Simon Says #12: Brave New World

Posted on March 1, 2012 by Simon Goertzen

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  4. “so bad losing to a bad player like u”

    I hope he finds out how much of a clown he made of himself with that :)

  5. I don’t understand passing Moan of the Unhallowed for Blazing Torch. You are already playing Reaper, and Moan is good if cast on turn 5, 6, or 26. With Cleaver and Archangel I would want as many dudes as possible.

    Other than that, pretty flawless drafting. I would have moved into BW more agressively with Voiceless Spirit over Victim of Night, but I also rate Voiceless Spirit lower than most.

  7. Great draft, always appreciate your insights into any format.
    Please, PLEASE do more drafts! Most entertaining and educational walkthroughs on this site.

  8. @Derp- Check the audio in the video player for (1) being muted or (2) being turned all the way down. I sometimes lose audio to errant clicking with our player. :)

  9. Hi guys, I’ve missed you too! :)

    Considering Moan of the Unhallowed, don’t underestimate the loss of mana consistency. At this point, I might still decide to not play Banshee and Reaper for that reason alone. Despite playing Reaper in the end, I had to work with 7 Swamps, which means that Moan is not a safe 4-drop, which makes it significantly weaker. This is different from the Reaper, which is still excellent even if I have to wait for my 8th land to cast him (on average, I need approximately half my lands for triple black). I think Moan is a very powerful card, but at this point in the draft I am not looking for 4-mana 2/2s, as I have lots of creatures (Mausoleum Guard and Elgaud Inquisitor even acting as better pseudo-Moans, especially with Collar) and good lategame. What my deck is lacking is efficient early drops and removal (only Bonds and Smite so far), which makes Blazing Torch an incredible cost efficient and effective card. The fact that it can be used to guarantee Morbid is just a bonus.

  10. Thank you sir for an awesome draft. I find watching your drafts I always learn something new.

  11. Can you go into more depth on the following picks.

    Gather the Townsfolk over Death’s Caress

    Voiceless Spirit over Victim of Night

    Blazing Torch over Moan of the Unhallowed

    All of these picks were more conservative picks (as you noted) though you get a pretty big drop in power level in each of them. Do you still feel like those were the right calls? I can understand the Voiceless Spirit over Victim of Night pick a bit more (I like picking aggressive creatures over conditional removal in this format) but the other two feel wrong to me. You cited the double black in each of them but double black by turn 5 and 4 doesn’t seem bad to me. Any words on this matter would be quite appreciated. As always, thanks for the draft! These are definitely my favorite draft videos out there.

  12. Thanks for the explanation on the Moan pick! You beat me to the punch on that one.

  13. Very well done!
    one thing bothered me though. M3G2, you had the option of using Smite to kill off his Bane of Hanwier at your turn, which you neglected to do. That seems wrong to start with since there are enough green morbid cards at common to be worth playing around (In this case, your opponent actually had one in his hand!). But then, at your end step, he used crushing vines to destroy your cleaver. At this point, if you tried to smite and he *actually had* Ranegrs’ Guile, that would still be his second spell of the turn and the werewolf would have flipped back at his upkeep. that way even if he has the only card in the format that could save his guy, he’ll have to skip yet another turn to make the guy relevent. Last but not least, by passing a turn, you give him another chance to draw an out to your removal spell.

    So am I missing something?

  15. Ok, here we go! Regarding Gather vs Caress (P1P4), the black card is slightly more powerful, but it is also the first black card I see in this draft, which means that black could easily be drafted to my right. This could mean that if I pick up the Caress at this point, I might end up with a low number of double colored cards in the end, which is the worst possible situation considering mana consistency. At the same point I am sure to be playing a high amount of white cards given the signals of P2 and P3. Picking up the white card at this point leaves me the option of going for a deck with about 3 black sources, while picking up the Caress commits me to playing 7+. All this would not apply if the black card was significantly more powerful than Gather the Townsfolk, which it actually is most of the time. However, with Vault (1), Doomsayer (2) and Souls (3) as my first three picks, I have:
    - 1.5 cards that interact very favorably with tokens (1) and (2)
    - an insane Token generator in Lingering Souls (3)
    - large incentive to pick up Equipments due to (2) and (3)
    - the foundation of a human theme (2), part of the archetype for which BW is the color combination in Innistrad
    My last reason for going with Gather the Townsfolk is the butterfly effect. After picking up three cards of first-pick quality, all of them white, I already feel favored to win my matches if not the draft. The worst thing that can happen to me is that the color I am committed to gets cut during pack 2, because there happen to be too many white drafters. Even a minor card like Gather the Townsfolk can make a difference.

