Drafting – Strictly Average – MTG

Peasant Cube on a Budget – White

Martin Hughes — Tue, 02 Oct 2018 08:30:54 +0000

So we recently discussed how anyone can build a cube, and how a budget limit doesn’t prevent you from building an incredible experience. This time out, I want to touch on the format of one of my own cubes to illustrate how to start building your own.

“Peasant” has a particular meaning for sixty-card decks – it’s usually a deck built from common cards, supplemented with a handful of uncommons. In Cube, it’s pretty hard to keep that ratio in place, so when we say “Peasant Cube”, we’re really just referring to a cube composed entirely of cards that are common or uncommon. It’s also referred to as “CUbe” in places. What makes these great to build is that half the cards you want to use are probably already in your binder! So let’s look at one way to go about constructing a peasant cube, starting with white.

The Rules

Usually, a card is considered legal for Peasant Cube if it’s had at least one printing at either common or uncommon rarity. So cards that were originally printed at common or uncommon and have since been upshifted in rarity are legal (like Pelakka Wurm), and cards that have started out as rare or mythic but have been downshifted are also legal (like Undead Gladiator). If you only have a printing with a rare or mythic symbol on it, that’s okay – it’s still allowed.
We’re going to try and stick to a curve for both creatures and non-creatures. We want to categorize cards according to their color identity, so anything with an activated ability or cost in an alternate color belongs out in the gold section (we’re looking at you, Momentary Blink and Lingering Souls).
We’re on a budget here, so for this article we’re not going to consider cards worth anything more than $3 (well, as of the time of writing this article, anyway … if only we could future-proof against spikes in card value)!
Finally, we’re aiming to build a 360-card cube, so we want to stick to the traditional 50 white cards, split between 25 creature and 25 non-creature. Rather than just mindlessly smashing together the top 50 cards, the best way to really tie a cube together is to use 20% of each color to tie the draft archetypes together, smooth out the curve and have a little fun. This means we’ll begin by looking for the twenty best creatures and twenty best non-creatures, and then pick and choose the last five of each ourselves.

What Makes a Good Peasant Cube Card?

So, we want to fill out the white section of a Peasant cube. What on earth makes a good card in this format? We’re pretty much talking about the cream of the common and uncommon crop here, so there are two big hints in how to pick a good one:

Is it a staple in Vintage, Legacy or 1v1 EDH? Any card that can hang with the best rares and mythics in its environment is a pretty safe bet for a good card.
Was it a high draft pick in the Limited environment for its release set? Or was it an absolute house at Pre-Release? Chances are that it’s a good Peasant Cube card too.

Now, we can look at something like MTGGoldfish’s current metagame decklists for the tournament / metagame staples – but there are literally about five white cards that make the list. For the high Limited picks, we could go off something like Frank Karsten’s ChannelFireball pick orders – but he only goes back to Theros, so we’d miss out on all these cool old cards that could make the list. So how do we find a decent list of cube-worthy commons and uncommons?

Fortunately for us, CubeTutor has us covered. It started out as a site to manage and test-draft your cube with, and there are now more than 40,000 cubes stored on the site. Even better than that, the site maintains an easily-filtered Top Cards List, giving us the ability to look at which Peasant-legal cards are run in the most cubes. And given that cubes of every size and shape are recorded there, the cards at the top of our list are going to be the ones that are eternal staples or Limited all-stars – exactly what we’re looking for. So, ready? Let’s go!

White Creatures

Staring at the top 20 white common and uncommon creatures on CubeTutor gives us the following:

You might recognise a few of those cards up there – Mother of Runes and Flickerwisp are firmly in the eternal staples list. And Cloudgoat Ranger and Serra Angel are both pretty infamous as Limited finishers. The rest show a strong bent towards a White Weenie archetype. Will the spells back that up?

White Spells

On the non-creature side, CubeTutor hands us the following twenty:

Well, that’s certainly more White Weenie – this time the token variety. Along with a heap of removal. There are a couple of cards in there that are going to blow our budget – let’s take care of them as we round out our fifty white cards.

Sticking to the Budget

Out of the forty cards we’ve highlighted so far, only two are over our $3 threshold – Path to Exile and Enlightened Tutor (Mother of Runes and Wall of Omens just scrape under, as of the time of writing). We’re not exactly going to be able to replace them with something similar but cheaper, so we’ll just pick the next two non-creature cards out of the CubeTutor list that are under $3 a copy. That gives us Midnight Haunting and Temporal Isolation.

Looking at the Curve

Okay, so we now have twenty creatures and twenty spells. Let’s check what our mana curves look like – this not only helps us to ensure we’re not too unbalanced with the casting costs of our selected cards, it also helps us to narrow down what we should be adding in our last ten cards.

If we look at the casting costs of of our creatures, we currently have a curve of 8-5-5-0-2-0 (meaning we have eight creatures with a converted mana cost of 1, five with a CMC of 2, five with a CMC of 3, and so on). We’re supposed to have a curve that evens out around CMC3-4, but we’re definitely not doing that here – we’re loaded with aggressive White Weenie creatures, and have gaping holes at CMC4 and CMC6. When we’re adding our last five creatures, we want to think about finishers that play well here.

The curve for the 20 non-creature spells is 6-7-4-1-0-2. Again, this is loaded with a lot of cheap removal and token production, and have a big gap around the CMC4-5 mark. When we’re adding our last five spells, we want to try and fill this hole.

