Introduction
Click the arrow to download the above video in .mp4 format.Draft and Deckbuilding
Click the arrow to download the above video in .mp4 format.DII Draft, Round 1
Click the arrow to download the above video in .mp4 format. Click the arrow to download the above video in .mp4 format.No Round 3.
nicely built deck, round 2 was awesome and very close!
Very nice deck. Havnt watched the rounds yet (cause this site takes forever to download from), but wanted to comment on one thing:
Call to the Kindred
You dismissed this card initially, and rightfully. It is a horrible early pick. But it wheeled and you ended up with it. You also ended up with one of the few decks capable of abusing it. You have 9 zombies maindeck by my count. That makes approx 1 of 4.5 cards in deck a zombie. Call looks at top five cards. Stands to reason you would be hitting pretty much every turn.
I have only played with it on the beta server, not in a regular draft, but when I have used it with 8 plus of a creature type it has been very good. It is probably better out of the sideboard against decks with no removal, but if played carefully could go maindeck too. High risk, high reward.
Hopefully I will be watching you bring it out of sb sometime during this draft.
Love the videos. I’ve just started playing in drafts and the first two videos have been really helpful.
I second Clown Baby’s comment – round two was very entertaining.
I wonder how much of these drafts you did before this one; I played like 20 and of the 12 times i played redgreen i won 11… i would have definitely picked the immerwolf and got the reward on picks 3 and 7 with 2 wild hungers… not to mention the pack 2 rare.
I guess that deck would have been as strong as this one, at least; of the 5 times i tried the zombie deck I didn’t pass round 1 once… it doesn’t feel like the zombie theme is getting there in draft.
Regarding Call to the Kindred:
A lot of people underestimate this card because they don’t know the best way to use it. Stick it on your opponent’s creatures!
Yes, enchanting his creatures still gives you the benefit. Chances are very good in Innistrad limited that the opponent will have a zombie, or a spirit, or a human, or any relevant tribe that could also be in your deck. Just enchant their guy and reap the potential benefits each turn. And if it causes them to kill or throw away their own guy, well, the aura just paid for itself.
At the very least, in a dedicated zombie deck, you should sideboard it in against decks that play zombies (like round 2′s opponent).
“It is always good to have some six drops in your deck” LOL – Round 2 @ 16:55
That introduction had nothing to do with your draft. You took the wrong card P1, P1 and never adjusted in any way. Without the Curse and mindshrieker, which are bombs, you wouldn’t have won round one. The signals were white, green and red and you forced a clunky archetype.
I enjoy the videos, but the intros appear to be made after the fact and have little to do with your draft strategy.
Hi guys, and thank you for your comments.
Regarding Call to the Kindred, I will definitely try that card again. I especially like the idea of enchanting an opponent’s creature, which is something I did not consider before — appreciate those kind of insights.
@knx: I did quite a lot of drafts before that one, including my PT Hawaii preparation and quite a lot of DII drafts on MTGO (the drafts for this series are not prerecorded so far in advance like on other sites). I like all the lords and they all have a very big upside. My reasoning for the zombie was that a regular U/B deck naturally contains more zombies than an R/G deck does Werewolves. In the end, both picks have a high upside if they work out, but if they don’t, I still prefer a deathtouch creature to a 2-colored intimidate one. It is very possible that R/G is so much better than U/B that the Immerwolf is the best option, but at this point I do not feel confident to say so. Additionally, I prefer my drafting to be as self-contained as possible, which makes me hesitant to go with color-preference picks while recording. This is especially true early on in a format, where I expect many people to still be figuring out the basics.
@Sylvan: Your comment is not the most constructive one, which makes it a bit difficult to respond. I make all intros after I recorded a draft, and some drafts make for better intros than others. However, all the intros are connected to the draft and/or play in some way or the other, even if the connection might not be apparent to you — I certainly have something in mind every time. I won’t go into the details, but the concepts I talked about influence my drafting both during draft and deckbuilding. If you want to take the next step (which is my goal with an educative series like this one), you not only apply what I say to my drafting and deckbuilding, but also to the deck of my round 2 opponent, for example.
Considering the actual draft, I “adjust” to taking the captain by following up with Tragic Slip and Nephalia Seakite, two great additions to any U/B deck. I don’t see picking up either Villager, Recluse or Wild Hunger P3 as a realistic option. A P4 Quiver also adds a lot of value to my deathtouch creatures and is a great pick-up. I sincerely hope that most viewers made this connection on their own, but the way Wolfhunter’s Quiver influences the remaining draft and deckbuilding is one of the key concepts I allude to in the intro.
Thanks for watching!
Round two was very interesting, thanks for the draft Mr. Goertzen. I feel like there was possibly a way to win round 2 and perhaps you played too quickly in a complicated situation. But your opponent drew very well and you drew too many lands, so maybe it wasn’t possible to win. I thought U/B was correct as well, for draft colors. One thing I learn from your drafts and other great players is that you always have tools to make up for what you are missing. In this draft, you didn’t find much removal, but you had a nice trick with the Quiver/Deathtouch, the flash creature, and the Banshee. Thanks again.
