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Draft? It’s Been Forever!

Although Commander and Standard are his favorite formats, Bennie Smith also talks about Draft today after participating in his first Avacyn Restored draft. Prepare for SCG Open Series: Orlando!

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In my weekly columns I generally alternate between talking about Commander and talking about Standard, the two formats I enjoy the most. This week is Standard’s turn, and while I’ll talk about Standard some today, I wanted to touch on a few different things first.

Draft

Last Friday, my roommate Chuck caught a ride with me out to Richmond Comix to draft, and we also brought some Commander decks to play afterwards. Now, I haven’t actually drafted any Magic cards in quite a while—it’s been so long I can’t even remember when I did it last, but I feel like it’s been six months at least, maybe longer. It might have been Innistrad? Suffice to say, my life for the past year or two hasn’t been conducive to playing Magic as much as I’d like to, and when I do play I like to focus on the formats I enjoy the most. Limited isn’t really something I enjoy too much, but when I play I prefer Draft because you at least have some ability to control the cards you put in your deck.

I was actually looking forward to drafting Avacyn Restored. I like drafting a set that’s three packs deep since you can more reliably focus on a particular strategy and can sometimes get duplicates of key cards. I also like going into a Draft format fresh and uninformed and trying to figure things out on the fly. I haven’t been keeping up with the latest information on Limited so I wasn’t sure what to expect, and that was exciting to me.

Twelve people signed up, and everyone decided to draft in one single pod, which was definitely interesting. I didn’t have too many expectations, other than I hoped I could get some green stuff. My pre-draft plan was to draft green beatdown and complement it with blue fliers and some blue tempo spells and leave the black and red removal to other people.

Pack 1 I found Killing Wave staring at me. Wow, this had to be good right? I mean, I think it’s rather lame for Constructed, but it seemed to me like it had to be good in Limited. Shuffling through the rest of the pack, I didn’t see anything that looked better, so I went ahead and took it. I assumed it would be pretty easy to splash even if I stuck with the green/blue plan.

For my second pick, I found Deadeye Navigator staring back at me. Now this guy I was sure had to be a bomb! How had it not been first pick out of the pack? I didn’t spend too much time wondering and just went ahead and took it.

I ended up playing black/blue. I didn’t see any green early, but later in the draft there seemed to be a lot of green floating around, so I’m not sure what happened there. People cut green early and then nobody picked it so the green went later? I dunno, but as I nabbed black cards to go with my blue fliers a strategy began to emerge once I slammed my second Blood Artist. I’d have black creatures I could sacrifice for profit (undying creatures, Undead Executioner) that could hold the ground and let my blue fliers get them low enough that Killing Wave would finish the job.

Turns out my strategy was solid…all except for Killing Wave, which proved to be an awful choice bouncing between awkward and awful all evening. I sided it out every single match for the Ghoulflesh that turned out to be much better than I thought it would be. Here’s the deck I played for games 2 and 3 of each match, with Killing Wave benched for Ghoulflesh:

1 Nephalia Smuggler
1 Bone Splinters
1 Wingcrafter
1 Ghoulflesh
1 Peel from Reality
3 Butcher Ghoul
2 Blood Artist
1 Fettergeist
1 Bloodflow Connoisseur
1 Scrapskin Drake
1 Barter in Blood
3 Undead Executioner
2 Evernight Shade
1 Corpse Traders
1 Gryff Vanguard
1 Homicidal Seclusion
1 Deadeye Navigator
8 Island
9 Swamp

Sideboard
1 Wingcrafter (foil)
1 Tormentor’s Trident
1 Scalding Devil
1 Crypt Creeper
1 Unhallowed Pact
1 Necrobite
1 Crippling Chill
1 Amass the Components
1 Narstad Scrapper
2 Raging Poltergeist
2 Rotcrown Ghoul
2 Renegade Demon
2 Grave Exchange
1 Maalfeld Twins

I kind of knew Blood Artist was going to be good, but I had no idea just how good it would be, especially alongside Bloodflow Connoisseur—that card was crazy good too! I think it might even be worth considering for Standard.

While I was disappointed that I didn’t get more soulbond creatures or ones with enters the battlefield abilities to pair up with Deadeye Navigator, I did find it useful for resetting my undying guys—a trick I used one time to have exactly enough creatures to sacrifice to kill my opponent with Blood Artist before he was going to kill me next turn. I blinked Gryff Vanguard one time too, which felt great!

