Welcome back cubeaholics, today is the third and final part of my series about the majestic cube rotisserie draft. In Part 1 I talked about how to successfully run a rotisserie draft and some of my experiences. Part 2, I taught you how to win a rotisserie draft. To end the series, I’ll be going over some of my personal strategies that I’ve used to succeed and showing you a few completed rotisserie drafts—specifically where I think they succeeded and failed. We have another jam-packed chapter today, so instead of showing you pictures of lolcats (just kidding buddy!), we’re going to jump right in.
To get started, I want to cover a topic that should’ve been in the last article, but I’ll stick it here since I realized that it’s certainly important enough to give a section all of its own. Honestly, I could write an entire article on just this subject, but I doubt I have the audience for that so let’s talk about the most important parts.
The Wheel
Quick question: what is likely number of wheels in an eight-man rotisserie draft? Of course the logical answer is two, but in this case it is the wrong answer. The likely number of wheels in an eight-man draft is four. “FOUR?!?! But there are only two people who pick twice in a row?!?!” Let me explain. Obviously seats one and eight have natural wheels, where they pick alternating rounds. The other two wheels are in seats two and seven, directly beside seats one and eight. After round seven or eight, each drafter should be in a clear archetype direction (or at least colors). If you want a wheel in the two or seven seat, stay out of the natural wheel’s way.
If you find yourself in one of those seats next to the natural wheel, try your best to stay open for the first few rounds to see what they are targeting. The natural wheel seats have the easiest time setting up very specific archetypes as they can grab two cards at a time, making it obvious when they’re making a statement to the rest of the draft. The reason to keep your options open is that if you planning on drafting a common color like blue in some part, it’s just too tough to fight with someone who breaks up your two closest picks every time. For the most part, let them have what they want and try and draft something dissimilar to it so you can pick up a free wheel yourself every single round.
Even though you’ll be battling them in the draft, I can’t stress enough how important it is to have a harmonious relationship with them so you aren’t stepping on their toes—meaning they won’t be stepping on yours.
Since we’ll be looking at drafts soon, I’ll let you take a look at some of the seat two and seven wheels to see how it can be done.
Three Drafts: A Study
Here I have three drafts to pick through, two of which I competed in and a third I watched from start to finish. I’ll show you them as we go and talk a bit about each participant’s draft and where they succeeded and failed.
I had the best record in this draft, at 6-1 drafting from the sixth seat. I did get incredibly lucky with Black Lotus somehow falling to me at pick six in the first round (R1P6 henceforth.) In each draft I think there are around two drafters that put on a clinic about how to draft a particular strategy, and in this one my B/G/W Reanimator draft was one of them. I drafted very few cards in the top half of the draft that weren’t good in my deck (Solemn Simulacrum and Yosei, the Morning Star being the two notables) while valuing the reanimation/graveyard spells in the right order (Entomb, Necromancy, then everything else) and accrued nine on-color lands to make my mana as perfect as possible. I was fortunate that no one else was interested in interacting with the graveyard and had little to fight over, giving me free reign over one of the absolute best strategies. I kept my options very open through the first eight rounds in case someone were to jump into my archetype so I would have all powerful cards I could use elsewhere.
The second superior draft was done by John Winters in seat three. John drafted a classic U/W tap-out control deck, presenting a superior threat every turn of the game from turn three forward. His curve was phenomenal and has game against every other deck in the field. He correctly identified the exact creature he would need to fit in his deck and drafted them in an order that is difficult to argue with. He was able to pick up three late U/W lands along with a Faerie Conclave, giving him an excellent mana base. There isn’t a whole lot wrong with his draft, and the only obvious threat to him would be discard backed by pressure, and none of that was really present here. This is a very good draft to emulate for this style deck.
