Friday. Magic night. Be there.

[Xilren's Twin]

Hey Schild ya low humidity bastard.  Scrape together 13 buck and join a draft will ya?

Or at least hop on so we can all raid the clan collection. :)

Xilren

[WayAbvPar]

I very well may join you. What time are you planning to get together? Can someone invite me to the guild while I am on?

I think schild is AFK for most of the weekend.

[Hoax]

I'm in, reluctantly I just get my ass handed to me in a draft so badly it makes me cry.  Although I did almost have success with a R/G/U deck the other week that had an interesting kill card in the "turn all lands into 2/2's".  It was kind of good times till I ran into icy manipulator + decoy 4tw..  (oh yeah, that was in round 1!!)

[eldaec]

I'm online now if anyone is about who can invite me into the clan.

[Raging Turtle]

I think only the Clan captain can invite people to join, will ask an adept. 

I'll try to be there tonight.  We want to set a time for this?  saaaay.... 9 central again?

[Xilren's Twin]

It's usually 10, 1030p EST when I get on, but I'll be there.  My luck seems to cycle, had a stretch on winning at least 2 packs for a while, then hit two drafts where i didnt get out of round one.  One draft I understood b/c i wasn't happy at all with my draft.  The other I thought i had a decent deck, but the turning point was in game two where i got my opponent down to 1 life and simply could not find that point to finish him off anywhere, this with an Air Elemental on the table and a giant growth in hand (he had the Aven flock he could pump toughness for 1 white and tons of plains...)  Man i was pissed.

Weirdest late rares I saw go buy.  A 6th pick Zur's weirding (didnt take it) and I picked up an Underworld Dreams with a 7th pick (wasn't playing black, but then again i dont think anyone was...)

Xilren

[Hoax]

I'm actually going to miss it I'm afraid I wont be home at 7pm pst, if I am I'll jump online but I can't head straight home from work today.

[schild]

California for the Grandma's birthday. Seriously, this is like the one week of the entire year I'm actually away from one of my own computers. I totally should have brought my laptop. Who would've thought they'd have wireless?

[Raging Turtle]

Casual Play --> Limited Games.  Be there, suckers

[Xilren's Twin]

Had a nice draft tonight: got passed a second pick blaze and a later opened a flame wave so it was something of a no brainer.  Lost 2-1 in the round 3 so at least my next draft's free.  Guy must have swallowed all the nice Black cards as he had multiple dark banishings, enfeeblement, and his mvp, trade routes.  He even used it to strip back his islands once my sea serpent hit the table. 

At any rate, here was the latest:
 Red
1 Blaze
1 Flame Wave
2 Shock
1 Lava Axe
1 Threaten
1 Goblin Mountaineer
1 Goblin Brigand
1 Goblin Sky Raider
1 Lightning Elemental
1 Rogue Kavu
1 Seething Song
2 Anaba Shaman
2 Balduvian Barbarians
 Blue
1 Air Elemental
1 Crafty Pathmage
1 Dehydration
1 Remove Soul
1 Sea Monster
1 Wind Drake
1 Dream Prowler
Other
1 Slate of Ancestry
8 Island
9 Mountain

Sideboard Blue
1 Boomerang
1 Crafty Pathmage
1 Fugitive Wizard
1 Mana Leak
Red
1 Furnace of Rath
1 Panic Attack
1 Reflexes
1 Shatter
1 Stone Rain

Xilren

[WayAbvPar]

Sorry I missed ya, folks- I remembered at about 9:30 PM. Arrgh. Might be up to try again sometime this week.

[Johny Cee]

My ISP has been driving me friggin' nuts.

It decides to randomly drop me from time to time.  It got me on draft night,  then again tonight when I was just about to finish my dismantling of some poor fool in round 1 of a sanctioned draft....  sigh.

I have to say,  the new movies/advertisements are an improvement.  They tend to be fairly humorous,  and god damn I was tired of the intro movie.  I was tired of hitting escape to get out of the intro movie, even....

Do the Adult Swim guys have a hand in the new ads?  It has their style of humor.

[schild]

Apparently yes. On adult swim last night there was a whole thing about Wizards of the Coast.

