Limited Resources: M13 Draft #1

Posted on August 3, 2012 by Limited Resources

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  1. m2g1 when he attacked with his flier and you speared it, you should have speared his face, untapped, attacked in the air for 4 and then speared his face for the win. i also think it was a big mistake to rummage away the mountain into the shade.

  2. Gotta love those drafts where you seem to be the only person in both your colors. How about some pick commentary for old time’s sake? :)

    P1P4 you take Spiked Baloth; I would take Crippling Blight or Krenko’s Command. There are lots of nice one-toughness targets, and sometimes you can finish off a blocker after combat. Command has that Arms Dealer potential going for it, and both are better than Baloth given your first three picks. You have to do a lot of work to keep the 4/2 from trading with a two drop at some point. Even if you trample over for some damage, you will have traded down to get it. Besides, one player to your right passed you a spear and two passed you a Murder! Stay on color! I would take blight with the clock winding down, here.

    P1P10 I like that you took the Tome and I was wondering if you would. If you get the mono removal deck, Tome becomes good.

    P2P3 You take Goblin Arsonist over Walking Corpse. This is the first pick where I think you should have been more influenced by the weight of each of your colors. You are going to get your shot at cards that cost a single red to replace Fire Elemental, but you are 100% playing nighthawk, so don’t take a card that wants you to have a Mountain by turn 1 over a similarly-powered card that just wants you to have a Swamp by turn 2.

    P2P5 You were debating Public Execution vs. Rummaging Goblin, but is the B/R dual the right pick here? It’s at least in the conversation for the same reason you prioritive dual lands in Cube: when you are not going to be short on powerful spells, make sure you don’t lose because you can’t cast them. Rummaging Goblin is arguably better at ensuring you cast your spells than Dragonskull Summit is, but with the way this table is going, I expect more chances at rummagers.

    Also, with all the removal you are building up, with more than one and a half packs to go, P.E. actually loses value because the -2/-0 won’t even happen to that many creatures. Then it’s “just” a six mana one-for-one.

    Man, I think I take the land there. How can you lose if you have good mana for this deck? I might be wrong…

    P2P9 You cut a Gorger over Vile Rebirth and Elixir of Immortality in a weak pack. I think I take Elixir as insurance against mill decks over hating the gorger, but it was a bad pack for sure.

    P2P13 You take Bloodthrone Vampire over Krenko’s Command. Despite what I said about favoring black at this point, I just don’t see a build where you are running Bloodthrone Vampire, but a lucky couple of Arms Dealers and Krenko’s Command might.

    P3P2 You now give double mana symbols appropriate consideration by taking Bladetusk Boar over Furnace Whelp, excellent. Great creature for your deck!

    I think I was with you on the rest of them.

    Great draft, now to watch the games!

  3. Hey, Godot is Ryan from what used to be the Marshel and Ryan team, right? that’s cool.

    good deck, good games. but is this an 8-4 or a swiss? usually after a game one loss in an 8-4 there are no more games…

  4. It always takes me a second to parse what you mean when you say ‘ship that’ and then select the card, as I understand ship as a verb to mean to send something somewhere else, as in on a ship.

    Example: to cause to be transported from Merriam-Webster.

    I guess you mean: to put in place for use although that feels to me to be a much less common usage. Perhaps it is colloquially more prevalent in your neck of the woods.

    Or maybe you are being ironic when you say it?

    Thanks for the free content!

  5. edit the previous post:

    The interface missed the actual examples.

    Example: to cause to be transported -shipped him off to prep school- from Merriam-Webster.

    I guess you mean: to put in place for use -ship the tiller- although that feels to me to be a much less common usage. Perhaps it is colloquially more prevalent in your neck of the woods.

    Without which the previous post makes less sense. Avoid using greater than or less than symbols when posting, as whatever you put between them does not get shipped.

  6. P3P2 i believe was when you took your 3rd Searing Spear, but with the black ring sitting right next to it, not even mentioned, pretty sure I would have taken that with your deck…

  7. I miss being able to watch these. The videos don’t seem to work in android anymore.

  10. Thanks Marshall, great content as always. Some observations:

    P1P4: I feel that Chronomaton is not only the best card in the pack but also a perfect fit for your strategic direction given your first 3 picks. The fact that you decide to pick one of the unexciting commons instead leads me to conclude that you somehow don’t believe Chronomaton to be playable, when it is in fact very good.
    P1P8: I think that it’s correct to pass upon the Essence Drain here. Given that you already have two Bloodhunter Bats at 4 mana as well as four removal spells, I would have considered an early defensive Goblin Artisan instead of the evasive Boar. Might be overvaluing the Goblin though.
    P2P5: I agree with Godot that Dragonskull Summit has to be considered given your picks. If not the land, Rummaging Goblin would have been my pick over the Execution.

