On the contrary Lucid, it's quite the opposite. You will never mill yourself to death because you are running Journey/Runic. The goal of the deck is to get itself down to no cards in the library with a large life total. This way, you can keep sifting through the same three cards, usually Spider Spawning, Gnaw, and Runic, every few turns. The fact that you need several small creatures to get value out of Gnaw to the Bone makes running multiple spells non-crucial to the combo (silent departure, sensory deprivation) a little detrimental. This is not to say that the deck can't get away with running a few, but with a typical list, lets assume that you want 14 creatures in the deck. After adding Journey, Runic, Spawning, and three Gnaw to the Bone, that leaves room for three or four more cards, typically some number of Mulch and Forbidden Alchemy, but often times a Ghoulcaller's Bell or a self-targeting Curse of the Bloody Tome. The fact that Journey is an instant makes you immune to the mill of the Curse, simply waiting until after the upkeep effect to then cast Journey before the draw step. Any time that I have lost with this deck it is typically because I don't have a stable way to continue to mill my own deck.
Wow, been a few years. Don't draft Bant. I seem to recall it being significantly worse a deck than the others. Also, pack one gives you power, then Conflux gives you mana-fixing, followed by Reborn, which fills in your two drop spot.
Well Naturax, generally, you start as a typical UG deck, or UB deck, taking decent cards of those colors, taking not of say a Runic Repetition in P1P1 or P1P2 that you feel you should wheel. If it doesnt wheel, then you abandon the strategy and just play with good cards.
What do you do when your opponent boards in 7 or 8 marginal spells and five more lands, now you have to mill a 53 card deck.... and if mill is your only way to win, what if they board in a 55-45 land to spell ratio, making a 65 card deck?
Well as all responses to this sort of question begin... it depends.
First of all, if Essence of the Wild is the strictest, that helps us understand, but if you have two Lumberknots and a Bramblecrush in the main, then the green is somewhat heavy. If the white has a Spectral Rider as well as a pair of Chapel Geist, this further persuades one not to splash.
Second, if the deck is one that does not need much removal to win, as in your plan is to go Doomed Traveler, Darkthicket Wolf, Chapel Geist, Travel Preparations, and only need to get rid of one blocker to be in good position to win, then the need for another removal spell is minimal.
Third, your curve matters. The second point carries moe weight: if you are trying to curve out, then spending a turn to cast Caravan Vigil, or not being able to cast Chapel Geist while having a Forest Plains and Mounain in play is severely detrimental to the deck.
Fourth, if you are a little slower and less dependent on the curve, then another removal spell could provide useful, but you have to consider the ease of casting it. If you have one fixer, such as a Caravan Vigil, a Traveler's Amulet, or Shimmering Grotto, then throw in a Mountain and the Brimstone Volley. If you have two Grottos, then you probably don't need the Mountain.
Finally, loads of removal are most efficient in decks that require longevity in order to win the game. That is, if you feel that your deck is capable of winning the game as long as you survive to turn 7 with a good chunk of life and cards in hand, then being able to deal with a relevent threat early can be quite useful.
Yes, this is a real thing, and it's very hard to beat.
The idea is to mill your own deck to nothing so that you can continually cast Runic Repetition and Memory's Journey along with one other card, often the above mentioned Gnaw to the Bone.
The deck wants to focus on a few key factors:
1. You must get Runic and Journey, and you should probably have two Gnaw to the Bone.
2. You play cards that mill yourself to quickly get down to only a fwe cards left in the deck. This means that Armored Skaab and Forbidden Alchemy are very high picks, but it also means that other cards that are significantly weaker go up in this deck, such as Deranged Assistant and Dream Twist.
3. You play with cheap one and two mana creatures and trade early in order to stay alive and also to add more creatures to the graveyard for Gnaw to the Bone. This also makes Boneyard Wurm a particularly strong creature in this deck, which generally comes around pick 7-8, or perhaps even later.
4. The money card of the deck.... remember this, is Spider Spawning. This card gives you a dependably win condition, and basically makes it impossible for the opponent to attack you anymore. It can be cast continually when entwined into the loop of Runic / Journey in order to let you make Spiders every other turn.
5. The deck thrives on cards that other decks generally don't play. Think Ghoulcaller's Bell is terrible? Well good, most of us do, but it serves the function of filling up the grave, while also giving you a win condition in the event that you can't punch through for enough damage. That said, you won't deck regardless, so as long as you are gaining enough life with your Gnaw(s), you should have any issues decking the opponent anyway. The combo of the deck is comprised of cards that no one else wants to play either, and the creatures the deck wants to play, while ideally would include Ambush Vipers and Boneyard Wurms, can be as simple as Selfless Occultists and Delvers and they will perform just fine.
