If I'm in the Ethereal Armor deck, and have an arrest or a few other enchantments, and I have TWO or more Spheres, I will play them. Bottom line is, it is extremely difficult to win against two Spheres on the table. This puts the opponent in a position where they can pay all of their mana to swing with one creature, that you might just Dramatic Rescue or something, OR they can cast something, but rarely both in the same turn. That doesn't mean that you pick Spheres because they are good in multiples, it means that if your deck already has several enchantments and you get a sphere 13th pick, the next one you see should get a little more consideration, that's all. Very narrow card, but can certainly put a game out of reach.
When I look at this pool I see two Doorkeeper and 2 Lobber crew, so my mind is telling me that we can stall to play NivMizzit, but also that we have a solid defense / alt-win plan, be it pinching with walls or milling with walls, but I wouldn't count on either.
Paralyzing Grasp, Voidweilder, Soulsworn Spirit and Skywatch also have us in this grindy mode as well, while the one of Psychic Spiral actually could work as a kill condition. Guttersnipe seems solid enough with the Crews and the options the pool provides as far as instants and sorceries goes.
Thoughtflare and Inspiration should be easy to cast on time so long as the walls hold down the fort.
Here's where it gets a little tricky.
With two Crews, the more gold stuff the better, so we have an option of splashing black, which provides two Augur Spree, Dreadbore, and Flailer, but shakes up the mana base. If we opt out of black, we can run the two Vassel Souls, but one would have to question the difference in power between those two cards... The Souls are just fine in UR, but I feel the pool really wants the black. There is still a Tower drake at 3 mana for a flyer, and adding black dictates 3 colors, making the Viashino Racketeer more playable as he can sift through an off-color card, or an extra Island in hopes of finding a swamp.
Some of the options in white are solid, such as the charm, rescue and skyknight, but I don't think that any of those cards provide something so special (that we don't already have anyway) that they warrant screwing the mana base even farther.
On a side note, having 3 Chronic Flooding makes trying to build a mill deck tempting, but I suppose it'd need a couple more cards for the deck... a couple Courriers, another Spiral, etc.
I suppose I would run what Ragoz listed except:
-Pursuit of Flight, +Pyroconvergence
The logic being that the guys we have already fly, I don't want to offer 2 for 1s to my opponent, and with 9 multicolor spells, Pyroconvergence can easily make up for its cost. Note that it is significantly better in sealed than in draft. I can potentially allow for multiple two for ones, and in some games where you got an early Lobber Crew followed by Guttersnipe, it can push through the last several points.
This set is definately above average in terms of limited play...
A few cons:
1. If you take the color wheel and switch Red and Black, to appear as WGBRU, you have the standard wheel for this set. That is; each pair of colors next to each other makes up a guild. Any guild can then borrow a third color very easily from either color on either side of said pair. As in, BG can easily add R or W. This gives us 5 'shards' to work with... Jund, Grixis, Bant, America (RWU), and Doran (GWB). With common lands that fix, as well as a few green fixers, it becomes feasible for a green deck to even have a fourth color. I like this!
2. Not a fan of all of those colors? Two color decks work just fine as well.
3. There really aren't too many outright bombs that just ruin the game.
4. While each guild has a somewhat linear strategy, the strategy does not revolve around one card. What I mean is this, and I'll use INN since folks keep using it for comparison. GW in Innistrad revolved around finding Travel Preparations, period. The deck could win without it, but if you had an 8-4 winner, it was probably packing double or triple 'Preps. Burning Vengeance didn't work very well without its namesake. The Spider Spawning deck was a ton of fun, but without spider spawning, it was very difficult to win the game, though not impossible. By comparison, Selesnya-populate decks are made much better with Call the Conclave cast on turn two, or Centaurs Herald turn one, but you don't just lose because they had it, like you would against Travel Preps on curve. While the 5/4 Unleash Trampler is amazing on curve, it is not essential to its deck. No one charm makes a deck worse, but none of them are a deck strategy on their own...
5. A few posts above mine references that those who don't like this set never drafted long ago. Ever Draft Nagao, Bound by Honor in Kamigawa? Tempest had a Fireball that you could split amongst any number of targets without paying additional mana for RRX. It... was... a... common. As recently as Zendikar, we were shuffling up for game 3 with 42 minutes left in the round.
Cons:
1. Pack Rat is horribly designed for limited and is easily the best rare / mythic in the set.
2. Signals can be difficult to read. Because colors are somewhat easily splashed in to, you may be sent a card that shares color(s) with the cards being taken to your right. This is especially true considering that amongst commons, gold cards seem to have a higher power level.
