A Pretty Cool DDD Draft

I wrote it. I am the editor.

no name: Good call. That makes it all the more awesome that I didn’t lose the Angel out of being nice to him. But then again, why didn’t he just sit back and block with the Niblis to do that on the following turn? If he thought I knew he had Tragic Slip enough to bluff in the comments box, wouldn’t it be worth not getting in for 1 extra damage? I guess he also leaves me open to stupidly blocking the 1/4 instead of the Niblis, and he obviously wouldn’t be able to block the Angel on his turn with the 1/4. But again, is all that worth risking me not blocking and then taking 5 damage from the angel the next turn and maybe even the turn after that?

Steinhauser: Almost assuredly, but my own voice and Plinkett imitations now flow into one another so readily (like the conflux of the Gombak and the Klang) that it’s hard to discern a difference.

Tokamak: Game Preserve? No way. I don’t even leave my apartment except to go to the bathroom. (I used to go to the GP a little bit when I lived in Bloomington, IN, though. Why do you ask?)

Black Beauty: Good call on a number of counts. For some reason, I like you. I’m not defending my decision making at all in R3G1, but I actually think that baiting a removal spell without first playing angel would’ve been right. He assuredly had something, and he was going to use it, so I think playing conservatively and holding onto angel when my board position was decent was probably the way to go. Again, I didn’t consciously make this decision, so I’m not defending myself in that regard.

Also, Beguiler gets killed by ‘unkicked’ Tragic Slip, so I’m not sure it’s a massive bomb at 5 in DDD. I was also passing the foil Niblis and worried I would be competing for blue in Pack 3, when deciding on the first Beguiler.

Finally, I understand what you mean when you say that I’m not supposed to let my ‘compassion’ affect my gameplay, but I’m not very clear on why my ‘understanding’ shouldn’t. How wouldn’t it? The only way to not let it would be to have a better understanding of the format, and you do that from drafting. This was my first DDD draft, and my first draft with Innistrad at all in over two months, so you should take that as you will. I’m not attempting, as you know, to offer something like Simon Goertzen offers; I’m offering a chance to watch someone kind of know what they’re doing while self-consciously not knowing what they’re doing. You get the privilege of watching someone not know what they’re doing and begin (slightly) to know what they’re doing (if you’d call that a privilege). Glad you like the vids.

Oh, and none of you know how old I am or what I weigh. Unless “old as fuck” means >24. Or unless all the old anchovies I ate during the last vid pushed me up 30-120 pounds.

Thanks for the note, Buddha. Technical issues like this are helpful to bring up. The answer: Yes, buy a new computer. This will happen eventually, but I’m not sure what can be done int he meantime considering hardware and software limitations. Or I can just try to talk louder.

Glad to respond to some of these comments.

For those of you still guessing my weight, I’ll save you the trouble: You can see me on video performing my MTGO Academy wampire editing duties here. The doctors calculate my weight in a combination of metric tonnes and DMTEs (dark matter tablespoon equivalents).

Vanwilder: Yeah, that play’s pretty fishy, and it made me cringe the most out of rewatching, mainly because the 2/1 guy is actually pretty decent in the late game. Truth be told, I probably should’ve kept him around, though there’s some legitimacy to making a 3/3 flier and trying to push through with it. The sad part was just not drawing the second green mana for so long, and I actually think if I had, or had drawn the Griffin one turn earlier, I could’ve turned that game around.

theeguy: Saving 3 tix is a good idea for most players of Magic Online, but when you have a career that pays *some* (note, not a lot) money, it’s oftentimes not worth the time scrounging around the Classifieds. Chris and I have gotten in many a fight about this; I maintain that my time is more valuable to me than event tickets. He maintains that it takes time to earn event tickets. Just don’t do as I do. (Or you could think about it in Goldfinger terms — returning those 3 tix to the Wizards’ maw whence they came ends up making your tix slightly more valuable. Plus I did this draft early last week, when prices were a bit higher on the packs.)

apaulogy: I don’t know what got in your fry hole, but it must’ve not been bbq sauce. And yes, your criticism is noted and appreciated. Simon is very aware of the format, works his ass off, and it really does show. You are right to point out that this is not the type of content I’m working to provide. You’re right — we’ve stumbled into a lot of wins, but I’ll stand up for myself a little bit and say that, in general, I do a good job of choosing the right line of play when I’m still uncomfortable with the format; having a mediocre deck but paying a lot of attention does a lot of work for winning matches, as does simply slowly thinking about all the possible routes and lines of play. This does not discount the fact that we’ve fallen into some wins over our respective tenures. I remember an early NMS draft where we ripped White Sun’s Zenith off the top of our deck exactly when we needed it several games in a row. There was another match, not sure if it was recorded, where I won with 00:00 left on the clock. Hopefully your experience with these drafts is like that of watching the basketball match in Space Jam live. Sometimes a Monstar just happens to trip, the laws of physics bend, an anvil falls, and he swishes a 3-pointer for the wrong team. From now on these will be titled Rube Goldberg Magic.

Mihi bonitas est pessimis esse meliorem.

shhh: Hollowhenge Spirit only lets you remove from combat a target creature that’s already been declared as an attacker or blocker, and once a creature has been declared as a blocker, the blocked creature isn’t going to do combat damage to the controller of the blocker unless it has trample or some other relevant effect is on the board.

Wait, is BEK my wife’s MTGO screen name, or are you just my wife trolling me pretending to be a man pretending to be a woman?