Simon Says #31: The Toughness Barrier (RTR 8-4)

Posted on November 15, 2012 by Simon Goertzen

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  3. Thanks for the draft! Love your introduction, as always! Amazing that your opponent built such a successful Izzet deck. I haven’t known that guild to be particularly effective on the whole, but then I don’t have much drafting experience, either. Ophidian effect + Rogue’s Passage, Teleportal, & the aura seems pretty nasty!

    Any thoughts on drafting off-guild colors? I hadn’t really considered it as many of the gold cards are so awesome, but just in the past week I’ve noticed that LSV played against a rather competitive Orzhov deck in round 3 (http://www.channelfireball.com/articles/channel-lsv-rtr-draft-6/), and Nakamura has a thoughtful article that briefly discusses what series of highly unlikely hypothetical circumstances might pull him into off-guild colors (http://www.channelfireball.com/articles/feature-article-aggro-or-control-english/):

    “Adding colors is possible, but combining guilds not present in this set like Dimir and Orzhov does not make a deck. Of course, it’s possible this is not true 100% of the time. Because I wouldn’t want to have color issues if I picked up five or more copies of Pack Rat, I think I would consider making the remaining 35 cards Swamps and playing mono-black. And perhaps to protect the rat from removal I would play some number of Mizzium Skin. If I picked up Rootborn Defenses, I might play Orzhov. However, in ordinary drafts it’s impossible to successfully play Boros or Simic. “

  4. Why did you side in the 2/1 when he already showed you two frostburn weirds and splatter thug against which it doesnt do anything?

  5. I feel like whenever I draft Azorious the same thing happens to me. It makes me want to draft any other guild.

  6. Weenie 2/2 Azorius.dec is bad because of the very toughness barrier you mention earlier you need a way to go over the top.

  7. I know people hate the 3 color decks but I tend to go Azorius/Izzet combo i get chars if i can and i get the 5/4 haste guy helps break through

  8. Hi Simon,
    very interesting introduction.

    In the first game I anticipated the Teleportal, like 6 turns before it happned.
    He just waited for the lethal crowd of attackers.
    You could’ve played the Voidwielder to prevent that another tur or to force him to play the cancel there.

    even blusteraquall was near lethal before you could’ve gotten there.

    anoter thing: grasp pumps the armor. that dmg might have been critical and if you anticipated the stallbreakerspell the you can just play it for the pump.

  9. In game 1 you could have been doing 1 for about 8 turns before you started attacking. That would have forced him to make plays instead of waiting for the lethal teleportal. ALso, Ethereal Armor on the Judge’s Familiar + Paralyzing Grasp on one of his creatures makes it a 6/6 and lets you punch through the hover barrier.

  10. Was thinking what Andy said also…
    And find it weird that the introduction wasn’t aligned with the draft, normally you talk about what happened in the draft but can’t say that was what happened here.
    I tried a 3 ethereal armor / 2 security blockade / 2 knightly valor and some blue enchantments once, but it felt very weak to removal (you know the feeling of drawing the izzium skin just after your creature gets blown away !).

  11. Durdly 1/1 and 2/2 do-nothing creatures in this set aren’t going to win much, no matter how good your curve. As you saw in the first game they quickly get shut down and you’ve got nothing that you can top deck to make a difference – because you’re just going to top-deck more useless 2/2s.

    Also, when your opponent shows you a 5/2 and 4/2 in the first game, siding out Swift Justice isn’t really a very good move.

    Andy pointed out some of the relevant misplays during the game. Playing out the Arrester for no value while holding the Stealer of Secrets seemed bad, but also bad was saying that you wanted to be more aggressive in the second game then continually leaving your Sunspire Griffin back to block when you already had something that could trade with his Stealer of Secrets (if he hadn’t enchanted it).