 | Date Posted: 10/25/2011
Posted By: Josh Hendricks
Member Since: 8/7/2008
Number of Replies: 1
Last Post: 10/25/2011 |
| | Rare Draft Wins | Looking over the history of my rare draft career, it looks like I've played in a total of 13 large rare drafts that include all rare drafts, RWU drafts and reject rare drafts. I've won 5 of them. Not as impressive as I thought. Looks like early on, Mike Dale won about as many, with Zack in a close second.
Anyway, here is kinda my primer when I go into a draft. Here are the types of spells you look for...
- Planeswalkers (almost any)
- Equipment, Equipment, Equipment! [e.g. Any sword of __&__, anything that gives a power boost and/or trample or flying, really almost any equipment is good]
- Red (or other) 'X' damage spells [e.g. Fireball, Profane Command]
- Card Draw (especially if it's on a creature/artifact or otherwise efficient) [e.g. Sphinx of Lost Truths, Fathom Trawl, Ancestral Visions, Bottled Cloister]
- Creature kill [e.g. Consuming Vapors, Exile, Vengeful Dreams]
- Mass Creature kill (best) [e.g. Wrath of God, Day of Judgment, Plague Boiler]
- Mana fixing/ramp (only need 1 maybe 2, too much is bad)[Bloomtender, Birds of Paradise]
- Artifact/ Enchantment removal [Plague Boiler, Nevinyral's Disk, Glissa]
- Any moat-type effect (obviously) [Moat, Teferri's Moat, Island Sanctuary]
- Reusable tapping, bouncing or critter killing things. [Icy Manipulator, Tradewind Rider, Scepter of Dominance]
- Steal stuff [Control Magic, Bribery, Govern the Guildless]
And here are the types of creature abilities in order of importance...
1) Flying
2) Shroud/hexproof or protection from all or most colors
3) Trample
4) Indestructible
Of course if you can get guys with 2 or more of those abilities all the better. [e.g. Sphinx of Jwaar Isle, Simic Sky Swallower]
Stuff you should avoid...
- Any do-nothing card. If it doesn't perform some reasonable effect on the board or your position, it should not be used.
- Creature enchantments. There are some exceptions to this rule, but most rare creature enchantments are better off just being creature slots. There are exceptions though (e.g. Eldrazi Conscription was awesome for me, but that's almost a direct damage spell!)
- Cards with limited usage. These can mostly be regulated to sideboards, but a good example is Divine Reckoning. I had a chance to draft this and opted to pass it. Sure it's good when you have 1 awesome creature and they have a whole bunch of smaller ones, but how often does this exact scenario actually come up? Not to mention, in draft you are usually being killed by one large guy, so this effectively does nothing most of the time.
Some other basic strategies...
- Pay attention to mana cost and curve. Sure it's great to have all those big bomb creatures, but that doesn't help much when you're not casting anything until turn 5 or 6. Draft small guys even if they suck. You will be glad you have a couple of 2-4 drop creatures.
- Look for combos and synergy. If you aree drafting a bunch of token makers, then maybe that Honor of the Pure is worth it. If you have a guy that repeatedly sacks creatures, then look for that token generator, etc. If you know that there is going to be some way to cheat that Blightsteel Colossus into play then go ahead and take it. I took a late BSC and then got passed a Kuldotha Forgemaster when I already had a ton of artifacts. Didn't play it, but it could have been nasty. I was also passed a Phyrexian Unlife which I took for the fast decks when I needed to buy time. Ironically a Melira, Sylvok Oucast got passed to me a few picks later. I wasn't in green, but might have been a decent combo if I was. This brings me directly to the next piece of advice...
- Don't rely too much on combos. Combos are cool, and even in the all rare draft they exist and can win games by themselves; however, stretching too hard for a combo can break you too. Be wary of relying to heavily on them. Synergy is a better plan.
- Green is typically the worst color to draft, but the easiest to play. I call it the worst because it doesn't usually have flyers, card draw or creature kill. The only real advantage to green is cheap creatures and sometimes you get trample and/or shroud. I still say that ground creatures in this format are pretty bad. Raise your hand if you've had a stand-off with your opponent because you both had a ton of ground guys and couldn't swing at each other. Sucks doesn't it? White, Blue and Black tend to be the strongest colors but are the hardest to play. Red is many times the underdog color. It is usually underdrafted and in the right table can be a very strong deck. The first rare draft I ever won I drafted an all red deck! Nobody was taking red and I made out like a bandit.
That's all I got. Did I miss any strategies? Do have your own? Anybody want to submit what they think the best cards in a rare draft are?
Last piece of advice...If you see a Bribery, take it and start drafting blue!
"I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody." Barack Obama |
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