A while back, I wrote some articles on difficult situations that came up in draft. Since nothing like this has been done in a while, and definitely not for TPF, I figured I’d take a little trip through the time machine this week and share some tough situations I’ve recently encountered.
A Tough Pick
To help ease back into this type of an article, I’ll start out with something we’re all familiar with: a difficult draft pick. As usual, this pick comes from an 8-4 online. It’s second pick in Planar Chaos (or 17th pick overall in the draft), and my deck currently looks like this:
Wipe Away
Crookclaw Transmuter
Mystical Teachings
Vesuvan Shapeshifter
2 Viscerid Deepwalker
Errant Ephemeron
Erratic Mutation
Tolarian Sentinel
Coal Stoker
Subterranean Shambler
Those are all of the relevant cards up to the point when I’m passed the following booster…
Saltfield Recluse, Dreamscape Artist, Needlepeak Spider, Keldon Marauders, Stingscourger, Uktabi Drake, Blightspeaker, Aquamorph Entity, Revered Dead, Prodigal Pyromancer, Vampiric Link, Timecrafting, Groundbreaker, Dust Elemental
If I zoom in a bit and take a look at the options that are in my colors, it looks something like this…
Saltfield Recluse
Dust Elemental
Dreamscape Artist
Aquamorph Entity
Stingscourger
Prodigal Pyromancer
Needlepeak Spider
This is not an easy pick to make, especially on the fly and under time restrictions. If you had to make the pick very quickly such as at Nationals or a Pro Tour, you may mispick because you didn’t break the pick down quick enough and figure out what you really needed. I’m going to break it down here and hopefully this will help get you in the mindset to be able to pick faster and more accurately. Deciding on a second color can be difficult when there are multiple good options present.
Aquamorph Entity and Needlepeak Spider can be thrown out right away due to the presence of better cards in their respective colors. This still doesn’t make the pick that much easier though, as there are five good options available, and my deck at this point isn’t headed in a clear direction. Let me look a little more closely.
Dreamscape Artist
This guy enables lots of splashing, but so far I think my main worry with this deck is finding a second color rather than finding a way to support a splash. The benefit of taking this guy is that he would definitely make my deck but I think the drop in power level compared to the other cards is too high a price to pay at this point when I don’t really need fixing.
Stingscourger / Prodigal Pyromancer
The accepted logic is that Pyromancer is the better of the two, unless you’re in G/R or you have some way to abuse the ‘Scourger. Personally, I think the pick is entirely based on what you already have, and at this point in the draft the Stingscourger is definitely better for me because I have Tolarian Sentinel and also some suspend guys to make the tempo swing more effective. Coal Stoker into Stingscourger is also a lot sexier than Stoker into Pyromancer. So the short story is that if I take a Red card, I believe it should be the Stingscourger.
Saltfield Recluse / Dawn Elemental
Dust Elemental is a rare. This much is true, but exactly how good is it?
It’s been very average in my experience, and only really been good in G/W with lots of small guys to bounce. If you take a look at my current card pool you will see that I don’t have many cheap guys, and bouncing something like Viscerid Deepwalker doesn’t seem very profitable in the big picture. Another problem for the Dust Elemental is that there is more bounce available in TPF than any format in recent memory. When I first looked at this pack, I felt that the average drafter would probably think the Dust Elemental was too good to pass up on and just take it right away. The problem is that there is an even better White card available in the pack, as well as other options!
Saltfield Recluse is absolutely amazing, and head and shoulders above Dust Elemental if you ask me. If I could post a poll here I would, but I’m fairly certain the forums will agree that anyone who’s had experience with ol’ Dusty will say that Saltfield is just more consistent and a better overall card.
Where does all of this leave us?
If you look back at my deck, you’ll see that I’m near mono-Blue at this point, with Coal Stoker and Benalish Cavalry as my main choices for a second color. This pick offers Saltfield Recluse and Stingscourger as the best possible choices after I went through the process of breaking the pick down. After doing all of this, what should I take?
I went with the Saltfield, mainly because I prefer U/W to U/R, and also because I got the Cavalry late and felt that there just weren’t many White cards in pack 1. Due to this I thought I’d get more good White later in this pack, and also get some help in Future Sight.
In retrospect, I think I made a relatively large error with this pick, and I’m going to tell you why.
First of all, my deck is looking very tempo oriented at this point, with two Deepwalkers, Ephemeron, Wipe Away, and Crookclaw Transmuter. Why not add Coal Stoker to the mix? Second, Subterranean Shambler looks to be excellent in my current deck, and also in combination with Tolarian Sentinel. Third, Stingscourger adds even more tempo and also combos with Sentinel.
In this particular situation, I believe I let the wrong variables take precedence, which led to a weaker pick and weaker deck overall, as I was in the wrong second color. I let archetype preference guide my decision, instead of taking the best card to fit my current card pool.
A Tight Spot
Describing in-game situations is more difficult than describing draft picks, but I’m going to give this a go anyway, and also give a screen shot to help those who are more visually oriented.
The situation is this: it’s game 1, and I really don’t know much about my opponent’s deck except the two guys he’s played so far. Here’s the current position on my fourth turn.
Him
Forest, Mountain, Plains, Greenseeker, Grinning Ignus
Tapped Out, 5 Cards in hand, 20 life
Me
Island, Island, Plains, Blind Phantasm
My hand is:
Whip-Spine Drake
Linessa, Zephyr Mage
Vedalken Aethermage
Saltfield Recluse
Fathom Seer
Erratic Mutation
A few things you should know:
I have Teferi in my deck to search for with the Aethermage.
