Now I know I'm not an incredible Magic player, but I don't feel like I'm absolutely terrible also. I keep up with the general meta and I'm always keeping up on common draft strategies/meta via popular YouTube channels and articles.
That said, I've been on quite a losing streak. I've won abut 9 games in the last 23 I've played. It's quite frustrating considering I was consistently going 2-1 on every draft before the release of Eldritch Moon. My last draft I went 0-3 and the 3 before that I went 1-2.
Any feedback on your personal losing streaks? How did you push the the aggravation of losing over and over again even though you didn't feel as if you drafted a terrible deck?
For example, attached is my last draft deck. This is the deck that I went 0-3 with. (Every individual game going 0-2) I'm fairly confident I didn't make any game-losing mistakes. It just felt like every game was just completely unwinnable.
Any advice for a player who is getting aggravated to the point of quitting limited magic for a while because of this losing streak?
Also please feel free to critique my deck building. I don't feel like it's a bad deck, but I'm sure mistakes could be found with it. Any advice helps in that regard.
What pulled you into blue? I don't see any huge payoffs so I'm wondering if there was better cards that could have been picked up instead. Also panharmonicon seems like it is only getting extra energy but no real energy payoffs. Also too many 4+ drops, this format seems to be faster than this. There are many ways to pump up small creatures (goggles, pump spells) and decent amount of removal to beat slightly larger ones so try to draft more 2 and 3 drops. What were your other picks? Maybe you could have lowered your curve some.
You also don't seem to have enough unconditional removal or evasiveness to go with the lockdown type you have. Like the previous poster said try to draft a plan not just a deck of cards.
The secret to weathering losing streaks, and most other things in life, is self-confidence.
Many players will tell you to study the game more, watch other players stream drafts, listen to Limited Resources podcasts, read articles on draft strategy, post draftcaps here, and analyze your past wins and losses and what worked and what didn't. These are all good tips, and they will all help you improve as a player. But the far bigger barrier is the emotional one. If you are frustrated from losing so much, then you won't be able to really take advantage of those tools to learn and improve as effectively. Mindset counts for a lot.
One mistake I see players making a lot is assuming "I'm good at drafting old format X" means "I should be good at drafting the new format." Draft strategy can change a lot. You might have been very good at Eldritch Moon, but Kaladesh is a faster format. If you don't adapt to the new format and new synergies, you're going to see worse performance. It's important to adjust to each format. If you read through the "venting" thread, you'll see many players initially frustrated with their performance in Kaladesh due to format differences.
Kaladesh is fast and favors attacking. That means you either have to be fast aggro or dedicated control with big defense. The usual midrange decks are bad. Also, the mechanics heavily reward synergy. If you are playing energy, you want a lot of energy. If you are playing "artifacts matter", you want a lot of artifacts. If you are playing Servos, you want a lot of Servos. If you are playing the +1/+1 counters deck, you want a lot of those cards.
It looks like you tried to draft this like any other format:
1) Only 3 2-drop creatures! That's very slow. You need more early creatures to interact with other early creatures. With only 3 2-drops and 4 3-drops, you're going to have a hard time blocking early and crewing Renegade Freighter.
2) A whopping 4 4-drop creatures and 4 5-drop creatures! Your curve is very top-heavy. It's going to take too long for you to put creatures on the table, while fast opponents just stomp through you and kill you
3) Why did you go blue? Your blue card pool looks very weak, other than Malfunction and the 4-drop flyer. There might have been something better in other colors that you missed.
4) Panharmonicon is bad without proper stuff to abuse it. In your deck, it just doubles energy generation. That's not worth a card slot. You might want to rare draft this for Commander, but don't include it in your maindeck.
5) You fell a bit short on the energy plan. 2 Thriving Rhino are great and the Tiger is good too, but that's really all you can do with energy. Deadlock Trap is pretty slow. I have never maindecked it. If you are drafting an energy deck, you want to prioritize picking things that use energy for profit and things that make incidental energy. Ideally you should have more energy stuff (not Puzzleknots though).
6) As mentioned, Blademaster requires you to be spell-heavy and Wingsmith requires you to have a lot of artifacts. You're pulling the synergy in too many directions. These cards are conditionally bad in your deck because you lack instants and lack artifacts, and these cards don't help push the energy plan. If you cut the bad artifacts, you'd have even fewer artifacts. Wingsmith is basically just a Hill Giant for you. Commit to one synergy plan and draft it heavily.
7) Someone else said you lack removal. I think you're actually doing pretty well with Nature's Way, Malfunction, Aether Meltdown and Welding Sparks. You even knew to splash to get extra removal. The problem is that the color combination UG tends to struggle to have good removal, in most formats. What this means is that in order to go UG, you usually want some strong synergy or powerful cards. Otherwise why commit to those colors? You were lucky to grab some decent removal (considering that you are UG), but I still don't see what pulled you into blue over other colors.
Hopefully some of that advice helps. Good luck. Next time maybe try recording your draftcap and posting it here so people can give feedback on pick and color choices.
I don't actually think the curve is that bad for this deck: 4 is generally the magic number of 2 drops needed to get one 75% of the time on the play, but I wouldn't call 3 2 drops and 4 3 drops "very slow". 4 4 drops and 3 5 drops isn't really that bad either depending on the deck.
The main problem with this deck is the combination of the individual cards being below average on power level, and the lack of synergies/gameplan. Now, UG usually falls under this camp if you can't get the combo pieces going, but consider how many cards you're playing that are filler or below filler tier, and how many cards will actually carry a game on their shoulders. In this deck, those types of cards are Arborback Stomper, Thriving Rhino, Riparian Tiger, Long-Finned Skywhale, Renegade Freighter, and Ballista Charger. These set of cards encourage a "win the ground with fat guys and push through for damage" type of deck, so let's see what cards don't fit that gameplan well - Wind Drake, Weldfast Wingsmith, Veldaken Blademaster, Panharmonicon, Wild Wanderer, Nimble Innovator, etc. One last thing is that your energy payoffs aren't strong enough to warrant playing cards that don't advance your gameplan - Sage in particular seems very weak, as long as the hermit.
UG is generally in an awkward position since it's most powerful archetype wants to be UGr combo splashing for energy payoffs. The UG deck that doesn't get there tends to be just UG good stuff splashing for removal. The main thing with that deck is that it doesn't want the smaller blue creatures like Wind Drake, Veldalken Blademaster etc, since that doesn't fit the plan of big dumb guy beatdown. Maybe take a look at your draft and see if there were cases where you could have taken cards that fit the gameplan more than that: perhaps a Aethertorch Renegade, Whirler Virtuoso, or even Ornamental Courage or Cowl Prowler would have fit the plan much better. Sometimes the draft just ends up this way though and you're forced to play below average cards, but be mindful of when you could have pivoted into another color combination and if there were signals pushing you into other colors.
Personally, I usually try to stay out of blue in this format unless I get a bomb like Confiscation Coup or Aethersquall Ancient, along with some strong signals that blue is open.
Looking at your draft, I'm not sure what pushed you into blue in the first place, because you don't have the bombs, and you also don't have high-end commons and uncommons aside from the single Malfunction. There's also the aforementioned focus issues (you've got energy cards, aggressive cards, control cards, the deck is kind of all over the place). You do have the makings of a very solid green energy deck, though -- I'd be happy to have any of the green cards except maybe Wild Wanderer. I probably would have gone GR, or maybe GB or GW depending on what was open. Then again, it's entirely possible that none of those colors were open and you just got unlucky with the draft.
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Now I know I'm not an incredible Magic player, but I don't feel like I'm absolutely terrible also. I keep up with the general meta and I'm always keeping up on common draft strategies/meta via popular YouTube channels and articles.
That said, I've been on quite a losing streak. I've won abut 9 games in the last 23 I've played. It's quite frustrating considering I was consistently going 2-1 on every draft before the release of Eldritch Moon. My last draft I went 0-3 and the 3 before that I went 1-2.
Any feedback on your personal losing streaks? How did you push the the aggravation of losing over and over again even though you didn't feel as if you drafted a terrible deck?
For example, attached is my last draft deck. This is the deck that I went 0-3 with. (Every individual game going 0-2) I'm fairly confident I didn't make any game-losing mistakes. It just felt like every game was just completely unwinnable.
Any advice for a player who is getting aggravated to the point of quitting limited magic for a while because of this losing streak?
Also please feel free to critique my deck building. I don't feel like it's a bad deck, but I'm sure mistakes could be found with it. Any advice helps in that regard.
You also don't seem to have enough unconditional removal or evasiveness to go with the lockdown type you have. Like the previous poster said try to draft a plan not just a deck of cards.
Many players will tell you to study the game more, watch other players stream drafts, listen to Limited Resources podcasts, read articles on draft strategy, post draftcaps here, and analyze your past wins and losses and what worked and what didn't. These are all good tips, and they will all help you improve as a player. But the far bigger barrier is the emotional one. If you are frustrated from losing so much, then you won't be able to really take advantage of those tools to learn and improve as effectively. Mindset counts for a lot.
One mistake I see players making a lot is assuming "I'm good at drafting old format X" means "I should be good at drafting the new format." Draft strategy can change a lot. You might have been very good at Eldritch Moon, but Kaladesh is a faster format. If you don't adapt to the new format and new synergies, you're going to see worse performance. It's important to adjust to each format. If you read through the "venting" thread, you'll see many players initially frustrated with their performance in Kaladesh due to format differences.
Kaladesh is fast and favors attacking. That means you either have to be fast aggro or dedicated control with big defense. The usual midrange decks are bad. Also, the mechanics heavily reward synergy. If you are playing energy, you want a lot of energy. If you are playing "artifacts matter", you want a lot of artifacts. If you are playing Servos, you want a lot of Servos. If you are playing the +1/+1 counters deck, you want a lot of those cards.
It looks like you tried to draft this like any other format:
1) Only 3 2-drop creatures! That's very slow. You need more early creatures to interact with other early creatures. With only 3 2-drops and 4 3-drops, you're going to have a hard time blocking early and crewing Renegade Freighter.
2) A whopping 4 4-drop creatures and 4 5-drop creatures! Your curve is very top-heavy. It's going to take too long for you to put creatures on the table, while fast opponents just stomp through you and kill you
3) Why did you go blue? Your blue card pool looks very weak, other than Malfunction and the 4-drop flyer. There might have been something better in other colors that you missed.
4) Panharmonicon is bad without proper stuff to abuse it. In your deck, it just doubles energy generation. That's not worth a card slot. You might want to rare draft this for Commander, but don't include it in your maindeck.
5) You fell a bit short on the energy plan. 2 Thriving Rhino are great and the Tiger is good too, but that's really all you can do with energy. Deadlock Trap is pretty slow. I have never maindecked it. If you are drafting an energy deck, you want to prioritize picking things that use energy for profit and things that make incidental energy. Ideally you should have more energy stuff (not Puzzleknots though).
6) As mentioned, Blademaster requires you to be spell-heavy and Wingsmith requires you to have a lot of artifacts. You're pulling the synergy in too many directions. These cards are conditionally bad in your deck because you lack instants and lack artifacts, and these cards don't help push the energy plan. If you cut the bad artifacts, you'd have even fewer artifacts. Wingsmith is basically just a Hill Giant for you. Commit to one synergy plan and draft it heavily.
7) Someone else said you lack removal. I think you're actually doing pretty well with Nature's Way, Malfunction, Aether Meltdown and Welding Sparks. You even knew to splash to get extra removal. The problem is that the color combination UG tends to struggle to have good removal, in most formats. What this means is that in order to go UG, you usually want some strong synergy or powerful cards. Otherwise why commit to those colors? You were lucky to grab some decent removal (considering that you are UG), but I still don't see what pulled you into blue over other colors.
Hopefully some of that advice helps. Good luck. Next time maybe try recording your draftcap and posting it here so people can give feedback on pick and color choices.
The main problem with this deck is the combination of the individual cards being below average on power level, and the lack of synergies/gameplan. Now, UG usually falls under this camp if you can't get the combo pieces going, but consider how many cards you're playing that are filler or below filler tier, and how many cards will actually carry a game on their shoulders. In this deck, those types of cards are Arborback Stomper, Thriving Rhino, Riparian Tiger, Long-Finned Skywhale, Renegade Freighter, and Ballista Charger. These set of cards encourage a "win the ground with fat guys and push through for damage" type of deck, so let's see what cards don't fit that gameplan well - Wind Drake, Weldfast Wingsmith, Veldaken Blademaster, Panharmonicon, Wild Wanderer, Nimble Innovator, etc. One last thing is that your energy payoffs aren't strong enough to warrant playing cards that don't advance your gameplan - Sage in particular seems very weak, as long as the hermit.
UG is generally in an awkward position since it's most powerful archetype wants to be UGr combo splashing for energy payoffs. The UG deck that doesn't get there tends to be just UG good stuff splashing for removal. The main thing with that deck is that it doesn't want the smaller blue creatures like Wind Drake, Veldalken Blademaster etc, since that doesn't fit the plan of big dumb guy beatdown. Maybe take a look at your draft and see if there were cases where you could have taken cards that fit the gameplan more than that: perhaps a Aethertorch Renegade, Whirler Virtuoso, or even Ornamental Courage or Cowl Prowler would have fit the plan much better. Sometimes the draft just ends up this way though and you're forced to play below average cards, but be mindful of when you could have pivoted into another color combination and if there were signals pushing you into other colors.
Looking at your draft, I'm not sure what pushed you into blue in the first place, because you don't have the bombs, and you also don't have high-end commons and uncommons aside from the single Malfunction. There's also the aforementioned focus issues (you've got energy cards, aggressive cards, control cards, the deck is kind of all over the place). You do have the makings of a very solid green energy deck, though -- I'd be happy to have any of the green cards except maybe Wild Wanderer. I probably would have gone GR, or maybe GB or GW depending on what was open. Then again, it's entirely possible that none of those colors were open and you just got unlucky with the draft.