As a writer it is a very good thing to do well at a Pro Tour, especially when you are as lazy as I am. Tournament reports are just much easier to write than general strategy articles and when you do well those reports usually contain useful information for the readers as well. Sadly, I had an abysmal finish in London so I don’t get that luxury. Instead I will try to focus on the interesting things that did happen in London and try to give pointers on what to do and not to do in CBS draft.
First of all a short comment on my own performance. After my recent finishes (in Limited) I have been getting a lot of hype. If you read and believe the coverage, you probably get the idea that I’m some sort of winning machine and that the normal rules of Magic somehow don’t apply to me. This is because the people that write coverage want to create profiles and give the impression that there is more skill in Magic than there really is.
Don’t get me wrong, there is a lot of skill in Magic but that skill mostly shines through in the tight matches. If you keep drawing from the bottom half of your deck or if you draw too many lands/not enough lands then the games are usually straightforward and most everyone at the PT level can play those games flawlessly. I might have been one of the favorites to win London but the chance of me actually doing well is still not great.
Bad luck isn’t the whole story though. Once I lost the first round, my usual problem came into play. I just can’t seem to rebound and get back into a tournament when I have a bad start. My level of play for the rest of the day was not very good, ending with a really bad mistake when I was down a game at 1-2. I should have won that game and I guess it is technically possible that I could have made a comeback after that (although my second draft deck was pretty bad). My bad finish was disappointing in itself but I am more disappointed that I can’t seem to get over this problem.
Enough about my crappy performance though, lets move on by starting at the end. The Top 8 of London might look like a weak one and judging by previous performance it certainly is. Between the people in it there were only a total of eight PT Top 8s, and four of those were Masashi Oiso. Thinking like that in this era of MODO is dangerous though – the days where an unknown name meant a weak player are definitely over. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that if you have what it takes to do well in the 8-4 drafts on MODO, then you have what it takes to win a Pro Tour. Assuming you can take the pressure of playing in a high level event of course.
Being that the format is actually better than CCC or CCB, in contrast to how the third set usually screws up the format instead of helps it (see Odyssey block, Invasion block or Mirrodin block for examples of this), you have to give credit to these players for making it. Of course I was personally very happy that Tomi Walamies and Johan Sadeghpour made it, seeing as how they are teammates of mine. Tomi making the Top 8 of a Limited Pro Tour might seem surprising, especially since he’s coming off a long break from Magic. But that’s just what Tomi always does, surprises people. Also, playing Magic is like riding a bicycle, once you are as good as Tomi you never really forget.
Johan making the Top 8 didn’t surprise me at all. It’s actually pretty funny being called “the best Limited player in the world” when you aren’t even sure if you are the best in your city! Both of us graduated from the “Jens Thorén School of Drafting” but once Johan found himself unqualified for the Pro Tour, he pretty much disappeared from Magic (a big part of that is because PTQ’s are far and few between where we live). Now that he’s qualified you will likely see more of him, assuming he is willing to put the work in.
The Top 8 draft was surely interesting. Since Johan was staying in the same room as me, I woke up in time and headed over to the site to watch the webcast. I have a great respect for Masashi Oiso as a player, but the way he drafted this time was nothing short of horrible. With his unwillingness to move into Red, he also had a big part in determining who the eventual champion would be. If you haven’t watched the draft pick by pick, I recommend doing so. His big mistake in my opinion was when he took Sosuke second pick over Rend Spirit. The way the format works (for Black in particular), you really can’t pass many Black cards and still think you will get anything good in the second pack.
My best guess is that Oiso wanted to stay away from Red/Black at any cost, since it is one of the worst archetypes. Still, there are obviously situations where you just have to bite the bullet. My opinion is that this was one of those situations. Oiso made a couple of other weird picks, like Bloodthirsty Ogre over Waking Nightmare and then Razorjaw Oni over Elder Pine, but none of those picks affected the draft as much as that Sosuke pick.
One of the things talked about before the Pro Tour was the advantage of having access to the Magic Online Beta. Richard Hoaen was convinced that one of the Pros on the beta would win the whole thing. Geoffrey Siron proved him right and Johan’s third place finish just strengthens the argument. I have no real information if any of the other T8 competitors were part of the beta, but still it really shows that the speed of play you get on Magic Online can’t be rivaled by “real life” drafts.
My belief is that practicing with Saviors was even more important than it usually is, since the format changed so much. If you haven’t read Sam Gomersall article, I advise you to do so. Basically, Saviors turned everything upside down. In CCB, I would only rarely touch a Green card and Black/White was the strongest archetype. With Saviors, the strongest archetype is Green/Red while Black/White is one of the weaker.
