Tuesday July 25, 2006
10:44am
Everyone arrived by about 10pm last night. Richie decided not to come, better dealing us for Gabe Walls and Indiana. I can deal with that. He was replaced with Takanobu Sato and Magic’s own Energizer Bunny, J. Evan Dean. Taka was most recently seen winning Grand Prix Madison as part of team Faddy Josh.
I also forgot to mention a de facto member of the household: Paul Nguyen. I left him off initially because I didn’t think he played Magic. Well, he does play, and even if he didn’t this is more of a gaming week than a Magic week.
Some testing occurred last night. An amount larger than my worst-case scenario for the whole week, so that’s promising. We have our favorites of the known decks, so that’s a good first step. Nationals is traditionally a tournament of established metagames, at least in recent history. People were surprisingly productive after their long trips from St. Louis. I have high hopes for this group. Oddly we are now encountering the problem of actually finding cards for the decks. If we can overcome that obstacle everyone should be well prepared.
There have been RGD drafts on MTGO going pretty much non-stop. As near as I can tell, this is the most awkward draft format in the history of time. Luckily the games can get very interesting if everyone draws their mana and didn’t draw the short straw in the draft.
My morning was largely spent watching these drafts. I don’t have the draft grabber or whatever, but I’d like to ask y’all what you think of this situation:
First pick we take Disembowel over Bramble Elemental and not much else. Pick 2 we take Keening Banshee over Selesnya Guildmage, Golgari Rotwurm, Peel from Reality, and Shambling Shell. Those picks went without much controversy. The next pack had Golgari Rot-Farm, Stinkweed Imp, Oathsworn Giant, and Brainspoil. What would you take?
The rest of the morning so far has been spent discussing Survivor strategy and analysis with J. Evan Dean.
2:12pm
Ioli, Crosby, Paul, Don and I are about to start a couple of multi-table tournaments on Party Poker. Kelly Clarkson is on the i-Tunes. Life is good.
5:57pm
Crosby is the only one left in a tournament online. A live poker tournament was started with 11 of us. I just busted in 7th place. Still in are Tim, Cole, Kyle, Paul, Cak, and Ioli. Tim is currently a pretty heavy chip leader. A Coldsnap draft is about to start, updates on both coming up.
8:01pm
The Coldsnap draft hasn’t finished yet, but I thought I’d share my deck with you and what I was thinking as I was drafting it. Keep in mind, this is the very first Coldsnap draft I’ve done. While I’m familiar with many of the cards and themes, I am more or less a babe in the woods. First, the list:
4 Krovikan Mist
1 Gutless Ghoul
1 Garza’s Assassin
3 Disciple of Tevesh Szat
1 Blizzard Specter
1 Zombie Musher
1 Balduvian Fallen
1 Void Maw
1 Herald of Leshrac
3 Feast of Flesh
2 Grim Harvest
1 Chill to the Bone
1 Soul Spike
2 Snow-Covered Swamp
1 Snow-Covered Island
9 Swamp
6 Island
Sideboard:
2 Controvert
2 Savior of the Unseen
1 Martyr of Frost
1 Balduvian Frostwalker
1 Thermal Flux
2 Rimewind Cryomancer
2 Rimebound Dead
1 Grim Harvest
1 Martyr of Bones
1 Disciple of Tevesh Szat
1 Gristle Grinner
1 Sound the Call
1 Frostweb Spider
1 Martyr of Spores
1 Ronom Unicorn
1 Sun’s Bounty
My first pick was Sound the Call, but after a fairly dry second pack in Green I opted to take Krovikan Mist. From here I decided I wanted to try Black. It seems to be the most maligned color, but I had a thought. If everyone likes these aggressive strategies, why not try to get the Rimebound Dead and create an early game that’s hard to bust through with a late game that takes complete control with the Disciples. I didn’t wind up with enough Snow mana to support this strategy, and the Lion informed me that the strategy is fairly poor, since the biggest problem card for the deck is Ronom Hulk and the Dead certainly don’t block them.
This wasn’t the way I built the deck initially. I tried to play the Dead anyway. Timmy showed me the error of my ways and moved the Feast of Fleshes to the maindeck. While 3 of them isn’t all that much, I forgot that they were enhanced by the Disciples. My version was destroyed by J. Evan Dean’s Red/Green aggro deck.
Crosby busted out of the re-buy tourney without making much noise. The live poker tournament played here was split by Tim and the Cak.
9:38pm
I’m currently helping Ioli in the heads-up portion of a sit and go. Justin made the final table of a multi on party poker, and the draw was split by Drew and Taka.
The real cap on the evening was a delicious barbecue prepared by Don Smith and Liz with assistance by Drew and J. Evan Dean. Burgers, pork tenderloin… Ioli just won the sit and go… bratwurst, sausage, and corn. A true feast. A great thank you to our chefs.
That’s all for today. More tomorrow.