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Drafting With Nick – Shards of Alara #26

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Wednesday, December 3rd – Nick continues his Drafting With series, bringing us a triple Shards of Alara draft from the 8-4 queue on Magic Online. Along with Rich, he shares his pick process and draft thoughts with each one, and supplies more detailed analysis in the forums.

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P1P2 I thought this was close and almost took Soul’s Fire or Bone Splinters.
P1P6 I wanted to take Knight here but considered going against the grain (big surprise right?) and took Naya Panorama to try and force GRw instead. This was likely a mistake in retrospect.
P1P10 It was at this point in the draft that I realized I should just be RWg.

P2P1 Another interesting pick I think Ring is the strongest card overall though since I have nothing to Ranger up.
P2P5 I fully committed to RWg here.
P2P7 I could’ve taken Land here and I’m not sure which was better. I did want to run my Firestoker with 2 Rockslides though so I went with the big guy.

P3P1 I was very tempted to take Bolt here since it’s awesome with Rockslide either by killing two guys or in combination with First Strike.
P3P2 I’d rather take Land here than another guy that I have to splash.

1 Ridge Rannet
1 Sigiled Paladin
1 Rakeclaw Gargantuan
2 Magma Spray
1 Welkin Guide
1 Dragon Fodder
1 Resounding Roar
1 Excommunicate
1 Vithian Stinger
2 Bloodpyre Elemental
1 Oblivion Ring
1 Knight of the Skyward Eye
1 Angelic Benediction
1 Exuberant Firestoker
2 Rockslide Elemental
1 Incurable Ogre
1 Obelisk of Jund
2 Algae Gharial
1 Guardians of Akrasa
6 Plains
7 Mountain
2 Forest
1 Bant Panorama
1 Naya Panorama

Sideboard
1 Soul’s Might
1 Ooze Garden
1 Gustrider Exuberant
1 Minion Reflector
1 Swamp
1 Swamp
1 Savage Hunger
1 Drumhunter
1 Angelsong
1 Kederekt Creeper
1 Forest
1 Cylian Elf
1 Resounding Scream
1 Call to Heel
1 Deft Duelist
1 Lush Growth
1 Island
1 Spell Snip
1 Godtoucher
1 Bloodthorn Taunter

Neither Drumhunter nor Ooze Garden was good enough to play in this deck even though I really wanted to play both with 2 Gharial and 2 Rockslide. I settled on splashing Resounding Roar instead. Unfortunately this deck features Magma Spray Oblivion Ring and Excommunicate which aren’t very good in combination with my goes to graveyard men.

Round 1 was against UBR. Game 1 I mulled on the play and killed a couple of guys before dropping a Gharial out. He ended up not doing much except using Gather Specimens on my Knight of the Skyward Eye to which I responded by Excommunicating it back onto my deck. I replayed Knight and then Rakeclaw and took it down. Game 2 I mulled to five and had a pretty good draw. We traded guys and removal and he was racing me with Windwright Mage in the air. On the final turn I pinged my own Stinger and then unearthed to do the final point to him.

Round 2 was against BRG. Game 1 he played some fatties and then blew me out with Violent Ultimatum. Game 2 I built a huge Algae Gharial in combination with Angelic Benediction and he had no answer to it. Game 3 I got a bit colorscrewed and allowed the game to go long which again resulted in me losing to Violent Ultimatum targeting two Rockslide Elementals.

Until tomorrow…

Nick Eisel