Comments on: Limited Resources: Out with the old…

By: ghettofetto

ghettofetto — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 15:37:15 +0000

p1 first 2 picks had both act of treason and bloodthrone vampire. P1 p1 and 2 act of treasons sets you up pretty well to run that arctype.

By: Dessiker

Dessiker — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 04:03:57 +0000

I disapproved of the Slime pick because it is such a blatant signal- there are no better commons in green, and the only comparable uncommons are Packleader and Cudgel Troll. Not to mention that after picking the Blinding Mage P1P1, you didn’t see anything that would indicate white being open. Pick 3 or 4 is right about where I’d expect a Griffin to go in the average-to-good strength pack. Chances are good another white card was taken out of that pack already, but you know there was no green card taken, and chances were very good one of the other green cards from pack 4 would table.

Yes, White is a much stronger color than green, but if you’re picking a Wild Griffin over the Slime after not seeing any playable white cards picks 2 or 3, that is akin to saying “I don’t care what signals I see, I am forcing white and not playing green under any circumstances.” From the way you were talking about drafting the “aggressive white deck top players swear by,” then “looking for Pegasi” after P1P1 Blinding Mage, on to “we’re in white- or hoping to be in white” in pick 3 (after being passed zero playable white cards the last two packs), you gave off the impression about deciding on your main color after P1P1 Blinding Mage, and you didn’t seem very flexible in terms of your colors.

Of course it’s always good to think about what type of strategy your deck is leaning towards, but this foresight is not beneficial if it restricts your thinking without warrant. A single Blinding Mage is not worth sacrificing the potential to jump in an open color that may show itself early, at a time when you can still easily switch colors without forfeiting multiple picks you’ve already made. Jumping into green also provides the additional fixing to let you play that Blinding Mage as an easy splash.

By: Robin Russell (RoninX)

Robin Russell (RoninX) — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 22:31:44 +0000

Fair enough – I was just trying to make the direction my criticism was coming from clear.

By: Godot

Godot — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 19:45:36 +0000

I was careful with my words: I didn’t even suggest that if we had fared better that people would have agreed with the P1P4 pick, just that the opinions would have less of an undertone of “duh, obvious, what’s wrong with you,” and that the potential benefits of the griffin pick would have been more fairly considered/acknowledged. This is just coming from a lot of experience now in sharing drafts publicly in columns and videos.

Drafting in pairs is definitely a double-edged sword, although I don’t think it was too much of a negative factor past the middle of pack one, as the squadron vs. wurm was the only debated pick iirc. My desire to pick the hawk there was not out of any sense that we needed to continue pursuing aggro white specifically; I just felt that green beef would be easier to come by than hawks, and that if we didn’t secure a second ASAP, the first would be unplayable.

By: Robin Russell (RoninX)

Robin Russell (RoninX) — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 19:25:42 +0000

@ Godot – Not to speak for others, but I do my best not to be results based in my draft analyses. Reasoning can be (and often is) sound and still not pay off. However, as I mentioned before the griffin pick really had to be backed up with a cohesive draft and here is where I think the two person draft hurt you guys. In listening to the draft it felt like *you* (Ryan) wanted to fight for the aggro white strategy – wanted to take the more flexible and generically powerful cards. This is also reflected, somewhat, in your discussions about p1p2 (pyromancer vs. ranger). Then when you ended up picking cards like the ranger p1p5 Marshall seemed to be off the “force white” and ended up talking you into a couple of picks that you would have made differently were you left to your own devices.

This is not to castigate your chosen format, as usually the two person draft adds a lot of value to your videos, but in this case it made a strategy (that was already a little dicey after an early signal the the fight for white was going to be a tough one) even chancier.

By: Godot

Godot — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 17:32:18 +0000

I admit that (at least from my perspective, Marsh can speak for himself) taking the griffin was ignoring a signal to stick to a color preference, but I think people are being a little more critical than they would be because of how the draft went from there. If we had ended up with a nice aggressive base-white deck that made the finals instead of an acknowledged train wreck, the tone of the replies would be a lot different, even if many/most would still favor taking the slime.

It was a conscious decision to continue to fight for the superior color by taking a weaker but solid card instead of branching into a third color for a card I consider very good but not a bomb. While it didn’t work out this time, the griffin is a defensible pick, but I generally agree that the better EV overall would have been to go with the green signal there. I just think the actual results are coloring the impression of just how much of a mistake that pick was given all potential results.

Finally, lol @ wjb147. “I love your podcast and vids, but I disagreed with a pick, so I quit watching.” Seems like an oddly detrimental way to approach viewing draft vids, but OK. While the rest of us finish up here, you can wait around exchanging smug nods with the people who stop reading my walkthrough articles if it comes up that it’s a Swiss Draft.

Thanks all for the feedback.

By: :( :(

:( :( — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 20:31:02 +0000

p1p1- doom blade is the definite pick. tutor and mind rot will not be signals, and blinding mage is a worse splash than doom blade. Definitely blade
p1p4- this pick is why you had the deck that you did. You ignore signals and you suffer for it
p3p2-You just got a sword of vengeance. Hawk makes more sense, especially since you need to maximize your playables. Wurms table all the time.

Your plays were better than the draft though. Fun commentary, and thanks for posting guys!