(Staff Note: Enter coupon code 3j8mtgoLUV through February 21, 2014, to receive 3 percent off any singles order in MTGO Academy’s web store. Born of the Gods cards are now available!)
Under guise of exploring the Wide Beta interface, ChrisKool plays a Swiss triple Born of the Gods draft. And with downtime looming, will any gods come to his aid? The struggle is real. And now, the continuation of Kool Runnings.
And while we’re thinking about the Wide Beta client, are there any new thoughts about it? Comment if you have any constructive and thoughtful criticism!
Watching this draft was so, so painful
How could you take a phenax and then just ignore the black oak? it’s a black 3 drop that has 5 toughness, and is probably one of the best creatures in the set with phenax! I’m not sure you realized that but phenax is a bomb and it’s correct to do every effort to be UB if you can when you pick him. Plus, black was far more open than red in many of the following picks.
Other cards you ignored for no good reason – 8th pick Siren Song Lyre, which is just a rock solid card, and Aerie Worshipers, who are SO good when the opponent can’t answer them immediately. Both those cards can take over a game.
On a more general note though, I did 3 triple born of the gods drafts, and went 8-1, which was pretty sweet. I think triple born of the gods is actually a really good format on it’s own, honestly. There are several different types of decks you can play (green based beef, white or red based aggro, blue or black based control) and many uncommons (hack, even some of the commons) create unique game situations that are fun to play out.
My favorite moment so far was a game where my opponent had some very beefy green guys that Iv’e been holding back with a couple Black Oaks and a Servant, while a 5 power flier I had was bashing the opponent every turn. Had things gone on like that for a while, I would have won. The opponent had that 2/4 centaur who plays lands from the top of his library, so I knew his next draw was going to be Noble Quarry. I attacked with my flier, played another 3/2 flier, leaving just enough black mana for my plan. The opponent, in his turn, put Noble Quarry on his largest monster and attacked with everything – intending to trade off that one bestowed creature for my entire board and deal a ton of damage. In response to the attack, I used one of my Oaks and my remaining black mana to tap all my other untapped creatures, chumped only with the Black Oak, took the rest of the damage and untapped with all my creatures – now the opponent had no blockers and I alpha striked for the win.
While that moment was especially awesome, as I really felt like I outwitted an opponent with a tricky use of a new card, many other games played it in a really fun way too. This format is a blast to play and I recommend it highly.
Most of the content on this sight is retarded. Only Simon makes incredible content, and maybe a dozen misplays a year.
I would recommend everyone to disregard and boycott Carrots comment. he is sincorrect and several assessment and he just wanted to boast himself with that post. siren song lyre is not a good card. Also you shouldnt trainwreck your draft just because you opened Phenax. drfat good cards with high tougness, dont draft mediocre ones.
Yeah you went 8-1, cool story bro, and now you think the format is super skillintensive. Whenever average players do good in one event, suddenly the format is super-skillintensive. As soon as variance catches up with you, im sure you will dismiss the format as terrible.
I agree that you should have recognized that U/B was open earlier, even had it not been open you should almost should have been trying to force it with a Phenax in hand. Those Oak passes made me cry so much. He is so good for what you should have wanted/ended up doing.
Hindsight 20/20, fun to watch. Keep it up!
The Oak is fine but not great when you don’t draw Phenax. The pack was horrible, so it was surely the pick anyway, but that’s not too disastrous. The Retraction Helix pick was maybe not optimal. You effectively only have 8 creatures at that point. The red stopped flowing pretty early, so as others have pointed out that was something you could’ve picked up on instead of drafting random 2/1′s. I think you underestimate the whole Nyxborn cycle quite a bit. You can only have so many non-creature spells in your deck, so a card that can provide a cheap body and lategame value is always very solid. Not sure about that Siren Song Lyre, that card seems almost unplayable to me. Maybe if you have a lot of inspired guys.
Also, a little loose in regards to knowledge of the cards. Looking at Stratus Walk, one of the best blue commons in the set, saying “what does this even do?”
Same with Phenax during deckbuilding, that made me laugh.
I get that these videos were perhaps explorative both in terms of BNG and the Beta, so this probably can’t be considered premium content.
Am is missing something or could you have retraction helix’ed your God when he played revoke on the last match (20.51) …. would it have been worth it ? …. thought it would at least be worth the mention if possible ?