So how did this happen? Well first of all, Black, Blue and White are all pretty mediocre in Saviors. In fact, those three colors only have one common each that you are happy first-picking, while Green and Red both have several (Shinen of Life’s Roar, Elder-Pine, Spiraling Embers, Barrel-Down Sokenzan). Also, Black and White lose out on one pack of Champions, the pack where those colors are the strongest. The biggest reason for this change is a bit harder to spot though, but if you have tried to draft for example a Spirit-centred White/Black deck you probably noticed it. Saviors won’t give you anything you want. There just aren’t enough quality spirits and if you want to draft a deck with good synergy, then you will most likely have to give up quality in your picks just to get there.
Green on the other hand is now filled to the brim with good synergy. You have several good creatures with Soulshift and a bunch of cheap spirits to use that Soulshift on. And I’m sure I don’t have to point out just how good Elder-Pine is.
The way you should draft Green in general or Green/Red in particular has of course changed too. I will give a few examples of cards that I think changed a lot in value with the addition of Saviors.
Serpent Skin
Now, Serpent Skin was always somewhat undervalued. A lot of the time it would still be there as an 11th pick and it almost never should be. With the addition of Saviors and the Green Shinen, it moves up significantly. I would pick it over cards like Order of the Sacred Bell or even Moss Kami most of the time.
Moss Kami
This guy is still good but as long as Nightsoil Kami pops up as an 8th pick in Saviors there is really no need to pick this guy very high. A lot of the time Nightsoil is actually better. I wouldn’t even pick the nonflying dragon over the next card.
Burr Grafter
Did I completely lose it? Maybe, it has been awfully warm here in Sweden so maybe I’m suffering from an overheated brain. Burr Grafter did get a big jump in power from Saviors though and whenever I think about turn 2 Shinen, turn 3 Elder-Pine, turn 4 BIG BURLY my mouth waters. Also, the four-mana spot in the curve isn’t as overflooded as it used to be.
Order of the Sacred Bell
This card doesn’t really do anything in the Green decks that you want to draft. Don’t think I would draft this over anything Green with the word “Spirit” or “Arcane” on it.
Sakura-Tribe Elder/Orochi Sustainer
These two, while still good, are not as important as they used to be. The Green decks of CBS should be filled with two-mana Spirits and the curve is usually not that high. The fact that we dont need acceleration any more in Green is another big reason why it is doing so well. It is much harder to win with a deck that has to play one of a few accelerators on turn 2 to have a shot at racing.
Petalmane Baku/Dripping-Tongue Zubera
Mr Gomersall talks warmly about the Petalmane in his article and it really is pretty good. Dripping-Tongue is a favorite of mine, mostly since it can perform double chumpblock-duty. Of course, none of these cards should be picked highly but they do make the cut in most my Green decks.
Okay so maybe the fact that Green is very good now isn’t news anymore, but why is Red the best color to go with it? Red still lost one pack of Glacial Rays and it’s not exactly stellar in Betrayers. Once again it comes down to synergy and cards that you can pick up late in packs since no one else wants them. Red has a bunch of one and two-mana spirits (Hearth Kami, Emberfist Zubera, Blademane Baku, Frostling, Glitterfang) that most decks don’t really want but that really shine in Green/Red. If you remember from my article about Black/White in CCB, I talked about the strength of drafting a deck that wants cards no other deck wants. This is exactly what happens here. Sometimes you’ll get an 11th pick Glitterfang that is absolutely nuts in your deck or a late Blademane Baku that will deal a ton of damage each game. I’ve won many games on the jank combo of Glitterfang/Blademane/Shinen of Life’s Roar.
Of course there is also the synergy between the Green growths and Red’s direct damage. Splicing a Kodama’s Might onto Barrel-Down Sokenzan or Torrent of Stone onto Inner Calm, Outer Strength is usually game over. And while it is harder to get that Might or Ray with only one pack of Champions, it is actually easier to find decent arcanes to splice them onto.
There are obviously a lot more interesting changes with Saviors but this will have to do for this article. Hopefully I managed to open some eyes to what cards you should be picking or at least manage to upset those that already figured out how good Green/Red is. I’ll be back in the near future with more 40-card strategy.
Have fun drafting,
Anton Jonsson
P.S: If you ever get the chance to see Mr Walamies’ Standup, don’t hesitate. And if you can get Osyp to go with you then thats just gravy. [Or as we like to call him “Mr. Eugene Harvey.” – Knut]