3. When you are not basing your draft on a guild's strengths, decks tend to dilute in power level. That is, if you are Selesnya and arent making tokens, many of the cards that should have blowout potential won't be nearly as significant. Think strategy specific cards such as Rootborn Defenses in populate decks, or Stealer of Secrets in Azorious detain...
All in all, I'll take the trade-offs and look forward to drafting more and more of this set.
Theoretically, if you self mill yourself with Chronic Flooding, you can run Treasure Finds to bring back the possibly milled Psychic Spiral to hit for a ton of cards... Again, this doesnt sound like a good deck... perhaps if Spider Spawning and Gnaw to the Bone were in the set...
Magic Online teaches you the raw math of the game, the importance of drops at various points on your mana curve, etc. This is becase you don't get to make comments or attempt to get a little information from a facial expression... you have only the numbers: cards in hands, cards left in decks, etc.
I will say that when holding a raise dead type of card IRL I have become a bit careless on masking it. I got used to playing on MODO where you don't give anything away when you browse your graveyard.
That said, modo is fantastic for learning about which cards are the best and why.
So I want to buy a bot, but I have a few questions...
Does anyone sell them?
How much do they cost?
How much do they tend to make monthly?
What kind of work is involved in keeping them current / updating them?
Bear in mind I have no programming skills whatsoever, just dipping my toes into the water here...
Lets say you open a reasonable blue card vs. a better red / black / white card. The idea is that blue is so good, that I am willing to take a somewhat weaker blue card in order to force it, hoping for the blue goodness in the draft. What I may have missed though, is that I am one of several players doing this. For that matter, the blue players that started on Mist Raven are definately going to make sure that they are blue, thus perhaps taking a Crippling Chill or Elguad dude over something a little better, like Riot Ringleader or Nettle Swine.
If you go into a draft telling yourself that you are going to avoid blue, sometimes, you avoid the fight and get great picks all draft... but often times, I'd still rather be blue.
In response to the idea that U/B us a weak archetype...
Basically, any time youre black, its because you got some strong cards such as Barter, Shade, Death Wind, etc. If you are combining it with blue, it is likely because you have cards like Mist Raven and Gryff Vanguard. The deck wants alchemists and butcher ghouls to fill in the bottom of the curve, and each makes Driver of the Dead far more playable.
U/x is always good, even if it is just a little removal and some bodies from black.
*Draw 3 off of Soul of the Harvest
*Draw 3 off of Harvester of Souls
*Ramp up 9 damage on Burn at the Stake
*Make Champion of Lambholt ridiculous, thus making your team unblockable
*Provide fodder for Bone Splinters
*Provide a sacrifice outlet for Demonlord of Ashmouth
*Charge up Druid's Repository
*Go Stupid with Cathar's Crusade!
*Activate Gallows at Willow Hill
*Provide 3 blockers with Alchemist's Refuge
*Sacrifice for Corpse Traders
*Make fodder for Barter in Blood
*Be discarded to draw a card off Mad Prophet or Desolate Lighthouse
....I am assuming were talking just AVN limited right?
I disagree with the above post. It doesn't really test your card evaluation skills, or understanding of synergies.
Sooooo many cards are so much more playable in their respective blocks. Furnace Celebration, Liquimetal Coating, Turn to Mist, Slayer of the wicked, etc. come immediately to mind.
So many keywords and cards that interact with them become irrelevant in this sort of draft. Metalcraft, poison, etc. are supposed to act as an added variable to a cards evaluation, but when you can scratch the thought of the keyword being relevent, cards like Chrome Steed go from being very solid to 'worse than grey ogre', and its easy to make that evaluation.
I have done these sorts of drafts several times and I've found that it actually simplifies the draft process. Take the removal and the efficient bodies, don't worry nearly as much about whether card X interacts with card Y or Z because the draft is unlikely to see either.
There is a mill your opponent forum already, but it seems to be going the route of UW, and several run Undead Alchemists & Gideon Jura. It looks like a deck that would be better off replacing the mill cards with a few decent spells and just being a UW deck unfortunately. With that said, I have been tinkering with UB Tezzeret Mill, here's what I have:
Mill Package:
4 Shriekhorn
4 Ghoulcaller's Bell
4 Dream Twist
SB:
4 Timely Reinforcements
1 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Sylvok Lifestaff
4 Mana Leak
3 Despise
2 Black Sun's Zenith
...admittedly, the sideboard is there strickly for a general idea. There was very little thought put into it.
