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Drafting & Deck Building
Round 1
Round 2
Round 3
Some quick tips for your next M15 draft:
- GW Convoke/Sanctified Charge is the best archetype.
- Consider aggressively trading creatures in the early game against GW decks since they are likely to have convoke cards.
- Keep an eye out for the UR Ensoul Artifact deck. You don't want to be drafting Ensoul Artifact early, but you do want to know if it has a chance to wheel and consider taking it then. Patrick Dickmann turned an otherwise awkward six creature draft in to a very sweet 3-0 by moving in on Ensoul Artifacts on the wheel at Pro Tour M15.
- Semi-removal enchantments such as Encrust, Crippling Blight and Stab Wound are worse than they look because of cards like Invasive Species, Peel from Reality and Quickling.
- x/1s are worse than they look because of cards like Triplicate Spirits (the best common in the set) Forge Devil, and, if you're really unlucky, Cone of Flame (the best uncommon in the set)
- It can be helpful to consult a list of instants and flash creatures while you play. I googled "M15 flash" and found http://www.hipstersofthecoast.com/2014/07/grinding-m15-instants-flash-creatures/
Want to know how much each M15 draft is likely to cost you? Check out MagicEV.com you can easily set your expected win% and how much you value QPs at. Note that almost everybody over-estimates their win%. I know I did.
Here is how I manage my collection after drafting:
- First, I keep cards I like as a spec. For me this means the painlands.
- Next, I sell the other money cards to Goatbots. If I want to verify I'm getting a good price, I'll compare their price to mtgowikiprice.com. And if I want to pinch pennies, I'll search the classifieds for "we pay" and tediously check whether any of Aboshanbots1/2/3 want any of my cards before I go to Goatbots.
- Finally, If I have a bunch of bulk I want to get rid of, I'll usually dump it off with the Clanteam bots.
Please leave a comment! I'm happy to discuss other lines of play, methods of managing the draft, or whatever else is on your mind.
1) Stoke the Flames is also playable and currently worth MORE than Perilous Vault!
2) Clanteam is NOT where you want to be unloading your M15 bulk right now. M15 is new enough that you can still unload it in lots of places, for minimal effort at 3-5x Clanteams prices.
1) Whoa, I guess I’d better pay more attention to uncommon prices. Thanks!
2) Where do you suggest selling bulk? For me the stuff is worth so little I’m just happy with Clanteam because they’re willing to take ALL the garbage I don’t want cluttering my account.
I have a question too, since you’re a MUCH better player than I am. This is one of those places that I bleed a little bit of overall deck power:
Can you go into more detail as to why Black Cat is a better pick than Rogue’s Gloves, when you have 2 Typhoid Rats, Xathrid Slyblade, 3 Accursed Spirit, and 2 Fliers? It seems to me that this is actually one of the few times Rogue’s Gloves would actually be quite good?
That said, with the way it panned out, it wouldn’t have made it into my deck either, though I’d be tempted to put it in over a sign in blood.
Rat doesn’t seem good with gloves, when equipped it is very easy to block with a generic 2drop at tempo gain or even a wayfinder/creature token for card advantage. I can see taking gloves over cat there, but I’m just not interested in gloves at all. I’ve considered gloves many times and even in decks where it’s at its best it doesn’t seem good enough to me. I would basically never play it over sign in blood. The problem with gloves is simply that it’s win-more, when you’re succeeding at getting in for damage every turn you probably don’t need to pay 4mana and a card once for a card every turn to turn the game from a loss in to a win. You’re already winning a large % of those games. Sometimes those games are more about winning the race than card advantage. On the other hand, drawing gloves in any game where you aren’t already getting in for damage consistently is a disaster.
Not sure if its just me but these videos had lagging and syncing issues again. Not as bad as last time, but it still was annoying.
Hey deymond–
Can you find a time in one of the videos where it goes off for you? Did you notice it in the first video? Because the first one starts off synced up for me and I didn’t notice it get off track.
Thanks! Paul’s still working the kinks out of the new client, so hopefully we can get this snuffed out.
desymond*
My bad. 🙂
In round 2 starting at 13 minutes the video pauses while the audio continues. The video finally catches up at 15:30 where you can see in the game log a bunch of things that happened that you couldn’t see in the video while paul was discussing them. That was the worst bit of it from what I can remember, I watched them yesterday.
It was worse for me. Relatively shortly after the initial problem desymond mentions, I had to stop watching, because the video froze while commentary continued… for like 7 minutes.
Same, most of the videos I only had audio for long periods of time and round 2 gives a failure to load when I try to play it.
I’m so sad right now. Looks like v4 is going to make me buy a new computer.