I was talking with Will Bax last Friday about Innistrad drafting on MTGO, and he seemed to insinuate that us London drafters kinda sucked.
“Are you losing all of your Innistrad drafts like the rest of us?” he asked.
“Actually, I’m doing pretty good!” was my reply.
… Then I proceeded to 1-2 my next draft. :S
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I’ve drafted 3x times now and gone 2-1 / 3-0 / 1-2 in that order.
What has been working out and what hasn’t? Let’s take a look at the builds that I played:
1) 2-1 = White / Blue Flyers
I tried to pick as many flying creatures as I could that had a decent CC and P/T. Highlights from the deck included cards like:
2x Abbey Griffin
2x Chapel Geist
Avacynian Priest
Doomed Traveller
2x Voiceless Spirit
Claustrophobia
Lantern Spirit
This deck was pretty good! Most of the flyers are in U/B/W so by cutting most of the flyers out of U/W that meant that the only “air force” I should really be expecting would come out of a B player. My loss was, indeed, to a Black deck… my opponent ended up having too much zombie recursion for me to deal with :(. This deck was pretty fast and had a good curve, which was what I think helped me win quite a few of my matches. My first impression of the format was that it is slower than the past few, so if you’re playing a fast deck against their fatties, you’re going to win. I was often so ahead that even once my opponent DID start dropping bombs, they were already in the red so far that they couldn’t recover. Either that, or they started dropping big monsters that had to walk the earth and couldn’t interact with my flyers as they closed in for the kill.
2) 3-0 = Blue / Black Humans
I REALLY think a fast aggressive deck is the way to go in Innistrad. Pump out quality creatures on a consistent basis and overrun them! In this build I was lucky enough to score some REALLY good human equipment in the form of Silver Inlaid Dagger AND Butchers Cleaver! Not only that, but my deck was like, ½ creatures, all of which were pretty decent! Here’s a quick breakdown of some of the stuff that made the cut:
Invisible Stalker
3x Delver of Secrets / Insectile Aberration
Diregraf Ghoul
Disciple of Griselbrand
Falkenrath Noble
Manor Skeleton
Morkrut Banshee
Screeching Bat
Lost in the Mist
Murder of Crows
Silent Departure
3x Stitched Drake
Spectral Flight
This deck was incredible! Lots of T1 plays, lots of humans to equip. I even managed a T1 Delver into T2 flip! Once again I am convinced that speed > fatties in this format, and that having good reusable tools will win you the game every time! Oh yea! T1 Delver into T2 flip and drop Silver Inlaid Dagger is REALLY good and had someone scoop on their T3 to it. The Delvers did not flip often, but they were there mostly as an early threat AND because they’re humans to weild my weapons of war.
3) 1-2 = Black / Green Fatties
I should have seen the signals and switched to red, but I got greedy when I saw some late removal in B and some decent big green creatures surfing the tables. I thought to myself: “Don’t do this… don’t get into the fat stuff… you KNOW they’re too slow and that the morbid becomes too hard to activate!” But I did it anyways. I won my first match (barely) then proceeded to get crushed in 2 straight twice in a row. My deck looked something like this:
Bloodgift Demon
Corpse Lunge
Curse of Death’s Hold
Markov Patrician
Morkrut Banshee
Skirsdag High Priest
Stromkirk Patrol
2x Festerhide Boar
Grizzled Outcasts
2x Villagers of Estewald
Spider Spawning
Yea… you can see how a deck like this one may as well scoop to the 2 decks I played above. IF I was able to make it to T3-4 without them dropping a creature, or doing ANYTHING AT ALL, I was golden… but if they had a play on T1-2 there was no way I was able to recover. Especially since by the time I had a creature in play, they had 2x and would just “remove” my blocker to keep pressure on me until I died. I had a HUGE problem activating morbid since my guys were beef and tended not to die when it would be beneficial to me…. No one wanted to chump block me into morbid :(.
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So I guess my experience with Innistrad has been that it’s a FASTER format than I’d originally thought. Unless you draft a fairly aggressive deck with multiple points along the mana curve, don’t expect to win with fatties. Ramping to fat is fine, but just piling them all in there and expecting to win will result in disappointment.
I’ve also found that unless you’re an aggressive deck, you will have a problem activating morbid. Smaller creatures = good for morbid. Bigger creatures w / high CC = bad. People can see your “swing into bad trade so that I can activate morbid” tech from a mile away… you’re not fooling anyone! The only GOOD thing about this was that I was able to play mind games w / 1 opponent and swing in for a couple points of damage w / a 1/1 he wouldn’t block in the fear of a Banshee… the joke was on him because all I had in my hand was land (5 of them)!
I hope this helps some of you with your drafting experience. I’d love to hear what YOU’VE had success with so that we can share notes and improve our game as a community.
Cheers!
Carl Szalich
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