So the idea here is pretty simple...
Early in the game, you want to drop either Shriekhorn or Ghoulcaller's Bell to begin the milling.
The midgame is back-boned by Trinket Mages, who can find a few matchup-based utility cards, or can find more artifacts to continue milling with.
The top end of the deck provides Jace, almost solely for the mill ten application; and Visions from Beyond, as it is likely an Ancestral Recall for the deck.
Surge Node is in here as it can be tutored for, but perhaps it should be a 4th Trinket Mage or even Throne of Geth. Likely, it should be neither, and a more powerful, non-role-player card should be there.
Not as bad as it sounds...janky, but not bad:
-Let's assume that good opening hands have a 1CC milling artifact. That can be followed on turn two by:
*2 more 1CC milling artifacts
*2 more 1CC milling artifacts, mox, then another 1CC milling artifact!
-perhaps turn two saw a Sphere of the Suns instead... this can lead to a turn three that involves:
*casting Tezzeret
*casting Trinket Mage and a 1CC artifact.
*Casting Tezzeret's Gambit to recharge your pair of Shriekhorns.
*Casting perhaps your second 1CC artifact along with Phyrexian Metamorph to copy it.
-any game that sees a turn two or three mana accelerant, which is fairly common considering the Trinket Mage's ability to find the mox, can result in a Jace on turn 4, a Tezzeret with activation and casting of a 1CC mill artifact.
-Most any of these combinations lead to Visions from Beyond carrying you over the top toward the end of the game, and if not, Visions is simply a cycler during the mid-game.
Some interesting directions to take the deck:
-With Timely Reinforcements in the sideboard, the deck has access to white mana. That said, perhaps Feeling of Dread has a spot somewhere for its ability to Fog after being milled by your own Ghoulcaller's Bell.
-The deck can shoot for a faster Visions from Beyond if it adds Gitaxian Probes, which could then move the Timely Reinforcements to the main deck, and in turn, makes me want to play with Snapcaster Mage. This would move a Sylvok Lifestaff into the main and I'd consider running a miser Sword of Body and Mind at that point. Event without the Snapcasters and Swords, if the deck's only access to creatures came in the form of Timely Reinforcements and Trinket Mage, this is likely still enough reason to move a Lifestaff into the main.
-With twelve cards that exclusively mill, and a Surge Node that I admit probably doesn't belong in the deck, perhaps a switcheroo sideboard can be done here? Perhaps we switch out all the artifacts except one Mox, and we Tutor for it with Trinket Mage, then Shape Anew it. This can also be done with an Inkmoth Nexus, which we already have in the main.
-Does mass removal such as Black Sun's Zenith Belong, or is our mill faster than their kill? (considering they will likely attack into a Tezzeret / Jace)
-Spheres and Moxen give us the ability to play green and red too. Ancient Stirrings and Desperate Ravings come to mind as potential players.
So, the reason this deck archetype sucks is because lots of people draft it? Thats probably the stupidest argument I've ever heard. You know what? GW is a horrible deck if five people at your table is forcing it. UW fliers, sucks when eight try to force it. Sure there's some variance, I think the standard Mill deck tends to be weak if two people are going for it, but seriously....the number of people drafting an archetype at your table will weaken what you pull, but has no bearing on the general power of an archetype in a random discussion.
The argument isn't all that stupid. It is rewarding to do your homework and do a boatload of drafts, then you know before the draft starts that this deck is the flavor of the week and it will be drafted, period. Unlike going into a draft where you start GW and hope no one else is in it, if you started in the force mill deck over the last week, a good player knows that there will be two or three other players trying to do it. There are two pages here on mill-yourself decks, and wizards daily had a huge article about the archetype. The difference Daggertooth, is that a player can go into a draft having a decent idea of what is popular right now. If there is an article on Wizards come Monday talking about how fast Bump in the Night BR strategies are, then I probably won't be drafting it on modo. Is the deck good? Sure. Is the deck good if 3 people are drafting it? Probably not. If I go into the draft knowing all this, and in my last draft, two people played the 'flavor of the week' archetype, then I'll probably try to run with a different archetype, knowing that its less likely to have players competing for the same cards.
No mention of Blasphemous Act? It's better than Volley, Victim, and Hunter for sure. I would even consider it over the mayor but that's a tough one, might just come down to taking it as two of the three players to your left will be in red, so you know to avoid it...
