Simon Says #19: Uncommon Roles

Posted on June 7, 2012 by Simon Goertzen

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  2. sweet deck and good games!

    I have to ask a question (not a criticism, just trying to get advice from the pros when I can). you seemed to be very serious about including two thunderbolts in your main deck, which seems a bit excesive to me. Do you think the card is good and/or important enough as a two of, in case you are a little short on playables?

  5. I’m glad you pointed out the most important fact on Druids Familiar: “It’s a bear.” :D

  6. Why did you mulligan the first hand in Match 2 Game 3? You had a forest, a mountain, a Wandering Wolf and a Timberland Guide? Two lands and two 2-drops seems keepable, no?

  8. Green in the intro: For my money Blessing is the action hero. Bear is *amazing* and generally better, but its a cop out to list it for both roles! Blessing on the other hand it always nuts off the top but leads to the shortest games in the format when you top it on turn 3 after playing a two drop (especially wolf). It also accels in aggro decks compared to control.

  9. Draft:

    I feel like you cast yourself as a “late game” deck too early. Even once you had a number of solid two and three drops you still seemed to see yourself as a late game deck rather than an aggro one with late game fatties.

    It seemed like the was a reasonable black signal coming early that you didn’t really discuss. You could have had a bone splinters early in the first pack, you passed a human frailty and corpse traders out of pretty empty packs in pack 2.

    Thought your comments re: Mad Prophet in GR were really solid.

    Final build was pretty solid, though I don’t like playing all your 5 drops. I would have run one snare over one of the trappers and left in both thunderbolts (since I cut a trappers I wouldn’t run lumberknot with only 4 Soulbond guys).

  10. @Alex: He lost in round 2 so there is no round 3. They just show all the buttons so they don’t spoiler the results.

  11. @agent, in the draft description it says this one is a swiss draft, so either that’s not correct or the button isn’t working (or maybe there was a bye or something?)

  12. I think Prophet was still the pick over the 2nd Thunderbolt. He may not be at his best in your deck but he can take over a game that goes long, he is great if you happen to get flooded, and he can help you hit your 5th and 6th land drops to cast your big dudes. Not to mention a 2/2 haster for 4 sometimes beats down when they have a slow start. You also already had a thunderbolt and two geist trappers (which are awesome and absolutely shut down fliers).

    Other than that I think your picks were spot on and your deck seemed quite strong. Moving into reed seemed like the correct decision. I do like Nightshade Peddler a lot so that might be my only other quibble but you had a lot of beef so maybe the deathtouch is less relevant.

  14. Really enjoyed that tips, drafting, and games. I always find your drafts fun to watch while also being educational. Sucks about all the poor hands that you were dealt, as it seemed to me that your deck should have worked far better than it did in most games.

  15. Thanks for your comments, great to see that you enjoyed this episode. The intro is somewhat experimental and I am quite happy how it turned out. I can tell you that keeping an analysis of this depth and uniqueness at under 10 minutes is a serious challenge in itself. Drafting and deckbuilding were also quite interesting, as my deck wasn’t overly powerful but certainly in the “could have made and/or won the finals” quality. It didn’t work out this time, which was partly due to the mulligans, but that’s part of the game. This was a single elimination 8-4 queue, which is why there is no round 3.

    @unfamiliar: Quite the contrary. Me talking about Arnold doing daycare was meant to be a reference to Kindergarten Cop. Non-native humor/irony is not easy to pull off, sorry if this one didn’t work out as intended.

    @carrotus: In red-green, your creatures will usually outclass opposing ground creatures. Some of the most dangerous threats your opponents can muster are flyers, especially four-toughness ones. I really like Thunderbolt as a way to take those out. In other games, they will act as a surprise finisher in a ground-on-ground race situation. I prefer to maindeck up to two of them and board them out accordingly, as long as my deck is at least somewhat aggressive to make use of the Lava Spike mode.

    @Chris: Everything I use is free and mostly open source. I record my videos with CamStudio, using and XVid Codec with maximum quality settings. If you want to record your own videos and need some detailed advice, contact me on twitter @simongoertzen.

    @Robin: Blessings of Nature has a very high upside, that much is clear. I really wanted to stress how powerful Druid’s Familiar is, which is why it ended up in both categories. All of your points regarding the draft and deckbuilding are valid as well. For black, I like the signals to be a little stronger than that. The other things are details which I might do differently today than when recording the draft.

    @vis: I was trying to maximize my creatures’ power which makes the Peddler much more expendable. I think that Mad Prophet is quite slow and I really only like looters to get rid of excess lands, which is difficult if you want to cast 5- and 6-drops. The way my deck is setup I will win most topdeck wars anyway, which is why I can work things out without a Prophet. Thunderbolt handles cheap flyers in the early game, but also some of the most dangerous cards blue and white decks present.

    Thanks again for all your comments, I create this series for you, the viewers, so it’s great to hear your comments, feedback and thoughts. Metaphorically speaking, my goal is to teach you how to fish instead of simply showing off today’s catch — it feels good to know that I succeed at least a little bit with that. Until next time!
    - Simon

  16. Not a question regarding the draft. I’ve been wondering why aren’t you guys listing the videos on youtube and possibly aim for a partnership? Maybe Marin can shed some light on that :)