6. The deck tends to not really care about cards that generally are very solid in matchups. What I mean by this is that if you have say two Gnaw to the Bone in your deck, and the opponent is trying to punch through with Nightbird's Clutches... provided you can gain 10-16 off of a Gnaw, the Clutches are negated. That is, you gain a sort of virtual card advantage by playing an uncommon strategy. The traditional game of tempo, card advantage and combat phases are sidestepped, thus neutering the effectiveness of cards meant to shine in the traditional game, such as a Moment of Heroism, or perhaps a Brimstone Volley.
7. There is very little that can be done to flat out beat this deck. That doesn't mean it can't be beaten, it just means that there isn't much that will just stomp it for revolving around one card or interaction (like naturalize or Urgent Exorcism against Burning Vengeance). I think Dissipate tarteting the Runic Repetition is about it.
8. The final plus for the deck is that if you don't actually wheel the Runic Repetition, or in pack three you simply don't see a Memory's Journey, you still have a deck with Silent Departure, Villagers of Estewald, Darkthicket Wolf, Think Twice, Claustrophobia, etc. That is, you are still playing with a deck that can take down a draft.
The only other advice I can offer if you opt to play this sort of deck is to avoid playing it on MODO. The bottom line is, you are flirting with your timer. It tends to get to a point where the opponent is taking up 10 seconds with his turn and you are taking 30 seconds at the end of the turn and on each of yours.
Well the argument for Devil's Play is that it doesn't die to Brimstone Volley, Into the Maw of Hell, Blasphemous Act, etc. and yes, I understand that under that logic shock is better than Baneslayer Angel. The point is simply that while both cards are very powerful, one has an immediate effect that does not require it to be in play for a turn. Yes, Olivia and Bloodline Keeper will do far more toward stabilizing and winning the game accross three turns, but they each provide a small window for the opponent to answer them.
Devil's Play is also one red mana, which for pack one pick one, you aren't losing much in terms of power by taking it over Olivia, but you are taking the card that you will play without having to force anything. Olivia wants you to be BR, or a two color combination which includes one of her colors while splashing the other, but the work involved to get her out, provided she sticks, is more significant in many cases.
Should you end up solidly in red after first picking the Devil's Play, then you have the opportunity to dependably flash it back, which turns it into a card that you can comfortably use early to stabilize, and late to get card advantage; or it can be 'double-domed' to finish an opponent off. It will play well in an aggro, midrange, or control deck, as it synergizes with just about all draft strategies.
What Devil's play cannot always do is get you back into a game that you may be very far behind in. With 8 mana in play, Olivia is a much better topdeck, likely taking out a creature and blocking another on your opponent's turn. While Devil's play has synergy with deck styles: two-for-one in your control deck, finisher or removal/finisher in your aggro deck, Olivia and Bloodline Keeper have even more powerful synergies with other cards that improve the deck overall to the point where perhaps it is more powerful than one taking advantage of the versitility of Devil's Play. In a game on MODO, my opponent played Bloodline Keeper, which I promptly killed. He brought it back with Unburial Rites, so I had to kill it again. The third time it killed me.
All strong cards, but I'd go with Devil's Play.
It is a part of MTGO. If you've played so slowly and are so far behind your opponent that you will clock out if he decides to just keep jumping his equipment back and forth, you have earned the loss. You have a full twenty five minutes to play just YOUR PART of a match, it is your responsibility to remain on schedule.
I think the post above mine is about right. In sealed, stalemates happen more often than in draft primarily because players build decks with the strongest cards that provide the most synergies often times at the expense of the curve. It is not uncommon for a draft deck to cast Bloodcrazed Neonate on turn two, followed with a Crossway Vampire, then Nightbird's Clutches, as the drafter is able to build with curve in mind, this makes the more prevelent 'weaker' cards much stronger and therefor more playable. As curve is so relevent in draft, being able to keep up with that curve is equally important. Sometimes a slow 3-color deck that really wants the extra card on the draw has to play first not because it is advantageous for that deck, but because it is a disadvantage for the opponent. Their Neonate can now be matched with a blocker on your second AND third turn provided you cast one on each respective turn.
A card like Kessig Wolf Run is more of a spell then a land as it gives you the opportunity to trade favorably with the opponent while pushing through some extra damage. It is not a bad card by any means. If I am GR, then obviously it is going to play, and if I am a two color combination capable of splashing for the missing color on the Wolf Run, I will seriously consider doing so. In Innistrad however, it seems that games are won on the ability to make plays early and often, while relying on the synergies of weaker cards to make themselves stronger than they are on paper. Put simply, if you are able to give a creature +5/+5, while it may be the deal breaker in a game, it may also be that you've already won that game.
its because there were two decks. The bushido white deck with mega-all-star Nagao, Bound by Honor... and there was the I have 4 Glacial Rays.dec ...if someone was in R/W and got both, there was nothing to save you from their beatings.
It's the Bonehoard no doubt...
Then you can assume that the players to your left will be in black, picking probably Imp, GFTT, then Spread, likely in that order. Then avoid black with the oncoming picks.
My friend, you can say or do nothing to help out your own cause or to help the person on the left. All you can do here is take the better of the two, giving him the other. Then you can probably assume that a card or two will be hated from you by the player on your left in pack two, but then rest assured that with a third pick option like those, along with two people cutting infect while passing to the right, you should have a few solid picks in pack three to solidify your deck.
I tend to go white for the sake of the value picks that the color tends to get.
So many of its cards are weak or fair on their own, but in a deck with which the card has synergy, white's cards in general go up. That is, Master's Call is a little better than average, and Ardent recruit sucks, but in a devoted metalcraft deck, these two cards are so much... combat tricks, tempo, chump blocks, etc.
Accorder Paladin Is a reasonable card as well. It can provide early pressure, an overrun effect, works amazingly with flyers, can take down cystbearer, etc.
Priests of Norn are quite solid too. Horned Turtle was a fine card in limited, but give it vigilence and you have a star. The infect part of the card is not irrelevent because "youre the white deck, youre not poison..." The infect is relevent because your opponant is unlikely to send a pair of 2/2s into the Priests like the would the Horned Turtle.
For that matter, I've done well with G/W poison, using Glint Hawks and Salvage Scouts in conjunction with Corpse Curs to gain a crap-ton of card advantage. Yes, a deck like this is generally going to need some reasonably strong cards at the top of the curve, but you get the point.
White only gets better with Scars, which adds a bit of removal, virtual card advantage (Myrsmith, Razor Hippo), and continues to provide decent synergistic players, which actually make your MBS cards a little better too... as in Glint Hawk or Glimmerpoint Stag targeting a Living Weapon or Ichor Wellspring.
So all this happy-time with the white cards. Don't get me wrong, I'm not taking Accorder Paladin over Kuldotha Flamefiend or Spread the Sickness, but decks are two colors usually, and White brings a lot to the table... much more so if in your Beseiged pack, you were the guy cutting white.
I've been doing a bit of drafting online lately and just wanted to throw out some general observations on cards that I feel are underappreciated. Perhaps you can give a little input as well.
Tel-Jilad Defiance:
This card makes a lot of green decks as it cycles, but there are more words on the card and those words are actually relevant fairly often. It is a 12th pick that has two for one written all over it.
Twisted Image:
Same concept here, as the Twisted Image cycles, so it will almost always make blue decks, but when it gets to take down a Wall of Tanglecord, change the Tangle Angler into a killer, or just make your 2/2 take down a Sylvok Replica, it really gives more value than most late picks.
Priests of Norn:
This card stops aggro, gives use to proliferate cards, raises Corpse Curs value in your non-infect deck (thus making Salvage Scout a value pick late), and it blocks and kills Blight Mamba / Ichorclaw Myr. Not saying that Priests of Norn are some insane bomb, but as Blightwidow is the best Giant Spider, Priests are the best Horned Turtle, and that's not a bad thing.
Culling Dais:
I love that in just about every draft online I get a Culling Dais. Talk about a valuable card to have. It lets you turn off so much removal, or at least turn their removal into tempo advantage only, while card advantage is all yours, especially with any sort of proliferating ability. Often times you don't have to use it throughout a game, but just get to crack it for 3 or 4 when the dust has settled, definately a game breaker.
First of all, if Essence of the Wild is the strictest, that helps us understand, but if you have two Lumberknots and a Bramblecrush in the main, then the green is somewhat heavy. If the white has a Spectral Rider as well as a pair of Chapel Geist, this further persuades one not to splash.
Second, if the deck is one that does not need much removal to win, as in your plan is to go Doomed Traveler, Darkthicket Wolf, Chapel Geist, Travel Preparations, and only need to get rid of one blocker to be in good position to win, then the need for another removal spell is minimal.
Third, your curve matters. The second point carries moe weight: if you are trying to curve out, then spending a turn to cast Caravan Vigil, or not being able to cast Chapel Geist while having a Forest Plains and Mounain in play is severely detrimental to the deck.
Fourth, if you are a little slower and less dependent on the curve, then another removal spell could provide useful, but you have to consider the ease of casting it. If you have one fixer, such as a Caravan Vigil, a Traveler's Amulet, or Shimmering Grotto, then throw in a Mountain and the Brimstone Volley. If you have two Grottos, then you probably don't need the Mountain.
Finally, loads of removal are most efficient in decks that require longevity in order to win the game. That is, if you feel that your deck is capable of winning the game as long as you survive to turn 7 with a good chunk of life and cards in hand, then being able to deal with a relevent threat early can be quite useful.
hope this helped!
The idea is to mill your own deck to nothing so that you can continually cast Runic Repetition and Memory's Journey along with one other card, often the above mentioned Gnaw to the Bone.
The deck wants to focus on a few key factors:
1. You must get Runic and Journey, and you should probably have two Gnaw to the Bone.
2. You play cards that mill yourself to quickly get down to only a fwe cards left in the deck. This means that Armored Skaab and Forbidden Alchemy are very high picks, but it also means that other cards that are significantly weaker go up in this deck, such as Deranged Assistant and Dream Twist.
3. You play with cheap one and two mana creatures and trade early in order to stay alive and also to add more creatures to the graveyard for Gnaw to the Bone. This also makes Boneyard Wurm a particularly strong creature in this deck, which generally comes around pick 7-8, or perhaps even later.
4. The money card of the deck.... remember this, is Spider Spawning. This card gives you a dependably win condition, and basically makes it impossible for the opponent to attack you anymore. It can be cast continually when entwined into the loop of Runic / Journey in order to let you make Spiders every other turn.
5. The deck thrives on cards that other decks generally don't play. Think Ghoulcaller's Bell is terrible? Well good, most of us do, but it serves the function of filling up the grave, while also giving you a win condition in the event that you can't punch through for enough damage. That said, you won't deck regardless, so as long as you are gaining enough life with your Gnaw(s), you should have any issues decking the opponent anyway. The combo of the deck is comprised of cards that no one else wants to play either, and the creatures the deck wants to play, while ideally would include Ambush Vipers and Boneyard Wurms, can be as simple as Selfless Occultists and Delvers and they will perform just fine.
6. The deck tends to not really care about cards that generally are very solid in matchups. What I mean by this is that if you have say two Gnaw to the Bone in your deck, and the opponent is trying to punch through with Nightbird's Clutches... provided you can gain 10-16 off of a Gnaw, the Clutches are negated. That is, you gain a sort of virtual card advantage by playing an uncommon strategy. The traditional game of tempo, card advantage and combat phases are sidestepped, thus neutering the effectiveness of cards meant to shine in the traditional game, such as a Moment of Heroism, or perhaps a Brimstone Volley.
7. There is very little that can be done to flat out beat this deck. That doesn't mean it can't be beaten, it just means that there isn't much that will just stomp it for revolving around one card or interaction (like naturalize or Urgent Exorcism against Burning Vengeance). I think Dissipate tarteting the Runic Repetition is about it.
8. The final plus for the deck is that if you don't actually wheel the Runic Repetition, or in pack three you simply don't see a Memory's Journey, you still have a deck with Silent Departure, Villagers of Estewald, Darkthicket Wolf, Think Twice, Claustrophobia, etc. That is, you are still playing with a deck that can take down a draft.
The only other advice I can offer if you opt to play this sort of deck is to avoid playing it on MODO. The bottom line is, you are flirting with your timer. It tends to get to a point where the opponent is taking up 10 seconds with his turn and you are taking 30 seconds at the end of the turn and on each of yours.
Devil's Play is also one red mana, which for pack one pick one, you aren't losing much in terms of power by taking it over Olivia, but you are taking the card that you will play without having to force anything. Olivia wants you to be BR, or a two color combination which includes one of her colors while splashing the other, but the work involved to get her out, provided she sticks, is more significant in many cases.
Should you end up solidly in red after first picking the Devil's Play, then you have the opportunity to dependably flash it back, which turns it into a card that you can comfortably use early to stabilize, and late to get card advantage; or it can be 'double-domed' to finish an opponent off. It will play well in an aggro, midrange, or control deck, as it synergizes with just about all draft strategies.
