Kool Runnings: MTGO Cube Draft #3

Posted on June 8, 2012 by ChrisKool

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  2. Starting with a sweet mono blue deck and then taking chrome mox, barely playable, over draw 3 made me not want to watch the rest.

  4. Chrome mox is card disadvantage, and is terrible in heavy blue. Chrome mox is best in mono red, 5cc, and storm. You passed ancestral vision for it. You passed ancestral vision for it. It’s too bad you couldn’t just tap the shoulder of the guy to your right and say “cut my blue pack 2, please!”. Then you do even better and pass Keiga for a magpie.

    Seriously who allows you to post videos? You are easily the worst cube drafter I’ve witnessed posting videos, even among all the lowly scrubs on YouTube.

  5. And as Jared said, stopped watching this trash shortly after your terrible picks.

    To anyone potentially watching these videos as a source of insight into cube drafting should know: ChrisKools videos are generally an example if what not to do.

  7. Chrome Mox is often good in a deck that can recoup from the card disadvantage, and accelerants are not only good in aggressive decks. It is regularly played, for instance, in several UW and Esper control lists in 100 card singleton.

    Marshall has been on vacation, but he’ll be returning.

  8. ‘Kill yourself’- what is with the sociopathic anonymous handles? Is it a reflection about how you feel about yourself? You shouldn’t kill yourself, the world needs trolls. /sarcasm

    Love the vids as always. Way to go breaking the proverbial mold by taking “bad” cards. LOL.

    <3 me

  9. tell planet walls to get the french fry/barbecue sauce combo going and make some vids too!!!

  10. Im not saying Chrome Mox is bad, im saying chrome mox is bad in limited. As many have pointed out it is card disadvantage and is good in certain decks. You dont have ways to recoup the card you lost. Not only that you passed to very good blue cards, ancestral is one of the best, setting up 2 people to cut you on the way back. No one getting passed a mox is thinking to themselves, blue must be wide open, pass me a visions and that is exactly what im thinking.

  12. I dunno, it looked like you had plenty of ways to draw cards. Moreover, the CA in your deck was sustainable (unlike the visions…). But what do I know, I was enjoying your videos instead of snap-hating on your picks. Thanks for doing your thing and helping folks learn.

  13. god this draft so far is mishandled. Chrome mox is pretty terrible and ancestral visions is very good. then you snap pick magpie which might just be the 4th best blue card in the pack. then you (want to) take trigon preditor with no green over pierce or fathom seer. Why aren’t you trying to cut blue more? You can EASILY be mono blue the way this is working out.

    skipped ahead a little and heard the phrase “masticore or mind stone”, skipped a little more ahead and see you take the 5 mana masticore. Am quitting this one, sorry. I generally don’t troll comment, but this is hard to watch.

  14. If I had to be gay with anyone, you would be third on my list… but this deck is not good. I cringed about 20 times during the draft; and now I have become that which I hate: a person who hindsights!!!

  15. Chris may be dumb, but he isn’t stupid. Chrome Mox is perfectly fine in UG which has:
    1. high cmc spells
    2. card draw

    Number 2 negates card disadvantage, one profits from the ramp and fixing Mox gives. Moar hate plx.

  16. While I may disagree with some of your picks I don’t think anyone has a right to bash your draft style (kill yourself) I feel the most unimpressive card in your deck for me atleast was Voidmage…I can understand it for a cheap creature but I believe you could have found something better if I’m missing why it was in your deck please explain….love the vids keep them coming

  17. chrome mox is OK it is not the pick there tho.

    I like mox in a deck with edric and magpie to an extent tho, turbo magpie is probably really fun to play and leans on moxen heavily.

    -orvn

  20. Mox was excellent in this deck, which has multiple ways to get to 8 cards.

    And why are you people commenting saying he should take more 6-drops? Even first picking the best of the 6-drops is questionable, and he did end up getting two which are better than the Keiga. Cube is way more tempo-oriented than you seem to realise, which is why Chrome Mox is a good pick, and why Prodigy is actually playable in this style of deck sometimes, particularly with an Edric and a Sword.

    This was pretty fun, though the weakness of your opponents makes me think you got off easy in this draft. Look forward to the next one.

  21. Not the way I would have gone but the pick that bothered me the most was not taking Gifts Ungiven over some random green card? Did you miss it? Seems like you snap picked and didn’t take your time. However, thanks for the vid. :)

  22. congrats on the win, however, it seemed like your draft picks werent very strong. I think there are many times you mispicked, and misplayed… a win is a win, but remember… even a broken clock is right twice a day.

  23. Via Twitter (May 17th): “Graham Stark ‏@Graham_LRR – Every recording of a MTGO Cube draft I see has comments flooded with how wrong the drafter picked their cards. Even when they win!”

    So true. That’s the Internet for you.

    This is the first time I watched one of your videos and I have to say I really liked how you engaged your opponents in the chat (or tried to). So many players (especially those making videos) say nothing and will even ignore what their opponents say. So, good on you for being a decent human being, first and foremost. =)

  24. Love that you do the draft, but I have to admit, I stopped watching before the end of the draft vid. Not strong picks at all, even straight up wrong picks.

  25. @MMogg: Awesome! That was me.
    Like I said, Cube is such a high-variance format that everyone has their own, very firm, ideas of what is “good”.

    —

    If anything, were I someone who thought Chris’ picks were bad, I’d want to keep watching just to see how the deck would perform. I think the “I stopped watching” crowd is really missing out on some interesting play.

