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Drafting With Olivier – Shards/Conflux/Reborn #20

Draft with Olivier Ruel... at StarCityGames.com!
Monday, July 13th – Hall of Famer Olivier Ruel takes us through an 8-4 draft queue on Magic Online. He shares some comprehensive thoughts about both the picks and the games, and talks us through each step of the way! If you’re looking to improve your Limited game, this is the article series for you!

Pack 1 pick 1:

















My Pick:

This should be fun!

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My Pick:

Sculler is a great card to search for with Tezzeret but Agony Warp is just much better.

Pack 1 pick 3:















My Pick:

Not fantastic obviously but there is nothing else to pick here.

Pack 1 pick 4:














My Pick:

Duelist would be better in a UW deck but I’ve been wanting to try that UB deck Manu is telling me so much about.

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I’m not sure exactly what a good UB deck looks like after 7 picks but probably not like this. I can still have a pretty good Esper control deck and Sculler would be really good in it.

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My Pick:

I’m not sure what the core of my deck will be and even if it’s likely to be UW I don’t think I’ll be aggro enough to make Gleam better than Spire.

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My Pick:

I don’t have an early curve yet and I like Outlander better then Cormorants anyway.

Pack 2 pick 4:














My Pick:

Tezzeret for Font of Mythos brings back good memories. But… no.

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My Pick:

Usually I like Homonculus a little more but I’m not so aggro here and Tezzeret makes all the Esperzoa combos (Kaleidostone Shieldmage) easy to gather.

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Pack 3 pick 1:

















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My Pick:

My deck is now officially veeeery good.

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My Pick:

Deny Reality would be better but it would reinforce the Black splash and I think my deck is good enough to go 3-0 if I can keep it stable.

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My Pick:

A card far too underrated which could not possibly fit a deck better than mine in which it clearly is a bomb.

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My Pick:

As my three best cards cost 5 8 and 8 I don’t really want to face discard spells and counters.

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My Pick:

I couldn’t resist the temptation but that pick is wrong. I got too greedy as I’ve explained earlier I don’t want to splash too many cards no matter how good they are. I should have gone for Hulk here.

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My Pick:

Right…

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My Pick:

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7 Plains
6 Island
3 Swamp
1 Rupture Spire

1 Court Homunculus
2 Vedalken Outlander
1 Tidehollow Sculler
1 Ethercaste Knight
1 Etherium Sculptor
1 Parasitic Strix
1 Ethersworn Shieldmage
1 Esperzoa
1 Windwright Mage
1 Esper Sojourners
1 Aven Mimeomancer
1 Faerie Mechanist
1 Arsenal Thresher
1 Glassdust Hulk
1 Jhessian Zombies
1 Sanctum Plowbeast
1 Filigree Angel
1 Sphinx of the Steel Wind

1 Thopter Foundry
1 Agony Warp
1 Offering to Asha
1 Tezzeret the Seeker

Sideboard
1 Kranioceros
2 Mountain
1 Cancel
1 Mountain
1 Swamp
1 Bone Saw
1 Lapse of Certainty
1 Deny Reality
1 Hindering Light
1 Forest
1 Brainbite
2 Gleam of Resistance
1 Lightning Talons
1 Kathari Screecher
1 Island
1 Bloodpyre Elemental
1 Skyward Eye Prophets
1 Blister Beetle
1 Spell Snip

Card Power: 9
Sphinx of the Still Wind Filigree Angel Tezzeret and a lot of solid early drops… the pool could hardly be better. I decided to play the cycler guys over Glimpse because I need guys to wait for my rares more than pump spells I’ll almost always cycle anyway.

Curve: 8
A good curve reinforced by three cyclers in case I’m missing lands or early drops. Two eight drops should not be good but having very high drops is fine when they should make you almost instantly win.

Stability: 7
I chose not to play Deny Reality even though it’d be pretty good in the deck in order to have a limited number of Black cards. The two land cyclers and Rupture Spire don’t guarantee I’ll have my three colors all the time but I should be able to play without any Black mana for a while.

Synergy: 7
A solid artifact base and a fair amount of good defensive cards to buy me time until I reach 8 mana. Also the land cyclers are pretty good as I don’t mind at all being land flooded and the Esperzoa/Shieldmage combo could win a game.

Round 1: BRGW

He complains a lot has the least stable deck ever and gives me a game 1 he should have won so there’s not much I feel like talking about here.

Round 2: Naya splash Black

Swamp Mountain Forest Plains… I’ve seen this start before…

He cycles Sylvan Bounty on turn 2 and when I play Tidehollow Sculler on turn 4 he still hasn’t played a spell. His hand: another four lands Slave of Bolas and Deadshot Minotaur. I pick the removal he cycles draw and concedes on turn 6 without playing a spell despite not having missed a single land drop!

In the second his draws don’t shine either but Filigree Fracture Naturalize and Dispeller’s Capsule keep him in the game and I start drawing all lands at some point. The battle is fierce but it becomes pretty clear I’m going to lose it until he stops making a move for almost ten minutes. At some point I type in the chat window to check if I am the one disconnected… apparently not. He answers and says my clock is going down. We both disconnect-reconnect and when we come back I’ve 16 minutes left while he only has 4.

He ends up winning in less than a minute but he won’t ever have enough time to take the third. I was actually probably guaranteed to take that one as my turn 4 5/5 Thresher is the only spell we had time to cast and I only had to draw a land to play my Sphinx on turn 8.

Final: Bant

In the first game I open with Vedalken Outlander and Tidehollow Sculler. He reveals a hand with Manaplasm Martial Coup 2x Waveskimmer Aven Bant Sojourners and Plains (his board is Plains Forest). I take the cycler to keep him from drawing his land. As he can’t find a Blue mana I don’t have too much trouble killing him before he can cast Coup.

I bring in Spell Snip and Cancel for his Coup as his deck doesn’t seem fantastic apart from his bomb. At some point I drew 12 lands and 6 spells but I still manage to turn the tables as the 7th spell I draw is Sphinx of the Still Wind. With seven mana on the table and no card sin hand he untaps and draws Martial Coup. Game 3 here we come.

My start in game 3 left him almost no chance as I had Etherium Sculptor and Aven Mimeomancer before he had played a single spell. He did play Rhox War Monk on turn 3 but I had a turn 4 Glassdusk Hulk. A pair of Esper Cormorants in the next two turns helped a bit but I made his lifelink guy 3/1 preventing him from attacking while I kept casting guys and making my 3/4 unblockable. In the end as he was unable to deal with the Aven and our guys were immobilized except for Hulk which dealt the last 12 damage on its own.

Until Wednesday…

Oli