    Round 1 showcased why it’s quite difficult to control games in this format. A lot of permanents demand immediate attention or force you to race. Even with a lot of removal various enchantments, the ring cycle and other powerful artifacts can give you a lot of trouble.
    In the final game of round 2, at 18:30, you decide to Spear his 2/3 Griffin on the play with Rummaging Goblin and a 1/1 Shade in play. Instead, you should simply drop the 4/3 Zombie and follow up with Boar and Spear next turn (or only one of them if you do decide to loot away your 6th land — not that you should — and don’t draw another one). The 2/3 Griffin doesn’t block *any* of your offensive creatures which means that you can safe your removal for other ones or in case he attempts to double block. The race is also absurdly in your favor, even if you take around 3 damage a turn from the vigilant Griffin. With the Zombie in play to pressure him, your opponent would need some obscenely powerful cards to beat your hand and board.

  11. OM knee ess ents
    not
    om nish ents

    Great deck. I disagree with your pick 1 though. incinerate is decent removal but stuffy doll has a huge effect that cant be replaced. There are 3 cards to stop him (liliana, pacifism, crippling blight) and he completely wrecks a ton of decks. Some decks just autolose to him. He may not be a bomb, but he is very close. Certainly a stronger card than incinerate, and keeps your colors open.
    Chronomaton is amazing too, you totally ignored him.

  12. Game 2 – MVP Rummaging Goblin?

    How about the Vampire Nighthawk that dominated the board for 10 turns and gained 10+ life?

    xd

  14. Omniscience

    American: ɑmˈnɪʃ(ə)ns or Om-nish-enss

    British: É’mˈnɪsɪəns or Om – niss – ee – enss
    also; É’mˈnɪʃɪəns or Om – nish – ee – enss
    also; É’mˈnɪʃəns or Om – nish – ants

    Om-knee-ess-ents is completely wrong in every regard. This is according to the Oxford English Dictionary, which is the most highly regarded English dictionary in the world…

  16. R2G2 towards the end, you went full Loucks, trying to get your value off the rancor instead of just winning. Instead of shooting his Rancor’d wolf, you should have just dropped the Bladetusk Boar. Next turn attack with Boar and Elemental; if either hits him, you have 6 points of burn in your hand to finish him. I’m betting you plum forgot Essence Drain can hit players.

  17. Lawl at the guy who said it is pronounced Om-knee-ess-ents

    I had a hard time watching game 1 when you were talking about how we saw how much removal you had and then watch you draw the embarrassing Goblin Arsonist who in my opinion could have been one of several cards that SHOULD have been Sign In Blood… Control only works when you can gain card advantage. I don’t get how you could leave pure card advantage in your board. Playing cards like Sign in Blood is EXACTLY what you want when you have tons of removal.

    In your video you said “sure, drawing more removal is nice but we have so much as it is…”

    ACK! I was so sad with that decision.

  18. What Simon and Gabriel said. Chronomatron feels like a card that is going to be really moving up on people’s pick orders as the format develops.

  19. I cant help but be pleased with your first match and I am sorry for that but I have a good reason. You are a really good player consistently getting to the final round and often winning in 8/4 drafts. I know the feeling I have been pulled 13 plains in my white wheeny deck when I pulled a 5th land to add to the 4 in my hand you just want to cry.

    For you to have such bad draw luck just reassures us “average” planewalkers that sometimes bad luck just wins out no matter how much skill or experience you have. No matter what is in your deck if you draw 15 lands twice you are gonna lose. But you didn’t tilt out you just said “well I think we have a better deck than that” and just pressed on. It makes me happy how you played it and kept going.

  21. Having drafted G/W multiple times in this format, I can say it’s rather powerful so long as you know what to look for. When those colors are open I take efficient creatures very highly (Courser’s a very high pick; Baloth is generally good; Prized Elephant is worth first-picking; etc.). Also, getting a Primadox early allows you to draft around it in either these colors (focusing mainly on the green creatures like Forcemage and Visionary, but also on white creatures like Attended Knight and War Priest – the guy even combos with Griffin Protector for extra damage every turn) or G/B if you decide to go the route with Rats . The archetype seems really solid. Even came second at a local draft recently (with a little splash for Xathrid Gorgon). I wasn’t super-happy with my picks at the time (it felt like Coursers, Pacifisms and such were being swiped out from under me), but doing well despite that shows the archetype’s power, I think. One thing I’ve noticed is that it doesn’t look for exalted creatures, although they can be welcome (mostly the uncommon knight and Aven Squire).

