MTG Salvation

First of all, thanks for this. There cannot be too many 2-player draft formats!

When we draft 2P (recently either our own mixture of Winston/Grid drafting or Winston/Quilt), we usually get at least two drafts in. However, we keep our decks from each draft, and play the decks from different drafts against each other, to determine an overall winner for the night. It's pretty fun to play against decks from a different draft...

Heading to the card store for lunch, with $5 burning a hole in my pocket. Herald of Torment or Master of the Feast? (Ties go to the Herald, which is $1.50 compared to $3...)

That's awesome. It reduces the analysis paralysis that can strike, and you get that delicious Chaos-Warp-what-will-I-slip excitement. I'll have to try it, especially since I don't mind extra variance.

I'll be flying out to Philly tomorrow--maybe I'll have time to quilt with Dan, as well...

I must be the last person to still "push" the morph mechanic in my cube--I even ran Zoetic Cavern until recently, and tried to keep enough in to keep the guessing game meaningful. I can't tell you how excited I am by the return of morph...

To be clear, I wasn't claiming that that deck was a good Metalworker deck, but that Metalworker was a great card in that particular deck. (We weren't able to grab enough artifacts to make it a classic artifact.dec, but still enough to make the 'worker strong...) I figured it was a good example of a borderline artifact deck that could run Metalworker. And in the actual games, its higher upside absolutely stole us some games we wouldn't otherwise have won--stuff like FTK/Sword/equip on one turn midgame.

And yes, I run Paladium Myr in my cube, and not Metalworker. But if I subbed back in the artifact package, I'd try Metalworker; my group doesn't mind the swinginess, and I think we'd find it the more fun card.

That's probably due to all the people from here trying to force red in your cube, as a result of this thread. Ha!

My 2 cents: if your group doesn't like the linear red aggro strategy, you should swap it out for a while and see how it goes. There's no point in having an objectively strong archetype in there if no-one drafts it, and if it warps your environment too much it's pretty easy to swap back in.

I've tried the red token strategy, and it's been very popular. Cards like Purphoros, Tempt with Vengeance, Guttersnipe, Young Pyro, Goblin Bombardment (a very fun and underrated card!), even Burn at the Stake have all been used.

UR counterburn with the Kiki-Jiki/Splinter Twin combo is also a very popular non-aggro red deck.

There are lots of quality sweepers and big red spells that don't get cubed often to make room for the needed aggro redundancy (and the damage they do the the typical red little aggro dudes). You'd have room for more cards like Form of the Dragon, Crater Hellion, Akroma, Angel of Vengeance, etc.

Quote from crszovc »

It sounds like everyone has had time to experiment with and experience "Quilt Drafting."

If one were to cater a cube to quilt drafting, are there certain cards you would or would not include in your list? Are certain cards more exciting to see? More exciting to pick? Do certain cards make you feel like "that guy?"

Quilting works quite well with any cube. However, if you're customizing your cube for the format, I'd say you could include more narrow, combo, and build-around cards than in a normal cube. Knowing your opponent has, say, Splinter Twin would make unlocking that Pestermite really costly.

I didn't rate this card at all, even when I pushed the artifact deck heavily. (I've since scaled back on it.)

Then I did the forum draft with ExpiredRascal's cube, and wound up with this deck. Metalworker was pretty easily the best card in there, winning lots of games we probably shouldn't have. Heck, you can goldfish that deck and see what I mean--any hand with Metalworker is insane.

If I sub the artifacts back in, I'm definitely getting a (gold-bordered) Metalworker.

Just an update on how we've been quilting. My most frequent opponent and I both dislike having perfect information, so we've been quilting less in the past year. Last night, however, we decided to do the following: Winston 32 cards before drafting two 8x8 quilts (stopping, as usual, halfway through). That way, you have roughly a third of your cards from the Winston, which means that there is still some uncertainty about what your opponent is drafting.

The extra cards allowed for significant hatedrafting, but also made for quite streamlined decks. I got an early build-around card in the Winston (Doubling Season), and that hidden information really made the quilt more enjoyable.

Amusingly, he first-picked a Pailano, the High City, and I arbitrarily chose RG, while he chose U. That warped his entire draft towards those colors. Oddly, I also drafted RUG...

Anyway, something to consider for those who don't like perfect information.

So, if you're adding in the Melira/Muzzio's persist combo into the tube for a test, should you run this guy or Viscera Seer? It seems that scrying is more broadly useful than having an x/x guy without evasion, but I'm not sure...

Okay, so one of my regular players asked if we could add a bit more combo to the cube. I currently run the Pestermite/Exarch/Zealous Conscripts/Kiki-Jiki/Restoration Angel set, and also have Oath of Druids as a one-card build-around. He suggested Melira, which intrigued me.

I already have Woodfall Primus, Finks, Redcap, Puppeteer Clique, and Glen Elendra, with Gargadon and Goblin Bombardment as sac outlets. (And heck, even if it isn't infinite, I'd probably run Melira in a green deck with Primus and Finks...)

However, Muzzio's Preparations makes this combo MUCH stronger, since it is guaranteed to be in play, thus changing the three-card combo into a two-card. Does this push it over the edge?

Does anyone still run this? Opinions?

Yeah, the instant speed on TfK makes it the only one still in my cube (well, alongside Frantic Search), even though I've greatly cut down on the artifact package. Windfall looks interesting, but not what I imagine a blue mage wants to be doing against many decks.

Quote from Fredo »

The conspiracies are very strong, that's for sure. I certainly wouldn't recommend the better ones for an unpowered cube. In a powered cube they offer some top tier picks.

Okay, so I run an lower-powered unpowered 520 cube. Which conspiracies do you see as bad for the format, I'm curious?

Okay, looking at your decklist I do think we definitely got lucky there. We were pretty resilient to your Catastrophe/Armageddon, but you should have rolled over us before we got any of our trickiness going. Our 2-for-1s (FTK, Fire Imp, Triskelion) saved the day for us, as did your not ever getting Bob or the Sword down.

You're right, though, by the end of pack 1 your deck was a total trainwreck. It was a nice audible into a totally different archetype in pack 2 there, and you were able to end up with a deck that looked like it was locked in early. There was little removal available--your three pieces is quite thin, but I don't think you had much of an opportunity to pick up any more.

Anyway, nice pivot into a strong deck...

Okay, sorry to necro this thread, but I finally picked up an Aetherling, and have been wondering: I know it's good, but how obnoxious is it? I cut Wurmcoil Engine from my cube since it was such a no-brainer easy win condition. Do you find Aetherling leads to feel-bad wins, like True Name Nemesis can? These "annihilated my opponent and he couldn't do anything about it" comments make me leery...