In all of my paper drafts so far (MTGO just got M15, so we should start getting a greater volume of experience soon), the Triplicate Spirits decks have never done better than 2-1, while the surprisingly powerful RB aggro deck has been the most consistent winner by a large margin. Generally, we've seen RB aggro decks use cheap removal to push through early damage, which has had the side effect of stifling convoke. A turn 4 Spirits is very good, while a turn 6 Spirits has yet to be good enough against the aggro deck.
It's obviously still very early, and we haven't gotten to practice on MTGO until now, but the early boogieman in our shop isn't GW Spirits, it's RB Nightfire. When you hear a groan, it's not because someone resolved Spirits, but because they resolved a Cone of Flame and are attacking again.
Just to bump this: I played in a few different styles of Conspiracy drafts over the weekend.
One of them had the pods divided into two rounds, with the last two survivors in each pod from the first round going to a final round for the prize. This was an awful experience in terms of games, and led to what I saw as just some really crappy feel-bad moments. Rather than the game becoming about checks and balances, whenever one player would pull ahead, the game became about which of the other three players could kiss up to him the most so that he would carry them into the finals with him. More than once, I saw a player commit to suiciding his entire board into other players just to make sure that he would be the second-place player. Players in a losing position were no longer in a position to bargain with their remaining resources, because there was too much value in knocking them out and securing a position in the second round. It was...bad.
If anyone here is going to keep running Conspiracy events at your store, do not run them this way.
Three more drafts today. In addition to pulling some sweet stuff (Misdirection and Stifle being the headliners), the games themselves were sweet. I went deep in a couple of drafts with four- and five-color decks, and another one with a "bleeder" strategy (just take all of the "each player" effects). Most of the decks performed really well; I won half of the games (we played two games in one draft) and just had a blast the whole day.
Great set. It's a breath of fresh air, and a fun palate cleanser before Vintage Masters hits.
Had a really interesting unsanctioned draft tonight at the store (same store as Narvuntien, but I was at a different table). Ignoring the fact that I pulled a gorgeous foil Reflecting Pool:
I drafted the "Lizard Warrior" deck. It wasn't as nutty as I wanted, but even just one Brago's Favor and one Secret Summoning was enough to be really good with five Lizard Warriors. And in a strange twist of fate, my neighbor's Lore Seeker gave me a Hall of Triumph from a Journey Into Nyx pack...so that was sweet. I backed it up with card draw, permission, some fliers, and a couple of Vent Sentinels (I had originally intended to use my Conspiracies on those guys, but didn't end up with enough of them). It came close, but wasn't quite enough to push through.
The second player in our pool drafted a Red/Black troll deck that didn't do much other than repeatedly boardwipe. And Grenzo's Cutthroat, which obviously was going to attack every turn for kicks.
One of the winners of our two games drafted a green/black deck based around morbid triggers and abusing Grudge Keeper. That card turned out to be very good, especially in multiples. When he had two of those guys out on the field, every Will of the Council vote suddenly became excruciatingly difficult. He also had a Spiritmonger, so...that helped.
The other winner did the standard UW fliers deck. Chunky defenders on the ground, fliers in the air. He basically just turtled up and pecked people to death. Nothing flashy, but it got there. Council's Judgement turned out to be a really interesting exercise in politics. And the white gravedigger was really good - guys, that thing flies!
I remember that draft - you were sitting two seats to my left, and took the Launch the Fleets that I opened (and didn't take) and the one my neighbor to the right opened (and also didn't take). I also opened that Medomai. I also 3-0'd the pod, although we never met since there were 9 people in it. We had a really weird run of white cards, mostly due to the player to my right being pretty new to the game. I got really lucky with red in that draft; nobody to my left was drafting it, so I got three Falls and a Conscriptor passed to me.
Red is a very strange color in this format. Cutting it is necessary, but not always going to be successful because Born is so stacked with red. It can be correct if your second color isn't solidified to just take the red cards from Born if its open; after all, your neighbor did all the hard work to cut the red, so you reap all the rewards! This is one of the reasons signals are so strange; some players have very strong opinions on the right way to draft red (or not to draft it) and it has a very real impact.
This article really annoyed me when I read it. It essentially amounts to "I think current Twin deckbuilders are garbage for playing Peek effects and I'm a genius for playing Twisted Image instead."
Is Twisted Image good? It's a solid sideboard card that, given the right meta, is maindeckable. Is it better than Peek? It comes down to how often you're going to get a card's worth of value out of one vs the other. Twisted Image is higher variance than Peek, so choose wisely. It's very easy to say "I ran this in one event, and it was insane, so everybody should immediately jam it into their decks." But that's not necessarily the entire story.
This has convinced me to add it to the primer though. (Speaking of which, apparently nobody else is interested in taking it over?)
this particular case is so incredibly marginal that worrying about it seems more symbolic than anything.
You're not wrong. But it does a lot for the confidence of customers at a store to know that the owners are looking out for them. And it's very good to have a policy in place, laid out ahead of time, so that you don't have to deal with it during the draft.
It's kinda like the "God Pack" issue in JBT draft. Is anybody going to open a God pack? Probably not. But our owner made it clear what his policy was if you opened one (either draft it or buy it at a discount), to avoid any feel-bads if it should arise.
If I were a store owner running a Conspiracy draft, I would decide ahead of time which packs I would be willing to contribute to the draft at no charge for a Lore Seeker. I would then let the player choose from those packs, and not allow anyone to add any of their own. If I wanted to make it exciting, I would let them draw from a pool where a small percent (say 1-2 out of 20) were of higher quality (say a Modern Masters pack or something); otherwise, I'd probably just let them pick from current Standard and/or Conspiracy. I agree that letting other players bring in packs is asking for trouble; hell, for all you know, someone mapped a box and has a pack with a sick rare in it (probably not, but it's possible).
Yes, this means that I, the store owner, am out a pack on the draft. But someone has to actually open a Lore Seeker for this to happen, and this will probably only happen once. I could even "virtually" just cut it from the prize pool; that is, after the draft, tell people that I'm putting the extra pack into the prize pool if nobody opened a Lore Seeker (as opposed to announcing that I'm taking the pack from the prize pool when someone does open the Lore Seeker). If you do it right, you get to look somewhat generous while also being fair to everybody.
I think the second Hubris is better than the first Retraction Helix in a deck that's unlikely to get much benefit from the targeting effect and looks like it wants to attack a lot. Hubris is actually really nice for this since if they have a Bestow, you get that out of the way too and don't have to attack through it.
With double ordeal, Hour of Need, Emissary, etc, I think I can get behind Shorestalker.
I don't like Mogis' Warhound here. You don't have anything heroic to jam him on, and you're not aggressive enough to really take advantage of it. Sometimes the tempo deck just needs to take a turn off to take a breath; you can't do that. This is actually where I think the Pensive Minotaur comes in; they're both three drops, but one is a Fearsome Temper with a drawback and one is a dude that fills your curve.
Alternately, now that I think about it, maybe Vortex Elemental isn't exciting? I guess it can wear an Ordeal and push through some damage in the late game? So I guess it stays...
I think Sea God's Revenge is mediocre in this deck, as your real threats are all evasive. Sea God's Revenge is secretly a green card - it's supposed to be followed up with a huge smash to the face. Blue/Red is probably the worst color combination to have it in. Let's take it out for Flurry of Horns, and now we don't have any six drops at all.
In general, your deck seems stretched along its mana curve; your draft gave you a wealth of options, and it's clear you had a hard time deciding how to build it. And I know you don't have that much time in a real draft to decide how to build, so I'm not criticizing - this looks like a tough build. I think I would suggest something like this:
It's ridiculous that they can't put images of the cards as they will actually appear in the set on the spoiler. It's impossible to know what rarity some of these cards are going to come in at.
I forgot something important - lurking automaton is at common, which means you'll probably see a lot more of them than 1 in 12 or 13. Probably something like 1 in every 6-8 packs. That's potentially quite a few of the buggers.
They're listed as common, but they're actually a special rarity. The draft-altering cards and conspiracies together only appear in the basic land slot; I don't think we know enough about how the distribution works for these special rarity cards yet to accurately predict, but you're going to see significantly fewer of them than you would a regular common, right?
I disagree that it's a money grab (well except insofar as they are making a product that they hope people will like well enough to buy), but I *do* agree that it is annoying. Are stores going to be willing to throw in a extra pack? Maybe, maybe not. More annoyingly, if I buy a box (which come in convenient multiples of 3) opening one of these means I just "lost" a draft set and I now have 2 "useless" packs (yes, you can just open them, but I don't think I've opened a pack outside of draft for 15 years).