I have no one-drops, so that Erratic Mutation will always hit for at least two.
I’m missing my fourth land drop this turn, if that wasn’t already apparent from reading the above information.
My opponent has also used Greenseeker on turn 2, discarding Mountain to fetch Forest, and left me at 20 life.
Okay, so where do I start?
The first thing that needs to be done this turn should be very obvious, and that is attacking with Blind Phantasm. I have no fear of him double blocking because of the Erratic Mutation in my hand, and if he does end up double blocking then that will make my play for the turn easy. Clearly he didn’t block or I wouldn’t be writing about this situation, so my attack took him to eighteen life. For what its worth, I don’t think it’s ever right to stay back in this situation, since my hand is very defensive and I might as well start applying pressure early.
After this, the only way to figure out the right play is to go through a process of elimination and then choose the play that seems best.
I first eliminated cycling the Aethermage, as getting Teferi does nothing at this point, and if for some reason this would be a good play I’d have kept back the Phantasm. I can’t cast Linessa, so that knocks it down to only four cards that may have an impact right away.
I think most players would just go ahead and cast the Saltfield Recluse here, and I can’t say that it would be a horrible play overall. Getting the Recluse online early is always good, but by doing so I am also creating a huge target for whatever removal my opponent has in hand. I rate this play as standard and pretty solid, but during the game I wasn’t satisfied with just doing this and wanted to at least search for a better option before I decided.
Another play I can make this turn is to Erratic Mutation my opponent’s Grinning Ignus to prevent some large monster from coming out prematurely. My opponent obviously has no mana difficulty since he used the Greenseeker, but the acceleration provided by the Ignus could put me far behind (depending on what he’s holding).
Other options include morphing either the Whip-Spine Drake or the Fathom Seer, and both are interesting. I wanted to protect the Whip-Spine Drake, at least for a little while, since my hand is full of options and it doesn’t look like I’ll be unmorphing any time soon. Morphing the Drake also makes it vulnerable to more removal, and as a whole I think it is a better play to just plan on waiting and eventually hard casting it.
Fathom Seer is a different story, and requires its own section of discussion. If I morph the Seer, I have a number of options.
First, I can just pass and hope my opponent attacks his Ignus into it unsuspectingly. I’m not sure how good a play this would be for me, as unmorphing after damage would take me up to a whopping nine cards in hand, ten if you count my draw step on my next turn. This wouldn’t be so bad except for the fact that I’d also be down to a single land and not be able to do anything on the following turn unless I drew a two-drop (with very few in my deck). I don’t like this play much after further review, and it shouldn’t be hard to see why. Even if I get to trade for the Ignus, I don’t like the end result as I’ll be so far behind, and that is the best-case scenario. If my opponent casts a removal spell on the Seer I’ll be in a very tough spot, and likely just have to let it die. The only way this play would be good is if he didn’t attack with Ignus and just cast a big guy on his turn, which would then allow me to untap, add mana, and do something better on my next turn. The trouble is that four mana doesn’t help me much, as Linessa does nothing without a surplus of lands.
A second play I could make would be to play the Seer and just unmorph right away. Sure, this would take me to nine cards again, but at least this time I could replay a land and also dig deeper for more land. This play forces me to discard a card, but could have the highest long-term value in this particular game.
After looking at all of the viable options, I can see only three plays that make sense.
1) Killing Ignus with Erratic Mutation.
This play is too paranoid. Yeah, he might have the nuts, but you’re never going to get anywhere if you’re always worried about monsters under your bed. If he has it then you’ll have to find some other way of dealing with it, but the odds are against him having something that devastating anyway.
2) Playing Saltfield Recluse.
This play is reasonable, though I would expect the Recluse to die quite often, since no removal has been spent yet. You can also assume that my opponent is splashing White in this draft, because he’s cast two early Red and Green drops, and also has a Greenseeker that helps facilitate a splash. If there was a chance he was splashing Red then this would certainly be the play, as it would be less likely he could kill the Recluse immediately.
3) Morphing Fathom Seer and unmorphing immediately.
This is the play I made, and I believe it is the play with the highest long-term value. I get to dig to more lands, have a play next turn, and also have a blocker for my opponent’s current board. The only downside here is if my opponent plays something huge off the Ignus and I’m unable to kill it with Mutation.
The astute reader will see that I could also morph Fathom Seer and just say go with the intention of not blocking and then unmorphing at a later time when my board won’t be as devastated by it and I won’t have to discard a card. I think this play is far too greedy, and it also gets wrecked by a simple removal spell, since I can’t imagine winning if I have to unmorph on my opponent’s turn. There are better options available, and I don’t believe I have to be greedy to create good footing in this board position.
I went on to win this game, and I believed afterwards that it was largely because of the play I made on this crucial turn. My opponent used a Ghostfire on Fathom Seer in order to push his men through, and this allowed my Saltfield Recluse to live when it came out a turn later. Decisions like these are crucial to beating better players, and being able to break them down and pinpoint why one play is better than another is the starting ground for improving your game.
What I’m really interested in is whether you guys would prefer this type of article in the near future, or if you’d rather have me do walkthroughs with game states included when possible. Voice your opinion in the forums, and I’ll see you again next week.