LoadingReadyRun #4: LRR’s Alphabet Cube

Posted on May 9, 2012 by LoadingReadyRun

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  1. Can you guys try doing something different with the series. This is the second week in a row where you basically just draft cards completely randomly. It’s not really entertaining to watch cards picked randomly from the pack. It stopped being comedy 2 minutes into the video when it’s just “hey this card is good, but we have to take the card that fit’s our arbitrary draft rule” over and over again.

    I really don’t mind an entertainment draft, but could you focus it around something other than this. Maybe try to force a deck that would be hilarious if it came together. Maybe build a griefer deck for standard. Honestly anything else would be welcome.

  2. That moment when you guys said X is next and I counted how many cards you’ve picked so far.

    “Will it? Will it?”

    Can’t stop laughing.

  3. @Bob– Fair points! Do you have a suggestion for something funny we could do in Limited? Please hit up our Twitter and let us know (@LRRMtG). We don’t have the resources to commit to anything in Standard.

    For what it’s worth, we tried to keep the actual games more entertaining this time. R2 is especially wacky.

  4. @ LRR– Why not just build around the card you think will lead to the weirdest deck in limited. A lot of cube drafts just end up as simple UW control, mono red, etc. Instead you could try to make your own archetype. This would be stuff like death cloud, birthing pod, minds desire, etc. That would combine the humor of trying to force something silly with the appeal of watching a draft (which comes from trying to anticipate picks and rooting for cards to show up).

    The nice thing about building weird decks in standard is they are usually really cheap to build online. For example you could make a descent into madness deck with literally just removal spells, swamps, and a playset of descent into madnesses.

    Also, did you guys do a podcast with Volpin props. I feel that you guys did at some point, but I could be wrong.

  5. “Is Batterskull his only win-con?” I guess Sorin can’t move to make himself noticed with the Faith’s Fetter on him.

  6. @Shadmed– Ouch. Right. Whoops!
    Well, whatever, he was… Fettered? Is that a verb?

    Still! That deck was AMAZING at doing a whole lot of nothing, you must admit.

    @Bob– Not a podcast, but we’re friends with Harrison who runs Volpin. We’ve hung out a couple times?

  7. Why not run Blue instad of Red? It would have been easier on your Mana.

  8. Here is the best suggestion ever!

    Best Suggestion Ever: Take advantage of the Time Spiral queues that will be up until next Wednesday by doing the Time Spiral Scavenger Hunt! The idea is that you attempt to have as many of the Time Spiral block mechanics (including old mechanics that were revisited in Time Spiral block) in your deck as possible.

    Since it’s a little fuzzy what exactly constitutes a mechanic, my suggested list is: Absorb, assemble contraptions, bloodthirst, buyback, convoke, delve, dredge, echo, fateseal, flanking, flashback, forecast, fortification (the artifact subtype), frenzy, grandeur, graft, gravestorm, hellbent, kicker, madness, morph, poisonous, rampage, scry, shadow, slivers, spellshaper, split card, split second, storm, suspend, threshold, transfigure, transmute, tribal (the card type), typecycling (e.g. slivercycling, swampcycling, wizardcycling), and vanishing.

    You won’t be able to get them all, but as long as you honestly give it your best effort, it should be pretty amusing and still leave you a little room to make some choices.

  9. “Do you have a suggestion for something funny we could do in Limited?”

    You could force storm… it’s just bad enough to be funny and fun with a slight chance of winning.

  10. you could also do a color wheel draft. Where you pick one of every color until you do the whole wheel and then start over. Like- first pick you can pick anything, second pick if you picked a red card, you can only pick U/G/B/W, third pick if you picked a white card you pick from G/B/U etc. Until you get to the 6th pick and it opens up again. If you get passed a pack that is heavy in one color, any pick that doesn’t fall in the color wheel pick scheme can not be played.

    For added strategy, artifact/land picks are free ones, and will meet the requirement for a color. Try to draft so If you are drafting strong W/R cards, you try to leave W/R open to pick from for the first pick in the second pack.

    could be fun.

  11. Maybe try a draft where you pick based on CMC. An all 1 drop draft would be fun. Run like 14 lands, or something crazy like that. 1 drop or card draw.

  12. You should do a “Curses, foiled again” draft, where you force a curse deck and have to take every foil you see.

  13. I think the approach of forcibly drafting around a certain card/theme is very appealing.
    To bad cube is gone, but cube is almost perfect for this.
    However any drafting format is doable as long as you do some research.
    F.e. for a format you make a list of 10+ cards which you think can do fun/interesting stuff or have a certain theme going around it.
    In innistrad/DA this would be Burning vengeance, zombie apocalypse, spider spawning, 5colour flashback control, mill etc.