Looking at the Draft Archetypes We Already Have

When considering what we want to add, we want to think about where we’re already strong. We currently have a pretty ridiculous suite of CMC1 White Weenie beaters, as well as a large number of token producers. Pretty much anything that buffs our small guys up, or helps us produce tokens, is going to make white play small, fast and angry.

Having Fun with the Final Adds

So here’s where we get to have fun and freewheel a bit as cube designers. We know roughly what is strong, we know roughly what sort of CMC we’re looking to fill, and we know roughly what sort of archetypes we’re looking at. So it’s time to work within those limits creatively.

Firstly, let’s add our last five creatures. We’ve worked out that we want cards that play well with tokens or White Weenie. We know we’re trying to fill holes in our mana curve at CMC4 and CMC6. And we know we want to stay under our $3-per-copy budget. So let’s try and add three CMC4 creatures and two CMC6+ finishers. At CMC4, there are two walk-up starts in Celestial Crusader and Goldnight Commander – they are both capable of buffing our smaller guys in effective and unexpected ways (sometimes to game-winning effect). Finally, let’s have some fun with the last of the three – Guardian of the Guildpact is very hard to deal with, and will still get buffed by the other two creatures we’ve just added. For our two CMC6+ finishers, Sentinel of the Eternal Watch was an Origins Limited first-pick, and Subjugator Angel might give us an on-the-spot win (especially if we start blinking it with some of the blink cards we already have). That’s a pretty good mix, and it gives us a more sensible mana curve of 8-5-5-3-2-2.

Now for our last five spells. We want to do something similar here, aiming to fill slots at CMC4-5. So let’s add three CMC4 spells and two CMC5 spells, once again aiming to encourage White Weenie and token strategies. At CMC4, Retreat to Emeria was almost custom-built for us – it lets us choose between the two archetypes we’re encouraging at any given moment. Field of Souls is another great token producer, and Valor in Akros is basically a second Goldnight Commander effect. At CMC5, we find another Limited all-star in Knightly Valor and a great instant token producer in Take Up Arms. This gives our spells a curve of 6-7-4-4-2-2, which is again quite low, but still okay.

The Final Product

So we’ve now got our fifty cards! The best part about this list is that, while it’s full of strong removal and known Limited finishers, about 75% of the cards here are straight out of the bulk bin. If you haven’t got half of this stashed away in your boxes, your local card store sure will.

Our Peasant Cube’s white section now looks like the following:

White Creatures

White Spells

CMC1

Cloudshift
Condemn
Gods Willing
Mana Tithe
Sunlance
Swords to Plowshares

CMC2

Disenchant
Gather the Townsfolk
Intangible Virtue
Journey to Nowhere
Pacifism
Raise the Alarm
Temporal Isolation

CMC3

Arrest
Banishing Light
Midnight Haunting
Oblivion Ring

CMC4

Faith’s Fetters
Field of Souls
Retreat to Emeria
Valor in Akros

CMC5

Knightly Valor
Take Up Arms

CMC6+

Spectral Procession
Triplicate Spirits

So that wraps white up. I hope that’s given you some ideas on how to construct your own white section of a Peasant cube! Is this definitive? Absolutely not. Go right ahead and replace half the bombs in here with your own 20 pet cards! I’ll be back next time to talk blue!

Martin Hughes

Martin first caught the Magic: the Gathering bug at university in Australia in 1995, just as Fourth Edition was released (naturally just missing the era of opening dual lands in booster packs). One degree, career, marriage and two kids later, he is still slinging cards across a kitchen table with friends and is spreading the infection to the next generation via cube, EDH and multiplayer formats.

Anyone Can Build a Cube (Yes, Even You!)

Martin Hughes — Tue, 04 Sep 2018 08:30:17 +0000

Usually, a Magic: the Gathering player can be placed in one of three boxes when it comes to Cube Draft – either they’ve never heard of it, think it’s the greatest format in the history of Magic, or they’d love to give it a try but the thought of buying or balancing 360+ cards freaks them out. Never fear! Let’s talk about how easy it is to set one up and have some of the greatest fun you’ve ever had at a kitchen table!

What is a Cube Draft?

Firstly, for the uninitiated, let’s talk about what a cube draft entails. Essentially, it’s the equivalent of holding a booster draft, except we’re doctoring the cards available. And they don’t come in foil wrapping. And instead of being down at the local store, we’re probably at your kitchen table with good friends, good food and good drink.
As per a normal booster draft, you need 45 cards per person (i.e. the equivalent of three boosters’ worth of cards). A cube size of 360 cards is considered standard, as this is enough cards for eight players to draft with, and is the equivalent of a draft pod at your local store. Those 360 cards are usually singleton copies, but there is no hard and fast rule. If you want to include multiple copies of a card in your cube, go right ahead.

Why Should I Run One?

I initially got into Cube because my playgroup was split down the middle – we had a few who had been playing since the beginning of Magic time, had some powerful cards, and had the disposable income to keep building upon that… and then we had a few who were newbies with only the last couple of years’ worth of cards, and/or they couldn’t afford to buy cards that helped them keep pace with the power players. Cube solves this problem by limiting the card pool and making the same level of power available to everyone.

As someone who has been playing for a while, it also gave me great joy to enable the newer players to discover some of the powerful old cards they wouldn’t ordinarily get to play. I distinctly remember a night early on where we had a new player draft Sneak Attack. Having never even seen it before, they tossed it into a deck full of angry red creatures, won the game with it, and said “Wow, that card’s even better than I thought it was! I can see why it’s worth so much.” As a cube designer, these are the moments that you want to take and frame.