I find your emotional composure and seeming inability to tilt very enviable. Your thought processes are quite methodical and calm and I wish I could do the same. =(
One thing I have always wondered is, do you record a few drafts and then choose one you like to use for a published video or do you just sit down and say, this one will be the article video regardless of what happens?
@Disco: I had the same feeling after round 2, but I could not really say how to maximize my chances against this deck. Just like with rogue decks in constructed, my opponent profited from confronting me with something very unexpected. And please call me Simon :).
@MMogg: You get to see whichever draft I happen to record and commentate. At rare instances (<5%) it happens that I am not happy with the flow of my commentary or the overall quality. In one of the first drafts I tried to record, I timed out in round 1 because playing and commentating took me too much time.
The problem is that that your intros are recorded after and . It would be useful if you were going into a draft with a strategy that you detailed and then applied, but you didn’t even follow standard draft logic. Blue Black, though strong at times, has proven to be a clunky archetype. The Captain isn’t a card that you go all in on from the first pick. Yet that’s what you did. Your signals from that point on were white, red and green, with multiple Wild Hungers and white flyers and token generators going late. Instead of reading the signals, you insisted that Nephalia Seakite third is a blue signal (It’s not, at all) and forced your way into an awkward draft.
You were rewarded in pack two with the two cards that won round one for you, Mindshrieker and curse. Had you gone another direction would have been okay with instigator gang, Champion of the Parrish and multiple human token generators to win the game before the curse comes down. I know WR is reviled by the CF crowd, but white has so many multiple token generators that rally the peasants type effects become a house.
Pack three you consistently mention the late white cards “Hmm, this is a late Chapel Geist”. That is because of the aforementioned huge white signal. At that point it is too late and you have your deck. I think that there were many better and more available decks out there that you passed on to play your Diregraf Captain. If you had a better grasp of the metagame of Innistrad Block limited, which is RG, GW > BW, RB, GUb, UB, RW, I don’t think you would have targeted the deck you drafted. In the intro you mentioned a specific creature to spell balance. At no time in your draft did it seem like you were trying to draft a specific number of creatures or spells. Oftentimes, your intros are less enlightening than tacked on. I enjoy your videos, as you do play well and offer up some insights, but you should seriously consider doing more research and adjusting the format of your videos.
Sylvan, I’m not replying on behalf of Simon here, but I think it a non sequitur to claim that the type of intro Simon provided has some sort of causal relation to what you perceive to be mistakes made during drafting.
An introduction made before drafting wherein the drafter decides on what strategy to pursue during the draft is neither better nor worse than an introduction made after the fact; it’s simply that a post hoc introduction accomplishes a different pedagogical task, situating the viewer with respect to the sorts of things to which he or she should be attentive when watching the draft. What’s so great about Simon’s introductions, from my perspective, is that they point out a conceptual issue that Simon thought was a salient factor during the draft and subsequent games. In short, Simon’s introductions are framing devices for a viewer interested primarily in learning from the videos, not declarations of a maxim with which the drafter will be approaching the draft pre hoc. This latter type of introduction (“I’m going to try and force RG because I think it’s the best; let’s see how this experiment turns out!”) may be effective at times, but whatever data it provides are empirical and determined after the fallout of the draft (or even the matches) anyway.
Does any of this make sense?
Thank you for your input, Sylvan. It seems that the pedagogical concept of my intros is not really reaching you. I can’t tell if that’s due to the addresser or the recipient, but so far I see no reason to deviate from my path. I strongly believe that pre-recorded intros would for make less enjoyable, less insightful draft videos, mainly because what’s going to matter in three hours of Magic is so unpredictable. My intros offer a little bit of theoretical knowledge or insights with every draft, and can be watched independently from the draft, or even the current format. Additionally, there is a somewhat subtle(!) connection to the decision points of the episode.
I appreciate your arguments for W, R, and G, as well as your view of the metagame, but if you want to have an argument with me, you can’t just dismiss my views as “wrong”. For example, why is Nephalia Seakite 3rd not a blue signal? I see it in the top 2 of the blue commons with Griptide, and the Kite is the better early pick for reasons of deck composition.
Furthermore, please let me know how the draft should proceed after a first-pick Captain, independent of you disagreeing with this pick in the first place. Is your second pick Tragic Slip, and what do you pick up after that (especially pick 3)? Which white signals are you talking about?
It is easy to say that I could have drafted a red-green deck after first-picking Immerwolf, but that would have been an even more extreme case of forcing than me picking great blue-black commons after a first-picked Captain.
Hey Simon,
Thanks again for the great videos. I have a question about a line you took in Game 2 Match 3. Around the 29:00 mark, when opponent attacked with the Hollowhenge beast, why did you block with captain? My thinking was since you still had the patrician in hand and departure in the GY, you can afford to take 5 damage there. With the diregraf captain in hand, it allows you next turn to swing with the seaskite/captain/screeching skaab (without losing the skaab).
Since at that point he will either have to block or play Gnaw to the bone, you can then drop patrician that turn.
Next turn given that nothing has changed, you can departure and swing with team + patrician.
I think the result wouldn’t have changed too much given what he revealed he had, but it would’ve dealt an extra 2 damage at least.