Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Drafting GB in M14

Been getting back on track with my M14 drafting. My last three 3-0's have been GB decks. It is definitely apparent that blue is being over-drafted at this point online. If you are joining an 8-4 queue, I'd recommend taking a black, green, or red card over a comparable blue card early in drafts. If you notice blue is in fact open, jump all over it, but it just hasn't happened often lately for me. 

I have been having a lot of success with both BR sacrifice and GB good stuff. Check out the decks below to get an idea of what you want to be looking for with GB. Focusing on as much black removal as you can find, the best green creatures you can find, and a howl of the night pack is a good recipe. Of course getting some solid finishers like a Sengir or Kalonian hydra helps too. If you have specific questions about how to draft this kind of deck definitely post em below or ask me on twitter @bchap55 .




Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Having a Plan

Sorry for the delay between posts, I have still been drafting 2-4 times most days, with a break on the weekend. I had a pretty brutal stretch of 5-6 second round exits where the games were very close and my opponents ended up winning the draft. The last few days I have been redeeming myself a bit with a win, and two losses in the finals which were also very close. I felt like I have been drafting very competitive decks for the most part. I wanted to share my last three decks:

This one finished 3-0, and as you can tell from the sideboard it was a bit of a train wreck. I was mainly UG but eventually green dried up and I got passed a Sengir/Liturgy so I delved into black. I picked up a late mark of the vampire which seemed good with my phantom warriors. It was! The deck was not great, but it had a plan - suit up phantom warrior and try to race. With the help of duress, which nabbed key removal spells, I was able to do this all three rounds. 

This is one thing I have been learning watching some higher level players stream - Owen Turtenwald, Cheon, etc, and they bring up the need for a plan pretty often. Both while drafting and also a plan for a given threat or game in general. This has helped my drafting and playing quite a bit. You should be thinking of compelling reasons to do just about anything from making a draft pick to playing a removal spell or creature. If you can't come up with a good reason/plan, you probably shouldn't make the pick or play. Of course it takes a ton of experience to know what the right pick/play is at any given time, and that is what I am trying to work on going into this season.

Here are a few more decks I drafted that lost 2-1 in the finals. Both of these decks crushed the first two rounds and had very close finals that could have gone either way.



I have decided that I am definitely going to the NYC PTQ on September 14th. I wish I could have made it to GP Oakland, but I couldn't get the time off from work. The PTQ will be the only serious M14 limited event I will be able to attend, so I hope all of my practice allows me to go deep in it. In the end, like I stated at the outset, I just need to sharpen up my game in general, which I believe has been going reasonably well so far. If I have any more interesting drafts, I will make a post to talk about them, but the next post you may see will be my pool from the PTQ. 

Thanks for reading,

Ben
@bchap55


Tuesday, August 13, 2013

M14 Draft thoughts and a Sealed Pool

Been grinding a bunch of M14 drafts since my last post with average to poor results. Have tried to stray from base blue decks to try out other archetypes, with bad results generally. I have had a few good green decks running Howl of the Nightpack along with spiders and baloths to stall. 

Blue is pretty clearly the best color, but I have been beaten by non-Blue decks that just have excellent cards in other colors. If you can assemble a bunch of top 2-3 pick quality cards, any color combo will work given enough of them. For example White is widely regarded as the worst color, and it is certainly has the weakest commons, but if you can put together a number of Serra Angels and Seraph of the Swords along with Pacifisms, you can get there.

You certainly want to jump on blue if it looks remotely available, but if not, you can try to rely on seeing what is open and trying to get the best cards in those colors. Pretty basic strategy, but it seems to be the way to go. Trying to jam slivers or RB sacrifice for example has led to some pretty disastrous results. You probably want to just draft the top pick cards and if after those you can pick up cards for one of the niche archetypes then go for it at that point. Trying to slam bubbling cauldron/act of treason over top pick quality red/black cards just hasn't been a good move early on. 



I'll leave you with an interesting sealed pool. At first I was super excited by the deck I had made, but it has some key flaws that led to a 2-2 drop in a premier event. The pool appears to be a little threat light, which turns it is a problem in the format. You need a legit plan to win, and the deck I built was pretty soft to a handful of spot removal. It is VERY hard to just not play red or black though given the bombs in black and the removal in red. Would love to hear how others would build this. Part of me wanted to go deep with the Angelic Accords + Cauldron, but I couldn't bring myself to do it.


Thanks for reading.

-Ben
@bchap55

Tuesday, August 6, 2013

Strange Night

Draft

So to continue practice this week I have done a few more drafts, with some more success but essentially breaking even. Did 3-0 one with a sold GW deck featuring Serra Angel, Seraph of the Sword, a solid curve. I also lost in a close finals with this sweet brew:


Yes, I did live the dream of having double Blightcaster out followed by Quag sickness to wipe the opponent's board. I actually ended up frequently siding out a Gladecover scout for naturalize/giant growth/ranger's guile depending on match up. I don't love necessarily running any scouts, but I did take down a sweet one with a fully suited up scout, Dark Favor, Troll hide, and mark of the vampire. That got there.

Premier Sealed Event

I signed up for what I thought was the sealed premier event that started at 5:30. I set an alarm, took a nap, and woke up to find out it started at 5:00! I had 16 minutes left on my clock for round one and a 140 card deck. I lost game one and then took a look at my pool. 3 minutes for deck building! I was pretty upset to see a very strong pool...perhaps the best I've had yet. I am conflicted because I ended up going x-2 and making 12th for 9 packs. On the other hand it could have been a pretty easy top 8...as I lost all of my game ones except in the finals when I had academy raider + mark of the vampire vs a GW deck with essentially no removal.

I started out trying GU which worked okay, but after I picked up my first loss to the mana base, I revisted the pool. I noticed the white cards actually had double pacifism, which I somehow missed at first. They also were a lot easier on the mana and fit the curve a bit better because of that. I had some very close games, but also some big blowouts. Kalonian Hydra is pretty hard to beat. Here is the pool and the GW deck I ran:


I'm signed up for one of the last 64 man draft tournaments tonight...hopefully I don't sleep through that one!

-Ben
@bchap55

Saturday, August 3, 2013

First week of drafting

Got in quite a bit of drafting this week. I started off super hot winning out-right in 4 of 6 drafts. I also opened some more money rares and was sitting at 30+ packs and 50-60 tickets when I had around 5 tickets and obviously no packs going into M14 release events. My rating also jumped from 1760ish to 1860ish. 

I was able to have a ton of success with multiple near mono blue decks splashing first pick cards in other colors. I chalk this up to people not yet understanding how good blue is in M14. The commons are very strong and cards like Opportunity and Air Servant are some of the best uncommons. Drafts certainly got harder as the week progressed...blue was drying up a lot sooner and I was forced to try some other archetypes with much less success. 

While the format seems to generally lend itself to long and grindy games, I have run into a decent number of white based aggro decks that can definitely punish a stumbling player. Master of diversion is key in these decks. I have also seen a few RWG sliver decks that can have a pretty nasty curve, but also can stumble themselves as their mana is generally not great.

I did a 108 player premier event sealed tourny and ended up 5-2, not making top 8. The deck was okay, my losses were to similar RG aggro decks that curved me out slightly faster than I could curve them out. My wins were fairly decisive. Here is the deck, feel free to discuss what I should have played instead. I often sided out the Brindle Boars for plummet and naturalize. Perhaps I should have just mained the spells? I felt I would be short creatures in that case though.



 

I plan to draft more next week and try to do a few more sealed decks as well. Thanks for reading!