  26. I think people would rag on drafters less (Chris included) if they gave a more thorough explanation of their picks. If Chris had been able to give a good reason that Chrome Mox is better in the deck he was looking to draft than Ancestral Visions (other than “Chrome Mox is good”), people might be more able to accept “different” picks.

  27. Hi everyone,

    Let me start this off by saying I really appreciate all constructive criticism. It’s been a while since I have been “on my game”, and comments that make me think about my decisions are always welcomed AND encouraged. I know there will always be comments that are antagonistic, but the number of truly well-thought ones tend to outnumber them, and for that, I am grateful!

    This is going to be a wall of text, so if you have a TL;DR tattoo on your inner forearm, I’m sorry. I aim to hit a few of the “issues” touched upon in the comments, and I reckon it will take some number of words (some large number…).

    Magic on video: Magic is a bad spectator game because of its pacing (personally, I liken it to baseball- only an extreme affinity for the game can make it interesting to watch). As was mentioned, more thorough on the narrator’s part goes a LONG way in making the game (or draft) being watched entertaining and/or insightful. I regret that I have been unfocused in videos as of late (as I do recognize that commentary makes or breaks a video); hopefully A.J. and myself can coordinate something for our schedules again to get “Let’s Play”s up and running again. The dual commentary really forces each of us to focus on expounding upon our decision trees (and means that we get tense “versus the clock” moments from running our mouths and pontificating too much)! Talking takes focus away from the game, so a commentating player *really* has to know what’s going on to deliver top-level narration and make the best plays.

    The average purpose of Kool Runnings: Mild-to-moderate entertainment coupled with me actually playing Magic instead of only thinking about it. I lost the desire to PT a long while ago. I love playing the game, but I believe that to earn (and not luck into) a Pro Tour berth, a player has to understand the environment they are playing in, and that takes a lot of work (both mental and physical- testing decks or running DEs is time consuming and theory crafting for a superior output is basically extreme problem-solving). That being said, I think Magic is a wonderful game and love to play it. These videos “force” me to take time out and play this exquisite game while providing my “unique” post-competitive mindset. To some, I hope this is enjoyable and is worth watching. :)

    In-game decision-making: It gets worse with less practice. Luckily (especially for cube), I think there are very few blatantly wrong decisions.Sure, the MTGO Cube favors certain archetypes, but it also supports a wide variety of successful decks based on past decks (stuff like Accel Blue, Eminent Domain, Elfball (which was a deck pre-Onslaught!, Sui Black and the like). I would only trust cube insights from players with a lot of experience with a wide variety of different cards from all Magic sets; most recent pros don’t even fit the bill here (look at the SCG Invitational Legacy portion or Legacy GPs for corroborating evidence). My personal experience is heavily based in playing Singleton (which I feel like translates into the cube environment moderately well), so a lot of my decisions are based on deck construction for that format. I have played cards like Sphinx of Jwar Isle in UG(w) for Std. Singleton and Chrome Mox in UW-based Control in 100CS to pleasant effect. Razormane Masticore has actually proven itself to me in past cube drafts (where I was not happy to be playing it, initially); I now respect it.

    MTGO Cube: There have been a decent amount of articles on how “awful” this cube is, and they do hit an important point: slower decks (that use mana ramp to better leverage their power of plays) are extreme ballbusters in this cube. Sure, LSV’s patented Mono-Red Cube 40(tm) is a known entity, but some mana ‘facts/elves and big spells win a lot of games. The good-stuff nature of the cube makes me less interested in drafting the “certain” deck, and more interested in having a pile of strong cards (unless the certain deck is a pet deck, like Sui Black or something with Wildfire)! Chrome Mox is very interesting because of the speed and resilience that comes with it. (The other quick accelerants are creatures and the mox doesn’t have summoning sickness issues.) I will play it over a land in a deck that doesn’t want a lot of mana sources but has 2cc-4cc drops that dramatically change the game coming out a turn earlier (and thus can lead to a win before card disadvantage matters) or in decks that have high-impact cards in the 3cc-6cc drops where a player is happy to pitch a card to stabilize the board and/or can easily recoup the lost card. Ancestral Vision is the opposite of this mentality- the mulligan is future benefit. I favor immediate benefit (most of the time) in MTGO Cube.

    Hindsight: I regret picking the shock duals in pack 2; sometimes, I get lured into taking lands. I also regret not taking Manriki-Gusari when it showed up fairly late. I also feel like I could have spent some of my mediocre picks hating cards I don’t want to see. I still like this style of deck, though (even if it did have soft competition and wasn’t perfectly drafted).

    And not to single out individual posters, but… Jared, sorry for the tongue-in-cheek reply to your comment. I was on vacation and a bit irritated when I left it (which is no excuse, ‘cept I can be a bit of a jerk :-O). I hope if you read this again that I gave you some insight into my Chrome Mox pick. “Kill yourself”, you picked your screenname… (Oops, there’s the jerk coming out again.)

  28. Hey Chris!

    I actually have a question! You seems to debate a little on Histrodon, compared to what else was in the pack. You did eventually pick it but what was making you second guess? It seems pretty strong compared to Magpie of course it doesn’t fly, but 4 toughness, and it morphs, which I think is good in limited becauase it comes down early if you need it too.

    Same thing with simic the big B/G flyer with shroud! That seems VERY strong, even though it’s a late game closer… Why didn’t you play it?