Now given this was my first Avacyn Restored draft, I’m sure I did not build this optimally, so I’d love to hear any feedback from those of you who’ve got more experience with the format and/or are just much better drafters. There are definitely some black and blue cards in the sideboard that I wasn’t sure whether I should be playing or not:  should I have made room for the fat Renegade Demons? Is Necrobite worth three mana as a combat trick? Is Amass the Components worth four mana? Is Grave Exchange worth six? Should I have played a second Wingcrafter? I tried hard to keep my curve as low as possible, though the four-mana spot is choked with cards I couldn’t see cutting.

I finished up 3-1 in the draft, losing only once in the third game of a match to the guy who went 4-0, and the only reason he won was the topdecked mythic rare miracle Bonfire of the Damned. Paying the miracle cost to play it enabled him to annihilate my entire board when I was going to kill him next turn. Hallelujah? Yeah, didn’t really give me a warm and fuzzy feeling…

I got second place out of twelve and felt pretty good about my performance despite the rust. We drafted the rares and foils out of the card pool, and first place nabbed the Cavern of Souls and I nabbed an extra Griselbrand for trade. Chuck went 3-1 as well, though his tiebreakers put him down at 5th place I believe.

Commander

Afterwards, we broke out our Commander decks and sat down with Josh and his girlfriend Nicole to play a four-man. This was Chuck’s first multiplayer game in many years, and he was eager to see Niv-Mizzet in action outside of the 1vs1 games we’d played. Josh was playing his totally broken Balthor the Defiled Zombie deck ("I’ve toned it down some," he claimed), and Nicole was playing his Ghave, Guru of Spores deck. Since I only brought two Commander decks with me and one of them was Ghave, I played the other one: Glissa, the Traitor.

We shuffled up and played. On turn 3 I didn’t have much going on so I decided to play Glissa. Chuck countered it. Turn 5 I still didn’t have much going on so I played Glissa again. Chuck countered it again. Of course, everyone but me thought this was funny as hell, but I just shook my head at him burning through his counterspells that way.

Sure enough, not too much later Josh went off and killed everyone with recurring Zombies. I told Chuck I hoped he could find another way home as we shuffled up for another game. Jessica joined in playing Vish Kal, Blood Arbiter. Josh switched up and played Karrthus, Tyrant of Jund. His build was very close the decklist I put out here and played out like I wrote about here. Basically, it did a lot of crazy haymaker plays with Dragons.

The game went on a little longer, and this time Chuck seemed a little less keyed up on what I was doing. Josh was building up quite an impressive force and was gearing up to kill someone when I played Mindslaver and activated it targeting him. I also played Dark Depths with Vampire Hexmage on the board (a combo I’d set up earlier with Demonic Tutor).

On Josh’s turn, my plot was to attack Chuck and kill him with all the Dragons, leaving Josh open for me to swing in and kill him with Marit Lage and a huge Mortivore. When I announced Josh’s attack step, Chuck had a Cryptic Command up his sleeve and tapped all of the Dragons down. Now Josh had World at War and a Regrowth in his hand and a Savage Beating in his graveyard.

It was late, I was trying to figure out what to do, and thankfully Josh explained how I can get it done. I played World at War, then Regrowthed the Savage Beating. On the additional combat step, I cast Savage Beating to untap the Dragons, and then swooped in to kill Chuck. I got another combat step, but all the Dragons were tapped out. I tapped Josh down and then passed his turn to me.

Again, it was late, I was tired, and I swung in as planned…only I forgot to equip Marit Lage with my Loxodon Warhammer and she got chumped by the Dragon token that Josh’s Dragon Broodmother made during my upkeep. The Warhammer’s trample would have made it lethal even if he blocked the Mortivore and I felt like a dumbass, especially since on Josh’s own turn I could have had the Dragon token come into play during his upkeep and devour the Broodmother if I’d thought things through. D’oh!

After I blew my turn, the women weren’t able to stop Josh’s Dragon shenanigans, and during his turn he killed us all good and proper.

It was 1:30 a.m. and Chuck had work in the morning, so we headed on back home. Chuck told me he had some cards he wanted to dump from Niv-Mizzet and replace with other stuff. I told him I’d pull out the blue and red boxes for him to peruse over the weekend.

Standard

I’m with Jesse Smith in expressing profound disappointment in innovation and rogue designs coming out in the new Standard. Avacyn Restored has brought us a lot of goodies, but the big Standard tournaments so far seem to be much the same as before. There are still some glimmers of hope if you look for them, though. Harrison Fang’s 14th place RUG Pod deck from this past weekend looked very interesting:

RUG Pod
Harrison Fang
14th Place at Star City Games Standard Open on 05-13-2012
Standard
Magic Arena

Creatures (30)

Lands (22)

Spells (8)

Sideboard

Magic Card Back


If you’ve regularly followed me you know I’ve been working on Pod decks for a while, but something about the Naya Pod lists really don’t do much for me. I’ve tried hard to make my G/B Glissa Pod decks to work, and they’ve done okay but still don’t quite cut it. This RUG Pod list though… now this is something I can get behind!