Kenny Mayer in seat one targeted an aggressive white deck starting early with an overall first pick Umezawa’s Jitte(!) over a piece of power. Even though Jitte is one of the 30 or so best cards in the cube, I don’t think even a targeted deck like the one Kenny drafted should’ve pulled the trigger that early, especially since he could’ve had a Sol Ring or even Mox Pearl (or both!) with it still being likely to snap Jitte up in the third round on his wheel. Outside of that he drafted about as well as he could while remaining mono-white, collecting five powerful equipment to go with his correctly drafted early Stoneforge Mystic. I had taken Ravages of War out of my cube as a test during this draft, which ultimately knocked down the power level of his deck. Even considering that, white doesn’t have enough cards that reward you for not playing more colors, especially in an environment where you will have certain access to all the lands you need.
Zach Shaffner in seat two and Matt Scott in seat five both started down a powerful archetype path that they didn’t capitalize on later in the draft. Matt Scott did jump into often under-drafted red when he saw no one was in it, but he had trouble utilizing his early picks in regards to the rest of his draft. This was something I talked about in Part Two, and likely could have been avoided if he’d continued rewriting his deck list. The fact that he was the only one in red aggro helped him tremendously, but he simply ended up with a good deck rather than a great one.
Brad Sheppard in seat seven looked like he was just drafting the best card available, which often gets you a winning record but assures you of not having the best record at the end of the draft. His first four picks were as powerful as any one’s and led to a clear control deck, but he stopped fighting for it about a third through the draft and lost focus as a result. It’s a shame that happened since his draft started out so strong (even with the blatant hate draft of Recurring Nightmare from me), and Brad is one of the best pure control players that no one knows about. Even good players like Brad can get derailed easily without a cohesive plan.
The last two drafts, Stephan Mercatoris in seat four and Ali Aintrazi in seat eight had similar issues while getting a lot right at the same time. In both Ali and Stephan’s cases, they were laser-focused on drafting a specific (and very powerful) archetype only to fall victim to incorrect drafting order. Both were having very little competition for a land/artifact acceleration deck but valued cards that only they wanted too highly, thus missing out on cards that are best in their decks but still good in other decks that were drafted by others before they had a chance to get them. In Stephan’s draft, he picked the core of his deck early (Stunted Growth, Plow Under, Palinchron, Mirari’s Wake) when no one else would have touched them and passed generic but important cards like Eternal Witness, Crystal Shard, Solemn Simulacrum, Sundering Titan, and Capsize that went  to others.
Ali had an amazing start with Mind Twist in Mana Crypt and double Mox, but then followed it up with Karn way too early rather than going down the road of early impact spells like a Fact or Fiction, Staff of Domination, or even a Dark Confidant while they were still on the table. His deck ended up very good, but like Stephan’s could have been great with more thought to what other decks wanted.
It does seem like I’ve praised myself while pointing out the fault in others’ drafts—and in this case I have, as I do feel that my and John’s drafts here are most in line with what a successful draft looks like. Don’t worry, in the next draft I’ll point out exactly why we failed even worse than we succeeded here. Let’s take a look at draft two.
I’ll start off by giving credit where credit is due: Matt Scott in seat two had a masterful mono-blue draft, which has a dramatically higher degree of difficulty than most archetypes. You often have three other drafters look to take the best parts of your deck, yet Matt Scott hung tough and continued taking the best card available for his deck for the top half of the draft. He even wasted his R3P2 selection on a card that didn’t even come close to making his deck, drafted Misdirection (an underpowered and rarely main decked card) way too early, and still made very few mistakes. His deck was obviously soft to blazing fast aggro, which brings me to my second excellent drafter for this draft.
Wes Wise in seat seven put together a great (but not perfect) R/W aggro deck. In a powered cube, on-color Mox in on-color Mox is exactly where you want to be for a two-color aggro deck, as you’ll benefit the most from drawing them early. Followed up with Stoneforge Mystic and Jitte makes your top four picks the best four cards in your deck, which is what every drafter would like to be able to say at the end of the draft. Where he faulted was not valuing reach (burn spells) highly enough, thus his deck was left with with a perfect creature base but an imperfect way to break through once his creatures were gone. He only needed a couple but even without those the blazing speed and land destruction would be enough to put most people too far behind to make a comeback.
Matt Gargiulo in seat one arguably had the most powerful spells in his deck, but based on his high curve I’m not sure enough consideration was given to how the deck would look in 40-card form. His deck had so much raw power once he got to his fours and fives, but there wasn’t enough action spread throughout each mana cost to make it the best it could’ve been. His draft had the most potential after Matt Scott’s and Wes Wise’s.
I’m honestly not sure what Travis Gibson in seat three was trying to do. It looked like a best card available-type draft, and then strangely jumped into black for a reason I don’t know. His draft also had little regard for curve.
Glenn Jones in seat four had powerful things going on, but ultimately had cards for two decks rather than one streamlined one. It’s clear for the first half of the draft he was purposely keeping his options open, which was an excellent use of his time in the early rounds in which he grabbed generally powerfully and multiple archetype useful cards. The issue came later when he took a hard turn at an aggressive deck, which weakened some of his earlier picks to the point of making them unlikely to main deck. This is a case where five or so picks made a world of difference in how a deck was constructed at the completion of the draft.
Ali Aintrazi in seat six drafted a surefire two-card combo in the first two rounds but again in the middle rounds had trouble identifying what other drafters wanted. He ended up again taking cards that would make his deck, but that he could have drafted much later. His is another case of a lot of potential ended up worse due to less preparation.
John Winters in seat five had the most blatant best card available draft strategy between all eight drafters. He clearly started in on a powerful combo in Fastbond-Crucible of Worlds-Wasteland, but picked the Crucible before picking the better Strip Mine and left the door open for it to find its way into someone else’s main deck. After those picks, he started grabbing whatever the best cards on the table were, loosely tied together in a W/G/U shell centered around creature with enters the battlefield effects. Again, curve was a concern even though he tried to clean it up by drafting Noble Hierarch and friends late in the draft. His draft also lacked enough lands to make a successful three-color mana base.
My draft in seat eight turned out just about how I wanted it to; the only problem was my ideology was wrong in how to construct this deck. I focused purely on as much speed as possible, completely sacrificing any sort of phase three end game and all resiliency to pressure, discard, and counterspells. If I didn’t get an early Tinker or Show and Tell (which is dangerous), then I didn’t have much follow up outside of Karn or Staff of Domination. Even my planeswalkers were sub-par as I didn’t have anything to take the focus off of people attacking them to death. I won a fair share of games off of broken starts, but the draft lacked substance outside of that. It’s a good shell to view if you know where I went wrong. Ultimately a failure as I didn’t take enough time to prepare for my opponent’s deck outside of a hate card or two per matchup (hint: with a poorly drafted deck, they weren’t enough.)
This last draft I want to look at is one I didn’t participate in but did see from start to finish.
There’s one deck in this draft that stood above all others (which pretty easily won the event), and that was Kenny Mayer in seat seven with Mono-Red. I honestly think this is the best draft from start to finish for anyone that I’ve covered in this article. From pick one all the way to a relevant last pick, I don’t really have any issue with the way Kenny conducted this draft. Even the normally awful R3P7 Stomping Grounds was a masterful reaction to the cluster#&%k going on in seat two, which I’ll address shortly. He simply took his man (the Stomping Grounds), didn’t overreact, and went on with his draft. If there has to be something to be critical of, I guess it’s the fact that he didn’t draft Stromkirk Noble, which surely would have made his deck.
So, seat two, with our old friend Stephan Mercatoris. Folks, this is exactly what you don’t what to happen to your draft. Taking Stoneforge Mystic with the second pick isn’t correct as far as I’m concerned, but if you do take it, you absolutely cannot sacrifice your next two picks by jumping out of a strategy at the first sign of fighting for it. Especially if you picked two lands, which is as firm a signal as any that you have drafted those colors. Stephan, to his credit, was fortunate enough to pick up a very late Mind Twist and late Recurring Nightmare to send him down a completely different path than one Taiga and Savannah would send him on. His deck ended up okay even though he didn’t really capitalize on his Stoneforge Mystic and passed on many, many more powerful cards.
