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