The super spicy card is Deadeye Navigator, a new card from Avacyn Restored that I’ve had my eye on (so to speak). Cheating him into play with a Birthing Pod should give you at least one or two "blink" activations available, and with all the usual Pod suspects packing enters the battlefield abilities you can really leverage the advantage even further. I mean, how difficult would it be to face a blinking Aether Adept? Acidic Slime? Friggin’ Frost Titan? And of course there’s one of my favorite new cards, Zealous Conscripts.

I love how there’s now two shortcuts up the Pod chain, with Deceiver Exarch letting you Pod up from two to four mana and Zealous Conscripts letting you Pod up from four to six mana (by "stealing" your own Pod and untapping it). That’s pretty sweet.

The sideboard is filled with fun stuff too:  Dungeon Geists, Kessig Cagebreakers, Tree of Redemption. Two Bonfire of the Damned!

One other deck I wanted to touch on was played pre-Avacyn Restored at the StarCityGames.com Standard Open in Des Moines. I kept waiting to hear someone talk about it, especially given how much the coverage guys raved about it on SCGLive…but I’m pretty sure no one really has. Did you see Jeff Hoogland 7th place Glissa Control deck?

Glissa Control
Jeff Hoogland
7th Place at Star City Games Standard Open on 04-08-2012
Standard
Magic Arena

Creatures (8)

Planeswalkers (5)

Lands (20)

Spells (27)

Sideboard

Magic Card Back


Watching him play the deck during the feature matches on the video coverage archives (on iTunes) reminded me again how surprisingly powerful Glissa is. I’ve been working with her in my Pod decks, but she’s perfectly fine as a card advantage engine in a control shell. It makes me wonder if I should give up my Glissa + Pod dreams and build two different decks.

There aren’t too many cards from Avacyn Restored that impress me as something this deck would want. Scroll of Griselbrand jumps out as an interesting way to fight against control, especially if you keep getting it back when you sweep away tokens. Maybe Abundant Growth for mana fixing and cantripping.

Before I go, I wanted to share with you a deck idea I had for Mimic Vat. The idea was that you want to play a Vat on turn 3 and then something turn 4 that you wouldn’t mind dying and putting on the Vat. I then thought of two cards:  Entomber Exarch and Stonehorn Dignitary. Dignitary shuts down combat for creature centric decks, while Exarch picks apart the hand of slower, more controlling decks. Exarch also plays double-duty by bringing back dead creatures.

The last piece of the puzzle is getting those creatures to die and be put on the Vat in a timely manner. Prior to Avacyn Restored, the best option seemed to be Culling Dais. The card had the advantage of being right on curve—turn 2 Dias, turn 3 Vat, turn 4 Dignitary or Exarch, turn 5 sac the creature with Dais and begin Vat shenanigans. The problem of course is that playing Dais on turn 2 and Vat on turn 3 means you aren’t doing anything to protect yourself from being smashed by your opponent.

But then Avacyn Restored brought Bloodflow Connoisseur to the party… Now that’s a sac outlet I can get behind! It’s a little clunky on the curve, but it’s a creature so it obviously has synergy with Vat in that regard.

Now, as much as I love the idea of infinite Dignitary, I think adding Bloodflow to the mix makes me want to be in a different color. How about green? Hahaha, I’m sure you didn’t see that coming! Mainly I think I want Viridian Emissary in here to make sure the mana keeps coming, since Mimic Vat activations are going to hog up a lot of mana. Here’s what I’m thinking of:

G/B Vat
Bennie Smith
Test deck on 05-13-2012
Standard
Magic Arena

Creatures (26)

Lands (24)

Spells (10)

Magic Card Back


I was tempted to put Blood Artist in here, but I think Skirsdag High Priest might be the better bet. What do you think? Should I go back to Stonehorn Dignitary?

Okay, that’s it for this week. Fingers crossed that Orlando brings some sweet new cards to the front and shakes up this metagame!

Take care,

Bennie

starcitygeezer AT gmail DOT com

Make sure to follow my Twitter feed (@blairwitchgreen). I check it often so feel free to send me feedback, ideas, and random thoughts. I’ve also created a Facebook page where I’ll be posting up deck ideas and will happily discuss Magic, life, or anything else you want to talk about!

New to Commander?
If you’re just curious about the format, building your first deck, or trying to take your Commander deck up a notch, here are some handy links:

My current Commander decks (and links to decklists):

Previous Commander decks currently on hiatus: