10/30 draft

This draft started out with me attempting to force heroic P1P1 Dauntless Onslaught over Reaper and passing keepsake gorgons left and right. But they guy next to me (match 3) was UW heroic and green was wiiiiide open so green I went. Polis crusher and Purphoros, plus red ordeal got me into splashing red.

I ended up with this which looked to me like a pretty good green beatstick deck.

1 sedge scorpion
1 leafcrown dyrad
2 voyaging satyr
2 minotaur skullcleaver
2 nessian courser
1 agent of horizons
1 borderland minotaur
2 nylea's disciple
1 polis crusher
1 centaur battlemaster
1 nessian asp
1 mistcutter hydra

1 ordeal of purphoros
1 ordeal of nylea
1 fade into antiquity
1 time to feed
1 feral invocation
1 nylea, god of the hunt
1 purphoros, god of the forge

10 forest
7 mountain

notable side board:
1 akroan crusader
1 firedrinker satyr
1 savage surge
1 fade into antiquity
1 shredding winds

Match 1 I was against a newbie that had the Reaper of the Wilds and Keepsake Gorgon that I passed him PLUS Underworld Cerebus. Game one turned to him when he sip'd my disciple turning off Nylea. We then double misplayed forgetting about Nylea's +2/+2. This was also the only 2 damage Purphoros got in. He ended up grinding it out with gorgons. Game 2 looked bad as I mulled to 4 but I miracle pulled and his 3 color stumbled and I won easily. Game 3 was pretty epic and we went to turns but I managed to pull it out thanks to Nylea and Mistcutter Hydra.

Match 2 was against the pod winner (running UB which he won with last week too!). This time instead of GreyMerchant.dec he had _2_ Keepsake Gorgons. Game 1 had them both out and I just turned over cards for a while, but I was drawing pretty dead. And he eventually flew overmen with a double bestow. He did thoughtseize my Polis Crusher, but even that wouldn't have mattered. Even mistcutter for 8 wouldn't have helped.
With such a bad match against this guy, I borded in for agro with crusader, fire drinker, and savage surge… hopping to burn him down before he got gorgons or thassa's emissary. It almost worked, I got him down to 5 but Whip of Erebos ended me.

Match 3 seemed like it ought to have been close the guy on my right's UW heroic (2 battlewise hoplites, 2 triton tactics). But game 1 I mulled to 6 and kept a very marginal land heavy hand. I did manage to drop a 5/5 mistcutter, but it was only 1 guy. I correctly realized that I was likely to have some early plays and not get overrun early, but mid game I was still flooded.

Setassan Griffon (!?) was the champ for him, as I couldn't block it or kill it (I did have answers but never drew them) At this point I have borded out Purphoros who has been a nearly dead card the whole draft (and also Borderland Minotaur who was too hard to cast anyway). Game 2 he just answered me very well, dispelling my dryad and vanquishing my foul Nessian Asp. This game was pretty good, but ended on the following:
He has 2 battle wise hoplites (1 counter), a wavecrasher. I have a sedge scorpion with feral invocation, disciple of nylea, and nylea herself and 8 mana to pump guys. I swing in, leaving the disciple back to block something tricky (I needed at least 2 turns to win), and get totally killed by Triton Tactics - he ends up losing 2 guys blocking my 5/5 deathtouch trample scorpion and 7/6 god but taps my entire team down for 2 turns. No answers drawn and good game.

So barely 1-2 was not what I was expecting out of this, and I am not sure why. It's true that I never got to play EITHER ordeal, or Polis Crusher. I clearly played a little too much red but since they were replacing stuff like savage surge I don't think it made that much difference. Green has really underperformed for me drafting this set.

You're between two decks. You either need more enablers or bigger threats. Voyaging Satyrs are just dead draws... except I guess you needed them to cast your minotaurs, since for some reason you only ran 7 mountains.

The gods aren't that good, but I guess you noticed.

Yeah, you would you think I would learn how bad 3/3s are in this format past turn 4. Also, mistcutter hydra is surprisingly not great. I mean it's a fine card but if if you need it to block with because you are behind on the board it's merely OK. If you have board parity or if your opponent is heavy blue it's the nuts.

