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Simon Says #11: Lessons Learned
Posted on January 19, 2012 by Simon Goertzen
Simon Goertzen Simon Goertzen is a pro Magic player whose prominent tournament successes include winning Pro Tour San Diego in 2010. In 2012 Simon began providing coverage of European MtG events, including Grands Prix.
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Awesome insight in the introduction: “We usually try to keep it low but it might not always be your best bet to only play on the safe side of this.” Thanks for the content
My top three is
1. Graveyard as a resource.
2. Double Faced Cards are such a strong signal in a real draft.
3. Hexproof is very good.
As good, if not better, than CFB drafts. The introductions are well composed and always insightful. I will always come back to you Gortzen and look forward to seeing how you handle the incoming set.
My three (perhaps a bit vague, but they are applicable to all formats):
Learn early on what decks to avoid.
Try and be ahead of the curve when it comes to innovative decks. look to draft them before they are in vogue.
Notice what cards beat you and adapt accordingly. Don’t consider certain strategies beneath you.
Best innovative strategy i saw was a strongish U/W deck that used tokens + spare from evil as an alpha strike, through a wall of spiders i thought would keep me safe even when on a low life total.
Thanks for these great videos Simon! I always look forward to seeing a new episode!
another thing I learned:
Take a good sideboard card (that beats the innovative decks) over a sub-par mediocre card.
for example:
purify the grave -> runic revelation + memory’s Journey combo
naturalize, bramblecrush -> burning vengeance combos
Without having listened to your picks yet:
1. Draft with a purpose. Cards aren’t “good” because of some abstract metric; they are good because they perform a specific job very well, or multiple jobs reasonably well. Most of the commons in Innistrad have such wildly different value in different decks. The earlier in a draft I can figure out what my deck’s path to victory is, the stronger my picks are.
2. Experiment. I’ve dominated Innistrad drafts with some very odd archetypes, and now that I understand what the key cards are, I can spot when those archetypes are open. When somebody destroys you with an unusual strategy, try to understand exactly what happened, and draft a similar deck when you have a chance.
3. Don’t pass the best deck. The very worst drafts are the ones where you see that, say, blue is crazy open, but for three picks in a row, you take slightly inferior white cards because you have a white bomb and you “already passed some good blue stuff”. Just move in on the best deck when you see it coming, or the guy to your left will draft it and smash your nose in.
I must admit I’ve been tempted before to run naturalise main in some of my shakier decks.
There are just so many artifacts and enchantments that get run (especially enchantments) that I’m rarely without a target. Galvanic Juggernaught, Butchers Cleaver and the various enchantment removals in blue and white are pretty much always making someones deck.
@Goblingrenadier – Bramblecrush also stops the spell-lands which is definitely not irrelevant either. It will probably be even more important when Ascension comes out with the additional spell lands.