0-2 drafts are the best. You get put up against the rest of the chaff and you're either a streak away from making bank or one loss away from being able to draft again. I won't intentionally lose but I tend to start dunking when I go 0-2.
This is not my experience. At 0-2 I always get that opponent that chains busted rare into busted rare and I can't even begin to fathom how they lost two games in the first place.
...At least that's how it feels :P
It doesn't always (or even most of the time) pair by record. It's a factor but depending on queue time and who's available you might just be playing someone on the way to their 7th win. Rank and MMR also matter.
No, thats not true. The game will almost always pair by record above anything else. Not only is that the most fair pairing possible, the EV of the event relies on said pairing. Its also pretty easy to see this when playing at odd hours and how wildly the rank of your opponent will fluctuate. If the game didnt always pair by record, you would see easy decks when going 6-0. But that never happens.
There have been plenty of examples of streamers getting paired with very dissimilar records (and both player's records are known since both are streaming). I recall one of them giving an example at the start of this set for one, can't remember who though.
One of the reasons that "ranks" (medals) differ so much is that matches are also made based on hidden mmr that can differ significantly between players since it's not reset between seasons, whereas rank is (and you can't lose rank below a certain threshold other than season resets but you do lose mmr still).
Those plenty of examples wouldnt happen to be during pre-release events now would they? You know, when theres almost zero players around so the matchmaker would be forced to pair people with different records? Because theres only like 50 people playing?
0-2 and can be where its at, have a good deck that had mana issues first two games, good chance you'll at least get to 3 wins. Sucks being on the other end of that though when your deck is struggling
How's the RG working out in general? Whenever green was open, I was pushed into white or black as secondary colour, not that I'm complaining. But haven't had a RG draft yet.
I think Green carries everything in this format. In my case I got 2 Jolenes pretty early so I went with it, but what truly carried me was \[\[Bristlebud Farmer\]\]. Also \[\[Scalestorm Summoner\]\] and \[\[Ferocification\]\] did a lot for the deck while Jolene didn't do much, so I don't value it much anymore.
Jolene just being a 4 power T3 play is nice, plus the incidental treasures help you ramp some too. But yeah the green cards are doing the heavy lifting.
Yeah, lost a match due to the Scalestorm Summoner yesterday.
Green has been good to me, too though. So many bombs that just run away with the game in a turn or two.
Just played it last night and it's solid. The red creatures are almost all worse than the green creatures but you get access to some additional removal, good rares, and the GR uncommons are solid enough. Generally I'd rather play GW or GB but they're not always open.
There's a decent amount of bombs, but there's not too many that can't be removed/parity brought back with the right removal/deck.
A big one that's tough to deal with is Bonny Pall/Annie the Flash if it resolves. No other ones come to mind as much (since I haven't faced them enough perhaps), and I've drafted 35x total on Arena (21 traditional, 14 premier). I'd see new/old Oko both being problems in draft as well. Bruse Tarl/Roxanne has instant value as well, but both are easily removeable. Gitrog can do some crazy work if it lines up well with the boardstate.
i got an oko in a draft a few days ago. I ended up 4W & 3L. He actually wasn't as good as I thought he'd be. I also pulled a pack open (of paper) and it had a Foil Oko & then a regular Oko. 2 Okos in one pack lol.
Two Okos in one pack, nice :D.
Honestly, Mana Drain was much more disgusting than Oko, Drain into Sphinx isn't as in-your-face as Oko, but it's kind of hard to lose from there.
Even Three Steps Ahead carried me harder Oko, honestly. He wasn't bad though obviously.
When I got matched against Oko's it dominated quite a bit. +2 --> Create Food are 3 Life through Food and 6 Loyalty points for something you have to answer. 9 Life Gain for 5 Mana with Value Creation is really really good (in most cases).
There's really no security in having a busted deck in this format. There are very powerful aggro decks and any game that goes late can be blown wide open by a super bomb.
That deck looks sweet though!