11-8 draft

This one was a little weird but I ended up in green again!
P1P1 Arbor Colossus P1P2 Mistcutter Hydra will do that. As usual no one wanted red or white but also there was some good blue and black cards just not very much. Pack 1 I had something like a pick 10 CHOICE of Voyages' End or Wingsteed Rider (?!?) and an extremely late coordinated assault which I hated. I ended up with a few blue and black to go with green. P2P1 was a tough call between 2 green solid cards and a temple of deceit. After much deliberation I took the land for money (also I needed them for standard). Pack 2 I picked up some green fatties, some black some blue, but nothing really definitive. Pack 3 had a curse of the swine which cemented me in blue. Mostly I was drafting satyrs and omenspeakers and a unicorn. And an extremely late (mid wheel!) Horizon chimera.

I ended up with this

1
2 omenspeaker
2 voyaging satyr
3 Nessian courser
1 Opaline Unicorn
1 Triton Fortun Hunter
2 Nylea's Emissary
1 Horizon Chimera
2 Nessian Asp
Arbor Colossus
Horizon Scholar
Mistcutter Hydra

2 Voyage's End
2 Feral Invocation
Time to Feed
Curse of the Swine

Temple of Deceit
6-8 Island
9-10 Forest

I always ran 17 lands but I didn't have the temple in until game 2 and I swapped a forest for an island in match 2 because of the colossus.

Sideboard:
1 swamp (for island)
2 Lash of the Whip (for 1 courser and either omenspeaker or feral invocation)

Other playables in color that I didn't really strongly consider:
prowler's helm LAST PICK
3rd Asp
Staunch hearted warrior
Coastline Chimera
Annul
Erebos's Emissary
Blood Toll Harpy
Sip of Hemlock
Told you it was a weird draft!

I can't even tell you how it went in the rest of my pod, although 1 guy got all the white and there was a near mono-red deck (and 1 RU). We played cross pod which was odd but apparently how the do it here in Canada (Toronto). I did start a friendly game between matches with the mono-red aggro guy and he was way ahead of me when we started round 4.

Overall, this was pretty darn similar to my other underperforming green decks… but I did quite a bit better with a 3-1 including a bye (and I won 2 out of 3 with a guy durning the bye that finished early.

It didn't start so good though. I faced a Naya aggro-y deck with fleecemane lion and fabled hero. I did misplay game one by not bouncing his lion before it went monstrous (forgot it gets hexproof!), but I was behind the whole game. He had 2 divine verdicts and 2 lightning strikes and I couldn't deal with his guys. Game 2 I sided in the 2 lashes given his cheap bomby rares but I ended up dying to Setassan Griffon anyway. Opponent made a great move by attacking into my unmonstrous arbor colossus with cards and mana open. I couldn't take the chance on a trade or worse trick and had to eat 3. I thought I was still OK, because I could monstrify and stabilize by killing his griffon but he put a nimbus niaid on a 3/3 or something and I was too far behind.

I had a tough decision to pig-ify his turn 3 fabled hero… I would rather try to 2 or 3 for one him with curse of the swine… but even a 3/3 double strike is very tough to deal with.

Match 2 I had a bye but got to play 3 games against a UW heroic deck. He didn't have any removal and although I got smashed in the first game, the next two I got the arbor colossus out and that pretty much ended it.

Match 3 I played a pretty aggro white blue deck. Game one he got stuck a bit on white but I 4 for 3'd him with curse of the swine (he had a hoplite and omenspeaker both with chosen by heliod on them… the pigs got in for 3 before I got the fat down and won. Game 2 was kind of funny because he tried to divine verdict my arbor colossus, but forgot to wait for it to attack or block. He had a cavalry pegasus and was pinging me because I couldn't block (or attack!) with this info. I was hitting him back on the ground, but I ended it by blocking with the colossus to draw his verdict and bouncing it back to my hand.

Match 4 was a great set against a RG deck. I lost game one (mull to 6) to a monsterous ill tempered cyclops. I did actually misplay a block forgetting that the cyclops had trample. For this guy I boarded in the lashes for the last two games, but kept both feral invocations. I wasn't sure at all what to board out for the lashes… I did get a card out of the triton. In then end, I never cast a lash (having it ready if I needed it once and having it dead in my hand the other time). Game 2 I mulled to 6 but an early colossus won it for me. Game 3 was an epic battle after I mulled to 5 on the draw. I was down early but stabilized with a 4/4 mistcutter. He played Titan of Eternal Fire and I bounced it twice and played Horizon scholar and then scryd to Arbor colossus.