As a draft format, Cube also takes the weathered old Spikes and net-deckers in your group and forces them to make decisions on the fly about their deck-building. Once you start getting used to drafting from the card pool, you begin to see combinations and archetypes that you wouldn’t have even thought about in a standard setting. It also teaches new players about good deck construction.

Finally, one of the best parts about putting your own cube together is then keeping it together, and figuring out what to change as time goes on and new sets come out. You will find that some members of your playgroup are totally into making these decisions with you, and it becomes a little bit of group excitement every time a new set comes out (e.g. “Wow, did you see the new merfolk that was spoilt today? That would be incredible in the cube! Maybe we should drop Storm Crow for it?”). Editor’s note – never!

Okay, So I Need 360 Cards Or So… How Do I Pick Them?

Just like designing an actual Magic set or building a deck, balance is important. We want to make sure we don’t favor one color over another, and we don’t want our curve all over the place. So we need to take care to have an even spread of colors and casting costs.
As a basic starting point for a 360-card cube, the following split is considered optimal:

50 mono-colored cards for each of the five colors (i.e. 50 black, 50 red…);
40 colorless cards;
40 non-basic land;
30 gold cards (i.e. cards with 2+ colors)

For each of the five colors, we want an even split of creature and non-creature cards, so a good starting point is to have 25 creatures and 25 non-creature spells in each color. Some cube designers consider green to be better at creatures and blue to be better at spells, so they weight these two colors differently (with green having a 33/17 split, and blue at 17/33 to counterbalance the cube).

It is also a good idea to have an even spread of cards across the color combinations in the gold section. Three cards per two-color combination / guild is a good baseline.
There are no true rules for colorless cards and non-basic lands, but I find it’s a good idea to have an even spread of color production across the land. Some people subscribe to the idea of splitting the colorless section out into 10 creatures, 10 equipment, 10 mana sources and 10 others, but again that’s totally up to you.

We also want to try and maintain a balanced curve, at least with our mono-colored cards as a minimum. This means, for example, that you don’t want to load up your 25 red creatures with 20+ dragons that cost 6 or more to cast – you want to spread out the casting costs evenly, with the majority sitting in the sweet spot of a converted mana cost at 3 or 4.
Some colors will likely want to have a lower curve than others. For example, red may want a pile of creatures and spells with a converted mana cost of 1. Green may want to have a higher number of creatures with hefty casting costs, encouraging you to ramp into them. How you design your curve is totally up to you – all that matters is that you have one, and it’s fair to all colors.

Some cube designers like to take this to the extreme and even have a mana curve for their colorless and gold cards. Personally, I haven’t bothered too much, especially with gold; my cubes haven’t suffered for it.

So I Have To Balance It, Curve It… This Sounds Complex…

Don’t worry – now that I’ve freaked you out with numbers, ratios and curves, this is where your creativity comes in. All the balancing ends up doing is limiting your choices when it comes to which cards you include. For example, you’ve just been limited to 25 white creatures, and you want to maintain a curve, so you probably want a maximum of five white creatures with a converted mana cost of 5. Did you want some angels? Things like Baneslayer Angel, Serra Angel and Archangel of Thune are probably already on the list if you have them and/or can afford them. Want to throw equipment around? Stonehewer Giant probably wants onboard. Want to play a totally non-viable enchantment theme just for fun? Celestial Ancient wants to join in. The point is that you’ve probably got some idea of the types of cards or archetypes you want to run in different areas, and with the limits we’ve put in place, you’ll find some of these slots filling up so fast that you’ll have to cut cards rather than add them.
If you want to make a particular archetype or theme playable within your cube, I’ve found through experience that the following guide works pretty well:

Have about 3% of the cards in your cube support the theme or archetype. For a 360-card cube, this is around 10-11 cards;
Try and spread the cards out on the curve (i.e. don’t make them all 3-drops);
Make sure each of the cards is playable on its own in a vacuum. For example, Wizened Cenn is great if you’ve already drafted 10 other Kithkin cards, but you’re never going to play it on its own (well, not unless it’s the only 2CC 2/2 creature you put in the cube, anyway)!

Finally, if you find a card that plays across multiple archetypes, that makes it more draftable. As an example, I have both Knight Tribal and Soldier Tribal as themes in my main cube. They were both about ten cards wide, and both worked fairly well as archetypes. And then I stumbled upon a little card called Knight-Captain of Eos. It worked with both, so I threw it in for a laugh. It has never left (and a player has won a game with a Soldier Tribal deck that fogged their opponents out, too).

But This Sounds Expensive… I Want The Best Cards In Here, Right?

No, not at all. The great art of being a cube designer is working with the limits you’re presented with. Haven’t got a big budget? Limit the cards to things you either own or can buy for less than $1! I have a friend who has literally built a cube this way. It’s incredible fun, and still completely broken. He let me get Balance under an Arcane Savant one night. He responded by resolving Tinker for Inkwell Leviathan!

