Thanks - always fun to look at. The "trainwreck" you describe is a phenomenon I've thought about a lot. What should one do when there's a player taking everything you need?
Good to hear you're playing a lot of Magic. I quite like Khans as a format, but weirdly I'm finding I don't want to play very much. During the Autumn I didn't feel like playing anything much, and even now I'm feeling better I'm finding I prefer games with shorter play sessions. Three hours for a draft feels hard to arrange.
On that life total I don't see why you wouldn't just take the damage. But I haven't played much of the format, so possibly I'm missing some reason why that would be horrible.
I haven't found many (if any) people playing around Dragonscale Boon. However, Awaken the Bear is. 3 mana can usually be enough to bluff the trick.
This is true, but the trouble there is that trading with Awaken is a 1-for-1 trade, so even if they think you have it they might well still block. The same is not true of Dragonscale Boon
Mike Turian's "make them have the trick" also applies here. If you spend all match not blocking because of a trick the opponent has you can end up losing to that trick even if they didn't have it after all!
Two things about the Grizzly I didn't initially realise:
* The low casting cost can be important against decks which are good at keeping creatures off the board, since it lets you cast the bears on the same turn as Savage Punch.
* The opponent often won't want to block whilst tapped out because of the threat of Dragonscale Boon. As such, an early Grizzly will often deal 4-8 damage before trading.
In formats I'm good at I do better at draft than Sealed. I suspect this is because I've never really developed my Sealed skills properly due to the fact that it costs a fortune to play on MtGO relative to Draft. That said, there have been a few formats (Theros, for example) where I've preferred Sealed because the Draft format is a bit broken and Sealed fixes it to some extent.
The other thing to bear in mind about Mardu is that you can't force it. If you push to draft it, you're probably going to lose. It comes up relatively rarely as a viable deck, so drafting it well is less about knowing some awesome secret tech and more about recognising when it's your best option.
I think the most likely way I'd end up in a Mardu deck is taking removal early and finding I'd tabled some decent aggressive creatures, rather than settling into it early.
I think that's about as good as we're going to get.
I'd swap out Death Frenzy for Dutiful Return, I think. We're not in a great position to exploit Death Frenzy, so probably best to side it in when we at least know it will hurt the opponent. Dutiful Return is slow, but given we don't have much going on at the top end it seems worthwhile - card advantage and a way to get back one of our few good creatures.
Yup, plays well. Its only real weakness is that failure to hit five mana promptly is a huge problem. Which might have been OK, but the opponent it happened against had a Duneblast I hadn't seen for game three. Ouch!
Whirlwind Adept has quietly moved from "I guess this works if I find nothing better" to "this card is crucial for the archetype and I want as many as I can".
Wow! I've been tabling those!
So is this just because the aggro decks mess with your blockers so much that Hexproof is the only way to keep a viable blocker?
Regarding non-Blue decks: W/B would be the obvious choice here if it wasn't overdrafted. But possibly at a GP people will be good enough drafters that they won't force it quite as much as people seem to on MtGO?
There are a lot of strong contenders for different reasons, but I think the overall winner is probably Warp World. At first glance it looks like a typical overpriced Red random-stuff-happens card, but actually it's a powerful and subtle weapon that has led to a lot of fun games as well as a lot of fun deckbuilding.
Good to hear you're playing a lot of Magic. I quite like Khans as a format, but weirdly I'm finding I don't want to play very much. During the Autumn I didn't feel like playing anything much, and even now I'm feeling better I'm finding I prefer games with shorter play sessions. Three hours for a draft feels hard to arrange.
Mike Turian's "make them have the trick" also applies here. If you spend all match not blocking because of a trick the opponent has you can end up losing to that trick even if they didn't have it after all!
* The low casting cost can be important against decks which are good at keeping creatures off the board, since it lets you cast the bears on the same turn as Savage Punch.
* The opponent often won't want to block whilst tapped out because of the threat of Dragonscale Boon. As such, an early Grizzly will often deal 4-8 damage before trading.
I think the most likely way I'd end up in a Mardu deck is taking removal early and finding I'd tabled some decent aggressive creatures, rather than settling into it early.
I'd swap out Death Frenzy for Dutiful Return, I think. We're not in a great position to exploit Death Frenzy, so probably best to side it in when we at least know it will hurt the opponent. Dutiful Return is slow, but given we don't have much going on at the top end it seems worthwhile - card advantage and a way to get back one of our few good creatures.
If this were a MtGO Swiss draft I'd be looking at securing 1-2 rather than worrying about pushing for 2-1.
So is this just because the aggro decks mess with your blockers so much that Hexproof is the only way to keep a viable blocker?
Regarding non-Blue decks: W/B would be the obvious choice here if it wasn't overdrafted. But possibly at a GP people will be good enough drafters that they won't force it quite as much as people seem to on MtGO?