Magic the Gathering Online Drafting

- Erik

I took a trip into the seldom-visited world of Constructed Magic for M2010 Game Day. It’s not that I mind playing constructed, and usually if I can build a competitive deck, I will play in the PTQ’s and such, but I prefer not to netdeck (which is very hard to not do and be competitive these days) and I prefer to play control decks, where Wizards keeps pushing aggro.

A couple weeks ago, I played a home-brew Blue/Black Mill deck using Mind Funeral and Haunting Echoes in an 8-man Standard and went 2-1. I was pleased with the deck’s performance, but did not really enjoy playing it, so I broke down and borrowed the cards I needed to build 5-Color Control, which was not only one of/the top deck in the format, but fit very well with my play style.

The version I ran initially had 1 Baneslayer Angel, 1 Broodmate Dragon, and 1 Bogardan Hellkite, but I was testing against Blightning Aggro with Anathemancers maindeck and having trouble, and I expected a lot of those, so I added a 2nd Baneslayer in place of an Esper Charm. I ended up not playing a whole lot of Blightning Aggro, but still was glad for the 2nd Angel. I originally intended to run 4 Great Sable Stags in the sideboard, but was only able to get a hold of 2 and replaced the others with Path to Exiles, which served me just fine.
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-Steve Bahnaman

Hindsight is 20/20, but I have made a concerted effort *not* to look at Bryan’s results in writing this commentary.  Starting only from the first pick without looking ahead, I’m going to redraft this myself.  To start with though, Bryan makes the good point that when you first-pick Jund Charm, you don’t exactly commit yourself as hard as some people think…in fact, you really still have three or four plans theoretically open because Naya Splash Black and, to a lesser extent, Grixis Splash Green, are options too.  Jund-based 5-color control and Jund-based control decks can both be quite strong.  So can Jund Aggro.  The 5-color control draft archetype often uses rather underdrafted Jund-based cards like Pestilent Kathari, to stall the opponent until it can start to play big beaters, and Black and Red have the most removal options in every set in the format.  Black-Red is a good base for 5-color control, and having green if Bryan does play all three of these colors heavily allows access to Druid of the Anima and Trace of Abundance.

But I wouldn’t have taken the Jund Charm.  This is a matter of preference, not a matter of power, but let me tell you why. (continue reading…)