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Pojo's MTG
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Patrick Hendry on Magic In my last article, I conducted an imaginary draft and when the smoke cleared, I was left with the following card pool:
Ravnica:
Guildpact:
4. Gigadrowse 6. Torch Drake 8. Runeboggle
Dissension
My color combination should be fairly obvious. R/B/U puts me into the three guilds I drafted: Dimir, Izzet, and Rakdos. Most draft decks should have a ratio of 7 mana sources to 13 non-mana producing cards. If you stick with the recommended 40 card deck for limited, then you should have roughly 14 mana sources and 26 non-mana producers. Let me discuss for a moment why you should stick with the 40-card deck size. If you draft four cards that are almost guaranteed to win the game, you stand a better chance of drawing them in a 40-card deck than in a 60-card deck. If you managed to pick four “bombs,” (cards that will win you the game) then you are a lucky person indeed. Most people are lucky if they pick one bomb. Consistency is what wins limited games. You need to try to draft a consistently agro or control deck, and you need your deck to have good draws. You have a much higher chance of drawing the quality card you need in a 40 card deck than in a 60 card deck. Furthermore, you will generally only draft 20-25 high-quality cards in a draft. If you put all 25 of the highly playable cards in the deck and then put the only marginally good cards in also, then you will NOT have consistency. This is a mistake that many players that are new to limited make. They try to put ALL their cards in a deck rather than trying to keep the deck small and consistent. This brings me to another mistake that many new limited players make: rare drafting. How many rare cards did I draft? Three. I could have drafted many more. If you are given a choice between a card that will trade well and a card that will win you the draft, your pick should only be influenced by one thing: do you like to trade or do you like to win? There are no right and wrong answers to rare drafting. It completely depends on personal choice. I admitted in my previous article that had this been a real draft, I would have chosen a dual land over a Goblin Flectomancer. While the Flectomancer may win me games, I would have chosen the $20 land. The only piece of advice I have to offer about rare drafting is this: don’t pick a card just because it is a rare. This is a dark and dismal road that leads to losing games. An uncommon is sometimes better than the rare. Moving on to the actual deck construction, we must first weed out the cards that will absolutely not be used. First: Nightguard Patrol, Benediction of Moons, and Lionheart Maverick are not even in my colors. Next, I can cut the Dogpile because it is inefficient, the Dizzy Spell because it is just plain bad, the Cry of Contrition because it won’t win me games, and discard is not really a theme in this deck, and Mizzium Transreliquat because its ability is too expensive and situational to be helpful. That leaves me with the following card pool:
Blue:
Red:
Black:
Gold:
Land:
The next round of cuts takes out: Gigadrowse, (too mana intensive) Vedalken Plotter, (too situational) Coalhauler Swine, (too expensive with a drawback) Ignorant Bliss, (too situational) Psychotic Fury, (just plain bad) Infectious Host, (not good enough) Lurking Informant, (not useful enough) and Anthem of Rakdos. (while I feel bad cutting this, my deck is just not agro enough to justify this. This leaves me with:
Blue: 4. Torch Drake 5. Runeboggle
Red: 1. Galvanic Arc 6. Seal of Fire 10. Taste for Mayhem
Black:
Gold:
These 22 cards are all excellent and worth playing. I will use 15 lands since my deck is a bit on the expensive side. That means that I need 3 more cards to bring my deck up to 40. Coalhauler Swine goes back in for a 4/4 body. Lurking Informant goes back in for disruption, and an ignorant bliss goes back in to enable hellbent and to draw a card. My final decklist looks like this:
Casting Cost 1: Seal of Fire x1
Casting Cost 2: Last Gasp x1
Casting Cost 3: Runeboggle x1 Galvanic Arc x1
Casting Cost 4: Torch Drake x1
Casting Cost 5: Brainspoil x1
Casting Cost 6:
Casting Cost 7:
Next week, I will tell you how this deck fared in actual games, and I will tell you how to have imaginary drafts.
Until then, draft well. Fortiter in re, suaviter in modo.
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