What Devil's play cannot always do is get you back into a game that you may be very far behind in. With 8 mana in play, Olivia is a much better topdeck, likely taking out a creature and blocking another on your opponent's turn. While Devil's play has synergy with deck styles: two-for-one in your control deck, finisher or removal/finisher in your aggro deck, Olivia and Bloodline Keeper have even more powerful synergies with other cards that improve the deck overall to the point where perhaps it is more powerful than one taking advantage of the versitility of Devil's Play. In a game on MODO, my opponent played Bloodline Keeper, which I promptly killed. He brought it back with Unburial Rites, so I had to kill it again. The third time it killed me.
All strong cards, but I'd go with Devil's Play.
A card like Kessig Wolf Run is more of a spell then a land as it gives you the opportunity to trade favorably with the opponent while pushing through some extra damage. It is not a bad card by any means. If I am GR, then obviously it is going to play, and if I am a two color combination capable of splashing for the missing color on the Wolf Run, I will seriously consider doing so. In Innistrad however, it seems that games are won on the ability to make plays early and often, while relying on the synergies of weaker cards to make themselves stronger than they are on paper. Put simply, if you are able to give a creature +5/+5, while it may be the deal breaker in a game, it may also be that you've already won that game.
its because there were two decks. The bushido white deck with mega-all-star Nagao, Bound by Honor... and there was the I have 4 Glacial Rays.dec ...if someone was in R/W and got both, there was nothing to save you from their beatings.
Then you can assume that the players to your left will be in black, picking probably Imp, GFTT, then Spread, likely in that order. Then avoid black with the oncoming picks.
My friend, you can say or do nothing to help out your own cause or to help the person on the left. All you can do here is take the better of the two, giving him the other. Then you can probably assume that a card or two will be hated from you by the player on your left in pack two, but then rest assured that with a third pick option like those, along with two people cutting infect while passing to the right, you should have a few solid picks in pack three to solidify your deck.
So many of its cards are weak or fair on their own, but in a deck with which the card has synergy, white's cards in general go up. That is, Master's Call is a little better than average, and Ardent recruit sucks, but in a devoted metalcraft deck, these two cards are so much... combat tricks, tempo, chump blocks, etc.
Accorder Paladin Is a reasonable card as well. It can provide early pressure, an overrun effect, works amazingly with flyers, can take down cystbearer, etc.
Priests of Norn are quite solid too. Horned Turtle was a fine card in limited, but give it vigilence and you have a star. The infect part of the card is not irrelevent because "youre the white deck, youre not poison..." The infect is relevent because your opponant is unlikely to send a pair of 2/2s into the Priests like the would the Horned Turtle.
For that matter, I've done well with G/W poison, using Glint Hawks and Salvage Scouts in conjunction with Corpse Curs to gain a crap-ton of card advantage. Yes, a deck like this is generally going to need some reasonably strong cards at the top of the curve, but you get the point.
White only gets better with Scars, which adds a bit of removal, virtual card advantage (Myrsmith, Razor Hippo), and continues to provide decent synergistic players, which actually make your MBS cards a little better too... as in Glint Hawk or Glimmerpoint Stag targeting a Living Weapon or Ichor Wellspring.
So all this happy-time with the white cards. Don't get me wrong, I'm not taking Accorder Paladin over Kuldotha Flamefiend or Spread the Sickness, but decks are two colors usually, and White brings a lot to the table... much more so if in your Beseiged pack, you were the guy cutting white.
Tel-Jilad Defiance:
This card makes a lot of green decks as it cycles, but there are more words on the card and those words are actually relevant fairly often. It is a 12th pick that has two for one written all over it.
Twisted Image:
Same concept here, as the Twisted Image cycles, so it will almost always make blue decks, but when it gets to take down a Wall of Tanglecord, change the Tangle Angler into a killer, or just make your 2/2 take down a Sylvok Replica, it really gives more value than most late picks.
Priests of Norn:
This card stops aggro, gives use to proliferate cards, raises Corpse Curs value in your non-infect deck (thus making Salvage Scout a value pick late), and it blocks and kills Blight Mamba / Ichorclaw Myr. Not saying that Priests of Norn are some insane bomb, but as Blightwidow is the best Giant Spider, Priests are the best Horned Turtle, and that's not a bad thing.
Culling Dais:
I love that in just about every draft online I get a Culling Dais. Talk about a valuable card to have. It lets you turn off so much removal, or at least turn their removal into tempo advantage only, while card advantage is all yours, especially with any sort of proliferating ability. Often times you don't have to use it throughout a game, but just get to crack it for 3 or 4 when the dust has settled, definately a game breaker.
So what do you guys thing? What's underrated?