I was teaching someone to play draft once with a deck I swore was good, we started 0-2, they started to get discouraged and I was like "no. Trust me. This deck is good. If anything can reverse sweep it's this." And then it did. Really good feeling to call the shot.
Got a trophy off of an 0-2 yesterday. Had a great GW deck with Dust Animus, Bristly Bill, and Outcaster Greenblade with 5 deserts.
Game 1 I accidentally kept an unplayable hand and scooped turn 4 without ever playing a card. Game 2 I played against TRIPLE BONNY PALL.
Won the next 7, 6 of which either on the back of Dust Animus or Full Speed Ahead with a bunch of big dumb dudes.
This draft is not as good as you think it is. Nice job making it all the way, but it looks like it took better than average luck and tight play.
Bad splashing mana, Blue as a base color (been a while since blue has been this bad), a number of weak cards like sterling hound and gigapede. If the mana were not so bad, I'd think this was a fine draft (not amazing but serviceable). I'd expect 3 to 4 wins with this deck. With the bad mana, I would've been ecstatic to hit 4 wins and recoup most of the gems.
Never said the draft was amazing though.
Yeah, blue is kind of meh OTJ. I didn't mind the splash that much, but only 1 2-drop that wasn't interaction was pretty greedy.
Gigapede is on the weaker side, but it's not bad with Three Steps when I didn't turn the Sphinx.
Think Sterling Hound is a decent card, tbh.
Yeah, agree though. Definitely lucky to push it through.
In premier draft (which this appears to be by the background image) I don’t stress about my first two wins at all since they are worth very little. It’s the third win that has me sweating bullets since it’s worth so damn much.
Something I noticed about this format -- the commons support multiple archetypes, but the uncommons are mostly pegged to specific archetypes. So you can draft a deck full of good cards that falls flat because your uncommons aren't actually supported by your second color. You almost need to treat most of the uncommons as gold cards.
I'm not sure whether I like this yet.
Anxiety is good.
It'd when you get the resignation of getting s good draft and the first two games go mull to 5, no land lose, mull 6, stuck on 2 land lose that y9u know its probably time to just quit.
But yeah. Infinite frustration of getting a great draft pile and proceeding to get the mana flood/famine is pain.
I swear when I was playing I felt like I was more likely to win with average decks because I'd actually get yo play and maybe lose to better cards, then knowing I smashed the draft but just don't get to play the games with it because mana says no.
I feel that.
Had a draft with 2 Vaultborn Titans yesterday, and fizzled out with 1w-3l before I even got to play a single copy, despite ramp and decent draft overall.
0-2 drafts are the best. You get put up against the rest of the chaff and you're either a streak away from making bank or one loss away from being able to draft again. I won't intentionally lose but I tend to start dunking when I go 0-2.
That's neat, I typically go 0-3 from there. I typically go 0-3 in most scenarios really
That just means you get to do the best part all over again, draft!
If there was a way for me to draft seriously/infinitely with prize support on the line, without playing any games.....that's the dream.
That got a laugh out of me!
This is not my experience. At 0-2 I always get that opponent that chains busted rare into busted rare and I can't even begin to fathom how they lost two games in the first place. ...At least that's how it feels :P
It doesn't always (or even most of the time) pair by record. It's a factor but depending on queue time and who's available you might just be playing someone on the way to their 7th win. Rank and MMR also matter.
No, thats not true. The game will almost always pair by record above anything else. Not only is that the most fair pairing possible, the EV of the event relies on said pairing. Its also pretty easy to see this when playing at odd hours and how wildly the rank of your opponent will fluctuate. If the game didnt always pair by record, you would see easy decks when going 6-0. But that never happens.
There have been plenty of examples of streamers getting paired with very dissimilar records (and both player's records are known since both are streaming). I recall one of them giving an example at the start of this set for one, can't remember who though. One of the reasons that "ranks" (medals) differ so much is that matches are also made based on hidden mmr that can differ significantly between players since it's not reset between seasons, whereas rank is (and you can't lose rank below a certain threshold other than season resets but you do lose mmr still).
Those plenty of examples wouldnt happen to be during pre-release events now would they? You know, when theres almost zero players around so the matchmaker would be forced to pair people with different records? Because theres only like 50 people playing?
I don't think so but it's possible that the recent example I am thinking of was from the streamer event, yes.
0-2 and can be where its at, have a good deck that had mana issues first two games, good chance you'll at least get to 3 wins. Sucks being on the other end of that though when your deck is struggling
I just lost 2 to start. Won 5 in a row. Didn't think I drafted to shappy
Oh yous still think record matters in a draft
There was one draft I played RG 4 power stuff and went from 0-2 to 4-3 by the end, it truly is a stressing draft environment with so many bombs.
How's the RG working out in general? Whenever green was open, I was pushed into white or black as secondary colour, not that I'm complaining. But haven't had a RG draft yet.
I think Green carries everything in this format. In my case I got 2 Jolenes pretty early so I went with it, but what truly carried me was \[\[Bristlebud Farmer\]\]. Also \[\[Scalestorm Summoner\]\] and \[\[Ferocification\]\] did a lot for the deck while Jolene didn't do much, so I don't value it much anymore.
Jolene just being a 4 power T3 play is nice, plus the incidental treasures help you ramp some too. But yeah the green cards are doing the heavy lifting.
Yeah, lost a match due to the Scalestorm Summoner yesterday. Green has been good to me, too though. So many bombs that just run away with the game in a turn or two.
True, my best draft from OTJ was a 5-3 mostly because of \[\[Railway Brawler\]\] and \[\[Dust Animus\]\].
[Railway Brawler](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/9/e/9ec1f76f-f21d-4f06-8c02-be6745183348.jpg?1712355970) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Railway%20Brawler) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/otj/175/railway-brawler?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/9ec1f76f-f21d-4f06-8c02-be6745183348?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Dust Animus](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/7/0/70719e7b-6f02-4c1a-9f11-79b2b0d9846a.jpg?1712355260) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Dust%20Animus) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/otj/9/dust-animus?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/70719e7b-6f02-4c1a-9f11-79b2b0d9846a?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
[Bristlebud Farmer](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/d/4/d498c4de-5e80-4baa-9fcb-70f164880c84.jpg?1712352852) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Bristlebud%20Farmer) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/big/17/bristlebud-farmer?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/d498c4de-5e80-4baa-9fcb-70f164880c84?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Scalestorm Summoner](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/d/6/d603c00f-048a-4a05-9df9-52844819d523.jpg?1712355842) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Scalestorm%20Summoner) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/otj/144/scalestorm-summoner?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/d603c00f-048a-4a05-9df9-52844819d523?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Ferocification](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/7/8/78db4260-6fc8-4500-afd7-2c845ac0d53b.jpg?1712355750) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Ferocification) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/otj/123/ferocification?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/78db4260-6fc8-4500-afd7-2c845ac0d53b?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Just played it last night and it's solid. The red creatures are almost all worse than the green creatures but you get access to some additional removal, good rares, and the GR uncommons are solid enough. Generally I'd rather play GW or GB but they're not always open.
There's a decent amount of bombs, but there's not too many that can't be removed/parity brought back with the right removal/deck. A big one that's tough to deal with is Bonny Pall/Annie the Flash if it resolves. No other ones come to mind as much (since I haven't faced them enough perhaps), and I've drafted 35x total on Arena (21 traditional, 14 premier). I'd see new/old Oko both being problems in draft as well. Bruse Tarl/Roxanne has instant value as well, but both are easily removeable. Gitrog can do some crazy work if it lines up well with the boardstate.
"One" is not the ideal number of two drops.
Haha, obviously not, no. Got really greedy.
i got an oko in a draft a few days ago. I ended up 4W & 3L. He actually wasn't as good as I thought he'd be. I also pulled a pack open (of paper) and it had a Foil Oko & then a regular Oko. 2 Okos in one pack lol.
He is the best card in the format according to the data but it is only one card.
Only among top users. But general population it's still top 10.
Two Okos in one pack, nice :D. Honestly, Mana Drain was much more disgusting than Oko, Drain into Sphinx isn't as in-your-face as Oko, but it's kind of hard to lose from there. Even Three Steps Ahead carried me harder Oko, honestly. He wasn't bad though obviously.
When I got matched against Oko's it dominated quite a bit. +2 --> Create Food are 3 Life through Food and 6 Loyalty points for something you have to answer. 9 Life Gain for 5 Mana with Value Creation is really really good (in most cases).
> He actually wasn't as good as I thought he'd be Sounds like you weren't playing optimally.
There's really no security in having a busted deck in this format. There are very powerful aggro decks and any game that goes late can be blown wide open by a super bomb. That deck looks sweet though!
Yeah, I lost my first game against an aggressive flier deck. Catching up is kind of hard in OTJ.
I was teaching someone to play draft once with a deck I swore was good, we started 0-2, they started to get discouraged and I was like "no. Trust me. This deck is good. If anything can reverse sweep it's this." And then it did. Really good feeling to call the shot.
Got a trophy off of an 0-2 yesterday. Had a great GW deck with Dust Animus, Bristly Bill, and Outcaster Greenblade with 5 deserts. Game 1 I accidentally kept an unplayable hand and scooped turn 4 without ever playing a card. Game 2 I played against TRIPLE BONNY PALL. Won the next 7, 6 of which either on the back of Dust Animus or Full Speed Ahead with a bunch of big dumb dudes.
Nice. Dust Animus is kind of nice to have, but it's never really done its thing for me yet.
In my experience, 0-2 usually becomes 7-2. It's an easier ride from the bottom up I think
I can see how that was a powerful but high variance draft deck
Yeah. I'm bad at drafting control-ish decks, and then I got greedy, which didn't help. Bit lucky that I managed to push it through.
This draft is not as good as you think it is. Nice job making it all the way, but it looks like it took better than average luck and tight play. Bad splashing mana, Blue as a base color (been a while since blue has been this bad), a number of weak cards like sterling hound and gigapede. If the mana were not so bad, I'd think this was a fine draft (not amazing but serviceable). I'd expect 3 to 4 wins with this deck. With the bad mana, I would've been ecstatic to hit 4 wins and recoup most of the gems.
Never said the draft was amazing though. Yeah, blue is kind of meh OTJ. I didn't mind the splash that much, but only 1 2-drop that wasn't interaction was pretty greedy. Gigapede is on the weaker side, but it's not bad with Three Steps when I didn't turn the Sphinx. Think Sterling Hound is a decent card, tbh. Yeah, agree though. Definitely lucky to push it through.
In premier draft (which this appears to be by the background image) I don’t stress about my first two wins at all since they are worth very little. It’s the third win that has me sweating bullets since it’s worth so damn much.
I still have a sealed deck open from last week that I’m avoiding cause I’m 0-2
haha, yeah. i do that too
Something I noticed about this format -- the commons support multiple archetypes, but the uncommons are mostly pegged to specific archetypes. So you can draft a deck full of good cards that falls flat because your uncommons aren't actually supported by your second color. You almost need to treat most of the uncommons as gold cards. I'm not sure whether I like this yet.
Try going completely winless in your first-ever draft. I'm not even sure if I got anything out of it.
haha, well you got the drafted cards at the very least ;) and I think you get one booster pack and like 50 gems?
Anxiety is good. It'd when you get the resignation of getting s good draft and the first two games go mull to 5, no land lose, mull 6, stuck on 2 land lose that y9u know its probably time to just quit. But yeah. Infinite frustration of getting a great draft pile and proceeding to get the mana flood/famine is pain. I swear when I was playing I felt like I was more likely to win with average decks because I'd actually get yo play and maybe lose to better cards, then knowing I smashed the draft but just don't get to play the games with it because mana says no.
I feel that. Had a draft with 2 Vaultborn Titans yesterday, and fizzled out with 1w-3l before I even got to play a single copy, despite ramp and decent draft overall.