The last several posts pretty much hit the nail on the head. I late picked a Runic Repetition, then in pack two AND three I opened a Memory's Journey, took a better card expecting the Journey to wheel and it did not! Twice in on draft!
Bottom line is, after LSV talked about it and Wizards had a page about it, everyone knows about it, and people try to force it. No longer can you expect to get Mulch, Runic, Gnaw, Journey, etc. in the last several cards. Now, I avoid the deck, but if a pack doesn't have anything for me, the odds of taking away Gnaw to the Bone or a combo piece have gone from 0% to like 80%.
Then there is the time out issue. Often times, I won games with the deck because my opponents would scoop when they realized that a loss was inevitable. Now, more players, myself included, will just sit and wait for you to kill them. Modo tends to slow down when there are 24 cards in a graveyard and a ton of permenents on the board, so casting Memory's Journey can take a half a minute off of your clock!
Paralyzing Grasp, Voidweilder, Soulsworn Spirit and Skywatch also have us in this grindy mode as well, while the one of Psychic Spiral actually could work as a kill condition. Guttersnipe seems solid enough with the Crews and the options the pool provides as far as instants and sorceries goes.
Thoughtflare and Inspiration should be easy to cast on time so long as the walls hold down the fort.
Here's where it gets a little tricky.
With two Crews, the more gold stuff the better, so we have an option of splashing black, which provides two Augur Spree, Dreadbore, and Flailer, but shakes up the mana base. If we opt out of black, we can run the two Vassel Souls, but one would have to question the difference in power between those two cards... The Souls are just fine in UR, but I feel the pool really wants the black. There is still a Tower drake at 3 mana for a flyer, and adding black dictates 3 colors, making the Viashino Racketeer more playable as he can sift through an off-color card, or an extra Island in hopes of finding a swamp.
Some of the options in white are solid, such as the charm, rescue and skyknight, but I don't think that any of those cards provide something so special (that we don't already have anyway) that they warrant screwing the mana base even farther.
On a side note, having 3 Chronic Flooding makes trying to build a mill deck tempting, but I suppose it'd need a couple more cards for the deck... a couple Courriers, another Spiral, etc.
I suppose I would run what Ragoz listed except:
-Pursuit of Flight, +Pyroconvergence
The logic being that the guys we have already fly, I don't want to offer 2 for 1s to my opponent, and with 9 multicolor spells, Pyroconvergence can easily make up for its cost. Note that it is significantly better in sealed than in draft. I can potentially allow for multiple two for ones, and in some games where you got an early Lobber Crew followed by Guttersnipe, it can push through the last several points.
A few cons:
1. If you take the color wheel and switch Red and Black, to appear as WGBRU, you have the standard wheel for this set. That is; each pair of colors next to each other makes up a guild. Any guild can then borrow a third color very easily from either color on either side of said pair. As in, BG can easily add R or W. This gives us 5 'shards' to work with... Jund, Grixis, Bant, America (RWU), and Doran (GWB). With common lands that fix, as well as a few green fixers, it becomes feasible for a green deck to even have a fourth color. I like this!
2. Not a fan of all of those colors? Two color decks work just fine as well.
3. There really aren't too many outright bombs that just ruin the game.
4. While each guild has a somewhat linear strategy, the strategy does not revolve around one card. What I mean is this, and I'll use INN since folks keep using it for comparison. GW in Innistrad revolved around finding Travel Preparations, period. The deck could win without it, but if you had an 8-4 winner, it was probably packing double or triple 'Preps. Burning Vengeance didn't work very well without its namesake. The Spider Spawning deck was a ton of fun, but without spider spawning, it was very difficult to win the game, though not impossible. By comparison, Selesnya-populate decks are made much better with Call the Conclave cast on turn two, or Centaurs Herald turn one, but you don't just lose because they had it, like you would against Travel Preps on curve. While the 5/4 Unleash Trampler is amazing on curve, it is not essential to its deck. No one charm makes a deck worse, but none of them are a deck strategy on their own...
5. A few posts above mine references that those who don't like this set never drafted long ago. Ever Draft Nagao, Bound by Honor in Kamigawa? Tempest had a Fireball that you could split amongst any number of targets without paying additional mana for RRX. It... was... a... common. As recently as Zendikar, we were shuffling up for game 3 with 42 minutes left in the round.
