Now that Innistrad is boring, Marlon Egolf (merl2pearl) heads back to the wonderful world of Ravnica block, where every draft is an adventure
Ravnica Block Draft #2
– January 26, 2012Posted in: Ravnica Block, Videos
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Social Media Hellhole
i was about to go to bed but i love this format
Is this current? I didn’t know you could draft Ravnica right now. I might have to wait until later to watch this and go do a draft instead.
You should really start using auto-yields for things you do every turn (like firemane).
I agree about Invisible Stalker; The pinnacle of non-interactivity.It’s only reason for being seems to be to make people play more sweepers and if that was their goal they couldn’t have been more hamfisted about it..
Best draft block ever!!! Agree with a lot of your picks…a few cards have dropped in quality that used to be first pickable…like peel from reality? Usually a 2:1
yes cant wait for more !!!
Liked the draft. You could have used your Simic Guildmage though to move your Ocular Halo EOT around to draw a card for U1: tap target creature you conrtol. ;)
Or … maybe you did see it. :) Next time i will comment after watching the videos to the end.
Ocular Halo grants Vigilance!!!! You kept putting it on your flying pinger and not attacking with it! Was driving me absolutely crazy watching it.
I agree with royalfishness and also Ravnica is the best draftformat ever!
@Boyks: You can auto-yield to choices, but you still have to click yes….
Why would they not let you use the packs you won to play future Rav drafts?
What gives, Wizards of the Coast.
Marlon, for the love of all that’s good and right in the world; Never stop drafting Ravnica. Ever. Wonderful content!
While your videos are as entertaining as ever Marlon, I have to say that I was quite disappointed with the drafting portion of this one. You passed up on a large number of quality removal spells in favor of fairly bad cards that didn’t really do anything for you. Without watching the entire thing again, I remember you passing on Faith’s Fetters (although taking the Angel is somewhat justifiable, just not a pick that I agreed with), Pillory of the Sleepless, Steamcore Weird (which is much better than a 7 mana 3 power flier with a virtually useless ability) and Riot Spikes. There may have been more but I don’t remember them offhand. Ravnica is a set with more than enough powerful creatures at the common rarity to build something that can win games, and so taking removal/bouncelands should basically be taken over everything that isn’t a complete bomb. I feel like you were trying to force a deck rather than just taking the one that was being passed to you.
While you did a good job of bashing Lore Broker yourself, which is a card that should just plain never be played outside of the mill decks, one card that you seemed to overlook was Petrahydrox. The card is horrendously unplayable and only exists to Time Walk its owner all day every day. A 4 mana 3/3 is fairly marginal to begin with, but his drawback essentially makes him the nut-low. Both of these cards are much worse than Azorious Aethermage even. Not that it’s a good card either mind you, but at least it’s a fairly cheap creature that may have drawn you cards given that your deck had some Karoos and a Mark.
Tough luck in the finals, although I will say that you were never going to win that game if your opponent were a competent human being. Your deck had virtually 0 outs to a couple of Eidolons, and so if he had just spent his time milling you and then playing his gold spells to recur them, then you would have been thrashed regardless of your draws. The better player lost but the better deck won. Your opponent also drew just as many mana sources as you did in game in game 1, so it wasn’t like his draw was spectacular either. Every card he cast simply mattered that much more.
Great video and great humour as always thougth, and so I hope that you keep them coming!
E:
You can also choose always yes to the choice. It saves a ton of time on something like that where you will just always go it.
I think auto yield is fine.. but pressing f6 is a sign of a real amateur imo. The only thing F6′n dose is reveal to your opponent what is in your hand. The only time you should be doing it is if you have all your land tapped, and have no zero cost abilities in play. Other than that you are just giving away information. Still Auto Yield is a bit different… like do you need to say “yes” to each time your cleric gives you a extra life when a creature comes into play? etc etc
I LOVE Ravnica. Nice draft, Egolf.
I’ve got to just pipe up with some sweet tricks that got missed in Part 5 (M2G2).
5:40, opponent puts Moldervine Cloak on the Gruul Scrapper. You could go 1U: move it onto another guy, shoot with Freewind Equenaut. Instead you take 6–that’s cool, you want to draw off of the Equenaut anyway, not tap her to kill a dude. (Still, usually I’d trade a random card in hand to kill a card on the board.)
