Simon Says #35: Power Struggles

Posted on January 3, 2013 by Simon Goertzen

Happy New Year! To celebrate 2013, I take a break from Return to Ravnica to bring you a powered holiday Cube draft. Check out the videos to see if my dreams of power come to fruition!





Follow me on Twitter @simongoertzen,
or check out my Tumblr entitled Strategic Thoughts.

 

  1. Stick with making videos for current draft format, please! I like the opening discussion videos you do, feel like I learn a lot.

  2. Well, currently RTR drafting is, as tends to happen late in a format, a bit stale. I personally find this standard to be abysmal, so I’d love to see someone who won a PT with Jund’s take on it in Modern.

    I’m also a big fan of old draft formats, so even though it is too late for Masques or Urza’s now, I’d love to see you drafting them when they are next available. Anything to mix it up for the last 3-4 weeks between a new set coming out and hitting MTGO and having to watch a potentially stale format seems good.

  3. Hey Simon,

    Id love to see some modern or pauper. Limited gets kind of stale pretty fast.

    Also the webcam makes it much more interesting to watch.

    Thx for the content. Keep it up.

  4. Watched 3/4 of the draft video, gave up when it became apparent that you had taken what can be the most fun format to watch and turned it into the most boring – Modern Storm. Grats

  5. Hallo Simon,

    thank you for putting up a powered cube video. I was pretty amazed when I saw this pop up.

    In general your analytical approach to the game is in my opinion outmatched by noone on any magic website and I enjoy them immensely. Had to say this once.

    Limited is my favorite way to play the game. So in that respect I also prefer anything in that direction. Does not have to be the latest format at all times though as rtr really is pretty boring by now. Thumbs up for older limited formats, even horrible ones (looking at you, masques ^^).

    Sad to see that the storm deck did not quite work out this time around although you probably had all the right pieces.

    Anyways. Keep it up pls. Amazing content as always.

  6. As I’m not familiar with storm decks I thought it would be fun to see it, but that was not true. Must be really irritating for an oponent to see you wonder for 6 minutes about what to do… another reason not to play cube I guess (besides the turn 3 losses).
    Apart from this vid I always appreciate your postings; when a set becomes a bit dull like RtR is now I’d enjoy a little step into the past with another ISD or AVR draft (funny how you sometimes can loose the feeling of those sets after not playing them for 3 months).

  8. I’m here for limited (but I would give constructed videos a chance)

    I really like your videos (the videos with your brother at PlanetMTG are a bit more entertaining, but still waiting for a draft-video from you I didn’t enjoy watching)

  9. Hi,

    So many questions….
    Webcam: Yes! I think it adds more personality to the whole thing.
    What to do: I like limited a lot and I’m amazed what you do with the, well, limited possibilites you have there. Watching you draft a storm deck was a revelation. I did not see all of the combos but I liked them a lot. RtR is pretty used up by now, so maybe some of the other limited things going around at the moment would be fine. As someone else said above, old formats if they’re available.

    All in all, great video. Thanks :)

  11. You really could have had something mean here, if you had wanted. Academy, Smokestack, Tangle Wire, Ethersworn Canonist and Lodestone Golem, Rishadan Port, Spectral Procession, The Abyss, Ravages of War, Opposition, Nether Void, maybe Grand Arbiter Augustin, and Awakening Zone, plus still get both monoliths and plenty of fixers and some mana rocks. Don’t get me wrong, you drafted a pretty cool storm deck and the prison/stax deck would really want another token maker (thelonite hermit was in there, but would be tough on the mana), but it’s an route I almost never see anyone take in this cube, and when were considering smokestack and tangle wire early on, I had really hoped you would go for it.

    Still a sweet draft regardless, even if it didn’t quite work out to be as powerful/broken as you might have hoped. I’m definitely going to keep watching your videos, your competitive analysis is top notch.

  13. Amusing that you didn’t notice that your Match 2 opponent failed to submit his/her deck. You assumed he/she had a 40 card deck and were discussing Brain Freeze, but you really should have noticed that it was twice that…

  14. This is a really interesting draft format I haven’t seen much of. So many cards from so many different sets! Lol when you passed the Hero of Bladehold I was so sad. Probably not even the right choice for your deck but I’ve seen her command battlefields in standard have have quite a bit of nostalgia for SM block.

  15. Also, RedEyedSoul, he did notice that, he commented on it almost immediately. And then when the person went down to 40 cards the next round he proceeded to Brain Freeze them for game.