Cons:
1. Pack Rat is horribly designed for limited and is easily the best rare / mythic in the set.
2. Signals can be difficult to read. Because colors are somewhat easily splashed in to, you may be sent a card that shares color(s) with the cards being taken to your right. This is especially true considering that amongst commons, gold cards seem to have a higher power level.
3. When you are not basing your draft on a guild's strengths, decks tend to dilute in power level. That is, if you are Selesnya and arent making tokens, many of the cards that should have blowout potential won't be nearly as significant. Think strategy specific cards such as Rootborn Defenses in populate decks, or Stealer of Secrets in Azorious detain...
All in all, I'll take the trade-offs and look forward to drafting more and more of this set.
I will say that when holding a raise dead type of card IRL I have become a bit careless on masking it. I got used to playing on MODO where you don't give anything away when you browse your graveyard.
That said, modo is fantastic for learning about which cards are the best and why.
Does anyone sell them?
How much do they cost?
How much do they tend to make monthly?
What kind of work is involved in keeping them current / updating them?
Bear in mind I have no programming skills whatsoever, just dipping my toes into the water here...
thanks!
Lets say you open a reasonable blue card vs. a better red / black / white card. The idea is that blue is so good, that I am willing to take a somewhat weaker blue card in order to force it, hoping for the blue goodness in the draft. What I may have missed though, is that I am one of several players doing this. For that matter, the blue players that started on Mist Raven are definately going to make sure that they are blue, thus perhaps taking a Crippling Chill or Elguad dude over something a little better, like Riot Ringleader or Nettle Swine.
If you go into a draft telling yourself that you are going to avoid blue, sometimes, you avoid the fight and get great picks all draft... but often times, I'd still rather be blue.
Basically, any time youre black, its because you got some strong cards such as Barter, Shade, Death Wind, etc. If you are combining it with blue, it is likely because you have cards like Mist Raven and Gryff Vanguard. The deck wants alchemists and butcher ghouls to fill in the bottom of the curve, and each makes Driver of the Dead far more playable.
U/x is always good, even if it is just a little removal and some bodies from black.
*Draw 3 off of Harvester of Souls
*Ramp up 9 damage on Burn at the Stake
*Make Champion of Lambholt ridiculous, thus making your team unblockable
*Provide fodder for Bone Splinters
*Provide a sacrifice outlet for Demonlord of Ashmouth
*Charge up Druid's Repository
*Go Stupid with Cathar's Crusade!
*Activate Gallows at Willow Hill
*Provide 3 blockers with Alchemist's Refuge
*Sacrifice for Corpse Traders
*Make fodder for Barter in Blood
*Be discarded to draw a card off Mad Prophet or Desolate Lighthouse
....I am assuming were talking just AVN limited right?
Sooooo many cards are so much more playable in their respective blocks. Furnace Celebration, Liquimetal Coating, Turn to Mist, Slayer of the wicked, etc. come immediately to mind.
So many keywords and cards that interact with them become irrelevant in this sort of draft. Metalcraft, poison, etc. are supposed to act as an added variable to a cards evaluation, but when you can scratch the thought of the keyword being relevent, cards like Chrome Steed go from being very solid to 'worse than grey ogre', and its easy to make that evaluation.
I have done these sorts of drafts several times and I've found that it actually simplifies the draft process. Take the removal and the efficient bodies, don't worry nearly as much about whether card X interacts with card Y or Z because the draft is unlikely to see either.
Thanks for the deck tag!
and I agree, we probably need to protect ourselves a little better. Perhaps Timely Reinforcements or Black Sun's Zenith belongs main?
Mill Package:
4 Shriekhorn
4 Ghoulcaller's Bell
4 Dream Twist
Card Draw / Utility:
4 Visions of Beyond
2 Phyrexian Metamorph
1 Nihil Spellbomb
3 Trinket Mage
2 Tezzeret's Gambit
3 Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas
4 Jace, Memory Adept
2 Think Twice
1 Surge Node
Mana Acceleration:
2 Mox Opal
4 Sphere of the Suns
Mana Base:
4 Darkslick Shores
3 Seachrome Coast
3 Inkmoth Nexus
7 Island
1 Swamp
2 Nephalia Drownyard
2 Drowned Catacomb
SB:
4 Timely Reinforcements
1 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Sylvok Lifestaff
4 Mana Leak
3 Despise
2 Black Sun's Zenith
...admittedly, the sideboard is there strickly for a general idea. There was very little thought put into it.
So the idea here is pretty simple...
