As the DraftMagic.com team bides their time waiting for M11 to hit MTGO, they’ve found time for some older formats. Here, Marlon Egolf (merl2pearl) tries his hand at one of the best draft formats of all time, Ravnica. Check out the video and see what made this format such a blast to draft!
Ravnica / Dissension / Guildpact Draft Video #1
– July 27, 2010Posted in: Ravnica Block, Videos
Man that draft was a mess, but the deck still seamed to play well.. hehe… until you hit the dig enchantment and then the oathsworn army :) Unlucky.
This blog is cool stuff and the youtube chan is great as well. I hope you consider adding a forum or something for better chats, and long to see more articles and start talk if you guys get time
Keep it up man… I can’t get enough of these draft vids..
Marlon! Curio is actually really good I’m upset you never considered it. Flight of Fancy-ish cards are busted good with it.
Congratulations on having a Glare passed to you…
RW in pack one is not just WB in 2 and RB in 3. It’s also UR in pack 2 and UW in pack 3 (and UG for your glare)
^^ this is why this format kicks ass!
What’s with the fixation on playing WB? Those colors seemed the least open actually. I think this deck was supposed to be UGR. Anyhow, it’s funny how you stubbornly tried to avoid green but got stuck having to play it anyway.
@Girl: Is that aimed at me? You don’t specify, but since I’m the previous poster, I’ll assume it’s me? In that case, allow me to rephrase. For viewers interested in improving their game, these videos serve as a nice exercise in reading signals. In this case, green is open, which Marlon specifically comments on. He admits aloud he is being stubborn by ignoring it. In the end, so many good green cards have come by that he winds up with a decent pile of them anyway and stretches into 4 colors in order to have enough playables. Hence it begs the question, what would his draft deck have looked like had he accepted the green signal? If you observe, his W and B picks are always early in the pack, and he is then passed good G, R, and U. Izzet and Simic are both pretty awesome at common. So I commented, it looks like UGR was open. And I ask, why the fixation on WB?
I don’t know about you, but I’m always trying to improve my game. That’s why I…watch draft videos online. Having a dialogue about what I would have done differently isn’t trolling and isn’t an insult, it’s a strategy discussion. I like this site and would like more active discussion in the comments. I know half the guys who post videos on here. I feel comfortable asking them about their strategy. My observations were legit. No idle trolling occurred.
Protoman, I’d just assume Girl Nextdoor is a bot….
I agree with Protoman and Roberto — the Brightflame was a total trap. It’s not even that good in full block draft. Yes it’s a 2 or 3 for 1, but it’s not worth forcing a color combination over.
I think this draft could have gone U/W/R with a splash of G for Glare, U/W/G (probably leave Brightflame in the sideboard), or U/G/R with a splash of W for Glare (and possibly Brightflame). Fixers were going really late so splashing would have been easy. I never liked W/B much in the full block draft.
Given the retro nature of this draft, I think it would have been a safe assumption that some of the drafters were not experienced with the format. Because of this, I would have gone either UWG or UGR because either way you are in two guilds in the third pack and given how messed up some of the less experienced drafters’ decks should be by that point you should get hooked up with some sweet UW and UG cards (which did indeed seem to be just going around the table pack 3).
Oh, also, this was the first draft video I watched here — I really appreciate it. I love lsv’s videos and have wondered for a while why more people haven’t made them since it doesn’t seem too hard to do (technologically, at least — actually drafting and playing Magic well while providing a coherent narrative commentary is probably pretty tricky). I’m looking forward to watching some more videos from the archive.
Oh — one more thing. Is there any way you could use the form of embedded youTube videos that has the fullscreen option? I always go full screen and the only way I know how to do it with this form of the embedded video is to go to the actual youTube page for the video.
Heh, so I got provoked by a bot? I missed that link altogether. Boy, talk about a waste of time responding. Thanks everyone who read my long response anyway :)