Glenn in seat one had a much better iteration of the Tinker deck. He took a more controlling route so he wasn’t crushed by any form of resistance. You couldn’t ask for much more in his first five picks in this type of strategy. His downfall was the lack of a true end game—this archetype tries to force one early but has difficulty keeping up with a real end game if another deck makes it there and presents one. Despite that, the permission does a great job of stopping opposition from getting there and making one’s life difficult.
You can’t say that Greg Respet in seat eight didn’t have a plan, but again we see the shortcomings in the curve department. Lots of three- and four-drops here, which is generally where a deck that’s trying to pay four mana and blow up all the lands doesn’t want to be. I don’t think he needed to take the Armageddon bros that early, as a wheel of Mox Pearl and Mox Emerald would’ve dramatically improved his deck especially drafting in the natural wheel. This is a great strategy to attempt from that spot if you do your homework a bit (hint hint.)
Both Dave Heilker in seat four and Andrew Westin in seat five hit the best card available strategy hard and early. My comments here about best available drafting are the same as previously. They both ended up with good but not great decks purely based on card power, but again, when you have focused and strong decks versus non-focused and strong decks, the focused decks will simply win more over the course of a seven game round robin. I don’t have much else to say that the entirety of Part Two didn’t cover.
Wes Murphy in seat six had what I thought was a very good draft, much in the same vein as John Winters draft from the first draft we looked at. He was able to draft some red late to be able to splash three powerhouse cards in Ajani Vengeant, Lighting Helix, and Izzet Chronarch, as well as a couple of pieces of excellent red removal. I don’t think there’s much wrong with Wes’s draft, outside of maybe having an additional non-basic land or two.
Wes Wise also had a very strong draft from seat three, with an odd but interesting B/U draft. It’s not necessarily control but more tempo oriented with cheap planeswalkers and value creatures, not to mention it started with a Black Lotus and Library of Alexandria. I do feel like there was a bit of value-drafting going on for Wes, but it does seems like it was at least off of a list of cards he had picked out ahead of time. Notice that he has incredible synergies in his deck, like keeping a low curve to best utilize Dark Confidant as well as cheap instants for Snapcaster Mage. Having the two best creatures ever printed may make this seem less impressive, but it does take effort to keep that up over the course of a draft. Crucible and Strip Mine were drafted in the correct order here and it paid off.
I believe that Wes Wise had the second best draft here, but Wes Murphy’s deck was better positioned in the metagame, so kudos to them both. There’s a lot to learn from each of their drafts.
The End of the Beginning of the End
That will mostly wrap up today’s article and my series about rotisserie drafting. I did say last time that I would cover team drafting strategies, and I still plan to do that—just not today. I’m already reaching critical tl;dr mass, and I don’t want to skimp on any of the info we went over today. I’ll be doing some more research to deliver an article sometime later this year exclusively on team rotisserie drafting, but for now I’ll give you a break and we’ll return to my regularly scheduled hard opinions on cubing.
Before you go, check out fellow cuber Ben Carlson’s completed four-man rotisserie draft and stellar write-up about the draft using his common/uncommon cube. Please take the time to let him know what you think in the comments over there!
Thanks again for reading, and I really hoped that everyone enjoyed this series as much as I did writing it. I know between all three entries it’s a ton of info to digest, so hopefully you can use them as guides whenever you go back and start a new roto draft. If you haven’t tried yet, please give it a shot! I’ve made it sound like a lot of work, but like anything else, you’ll get out what you put in. If you’ve tried and can’t get one together, let me know in the comments or on Facebook, and I’ll personally try and help you set one up or at least partake in one at a Grand Prix or StarCityGames.com Open near you.
As always, any comments in the forums or elsewhere are greatly appreciated.
Justin Parnell
@JParnell1 on Twitter
Official Facebook Cube Drafting Page
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