There are many things I would not recommend in Shards Block Draft. There are cards and archetypes on my list. In theory, they can all be pretty good, and I do actually face them a lot, but still… I just don’t like them, and I will now explain why.
Five-Color Control
My favorite archetype in both AAA and AAC has become really bad in ACR. It’s too slow, and it requires wasting precious turns for fixing (be it landcycling, fetching, playing Rupture Spire, Obelisks, Armillary Sphere). Removal is less influential now that the decks are more synergistic, and it seems that any non-bomb card is equal to any other. More importantly, because the format has become faster, any tiny little mana problem may cost you the game. If I open Broodmate Dragon and get passed Empyrial Archangel, I’ll consider it again. Otherwise…
Naya & Bant
The five Shards are based on the following concepts:
Bant: Exalted
Esper: Artifacts
Jund & Grixis: Unearth
Naya: Five-power guys
Esper receives decent artifacts throughout all three packs.
There are far fewer Unearth guys in packs 2 and 3, but Grixis survives thanks to removal, and Jund survives thanks to an amazing pack 3.
However, Conflux and Reborn have very few Exalted and Cascade guys. Worst of all, the format is getting really fast, and fat guys usually arrive on the Battlefield with a very bad loss of tempo, and they generally can’t deal with flyers. Now, if you really have to use Plains, Forest, and Mountain in the same deck, it had better be in a WG splash Red deck.
For Bant, the problem is different. The deck should be aggressive, but you don’t really want to spend the first turns landcycling, fetching, or playing an Obelisk, otherwise you’d lose your aggressiveness. Therefore, a Bant deck is, by nature, unstable, as it has either not enough fixers or not enough explosive power. It just can’t work, and it is a lot wiser to draft either WG or UW. Because of this, many cards that usually belong to these two archetypes are just not good enough to be picked very highly.
It is necessary in a Naya deck, but I don’t give the archetype much credit. Therefore, the card is pretty good but nearly unplayable. It’s too slow for GW, and G is often the color with the fewest cards in a Jund deck. A card that should fix and accelerate the mana has to be a consistent early drop, and Druid of the Anima is not this in a Jund deck.
Far too slow for a White-based deck, which is now either really fast or possibly Esper control that will use countermagic and artifact spells better as fillers. In aggro decks, you don’t want to waste time cycling in the first turns.
Cerodon Yearling/Jhessian Infiltrator/Stun Sniper
Nearly every stable deck has two neighboring colors as a core. Therefore, early drops cannot be from opposing colors, otherwise they will end up causing you mana problems. The only exception is Tidehollow Sculler, because it has an impact even if it’s not played on turn 2, but also because an artifact is always synergistic in an Esper deck, and eventually because in a control Esper build you usually have time to draw the correct mana.
An excellent card in AAA and AAC which is now merely “okay” in White/Green decks in ACR. However, the once first to third pick is now a seventh to ninth pick.
Bull Cerodon and the five-power guys
Bull Cerodon is a fantastic card, but it only shines in the worst archetype in the format. I still pick it pretty often, but it always ends up in my sideboard.
Woolly Thoctar and Bull Cerodon are two good reasons to give Naya a chance, but they will more likely make your draft start on the wrong foot. The only five-power guys I now play are Mosstodon (fine in WG with pump spells and exalted guys, and because the deck has a low curve and a five-mana spell won’t hurt the curve), Ridge Rannet (Jund can play it once in a while if he misses playables and if it has Necrogenesis), and the landcyclers.
If a fixer is two colors, it doesn’t fix anything. Indeed, it’s supposed to bring stability to your mana, but how would it give you a mana which is already require to cast it? If you’re Naya it’s okay, but if you’re Jund it will screw up your mana more than helping it, and if you’re W/G splash Blue you won’t really want to play it when you could play a two-mana guy instead on turn 2.
If you’re UW or WG, it is a decent splash, but it is nothing like the bomb it seems to be. When you have it on turn 3, your opponent usually hasn’t used his removal yet, and when you have it later (which will happens more often if it’s a splash), it has lost much influence as your life is probably closer to 20 than to 0 now.
But a card doesn’t necessarily have to be Bant or Naya for me to dislike it…
Opposing colors = bad
One toughness = bad
People not playing many big guys anymore = bad
It is, at best, a sideboard card if you have many fixers in your UW or WG deck, and if you are facing a Green deck or a superbomb (such as Flameblast Dragon). And even then it’s still pretty small and dies to every single removal spell (except for Celestial Purge) and pinger in the format.
