This week's draft started off with a strong blue pick, but quickly pivoted into green/white.
This week, I figured out where I wanted to be relatively early, which allowed me to dedicate more picks to my preferred colors, instead of wasting a bunch of them on speculative picks. At the end of the draft, these are the cards I have to work with.
Obviously there needs to be some cuts made here, to pare the deck down to ~23 cards. So first, I take out the cards that I'm almost definitely not playing, like Yoked Ox, Enlightened Ascetic, Healing Hands, Caustic Caterpillar, Meteorite, and Veteran's Sidearm. That still leaves me 4 cards over the limit, with 20 creatures and 7 non-creature spells. I'm probably going to want to cut some creatures from the deck, so it'll be easiest if I view my cards in order of their converted mana cost, that way I can see what my curve looks like.
It looks like I'm sitting on a glut of 3's. Since I need to cut some creatures, and my current suite of enchantments don't tend to fall into the graveyard very often, I've got no problem with cutting the two Auramancers, here. In addition, I'd like to cut something from the top-end to lower my curve slightly, and I don't feel my deck is aggressive enough in the early game to really abuse the enter-the-battlefield (EtB) effect of Heavy Infantry, so I cut that as well.
That leaves me with 17 creatures and 7 non-creature spells. Are there any of the latter I want to cut?
That leaves me with 17 creatures and 7 non-creature spells. Are there any of the latter I want to cut?
Maybe? I'm not ditching the combat tricks or removal spells. That means Alchemist's Vial, Evolutionary Leap, and Grasp of the Heiromancer are potentially on the chopping block. However, both the vial and Grasp allow me to guarantee my renown triggers go off, and while Evolutionary Leap has the potential to be a dud when I'm on the beatdown, I also have a number of early creatures I wouldn't mind trading in for bigger beaters if/when the game goes long. Ultimately, I'm not sure I really want to cut anything from here. Which means I probably need to find 1 more creature to cut.
The "weakest" creatures in the deck are definitely the artifact creatures, but they're all settled into mana slots that would be too weak if I removed them. Elvish Visionary is a weak 2-drop as it is, so I can't remove the Bonded Constructs, and my only other 4-drop is Pharika's Disciple. My best option would be to cut another 5-drop, or another 3-drop. I consider cutting Totem-Guide Hartebeest for a moment, but with three auras to fetch with it (two of them removal), I don't really want to cut it from my deck.
So, it has to be a 3-drop. Looking over what I have available, my weakest cards are Knight of the Pilgrim's Road, Orchard Spirit, and Yeva's Forcemage. Since the Knight's stats are just the highest between the three, even before renown, I decide to keep it and pare down my choices to the other two cards. Orchard Spirit has pseudo-evasion, but Yeva's Forcemage allows me to either get an aggressive start on turn 3 or brute force a renown creature through my opponent's defenses.
If this deck were more aggressive in the early game, Orchard Spirit would be the pick to keep piling on the pressure, since it's harder to block. However, in a board parity situation (assuming the opponent can block fliers, which isn't uncommon), the Orchard Spirit blocks the same as the Forcemage. It's actually a worse topdeck in more situations, because it's often just a 2/2 for 3, and nothing more. This is a tough decision, and I could see other people going a different direction on this, but I decide to cut Orchard Spirit and keep Yeva's Forcemage in my deck, counting on the EtB effect to put me in a better board position than a 2/2 with pseudo-evasion.
So, with that final decision made, this is the final deck.
So, it has to be a 3-drop. Looking over what I have available, my weakest cards are Knight of the Pilgrim's Road, Orchard Spirit, and Yeva's Forcemage. Since the Knight's stats are just the highest between the three, even before renown, I decide to keep it and pare down my choices to the other two cards. Orchard Spirit has pseudo-evasion, but Yeva's Forcemage allows me to either get an aggressive start on turn 3 or brute force a renown creature through my opponent's defenses.
If this deck were more aggressive in the early game, Orchard Spirit would be the pick to keep piling on the pressure, since it's harder to block. However, in a board parity situation (assuming the opponent can block fliers, which isn't uncommon), the Orchard Spirit blocks the same as the Forcemage. It's actually a worse topdeck in more situations, because it's often just a 2/2 for 3, and nothing more. This is a tough decision, and I could see other people going a different direction on this, but I decide to cut Orchard Spirit and keep Yeva's Forcemage in my deck, counting on the EtB effect to put me in a better board position than a 2/2 with pseudo-evasion.
So, with that final decision made, this is the final deck.
Though it's a little more defensive than I would like, the curve is reasonable, and I have plenty of top end to break up a board parity situation and push through a win. I might have also liked an extra combat trick, like Mighty Leap, but overall I'm pretty happy with how the deck turned out.
Unfortunately, my sideboard is a little sparse, since pack 2 wasn't especially great for my colors. However, I do have a few options for different matchup situations. Against decks with a lot of creatures that do little more than clog up the ground, I can side out Yeva's Forcemage for the Orchard Spirit. If I run into any slower control-type decks, Heavy Infantry will be a decent sideboard option to tap out one of their few blockers. Of course, Enlightened Ascetic and Caustic Caterpillar have their obvious sideboard situations with enchantments and artifacts. Meteorite might be worth siding in against a red deck that has a lot of those annoying x/2 first-strikers. And finally, the Auramancers are nice options to bring in against black/red, or just anybody who's running sacrifice effects in their deck, so I can fish my Suppression Bonds out of the graveyard and replay them multiple times.
My early gut call on green being open early in the draft, and that insight eventually led me into a strong pack 3, where I was able to capitalize on the choices I made in the first pack. I'm rather happy that my practice has started to pay off with this set, and I've started to get better at reading the signals around the table. The deck I ended up with, while lacking in some areas, feels pretty solid all-around. I would have liked to replace those Bonded Constructs with real 2-drops, and it would have been amazing to grab that late Joraga Invocation, but we can't always have everything we want, especially if we're playing to win.
Check back next Tuesday to find out how my deck fared in real matches!
<-Assembly Line Stress Test->
Back to the Drafting Table->
My early gut call on green being open early in the draft, and that insight eventually led me into a strong pack 3, where I was able to capitalize on the choices I made in the first pack. I'm rather happy that my practice has started to pay off with this set, and I've started to get better at reading the signals around the table. The deck I ended up with, while lacking in some areas, feels pretty solid all-around. I would have liked to replace those Bonded Constructs with real 2-drops, and it would have been amazing to grab that late Joraga Invocation, but we can't always have everything we want, especially if we're playing to win.
Check back next Tuesday to find out how my deck fared in real matches!
<-Assembly Line Stress Test->
Back to the Drafting Table->