I do think the idea is cool though. I am a little confused how it works - does the new pack just accompany the pack it was "created" from - so that "spot" in the draft is going to drafting 2 cards?
You just add a pack to the draft. You now have eight players drafting nine packs, which means that traditional rules about not letting packs back up in the draft queue kinda go out the window.
I generally agree with your assessments; just a couple of additions.
Cogwork Librarian seems very strong when taken early since your colors won't be firmly established. I don't think you take him over a good rare, but he's almost certainly the best second pick you could ask for.
I think you're right about Lore Seeker; you're almost obligated to just take him and add the pack so you get value out of it. Again, if the rare in your pack is solid and/or money, then don't do it, but if he gets passed to you second-pick then you pretty much have to just bite the bullet and do it.
Lurking Automaton - how many of these are actually going to be opened? It's a common, yes, but it's in the basic slot. There's going to be an average of what, 1-2 of these opened per draft? Don't take this early and hope to move in; only take it if it passes the vanilla test when you get it. I don't think this card is going to be all that skill-testing in draft - it will become obvious when you should and shouldn't draft this guy.
Whispergear Sneak is weird. I think it's almost always correct if you get this guy in pack one to open your second pack and peek at your rare - it could help you make decisions about what you want your second color to be. But you're never actually playing the Sneak, so you're getting zero value from the pick other than that. And once you're already in your colors, the card is essentially useless (other than to troll someone). Ultimately, the value isn't that high - I would never take this card unless there's nothing else exciting in the pack, and I would probably completely avoid it entirely in packs two and three.
Even long-term trends have a problem, because aside from having separate Limited/Constructed ratings there aren't different ratings for different formats.
So if my Constructed rating is lower than it was 2 years ago, maybe I've gotten worse...or maybe I just play more Momir Basic now than I used to.
That's a fair point. A while back I managed to tank my limited rating all the way back down to just a little over 1600 by playing sealed (I am just awful at sealed, apparently) for a few weeks; there is some skill overlap between draft and sealed, but not a lot.
It's obviously still very early, and we haven't gotten to practice on MTGO until now, but the early boogieman in our shop isn't GW Spirits, it's RB Nightfire. When you hear a groan, it's not because someone resolved Spirits, but because they resolved a Cone of Flame and are attacking again.
One of them had the pods divided into two rounds, with the last two survivors in each pod from the first round going to a final round for the prize. This was an awful experience in terms of games, and led to what I saw as just some really crappy feel-bad moments. Rather than the game becoming about checks and balances, whenever one player would pull ahead, the game became about which of the other three players could kiss up to him the most so that he would carry them into the finals with him. More than once, I saw a player commit to suiciding his entire board into other players just to make sure that he would be the second-place player. Players in a losing position were no longer in a position to bargain with their remaining resources, because there was too much value in knocking them out and securing a position in the second round. It was...bad.
If anyone here is going to keep running Conspiracy events at your store, do not run them this way.
Great set. It's a breath of fresh air, and a fun palate cleanser before Vintage Masters hits.
I drafted the "Lizard Warrior" deck. It wasn't as nutty as I wanted, but even just one Brago's Favor and one Secret Summoning was enough to be really good with five Lizard Warriors. And in a strange twist of fate, my neighbor's Lore Seeker gave me a Hall of Triumph from a Journey Into Nyx pack...so that was sweet. I backed it up with card draw, permission, some fliers, and a couple of Vent Sentinels (I had originally intended to use my Conspiracies on those guys, but didn't end up with enough of them). It came close, but wasn't quite enough to push through.
The second player in our pool drafted a Red/Black troll deck that didn't do much other than repeatedly boardwipe. And Grenzo's Cutthroat, which obviously was going to attack every turn for kicks.
One of the winners of our two games drafted a green/black deck based around morbid triggers and abusing Grudge Keeper. That card turned out to be very good, especially in multiples. When he had two of those guys out on the field, every Will of the Council vote suddenly became excruciatingly difficult. He also had a Spiritmonger, so...that helped.
The other winner did the standard UW fliers deck. Chunky defenders on the ground, fliers in the air. He basically just turtled up and pecked people to death. Nothing flashy, but it got there. Council's Judgement turned out to be a really interesting exercise in politics. And the white gravedigger was really good - guys, that thing flies!