Shards of Alara’s Obelisks
ACR is a fast format in which the tempo is capital. Getting your mana at the right time is important, but it’s better if it doesn’t cost you your turn 3 drop. Also, most decks are two-color based, and would prefer a land from the splash color more than a mana artifact.
This card is just bad. Really bad.
The damage effect is good in a four-color or more aggro deck, which shouldn’t exist.
The acceleration effect would be good if the card cost two mana. Here, it accelerates into your six-mana spells… Yay!
The fixer effect would be good if it was one color to cast. You can’t ask a card supposed to stabilize your mana to be two colors, otherwise you may not even be able to cast it and it would harm you instead of helping you.
Rupture Spire and Fetchlands in agro, and Fetchlands that only fix two colors
The success of an aggro deck depends on its ability to play guys on every turn from turn 2, and sometimes from turn 1 (Wild Nacatl, Akrasan Squire, Court Homunculus). Therefore you don’t really want to waste your second turn fixing your mana. The same applies to the landcyclers, which don’t do much when you cast them (Sanctum Plowbeast in UWg, Valley Rannet in WGr etc).
If I have a Bant Panorama in UWg or GWu, or a Rupture Spire in Esper, I’ll probably play them. I just won’t pick them over any good spell.
If I’ve a Bant Panorama and I’m Esper, I will never ever play it. It doesn’t fix anything, as you will often have to search for the land you’d have wanted to play instead of it anyway, and it still costs you one precious turn and hurts your tempo.
It used to be excellent. It’s now barely playable. If you have Grixis Slavedriver or Kederekt Leviathan it’s pretty good, but otherwise it’s quite slow. There are not many Unearth guys in pack 1, Bone Splinters doesn’t shine anymore, and Devour guys are pretty bad.
A Looter should never require mana to be good. Also, a Looter has too major functions: helping you fix your mana in the early game, and drawing spells instead of lands in the late game. If you can activate it, you probably don’t need the first bonus, while the second is not great anyway as the late game is not something you encounter so often in the format.
As for the Red ability, it’s fine in an aggro deck, but it’s not good enough to be played in Jund. Therefore, it is only okay in RB, but it won’t make you want to pick it a lot more. Indeed, a RB deck is usually the result of a Jund deck that turned into two color when you started Conflux with Shambling Remains and Goblin Outlander, meaning not so often, and only in pack 2. You rarely decide to play RB as a primary choice, so you should almost never pick Grixis Battlemage anywhere close to high.
With almost no Unearth dudes in the format, the card has just become an average to low pick. I’ll only pick it if I’ve several combos already, which won’t happen a lot. Kathari Bomber is a really good combo, but it’s in pack 3, and there may be cards you want to pick over it anyway.
Once upon a time in AAA and AAC, Sanctum Gargoyles were everywhere, the games were long. Nowadays, however, the format is fast and this combo almost impossible. The card remains playable in Esper but, in most decks, a card that takes you two turns for a card advantage of one is just not good.
This has the same problem as Courier’s Capsule: you won’t spend two turns for plus-one card advantage, in particular now that decks are more stable and shouldn’t need a fixer. It’s playable in any three-or-more colors deck, but not an early pick anymore.
Rip-Clan Crasher and Nacatl Outlander
If you ignore the very few times you’re pure RG, these cards are pretty bad. First, they are early drops, so you want RG to be the core of your deck when you use them. Second, they don’t do much when they arrive later. Blue creatures are the fewest in the format, and they often fly, while Crystallization is the only good Blue removal spell, and no one wants to waste it on a Grizzly Bear anyway.
You should avoid being five colors. Paragon of the Amesha and Dragonsoul Knight are still okay because they have first strike, but Fleshformer doesn’t shine at all.
You almost always have cards that annihilate or at least limit your Cascade effect (any fixer, a pump spell, a counterspell, a bounce spell). It’s not that bad when your Cascade spell does something relevant on its own, but Captured Sunlight almost doesn’t. Even when you get a guy, it still usually costs two mana, which makes the deal barely decent. Therefore, if you’re short in three-drops, if you have any mana fixing artifacts, and obviously if you’re three colors, you should not play it.
It can still be okay from the sideboard though, against decks like RB aggro which don’t really have a second breath, and usually die when you’re above 10 life on turn 6.
And finally…
Drawing First
Tempo is the key in this format. I play first 95% of the time in Limited, and that number jumps to 99% in ACR.
…
A few weeks ago, I received an email from WOTC announcing that it was time to vote for the Hall of Fame 2009. After a few days of reflection, I came up with five names as my ballot choices.
