Simon Says #22: Power and Consistency

Posted on July 19, 2012 by Simon Goertzen

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  1. Awesome job, Simon. This was without a doubt the best cube draft video I’ve ever seen. Keep up the great work!

  2. As always a good draft. I love your analytical approach.

    However, some points:
    1. Bloodgift demon: “not on the power level we are looking for”. Um, what? It is a dragon that draws cards. It is highly underrated (it wheeled, which is often does, but is just wrong), but it is actually a very good finisher: either they remove it, they go over the top (which would go over the top of most 5 drops in cube) or they die, mostly. Admittedly, the lifeloss can hurt against aggressive decks, but having a body over phyrexian arena makes that not as bad, as it blocks and is a clock itself.
    2. Manticore is basically unplayable and so much worse then the demon, it is ridiculous.
    3. Time spiral -> upheavel actually seems like one of the better combos with time spiral. Drogskoll reaver is probably the choice, but it seems weird not to mention it.

  3. It may be worth stressing more that I do love your series. Together with LSV you make by far the best magic draft/play videos on the internet in my opinion.

  4. You managed to get Nicol Bolas to the battlefield. twice.

    you are my hero.

  5. Whenever Simon posts, I immediately stop what I’m doing and watch.

    Amazing job, as always!

  6. I agree with the above posters that in terms of pure educational value, your draft videos are the best I have seen. Good Work.

  8. How was it possible to play Nicol Bolas in Game 3 Round 1 with Shelldock Isle, having 24 lands in your library?

  9. @ Luke: read the card, it says “a library” not “your library”.

    Simon, great job from beginning to end. It’s too bad they didn’t offer Cube all the time. =/

  10. perhaps its because i’ve never played with the card (i missed odyssey block)… but why is Upheaval considered such a strong card? Simon spoke of it in such high regard… however I dont see how a control deck can take advantage of returning ALL permanents to their owners hands.

    i can see how other wrath effects like armageddon or wrath of god can be played to your own benefit… but this just seems like a stronger devastation tide, and dev tide is horrible.

  11. ok… i made my comment before seeing the end of match 3…. i see now when you can float mana you can get some real serious advantage. still, he mentioned several times about upheaval’ing on turn 3 after dropping a grim monolith… which doesn’t seem to make much sense at all.

  12. @dasMetzger: With all due respect to Simon, these videos — while entertaining — don’t display the raw power and full spectrum of the potential of Upheaval. I remember watching a TSG Cube draft at ChannelFireball (perhaps it was Channel TSG — Cube Draft #11) that really illustrated the multiple facets of Upheaval as both a defensive blow out card and an offensive use, more akin to what Simon did here. One example of a controlling blow out is when your opponent aggressively draws cards, develops their mana base and board position, walking right into an Upheaval. Now they have to discard their biggest casting cost threats, some of the mana to cast those threats, or some of the other enablers. That is just one example of how Upheaval can be very powerful. You’re right that definitely a turn 3 Upheaval off of three lands and a Monolith is not an optimized use of Upheaval.

  13. Really amazing cube to watch. I don’t generally enjoy watching cube drafts, but this was an excellent to watch for the great play making and analysis.

    I look forward to your series every time it goes up.

  14. Amazing videos, great picks great play great commentary
    I’d highly enjoy another one (or as many as you can) of these

  15. Thank you for your commentary, it was excellent. I especially liked the final game, where you forced the opponent to use his resources every turn without gaining any card advantage or board presence. You played him like an instrument, and I know I would have missed some of those plays.

    You said that your last opponent might have wanted to side out Rhox War Monk. Why is that?

  17. How come you did not consider Earthquake or Tangle wire in pack 3?

    Your deck is super controlling and late game. you are playing red at this point. Earthquake will help you stay alive untill you land a threat that will take over.

    Same goes with tangle wire. Although you have the added benefit of having cards like shelldock isle, gilded lotus and grim monlith. So it wont slow you down as badly. Like I said above youre playing for the late game. Also tangle wire is amazing with upheaval to make the games go extremely long.

  18. Hi guys, I am a bit late with my response because I had a Legacy GP to play last weekend. As always, thanks for your comments and feedback.

