Money drafts are legit. They're popular amongst pro players as recreation at GPs/PTs etc. The format is, as I understand it, typically a 2-vs-2 draft in which teammates sit opposite one another. The strategy is very different from normal draft, because hatedrafting is actually good and confusing the players adjacent to you is a winning move!
Are you sure about the hatedrafting thing? I've heard that advice several times but I don't think it's right. The increased incentive to hatedraft is that making your deck stronger affects your team's chances of winning on the same scale as much as making one of your opponent's decks weaker (i.e. both of you contribute to 1/3 of the games played for your team assuming you're playing 3v3).
However, it is difficult to know with any degree of certainty which person at the table would end up with the card that you are considering hatedrafting. Also, if there's more than one playable card in your target opponent's colors, you are only making their deck stronger by the relative value of the hatedrafted card and his/her second best option. Considerations like these make it so that the factor by which the hatedrafted card's power exceeds the best card for your deck's power must be quite a bit higher than 1 (which is the factor suggested by the aforementioned argument for hatedrafting) for your to reach indifference between the two options.
Edit: But I agree that sending terrible signals (with the caveat that you are picking the strongest card regardless of color and not explicitly hatedrafting) can probably be a viable strategy if you think your ability draft a coherent deck from relatively bad cards while receiving bad signals exceeds that of the opponents to either side of you.
As I'm rather new to the format and there seems to be very little strategic information online, I'd like to pick this forum's collective brain on the subject (strategies, tips, tricks). Thanks for your help!
I think 'pretty decent 2-of' is a perfectly reasonable description of Fleshmad Steed. Doesn't mean you're running 2 in every single black deck, just that you're not unhappy to have 2 in the deck.
Why not RB? The creature base is roughly as strong as the RW deck's and the sac synergies give it some actual power. All the creatures Fireshrieker is good on in RW are also in RB.
There is a huge difference between drawing a card and casting an exiled card for only
the turn the ability was activated. In decks where you want to have more cards in your hand at all times (midrange/control), this ability is mediocre at best because it doesn't actually let you keep the card. It probably be much wiser to play blue/black for its ability to gain actual CA instead of playing red for Chandra.
Her first ability doesn't really counteract aggro as her casting cost prohibits her from being played early on in the game to stabilize, it really reads: target creature can't block and opponent takes one. I'm not sure if I'd want to spend 4 mana doing that.
Thanks for your input. There isn't a huge difference in an aggro shell though, which was my point. Consider the following scenarios:
1) The card is a land - Chandra's 0 is functionally "draw a card"
2) The card is a creature - with >=4 mana, this is incredibly close to "draw a card."
3) The card is a non-creature spell - might encourage you throw burn indiscriminately to use your mana effectively but is still probably worth half a card; this is the worst of the three scenarios, but also the least likely.
Overall, Chandra's 0 roughly reads "Draw .95* cards on average" in a generic aggro shell (*note: semi-arbitrary number, a rough guesstimate). The funny thing is, it gets better in both a deck that wants the ability to throw burn around indiscriminately and in a deck without much burn (creature-heavy decks like the current Domri builds, though a Chandra creature-heavy deck wants a lower curve than a Domri one). As a side note, Domri's +1 is "draw .5 cards on average" in its best case scenario. In essence, Chandra is much more versatile, which makes her viable in more types of decks. She also need not be weaker than Domri in decks built to support her (we should recall that Domri took a while to wake up because people were hesitant to build around him too).
In his article on SCG yesterday, Brian Kibler said the following: "I haven't actually played with Naya lately, but I think it has a chance to be very well positioned. I'd be scared to play against Jund with Lifebane Zombie, but I'd definitely try the same plan I used in G/R against it: Chandra, Pyromaster. Chandra can help clear out Lifebane Zombies as well as pave the way for your Loxodon Smiters to attack past Thragtusks and the like. I'm not really a financial expert by any means, but I suggest picking up Chandras while they're still relatively cheap. I'm fairly certain she's the real deal and that she's going to continue to make her impact felt for the duration of her time in Standard."
I also think this card is incredibly strong. Most people are testing her in midrange shells but I believe she is strongest in an aggressive strategy. Here's why (kind of unstructured, but please bear with me):
1) Her +1 is very versatile and very underrated. It's good against many potential post-rotation staples such as Lifebane Zombie, Sin Collector, Elvish Mystic, Voice, Smiter, Blood Baron, Ooze, AEtherling, Archangel of Thune, Trostani, Boros Reckoner (so long as you're not running an army of X/1s), Firefist Striker, Imposing Sovereign, Young Pyromancer, etc. It also makes planeswalkers like Jace, Ral, and Vraska (and Domri, to an extent) really sad. In an aggressive strategy, this ability is most useful against midrange decks but also has uses in the aggro mirror (lets you race on the play and picks off random dudes) and control matchups (mainly makes planeswalkers miserable but might just get you there before they can Revelate).
2) Her 0 allows you to fight on another axis and shores up a key weakness that red decks usually have. With a low curve, this ability is straight up draw a card. This is much less restrictive that Domri's +1 with respect to deckbuilding so you don't have to warp your deck and play potentially weaker cards. Against the aggro mirror, if you're at least close to parity, Chandra +1s the turn she comes down then buries the other guy in card advantage (if she doesn't just enable a favorable race with repeated +1s). She can't pull you back from the grave when you're very far behind, but very few cards can. Bonfire's rotating and Mortars is already in your deck. Against midrange, you'll probably be using her +1 over and over but if they've stabilized, her 0 is red's best option to regain control of the game. Against control, the card draw helps you recover from Verdicts and just removal spells in general. It might even let you fight through the first Revelation.
3) I don't factor her ultimate much into my evaluation, and quite frankly, I don't think it's very strong due to the possibility of just whiffing (even with 8 burn spells left in 45 cards, you have a 10% chance of whiffing). If you think it's any good, that just makes her all that much stronger.
4) She can't protect herself but she doesn't need to in an aggro shell. Protection is most useful against decks that can attack you back. If an aggro deck spends resources attacking Chandra, you're probably going to win the race (you're only +1ing and attacking because you think you can, otherwise you sit back and 0, trading resources until you bury them). I don't see any non-corner cases where a midrange deck can start attacking Chandra effectively.
5) Her high loyalty makes it harder to burn her out (+1 makes Warleader's Helix especially sad) and also helps with #4.
6) She also might be playable in midrange (people have been either testing or actually playing her in Jund, Naya, and Dega). She even showed up maindeck (as a two-of, I think) in Team Hungary's Finals Jund deck during Worlds (although the format was Team Unified Standard, so take this result with a grain of salt).
The card is already spiking on MTGO; it's now the second highest priced M14 card behind Archangel. There are still paper copies floating around under $12. Is it time to move? Tags added. -Galspanic
Don't get me wrong, good card, but I hate having myself wanting to draw lands in the late game to cast a 7 mana spell that might not win on the spot...A billion things I'd take over it. What do you guys think?
Howl hedges well against flooding out, which is especially useful if you have other powerful high drops that make you want to run more lands. The effect of getting 3+ bodies on the board can range from mediocre (inducing or maintaining a board stall) to game-ending (opening up a lethal alpha strike the next turn). The variance on this card seems, in theory and practice, pretty high; this precludes it from being a particularly high pick. In an average draft, I'd be happy to pick this up 4-7th pick. However, it's not the strongest signal that heavy green is open (late Baloths and Tuskars would be much better in this regard, and in power level) just because I think other people under value this card a bit.
Flames is the best red uncommon by a far margin. I only meant that, out of those five cards I listed (The pseudo-cycle of uncommon bombs), the red one was by far the worse.
This is untrue. Flames is roughly as powerful as Serra Angel (which is the best of the five).
Are you sure about the hatedrafting thing? I've heard that advice several times but I don't think it's right. The increased incentive to hatedraft is that making your deck stronger affects your team's chances of winning on the same scale as much as making one of your opponent's decks weaker (i.e. both of you contribute to 1/3 of the games played for your team assuming you're playing 3v3).
However, it is difficult to know with any degree of certainty which person at the table would end up with the card that you are considering hatedrafting. Also, if there's more than one playable card in your target opponent's colors, you are only making their deck stronger by the relative value of the hatedrafted card and his/her second best option. Considerations like these make it so that the factor by which the hatedrafted card's power exceeds the best card for your deck's power must be quite a bit higher than 1 (which is the factor suggested by the aforementioned argument for hatedrafting) for your to reach indifference between the two options.
Edit: But I agree that sending terrible signals (with the caveat that you are picking the strongest card regardless of color and not explicitly hatedrafting) can probably be a viable strategy if you think your ability draft a coherent deck from relatively bad cards while receiving bad signals exceeds that of the opponents to either side of you.
Rules are here (ctrl-f "team draft"): https://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtgcom/daily/sw31
You usually play for either the rares in the packs or $$$, the latter payoff being why it is sometimes called a money draft.
Edit: For those unfamiliar with the rules, here they are (ctrl-f "team draft"): https://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtgcom/daily/sw31
I'd be very unhappy to have two in a deck.
2 vaporkin
2 shipwreck singer
1 blood-toll harpy
1 wavecrash triton
1 opaline unicorn
1 burnished hart
1 guardians of meletis
1 akroan horse
1 disciple of phenax
1 horizon chimera
2 sealock monster
1 prescient chimera
1 benthic giant
1 abhorrent overlord
1 time to feed
1 griptide
1 rescue from the underworld
1 lash of the whip
1 sip of hemlock
lands
2 forest
8 swamp
8 island
2 shredding winds
1 nessian asp
1 march of the returned
1 bronze sable
1 triton shorethief
1 guardians of meletis
Where were you getting these for $2 a pop?
Then again, you're running 14 creatures in an aggro deck, three of which are garbage in an aggro deck (wall, hatchling in heavy W, and auramancer).
Thanks for your input. There isn't a huge difference in an aggro shell though, which was my point. Consider the following scenarios:
1) The card is a land - Chandra's 0 is functionally "draw a card"
2) The card is a creature - with >=4 mana, this is incredibly close to "draw a card."
3) The card is a non-creature spell - might encourage you throw burn indiscriminately to use your mana effectively but is still probably worth half a card; this is the worst of the three scenarios, but also the least likely.
Overall, Chandra's 0 roughly reads "Draw .95* cards on average" in a generic aggro shell (*note: semi-arbitrary number, a rough guesstimate). The funny thing is, it gets better in both a deck that wants the ability to throw burn around indiscriminately and in a deck without much burn (creature-heavy decks like the current Domri builds, though a Chandra creature-heavy deck wants a lower curve than a Domri one). As a side note, Domri's +1 is "draw .5 cards on average" in its best case scenario. In essence, Chandra is much more versatile, which makes her viable in more types of decks. She also need not be weaker than Domri in decks built to support her (we should recall that Domri took a while to wake up because people were hesitant to build around him too).
I also think this card is incredibly strong. Most people are testing her in midrange shells but I believe she is strongest in an aggressive strategy. Here's why (kind of unstructured, but please bear with me):
1) Her +1 is very versatile and very underrated. It's good against many potential post-rotation staples such as Lifebane Zombie, Sin Collector, Elvish Mystic, Voice, Smiter, Blood Baron, Ooze, AEtherling, Archangel of Thune, Trostani, Boros Reckoner (so long as you're not running an army of X/1s), Firefist Striker, Imposing Sovereign, Young Pyromancer, etc. It also makes planeswalkers like Jace, Ral, and Vraska (and Domri, to an extent) really sad. In an aggressive strategy, this ability is most useful against midrange decks but also has uses in the aggro mirror (lets you race on the play and picks off random dudes) and control matchups (mainly makes planeswalkers miserable but might just get you there before they can Revelate).
2) Her 0 allows you to fight on another axis and shores up a key weakness that red decks usually have. With a low curve, this ability is straight up draw a card. This is much less restrictive that Domri's +1 with respect to deckbuilding so you don't have to warp your deck and play potentially weaker cards. Against the aggro mirror, if you're at least close to parity, Chandra +1s the turn she comes down then buries the other guy in card advantage (if she doesn't just enable a favorable race with repeated +1s). She can't pull you back from the grave when you're very far behind, but very few cards can. Bonfire's rotating and Mortars is already in your deck. Against midrange, you'll probably be using her +1 over and over but if they've stabilized, her 0 is red's best option to regain control of the game. Against control, the card draw helps you recover from Verdicts and just removal spells in general. It might even let you fight through the first Revelation.
3) I don't factor her ultimate much into my evaluation, and quite frankly, I don't think it's very strong due to the possibility of just whiffing (even with 8 burn spells left in 45 cards, you have a 10% chance of whiffing). If you think it's any good, that just makes her all that much stronger.
4) She can't protect herself but she doesn't need to in an aggro shell. Protection is most useful against decks that can attack you back. If an aggro deck spends resources attacking Chandra, you're probably going to win the race (you're only +1ing and attacking because you think you can, otherwise you sit back and 0, trading resources until you bury them). I don't see any non-corner cases where a midrange deck can start attacking Chandra effectively.
5) Her high loyalty makes it harder to burn her out (+1 makes Warleader's Helix especially sad) and also helps with #4.
6) She also might be playable in midrange (people have been either testing or actually playing her in Jund, Naya, and Dega). She even showed up maindeck (as a two-of, I think) in Team Hungary's Finals Jund deck during Worlds (although the format was Team Unified Standard, so take this result with a grain of salt).
The card is already spiking on MTGO; it's now the second highest priced M14 card behind Archangel. There are still paper copies floating around under $12. Is it time to move?
Tags added. -Galspanic
Howl hedges well against flooding out, which is especially useful if you have other powerful high drops that make you want to run more lands. The effect of getting 3+ bodies on the board can range from mediocre (inducing or maintaining a board stall) to game-ending (opening up a lethal alpha strike the next turn). The variance on this card seems, in theory and practice, pretty high; this precludes it from being a particularly high pick. In an average draft, I'd be happy to pick this up 4-7th pick. However, it's not the strongest signal that heavy green is open (late Baloths and Tuskars would be much better in this regard, and in power level) just because I think other people under value this card a bit.
Uhhhh, with?
This is untrue. Flames is roughly as powerful as Serra Angel (which is the best of the five).