Grand Prix Valencia – covered live on video by Matej Zatlkaj and myself – concluded last weekend, with Austrian Valentin Mackl finishing in 4th place. In this episode, I discuss some of the decisions he had to make during the Top 8 draft and where they led him.
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R1M2, I’m pretty sure (although ready to stand corrected) that the Marauder would have triggered heroic on the Artisan of Forms, so you could have made another 6/6 flyer to leave you with an ekstra blocker.
The Marauder doesn’t trigger heroic. His ability targets something, not the spell (which is the requirement for the heroic trigger)
@Yuval, I think only spells cast from the hand trigger heroic so it wouldn’t have worked.
Nope – I’ve tried that before – Marauder’s ability is not “from a spell” target, so heroic is not triggered!
Same mistake others (and myself at first) thought of the equipment. I thought equip targets were going to trigger heroic – sadly not!
Thanks for the content, Simon. It must always be tempting to bin these types of drafts for the videos and just show us the 3-0s.
Artisan of form would not trigger, as it needs to be a spell that is targeting to trigger heroic, and not an ability of a creature like an etb effect.
Watching the draft, I saw a nice BR deck. I have had some sucesses with minotaurs, so I could be biaised but any thought about this route?
This was a very illuminating opening discussion. At FNM three weeks ago I drafted a very similar deck to the one Valentin played. No Tormented Heroes but 1 Phalanx Leader and 1 Favored Hopelite and other than that it was nearly identical. I had similar results, and I didn’t understand why until this video. I really appreciate the work you do here. There’s no shortage of drafting videos out there and you always go the extra mile to help players like me to really understand the game more with the extra content you provide. Thanks for another terrific episode Simon.
I like Marauder in black control decks just as a way to force through 8 damage or so, like you did in game one. Against green you can’t afford to sit there with no pressure forever. It’s not fantastic, but a split card of falter and Gray Ogre that fuels devotion is fine.
M1G2 I think there should have been consideration to play the Artisan when you drew it, then bestowing the Emissary onto it, copying the Nessian Asp. Having a huge asp (even with 0 prospects to monstrous it) would have been a great way to foil the dangerous lifelink harpy and not be relying on your flier-blocker being easy to remove.