From: hahn@bway.net (hahn) Subject: Let's Talk Booster Draft Date: 31 Jul 1997 13:09:30 GMT Last night, I engaged in some more practice booster draft with my teammate Eric Kesselman -- one of the best Limited players I know, even by Neutral Ground standards which are high indeed. And on-line, I've been emailing Mike Flores about random things, one of which is booster draft strategy. Now, if anyone would like to check on my Limited rating, he would note that I am a total scrub in this environment. :) Nonetheless, since those who can, do, and those who cannot, teach, I thought I might post some observations/thoughts on booster draft to stimulate higher level discussion. 1. Draft Metagame One of the most interesting and important metagame considerations for draft (or any Limited format, really) is that the game is all about creatures. I've seen players lose with "God" decks with Hammer, Torch, Geyser, Ray, Dark Banishing, Incinerate, Rock Slide, Enfeeblement, Infernal Harvest, and Fire Whip simply because they get run over in the early game by 2/2 flankers and 2/1 flyers. Note that above, his deck dedicates 10 slots to removal -- granted, they are power removal, but that's 10 slots on reactive cards. Figuring on 17 land in a 40 card deck, that leaves 13 slots for creatures. In that instance, he didn't have the best creature selection available -- Skulking Ghost, Azimaet Drake, Breathstealer, Viashino Sandstalker, some other smaller critters, and one big-ass Hulking Cyclops. In theory, he should just beatdown on most opponents, removing every single threat and winning with Torch/Geyser or critter beatdown. On a decent draw, he just might do that. But, what I've noticed is that such removal-heavy decks suffer from not having early combatants to deal with the annoying 2/2 or 3/2 or 3/3 early on. Fine, Hammer is reusable, but only after 5 mana (and really only at 8 mana, 5 red -- somewhat difficult in Limited). In other cases, he's having to trade removal card for card against some 2/2 flanker or 3/3 Wild Elephant or something because his creatures cannot block and live while his opponents just sit back with some annoying 3/3 and care nothing about his 2/2 creature. Instead, he ends up losing because his opponent has better creatures, has more of them than he has removal/creatures, and has a few tricks up his sleeve as well. And over the course of the game, he gains the beatdown advantage. The beatdown advantage is a feature of Limited formats. It's the reason why you generally want to go first, so that your flanker can begin the beatdown before his, so that you can play something earlier and gain the momentum, play 2/2's and 3/3's one after the other such that you always have something on the attack and something on defense. Man O War is such a good card because it often helps to maintain/restore the beatdown advantage. Undo is amazing because it does that twice. Beatdown advantage is the reason why "bigger is better", why flying is important, and why toughness counts more than power (who'd rather have a Panther Warrior over a Redwood Treefolk, for example -- though one is VI and the other is WL?). 2. Color Priorities I've discovered that I favor certain colors heavily in drafting Mirage/Visions/Weatherlight. I don't have enough experience in other formats to say, but let's stay on MVW for now. I almost always draft a R/G base with either White or Blue support. Red for removal and decent creatures, green for the fatties, and white/blue for the tricks. The reason is grounded in the metagame (above). Red usually gives me the fast early creatures -- the three casting cost goodness like the Firefiend and the Cyclops or flank knights. Green provides some early critters -- Gibbering Hyenas, River Boa, etc. -- but its strength is in fatness. Between Mirage, Visions, and Weatherlight, there are so many fat green critters that even if others are heavily drafting green, I'm likely to end up with a decent fatness base. If not Jungle Wurms and Behemoths, at least Bull Elephants and Caterpillars, possibly Efreets, etc. White is simply amazing in WL with the broken Armor, Ballista, Gossamer Joe, Ardent Milita, even the Soul Shepherd, Volunteer Reserves, and the Revered Unicorn. Red also provides decent removal -- if I didn't get that Torch, Geyser, Torrent of Lava, or other killer cards, I still have a good chance of ending up with at least a Fire Whip, a Lava Storm, a Flare maybe, something. Green does have a few good tricks -- Feral Instinct, Spider Climb, even Choking Vines and Wind Shear are all good. But White is the king of tricks -- Remedy is amazing in the creature-heavy format, Honorable Passage and Shadowbane both are good, Healing Salve is good, Hope Charm, Ivory Charm, tricks, tricks, tricks. And, white has a decent creature base with many flankers, first strikers, banders, and flying griffins/chickens. Now, blue is one of two things, imho. Either, 1. it's so good as to be almost broken, or 2. it's very weak. If you get the fat flying beatdown, blue is unbelievable. Ray of Command is better than Dark Banishing, and a close contender with Torch as the best common card in the format -- I believe the Torch wins out only because red tends to have a better creature base than blue. But, if you have the Breezekeeper, Waterspout, Crocodile, Cloud Elemental/Djinn, Man O War, 187 Knights, and so forth and so on, I really do think blue is hard to stop. Phantom Wings is one of the best tricks in the format, as it combats Armor and gives your fatness wings to boot. But blue's weakness is that its creatures are not very durable, and not very numerous. Phasing hurts in the beatdown advantage game, and flying is great but not if you're trading 2 from your Cloud Elemental for 5 from his Jungle Wurm. Black. Ah, black. The color of night has certain problems in the MVW environment. First, there are 2 common swampwalkers: Dirty Wraith and Warthog. Second, WL has an uncommon swampwalker: Odyllic Wraith, which will mess you up and good unless dealt with immediately. Third, there are quite a few hose-black cards to boot: Decomposition is an excellent card against black, as it usually changes the math of the beatdown. To wit, say you have a turn 2 Askari, which is normally very strong. Your opponent then puts Decomposition on it. You lose one life during upkeep, do 2. Next turn, you take 2, do 2 more. So far you have 1 life advantage, except that if the Askari should ever die, you lose 2 life as well. Next turn, you lose 3 and do 2. Now, you're at "par" except for the fact that you're bound to lose 2 life when the Askari dies. The math simply does not favor the black player here. Elephant Grass simply ruins your day, and most black creatures are outclassed by red and green. Having said that, though, black is amazingly strong if supported with enough removal/tricks. Shadow Rider is by far the most dangerous 4 casting cost creature next to Maro, and Nekrataal, of course, is good enough for constructed decks. Black has an early beatdown advantage with Skulking Ghosts, Askari, regenerating flanker, Feral Shadow, even Shadow Guildmage and Sewer Rats. Crypt Rats are power, as is Infernal Harvest, Bone Harvest, etc. Dark Banishing is usually a first-pick, and Coercion is a Dark Banishing in disguise. Black has a few notable fatness in Necrosavant, Gallowbraid, Morinfen, and Urborg Stalker, but the last three have drawbacks and are difficult to get -- compared to green whose fatness is common. 3. Card Priorities Everyone has a different strategy in draft, which is what makes it interesting. And in MVW, just about any strategy could pay off. However, it does appear that most of the better players split among two camps: critters v. removal. Because the environment is all about creature combat, many top players basically favor creatures over removal. Their attitude is basically, "Deal with this, or lose." If the opponent does deal with it, fine, here's another fatness for you to consider. One rule of thumb I've heard is this: 19 creatures. Play with 19 creatures and no one could remove all of them. If half of your 19 (say 9) are fatness, then you have creature superiority and will overcome in combat. They wouldn't pass up killer removal, such as Torch or Ray or Banishing, but they might pass up Incinerates, Spitting Earth, Drain Life, Pacifism, Thirst, etc. in favor of more fatness or more speed or more whatever in creatures. The other camp takes the attitude that there are enough creatures to get a solid base, but there aren't that many good removal spells. Take an Incinerate over a Wild Elephant because the Incinerate will not only kill that Elephant but possibly something else as well. Take a Funeral Charm to kill that x/1 annoyance. Take the Mana Chains over some crappy critter. Of course, they need to draft a solid creature base, but they feel okay about playing maybe 12-14 creatures with the rest being creature removal of one kind or another. Both camps, however, emphasize staying simple and focused. Limited is not about control and cute tricks and card advantage. It's all about the beatdown; card advantage is great if it comes in the form of 187's (Nekrataal and company) but spending a turn to cast a Mangara's Tome might get you beatdown for another 5 points of damage. 3. Some Neutral Ground Wisdom Seeing some of the comments/analysis by players in other areas of the world, I find them very interesting. I play at Neutral Ground, in NYC, which is one of the toughest competitive arenas for every single format but especially for Limited. These are some of the "quirks" of NG draft philosophy which seems to disagree with much of the world. A. Peacekeeper is a bad card -- it's a 1/1 that doesn't do squat but allow your opponent to build up a massive army, ping it with a Fire Whip or a charm of some kind, then beat you down mercilessly. And of course, in the meantime, you're doing nothing but building up your defensive force as well; if your defense is better than his offense, great, but otherwise, just get the beatdown going. B. You must have enchantment removal -- and not just the Broken Armor, but global enchantments as well since Serra's Blessing or Heat Stroke in the right deck can be excessively painful. C. Energy Bolt is not a great card -- good, but not great. Reason is that it can't remove a creature, and it commits you to 2 colors nice and early. Granted, R/W is not a bad color combination, but if there's anything better, take that first (by better here, I mean things like Jungle Wurms or flankers). D. X/1 blockers are almost worthless -- they can't block flankers, then they might as well not block. Oh, and they get killed with red & black charms? Fire Whips ruin you? No thank you. E. Abyssal Gatekeeper is a bad card -- very often, it results in card disadvantage for you & creature disadvantage as well. Opponent tend to kill it when it will most hurt you and most benefit them. F. Hidden Horror is not great -- Phantom Wings, Undo, Man O War, Sun Clasp are all commons. I'm sure that others have very different perspective on drafting; these were just some of my observations. I'd love to hear about different strategies with reasons for them. Discuss. -The Sophist -- Robert S. Hahn hahn@bway.net http://www.bway.net/~hahn Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy; For the apparel oft proclaims the man - Polonius, to his son Laertes Hamlet, Act I, Scene III.