Ah a dark stormy night, what a perfect time to hatch a plot
and start constructing a conspiracy. Hey guys I’m back and hopefully I can keep
this going again for once till at least classes start back up in the fall. I
apologize for the abrupt stop in writing again, but as always school and
everything of that nature comes first. Originally I was going to just write
about what I’ve been up to and playing since last we met, but after the weather
turned dark on my way home from my first conspiracy draft I was just inspired
to write about the format and my thoughts on it instead. So without further ado
let’s start planning the machinations to our opponent’s demise.
So to start off here are my thoughts on the draft. First of
all I think it’s a very solid format with lots of possibilities. You can be
crazy and draft all the wacky stuff and combos available to you, such as the
deck I want to try that uses Vent Sentinel, the new card Flamewright that makes
1/1 defenders, and the conspiracy Sentinel Dispatch that give you a 1/1
defender at the beginning of the game. Or you can draft just solid decks
utilizing common archetypes with the help of some of the new cards in the set.
For what is currently the only conspiracy draft I’ve been a player in, I ended
up in a very fun and solid Jund Morbid deck where the red was a very light
splash and I had a single Island for a Dack Fayden I opened in pack three.
However before I talk about my draft, allow me to finish my thoughts on the
draft format in general. Despite being a
diverse format I feel that despite being an interesting experience this is a
detriment to newer players who have no experience with most of the cards in the
format and the players who didn’t follow spoilers and don’t know how the new
cards and abilities play out. It is because of this I feel that the actual
draft takes a lot longer than it should. Now this can be counter acted by
having a table full of fun people and friends who you can joke around with and
share a good time with, but the draft is still going to take a while without
experience and even the new cards can make the draft go long. Because of these
reasons I want to advise people DO NOT draft the set if you will be a first
time drafter. There were several people at the couple drafts my shop has
already had who were first time drafters and this seemed to also drag out the
draft. My draft for instance had at least 4 players who had no idea what a
majority of the cards were, excluding the brand new cards, and a new drafter;
these factors combined helped the draft portion take a around if not a little
more than an hour. Now I’m all for people drafting as I really enjoy limited,
but this IS NOT something for first time drafters. I highly recommend taking
part in another draft where you know the format, like Theros block, for the
first time or just buying the packs and drafting with your friends for your
first draft.
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| How it feels for the uninformed to draft conspiracy |
Now as I mentioned earlier that for my first draft I ended
up in a very cool Jund Morbid list, with red as a very light splash along with
a Dack Fayden (Because come on you want to play the greatest thief in the
multiverse). I knew that after my first
several picks I wouldn’t be fighting over black very hard because I picked up
two Liliana’s Specters, a Tragic Slip, and a Syphon Soul all in my first five
picks, and rounding out the five was my first of two Deathreap Ritual. So
coming out of the gates I had a feel a rock style list with a morbid theme
would be pretty open and fun, and eventually I went in on a red splash to
finish out my jund colors. From what I can tell the format is very forgiving
with multicolor decks, and I think it in fact encourages even three color decks
will all the land cycling there is in the set so it’s very easy to pick up ways
to play your colors. So after the draft here’s what I came up with included
what was left over in my card pool:
In deck:
Also in pool:
2 Provoke
By the end
of the draft I was very happy with what I had managed to get into my pool,
including the little bit of value I had opened up. If you were to ask me if
there was anything else I would have wanted for my deck I would have loved to
have had another Tragic Slip, another Syphon Life, another Infectious Horror,
possibly a small pox or two, and of course a Pernicious Deed. However I can’t
really complain about what I picked up during the draft and was very happy with
the results. I was so successful in the draft that I was having trouble cutting
all the playables I picked up, so eventually I resided that since these games
would go longer and I had enough draw effects that I could play somewhere
between a 45 and 50 card deck.
Eventually I settled on the 46 cards that found their way into my deck.
I feel that there are enough reasons again ranging from the possibility that
these games can go long as they are multiplayer style and because that there
are enough draw effects that this is one of the few times players can easily
break the golden rule of 40 card limited decks and now worry about this
effecting them in the long run of their game/games.