Red is a very strange color in this format. Cutting it is necessary, but not always going to be successful because Born is so stacked with red. It can be correct if your second color isn't solidified to just take the red cards from Born if its open; after all, your neighbor did all the hard work to cut the red, so you reap all the rewards! This is one of the reasons signals are so strange; some players have very strong opinions on the right way to draft red (or not to draft it) and it has a very real impact.
This article really annoyed me when I read it. It essentially amounts to "I think current Twin deckbuilders are garbage for playing Peek effects and I'm a genius for playing Twisted Image instead."
Is Twisted Image good? It's a solid sideboard card that, given the right meta, is maindeckable. Is it better than Peek? It comes down to how often you're going to get a card's worth of value out of one vs the other. Twisted Image is higher variance than Peek, so choose wisely. It's very easy to say "I ran this in one event, and it was insane, so everybody should immediately jam it into their decks." But that's not necessarily the entire story.
This has convinced me to add it to the primer though. (Speaking of which, apparently nobody else is interested in taking it over?)
You're not wrong. But it does a lot for the confidence of customers at a store to know that the owners are looking out for them. And it's very good to have a policy in place, laid out ahead of time, so that you don't have to deal with it during the draft.
It's kinda like the "God Pack" issue in JBT draft. Is anybody going to open a God pack? Probably not. But our owner made it clear what his policy was if you opened one (either draft it or buy it at a discount), to avoid any feel-bads if it should arise.
Yes, this means that I, the store owner, am out a pack on the draft. But someone has to actually open a Lore Seeker for this to happen, and this will probably only happen once. I could even "virtually" just cut it from the prize pool; that is, after the draft, tell people that I'm putting the extra pack into the prize pool if nobody opened a Lore Seeker (as opposed to announcing that I'm taking the pack from the prize pool when someone does open the Lore Seeker). If you do it right, you get to look somewhat generous while also being fair to everybody.
With double ordeal, Hour of Need, Emissary, etc, I think I can get behind Shorestalker.
I don't like Mogis' Warhound here. You don't have anything heroic to jam him on, and you're not aggressive enough to really take advantage of it. Sometimes the tempo deck just needs to take a turn off to take a breath; you can't do that. This is actually where I think the Pensive Minotaur comes in; they're both three drops, but one is a Fearsome Temper with a drawback and one is a dude that fills your curve.
Alternately, now that I think about it, maybe Vortex Elemental isn't exciting? I guess it can wear an Ordeal and push through some damage in the late game? So I guess it stays...
I think Sea God's Revenge is mediocre in this deck, as your real threats are all evasive. Sea God's Revenge is secretly a green card - it's supposed to be followed up with a huge smash to the face. Blue/Red is probably the worst color combination to have it in. Let's take it out for Flurry of Horns, and now we don't have any six drops at all.
In general, your deck seems stretched along its mana curve; your draft gave you a wealth of options, and it's clear you had a hard time deciding how to build it. And I know you don't have that much time in a real draft to decide how to build, so I'm not criticizing - this looks like a tough build. I think I would suggest something like this:
1 Vortex Elemental
1 Triton Shorestalker
1 Deepwater Hypnotist
1 Arena Athlete
1 Vaporkin
1 Reckless Reveler
1 Pensive Minotaur
1 Minotaur Skullcleaver
1 Satyr Nyx-Smith
1 Thassa's Emissary
1 Bladetusk Boar
1 Borderland Minotaur
1 Whitewater Naiads
1 Flurry of Horns
1 Siren of the Fanged Coast
2 Hubris
1 Pin to the Earth
1 Ordeal of Thassa
1 Ordeal of Purphoros
1 Hour of Need
1 Griptide
1 Mogis's Warhound
2 Divination
1 Font of Fortunes
1 Sea God's Revenge
1 Retraction Helix
They're listed as common, but they're actually a special rarity. The draft-altering cards and conspiracies together only appear in the basic land slot; I don't think we know enough about how the distribution works for these special rarity cards yet to accurately predict, but you're going to see significantly fewer of them than you would a regular common, right?
You just add a pack to the draft. You now have eight players drafting nine packs, which means that traditional rules about not letting packs back up in the draft queue kinda go out the window.
That's a fair point. A while back I managed to tank my limited rating all the way back down to just a little over 1600 by playing sealed (I am just awful at sealed, apparently) for a few weeks; there is some skill overlap between draft and sealed, but not a lot.