  22. Have to echo the call for Chronomaton. When it’s in the right deck (anything slightly controlling and full of instants and removal), that card is crazy. Sam Black recently called it the opposite of a miracle – if you have it in your opening hand, you straight up win the game. Obviously that’s a little over the top, but even by p1p4, your deck clearly wanted a flexible early play that when left alone and helped by removal can easily win the game. This is exactly what Chronomaton does. Like, better than Vampire Nighthawk does. I really think skipping it for such a mediocre card (that wasn’t even in your colours!) was a straight-up punt.

  23. I’m pretty sure that instead of killing his battleflight eagle in R2/G1 you could have taken the hit, searing speared at end of turn, searing speared on your turn, and swung with nighthawk and bloodhunter bat for the win.

  24. ahhhh i can’ttttt believe you didn’t play that sign in blood. your deck needed that card desperately!! btw bloodthrone vampire is competely unplayable.

  26. Hey, Marshall,

    I think you should have least considered taking the dual land over either of those other two very good cards you were considering, simply because your mana was not good (so many double black 3 drops) and you already had a very powerful deck. The land would have made a big difference to your deck. For example, sometimes it can give you the perfect draw or just save you from being colour screwed. These things decide the games so I feel you should at least have looked at the Dragonskull cliff.
    Also, the whelp versus the boar pick was correct for your deck, I think, because you had bad fixing and also good removal versus fliers, but in case you had fixing and no removal, I think the flier is much more important. You need some way to deal with blue and white fliers, after all.
    I don’t agree with the essence drain versus boar pick in the first pack, because I think the removal was much better, but sometimes you just get all the removal you want and then you can dispense with it to make sure you get the creatures your deck wants.
    I think it was bad to pick the Baloth over the black and red spells in pack 1 for signal purposes. It’s just not worth it to do that.
    Nice draft. Totally agree with your first pick spear. The card is just the nuts.

  27. p1p1 spear vs. doll. this is actually a choice, to me. doll shuts down a lot of decks (any combination of R, G or B) but it is pretty bad against U and W. I can see why you favor spear, as it is more proactive and puts the choice in your hands, rather than just hoping they don’t have “it” (pacifism, o-ring, etc.).

    p1p4 baloth is filler and is not even in the discussion. it’s between chronomaton and crippling blight. I’d take chronomaton.

    p2p3 corpse. he beats for 2, rather than 1. you have plenty of removal so the shooting effect isn’t that special for you.

    p2p5 execution vs. rummaging goblin. I would probably take the execution as well but you should at least mention the goblin for how important it is to decks like this – it provides a source of card advantage and protection from flooding, which can often be the downfall of removal heavy decks. (if you get flooded, or your opponent plays a card that takes you 2 removal spells to kill (talrand’s invocation, a big green guy if you don’t have murder) you can end up losing as _they_ attrition _you_ out. this is a very real danger if their threats are more efficient than your remova.l). I would’ve expected to see another goblin later in the draft though.

    p2p6 servant over 2nd cower. cower is just ok in this format. it can be a blowout but it can also be kind of dead. servant is fragile, but it hits hard when the board is clear and trades up on defense.

    p3p2 ring of xathrid by about 10 miles. this was huge mistake – you _severely_ underestimate how good the black ring in a deck that can support it. (it’s insane)

    p3p9 I think ghoul is what you want. mark is very good but ghoul is a resilient finisher that lets you grind people out once you’ve cleared their board. again, it’s a source of card advantage in a deck with lots of removal (if you know you’re going to be going 1 for 1 with other decks you want to make sure you have a plan for the lategame – either bombs or some type of card advantage (resilient creatures like ghoul), rather than accepting a topdeck war). you seemed like you were aware of this when you talked about fire elemental. mark is great but you probably wouldn’t need the life very much as you’d be able to kill everything they play.

  28. Note to myself : don’t eat while watching these vids…
    I almost choked when you called oponents card “Garruck SNACKleader”

  29. Can somebody explain to me why in the second game he receives the searing spear and thinks it can’t kill the vampire nighthawk? It deals three damage and the nighthawk wouldn’t have been 3/4 until the next turn. I think he gave up the game there.