Comments on: Let’s Play: M12 Draft #2, and a Bonus Bad Legacy Deck

By: ChrisKool

ChrisKool — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 17:15:53 +0000

Greets Simon,

A.J. and I have been discussing 4 Color Doran for a few weeks and have come to no consensus. We’ve been running a Green Sun’s Zenith, but beyond Doran, the Siege Tower fetching, it isn’t very remarkable–we always want to get Meddling Mage or Tidehollow Sculler with it. Currently, we only have one Birds of Paradise, but I think that I am going to update the list to three. The mana is pretty rough at three colors, so perhaps they will help. Do you have any suggestions to get more value out of BoPs in a Doran list? I was thinking Birthing Pod might be a nice inclusion in the number of one or two copies.

Additionally, we will test out the Sundering Vitae and Slaughter Pact; I forgot that convoke was an ability in Magic..

By: Simon Goertzen

Simon Goertzen — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 08:16:34 +0000

Sundering Vitae is another nice way to get around Blood Moon, as long as you play enough green creatures. But if you are 4-color, shouldn’t you be running Birds of Paradise anyway?
Magus of the Moon is not as heavily played as Blood Moon, but you could always run 1-2 Slaughter Pacts in addition to other removal spells. It’s surprisingly good against a number of combo decks in the format.

By: PlanetWalls

PlanetWalls — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 01:15:25 +0000

Thanks for the suggestions. Lotus Cobra is very interesting, actually.

By: apricio

apricio — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 16:02:03 +0000

with further thought lethemancer seems bad.
Beast within is a good option vs blood moon/ mages/ and twin exarch.
dark confidant+ ravens crime( better than lethamancer)
and stupor just to be annoying.

good luck

By: apricio

apricio — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 15:42:42 +0000

ha 4/4 spellkite? and countering blazing shoal, sounds like its found a slight niche in the meta.
against u/r, between meddling mage, sculler, and qasili pridemage, brave the elements seems good to protect your hate bears and your doran, and possibly a finks(in other matches).((firsespout that u/r runs and wrecks your day)).
If you run lotus cobra it might allow you to get around blood moon, and blow it up via landfall, krosan grip.
bbe on a red splash could be good, considering bosk already adds 3 of 4 colors.
cunning lethemancer is always a card I wanted to make work, if your running 8 1 drop ramp spells, you can t2 diminish their hand. It might be too slow vs combo, but lets say pitching vengivines or demigods of revenge in your gy is never too bad. If they dont remove it they have less resources to combo off with, also you will have other ways to disrupt them, like thoughtseize.

By: PlanetWalls

PlanetWalls — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 06:21:30 +0000

Thanks for the comments and compliments, guys. Troy, you make a good point about Giant Spider, but I think if you have a lot of low-cost guys and play defensively, you can keep bloodthirsters like the minotaurs from landing. Then you just have the uncommon 4/4 fliers to deal with, which, admittedly, aren’t easy to kill.

Since this Draft, Chris and I have drafted some really unique and entertaining decks, and I wish we’d recorded one. Chris picked up two Call to the Grave in the first pack and built his deck around it (drafting Mono-Black Zombies with two Reassembling Skeletons, the hexproof Greaves, and a Royal Assassin), and each of us has drafted decks with Dungrove Elder and tons of sick auras. This format is boss.

Apricio, we’re actually working on a Four-Color Doran build for Modern right now, which aims to run a ton of discard and disruptive beaters (Spellskite, Treefolk Harbinger, Doran, Meddling Mage, Tidehollow Sculler, etc.) to deal with both Zoo lists and blue-red combo lists. Doran even (hilariously) “counters” the Mono-Blue Infect build’s Blazing Shoal. The problem is the mana base, and you have to play around Blood Moon and Magus in Games 2 and 3 against most serious UR lists, and it’s just really rough. We might return to our Esper Hate Bears list (which we played two weeks ago in Let’s Play) now that the environment has settled a bit. Cards like Stillmoon Cavalier and Mirran Crusader likely won’t make the cut, though. Nor will Leonin Arbiter see play pre-board, I imagine. Trying to figure out a way to win with a deck that only runs hate bears is a bit of trouble.

Oh, and one more thing. If you like our drafts, then check out Simon Goertzen’s this coming Wednesday morning. He’s way, way better than us, and much more serious about it.

By: Troy

Troy — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 05:37:00 +0000

Just finished. You guys are hysterical. I love to watch you draft. Especially when you waste time and have to go into quickplay mode. I guess those spiders are pretty damn good, but then you didn’t see to many big fliers. Very entertaining.