I’m writing this from Sydney, Australia, where for the past several days, former Rookie of the Year Aaron Nicastri has opened up his apartment to host gamers from far and wide for the first Scars of Mirrodin Limited Grand Prix this upcoming weekend. Traveling across the world is always a trying experience, although this trip was particularly so.
The best ticket I was able to find conveniently flew out of the small local airport in Carlsbad, CA, which is closest to where I live, but not-so-conveniently made connections first in Los Angeles and then in San Francisco before finally making it to Sydney. This was particularly amusing because Luis Scott-Vargas and David Ochoa had found tickets that flew out of Los Angeles, so they flew down to LA the day before to hang out and draft.
I came down with something of a cold just before the trip that really started to hit me while we were drafting, so I arrived at the airport the next day with a headache, cough, and my sinuses feeling like the inflatable toad used by a Goblin Balloon Brigade. The first leg of my flight was fine, but when I arrived, the second flight was listed as being delayed for 45 minutes, which is when I started to worry. When the flight actually boarded only 30 minutes late, I was hopeful that things would work out and boarded the plane and promptly fell asleep.
I woke up a while later from my NyQuil-induced coma to the announcement that we were beginning our initial decent into San Francisco. I looked and saw that I should have plenty of time to make my flight. Sweet, I thought, right before I passed out again. Then the next time I woke up we still weren’t on the ground, and the pilot was on the intercom telling us that we’d have to stay in our holding pattern for at least another twenty minutes, and then we’d be at the gate twenty minutes after that. I was still in something of a haze and didn’t really process what was going on but checked my phone when we landed to find that we somehow spent nearly another hour in the air, and rather than being well in time for my connection to Sydney, it had already left.
I trudged to the customer service desk surrounded by my fellow passengers to find out our fates. It was already after midnight at this point, so I obviously wasn’t getting out until at least the next day, and by the looks of the flight schedule, probably not until the next night since there aren’t exactly a lot of flights to Sydney. I overheard an attendant telling an Australian couple in front of me that the first flight they had to Sydney with empty seats wasn’t for another
two days,
and I started to laugh.
Thankfully, when I actually got to the front of the line, the agent already had me rebooked on another airline (the perks of having infinite frequent flier miles!), so I wasn’ stuck in San Francisco forever. My next flight was the following evening at 7 p.m. through Vancouver. Somehow Vancouver has been the re-routing airport of disaster for me this past year, as it’s where my flight to Kuala Lumpur made an emergency landing back in March when there was some medical issue on board, causing me to miss my connection and the airline to lose my bag. Déjà vu…
Thankfully, Tom Martell responded to my text messages about being stranded in San Fran, so I hopped in a cab and made my way to his apartment in the city rather than spend an entire day at some airport hotel. I slept until nearly 1:30 p.m. when Tom gets off work and felt much better. I won a free lunch off Tom in the credit card game (Wescoe check!), managed to bungle the 2008 election playing one of Tom’s massive collection of board games, and then made my way to the airport for my flight to Sydney: take two.
My next few flights went by without incident (except because I got rebooked, not only did I not get upgraded, but I had a middle seat for my thirteen hour flight), but of course, when I finally arrived in Sydney, my bag hadn’t actually made the trip with me.
That brings us to the present, where I am sitting, as I said, in Aaron Nicastri apartment, unfortunately wearing the same clothes I had on when I left for the airport for the first time on Sunday, since my bag isn’t yet here. If it doesn’t get here in the next few hours, I’m going to just go to a mall or something nearby and buy clean clothes, because this is getting somewhat out of hand.
Anyway, enough stories of travel bad beats — on to the Magic! I’ve done a lot of drafts over the past few weeks to prepare for Sydney, and I’ve certainly learned a lot in that time. Scars Limited is a very intricate format, and while it’s reminiscent of old Mirrodin block, there’s all new tricks to learn, and I feel like I continue learning with every draft that I do. Hopefully you can glean some wisdom out of my efforts.
Generally speaking, I’ve found that I have the most success when I try to keep my draft as flexible as possible. Scars is, clearly, an artifact heavy set, and this means that you can have much lighter color commitments for much longer than you could in a typical set. I had one draft where I had only nine total colored cards going into the third pack, and when I got passed a powerful card in another color, I was able to jettison four of those cards — one entire color — and shift into a different color to take advantage of that bomb.
Focusing on drafting quality artifacts early on not only gives you color flexibility but also strategic options. If you have a bunch of colored cards and only a few artifacts going into the second pack and you open a powerful but artifact-reliant card like Embersmith or Chrome Steed, you could end up essentially wasting a pick on it if your draft doesn’t come together.
