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mediocremagicman · 6 years

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Wednesday night draft!

9 Person Ixalan (3xXLN)

This week I finally got a chance to run something different than the usual archetypes in Ixalan which felt like a breath of fresh air. While it's not a full fledged archetype there are a couple of cards that play into a G/B deck based around explore. I only ended up with one of these cards which meant the deck wasn't as cohesive as you would like an Ixalan deck to be. Luckily I had enough strong two drops and other general good stuff that I was able to end up with a 2-1 record putting me in third.

The Draft (Each pick in order from top to bottom, then left to right)

Pick one started off rocky with a Ashes of Abhorrent as the rare. Snapping Sailback isn't an exciting first pick either but without any of the truly powerful commons or uncommons it made the cut. The following pick was an interesting one that I believe I made the wrong call on. In the pack there was Sleek Schooner, Queen's Commission and Call to the Feast. Call to the Feast is the strongest cards of the three but as a gold card it's definitely not something I want to take this early. Queen's Commission is stronger than the Schooner but ties me to white so I opted to stay as open as possible. What I should have done is take the Commission and gamble on the Call to the Feast coming back. One wasted pick isn't a huge risk compared to the potential upside of being the only B/W player and getting the Call to wheel. In this case the Call to the Feast did wheel but since I didn't take the risk the that door wasn't open to me. A second Sailback coming up after it was a good pick. While I wasn't thrilled about it pick one this is the spot where I expect to see it. It being the third most powerful card in the deck makes a great deal more sense than it being the most powerful card. Next pick is when things get interesting. Even though B/G isn't really an archetype Mark of the Vampire is just a generally good enough card that it is worth taking here. The classical wisdom of aura's is that they are bad because if your opponent has removal or strong enough creatures they can still trade either one creature or one spell for your two cards (the creature and the aura). Due to the environment of Ixalan however both of these risks are mitigated. Creatures in this format are small which makes the odds very high that whatever you have will get big enough that a single creature can't trade with it. Removal in this format is for the most part sorcery speed; this means you usually get at least one swing in. If you assume they have sorcery speed removal that means you get one swing in. That one swing gets you either a decent life drain or eats a small creature which is just enough value to justify the aura. And that is the worst case. As I said in the opening G/B isn't a full archetype but there are two cards that support that color combo. When I already have cards in both of those colors taking said cards feels like a good idea and Wildgrowth Walker is one of those cards. A second Mark of the Vampire as a follow up is just as good as the first. The question didn't come up this draft but I would say that two is the limit however. None of the things that make aura's playable matters when you draw two of them and no creature to play them on. I could rant for days about how good the one mana combat tricks are in this format. Finding one in my colors this late is a sign I picked the right colors. Ravenous Daggertooth is a filler three drop. It's nothing to write home about but there wasn't anything in the pack to jump colors for. Next is perhaps the most exciting Dire Fleet Interloper there has ever been. It's starting to look like the G/B explore deck might actually be feasible. Ixalli's Diviner makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside. It plays into the non-archetype archetype I'm building and as a three or four butt keeps me safe and cozy. Heartless Pillage is on color but really belongs in a more aggressive deck than what I'm putting together. Ideally you want to play that turn five or so after you've emptied out all your two and three drops to make them discard their five and six drops you can't deal with. Despite the archetype mentioned in the name Commune with Dinosaurs is a fine playable in any deck that has green in it telling me that green was very open.

Pack two opened with a off color rare but one of the few pieces of unconditional removal in the set that I'm happy to take. Second pack wasn't nearly as satisfying. Two drops are very important in Ixalan but Deeproot Warrior is a very aggressive two drop and I need to build more defensively if I want to live long enough to cast my Snapping Sailbacks or get maximum value out of Mark of the Vampire. A second Contract Killing is as good as the first. Colossal Dreadmaw is the kind of big top end my deck wants, assuming I can get the support to get there. As I take the second Deeproot Warrior I grow wary that I've made a mistake sticking to the green. Vanquish the Weak gently reassures me that I've made at least one good color decision. Skulduggery yells the same message right in my face. I already think Commune is playable in any green deck and now that I've got four potential hits to get me a creature when I need it I'm happy to snatch out of the pack. A second Colossal Dreadmaw (combined with the Communes and Sailbacks) pretty much guarantees that I will have threats in the lategame. March of the Drowned isn't very good outside of the pirates deck but Crushing Canopy and Crash the Ramparts are decent cards to pick up this late in the pack.

Pack three kicked off with a Savage Stomp. Even at full cost this card is as brutal as it's name implies. My creatures are generally strong enough to live through the fight and I have a solid chance of playing it for one mana. Grazing Whiptail is a card that looks relatively unexciting but is one of the most powerful green commons. The combination of stats matches up very favorably in most situations. It's exactly the kind of thing I need to sure to stabilize in the mid game so that I can make it to the long game. Two in a row makes things look pretty optimistic. While I hadn't found any of the other explore payoff cards a second Dire Fleet Interloper is still worthing taking although I don't think I would play two without any unless I find another one of those payoffs. A second Ixalli's Diviner will definitely make the deck since it works with my plan to push to late game. At this time although the green really started to flow it they weren't cards that jived with what I was trying to do. Merfolk Branchwalker was the only card that was just a generally good card. The rest either belonged in the Merfolk deck that I didn't have the pieces for or a ramp deck with a even bigger top end than my own.

The Final Decklist

Enchantment/Artifacts: 2x Mark of the Vampire Instant/Sorceries: 2x Commune with Dinosaurs 2x Skulduggery 1x Crash the Ramparts 1x Vanquish the Weak 1x Savage Stomp 2x Contract Killing Creatures: 1x Merfolk Branchwalker 1x Ixalli's Keeper 2x Ixalli's Diviner 1x Wildgrowth Walker 1x Ravenous Daggertooth 2x Grazing Whiptail 1x Dire Fleet Interloper 2x Snapping Sailback 2x Colossal Dreadmaw Lands: 8x Forest 7x Swamp

Round 1 (2-0) I played against a B/W vampires deck. It also happened to be the third and four game of magic my opponent had ever played. Game one I curved Commune turn one, Wildgrowth Walker turn two, Ixalli's Diviner and Commune turn three and Grazing Whiptail turn four. Their first play was a Paladin of the Bloodstained which I Savage Stomped. I attacked conservatively just to be careful but it wasn't long before I was able to just smash hard enough they knew there was no way out. Game two there was less going on for me. I didn't have anything until a Ravenous Daggertooth but I followed it up with a Mark of the Vampire turn four. I didn't have anything else going on for awhile but my opponent kept attacking one one creature and chumping with another when a multi-block could have stopped my Daggertooth. They had enough creatures to that it took a bunch of attacks but eventually I the game was mine.

Round 2 (2-1) I played against a R/B pirates deck. Game one started off horribly for me when they played two Headstrong Brutes into Charging Monstrosaur. I had to chuck my Diviner under the Monstrosaur bus to make it to my turn six where I played a Colossal Dreadmaw which at least stopped the Monstrosaur. Next turn as I took six more from the menacing Brutes and extra drain from a second main Skymarch Bloodletter. Then I really turned things around with by using Contract Killing on their Monostrosaur and with the treasures had just enough mana to cast Mark of the Vampire on the Dreadmaw and swing for a 16 point life swing. They still had a hope of winning the race so they decide to swing out on their turn. On my turn I untapped and drew what became the most Savage Stomp I've ever seen. Game two they actually managed to come out with the same push from double Brutes into Monostrosaur but this time I didn't have the tricks to pull it out. Game three my opponent mulliganed to six, took a hand with two lands and by the time they found another I had a full board.

Round 3 (1-2) was another B/W vampire deck from a much more experienced player. Game one I played an Ixalli's Diviner turn two which nullifies most any attacks from the vampires deck which allowed me to live long enough to get to my big things that their tokens just couldn't deal with. Game two started off similarly with a Wildgrowth Walker into Diviner but while they found the optimal top end in form of Anointed Deacon and Contract Killing I found only more lands. Game three I had the most effective mulligan to five I think I could have had with able to play a two, three and four drop. but they just had answers to everything I played down to having a Bright Reprisal to kill the Ravenous Daggertooth I had just enchanted with Mark of the Vampire.

