This past weekend I played the Arena Open. This time, the Open was Pioneer Masters Limited, a scarcely played format in the community. Pioneer Masters' main focus was to get Pioneer cards onto Arena while providing a fresher take on them in Limited. The format itself is not great, but given the tools available it was fairly well done for a set meant to accomplish the goal of repurposing old cards.
I usually don't do postmortems about events, especially an event where I didn't put much effort into it, but I've been thinking a lot about a specific pick I made, exactly what went into my choice, and if I would change it in retrospect.
First, I managed to make day two on my first bullet, and I was only going to play one or two bullets max, as the format was not designed for sealed, and as far as I know, this was the only way to play Pioneer Masters sealed. I felt the format would be all midrange soup gates decks, and I didn't want to slog through in a format I didn't feel entirely comfortable with and, frankly, only somewhat enjoy.
Here's a picture of my sealed deck. As you can see, I got lucky with a fast-paced aggro deck that could quickly close the door on slower decks. That's what happened until I got to the last few rounds where I played against other aggro decks.
As for my first draft, I noticed that like other sets, cards weren't flowing around the table like they would in a more open environment like a normal Arena draft. My opponents played conventional two-color decks, no splashes, and mostly midrange in nature. No one had overpowered gates decks or an abundance of high-powered rares.
I ended up with this normal GW deck where I enjoyed the challenge of building, as the last few cards changed match to match based on not much other than pure instinct. For instance, I noticed in my first game that I should play my Rogue's Passage despite it being awkward on my mana because my deck was prone to flooding out and capable of a good early start being thwarted by opponents' large creatures.
I lost my first match to a Hornet's Nest, but I won the next three to advance to the second draft.
My second draft was uneventful. I lost both my games, mulling into one-landers on the draw with hands that would have functioned with two lands, but I failed to draw the correctly-colored land or any land in general. My opponent also played 0-1 spells during the game they lost when I was on the play.
Here's my third deck and the source of my frustration from the event.
I had never drafted this archetype before. I got pushed into it by my first draft pick. I did not take a gold card, I took Ultimate Price. After Ultimate Price, I took a Jhessian Thief in a weak pack. In pick three, I got passed a pack with Lotleth Troll, Nyx Weaver, and Dreg Mangler for notable Golgari cards. I took the troll and said to myself I'll likely wheel one of these Golgari cards, and if so, that's probably my lane. I wheeled both of those Golgari cards, took the Nyx Weaver, and knew I was supposed to be in that lane. Ultimately, I think I made the right choice pack 1 pick 1, even in retrospect, but still I wonder.
The alternative choice to Ultimate Price was Thassa, God of the Sea. I don't regret my choice, but I keep thinking about why I made that choice. Traditionally, I've been a risky drafter. I tend to take chances on powerful cards and try to make them work the best I can. It's why I fell in love with Limited Magic, and frankly, a big reason I'm still playing this game after 25 or more years.
Thassa requires a firm commitment. It wants most of the cards in your deck to be blue. It's a single blue pip on the card, but it generally wants you to play something like 13 blue sources. That's the kind of blue deck you're potentially committing to with Thassa. Many drafters don't understand this, and even to this day in my stream, they'll see me drafting a two-color deck on stream and ask why I didn't speculate on a card like Thassa pick seven. Some cards require more picks to be functional. You don't want to speculate on those types of cards, not because they don't work out, but because they carry a large risk of ruin.
This is why I didn't take Thassa. It's not that speculating on Thassa is bad, quite the contrary. It's a powerful card with a high ceiling in the right deck, but to get to that point, you need to spend a lot of picks. Many of those picks make it nearly impossible to pivot. Once you have Thassa in your pile, you're making a firm commitment that you're going to take just blue cards for the foreseeable future.
There are other examples that are unrelated to devotion. To speculate on a card, you need to completely understand what you're getting yourself into, as it's not just wasting one pick. It's potentially wasting lots of picks or even fully wrecking your draft.
Speculating on splashable cards is more justifiable. Generally, when I speculate on a gold card like Dinrova Horror, the only thing I need to go well is picking up a couple of pieces of fixing. It's a six-mana spell that requires one mana of another color, so I can play it off of a single guildgate, an Evolving Wilds, and a basic land of the splash color.
It's harder to full-color pivot, especially for a card that has more than one pip. Let's say in pack two you open an Archangel of Thune, and you firmly committed to red, but your blue is a bit shallow. There's also a Treasure Cruise in your pack that would be good in your deck but not as good as Angel. Once you take Angel here, you need to adjust your mana so you can cast that Angel, which likely means at least eight plains, which means you need to aggressively pick up white cards.
This kind of adjustment takes a lot of picks, and the juice better be worth the squeeze. I purposely chose Archangel of Thune for this example because while it's a great card, I believe the juice is not worth the squeeze. The card is easily answered, and we're giving up at least a few cards to not only take this Angel but potentially put ourselves in a position to do guesswork down the line.
I don't like guessing. I like to stay flexible and read signals, but sometimes, especially in an event like the Arena Open, it's better to take the higher-powered cards and gamble that you won't be cut in multiple spots. Ultimately, given that I needed a very strong deck to make the money with a loss already, I likely should have taken Thassa and tried to cut blue as much as possible. In these drafts, you don't get really strong cards as much as you would in casual drafts. Passing on them to stay flexible is a mistake I often realize in retrospect. Ultimate Price is a splashable, great removal spell, but this set has plenty of removal.
I rarely regret picks in higher stakes spots, as I'm usually focused and prepared enough to make tough calls on the spot. This time, with the set having just been changed a few days prior, I played it safe in a spot I should have taken a bigger gamble. Both picks are respectable, but I'd have had more fun, if anything else, trying to draft a Thassa deck than a normal midrange black deck.
I think I was in the right lane and didn't end up getting a bunch of blue or anything, but I still thought a lot about the pick and wondered why. Was it because I lost? It can't be because regardless of my deck, I'm sure I won the maximum amount of matches I could have based on the way I drew. It was the uncertainty that compelled me to write this and think about it for a few days. Learning in Magic is one of the best things about the game. I think I leveled up a bit this past weekend. I've learned that I need to be less risk-averse in higher-leverage situations and be willing to end up with a bad deck now and then against tough competition.
I realize that all of this is also true in life. The path of least resistance tends to lead to scripted outcomes, generally with the least upside and downsides. Taking a path of higher resistance will achieve higher highs and lower lows. Learning when to take those risks is key in both life and in Magic.
Comentarios