Haven’t got a big card pool? Throw in what you’ve got! One of the great things about the Cube format is that it’s basically unsolvable – there is no such thing as a perfect cube. You’ll soon discover the weak points of your cube once you’ve drafted it a few times (and then you’ll catch the “what cards exist that I can put in this slot” bug). When I built my initial cube in 2011, I had about 200-250 decent cards and a whole lot of holes to fill. But I’d bought a playset of Lorwyn commons and uncommons, and my playgroup liked tribal themes, so I filled all the holes with Lorwyn commons and uncommons. And surprise! It was still amazing fun (and some of those commons and uncommons became favorites and never left)! Imperious Perfect and Elvish Harbinger are still in there seven years later!

How Do I Draft It?

So you’ve got your 360 cards together and you want to actually give this a try with your friends. How do you shuffle up and distribute the cards?
There are a few out there who subscribe to just taking the entire 360 and just shuffling it all in one giant pile to see what you get. That works, but it produces some pretty wacky boosters. My preferred way to seed booster packs is the following:

Split your cube out into the eight sections we had when we were designing it – the five colors, gold, non-basic land and colorless;
Shuffle each of those piles well;
Evenly distribute these piles into 24 stacks of 15 cards. There are plenty of ways to do this, but I generally hand each booster two cards from each of the monocolored piles, and then another five cards in some way from the last three. This tends to end up looking very similar to an actual real-life Magic booster;

If you’ve never drafted before, it works like this:

Everyone sits in a circle around the table. Each player gets three 15-card boosters;
Everyone picks up their first booster, picks one card from it, and passes the remaining 14 to the player on their left;
You then get handed a 14-card booster. Pick one card from it and pass the other 13 left;
Keep going until you’ve all run out of cards;
Everyone picks up the second booster and does the same, but this time passes right;
Finally, everyone picks up the third booster and does the same, but passes left again.

Everyone should now have 45 semi-cohesive cards to build a 40-card deck with. You usually want 23 non-land cards and 17 land. A cube should have 40-50 of each basic land type handy for players to complete their decks with. Once everyone has built their decks, you’re ready to go!

Some folks complain that drafting takes a chunk of time out of the evening when you just want to shuffle up and play. After a few drafts, you’ll actually find the group getting used to the cards and making faster pick choices. You’ll also find them enjoying having to make the hard decisions between the awesome cards in their boosters (and probably enjoy the agonizing looks you’ve put on some of their faces as they’re having to make those hard choices). It ends up being part of the fun in the long run.

If you haven’t got eight players, don’t stress – the rest of the cards stay in the box, and the players that are drafting are left with some quirky decisions when they try and draft particular archetypes (e.g. “Hmm… I’m going hard at Storm in this draft… I really hope Empty the Warrens isn’t still in the box!”).

So there you go – that’s the quick and dirty guide to creating and drafting your own cube! As a format, Cube can take you as shallow or as deep as you want to go – if you just want to slap 360 cards together and get going, you can. If you want to overthink every slot in the cube, you can do that too! I hope this at least encourages you to give the format a shot if you haven’t before – it is quite likely the most fun your playgroup can have at a kitchen table!

Martin Hughes

Drafting with Woolie: Hour of Devastation

Craig Simpson — Fri, 28 Jul 2017 02:09:26 +0000

Welcome to the first installment of ‘Drafting with Woolie’. I’m a husband and a father of four with limited free time at normal hours, so playing Magic online is a great outlet for me, whether it is at 6 am or 11 pm. I started playing Magic in high school (Revised), and then switched over to Decipher Star Wars CCG when it was released, even trading the set of Antiquities I had worked hard to trade into for a set of Premier BB at one point. I met Strictly through the Discord channels and have really enjoyed being a part of his Patron community. I feel comfortable posting here, as I am aware of some of my shortcomings; I don’t always see the best line of play, sometimes I f6 when I shouldn’t- I know, never hit f6!

I downloaded the MTGO client shortly after getting back into the game in 2009, and discovered drafting through triple Zendikar queues. The draft itself was always fun, but time-consuming to complete a 3 round event, or disheartening to lose in round 1 of a single elimination queue. I enjoy seeing the different limited interactions, so swiss queues are what I prefer to enter. Over the years, I’ve only drafted occasionally (usually closer to set release when the best archetypes haven’t been decided on) and would not consider myself to be an expert by any means. Since I know that I am not an expert drafter, I like to keep a window open with MTGO bot prices and make sure that I don’t pass foil mythics that are unplayable but valuable to set redeemers (a free draft, is a free draft!).

Fast forward to Wizards bringing leagues to the client, which allow you to draft in an 8-person pod, build your deck, and then play the rounds on your own schedule. This changes the draft slightly: you don’t need to worry about hate-drafting cards you won’t play in your deck or would be good against you, as it is unlikely that you will be paired with anyone from your pod. The league structure allows you to take your time and play 1 match a day, or play 3 matches in a row very efficiently (since you don’t have to wait for the other matches in your pod to finish to move on to the next round).

With the abundance of video content available for Magic today, I fondly remember reading David Ochoa’s draft walkthroughs on ChannelFireball (ex: https://www.channelfireball.com/videos/according-to-webster-rtr-draft-1-with-videos/ ), and that is what I hope to leave you with today, a chance to look at my picks and decide what direction you would have taken (I am not posting the videos of the matches though, you’ll have to bear with my recaps).

On to the draft!

