M10 drafting

[ross miles]

been out of the loop for a while! what's people's take on how to draft m10 stuff. word.

[Amar Dattani]

pretty lame. i dont think im going to go to any more M10 drafts unless they are for a PTQ or GPT/GP etc
it really has no depth to it - but there are a lot of money cards you can draft...

[ross miles]

what are the big monies

[James Mills]

Baneslayer Angel, Great Sable Stag, Lands, Pithing Needle, Planeswalkers

[Ben Titmarsh]

All that happens in every m10 game is the ground stalls on about turn 5, then someone eventually plays sleep or overrun and wins

[stevie_b]

just don't bother.

[Thomas David Baker]

Some (fairly) unquestionable truths about M10:

- Red is very thin. Prefer to splash Fireball over leaping in with both feet.
- Black really wants you to play mono-Black or close to (Tendrils of Corruption, Consume Spirit, Nightmare). Red has some similar cards but isn't deep enough to consider it. The mono-B deck is very strong but folds to White Knight.
- Green's efficient creatures don't have evasion and thus Green is worse than White (with efficient creatures + fliers) and probably Blue (fliers, Sleep, but a bit thin).
- The bomb Uncommons determine everything. Sleep, Overrun, Fireball, Mind Control. To a lesser extent Tendrils of Corruption, Armored Ascension, probably others. The bomb rares also, although they are of course rarer: Ant Queen, Royal Assassin, Baneslayer Angel, Cemetery Reaper, etc.
- Removal is at a premium, even more so than usual. Things like Entangling Vines are playable.
- Gorgon Flail is good. Rod of Ruin is OK. Prodigal Pyromancer is nowhere near as good as Vithian Stinger. Goblin Artillery is a borderline bomb. Magebane Armor is probably a bomb. Blinding Mage is very strong. Deadly Recluse is good. Some of the walls are playable. Merfolk Looter is awesome.
- Levitation is surprisingly good in UG. It may be otherwise unplayable and should table.
- WU fliers-of-death and Mono-B life-gain-and-kill-you are probably the best archetypes. But really the best archetypes are "creatures + overrun", "creatures + sleep" or "creatures + bomb rare".
- Elite Vanguard, Runeclaw Bears and other cards that look like they would go in a nice aggressive Shards deck are basically crap. The other guy will play a Centaur Courser before long and make your early dudes irrelevant.
- Bombs, Removal, Evasion as the mantra goes but to a such a degree that anything that does not fall in these categories has almost no way to impact the game at all.

[James Mills]

Or your opponent can play a forest walker and do 18 points of damage with it.

Ben Titmarsh said:

All that happens in every m10 game is the ground stalls on about turn 5, then someone eventually plays sleep or overrun and wins

[Amar Dattani]

that was quite funny. cant believe it actually did 18 points. the other 3 were from bens own banshee!

[ross miles]

cheers tom - thats the kind of advice i'm looking for. although i just drafted lots of red online - shit

[Dan Barrett]

Zephyr Sprite = Lightning Bolt

[stevie_b]

tom i think your mate olivier would disagree with your opinion on m10 red. Bombs aside, i watched him 3rd pick a panic attack, and along with multiple jackal pups, lightning elementals and fiery hound drafted what closest resembles an all-in aggro deck.

[Thomas David Baker]

Tiff, who has a 100% record against Mr. Ruel and has won prizes in her last three M10 drafts, is big on the multiple Panic Attack, multiple Trumpet Blast red deck, too. And I am 1-5 this week in M10 draft matches. So I could definitely be wrong about Red.