Nix Tix weekend for drafting!

[Johny Cee]

The ticket cost for drafting/premier events has been removed.  If you feel like drafting a little Rav,  now's the time to do it.

[Margalis]

Thanks for the heads up. I just won a draft I had no business winning. Had a G/B deck with lots of removal including Putrefy (which I never drew once!) but a terrible set of creatures. I was playing Sisters of Stone Death, Ivy Dancer, Sewer Dreg, Thoughtpicker etc main deck. First round played someone with a 4 or 5 color deck, he just couldn't cast things consistently enough. (Plus I Nightmare Voided away some things that were sure to kill me) Second round was a bye. Third round faced a pretty bad WG deck. It was weird, neither deck I faced was good at all, mine wasn't good, and I didn't see much good stuff getting passed around either. Must have been some pretty awful packs overall.

[Strazos]

I had a pimp U/b Mill deck, and decked out my first opponent in 12 and 9 turns.

I then proceeded to get rofflepwned by a fast (and Lucky) Selsanya deck. Oh well.

[Margalis]

I played a draft where I had to face down 2 mill decks in a row...grueling experience. I ended up winning one game with 1 card left in my library where I attacked with everything then used Golgari Rotwurm to do that last 3 points of damage with the sac effect and my exactly 3 open swamps. One of the mill decks had a Glimpse of the Unthinkable in it. (The UB card that mills 10) along with Psychic Drain (the mill X, gain X life card) Scary deck to play against because in two turns you can go from 15 cards to dead. I didn't use any of my dredge cards at all, was too scared. Kind of silly really.

Rav drafting has been very good to me overall. Drafting 9th my rating dropped to 1570 but now it's back up to 1630 or so. I probably won't draft too much until the next set comes out, maybe once every 2 weeks or so. I've done a great job of conserving money though, I've done 5 or 6 drafts only having invested in 3 boosters and I still have 4 or so left unopened. (Made it to a lot of finals)

[Hoax]

I hope I didn't miss this...

This weekend I was in Sacramento and my buddy bought a box of Rav which we did 3 four player drafts out of.  That was a ton of fun.  In fact I actually won against my far superior MtG player friend with a W/R deck with black Splashed for two of those -3/-3 cards.

All in all the drafts are a ton of fun, I love how W/R+? plays when I can draft it but I had a hell of a time figuring out what was being drafted by other players.

[Johny Cee]

I hope I didn't miss this...

This weekend I was in Sacramento and my buddy bought a box of Rav which we did 3 four player drafts out of.  That was a ton of fun.  In fact I actually won against my far superior MtG player friend with a W/R deck with black Splashed for two of those -3/-3 cards.

All in all the drafts are a ton of fun, I love how W/R+? plays when I can draft it but I had a hell of a time figuring out what was being drafted by other players.

I think nix tix is over today.

I have some problems with reading/sending draft signals,  but my main problem is I like the G/B/W playstyle too much.  Tend to draft it even if I shouldn't.

Magic Online tables can give you some real bizarre signals, too.  When Marg was on the other day,  did a draft with an even mix of sub-1500 and high 1700 players.  The table signals were all over the place,  with no one drafting a color then everyone moving into that color.

I had a god awful collection of cards in 4 different colors since I consistently found myself locked out of color after I moved to it.  Got destoryed round one.

Ahh well....  Had a good run of winning at least one round each draft,  which meant the next draft was free or cost me $4.01 at most and netted me much more than that in rare value.

[Margalis]

I tend to play GBW or GBU almost exclusively. Not that I try, I just find that coming my way. Part of it is probably how I rate cards - I take Disembowel and Brainspoil pretty darn high, for example. Reading signals can be very tough, I had a draft recently where I started with 2 good black removal cards but then Boros seemed wide open so I thought about switching into it. I got a Flame-kin Zealot as the 14th pick in a pack or something like that...then in the 2nd pack it just totally dried up and I stayed in my original colors. I think that was a draft where the first round I faced a god awful 5 color monstrosity, so I guess it isn't surprising that the signals were all over the place.

[Hoax]

Does switching mid-draft ever work?  I had a very similar experience one of our paper magic drafts.  At the end of the first pack I had mostly black, with some decent red splash cards (I found the all creatures/players take 1 to be a game saver many times) and about 3 total from blue and green having not committed to either to support black.  In the second pack I was passed two packs in a row that had 3 great boros cards each.  So I started trying to get to that, I ended up with the worst deck of our four drafts because pack three I couldn't find white or red to save my life.  The draft started and two of our four were using W/R.  In conclusion I've decided whatever you end up with at the end of the first pack, stick with it.  Unless people have actually made a second pack switch work.

[Margalis]

If I'm looking to switch it's usually because one of the first packs came all the way around in it with some decent stuff in a color that I remember was not that deep in that pack. For example if my first pack has a Skynight and a Faith's fetters as the only decent white cards and it comes back with Skynight still in it I may switch. So if I'm going to switch it's usually on pick 9-12 or so of pack 1. Maybe a bit earlier if I notice a ton of cards getting passed my way of one color and high quality.

I've switched secondary colors in pack 2, or switched my balance of colors. For example recently I started out as Dimir with a splash for Putrefy but I ended up playing Goglari with a bit of blue splash when the blue dried up. I've never switched primary colors successfully in pack 2. Missing out on the first 3-4 picks in your color really hurts. If you switch colors on say pick 4 of pack 2 you've probably already missed 3 good first picks in the preceding packs and are banking on the fact that the color you are switching to is wide open.