    @apricio: I agree with you on the Earthquake. Even as a splash, it would have been more reasonable than Platinum Angel. I could have used it myself and taken a burn spell from my red opponents. As for Tangle Wire, this card is one of the best weapons for aggressive decks against control decks. In the later stages in the game, it is going to hinder the control deck from casting its lategame spells. In the early game, it advantages the player with more permanents, which is going to be the aggressive deck. Playing Tangle Wire in an UBrw control deck with only minimal board presence and the need to get the most value out of every single card is not something I would advise. Futhermore, Shelldock Isle and Grim Monolith don’t really combo with Tangle Wire, and at the time that Gilded Lotus comes down, the Wire has most likely lost its impact. In the best case, Tangle Wire slows down an opponent who hasn’t commited much to the board yet (which is already the perfect scenario for my deck), in the worst case he is ahead on the board and the tap effect hinders me much more than him.

    @Disco: Thank you for the praise. One of the key skills in Magic is patience, and players have an irrational fear of the opponent’s draw step, leading them to make hasty decisions. I try hard not to fall into that trap.
    Considering Rhox War Monk, it’s certainly a very efficient creature. However, if you consider that I won’t ever engage in a true race against my Bant opponent, the Monk becomes a 3/4 with an awkward mana cost, basically a glorified Hill Giant. His creature suite looked quite midrangy, so in order to have a chance he needs to decide where to position himself. If he sees a way to win a prolongued game, he should cut cards like the Monk for lategame spells. If not, he needs every high-powered creature he can find, but even then the Monk doesn’t support his aggressive potential that well.

    @Cock Horse: Thank you. Sadly, I only managed to record one of these, but will try to record at least one Cube drafts whenever they are available. A lot of people think that Cube is just casual fun (and it certainly is fun!), but it also offers great strategic depth. The next episodes will focus on M13 and I’ll try to do some more intros on core strategic concepts.

    Re: Upheaval. This card is so insane because it just does everything. The best application is an offensive Upheaval with floating mana, dropping a game-winning threat afterwards. This was the main application during the reign of Psychatog in Standard. However, it also serves a defensive role as a reset button if needed. The fact that it returns lands as well makes it so much more viable than Devastation Tide. In these matches, I mainly kept Mystical Tutor as a way to Upheaval if things went wrong, but that wasn’t really needed. The very last game showed the true potential of Upheaval, even though it was a rather harmless one :).

    @Comments: I might have undervalued the Demon. For five mana upwards, I expect a lot from my creatures and I regularly stabilize on a life total, which is why I try to shy away from self-damaging cards. Masticore is a completely different card, as it is meant as a way to keep early aggression and dangerous utility creatures in check. The fact that it costs 4 instead of 3BB is also a big deal. I agree that Masticore is also not on a particularly high power level, but you have to differentiate between the drafting and the deckbuilding portion. I try not to pick expensive creatures to highly, as there is quite a lot of them going around. This means that a creature has to be truly insane for me to consider it an early pick. This is not the case for either the Demon or the Masticore. With this strategy, I will then end up with a lot of great cards, and then I have to see what creatures I have to work with. As a result, cards like the Masticore might make the deck if I have an application for it, and the Demon would most likely make all my black decks if the curve allows it. This is really not a question of one card being better than the other, but how the drafting dynamics and priorities affect my options during deckbuilding. I third-picked a Marsh Flats over Consecrated Sphinx (which is in fact insane), so I believe that passing Bloodgift Demon for an 18th-pick Scalding Tarn is the natural extension of this strategy. Come pick 21, I take the chance to make up for my lack of creatures and board control by picking up Masticore instead of Tolaria West, which doesn’t have good targets at this point. The comment “Manticore is basically unplayable and so much worse then the demon, it is ridiculous.” is not completely wrong, but it appears to me that it simplifies things too much. Maybe the above explanation helps to understand my approach and reasoning.

    Finally, a big thank you to everyone chiming in to tell me how much they enjoy the show. I try hard to give you the best possible content doing what I love to do (teaching and analyzing, mainly), and your comments show me that my efforts are paying off, which is great to know!