    Regarding Voiceless Spirit over Victim of Night, this could have been the point to commit to black, but I prefer to keep my options open as long as possible. I am not going to repeat everything, some of my reasoning is in the video, and the rest should be clear from what I wrote about the other controversial picks. If I had to redo this draft, I would not change any of the three picks, but if I had to order them by how I convinced I am of their “correctness”, it would be (from most convinced to least)
    1. Torch over Moan
    2. Gather over Caress
    3. Voiceless Spirit over Victim

    @Carrotus: Thanks for your comment. The turn you are commentating about started off with me misclicking/playing to fast, leading me to pass into my declare attackers. The best course of action would have been a pre-combat Smite, followed by an attack. After losing that option, I decided to wait for his turn because of the small chance that him not knowing about the Smite would make him play differently, like playing one expensive spell that would be weaker than two cheaper spells, or playing some kind of equipment or aura. However, the fact that there is Morbid made that play wrong, and he could have punished me with both the bear as well as the boar. Thankfully Woodland Sleuth was not really backbreaking. Smiting after he played Crushing Vines would have been a nice play, which is one of the reasons why I like to have a stop in my own end step. But I did not reconsider my options and stuck to the plan I originally made to cover up my mistake. In addition, I was probably quite exhausted from commentating and playing the last round, and the fact that I seemed to be easily winning this game based on my hand made me play a little too fast and careless.

  16. Interesting reasoning, I still completely disagree with Torch over Moan not only due to card strength and deck synergy but because of the formats general tempo, however your comments as usual are enlightening and appreciated.

    I mean no disrespect to the other content producers of this site, but these drafts are far and away the best content on MTGOAcademy and some of the best magic content online.

  17. After the first three picks of the draft I was guessing a 3-0 and good to see you delivered, despite a very strong but ill mannered opponent in the second round. I do feel that alter’s reap, between elder cathar, gather, collar, mausoleum guard, morbid triggers, village cannibals, and opposing enchantment removal, deserves a maindeck inclusion, since card drawing is quite good in such a powerful deck. I might cut smite from the main or rats from the main.

  18. you are just awesome and very clear and comprehensive with your pick discussion. Thank you. Hands down best draft videos on the web. yeah. I said it.

  19. This site is one of the best for quality mtgo vids…………

    but please please get another server. Its ridiculous that I cannot watch a video without pausing it and waiting for 5 minutes so it loads enough. I can stream perfectly from any other site (30mbps cable connection), can host live video, download wirelessly in my house at over 1mb a sec, but i cant watch your vids. Even when i try to download the file its slow. Might be about time to let youtube host your videos if you cannot afford the extra bandwidth.

  20. very nicely done draft. I agreed with all picks except for the moan of unhallowed. The power level of moan makes it the pick, especially since you just took a triple black spell.

    If i had been doing the draft i would have grabbed the foil gringrim just for the money, unless it was a top8 draft or something with higher value.

  21. Sorry to repeat what the others have already said but: a) welcome back; b) this is the best MTGO content online; c) you are one of the most articulate and thoughtful drafters/players making videos. Thanks to you and to MTGO Academy for the great content.

    Keep up the great work!

  22. Awesome draft and comments, one of the best I have seen. Please make more vids soon!

  23. I agree wholeheartedly with the torch over moan. I think many people underestimate the torch. It kills many creatures, and the fact that it is good vs vampires and zombies is just icing.

    I would have considered myself drafting black and taken the victim of night, but I’m not as good a player or drafter, so take that with a grain of salt. I also tend to commit very early to two colors so that I get more of the higher power level cards. However, this can lead to losing more picks if a color must be dropped later.

  25. The reason I love your drafts is there is always a good reason for taking a pick. From power level to mana consistency, it’s a solid reason and more importantly it makes sense and works.

    For someone like myself who’s looking to learn, this really makes the difference.

  26. your drafting is flawless, and clearly you had some help from the table. i tend to find you a bit too conservative in play, but learning from your style is exactly what i have needed to grow as a player. excellent games, sir!