5:59: Draw with Equenaut. Got WRU mana open in his end step, past the time of watching out for Galvanic Arc–don’t you want to move Halo with Simic Guildmage onto any of your other guys and draw another card?
6:15: If you leave your blue mana open (say, tap Boros Garrison + Mountain), you can both move his Moldervine Cloak and get an extra draw off of Halo. But you tap it, leaving you one trick. (2 cards missed now) (Or you could have moved it back to get a shock out of the Equenaut, had you moved it earlier for the free card.)
9:41: 3 more free cards missed, opponent even has an empty hand so it’s safe.
These certainly weren’t fatal errors or anything…you were sitting pretty cushy with your superior card quality all that game. But hey, free cards are sweet. And nothing matches your opponent trying to untap his Stone-Seeder by giving it vigilance. Actually, Halo is pretty sweet on that guy, normally.
@E: Yeah, if you right-click a trigger, you have the option to always say yes, always say no, always yield. It would take two right-clicks to always reap Firemane’s benefit.
@Kyle: Petrahydrox is fine. There are plenty of LSV drafts that demonstrate their use.
@Lore Broker: Damn, you suck. Looting is terrible when your opponent gets to do it too…what is this, Masques Block, where you have to share your abilities with your opponent half the time?
@Protoman
If such a draft exists then I’d really like to see it. I’m of the opinion that it’s not a good card to field against someone who’s shown us cards such as Rakdos Ickspitter, but clearly I’m missing some amazing interaction or something. Feel free to link everyone a draft where the card does something worthwhile, or explain to us why it’s a good card to field against people who’ve shown us repeatable, targeted effects. If you had absolutely no playables to field, then maybe you’d grudgingly use it as a 23rd card, but that wasn’t the case in this draft. We had Sporeback Troll (who is just plain solid) and Fists of Ironwood (which is a great card that combos well with our Freewind Equenaut and Mark of Eviction), and we were already splashing Green. Either of those cards would have been much stronger. Every time Marlon drew Petra, it sat in his hand and did nothing because it was never a worthwhile card to play. I think he cast it once, in Round 1 or something, and that was only because he had the game on lock. I don’t think his opponent even had a non-land permanent in play.
Next week is the nix tix for Rav Block. Save your packs till then.
@Kyle B
“Steamcore Weird (which is much better than a 7 mana 3 power flier with a virtually useless ability)”
He actually took Invoke the Firemind over Steamcore Weird, and Djinn Illuminatus over Repeal. I think your point still stands though.
@Kyle B
There have been plenty of drafts (both online and in my own IRL experience) where Petrahydrox has been fine, and sometimes even problematic. Sure, if you happen to face a bunch of opponents with repeating targeting effects then it sucks, but often times the hydrox just downgrades your opponents removal to unsummons. It’s definitely a solid playable, although because of its ability it does need to be sided out every once and a while.
And like Orcish said, I didn’t take Djinn over Steamcore, and I wouldn’t have if that was the option. That being said, Djinn is fairly underrated since his stats aren’t amazing, but Ravnica is a format that often results in a lot of board stalls, and having a fairly large flyer like the Djinn can go a long way. Plus his ability is not exactly useless if you have even a few decent spells.
Thank you so much. MTGO doesn’t have Ravnica on their calendar until the first, so I might have missed out on days of drafting the best set ever without your vid. These are my favorite drafts to watch/play; the fixing is plentiful, the removal is versatile and mmost of the bombs actually could be answered (fuck hexproof). Beautiful.
as the world is digital, why doesn’t mtgo just have every draft format they have ever had available 24/7?
@Kyle B: LSV pretty much always forces blue in this format, so I’d go watch any of his RGD drafts. I feel weird linking a competitor’s draft videos here, but they’re easy to find, and enjoyable if you like the format.
At least you get 1 Guildpact, 1 Dissension for winning round 1, and 2 Rav 1 Guild 1 Dissension for winning the whole draft. So you can join two further drafts after today’s downtime in the Nix Tix events… Not like in the SOM Block drafts where you are flooded with NPH packs.