Limited Resources: KTK Draft #1

Posted on October 10, 2014 by Limited Resources

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  1. Please take fixing higher, you end up with about 30 playables and 1 land, you passed a couple of jungle hollows, and a frontier bivouak. Also with the amount of delve you play, bitter revelation is possibly better than treasure cruise, it’s a really really good card from my experience.

  2. Just watched round1 so far.
    First game, I think you should really have gone for the kill on the ainok while it was possible. He had tapped “wrong” and had no more white mana, that was the one chance ^^
    Sad, that game should have been for you in spite of the poor draw :s

  3. There were at least 3 spots where you should have taken a fixer over a good card, your power level was already through the roof, more than enough playables but a very weak manabase.

  4. I don’t think Incremental Growth is good in your deck: you have a lot of expensive creatures and usually the opponent kills some before you can cast it. Maybe you can play one copy of it, but 2 is just wrong i think.

  5. Have to agree that you were punished for not prioritizing fixing.

    Is this format as miserable to play as it is to watch? It seems pretty un-fun so far, but even given that, I always enjoy your content.

  6. Marshall has a learning curve too everyone! Now we know a week into the new online format – taking the fixing is more important than the playables, especially in packs 2 and 3.

    I also like the punts of playing into the same combat trick twice in the same match (I do that way more than I should), and misclicking with the new cards. Good thing those first few drafts were Swiss!

  7. Sultai Ascendancy is just a middling card, not a first pick. Most sultai decks would rather have Scout the Borders. Also, sultai is probably not aggressive enough to want 2 Incremental Growths.

  8. Does it annoy anyone else that Marshall taps his manner, then clicks the spell or ability? It’s just so inefficient to have to click the mana symbols again. Am I just OC?

  9. Marshall I pretty much stop everything to catch your drafts, very informative and entertaining.

    Sultai Ascendancy seemed weak.

    I also think fixing taken higher would be more beneficial you get plenty of playables.

    Great video, format is a lot of fun, go WOTC!

  10. this is a great learning tool, you need to have a more louksy approach to lands. you only got one despite there being a common and uncommon cycle improving your mana would have improved your deck much more that improving your creature or spell quality, and that was clear by pack 3 and probably a bit earlier. i like the one life tapped lands as the life dose help offset the tempo alot better this time around

  11. ya, I think fixing should have been a higher priority. Gotta get as many dual lands as you can. In my experience the last 5 or 6 picks of the draft are often really rich with playables, so you can pick up the 22nd and 23rd card there.

  12. m1g1 he could have also had force away.

    I don’t like how every game in these multi-color formats hinges on drawing the right lands, but also having only 1 land that mana fixes was really bad.

  13. A deck full of powerful delve and very few ways to fill the graveyard was doomed from the beginning even without the land fixing. These delve decks need cards like Raksasha’s Secret and Bitter Revelation to keep ahead in card advantage while playing 3/3 fliers and 4/4 tramplers in the same turn. If you are having to play your delve cards for only 1 or 2 mana cheaper, you’re not making the best of your turns and will eventually get beaten by your opponents card advantage.

  14. Set Adrift seems a really poor inclusion to the splash. Got punished for that game 1. Also, played right into Force Away end of M1G1 despite getting hit with the rare instead.

    I’m sure his drafts will be better the next few weeks. Hoping for 5-color next time.

  15. I like KTK drafting so far. If you’re running 3 color you have to mana fix like it’s Dragon’s Maze. If you’re 2 color, while everyone else is spending picks on fixing, you get to keep grabbing the best spells in your colors. If you’re 5 color, you grab anything that says morph and pray to the Heart of the Cards for that one mountain you’re going to need on turn 9.

  16. m3g3 was hard to watch. You gotta mull that opener; mana was by far the biggest weekness in your deck and keeping a hand where nothing is castable plays right into that weekness.
    Also morphing the Temur Charger and turning it face up to trade with the Hordechief would been the right play.
    Never the less love the videos

  17. Marshall, how goes that recently all of your uploaded videos (and i mean not just yours specifically, but from all contributors on this site) only have sound coming from the left audio channel? None of the older videos had that issue. It’s nothing terrible, i know, but it’s a little bit annoying, like someone talking in your left year.

  18. 12:00, you say “nothing for us” while staring a Disowned Anscestor right in the face. Card is NUTS–early impenetrable wall, late game dominant–and at its best in Sultai, where it can be thrown away to Kheru Bloodsucker and Sultai Flayer for value. Turn 1 Ancestor basically wins you either of the games in Match 1.

  19. I don’t even know if you needed to play blue at all in this deck, or you could maybe splash for just the charm. Might have been better just BG.

  20. I’ve been really looking forward to this as I haven’t drafted KTK yet (I’ve got my box of Khans of Tarkir sitting on my desk and waiting for my mates to come round for a draft at some point).
    Some things I picked up from the matches is that there is a lot of removal in this set and it isn’t that expensive considering the speed of the format and all the mana flying round, not to mention delve.
    You got Incremental Growth off once. Two copies was too many, even one copy seemed a waste in most of those games. It seems like it’s a better fit with decks that can rapidly pump out a bunch of little gribblies.
    As has been mentioned several times, some more mana fixing would of really smoothed out the deck’s performance.
    I’m looking forward to the next video.

  21. M1G2 I think you were a bit too dead set on racing without really having the hand for it. By that I mean I probably would have untapped the bear to trade with his hexproof guy before playing the mandrills or really doing anything else. He might have had a way to deal with the grizzly but that would slow him down and in any case it would have put the bear in the yard, allowing you to play both mandrills and temur charger the turn after.

  22. Things I’ve noticed about this format:

    Going first is never better. Format is too slow to matter, you need the extra card.
    Mulligans loose you the game.
    18 lands are needed in all except very niche fast aggro decks, and those decks get completely wrecked by Abzan.
    Always pick mana fixing (but not those stupid banners) over any card you aren’t absolutely certain to run.
    The winner of your tournament will win only because he opened or was passed the absolute nut.
    Best KTK card in limited: Duneblast. I’ve been passed it a couple times and always pick it, even if I have to splash for it. I’ve never lost after resolving it.

  23. I think Suspension Field is considerably better than you give it credit for. It’s very close to Journey to Nowhere and a way more efficient card than something clunky like Arrow Storm to which you compared it.

  24. Whenever I felt the urge to scream at the screen: ‘Nooo dont pick that, you bloody idiot!!” I used to watch David Ochoa vids. Unfortunately channelfireball stopped uploading them. But I found a new home for that… Marshall…

    The difference of course is that I still think Ocho was trolling us for a year because he silently kept being a platinum pro while mr Sutcliffe might not know any better. But that’s ok, he has many other talents. Keep on truckin Marshall!

  25. The saddest thing about Marshall’s draft videos is not how much he embarrasses himself while being completely oblivious about it, or even that none of his friends from the pro community seem to have the heart to tell him honestly how terrible he is – it is how many beginning players are led to believe that Marshall actually has any clue at all. Actually, this is where things get not only sad, but disgusting and infuriating. I realize that Marshall is well connected, allowing him to publish his stuff here and on the WotC website, but it’s a scandal that the people responsible for these sites do not place a higher priority on educating beginning players, or at least not outright miseducating them.

    I can also not spot any “learning curve” here – Marshall’s still every bit as terrible as he was a year before. Aping some easily digestible advice from better players may allow him to win a couple more matches than other clueless players, and write some stuff which seems to make sense at the surface, but he lacks any deper understanding of limited strategy at all, which would be exactly the thing a teacher needs.

  26. agree on taking fixing – but remember that this was Marshall’s second MTGO draft. I suspect he’ll learn.

    I’m also not sure that you can run that many delve cards in a deck, without running a lot more Bitter Revelations and without decking yourself.

    Question: how good is Hooting Mandrels in this format? I’m seeing a 4/4 getting stuck across from some 2/5s or 2/8s way too often, but my sample size is small. Right now, though, I’m liking a 3/3 flier better than a 4/4 trampler.

    Also, Incremental Growth was insane last time, but the range of P/T was smaller back then. With all the really high power and toughness commons, is Inc. Growth only good if you have evasive creatures?

    Finally, Missed Chance, either make some constructive comments or shut up. “Marshall is bad” is not constructive or even vaguely useful. Please keep your vitriolic diatribes (look it up) to yourself. Marshal has the ability to simultaneously talk coherently, teach, play Magic – and not time out. Not all that easy. If you can do better, then create your own videos. That would be an infinitely better use of your time than trashing people in forums.

    I agree Marshall is not perfect. He tends to overvalue small aggressive creatures and bounce spells, including playing bounce over true removal in control decks, but saying he “lacks any deper (sic) understanding of limited strategy” is hyperbole. I consider Marshall to be the Craig Wescoe of limited – the person who plays aggro no matter what. To get a balance, you should also watch LSV, who drafts 4 and 5 color slow decks in Tempest block. That covers the extremes – draft somewhere in the middle and you will be okay.

    Is Marshall the be-all and end-all on limited strategy? No – for that *read* stuff like Frank Karsten’s pick orders and various stat breakdowns. Draft videos are, in the end, part education and part entertainment. I find Marshall’s videos entertaining, even when I am mentally yelling at him for missing a pick or trick. If you don’t like the mix, you have every right to watch other videos or read other articles. But dumping on people without offering anything constructive violates the “Don’t Be a Dick” rule big time. Please stop. If you cannot do that, go away.

    And to everyone else – sorry for my diatribe, but idiots like him piss me off.

  28. So… 8:39 in the draft vid…

    What kind of draft awards a QP and 4 packs? Interesting.