The cards that I’m happiest to pick up early in a draft, besides obvious bombs, are Myr. Myr were the cornerstone of the format in Mirrodin and that, at least, hasn’t changed with the Phyrexian invasion. Myr are welcome additions to any deck, from their obvious role in enabling metalcraft to carrying equipment when the rest of your team is dead. Even off-color Myr are fantastic accelerators. Even in decks where you don’t necessarily want to ramp to four mana specifically, having access to more mana to cast multiple spells in a single turn or play and use equipment can have a huge impact on your success.
Similarly, cheap, effective equipment is something that every deck wants. Darksteel Axe is powerful for enabling metalcraft, pumping fliers, or making infect creatures doubly dangerous. Sylvok Lifestaff is remarkably underrated. It’s cheap to play and cheap to equip and can turn races into lose-lose situations for your opponent. The biggest sleeper when it comes to equipment, though, is Accorder’s Shield. Any cheap artifacts can be decent in a format like this, and the cheaper the better. At zero mana, Accorder’s Shield is a steal, since it provides an effect that’s actually quite powerful. Grizzly Bears and Grey Ogres are the industry Standard in this format, which makes +3 toughness and vigilance a big deal in combat situations.
My focus on flexibility has led me to generally drafting red, white, and blue, because infect splits green and black into two separate card pools. I’ve drafted infect several times, but found my greatest success was when I stayed flexible with my first few picks and moved in on infect when it was clearly open. My record with infect has been drastically higher in drafts in which I first-picked a Myr or removal spell than those in which I’ve taken Hand of the Praetors.
The most successful infect decks that I’ve seen have all shared some important characteristics. The most important element, of course, is focus. A deck that has half-infect and half-normal creatures isn’t going to consistently get the job done on either front. With the exception of cards like Hoard-Smelter Dragon and Molten-Tail Masticore — basically, cards that can win the game on their own — you want to minimize the number of non-infect creatures in your poison decks. Utility creatures like Sylvok Replica, Skinrender, or Myr are obviously also okay and get even better if you have a Grafted Exoskeleton in your deck, but even top notch non-infect creatures are pretty poor. The converse of this is true, as well — most infect creatures are weak in non-infect decks, but independently game-winning creatures like Skithiryx or utility creatures like Necropede can still find a place outside poison decks.
As far as the individually important commons and uncommons are concerned, I think the best infect creature is Tangle Angler. It does so many things that infect decks want. With five toughness, it’s incredibly durable, and it can threaten to whittle down opposing creatures steadily with -1/-1 counters. It also solves the poison deck’s issue of breaking through later in the game when its creatures are outclassed. The ability to alpha strike with the Tangle Angler and the rest of your team and get through makes it an all-star at any stage of the game.
Similarly, any kind of reusable proliferate card is outstanding in an infect deck. Contagion Clasp is possibly the best non-rare card in the set to pick up early and obviously shines with poison. The best infect deck I’ve had so far had two copies of Throne of Geth, and they were absolutely outstanding. I once managed to set up a Throne of Geth along with a Mimic Vat on Corpse Cur. That’s obviously just rubbing it in, but showcases the high-end power of what the Throne can do. At the low end, the Throne lets you win via proliferating poison counters after the board gets locked up, and often at very low cost because of cards like Corpse Cur.
For metalcraft decks, I prefer metalcraft cards that are at least decent without metalcraft, like Ghalma’s Warden and Carapace Forger. Cards like Vedalken Certarch and Auriok Sun Chaser can just sit there on the board as 1/1s throughout much of the game, and in the case of the flier, can even get blown out if your opponent kills one of your artifacts at instant speed.
In addition to Myr and equipment, I draft on-color Spellbombs very high, because they can contribute to turning on metalcraft very quickly and then cycle or even produce a relevant effect once your artifact count is stable. My favorite Spellbomb is the white one, since it keeps your artifact count stable after you use it, and I’ll even use the green Spellbomb in off-color decks because it can at least replace itself card-count wise when you use it.
Generally speaking, I like cheap artifacts and expensive non-artifact creatures. The quantity of artifact removal makes playing costly artifacts open yourself up to blowouts. Cards like Argentum Armor may seem very powerful, but rarely actually have the impact that you hope they will because they end up getting destroyed after you’ve spent a ton of mana but before they have a major impact. The prominence of artifact removal comes at the price of “real” removal, which makes big, non-artifact creatures like Hoard-Smelter Dragon or even Scrapdiver Serpent much harder to deal with. Even a 3/3 non-artifact creature is tough for a lot of decks to kill — keep that in mind.
I have even more drafts ahead of me over the next couple days — along with some kangaroo watching at the zoo — so I’m sure I’ll learn quite a bit more by the time the Grand Prix comes around. Hopefully what I’ve learned so far can help you in your drafts to come.
Good luck to everyone playing in the 2010’s this weekend. Remember — Molten-Tail Masticore and Scroll Thief is the real deal.
Until next time,
bmk