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| Just had to play him |
Moving on now to the actual game/games played. For my draft
we had 16 people total, enough for four 4-man games where the winners of each
game would go onto a final four table for the actual prizes. My shop will
usually cross-pod it’s games, but while this is usually something I find rather
annoying for this format I think it made it rather exciting. How the split for
the 4-mans went there ended up being two players from each 8-man draft per table, but what made this interesting
with the cross-pod games was that while my table didn’t open a Lore Seeker(the
guy who adds a pack to the draft), the other table opened TWO of them. My shop
didn’t have any interesting packs lying around so they decided to add a
prerelease promo pack from Born of the Gods and a pack of Core Set 2011, don’t
worry I’m placing an order for some very interesting packs in hopes of my pod
opening one of these guys next time I draft conspiracy. As for the actual game it was more lackluster
than I wanted. I’m personally a very political player in multiplayer, and I love
just seeing what I can get away with in EDH games while I slowly voltron up my
Kemba to the point of being able to one-shot people, so I built the Jund deck
above accordingly. It was a very grindy deck made to go long and gain
incremental advantage until it was down to me an one other person and I would
be so far ahead that it would be had for them to beat me. However that was not
the case for my opponents as they had all drafted midrange and weenie
strategies, one player was on this weird 4-color amalgamation that was leaning
very midrange, another player was on WR weenies that just tried to flood out
the board and stall till he could slam one of his three 8/8 Lurking Automatons
that now cost four thanks to a Brago’s Favor and were also given haste due to
Immediate Action, and the final player was on a somewhat controlling but more
midrange U/W fliers list. So while they built up their board states and I was
just maintaining the field and giving myself political leverage thanks to an
early spectral search light the game divulged into a cold war. I was so bad
that none of the players wanted to make a move because if they swung out first
the game would turn into one shots around the table. Eventually after much
deliberation me and the 4-color player came to an agreement with the player on
U/W fliers to give him a reprieve if he took out the weenie player as we all
feared the looming threat of the soviet automatons. So once the U/W player took
out the weenie player it was a few more turns of draw go until it was time to
make a go at claiming the prize that lay before me; unfortunately the game
would have ended sooner as the 4-color player knowing he couldn’t best me was
close to just backstabbing the U/W player and then losing to me once my turn
came around, but according to him after several turns of draw-go he forgot that
he even had a combat phase. Now on my next turn I decided to go off, after
drawing several cards through various means, syphoning, causing my opponents to
lose 4 life apiece with Tyrant’s Choice, and running through several recycles
of Pitchburn Devils I had dealt my opponents
around 20 points of damage total setting me up to win next turn if
nothing went wrong.....But alas the machinations of my opponents demise were
foiled by the death of one of my creature like followers and a lowly counter
spell leaving the U/W bourgeoisie to claim their place as head of our section
of the plane of Fiora. Despite being a very interesting climax to the game the
board stall made the game draw out a lot longer than it should have and lasted
for about an hour and a half. Putting this into perspective my table was the
“third” to finish their game, I say “third” because one table had to start all
over after a Stronghold Discipline forced a draw in their first game, with one
of the tables finishing very quickly due to an agro deck just running the table and the fourth table still
finishing their game. That means the fourth table was playing for longer than
an hour and a half, although I believe they finished soon after my table, and
the table that had to restart was in the middle point of their game where
boards were very underdeveloped. This
fact is to me at least is a major downside of the format. I expect the games to
go longer due to the nature of the format but there is no reason the games
should range from 20-30ish minutes to an hour and a half+, especially when an
average casual 4-man game of commander with my play group is easily over in an
hour(unless I get bored and Armageddon on turn four……..sorry guys).
So now it’s time for the final verdict, and the jury is
out……..I enjoy the format. However it’s not without its flaw, which will
hopefully be fixed as people get more experience with the format. Again I still
think it’s over hyped and not as good as I had hoped it would be, but that’s
not to say it isn’t fun. It’s just that until people adjust to the new
environment and start seeing the main archetypes the draft is going to take a
lot longer than people are used to and the same goes for the games. But I think
wizards did a great job on putting something together that I think people will
be able to look back on and enjoy, I just don’t see myself wanting to draft it
every week as I had originally hoped. Well guys it was fun getting back to
writing, and as I said I plan on returning to a weekly schedule of
Wednesday/Thursday posts at least until the fall semester starts up in August.
See you all next week,
Zack
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| Duane's glad to be back as well! |
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