the Oaf and Apothecary.
Some how I still managed to go less than stellar but, that pile of uncommons must have half paid for the draft on their own. And all the on colour ones (GBu) made the deck or were sideboarded in a few times.

TnT

I have to say that playing with this deck is an awful amount of fun, it has so much sheer power. I'm pretty sure that I would have gone better with it if I had of played it a little bit more aggresivly.
Whenever I looked at the game state and noticed that I was going to loose on the next turn I would just decide to win, and most of the time the deck complied. Sure this was mainly when I had a Tog in play and a Grave-Troll in the graveyard or hand, but that wasn't a very unusual game state.
The look of surprise when you win the game when your opponent is sitting on 28 life, or with a Wurm in play with a Jitte with 2 counters equipt. And all that from nothing in play beyond a Tog and 2 or 3 cards in hand. With 2 Collesiums in play you can get your self 7 draws which can all be replaced with dredge 6, giving 48 cards in the graveyard, which will always put a Brawn or Wonder into the graveyard.
Still it does seam like too much of a predictable deck to be truely fun :(

PS: the title of this post makes sense because I'm currently trying to ring JJJ to mise some tickets the the JCDC concert.

The Trials of a Newb

After speaking to some lecturers at uni about their homosexual tendencies (they need me to comeback over summer to do 1 more subject before I graduate), I dropped past some random building in the city to pick up some Deeds and an Overgrown Tomb to finish of my deck, which looked somewhat like this:

*Main Deck*
4 Polluted Delta
1 Bloodstained Mire
3 Watery Grave
4 Overgrown Tomb
1 Lonely Sandbar
2 Cephalid Coliseum
3 Barren Moor
2 Island
1 Forest
1 Swamp
22 land

4 Psychatog
4 Wild Mongrel
4 Golgari Grave-Troll
1 Genesis
1 Brawn
1 Wonder
15 creatures

4 Circular Logic
4 Deep Analysis
2 Sensei's Divining Top
2 Life from the Loam
1 Gifts Ungiven
3 Darkblast
3 Echoing Truth
2 Chrome Mox
2 Careful Study
23 other spells

*Sideboard*
1 Darkblast
2 Ray of Revelation
3 Cranial Extraction
3 Duress
3 Pernicious Deed
3 Putrefy
15 sideboard cards

Which is 3 cards off of Craig Jones' deck from PT:LA the weekend before. I liked his deck as it looked like a lot of fun, but thought that the raw power of Cephalid coliseum in the deck was much to powerful to ignore. Also I felt that 3 Life from the Loam was too many as I was never using it as a draw engine in the early game, and by the late game I'd always dredge ~15 cards so there was always 2 of them available for dredging.
Friday was very slow at GP:Melbourne, it was something like 1.00pm before the first trial even started.
In the first round I got paired against some weenie deck that I had too take too much early damage against to manage to win a game.
Then once that trial got around to the semi-finals (or maybe even the final) the second trial started up.
In the first round of this trial I got paired against one of the younger regulars at CardHeaven playing Heartbeat combo. Game one I lost after messing up how to play around moments peace, and then I lost game 2 in spectacular fashion. I'd kept a hand with nothing but blue mana sources, but with a careful study or two, but had only managed to draw into a second blue source and a SDT by something like turn 5. My opponent decides that he needs to go for it on his next turn and drops a Heartbeat of Spring and gives me another turn. At eot I have a look at the top 3 and see: Overgrown Tomb; Psychatog; and Cranial Extraction. So naturally being the idiot that I am I put the Tog on top with the land under it and do some top tricks on my turn to bury the top and play the Tog. After ending my turn I sit back and let Rob (the judge hanging over this game as were coming close to time) make sure my opponent doesn't cheat/screw up.
Obviously he manages to combo out that turn and I loose, if I had of instead decided that casting Cranial Extraction against combo players was the tech he wouldn't have been able to win and gg to me. Instead I had to hope for him to randomly fizzle which he was better/luckier than to loose that way.

Mulliganing with Strategy?

I've never been very good at mulliganing, pretty much all I have ever done is:

1. Do I have enough land:
1. >= 2 Land
2. <= 4 Land
3. Or some way to see many cards with the opening hand even without 2 permanent mana sources (for example in Type1 I'd keep a hand with Island, Ancestral recall, Lotus Petal and accumulated Knowledge)
2. Do have anything to do:
1. A decent creature
2. Some permission
3. Some card draw

Now naturally what I was playing affected my definitions of "decent creature" and such, but that was pretty much all I was thinking about when deciding to mulligan. In the last few hours I've been thinking that maybe muliganing would be a good first place to start thinking about strategy.
Along this idea I think that a mulligan should be taken after working out what the current hands strategy will be, and weather that will be good enough. I don't think this will ever lead to me not taking a mulligan where I have been, but will lead to me muliganing more average hands. The ones that have land and spells, in a reasonable proportion but just don't look like they want to do anything constructive.
I think this is just a general reaction to many of the articles I've been reading lately though. A lot of strategy articles have been about the need for strategy during a game and how having one will benefit the player.
So yeah, do stuff with, umm strategy, and yeah, purpose as well.

GP Melbourne Mini Report

!Friday:
GPT#1: Lost in first round :(
GPT#2: Lost in first round :(

Saturday:
GP Melbourne Round 1: Won against Pink Weenie
GP Melbourne Round 2: Won against really really bad draws from a Goblin deck
GP Melbourne Round 3: Lost against BGA
GP Melbourne Round 4: Won against control Tog (traditional Tog + Life from the Loam engine)
GP Melbourne Round 5: Lost against control Tog (ditto)
GP Melbourne Round 6: Lost against Affinity
GP Melbourne Round 7: Lost against JikiKiki.dec because I'm a F@#$%^& newb.

Sunday:
PTQ Honolulu Round 1: Lost to Rbg Goblins
PTQ Honolulu Round 2: Lost to ICan'tRemember.dec
PTQ Honolulu Round 3: Beat Septer Cant
PTQ Honolulu Round 4: Beat Affinity (piloted by: I'll keep dropping artifact land with a Deed on the table)
PTQ Honolulu Round 5: Lost to Madness (after stealing a win by having Brawn to trample over a (very) Arrogant Wurm with a Jitte+2)

So 0-2 in GPT's, 3-4 in GP, 2-3 in PTQ for a grand total of 5-9 for the weekend, so I wonder how low my constructed rating can get now?

More details to follow as I get time