Pack 1, Pick 1: I see a white rare that flies and can have a great late game impact. I like Puncturing Blow, but not over this Angel. Also of note, there are 3 other white playables in the pack, we’ll see if I wheel one. (Angel of Condemnation)

Pack 1, Pick 2 : I thought about taking the life gain bird, but the upside to the blue enchantment is high, even if I am just scrying in the late game. (Riddleform)

Pack 1, Pick 3 : The Vizier looks like a strong card to help punch through defenders, and the Aerial Guide helps another attacker without the exert. (Aerial Guide)

Pack 1, Pick 4 : I was really hoping to see some quality removal in either Black or Red to help steer me into one of those colors, but it wasn’t there so I continued to take good creatures. The rare doesn’t look great to me unless you draw it at exactly the right time, leaving the cycling angel, another Aerial Guide and Oketra’s Avenger. I decided on the 2-drop. (Oketra’s Avenger)

Pack 1, Pick 5 : Although I wouldn’t consider myself locked in, I am definitely leaning towards a W/U fliers deck. This pack really didn’t offer much, so I took the cycler/conditional counterspell, most likely for the sideboard. (Countervailing Winds)

Pack 1, Pick 6 : I highlighted the 2-drop in my screenshot, which I like with the prowess as you can hold up mana during attacks to keep your opponent guessing. I have also noted that I passed a lot of solid green creatures, hopefully this will mean I see either white or blue passed to me in pack 2. Also on that note, I have also left playable white cards in many of the packs, so the payoff in pack 3 could be blue. (Spellweaver Eternal)

Pack 1, Pick 7 : Unsummon is an unspectacular playable, but the potential to get a second use out of the Cleric makes it the pick here. (Steadfast Sentinel)

Pack 1, Pick 8 : Being able to play on your opponents’ turn is always a useful tool to have, and flashing in a blocker to surprise an opponent or on their end step makes for efficient use of your mana. (Aven Reedstalker)

Pack 1, Pick 9 : The 1-drop doesn’t get me excited at all, whereas the chance to bring back the Naga Warrior at a discount does. (Sinuous Striker)

Pack 1, Pick 10 : I took the aftermath card as a hedge in case I turn to black in pack 2. (Consign // Oblivion)

Pack 1, dregs: Razaketh’s Rite, Grave Abomination, Strategic Plan, full art Plains, red card

After pack 1, I have 7 creatures, looking like the start of a decent (if unexciting) deck.

Pack 2, Pick 1 : I could see the Dauntless Aven being great in a deck with lots of exert, but the card advantage that the Champion offers (bonus if I can toss another Eternalize card) is excellent. (Champion of Wits)

Pack 2, Pick 2 : The red cards aren’t strong enough to make me want to leave my plan of W/U, same goes for the green creatures. The zombie can beat down and sometimes trade up. (Mummy Paramount)

Pack 2, Pick 3 : Maybe I should take another Aerial Guide here, but I like to have a couple of good combat tricks, and it will also turn on my Riddleform. (Act of Heroism)

Pack 2, Pick 4 : I like the cycling on the serpent, and the life gain on the bird, but I like the aggression more. (Oketra’s Avenger)

Pack 2, Pick 5 : Finally, a piece of (conditional) removal! I’ll grab it. (Sandblast)

Pack 2, Pick 6 : Very similar looking pack, and the same pick. (Sandblast)

Pack 2, Pick 7 : If I was all in on spells and walls, maybe the swarm intelligence is playable? (Unsummon)

Pack 2, Pick 8 : Unexciting pick of the cycle/tapper. (Djeru’s Renunciation)

Pack 2, Pick 9 : Imaginary Threats looks interesting, but I haven’t played with it yet and think that I want to be attacking and not blocking. Even though I don’t have a desert yet, I took the wall. (Wall of Forgotten Pharoahs)

Pack 2, Pick 10 : Tragic Lesson is instant speed card draw, and I think the drawback will not hurt us much in this deck if we can toss a card with Eternalize. (Tragic Lesson)

Pack 2, Dregs: Magmaroth, full art Island, Fraying Sanity (playable?), full art Forest, full art Plains. Even if I don’t go 3-0, I will at least have some nice basics in front of me!

I am now at 10 creatures, and would like to get above 15 in pack 3. I have a good mana curve and only one card with double white, many creatures have evasion or built in recursion. A concern is that I only have 2 pieces of removal, so getting a good counterspell or removal will be priorities in the last pack. My fliers should give me a chance to close out games, but I could use another top-end sphinx or angel.

Pack 3, Pick 1 : This picked really hurt! Oketra and her monument side by side. I think the monument is a bomb all by itself in a deck with a high creature count, but I have a high enough creature count that I think Oketra will be able to attack and block without her activations. Would the exert bird have been the safe pick here? (Oketra the True)

Pack 3, Pick 2 : I like the upside of the combat trick over the cycling. (In Oketra’s Name)

Pack 3, Pick 3 : I already have a few zombies (Eternalize and normal), so this 2-drop may get multiple uses, especially in the late game. (Binding Mummy)

Pack 3, Pick 4 : With Eternalize cards already in the deck, the multicolored bird warrior is a perfect fit. (Aven Wind Guide)

Pack 3, Pick 5 : The blue Cartouche doesn’t excite me since many of my creatures already have flying, and getting 2 for 1’ed with a removal spell always feels bad. A 2-drop with Embalm it is. (Tah-Crop Skirmisher)

Pack 3, Pick 6 : The camel doesn’t do what I want to be doing with a 5-drop in this deck, the counterspell should help me deal with a bomb, maybe out of the sideboard. (Essence Scatter)