    The moment you start the draft off you try to find one of those cards on your list and then force draft that archetype for the rest of the draft. It still will be fun and have comedical value, but also it remains true to magic and people might learn a thing or two.

  14. You guys make me laugh I like the light hearted approach while maintaining the competitive ame play when things look grim…best line oh look sorin your welcome we passed that to you!

  15. Only had time to watch the first, and the draft, but I found the draft and the deck making process amusing. Faith’s Fetters is a legit T5 pick, so you lucked out there; Parallax Wave is also awesome, though you underrated it. And that combo deck was amazing! Casting Yawg’s Will and breaking LED, and actually going the Storm route… only needed Necropotence and it would’ve been the stones. Interesting stuff though, look forward to watching the rest of the videos.

  16. You need an override of some sort. Maybe each teammate gets one veto, or you ignore cards once thay aren’t in your colors. Being left completely to the mercy of the alphabet is tradegy, as in the agony warp pick.

  17. Lackluster deck countered by Canadian charm! Quick question: what kind of microphone are you guys using? All mtgoacademy, draftmagic, channelfireball, etc. drafters should use your mic. Keep having fun!

  18. For the last play of round 1 couldn’t you unearth the 4/4 and equip the artifact on it to kill his planeswalker?

  19. The guy who said this wasn’t fun is just plain wrong.

    This was great fun. Maybe not the best magic I’ve ever seen played, but even for a cube this was pure molten insanity and the fact you somehow managed to get a match won with that deck was golden. From facing down Vengevine and Yosei, with the wall gaining more life than you could ever hope to kill, THEN him saccing it all to the Gargadon and going on a rampagin 36 point life swing (I could totally imagine that guy doing a little victory dance) , THEN fading them all out and beating for the win ? How is that not awesome ?

    If nothing else it goes to show that cube has some sweet cards, and even drafting essentially at random can put together some fun things. If I wanted to see LSV and chums do a regular every day draft, I’d go watch their videos. I come to LRR to see them screw around and be sarcastic at MtG and this totally delivered.

    If you went for this kind of thing again, maybe take your first pick in each pack like a regular pick, THEN go alphabetically from there. Probably doesn’t make that much difference but at least you get serious bombs as well as wackyness.

    Anyways, this was a great watch. With TerriblyRandom.dek every game is a nail biter because you literally have no idea what is going to happen! Excitement! Adventure! Venser-Skinrender-Grave Titan-Death! Anything is possible!

  20. Watching you guys play Ball Lightning over Goblin Trenches in the 5-mountain deck was painful. Saccing five lands late game for ten 1/1s will win a lot of games.

    Also,don’t forget that morph creatures are, at worst, a colorless 2/2 for three.

  21. Here’s a sugestion. Force a Pauper draft by only taking commons if nothing else you shoudl be able to get a perty fast deck out of that. and to add an extra level of difficulty no mulls allowed.

  22. This was hilarious. Another great video guys.

    The Time Spiral suggestion is pure gold btw. I can see it now…

  23. Thoroughly enjoying these, although count me in the players yelling at the screen at terrible plays ;)

    (Although frequently by your opponents!)

    As for suggestions: Creature-only draft

  24. Love these videos.

    Don’t worry about if you’re making bad plays or not, I don’t care about strat when I’m watching humor videos.

  25. I love these comedy drafts. Should try the sealed idea where you use every card to build a huge deck.

  27. I just realized (in the middle of my own TSP draft) that I left Cycling and Rebels off the list, so if you do it, you probably want to put those on.

  28. Love the idea of the first-pick-whatever-you-want-followed-by-alphabetical draft, or the forced pauper draft (and if no commons were left, you could pick whatever you wanted).

    Anyway, I think people who thought this wasn’t fun were taking it too seriously. If you want to watch people draft a serious deck, there are other videos to watch. But I actually want to try this with a group of people and my peasant cube, all starting on different letters, just to see what madness follows.

  29. Graham forcing bump in the night on his LRR draft twitch tv account was quite a laugh. I gree that forcing something silly has the potential of great comedy. I like the idea of drafting with the rule that you have to main every card that you pick. You guys make me laugh regardless, so I don’t really mind what you do. I’ll still watch.

  30. In game 1, when you try to chaos warp the batterskull, you say “in hindsight, we should have done it on his turn, cause he was tapped out”, and it seems to be because you are afraid of counterspells. But the real reason why you should have done it on your turn, is because he could still just return it to hand, using 3 mana again. Just like he did with the previous spell you cast on it. =P

  31. Note: just started watching the series, going on an archive binge.

    I think that while a random draft itself isn’t necessarily entertaining, it is quite funny/entertaining to watch you try to play a randomly drafted deck. Not only is it humorous, but also fun to watch from a “how the hell will they get this to work?” perspective.