Bump... What do people think of splashing for the two lashes? I had really mixed feelings about it... I had to cut some decent cards to do it. Is 3 sources, including the unicorn enough.

Seems pretty low risk, high reward. Arbor Colossus, Curse and Horizon Chimera are your only color-heavy cards so those swamps shouldn't be dead draws.

Man, I haven't drafted in a few weeks and I'm Jonesin' now!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vr5PkXjLF4

I think your instincts are asking you if your deck is too greedy. I think it is. If the magic gods give you three asps, jam three asps. I would've run something like this:

2 omenspeaker
2 voyaging satyr
3 Nessian courser
2 Nylea's Emissary
1 Staunch hearted warrior
1 Horizon Chimera
3 Nessian Asp
1 Arbor Colossus
1 Mistcutter Hydra

2 Voyage's End
2 Feral Invocation
1 Time to Feed
1 Curse of the Swine
1 Annul

The speakers come down early and help control your draws, the swine is an effective board-wipe, voyage's end resets heroic, invocation hits your warrior, the satyrs ramp... it's just got a lot of goodies. The only deck that would seriously compete with this is one jamming 8+ hard removal spells. In this format, that's no deck. The issue here is you'll spend a lot of time twiddling your thumbs with your huge number of non-aggro-y early drops, hoping to draw into some of your fat, or your splash color for your mediocre removal spells. Screw that, just go all in on the "my creatures are bigger and scarier than yours" plan.

Annul can always be maindecked, and if you find yourself taking it out, you can put in the helm. I won game day off the helm and big creatures. I just don't think screwing with the mana base to spend 5 mana to kill their T4 creature is worth it. I wish you had more than 5 enablers, but that's how it goes.

Fortune hunter I took out bc it may help you draw into your spells, but it does it in a bad way. Like, what are the chances of you casting a feral invocation on it to kill a creature and draw a card? So, so slim. I took out unicorn because it's a horrible topdeck late game, and you don't need the fixing if you're not playing black. I took out the scholar bc you have enough low-curve playables and ramp to not need a 6-drop, and though the evasion is nice, I like the third asp better.

I think both the fortune hunter and the warrior are pretty useless in this deck with all of 4 enablers including the expensive emissaries (which usually end up going on some giant reach dude for the win anyway). Annul is a good substitute for Lash I think. What this deck needs to kill are the turn 3 double strikers... and frankly the lashes aren't even great at that, because they won't come down until it's too late.

I disagree about the unicorn. Especially with the arbor colossus needing TWICE. There are a whole set of early hands he improves. And in this format even a late game chump blocker isn't totally dead.

It didn't really occur to me to swap the scholar for another asp. I did win at least one game pinging with horizon chimera because I needed big guys to block big guys on the ground. So in "the mirror" or against someone with a bunch of deathtouchers (pretty common deck) scholar is going to be better.

It is interesting (to me) that I have drafted roughly the same core (nessian_courser.dec) green deck almost 4 times now... but most of it is just filler without big monsters or pump spells.

I don't mind the warrior because threat of activation is a fine tactic when attacking, especially T5 when you should still have a fist full of cards. A single activation turns him into a major threat. But even if you don't like him, the coastline chimera is a fine 4-drop.

The unicorn is borderline unplayable. You're talking about losing to aggressive decks then justifying playing a 3-mana 1/2. I don't understand; there are a lot of aggressive decks in the format that just flat out punish decisions like that. Being a potential chump-blocker is not a potential upside to consider. You can board it in against slower decks, of course, and it's fine in sealed because of that, but in draft decks are more finely tuned. 3-drop creatures should be evaluated by the early-game. T4 is mid-game, and while a T4 asp is awesome, you can do that with the satyrs and still play a 4-drop on T3.

Also, if you cast colossus you already have the ggg...

Courser is not very good in a deck without enablers. 4 is the magic number for power here, or 5 for toughness, which is why the chimera is playable. 3 doesn't cut it with this many combat tricks.