AuthorNick Eisel

This week I decided to do one last MD5 Walkthrough since the format will still be up and running on Magic Online for quite some time. This time I used a different approach to the draft though, since some people have been claiming that I’m “handpicking” drafts that are too powerful or something. For this draft, I decided that it’d be more of a “Live” draft, since I’m just sitting down on MTGO, covering the draft, and then writing about it.

Let’s begin with one of the more difficult draft decks I’ve had to build in the past few weeks from MTGO. I was constantly getting good cards late, but the problem was that they were all heavy on the mana requirements and in three different colors to boot. I’m going to list all of the relevant picks in order first and then go over some of the builds I went through during deck construction after some discussion about the draft.

In my last article I went over the basic guidelines for drafting what I consider to be the most powerful archetype in MD5 Limited. This week I’m going more in depth with a step by step approach to drafting and then building one of these monsters.

In the past month of playing at least a draft a day, I’m fairly certain that I’ve broken the MD5 draft format wide open with a single archetype. I basically go into every draft with the idea of forcing this deck in some shape or form, since the deck is extremely flexible and maximizes the power level you can obtain, while still keeping up with the tempo of the format.

Class is almost out for the year, and I’ve had more time to start playing regular Magic again, so I thought I’d take some time today and share some of my ideas on some”terrible” cards that I think are actually good, as well as one of my favorite archetypes in the format. Tim Aten did a nice article last week on some of the underrated Darksteel cards, so I’ll try not to overlap anything with what he said, and I do have some goodies of my own.

The overall opinion on the format seems to be that Black is the dominating color, and Green is pretty bad unless you can get in a position where you’re one of two drafters at the table pulling for it. The pick here seems to be Spikeshot Goblin without a question, though you could make a case for the Den-Guard or Trolls if you want to fight strongly for either color.
Jerry, the pilot of this draft, explained that he wanted the Glimmervoid for a Standard Affinity deck and didn’t think the pick affected the overall result of his draft.

Honestly, I’ve searched and searched for some sort of strategy to write about, but if I haven’t said already, somebody else has. Call it writer’s block if you will, but I really don’t think Darksteel has affected the format as much as many of the sets have in the past. So I guess I’m gonna have to reach into the old file cabinet and pull out one of my old ideas for an article that I never got around to writing since there was always more important things to talk about.

Sometimes the best advice you can give someone is the last thing you’d ever think of. I found this out pretty quick when I received an absolutely overwhelming response to my article last week on stepping up your game. Most of the things I addressed in that piece are things that are second nature to me, and what I consider to be the ground level attributes of any winning player. While they are very basic, they are also essential to winning play.

Anyway, since I only touched the tip of the iceberg last week and got a huge response from you guys, I figure it would only be fitting to go a little deeper into the topic this week.

What I am offering up is a list of points that you should think about if you ever want to improve your game. While I realize this type of thing has been done many times before, I think I have a number of things to hit on that many people haven’t covered, and that I find very important to anyone looking to get better at Magic, especially Limited. These are things that changed me from a mediocre player into a pro player years ago, and they are general enough that they can work for everyone.

Ah, Black. The color of Witches, Evil, and Darkness. Ken Ho proved one of my initial thoughts last weekend when he took down GP Oakland with a mono-Black draft deck in Mirrodin Limited. The moment I saw the spoiler for Darksteel, I decided that this deck would finally have enough firepower to exist prominently in the draft metagame.

When Mirrodin first came out I constantly joked about finding a way to break this card. Apparently, I’ve come close to doing it, as I’ve drafted”The Hysteria Deck” three times with a total record of 8-1 in matches. Basically the only constraint here is that you need lots of large Green men and you can basically count the Hysteria as a”trick” of sorts, since there’s no way your opponent is going to be playing around it right off the bat. I’ve stolen games with a surprise Malachite Golem or Clockwork Condor before, even when my opponent knew the awful Red rare was lurking in my deck.

Honestly, I thought we’d seen the end of broken Mirrodin Limited uncommons with Loxodon Warhammer, Grab the Reins, and Crystal Shard. Skullclamp is likely as big a mistake as Wild Mongrel, even if it isn’t as obvious at first.

This week at CMU I was lucky enough to get shipped two copies of the degenerate piece of cardboard, right into my near mono-White deck. I didn’t come close to losing a game, and especially not those games where I dropped the Clamp. One game I drew sixteen additional cards by turn 6 off of my Raise the Alarms and 1/1 dorks.

As you’ve probably read on Sideboard.com, seventeen land in Mirrodin Limited is a thing of the past. I’ve wanted to write this article for weeks, but was asked to hold off by my friends on team CMU since they wanted to keep the information secret until after PT Amsterdam. With that in mind, even though Sideboard let the information out of the bag, there are a lot of things to talk about regarding this”Spellbomb” archetype.

Yep, he broke the database… twice. But it’s worth it.

Draft Two analysis and side-by-side comparisons of the outcomes.