I think he made the most of some unlucky packs the main highlight of these videos is that the beta needs some serious work. I finally uninstalled it due to the same lag issues he was experiencing plus it has a habit of crashing in drafts when you open new packs which can obviously cost you the best first pick. I like the layout of the beta better than the old version…i just wish it wasnt so glitchy.
@Martin,
have you seen the Lyre at work? of all the times Iv’e seen it used, only once it was not very good.
Also, I’m pretty sure the kezzerdrix is mostly a joke, but just to clarify… I wasn’t saying the format is super skill intensive or anything, just that it’s super fun. I mentioned the “winning streak” just to show that my opinion might be skewered a bit by winning. But it’s still the most fun I had in drafting in a long while (better than triple Theros, and better than the recent MD5 flashback drafts).
Absolute disastrous experience to watch this draft.
I will stick just to Simon, Marshall & LRR from now on here on MtgAcademy.
the 6 minutes of video before the draft were pretty unacceptable
r2g3 was awesome!
@Carrot, I have actually not seen it in play. I can see how it can be an Opposition-like effect with enough creatures and mana. I shouldn’t write it off, 6 mana and a creature to tap one guy just seems like a huge investment in a rather tempo oriented format. I’ll take your input into consideration when I see it in a draft next time, though!
Hello everyone! Thanks for the comments good & bad. I’ll defend some points and concede some others (Note, this is mostly copied from a youtube comment. Sorry, getting late here, so I won’t respond to a lot of play-specific comments.)
Triple BNG: In context of a triple set versus BTT, it’s hard to judge a card’s efficacy.
Red cards: I played a match against a quite good aggro BR deck and thought that this might be the way to go with the Inspire, Intimidate Zombie-generator. I should have read signals in late-pack 1 and early-pack 2 better, but hindsight is 20/20.
Double-clicking to add cards: Thanks for the tip! I used it today
Beta client: As a long-time MTGO player, I have stayed away from using the beta client for a while (as it feels inferior to the old, ugly client in many non-draft usability areas). But seeing as the wide beta client should become the normal client this year, I thought it would be more valuable to learn the client as I played on video than exploring a ton by myself to master it so Wizards could see what it might be like for a newer user to experience this piece of software. Wizards has also communicated that there have been major improvements to the framework recently, so it seemed timely to produce content like this again.
Machine specs & programs running: I had MTGO, iTunes, Firefox, Skype and Camtasia running while I recorded. (These are the programs, beyond Camtasia, that I would expect to quite regularly have in operation while playing.) I have a … less than desirable Acer laptop with 4GB ram, Intel Core i5 2.66ghz, AMD Radeon 6550M. Not top-of-the-line, but it isn’t a pile either.
@Martin,
in most formats the Lyer is not all that good. However, in this format, filled with bestow creatures, you often get to lock away a significant parts of your opponent’s board with just a single tap.
I recommend that you give the card a try – you’ll just see how it play out for yourself
I’m a new MTGO player. I used the beta client first. When it was having stability issues a while back I tried the old client and found it completely unusable (fwiw I am an interface designer and usability researcher by profession). Not to say that the beta client is without it’s flaws, but from a new player perspective it’s just so far ahead that it’s not even funny. It reminded me of trying to go back and play the old SSI D&D games I loved so much in high school (Pool of Radiance, et al).
Yeah, I’m old.
a) beta is a nice interface but more demanding on your cpu. we don’t all have state of the art machines out here. i like beta interface alot but crashes kills it vs stable v3.
b) i agree, draft was painful to watch too many crazy pix. man what are you thinking? learn the format its not that hard to get a read. Watch the marshal stucliff draft and then come back to show us what you can do. not his best showing but at least some reasonable logic.
c)Keep it rolling Chris, this is my first time watching you draft and props for trying new client live, just work on your craft. It can only get better from here.
The beta is disgustingly awful and should be boycotted
I can understand your desire to let people (WotC) see what it’s like for a new person using the beta, but your lack of any working knowledge on how to use the client made this unwatchable for me. I finally gave up after R1G1. Just far too many moments of “Uh, what do I do here….” It was unbearably frustrating to watch. It was a bad call, but hopefully, should you decide to do another draft vid, you will be more experienced in the next one.
Glad to see more drafting happening here. I just hope that in the future you prepare ahead of time, rather than making us watch you learn on the job. It’s not entertaining and I certainly didn’t learn anything new, which are the two main reasons I watch the MTGOA draft videos.