Hall of Fame 2009 nominees:
Ryuuichi Arita
William Jensen
Rickard Osterberg
José Barbero
Scott Johns
Diego Ostrovich
Chris Benafel
Craig Jones
Jamie Parke
Marco Blume
Mattias Jorstedt
Brock Parker
David Brucker
Mark Justice
Chris Pikula
Franck Canu
Frank Karsten
David Price
Tiago Chan
Mattias Kettil
Michael Pustilnik
Patrick Chapin
Brian Kibler
Neil Reeves
Daniel Clegg
Masashiro Kuroda
Carlos Romão
Kamiel Cornelissen
Nicolas Labarre
Antoine Ruel
Jeff Cunningham
Matt Linde
Brian Selden
Brian Davis
Raffaele Lo Moro
Alex Shvartsman
Antonino De Rosa
Michael Long
Bram Snepvangers
Eric Froehlich
Pierre Malherbaud
Ben Stark
Osamu Fujita
Casey McCarrel
Helmut Summersberger
Justin Gary
Patrick Mello
Mike Thompson
Gerardo Godinez Estrada
Eivind Nitter
Jens Thorén
Mike Hron
Jin Okamoto
Tom van de Logt
Masami Ibamoto
Daniel O'Mahoney-Schwartz
Tomi Walamies
Tsuyoshi Ikeda
Steven O’Mahoney-Schwartz
David Williams
Itaru Ishida
Wessel Oomens
From of this list, it’s easy to find lots of great players. Some of my best friends are here, as are people I admire and appreciate a lot, but I had to cut the list down to five names:
He’s my brother, so he would obviously get my vote, but he would have it regardless. Not only does he have 18 GP Top 8s (and 2 wins), 4 PT Top 8s (and 1 win), an Invitational win (with Antoine becoming the Ranger of Eos), and a monthly column in a French magazine to share his knowledge and his passion about the game, but he also displays a daily devotion to the game that I’ve witnessed first-hand for more than fifteen years.
Kamiel Cornelissen
The other super-obvious pick. Kamiel’s a monster. 6 PT Top 8s, with 1 win and two finals. I could talk about him for a lot longer, but I doubt anyone needs to be convinced he has his place in his ballot.
Frank Karsten
It feels like Frank has always been there. Always smiling, always nice, always doing well. He has 3 PT Top 8s and 6 GP Top 8s, but even though I don’t have the exact stats here, I’m convinced he’s the player in this ballot who has the most money finishes. Frank may never have been one of the five best players in the world, but he has been one of the Top 20 for about ten years. He personifies consistency.
Patrick is the only player from the first generation of pros that is still playing at high level. He was kept away from tournament play for some years, and, when just about anyone else would have stopped, he managed to come back at a very high level. The release of his online book is a first reward for his consistent involvement in the game for the last fifteen years… now I think he deserves a second big reward.
Masashiro Kuroda
Masashiro has only played in 13 Pro Tours. However, this is not a matter of skill level, but a matter of time. He works about 50 hours a week, and has a wife and two kids, but he still finds time for his passion and comes back to the PT once or twice a year. When he does, he doesn’t travel merely for sightseeing. Three Top 8 in such a small number of PTs played is amazing . Some other players in this ballot have almost comparable stats, but they got their results at a time when the PT was young, in tournaments that welcomed 200 less-prepared players at once. His PT win, the first for a Japanese player, was the trigger for an uncontested reign of Asian players since then.
Oh, I almost forgot to mention the 2 GP and two Masters wins!
Almost Making It…
Of the many players I would have liked to be induced this year, José Barbero and Carlos Romao are great friends. They played the same role of Magic trigger in South America (along with Diego Ostrovich) that Kuroda played in Japan, but their results were just not good enough compared to my Top 5, and even more to the two players who were the closest from my top 5: Ryuchi Arita and Antonino de Rosa.
If I was strictly looking at the results, Arita is at the same level as my Top 5, maybe above Frank, but to be honest I didn’t vote for him because I’m more of a friend with everyone in this ballot, and because the five people I voted for have showed an incredible devotion to the game for years, while I don’t know enough about Ryuchi to judge. Concerning devotion, Antonino definitely matches my Top 5 here as well, and I can’t ignore how much I would like him to join, but his overall results are a little lower than everyone else.
If these two were to make it, it would make me really happy.
About that… my brother Antoine just shared his own vote:
Kamiel Cornelissen
Frank Karsten
Patrick Chapin
Antonino de Rosa
Carlos Romao
Until next week!
Oli