After speculating black for a bit, this week's draft ended up in an aggressive, low curve red/green deck.
Even with a few picks lost to speculation, I still managed to accumulate more than enough cards in my colors to end up with enough playables, and then some. Here's a shot of what I ended up with.
Obviously there are more than a handful of sideboard (Caustic Caterpillar, Aerial Volley, Mantle of Webs) and unplayable (Demolish, Bellows Lizard, Nissa's Pilgrimage) cards here, so after I take them out, I have something a little more closely resembling a deck.
Even with all those cuts, I'm still at 26 cards, which means I need to cut three cards before I can call this finished. I have 16 creatures, currently, and 10 non-creature spells. Since I want this deck to curve out early and push a consistent beatdown, I don't want to cut more than 1 creature, if any at all. Which means I'm most likely just going to cut 3 non-creature spells instead.
About half my spells are pretty strong, while the other are questionable. All the Fiery Impulses will stay in the deck, as well as Titanic Growth, Might of the Masses, and Joraga Invocation. The only spells I might possibly cut are Alchemist's Vial, Brawler's Plate, Call of the Full Moon, and Chandra's Fury.
While the Alchemist's Vial could potentially draw me into more gas, I'd kinda rather just draw into a card that will actually effect the board, since most of the creatures in my deck are about equal power level. Chandra's Fury is an interesting card for reach, and it clears x/1 creatures beautifully, but it's another one of those cards that usually just doesn't effect the board. I can probably pretty safely cut both of these cards from my deck.
Brawler's Plate and Call of the Full Moon kind of serve the same purpose, buffing a creature and giving it trample. On the one hand, Brawler's Plate is guaranteed to stick around, outside of the rare artifact-hate card, but it's highly mana intensive, making it occasionally hard to activate when you also want to play other spells during your turn. On the other hand, Call of the Full Moon is very cheap to play and makes early aggression especially deadly, but it easy to knock into the graveyard during the midgame when your opponent has gotten to 5-6 mana; although, in the extreme late game, where both players are in topdeck mode, it becomes good again because playing two spells in a single turn often doesn't happen anymore.
In the end, I decide to ditch the Brawler's Plate and keep the Call of the Full Moon. While the equipment is a lot more difficult to remove and is overall more flexible (since you can move the buff around to different creatures during your turn), I already have two mana sinks in Somberwald Alpha and Volcanic Rambler, on top of Joraga Invocation as a 6-cost finisher. I'm just not sure I'm going to have the flexibility in my mana to be able to afford to abuse the buff provided by the equipment.
So, with those decisions out of the way, here is my final deck.
While the Alchemist's Vial could potentially draw me into more gas, I'd kinda rather just draw into a card that will actually effect the board, since most of the creatures in my deck are about equal power level. Chandra's Fury is an interesting card for reach, and it clears x/1 creatures beautifully, but it's another one of those cards that usually just doesn't effect the board. I can probably pretty safely cut both of these cards from my deck.
Brawler's Plate and Call of the Full Moon kind of serve the same purpose, buffing a creature and giving it trample. On the one hand, Brawler's Plate is guaranteed to stick around, outside of the rare artifact-hate card, but it's highly mana intensive, making it occasionally hard to activate when you also want to play other spells during your turn. On the other hand, Call of the Full Moon is very cheap to play and makes early aggression especially deadly, but it easy to knock into the graveyard during the midgame when your opponent has gotten to 5-6 mana; although, in the extreme late game, where both players are in topdeck mode, it becomes good again because playing two spells in a single turn often doesn't happen anymore.
In the end, I decide to ditch the Brawler's Plate and keep the Call of the Full Moon. While the equipment is a lot more difficult to remove and is overall more flexible (since you can move the buff around to different creatures during your turn), I already have two mana sinks in Somberwald Alpha and Volcanic Rambler, on top of Joraga Invocation as a 6-cost finisher. I'm just not sure I'm going to have the flexibility in my mana to be able to afford to abuse the buff provided by the equipment.
So, with those decisions out of the way, here is my final deck.
I'm a little concerned about the overall power of my creatures. The 2 and 3 drops are OK, but none of them are especially high on the power curve. The wide majority of them are "filler" cards that you take to make playables, and I've essentially made an entire deck out of them. I have some explosiveness with 3 Yeva's Forcemage and Call of the Wild, and Somberwald Alpha should make blocking problematic for my opponent, but most of my creatures are very fragile, and that worries me a bit.
So, with the deckbuilding done, here's a view of my sideboard.
So, with the deckbuilding done, here's a view of my sideboard.
The Infectious Bloodlust and Nissa's Pilgrimage are both dead cards, and will never leave my sideboard, but I do have a few decent options for different matchups. Against any deck running a lot of x/1's (thopters, dragon fodder, etc), Chandra's Fury will come out to wipe them off the field and provide me with a bit of reach. Two Aerial Volleys and two Mantle of Webs means I'm pretty set if I go up against any flier-heavy decks, though this deck doesn't really want to be defensive, so I'm hoping I never have to bring out the Mantles. Caustic Caterpillar is always a nice fallback if my opponent runs a lot of enchantments. Finally, I can always bring in Brawler's Plate if I run into somebody who's running a lot of weenie chump blockers that are keeping me from closing out a game.
I'm a little unsure how this deck will run, but if I don't run into mana issues, I should curve out well enough to threaten lethal pretty early in most matches. The biggest hurdle will probably come from trying to close out when my opponent has stabilized. Control decks might be an issue, thought I'm not sure I want to face up against a red/white aggro deck either, especially with all the first strike they tend to pack.
Check back on Tuesday to find out how this deck fared in the actual games!
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I'm a little unsure how this deck will run, but if I don't run into mana issues, I should curve out well enough to threaten lethal pretty early in most matches. The biggest hurdle will probably come from trying to close out when my opponent has stabilized. Control decks might be an issue, thought I'm not sure I want to face up against a red/white aggro deck either, especially with all the first strike they tend to pack.
Check back on Tuesday to find out how this deck fared in the actual games!
<-Assembly Line Stress Test->
Back to the Drafting Table->