Early in the game, you want to drop either Shriekhorn or Ghoulcaller's Bell to begin the milling.
The midgame is back-boned by Trinket Mages, who can find a few matchup-based utility cards, or can find more artifacts to continue milling with.
The top end of the deck provides Jace, almost solely for the mill ten application; and Visions from Beyond, as it is likely an Ancestral Recall for the deck.
Surge Node is in here as it can be tutored for, but perhaps it should be a 4th Trinket Mage or even Throne of Geth. Likely, it should be neither, and a more powerful, non-role-player card should be there.
Not as bad as it sounds...janky, but not bad:
-Let's assume that good opening hands have a 1CC milling artifact. That can be followed on turn two by:
*2 more 1CC milling artifacts
*2 more 1CC milling artifacts, mox, then another 1CC milling artifact!
-perhaps turn two saw a Sphere of the Suns instead... this can lead to a turn three that involves:
*casting Tezzeret
*casting Trinket Mage and a 1CC artifact.
*Casting Tezzeret's Gambit to recharge your pair of Shriekhorns.
*Casting perhaps your second 1CC artifact along with Phyrexian Metamorph to copy it.
-any game that sees a turn two or three mana accelerant, which is fairly common considering the Trinket Mage's ability to find the mox, can result in a Jace on turn 4, a Tezzeret with activation and casting of a 1CC mill artifact.
-Most any of these combinations lead to Visions from Beyond carrying you over the top toward the end of the game, and if not, Visions is simply a cycler during the mid-game.
Some interesting directions to take the deck:
-With Timely Reinforcements in the sideboard, the deck has access to white mana. That said, perhaps Feeling of Dread has a spot somewhere for its ability to Fog after being milled by your own Ghoulcaller's Bell.
-The deck can shoot for a faster Visions from Beyond if it adds Gitaxian Probes, which could then move the Timely Reinforcements to the main deck, and in turn, makes me want to play with Snapcaster Mage. This would move a Sylvok Lifestaff into the main and I'd consider running a miser Sword of Body and Mind at that point. Event without the Snapcasters and Swords, if the deck's only access to creatures came in the form of Timely Reinforcements and Trinket Mage, this is likely still enough reason to move a Lifestaff into the main.
-With twelve cards that exclusively mill, and a Surge Node that I admit probably doesn't belong in the deck, perhaps a switcheroo sideboard can be done here? Perhaps we switch out all the artifacts except one Mox, and we Tutor for it with Trinket Mage, then Shape Anew it. This can also be done with an Inkmoth Nexus, which we already have in the main.
-Does mass removal such as Black Sun's Zenith Belong, or is our mill faster than their kill? (considering they will likely attack into a Tezzeret / Jace)
-Spheres and Moxen give us the ability to play green and red too. Ancient Stirrings and Desperate Ravings come to mind as potential players.
-Does Liliana belong anywhere in here?
Thoughts and comments encouraged and appreciated!
The argument isn't all that stupid. It is rewarding to do your homework and do a boatload of drafts, then you know before the draft starts that this deck is the flavor of the week and it will be drafted, period. Unlike going into a draft where you start GW and hope no one else is in it, if you started in the force mill deck over the last week, a good player knows that there will be two or three other players trying to do it. There are two pages here on mill-yourself decks, and wizards daily had a huge article about the archetype. The difference Daggertooth, is that a player can go into a draft having a decent idea of what is popular right now. If there is an article on Wizards come Monday talking about how fast Bump in the Night BR strategies are, then I probably won't be drafting it on modo. Is the deck good? Sure. Is the deck good if 3 people are drafting it? Probably not. If I go into the draft knowing all this, and in my last draft, two people played the 'flavor of the week' archetype, then I'll probably try to run with a different archetype, knowing that its less likely to have players competing for the same cards.
Bottom line is, after LSV talked about it and Wizards had a page about it, everyone knows about it, and people try to force it. No longer can you expect to get Mulch, Runic, Gnaw, Journey, etc. in the last several cards. Now, I avoid the deck, but if a pack doesn't have anything for me, the odds of taking away Gnaw to the Bone or a combo piece have gone from 0% to like 80%.
Then there is the time out issue. Often times, I won games with the deck because my opponents would scoop when they realized that a loss was inevitable. Now, more players, myself included, will just sit and wait for you to kill them. Modo tends to slow down when there are 24 cards in a graveyard and a ton of permenents on the board, so casting Memory's Journey can take a half a minute off of your clock!