Pack 3, Pick 7 : Okay, I guess I should have at least one camel in this desert plane. Maybe I should have taken the cycle/disenchant card for the sideboard if I face a monument or Sandwurm Convergence. (Supply Caravan)

Pack 3, Pick 8 : I like the trick, more likely that I will play it than the other spells to choose from. Lots of blue coming my way this pack! (Mighty Leap)

Pack 3, Pick 9 : The exert bird wheeled! Yay! That might be a game-ending card to play. (Tah-Crop Elite)

Pack 3, Pick 10 : I took the nice land. (Plains)

Pack 3, Dregs: Plains, Failure // Comply, Shimmerscale Drake, red card, swamp

The blue cards certainly came in pack 3, and although they weren’t high quality in most cases, the Drake was a welcome inclusion to the main deck. The mana curve looks good, with six creatures at 2 and 4 mana, and a few tricks to buff them. Not a lot of situational sideboard cards, but there are at least a few options. I chose to run the Act of Heroism over Mighty Leap as I have some creatures that I will want to exert. My only regret is not opening any Unquenchable Thirst in the first two packs, which would have been an upgrade over my light removal package. Onto the 3 round friendly swiss league (2-1 will win me 2 packs)!

This was my 40-card main deck, I didn’t have many cycling cards so I went with 17 lands.

Round 1 I faced a RG big green creature deck, I had a great opener with both Oketra and Angel and my opponent was stuck on three lands, not a very exciting way to win but I’ll take it. Game 2 I kept a 2-lander with 4 cards costing 2, but was stuck on those two lands until turn four. My opponent started with an Exemplar of Strength and ramped into an early Sifter Wurm off an exerted Oasis Ritualist. I had no answer and was dispatched shortly after. Essence Scatter was brought in and Riddleform came out. Game 3 we both agreed to have no mana problems, and the race was on with his Exemplar and my small fries whittling down the life totals. The game got interesting when Oketra made an appearance to face off against the Wurm. Unfortunately for me, my opponent had enough removal to keep Oketra locked away when I needed her most and trampled over my feeble defenses.

Round 2 I faced a UG deck running Plains and Mountains, but I could not apply enough early pressure for my fliers to finish them off, and a Rampaging Hippo outclassed my blockers (and I didn’t draw the Sandblast to force a trade). Getting Unquenchable Thirst played on two of my creatures was the difference in this game. Once again I brought in the Essence Scatter to deal with their big creatures, and it came in handy game 2 when I used it to counter a Rhonas the Indomitable! Now I knew what I was really up against, and in game 3 my opponent got a turn 3 Rhonas and kept the creatures coming to bring my dream of prizes to a crashing halt.

I wasn’t going to let my first article ever be tainted with an 0-2 drop, so I soldiered on to play out the string against a UR cycling/eternalize deck with fliers. I had mana problems in game 1 and died to an Ominous Sphinx and Glyph Keeper. Game 2 was also uneventful as I curved out and got a concession on turn five. In Game 3 my early pressure, and my opponent’s Hazoret’s Favor had us both top decking for the win. My opponent had me down to 7 life with a hasted and exerted Khenra Scrapper. On the second last turn of the game, he chose not to use the haste ability on his Ominous Sphinx facing down my three small creatures, and I attacked right into it, getting to use Sandblast to great effect. His topdeck was the Glyph Keeper of course, and I acknowledged a ‘ggs’.

Unfortunately for my opponent, the sphinx counters the first ability that targets it every turn, so they were not able to attack me for lethal damage and the third round ended in victory for me!

To sum it up, I was 3-3 in games played and didn’t mulligan once, but the games that I had 4-drops in my opener ended in victory, and the games I had 2-drops didn’t.

I didn’t get to attack even once or use the ability on my first pick Angel of Condemnation, and when Oketra was live she was unstoppable (I would have like to have a couple more ways to generate tokens and support her). I feel like if I had been able to draft more/better removal that I could have realistically ended up 2-1, as the big green creatures gave me trouble in both my losses. Perhaps I should have drafted green in the first place!

Thanks for taking the time to read, and remember to let the Woolie win!

Craig Simpson

Craig is a husband, and father of 4, living in the frozen north of Winnipeg, Manitoba. Outside of collecting cards to build old school decks with, he has a love for merfolk in modern and occasionally drafting online.

Strictly Short: AlmondCat Pre-Release Midnight

Jeremy Beardsley — Sat, 22 Apr 2017 14:16:26 +0000

Good morning friends and family. Here I am, exhausted and undercaffeinated after a late night of AlmondCat prerelease. Here’s to hoping you all are off to some events this weekend, and my brief notes will be useful for you. Let’s cover the humble brags first, because who doesn’t love it when our hero slays the evil mages at his LGS?

My Deck

I ended up building a pretty sweet Green Blue Fliers/Stompy deck. I was mainly focused on the double blue Cartouches that I opened, and learned some synergies as I went along. The low curve stuff didn’t perform as expected. The Slither Blade‘s seemed like they would be good, but it wasn’t until the later part of Round 2 when I finally drew them. They were mostly underwhelming but did get a bit of early damage in, before eating removal. This cleared the way for some great 2 drops. Bitterblade warriors were just Bears with upside and always did their job. I found Labyrinth Guardian to be very useful, with a great filterability and also leaving a good size body to save time for my bigger threats. Exemplar of Strength is a beast and when paired up with Cartouche of Knowledge, I was living in Value Town.

