Dave M11 Draft #3 4-3-2-2

  Pack 1 pick 1:

Not the strongest of opening packs here.  Outrage and Pyromancer are a cut above the other options in pack, so I select the one with the most flexibility even though I dislike Red as a colour.  I'll be happy to let the pyromancer go if any other colour combination appears to be open. 

My Pick:

Stu Draft #1 M11 Swiss

Ok so let me preface this post by saying that I am not a good Magic player. I guess that makes me self aware. From reading Edd's first report I realise that I am way off in terms of understanding good draft strategy. I once spent 2 minutes deliberating over whether or not to pick futuresight when I had a blue deck.

Anyways I was at Edd's flat recently and he was testing for nationals. I got "the bug" and fancied getting back into it, and as an online gamer magic online is farmore appealing to me than testing constructed standard decks. I registered an online account under the nifty name JimHopper and tried to deposit with no success as they dont accept Maestro - another 30 mins spent fannying around with paypal drew me to the conclusion that if I wanted to draft tonight then Dave would have to let me pick for him. And so we begin...
 
Pack 1 pick 1:


 I mean there are quite alot of good choices here and basically I just had to make a decision on which color I fancied. I got it down to 3 choices - Black, Blue and White. Had I decided to pick white then I draft the crusader and with Blue I pick the sleep. Both decent cards I think, but I felt that even tho I would be passing two good black cards, black had the strongest options in the pack. I did consider passing 3 good black cards and having the 2 players to my left wasting some picks fighting over that color, but I also thought that I have right of first pick and I get to control all the black in pack one anyway, so I'm going to pick a black card. I didnt think there was too much of decision to make in terms of what the best black card was. But I didntlike passing the other two.

My Pick:

Dave Draft #2 M11 Swiss

  Pack 1 pick 1:


   Red has been getting a lot of hate in discussions amongst my playgroup lately.  The general consensus seems to be that the removal is too splashable (except Outrage) and the common quality is too low.  I'm still trying things out in this format, so I'm certainly willing to see where a 4/4 flier for 5 will take me, and whether he will have the support he needs or if I barely even get to cast him before I'm dead.  Other considerations apart from the Dragon were the Outrage (which I admittedly do not love passing while trying to be red, but it seems underdrafted enough that I hope I'll be fine), the Cloud Elemental, the Specter, and Sleep.  Elemental is strictly worse than the dragon despite being blue.  Sleep isn't the blowout it was in M10, but is fairly solid and a card that a lot of people seem to still rate highly, so passing that will almost certainly put someone to my left in blue (as if they needed the help).  Spider is a solid card, but you'd have to really want to not play red to pick it.

My Pick:

Ed's Draft 2 - M11 8-4

So this was my 5th draft in 3 days after work and I was on a nice little 12-0 going into this. Let's see how it goes.... 

Pack 1 pick 1:


 A very interesting first pick between Howling Banshee and Sleep. Perhaps this shows my bias towards black, but either way I found these cards very hard to separate (both excellent, both heavy colour commitments). Whilst Sleep shines in creature heavy decks (GU) of course so does shape more strongly how your draft must go there's no better way to do this than from the get go. I don't usually pay too much attention to wheel considerations in pack 1 but given the 3 blue cards it will be interesting to see how many of them wheel (probably not that many since the quality of the other commons isn't high whilst all the blue are playable).

My Pick: