3DM Draft Debate - Wrapup Article!
Daily Draft Debate
KrazyCaley
26 September 2013
3224 views
26 September 2013
3224 views
Our first Daily Draft Debate with community competitors is finished! In this article, we'll analyze and Let's start with our look at the table.
Table Overview & Color Intensity
Color Intensity:
Most Drafted: Red and Black tie (6)
3rd - Green (5 and 1 splash)
4th - White (4)
Least Drafted - Blue (3)
Final Standings
1st Place - landot's Team Stones vs. Clues (6-1)
team landot DDD deck
Unknown*
629 COMMENTS | 748 VIEWS
Congratulations to landot and his team. They earn the right to remain a team moving into the Theros Daily Draft Debate, should he and they so wish.
2nd Place (tie)
DeckBuilder345's Team Magic Carpet (4-3), Darkness1835's Team Dark Brotherhood (4-3), and Leafs_Suck's Team Vox de Bello (4-3)
The Dark Brotherhood
Unknown
SCORE: 1 | 1068 COMMENTS | 477 VIEWS
Vox de Bello's DDD SUPER SECRET GROUP DECK
Casual*
712 COMMENTS | 579 VIEWS
Maze Rider
Unknown*
699 COMMENTS | 328 VIEWS
5th Place - GureiSeion's Team Castle GureiSkull (4-3)
Daily Draft Debate - GureiSeion's Team
Unknown*
805 COMMENTS | 454 VIEWS
6th Place - RussischerZar's Team Maze Runners, Inc. (3-4)
DDD Maze Runners Inc
Pre-release*
SCORE: 5 | 684 COMMENTS | 607 VIEWS
7th Place - Goody's Team Fblthp (3-4)
Team Fblthp deck
Unknown
80 COMMENTS | 526 VIEWS
8th Place - TridenT's Team TriColor (1-6)
Team Tri DDD Deck
Unknown
483 COMMENTS | 355 VIEWS
Observer Area Now Public!
For the entire pick-by-pick draft, with Caley's comments as packs go by, hit up the Observer deck, located here:
3DM DDD Observer Area
Unknown
100 COMMENTS | 487 VIEWS
Caley's Post-Draft Commentary and Drafter Interviews
RussischerZar
(Predicted Finish - 2nd. Actual finish - 6th.)
The most dramatic underperformer relative to my predictions. I thought that they would be swarming people with tons of early damage, but they could not always get the draws to make it work, and in their first couple of games they suffered from horrendous luck. They win the overall award for "most mana screw of the draft." In general, their deck was not quite as fast as I had thought, mana-screw or no, though it was still capable of very dangerous speed from time to time.
PRE-Match Questions:
1 - What colors do you predict were most open, and least open?
Most open: White. We got passed a lot of good Boros, Selesnya, Azorius and Orzhov cards. Least open: Probably blue, we had some packs where the Mumuring Phantasm got picked before some other rather nice cards. Red also seemed to get picked a lot.
(Not quite correct about white being most open, though close, incorrect about blue being least open; Murmuring Phantasm disappeared due to the blue groups overvaluing it. Red being picked a lot was accurate.)
2 - How many match wins (7 total possible) do you think you'll accumulate in this round-robin event?
There's no real consensus here since it's very hard to measure the power of a deck versus unknown things. We think we're slightly above average so 4 or 5 wins could happen.
(Slightly worse than I thought they'd do, but slightly better than they actually performed.)
3 - What do you suspect to be the colors of the player to your right (that you were getting your cards from in the first and third packs), and the player to your left (that you were getting your cards from in the second pack)
We wager red in both decks, probably also blue on the right and green on the left.
(Red in both decks was only half right; though landot ran Grixis, Deckbuilder ran Junk. Blue on the right and green on the left thus was backwards from the true order of things.)
4 - Pick apart your own draft a bit for me.
Our first pick was Debt to the Deathless and after that we decided on our colors pretty fast. BRw was the way to go. In the end we got a few more boros cards and thus we evolved into BWR, but we stuck with our colors the whole time. This might actually be something that could've made our draft in whole.
Early on there was very little disagreement. Choices were clear, and the deck's direction seemed to be presenting itself. It looked to be be a control/direct damage deck. But later, some boros ground damage came along, and it turned our pool into a mix of aggro/late game, with gatekeepers to give advantage at midgame.
In pack 3 and final decklist, we started to see some disagreement, mainly between two of the drafters. We had a clash of switching directions to a more aggro focus vs. favoring the late game strengths. Although a lot of discussion was done, no insults or similar were made and in all it was a very constructive learning process.
It was interesting to see the different thinking. Round 3 revealed different mindsets: a couple of us are more early-game oriented players, and a couple are more late-game oriented, with the leader somewhere in the middle. It led to a clash in decisions as described above but in the end we made good compromises.
We drafted 6 gatekeepers, and since we had 3 gates in the 1st round it looked like a really good direction to go. In the end we only got 4 gates though which was not enough to support the strategy we were going for, that's why not all of them ended up in the final deck list. We learned that if you go for something, you have to go all in or just don't do it at all. It's probably better to have a solid fundament in the deck than to get caught up in any one gimmick or engine, like we did with the gatekeepers.
We ended up with a probably solid enough mix of early & late game weapons considering the format, but our midgame will likely be a bit weak. Also, we have almost no removal, barring very few cards and the engine with Maw of the Obzedat and the red Gatekeepers.
We're all very curious to see how we end up doing. Most of our group think it could be a top finisher or a total disaster. It's just very hard to predict so we're just hoping the best.
POST-Match Questions
1 - Who had the best deck?
Landot. Definitely. As a close second I actually liked the Nivix deck.
2 - What play most surprised or shocked you?
Easy: Possibility Storm -> Pilfered Plans into Blast of Genius. I lol'd.
Deckbuilder345
(Predicted Finish - 3rd. Actual Finish - Tied 2nd/3rd/4th)
Haazda Snare Squad did not put in as much work as I thought it would in this deck, but Blood Baron of Vizkopa certainly proved its worth. Only Darkness1835 had no fear of its protection, and almost every time it came out, it won the game for them. The primary weakness was the leanness of their removal; their two Putrefys only took them so far.
PRE-Match Questions-
1 - What colors do you predict were most open, and least open?
Most open BOROS seemed like no one was playing boros, i mean that specific color combo not white or red separately but the combo of both... saw a lot of pretty decent boros stuff that and blue. Least open.... probably black
2 - How many match wins (7 total possible) do you think you'll accumulate in this round-robin event?
tough one but i am feeling real good about our deck so i am going to say 6
(Actual: 4)
3 - What do you suspect to be the colors of the player to your right (that you were getting your cards from in the first and third packs), and the player to your left (that you were getting your cards from in the second pack)
hmm... to the right hard to say.... they kinda seemed all over the place. To the left i am expecting green would be surprised if they ended up in black after we cut it so hard and people to our right did too. I also don't think to our immediate left was in white, cuz we ended up with some good white stuff in round 2.
(Actual - To the right was TridenT, who was indeed all over the place. To the left was RussischerZar, which Deckbuilder incorrectly predicted DID run green and DID NOT run white, but which he correctly predicted DID run black)
4 - Pick apart your own draft a bit for me.
It started with a sweet bomb rare which pretty much defined the colors we were going to be in, especially after we got a second pick rare in our chosen colors in the second pick of the first pack signaling black was open. We discussed how combat tricks and removal in this set while looking bad for a constructed deck were not actually bad in this format and we should not shun the ones available because even though they would look bad in a regular deck they would be good in this format. Black seemed open at first.. but later it seemed more people moved into black.. which was weird b/c early they sent the signals that it was open and we cut it hard.
We ended up with some removal and combat tricks early, and then in pack 2 we really pushed hard to fill in our early drops on our mana curve, as we had some serious concerns that early drops were hard to come by. Black was never plentiful even in round 2 even after we had cut it so hard in round 1 but with our focus on early drops black didn't have many worth picking up any how, which was evident after we listed all the 2 drop possibilities. White seemed to be passed to us pretty decently and really filled in our lower curve. We ended up with the best removal in the set in putrefy which pretty much solidified our splash color as green as we had considered blue prior to that. Ended up getting 2 copies of putrefy. We were surprised so many gates got picked up early, as we had hoped more would come to us, but it wasn't to be. (enough gates were missing some of us wondered if there was a group drafting 5 color) We really rounded out the rest of our deck nicely with a sweet mix of early and late drops and were happy to pick up a late skeleton warrior after taking one early.(we had hoped to nab a 3rd one on the wheel but some one snagged it unexpectedly)
The skeletons were a huge debate that ran through most of the rest of our draft discussion. Some of us figured they would be cornerstones of our deck but others were less convinced and wanted to cut them. We went back and forth a lot on those even analyzing what 3 power could kill vs what 4 power could, and what the toughness levels of creatures were in the set. This debate raged all the way till the end of deck building. Alive / Well was another card that was very hotly debated as well and was often urged as a skeleton replacement.
We had a pretty solid base of a deck after round 2 so in round 3 we just started making more luxury picks... got a couple more early drops to round out our deck, and a few more late drops to upgrade our end game beef. But wasn't a lot in round 3 that seemed particularly good... was kinda disappointing. Although round 3 did seem some of the most lively debates surrounding the picks as we had been more in agreement on earlier choices. (This I think had mostly to do with the fact we had to cut cards to add new picks and so made the choices a lot harder) The best pack of round 3 was probably the one we opened which had so much sweet stuff in it we even got a decent wheel card i believe. Some of the packs were so bad in round 3 we ended up hate drafting things. We discussed deck building all through pack 3 and so already had a good start once the final picks were made on our deck. This allowed us to spend our time trying to refine things and hashing out exactly which 40 to play. Turned out those who supported the skellies won out and they became a cornerstone of the deck, while the most hotly contested card Alive / Well was left out due to color reasons and a body that was not strong enough or big enough.
(Thoughtful, long answer, thanks!)
POST-Match Questions:
1 - Who had the best deck?
Landot gotta be given credit for best deck since he made 1st place. this seems somewhat obvious....
2 - Most surprising/shocking play?
most suprising play was seeing the 5th Nivix Cyclops come down on my opponents side of the board, and then never seeing a spell to activate any of them. Leading me to the win. But yeah seeing him play the 5th i think in that game and putting it into play was kinda crazy. especially after i had killed several and he still had 3 on the board...
Trident
(Predicted Finish - 6th. Actual Finish - 8th).
I was fearful for this deck's chances throughout the draft; it started with the worst, most confusing pack to have to pick from, and its various pieces were, well, rather piecemeal, and did not work well with each other. I became somewhat more hopeful when they picked up Master of Cruelties. Unfortunately for them, they suffered from some bad luck during their matches and were rarely able to cast either the Master or Tajic, Blade of the Legion, which they splashed for. Someone often gets screwed over by the packs in a draft, and today that was TridenT.
PRE-Match Questions:
1 - What colors do you predict were most open, and least open?
From where we sat, white looked the most open, as well as blue to an extent. Green and red looked least open, probably from our point of view simply because we got no good stuffs.
2 - How many match wins (7 total possible) do you think you'll accumulate in this round-robin event?
My guys were generous. They predicted we would get out of there in 3rd or 4th place, nobody really counted up match wins, but I figure that means we beat 4 out of our 7 opponents. As for me? My prediction was solid (and true) from day one, before we even picked pack 1: Last Effing Place. I am truly astounded we beat RZ.
3 - What do you suspect to be the colors of the player to your right (that you were getting your cards from in the first and third packs), and the player to your left (that you were getting your cards from in the second pack)
I really don't remember the table order, but given what we saw open, we figured to our left would be someone taking all our red and green away, and to our right someone picking up all the white we didn't use.
(Actual - to their left was Deckbuilder345, taking green/white/black, and to the right was Leafs_Suck, who was four-color, no red.)
4 - Pick apart your own draft a bit for me.
I have to be honest. I'm new to limited, by Magic standards. I have played kitchen table magic since Nineteen-Ninety-Something, give or take Ice Age, off and on through my life. Only since Scars of Mirrodin have I even played Sealed, and this is quite literally my first draft with human beings. I was fortunate to have some smart guys helping me make my choices, or my pile of cards would have definitely been way worse. That said, I don't like that our pack one pick one was Putrefy. I don't remember what exactly was in the first fifteen, but there had to be something else to take other than the one (fantastic) removal spell that locks us into black green. Not that it wasn't doable in 3xDGM, but that's not the point. Our picks from there were basically "We have this so we have to have that", which felt very railroaded, and left us with very few good things to use once all was said and done. Triple DGM is a good format in my opinion.
POST-Match Questions
1- Who had the best deck?
I'm going to actually say that Darkness had the best deck, because frankly I felt like his mega cyclops beats machine can't possibly have been as unlucky as all that, but apparently the shuffler hates him. Poor fella, shoulda come in first. But he had a very solid, actual strategy and had the cards to make it work.
2 - What enemy play was most surprising?
So, did everyone pull Teysa except us? It felt like everyone had Teysa. Seeing mythics plopped down was only surprising because we barely got to do any ourselves. Truth be told though, I'll say the times we were hit with Debt to the Deathless was probably the most surprising. That's a big hit card, no question.
Leafs_Suck
(Predicted Finish - 4th. Actual finish - Tied 2nd/3rd/4th)
About what I expected - this four-color deck was very dangerous when it had all the mana it needed, and more often than not it had all the mana it needed. The problems came when they could not draw key pieces of removal, or bombs like Debt to the Deathless and Teysa, Envoy of Ghosts. Their gatekeepers were always enough to give them a chance and threaten to win, but they weren't always enough to win alone.
PRE-Match Questions:
1 - What colors do you predict were most open, and least open?
I noticed that there seemed to be an absolute TON of Boros floating around. It seems odd that no-one wanted to do aggro when cards like Boros Mastiff and Viashino Firstblades seemed to come around more then I thought they would. I didn't really see a lot of Gruul or Izzet stuff, and the usual suspects like Orzhov were hard to cross as well.
(Fairly accurate; the only player with both red and white was RussischerZar. Even less played than that was Azorius; only Leafs_Suck ran both blue and white, and only then as part of a four color deck).
2 - How many match wins (7 total possible) do you think you'll accumulate in this round-robin event?
My team and I drafted some other 3xDGM decks and playtested our DDD deck against the others, and it seems like we have a pretty solid deck. I don't expect to go undefeated because we don't necessarily have a ton of answers for things, but I'm quite confident in getting a winning record. I'd like to predict 5-2.
(Actual - 4-3)
3 - What do you suspect to be the colors of the player to your right (that you were getting your cards from in the first and third packs), and the player to your left (that you were getting your cards from in the second pack)
I was really bad for this and I didn't necessarily track what the teams were taking. We had a pretty straightforward goal with our strategy(which I'll delve into a bit more in the next question), so I didn't really need to track much. I suspect in seeing a few Orzhov decks, a Rakdos deck, and with the amount of Armored Wolf-Riders that we passed, a Selesnya deck or two as well. I have a feeling an Azorious deck is gonna do bonkers as well.
(An Azorius deck WOULD have been very powerful, I feel, had anyone drafted those colors as part of a two or three color deck).
4 - Pick apart your own draft a bit for me.
When we first introduced ourselves, one of my groupies had won a 3xDGM draft and had major success in another by going a Gatekeepers strategy, which is take Gates and Gatekeepers(Combined, they're UNSTOPPABLE, MU HAHAHAHAHAHA, or at the very least, "value town".) I liked this strategy as well because the main source of color fixing are Gates, and we took 8 of them, leaving probably around 16(assuming a few foils floating around or shocks) for the other 7 groups combined. That means a lot of groups will only have 2 or 3, or maybe at the max 4. This can be fairly restricting when building a tri color or 4 color deck. Based off that, I will hopefully only one or two consistent tri color decks, with about half only being dual color with a very light splash for a 3rd.
My group had two main vociferous individuals who often gave differing opinions, and I was kind of the 3rd voice chiming in with ideas. The two voices often clashed a bit and there were some pretty tense discussions on whether to take a card or not, or even currently with our deck construction. Each side had some very valid points and the rest of the group usually decided which of the 2 or 3 directions to go. Thankfully, we had some easy choices thrown in to break up the tension.
Drafting cards wise, our deck always seemed pretty meh to be honest. We got lucky getting passed a bomb on pack 2 and then our main bomb opened pack 3, pick 1. I would have liked to have gotten another B or W Gatekeeper but this deck is solid, and I'm decently happy with it, as is the group. I wasn't terribly happy drafting 3xDGM, but all in all it was actually pretty fun and I'd draft it again.
POST-Match Questions
1 - Who had the best deck?
Landot, with his filthy Aetherling/removal deck.
2 - Most surprising/shocking moment?
When I had 3 Nivix Cyclops dropped on me twice by Darkness. That was depressing.
GureiSeion
(Predicted Finish - 8th. Actual finish - 5th)
My biggest prediction miss; I picked them to finish last, and they only barely avoided tying for 2nd with their 2-3 record because of tiebreakers. Their meat-and-potatoes creatures like Kraul Warrior and Armored Wolf-Rider, of which they have 2 and 3 copies, respectively, ended up quite a bit stronger than I gave credit for.
PRE-Match Questions-
1 - What colors do you predict were most open, and least open?
Seemed to be red and blue here and there, with green / Selesnya as a clear open. Looked like a lot of fighting over black going on.
2 - How many match wins (7 total possible) do you think you'll accumulate in this round-robin event?
General team consensus was 4.
(Exactly correct)
3 - What do you suspect to be the colors of the player to your right (that you were getting your cards from in the first and third packs), and the player to your left (that you were getting your cards from in the second pack)
Something most of our team is trying to learn. Supersun: "I suspect that someone to our near right is Blue/White, someone else is Blue/Green, and someone else is Blue/Red. One of those people is also running black as well, probably the person closest to our right. That may have changed as the draft went on and any bombs that were opened may have easily caused a group to switch colors.
(This prediction, though far ranging, did not produce any direct hits. To their right were, in increasing distance, a blue/red deck with the barest of green splashes, a Jund deck, and a Grixis deck. Two of these decks satisfy the blue/red prediction, but neither of the other predictions was correct.)
4 - Pick apart your own draft a bit for me.
Supersun goes into the most detail:
"We started out really early trying to see if we could choke white or green out from the people to our right since our first pack had a Ready / Willing which was largely the only card that had white or green in the first pack that anyone would want to take, and get some good passes to us in pack 2. That plan failed rather quickly when the Protect/Serve flood came.
Towards the end of pack 1 we got passed some red cards that had no business getting passed that late (2x Rubblebelt Maaka and a Scab Clan), and we picked those up.
From pack 2 we were hoping that we might be able to draft some gatekeepers that people didn't want. Unfortunately someone else had that idea and gatekeepers and gates were pretty slim pickings after pack 1.
From pack 3, due to the fact that we had like 2 Armored Wolf Riders table to us, we decided to go for a more ramp based strategy using the piles of cluestones that we got and the giant creatures that were kept being passed our way."
POST-Match Questions-
1 - Who had the best deck?
My chat with landot after our match informed me of what I missed out on. So much control, with AEtherling to boot! I said it to him them and the standings didn't prove me wrong.
2 - Most surprising/shocking moment?
(After the fact, watching the dual-stream) In that matchup with landot, seeing how differently a specific Warped Physique could have gone...
Darkness1835
(Predicted Finish - 5th. Actual Finish - Tied 2nd/3rd/4th.)
I had no idea how this deck was going to do. In its wins, it won exactly as envisioned, with two or three Nivix Cyclops, instants, instants, death. When it lost, it lost because, surprisingly, of a lack of consistency! This deck actually had trouble from time to time finding a Nivix Cyclops, which I find rather shocking. The most "legitimate" loss where they least lost due to bad draws was against landot, who had sufficient Cyclops removal to avoid danger.
PRE-Match Questions:
1 - What colors do you predict were most open, and least open?
Izzet was very open, especially blue (which is why we pounced on it). Black was quite closed off, with green and white right behind.
2 - Predicted wins/losses for you?
My group is incredibly confident in the deck we drafted. We expect to win 6 or all 7 matches. I’m by no means a perfect magic player, and human error and mana screw are inevitable, so anything could happen.
(Actual - 4-3, but I can understand why they were confident).
3 - Who was drafting what around you?
Reading signals in 3-DGM is tough because of all the multicolor, and no one went back to do a thorough analysis, but we suspect GureiSeion’s team is playing Junk, and Goody’s team is playing Jund.
(Impressive! By far the most accurate predictions. GureiSeion's team WAS drafting Junk until they switched to Naya late-ish in the draft, and Goody's team did draft Jund).
4 - Pick apart your draft for me.
My team’s draft started out with just picking the good stuff and seeing where it would take us. Advent of the Wurm came first, followed me a Beetleform Mage. It was still too early to get locked into colors, but I was totally fine going with Bant. We started to pick up some red removal and utility in Punish the Enemy and Weapon Surge, which gave red the green light. At this point, we began to notice blue was crazy open, and we weren’t getting much more green or white. I’m not sure how it happened, but at some point, the decided to go for broke with the Cyclops, since we were getting passed them like crazy. After that, we didn’t really have to discuss much. If it was a Cyclops or a red/blue instant/sorcery, we took it. If we did disagree, we’d usually have a preliminary vote, and then begin trying to convince others to change their vote. All in all it worked out in a very civilized manner.
POST-match questions-
1 - Who had the best deck?
I think landot definitely had the best deck. It was packed with removal and stall until he could get out Fluxcharger, and at that point he would just kill everything I had then swing in for damage. Rinse, wash, repeat.
2 - Most surprising/shocking play?
The most surprisingly play was against Deckbuilder, I believe, when he pulled two Skylashers. There was nothing our deck could do about that. It just seemed like his deck was designed to beat ours.
Goody
(Predicted Finish - 7th. Actual Finish - 7th.)
My criticisms of this deck going in were: 1 - Not enough removal, and Fatal Fumes is bad removal. 2- Drastic overvaluation of Skylasher, and 3- Only real win condition is Ruric Thar, the Unbowed, or a clogged board where their multiple copies of Hired Torturer could break their opponents. These more or less were the damning weaknesses in the actual matches, though they certainly could have done with some better draws; luck was not kind to this group.
PRE-Match Questions:
1 - Most open/least open colors?
White was the most open, that was pretty clear from pack 1. We saw a LOT of Azorius and Selesnya go by throughout the draft. Red and Blue were semi-open as well. Black and green were the prime colors around the table.
(Very astute, and mostly completely accurate).
2 - Predicted wins/losses for you?
I'd love to say 7 but that's unrealistic; I think we'll do well, we got some really solid picks, though our mana base is a bit underwhelming. I'll give us a high 5.
(Actual - 3-4)
3 - Right was Darkness, probably black, maybe red. Left was Landot, probably blue, maybe white considering how much white we passed.
(Darkness WAS red, but not black. Landot WAS blue, but not white. I like their thinking on the white prediction, though; landot just never decided to expand into white despite seeing and taking a lot of incidental white cards).
4 - Pick apart your draft for me.
We started with a first pick deadbridge chant, and then tried to pick the best cards in each pack that might fit that color scheme. We first looked to be strongly in BUG when we picked woodlot crawler, already packing far/away, but in pack 2 the blue dried up and red was much more open (and powerful), so we snagged ruric thar and punish the enemy. At this point we figured we'd grab the best GB cards, and f none were worth playing, grab the best U or R cards. We finally decided fairly late into the draft (pack 3 pick 3) to stick with red for sure, as we already had one red bomb and hadn't opened good blue cards. We looked into going very aggro for a while since we picked a few copies of phytoburst, but that thought faded quick when we picked up a pair of korozda gorgons and more solid mid-late game spells and creatures.
Our group worked together fairly well; there were some picks where we disagreed and it came down to ties or one-vote differences. Some picks we regretted immediately (like passing up a gruul guildgate for a blue uncommon), others we really appreciated later (3x kraul warrior, ruric thar).
Triple DGM was daunting for sure, but I think it was fun to draft and it'll be a fun set of matches. I just wish we'd grabbed more guildgates...
POST-Match Questions-
1 - Best deck?
Landot for sure. I heard after the match he pulled an Aetherling, which instantly makes his deck better than most, and the rest was just digging and removal and solid creatures. Black was an excellent color to draft, red as well, and blue supported them well.
2 - Most surprising/shocking play?
Against Russeizhar, I believe. I got Ruric Thar out and he cast Smelt-Ward Gatekeepers to steal it. He also did it to my Korozda gorgon and sacc'd it with Maw of the Obzedat earlier. That deck was just quite mean.
landot
(Predicted Finish - 1st. Actual Finish - 1st.)
Landot's deck was, as expected, totally dominant. A horrifying legion of effective kill spells, plus a well-rounded set of finishers led by AEtherling, proved far too much for the field to handle. They even used Possibility Storm to finish a game, flaunting the only pick of theirs of which I was seriously critical.
PRE-Match Questions
1 - What colors do you predict were most open, and least open?
blue seemed very open to us -- toward the middle, there was lots of black, too, but during the last two packs it became clear that white was really open. We almost splashed the white -- render silent, deputy of acquitals, some others -- but wanted to keep our colors as simple as possible. I tihnk that really worked in our favor.
2 - How many match wins (7 total possible) do you think you'll accumulate in this round-robin event?
We were all pretty high on our deck, our predictions were all that we would do well -- most people said they wouldn't be surprised if we went 7-0.
(Actual 6-1)
3 - What do you suspect to be the colors of the player to your right (that you were getting your cards from in the first and third packs), and the player to your left (that you were getting your cards from in the second pack)
maybe white-black to the left, and red green or naya to our right?
(Actual - to the left was Goody, Black/Green/Red. To the right was RussischerZar, White/Black/Red. Actually got them more or less backwards).
4 - Pick apart your own draft a bit for me.
Our first pick was pretty snap; aetherling is the best bomb in the set, and it requires heavy blue. Our second pick blast of genius really pointed us in the direction we wanted to go -- removal and card draw with a few big finishers. We had a hard time choosing black over white for our 3rd color, but once we did, things fell in to place and we had a pretty good grip on what would wheel -- we agreed to wait for cluestones until late. I think the rakdos drake was a bad pick, but other than that we were pretty well agreed on everything; it was an interesting process, but not a difficult one. We stuck really hard to just taking the good stuff until we had a critical mass in a third color -- which ended up being the black due to the late, late warped physiques.
POST-Match Questions:
1 - Who had the best deck?
I mean, I think that's pretty clear . . . . :-p I actually loved TridenT's deck, and was surprised at his results -- in any format other than DGM, Tajic is super strong -- Deckbuilder's deck also played really smoothly, if I remember correctly. seemed well-built.
2 - What was the most surprising/shocking moment of the draft for you?
I got stung hard by ready / willing; the combat tricks in this set, especially the split cards, can be huge blowouts, and I got jumped by them a few times.
Video Archive & Round by Round Record
Here I will attempt to collate all the matches as they were recorded on my stream. I did not catch all of them; there will be gaps. But here we go. First, I will link to Absinthman's awesome sheet. This will tell you who won what match, and with how many games, without having to navigate backwards through all the prior rounds. On to the videos.
Round 1:
RussischerZar vs. Deckbuilder345
Round 2
Round 3
Deckbuilder345 vs. Darkness1835
Goody vs. landot - Unavailable
Round 4
Leafs_Suck vs. Darkness1835 - Unavailable
TridenT vs. Goody - Unavailable
Round 5
RussischerZar vs. Darkness1835
Round 6
RussischerZar vs. Goody - Unavailable
Round 7
RussischerZar vs. landot - Unavailable
Leafs_Suck vs. GureiSeion - Unavailable
See you next time!
Stay tuned for the Theros Daily Draft Debate Group Leader search, coming this weekend!
KrazyCaley says... #2
@dcarpntr -
Good catch, neglected to put those up. They are up now.
September 26, 2013 11:05 p.m.
wait, how did gureiseion lose to deckbuilder? we lost to darkness and leafs suck because same number of wins but they beat us but we beat deckbuilder and had the same number of wins. what am i missing?
September 26, 2013 11:25 p.m.
GureiSeion says... #4
All my matches (from my point of view) should be accessible on Absintheman's sheet (links point directly to the respective matches).
September 26, 2013 11:39 p.m.
I would love to have our team stay together for the next draft, but I think someone else needs to step up and be the honcho / pilot -- I underestimated the amount of time I would need to invest, and with my current schedule, I don't have the time to be as responsive as I should; I know my scheduling / time issues were a frustration to some, for which I apologize.
And I forgot to mention it in the exit interview, but: that izzet deck was insane and was probably the most surprising moment in the draft for us -- we thought we had done a pretty good job of staking a claim on the izzet stuff.
September 27, 2013 12:31 a.m.
KrazyCaley says... #6
@Tempest - The three tied for second form a chain of beating-ness. Gurei lost to more than one of them, and thus is left out.
September 27, 2013 1:41 a.m.
RussischerZar says... #7
All I can say is I made some errors in piloting in the first few matches, being rather unfamiliar with MTGO. It still was a very fun experience and I'm looking forward to being a group member in the next DDD :)
WP everyone!
September 27, 2013 7:34 a.m.
I find it fascinating that the predictions of where each deck would place were for the most part very close to how they finished.
Well played everybody. There's a wealth of information here to look through.
September 27, 2013 9:13 a.m.
Absinthman says... #9
Thanks to all you guys for investing time into this. I learned a lot, as I'm sure everyone did. Can't wait for DDD Theros.
September 27, 2013 11:13 a.m.
potatoedoughnut says... #10
Yeah thanks for organizing, it was a lot of fun.
Compared to previous DDD the drafting portion was a lot more fun in small groups, but once matches started it wasn't as interesting.
I ended up watching only a couple matches because I didn't have time to watch all of them, and since there were no text recaps I mostly just saw the results.
Obviously you don't want to spoil decks for the different groups, but I still wanted that recap and especially 3rd party analysis post-draft.
The two things I like most about DDD are the debates about picks, and then analysis of how the decks perform once they're built. I feel like in this format the first is much better, while the second falls off a lot.
Not sure how to fix this, but something to think about for next time. Looking forward to the next DDD :)
September 27, 2013 11:50 a.m.
I'm sorry KrazyCaley, but there is absolutely no way anyone could ever overvalue Skylasher , they're just that good
September 27, 2013 11:57 a.m.
I LOVED the team draft format. It was so much fun, and a lot better experience than the previous DDD.
I thought the games were exciting to watch, but it was way too long in between games because of everyone's scheduling issues. And most of the games were at 8 pm Pacific or later, so a lot of people wouldn't stay up to watch the matches live because of work the next day.
One way I can think of this being more efficient is if all of the team captains can devote a specific Saturday or Sunday and crank out three rounds of play in a Swiss tournament format, and then we cut to Top 4 for a playoff. This would only take one day to complete all of the games because it would only be five rounds total, instead of playing a round robin.
It may not demonstrate the overall best deck, but it would crown a winner and we wouldn't have to wait for two months to finish it. Also, doing the tournament this way would mean that we don't have to skip every other set that is released (like we skipped M-14).
September 27, 2013 12:24 p.m.
So apparently Twitch.tv deletes any broadcasts that get left alone after a certain period of time. I had videos for matches 5 and 6, but they got deleted since I never highlighted them.
I have matches 1-4 and 7 up on my channel, however.
September 27, 2013 1:56 p.m.
I agree with dcarpntr. I didnt get to watch the matches and I always love Caley's commentary. I really missed those parts from the old format.
Plus Now I feel like it is too late to rub my team mates noses in how wrong they were on our first few picks
September 27, 2013 2:05 p.m.
potatoedoughnut says... #15
Agreed, I like watching the matches and really like Caley's commentary; however, I don't have time to watch 28 ~1h videos. I much prefer the old text-based recaps which I can read in much less time and also lead to discussion here (rather than only Caley talking).
Another note about the videos: Caley did an awesome job going solo. Solo casting is super hard though, and bringing on a co-host could make it easier to cast (however this comes with more scheduling issues).
September 27, 2013 2:14 p.m.
KrazyCaley says... #16
@potatoedoughnut - Yeah, play-by-play plus color commentator is the traditional format. I COULD bring back the text write-ups, but that is SO MUCH work, you guys, although at least I could be a lot more accurate now that I have a record to work with. I'm just not sure I have the time now! Maybe if someone wants to transcribe them from the broadcasts?
September 27, 2013 6:16 p.m.
sorry zaddos!
KrazyCaley, ok... i guess that makes sense?
September 27, 2013 9:36 p.m.
I had seen the numerous topics on the main page about the DDD but it was really confusing as to what was going on and took me a minute to understand because I had came upon it in the middle of what was going on. This Wrap up article is really nice and gave a really good look at each individual group, nice job! I've only looked at one of the decks so far, Team Landlots, and I have a question. I thought I read that the draft was 3 packs of Dragon's Maze, but I noticed on Team Landlot's deck list they had a Steam Vents . I was just curious how they got that, did I miss something and a pack of RTR was drafted also? Is it a typo?? Keep in mind that I'm not trying to accuse anyone of anything and i'm not saying this with any kind of negative feelings, I'm just very inexperience in drafts and was under the impression that only basic lands could be added, so I was curious how this came about.
September 28, 2013 12:09 a.m.
GureiSeion says... #19
@abenz419 - DGM packs rarely switched out the land guildgate in each pack with shocklands.
September 28, 2013 1:13 a.m.
GureiSeion says... #20
@KrazyCaley - I don't mind transcribing future matches for any group I'm affiliated with, or some-such like that. Point being that I don't mind helping out to some degree.
September 28, 2013 1:26 a.m.
@GureiSeion so you could open a pack of Dragons's Maze and get a Return to Ravnica shockland?? I never heard of booster packs containing cards from other sets (that weren't reprints) before. Are there other sets/cards like this??
September 28, 2013 1:28 a.m.
I would like to participate in the next DDD. How does one go about getting into one of the groups. I saw the thread that is recruiting group leaders, but with my inexperience drafting and not being involved in any previous DDD that's something I'm interested in. But, I would love to get into one of the groups and get some insights on drafting as we make our picks. I would really love to hear what the good, experienced drafters are thinking as they're making picks.
September 28, 2013 1:35 a.m.
GureiSeion says... #23
@abenz419 - It was a first that I'm aware of.
As for the specific symbol, it was apparently cheaper for them to go with the original reprinting symbol than to make a new one.
September 28, 2013 1:36 a.m.
GureiSeion says... #24
@abenz419 - There was also an article where one was able to opt-in to either one of the groups (fairly at random, unless by request), or into the observer group.
September 28, 2013 1:39 a.m.
has there been an article for people to join the groups of the new Theros DDD yet? if so, is it too late to join??
September 28, 2013 1:46 a.m.
GureiSeion says... #26
@abenz419 - There hasn't been too much talk of it yet, much less any sign-ups. Give it some time.
September 28, 2013 2:31 a.m.
ok thanks, yeah I saw the one about the leader selections. It's just when GureiSeion mentioned there was an article to sign up for a group I didn't know if he meant for the new DDD or if he was just explaining how you went about joining a group for the last one.
thanks again
September 28, 2013 2:35 a.m.
This was a very interesting draft debate, and I'm glad I had the chance to follow this.
September 28, 2013 10:57 a.m.
One thing to note, while Blue was the least drafted color overall it was very heavily drafted on one side of the table. Goody specifically would have had blue sucked up like a vacuum giving the appearance of blue being drafted harder then it was.
September 30, 2013 5:08 a.m.
Supersun, you are dead-on. Pack 2 was pretty bad for us as our blue dried up very suddenly and we had subpar picks all around, as the two leaders next to me drafted all the colors we were interested in (darkness had RG, landot had BR). It was a rough spot but we made do with our Hired Torturer s!
September 30, 2013 8:39 a.m.
I'm actually wondering if it's a fair statement to say that Blue was the least drafted color. Yes, it was the color that the least amount of groups ran in their final decks, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it was the least drafted.
The best way to accurately check that would be to "add" all the cards up by when they were picked and average them.
Does KrazyCaley have a master list of the order that cards were picked in each pack? (Like what shows after a Tappedout online draft simulation) It wouldn't take terribly long for someone to do that if they had that list (that and we get to see some of the lulzy picks some of the groups made like the number of people that decided it was a smart idea to pass MULTIPLE Far/Aways to landot lol).
October 1, 2013 3:59 a.m.
KrazyCaley says... #33
3DM DDD Observer Area
October 1, 2013 4:45 a.m.
KrazyCaley says... #34
@abenz419 - The article for signing up for participation as a normal member is now up! Go sign up. :)
October 1, 2013 4:47 a.m.
Took an average of the cards in pack 3 and it looks like this (lower number means cards of that color were picked sooner).
Black - 7.5675595238
Green - 7.9873511905
Blue - 8.4508928571
Red - 8.6245535714
White - 8.7269345238
and the number of each color in pack 3 (multicolored cards, split cards, guildgates, and cluestones count as 1 card of each color).
Blue - 78
Red - 76
Green - 75
Black - 74
White - 73
I'll work on pack 2 and 1 later. Once those are done you should be able to average the values of all 3 packs to get a feel for how strongly a certain color was picked at the table, regardless of whether it made it in their final deck list or not. (Honestly I'm a little surprised that even in pack 3 blue was valued higher then white and red despite it being the least played color).
October 2, 2013 2:45 a.m.
thebeardedshuffler says... #36
This was good fun and I liked reading the comments in the observer area. I was super impressed by the Cyclops deck, so high five to those guys. I feel our pilot's unfamiliarity with MTGO, plus his team not making most of the matches to observe/comment, probably led to us losing a few games we could've won. But in the end, the playing is just the end result of the real fun: the drafting!
And the drafting was good fun indeed, it's a difficult format to draft and I think our team came out with a strong deck. Looking forward to doing it again.
October 2, 2013 7:52 a.m.
potatoedoughnut says... #37
@Supersun: If you're just looking at the number of each color of card in each pack then the distribution should be pretty flat (there are the same number of WUBRG cards in the set).
A better measure would be to look at the pick number of each color of card and weight the averages this way. So if color X was drafted on average as "x"th pick and color Y was on average "x+y"th pick, then you could say that X was drafted more aggressively then Y.
October 2, 2013 11:03 a.m.
thebeardedshuffler says... #38
Or halfway through the pack, count how many of each colour are left.
October 2, 2013 11:09 a.m.
The first set of numbers is the average of the pick numbers. I just included the number of cards in the pack below just to make sure that there were around the same number of cards for each color in the pack (luck can be luck).
October 2, 2013 4:44 p.m.
Got pack 2 numbers done.
Black - 7.3933035714
Red - 7.6151785714
White - 8.0547619048
Green - 8.0964285714
Blue - 8.4302827381
White - 78
Blue - 75
Black - 74
Red - 74
Green 73
These numbers are a bit closer to what was ran in the final decks of everyone. I'd assume the main reason white beat green this time though was mainly just because there were a decent number more white cards. I'll hopefully get pack 1 done tomorrow.
October 3, 2013 3:41 a.m.
Ignore all the numbers above. I found an error in the math.
Below should be the correct numbers.
(Apparently in Excel having a ";" get replaced with a ":" makes a significant difference lol).
Pack 1 Pick Averages
Black - 6.7(857142)
Green - 7.3125
White - 7.(736842105263157894)
Red - 8.(2941176470588235)
Blue - 8.(48780)
Pack 2 Pick Averages
Red - 6.(92682)
Black - 7.(4)
Green - 7.(87)
White - 8.(282051)
Blue - 9.(4)
Pack 3 Pick Averages
Black - 6.2
Green - 7.2
Blue - 8.(48780)
Red - 8.5
White - 9.5(142857)
FINAL PICK AVERAGES
Black - 6.814159292...
Green - 7.46
Red - 7.8672566372...
White - 8.482(142857)
Blue - 8.7796610169...
Just like the final deck lists showed Black was by far the most picked color of the draft though in pack 2 it wasn't picked quite as much as in packs 1 and 3.
According to these numbers though Green was picked more often than Red in general unlike what was reflected in everyone's decks. For some reason though Red seemed to be in very high demand in pack 2 even beating black. I suspect a large reason for this is because it was a very unpopular color in pack 1 and some relatively powerful red cards were getting passed around late in the first pack which made a few groups consider adding red to their collection starting pack 2.
White and Blue were definitely the least picked colors. White started off fairly well with it being the 3rd most popular color, even more popular then red, and eventually plummeting to be the absolute least picked color in pack 3 (despite all the 1st pick white cards in that pack as well). Blue stayed pretty consistent with the exception of pack 2 where everyone seemed to avoid it for some reason.
dcarpntr says... #1
What did Darkness have to say in his Post-Match Questions?
September 26, 2013 10 p.m.