As the mana curve got larger my value just exploded with this deck. Manglehorn and Vizier of Tumbling Sands were just straight bodies, and their abilities had little effect on the game. Prowling Serpopard was just a beastly 4/3 that at one point had 2 Cartouches attached to him. Pouncing Cheetah proved to be super great in my matchups. Sometimes it was merely a 3 mana removal spell and in other times if my opponent didn’t have a fully developed board, I would flash the cat in on their End Step, and get in for 3 more damage on Turn 4. Crocodile of the Crossing is a Bomb in this limited format. From the 5 drop slot, Glyph Keeper did a heck of a job removing the drawback from the Crocodile and the Exemplar of Strength. This synergy was not immediately obvious to me until I actually had two of the cards in hand. This proved to be absolutely backbreaking for my opponent. I cast the Sphinx on turn 5, with life totals at or around 20. On turn 6, I cast the Crocodile, targeting the Sphinx and the ability was countered. I then swung for 10. The rest of the fliers were just icing on the cake.

The spell suite was pretty powerful, with the 2 Cartouches being pretty much the game-changers for me. I used Commit as a way to get me to my later threats, or to remove an attacker my opponent has pumped on an empty board, or attached an Enchantment to. Synchronized Strike is a killer combat trick and can turn an equal board state into a lopsided board state very quickly. Decision Paralysis was a great way to disrupt an opponents attack plan, and the Sheltered Thicket was just added value due to having 1 of my colors, and allowing me to Cycle when I needed to draw an extra card.

Last minute tips

If you are looking for trade value on sites like Pucatrade, make yourself a brief list of the most promoted cards, and trade for them between rounds. People are paying a premium right now for the ability to play their Standard Decks immediately when the cards are legal. This will allow you to get pretty slick deals on sends.
Don’t be afraid to try new things. I was very wary of my deck when I built it. I just knew I had value in these two colors, and wanted to try and see if they could work. And they did. I lost one game all night, and that was when my opponent landed a Liliana.
The cycle lands are good in limited, and it’s okay to play off color cycle lands just for straight value.
Creature Synergies seems good. Especially Zombie decks. There was one Zombie deck floating at the event that I was happy I didn’t face. The Lords make this deck idea very viable.
Interested in reading a prerelease primer by a seasoned pro? Try:
https://www.channelfireball.com/articles/the-amonkhet-prerelease-primer/

I will be attending at least 3 or 4 more events this weekend, and hope to keep you all posted on progress, and attempt to assist those of you playing tomorrow.

Good luck, and have fun out there.

-Strictly

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Jeremy Beardsley

Jeremy aka “Strictly Average” is an ‘average’ guy with ‘average’ plans. He is the creator and overboss of Strictly Average Gaming, which includes the Patreon group and StrictlyAverageMTG.com

https://strictlyaveragemtg.com

MTGO Aether Revolt Draft Video – BREAD Theory

Jeremy Beardsley — Wed, 01 Mar 2017 04:11:58 +0000

Join me for my first Draft Video. I attempt to apply the BREAD Theory in this draft. Feel free to give feedback on the deck, and I will make modifications and record match videos this weekend with the modified deck.

Good Luck and Have Fun!
Strictly

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Jeremy Beardsley

https://strictlyaveragemtg.com

Drafting Level Up – BREAD Theory

Jeremy Beardsley — Mon, 20 Feb 2017 20:08:39 +0000

Recently, I was discussing my recent draft level up article with a friend, and we began to hash out more ideas for articles. We started talking about his current draft, where he was passed 4 copies of Hungry Flames and opened a Fatal Push. The two of us went back and forth about our personal drafting theory and how we value cards. As I was explaining my approach, he said ‘So you use BREAD theory?’ I had no idea what he meant by this since I’d never heard anyone talk about it. He told me to go home and look it up so I could write about it because it would make for a great Level Up article.

Much to my surprise, this is a very well documented approach to drafting. BREAD is an acronym for how to evaluate cards during the draft. The letters stand for: Bombs, Removal, Evasion, Aggro, Duds/Dregs. I’ll go through each of these categories and list out a handful of cards that fall into each one. Keep in mind while considering this approach to drafting that this is a series of guidelines, not hard and strict rules. Sometimes switching colors to acquire a Bomb or Removal card makes sense, while other times it is just silly and will make your deck worse off. The tricky part about becoming better at Limited is to learn when it is correct to make a drastic change or not.

Bombs

These cards are exactly what the name implies. They are the cards that are usually picked first for a very good reason. A Bomb is a card that needs to be answered, or it can completely take over the game. Some traditional examples of Bombs are massive creatures that are hard to interact with or Planeswalkers. Usually, these are the cards that will force a player into a particular color because they know if they can resolve a bomb, they’ll be winning the game. In the context of Aether Revolt, some of the bombs I’ve observed are Exquisite Archangel, Herald Of Anguish, Lightning Runner, Battle At the Bridge, and Heart of Kiran.

Removal

This is my personal favorite type of card to draft. Having answers to my opponents threats is a good way to open the door for my threats to do their job, and win me the game. Removal cards are answers to threats played by an opponent. These cards can often directly kill (or otherwise disable) opponents creatures or permanents. This category can even include combat tricks that may help your creatures survive while killing your opponent’s creature. Removal can be tricky because not all removal is created equal. Some removal cards use mana inefficiently which can put you far behind on tempo. Aether Revolt is loaded with interesting removal and just a few examples of them are Fatal Push, Caught in the Brights, Shock, Hungry Flames, Thopter Arrest, Cruel Finality, Foundry Hornet, Yahenni’s Expertise, Monsterous Onslaught and Natural Obsolescence. For a full list of removal check out the Aether Revolt Removal List on MTGGoldfish.

Evasion

Evasion creatures are the bread (no pun intended) and butter of a successful draft deck. These are creatures that are hard to block or hard to interact with. The first obvious type of evasion is Flying but some of the other important keywords in the evasion category would be Menace, Unblockable, Deathtouch, Double Strike, and First Strike. These creatures should be prioritized higher than ‘vanilla’ creatures with very little keywords or abilities. In the case of Aether Revolt, I would add mana efficient hard to kill creatures to this list, mainly because of cards like Lifecraft Cavalry. Some of the best evasive threats in AER are Dawnfeather Eagle, Aethertide Whale, Aether Swooper, Solemn Recruit, Aether Chaser, Glint-Sleeve Siphoner, Scrapper Champion, Greenbelt Rampager, Ridgescale Tusker, and Outland Boar. In deeper discussions with some seasoned Limited players, they kind of treat this category as a catch-all for good spells. Others would add cards like Tezzeret’s Touch and Weldfast Engineer in this bucket since they are very synergistic with this set.

Aggro

This heading is for aggressive creatures and other serviceable spells. Your draft will typically be comprised of many cards from this category. One to two of this level of the card will not determine the direct outcome of a draft, but having a series of good aggro cards will contribute positively to the number of prizes that can be collected at the end of an event. In this current draft format, I would be happy with a deck filled out with cards such as Winding Constrictor, Silkweaver Elite, Countless Gears Renegade, Aetherstream Leopard, Audacious Infiltrator, Scrounging Bandar, Narnam Renegade, and Greenwheel Liberator.

Duds and Dregs

These are usually the last cards picked, and add little or no value to a draft deck. I usually make a pile closer to my deck box of these, because I hope that I will not end up playing these in my deck. These are the cards that I will actually be upset with if I end up getting them as the last card. Cards like Secret Salvage have little or no business getting sleeved into a draft deck. This category can also include cards that require a setup that is just plain not worth the payoff.

I hope this little primer on BREAD theory was informative and useful. Please feel free to leave a comment below with questions, concerns, feedback, or just to say Hello.

Good Luck and Have Fun!
-Strictly

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Jeremy Beardsley

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Strictly Level Up – Mana Fixing a Bad Draft

Jeremy Beardsley — Sun, 22 Jan 2017 02:36:28 +0000

One of the most common complaints I run into from drafters at local events is that they got mana screwed all night long. Although it is mathematically possible to draw bad mana for an entire event, there’s usually a deeper cause than just bad luck. Many times after someone complains about their mana situation at an FNM I ask if they mind if I take a look at their deck. Many things can be learned by analyzing a mana base of a draft deck, and it is surprising how many people just slap lands into their deck and hope for the best.

40 cards! No more, no less.

The first two things that I look at is the total land count and total card count. Forty cards are the legal minimum number of cards in a draft deck and it is highly recommended that this number is adhered to. A 40 card draft deck will give you the most chance of drawing the cards you need to win and the lands you need to cast them. It is surprising how many people up there card counts to 45 or 50, without considering the impact on their mana.

The accepted standard for land count is 17, and I have seen many successful draft decks with 18. Anymore, there is a risk of getting flooded and any less there is a risk for not drawing enough lands. I usually will up my land count to 18 if I have a high-cost spell or creature that I know will win me the game and I want to make sure I draw enough lands throughout the course of the game.

Stick to two colors

Another major mistake I see is drafters forcing three colors. In the current format, there is little mana fixing to help with this. Being greedy with three different colors is a surefire way to guarantee not drawing the proper mana when it is needed. There are many arguments that can be made against my stance on this, but I see all too often people saying ‘I would have won that game if I only drew the right mana for my bomb.’ Splashing for a win condition is useless if the card becomes uncastable in most games because of diluted mana. Two-color decks are far more consistent and give you a higher percent chance to win your match than spiking just once or twice throughout the night.

Determining Land Count

Throughout the years I have heard and observed dozens of different approaches to deciding how many of each basic land type to add to a deck. I prefer simple math to figure out my mana base. It is far easier than most people think. I simply add up the total mana symbols for each symbol in my deck and look at the ratios.

Let us use my 3-0 draft deck from last night as an example. I had 15 white mana symbols and 10 green symbols. Simple math tells me that I have a 3 to 2 ratio of white spells to green spells and my mana base should be 3 to 2 in favor of plans. I split my lands out to be 10 plains and 7 forests. A 10 to 7 split isn’t inherently a 3 to 2 ratio, but I simply added lands in that ratio until I was over my count of 17 lands. This left me with a count of 12 and 9, and I took 2 out from each to get to my number of 17. This math isn’t exact, but it brings me close enough to where I felt confident.

When I started implementing these simple guidelines for my mana base I found that my issues around being able to cast my cards seemed to almost go away. Magic is a game of variance, so there is always random bad draws and rough runs on mana. I prefer to ensure that when I lose to variance, it really is variance and not poor deck building.

I hope you learned something from my mistakes. Please leave a comment or reach out to me on Twitter and let me know what you liked in this article, what you hated or what you would rather have read about.

Don’t Forget to laugh,
Strictly

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Jeremy Beardsley

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