[Xilren's Twin]

Friday night magic strikes again.  The below cards allowed me to win my draft.  4 packs = free fun.  Turned into a nice little aggro-control deck including my final game in round 3, which saw me come back from a 20-1 hole to win!  Had to use a blaze on an opponents shaman who got me to 1, but it worked..  Also in round one played a g/w/b deck with Worship in it.  Didn't see it game 1 which i won.  Game 2 it hit the table and I had no way to remove it.  So for game 3 i sided in Demystfy and 3 plains, and used it to kill that damn card!  Yeah me for picking that card as a last pick in one pack.  Ok, I got lucky! :)



1 Puppeteer
1 Rewind
1 Sleight of Hand
1 Storm Crow
1 Thought Courier
1 Trade Routes
2 Dehydration
2 Wind Drake
 

1 Balduvian Barbarians
1 Blaze
1 Enrage
1 Hill Giant
1 Lava Axe
1 Lightning Elemental
1 Rogue Kavu
2 Anaba Shaman
1 Sandstone Warrior
1 Thundermare
2 Flowstone Shambler

8 Island
9 Mountain
 
Sideboard:Blue
1 Aven Fisher
1 Levitation
1 Lumengrid Warden
1 Sea's Claim
1 Sea Monster
1 Fishliver Oil (premium)
1 Tidings
 

1 Panic Attack
1 Reflexes
1 Goblin Balloon Brigade
1 Goblin Mountaineer
1 Goblin Piker
 

1 Blessed Orator
1 Demystify
1 Inspirit
 
[Other]
1 Fellwar Stone
1 Spellbook


Xilren

[Margalis]

That is a nice deck. Thought Courier wins a lot of games just on his own.

I drafted a great red/green deck and then ran into a worship deck. The guy got it down immediately both games. I had a flame wave main deck, some burn, a threaten, etc, but I couldn't draw flame wave either game and had no other way around it.

Very frustrating because the guys' deck was terrible. The entire deck was based around Worship but he had no card draw in his deck and his creatures/spells were awful. It was basically worship plus 39 other sucky cards.

My first round I almost lost because game 1 I drew lands for like 7 turns in a row, then game 3 I was stuck on 3 lands for most of the game. Luckily my mana curve was very low so I was able to pull it out.

I guess the moral of the story is, pick up one of those last-pick demystifies! Still, given how he got worship out almost immediately both games I'm not sure it would have mattered.

[Margalis]

AARRRRRGH.

My limited rating dropped ten points in one draft.

First round I start with a nice hand but draw nothing but land.
Second round opponet mulligans twice and is stuck on 2 land.
Third round I have to mulligan twice and then keep a hand with all mismatched colors and get run over.

All three games were decided by shuffling. There is no deck I could have beaten in the first and third game, of any quality. And no way I could have lost with any deck on the second game. Very frustrating.

[Margalis]

I'll be on tonight around 9 if anyone wants to join me.

[Johny Cee]

I should be around tonight,  though I'm quite infatuated with my new league deck.  Went 4-1,  solid build of white/green with a couple very nice cards.

[schild]

Unless something comes up, I'll be there this Friday. Somehow I managed to miss last Friday. Might have been one of the other hojillion games I'm playing. I don't even remember.

[Margalis]

I can't make it this Friday, I have company. Oh well. I'm getting my limited rating back up, should break 1600 again if I can get past the first round next draft I do.

The bad news is I've sold off almost all my rares (I don't play any constructed) so I have to keep winning or else invest some more money.

[Hoax]

Yikes Friday is going to become tough for me, but I'd love to be there and I think we should absolutely try to have some private drafting once Rav hits for some fun and practice getting used to what works and what doesn't with the set in limited.  I think the one private draft we did way back when was a great learning experience because we all talked about what we were using in the deck, I got a sense of what colors had been drafted heavily and could compare that to what I thought was being drafted during the draft and once I lost (which was fast)  I got to play versus several other people's draft decks which was worth more then the chance of getting prizes for someone like me who never wins boosters anyways.

[Johny Cee]

Friday is questionable for me.

I'll either be in Boston drinking in the worst dive we can find,  or be at work hammering away for the October 17th tax deadline.

Get ready for Ravinica folks.  It's going to be some fun.  Did a sealed last weekend,  and it's a good batch of cards.  Dredge is actually a real powerful mechanic.  Had Grave-shell Scarab (5cc, 4/4, 1, sac, draw a card; Dredge 1) and he was a house.

[Margalis]

Yes dredge looks great. Basically instead of drawing a random card, you get to draw the card you want. Given that you can draw lands, drawing the card you want is going to be better than drawing a random card, on average. And of course if the dredge card is really good it's that much better. A 4/4 that you can bring back every time he dies is going to overpower a lot of decks.

[Margalis]

I am drafting, openened a first pick flame wave then a second pick master decoy, figured I would go for a sort of red/white control. However the white and red both totally dried up after that. I ended up with a lot of black after pack 1. After 3 packs I had on ok deck...2 gravediggers, 2 anaba shaman, 4 removal spells, flame wave, etc. Nothing great, and a lot of the people in my draft have very high ratings.

First round I am up against a guy playing green - I saw a ton of good green passed around in the second pack so I figure I am in trouble. This guy has the worst green/red deck I think I've ever seen. No big creatures at all. When I beat him he has about 9 mana available and 3 or 4 cards in his hand...what they could possibly be I have no idea. I didn't see a single trained armadon, rootwalla, order, nothing...just grizzly bears for the most part.

Waiting for round 2. I don't think I can beat any legit good deck unless I get an awesome draw or can live long enough for Flame Wave. I have YET to cast Flame Wave in a draft, even though I've had it in about 6 decks. I can never end up with a deck that has mana accel or that can stall long enough.

[Margalis]

Well I got owned in the second round, as I should have. Once again did not cast Flame Wave.

[Xilren's Twin]

I am drafting, openened a first pick flame wave then a second pick master decoy, figured I would go for a sort of red/white control. However the white and red both totally dried up after that. I ended up with a lot of black after pack 1. After 3 packs I had on ok deck...2 gravediggers, 2 anaba shaman, 4 removal spells, flame wave, etc. Nothing great, and a lot of the people in my draft have very high ratings.

First round I am up against a guy playing green - I saw a ton of good green passed around in the second pack so I figure I am in trouble. This guy has the worst green/red deck I think I've ever seen. No big creatures at all. When I beat him he has about 9 mana available and 3 or 4 cards in his hand...what they could possibly be I have no idea. I didn't see a single trained armadon, rootwalla, order, nothing...just grizzly bears for the most part.

I see this alot too; green seems to be consistently the least drafted color, yet paired with a good other color can make a really nasty deck.  It's problems of course is the other color has to do all the things green can't.  Where's Jamie Wakefield when you need him :)  Green's weaknesses in this format green are it's generally slow (exp critters), critters are all land based with minimal evasion, and it has next to no decent utility/removal/damage spells at all.  Giant growth, rampant growth, some lure stuff, thats about it.  You have to use the green far to overrun an opponent quickly and thats just dicely depending on how many chump blockers that can get out.

IMHO, it's definately the worst color for drafting in 9th, though I did manage to play a verdant force one draft several weeks back.  That card is just too good, but not worth picking green early IMHO.

Xilren

[WayAbvPar]

I am going to try to remember to make it tonight. 7 PM PDT? How much does a league cost me again?

[Xilren's Twin]

I am going to try to remember to make it tonight. 7 PM PDT? How much does a league cost me again?

A league it 5 packs and 2 tickets for week 1 and you can add up to 1 booster per week the following 3 weeks.  So $21 - 31.50.

Booster drafts are 3 packs and 2 tickets if you play one with prizes ($13), and they now have both 4-3-2-2 and 8-4 booster prize payouts kinds.

Xilren

[Margalis]

Yeah, green is good if you can pair it with some removal. I like green/white/red or green/white/black. I find green/white goes together well because white can provide some flyers and the annoying utility creatures make green fatties that much more overwhelming. Plus with white splash red or black you have access to pacificsm, master decoy and red or black removal.

[Raging Turtle]

Won't be there tonight.  Def. up for some Ravnica though. 

[Hoax]

I'm so late, is there a league to join for the weekend?  I'd be down.  But noway I'm online before 8pm pst today...

[Xilren's Twin]

I know its a little late, 10.50p est, but im on. Hoping in t a 9th draft...

Xilren

[Margalis]

Drafting Rav will be interesting, but what will be *really* interesting will be drafting Rav when there are 2 or 3 sets released. My assumption is that people will try to draft 3 colors in combination like RW, WG, GR. It's going to be very tricky to cut off colors in draft or signal because there will be 10 color combinations. I guess in my example above you would try to cut off white to establish RW and WG, then hope some GR also shows up, making RG your "splash" guild. In Magic there are 5 colors and each deck usually has 2 with maybe a splash of a 3rd. When Rav is complete there will be 10 guilds, and typical decks will probably use 2 with maybe a splash of a third. It's interesting because if you have 2 overlapping guilds there is a 3rd guild that also obviously overlaps those first 2.

[Xilren's Twin]

Sometime these drafts confuse me.  Last night I started with a first pick master decoy, but saw no more great white cards out of pack 1,so I ended up going Red Blue heavy fliers yet again b/c I got passed a 2nd pick Pyroclasm, 4th pick Rod of Ruin and a 5th pick Air Elemental!  I also picked up a Cowardice, thinking between the Rod and an Anaba Shaman I had I could bounce my opponents creaters off the table.  At least that was the theory;  the two games I used it, it probably hurt me as much as helped me.  Beat a WB deck and then promptly got rolled by a nice RB deck with Blaze, multiple mind rots and Anarchist plus raise dead gravedigger combo's to keep bringing back the nasty sorceries.  I though he was nuts when he blazed one of my 1/3 fliers but it soon became clear what he was up to.  2nd game I got mind rotted 3 times in 5 turns and that was that.

Xilren

[Margalis]

5th pick air elemental? Must have been a draft where everyone hated blue.

I always find it hard to evaluate the hand disruption cards in limited.