#original #pics #MtG Draft #mtg limited #MtG #Magic Drafting #ixalan

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adombikes · 7 years

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This is not the best picture of my new Crust Bikes Romanceur, but it shows the bike with accoutrements for the five hour ride I was on yesterday, and is a bit more interesting as such. This is my newest bike. If you’ll recall older posts of mine where I discuss wanting to replace my Rivendell A. Homer Hilsen with something, well, this is what replaces it. Crust Bikes is a new brand with a cult~ish following a la that of Rivendell. In fact, many of the Crust owners I follow on Instagram are also Rivendell owners, as the bikes complement each other well. If you want something Rivendell~ish, but are married to the idea of disc brakes, Crust is your answer. This bike happens to be the most Rivendell-like bike of theirs, in that it is fully lugged steel with traditional non-sloping geometry, and an overall classic sensibility. It is designed by UltraRomance, after all.

This bike fills the void in my collection you could call randonneur bike or enduro allroad bike. I loved my A Homer Hilsen for traveling across the city quickly without hesitating to hit some dirt here and there. This bike is second only to my road bike in sheer speed, though it might be a tie for second with my Black Mountain Cycles monster CX. What it loses in speed to my road bike it gains in durability, lock-ability, and most importantly, its ability to carry things.

The Romanceur is perfectly suited to the ride I did yesterday, though the Black Mountain Cycles would’ve done just as well albeit with a slightly different style of riding. Most of the ride was actually on the road; we took the coast south for about an hour before reaching our destination, an old overgrown stagecoach road known colloquially (among cyclists) as Planet of the Apes. At one point, I asked my friends why it is called that, and they couldn’t agree: is it because the road is reminiscent of scenes in the movie, or because the movie is filmed there? To me, nothing about the ride was overtly “Planet of the Apes” but the name makes sense for some reason anyways.

My concern for this bike was the disc brakes. I have disc brakes on my mountain bike because they are standard for modern mountain bikes, but didn’t feel confident about having them on a road~ish bike since all my other bikes have been rim-brakers and discs seem to be so polarizing. It turns out I’m not that picky and that I lucked out with the brakes I ended up with; they work great. They are easy to set up, also, and I discovered that swapping out pads is not an issue. One thing I’ll have to watch is pad wear since disc pads wear out faster than rim brake pads, I think. All that being said, I would have swooped on this bike quicker had it just been spec’d for cantilevers. I know canti’s are notoriously bad, but they are more pure functionally and visually in my humble opinion (IMHO or ATMO).

Someone at a recent bicycle-centered dinner party remarked that this bike might be redundant with my Hunqapillar, and I said that it would not be, though I wasn’t sure having not ridden or even seen the bike in person. I can confirm now that the bike is not redundant with my Hunq, and that it is perhaps most redundant with my Black Mountain MonsterCross. I don’t care and I’m keeping both. The Hunqapillar’s tubing is certainly much stouter, as that bike is meant for lots of ruff-riding. This bike’s ride quality is best described as “springy” where it doesn’t quite plane but it doesn’t fight you while pedaling hard like an Atlantis might. I was slightly worried about the ride yesterday being too rough for the bike, but realistically it would take much more to break a Romanceur.

I’m very slightly bummed because Crust just released a teaser for their new model called the Lightning Bolt, which is a beautiful translucent green, and all my other bikes are green. What can ya do? I really cannot complain because the Romanceur looks great and silver is a cool color, too. I think it’s important to have a wildcard, anyways.

The handlebar bag pictured is a custom vegan Makeshifter Canvas Works Outback Saddlebag. It works great as a handlebar bag even though she markets it without mentioning that capability. I found it to be the perfect size yesterday for carrying a jacket, two bags of chips and two tubs of hummus, along with two tubes and a tire lever and a multitool. My UltraSwift Wizard Sleeve wouldn’t fit between the handlebars on this bike, and would have been overkill for a day ride. What makes this particular bag vegan above her normal bag is that she sourced non-wool felt (made from post-consumer plastic!), non-beeswax waxed canvas, and non-leather straps. The quality and attention to detail are at least a notch above Swift industries, which is saying a lot as Swift makes some really nice stuff.

Overall this bike is amazing and any qualms remain to be seen. The lugs and the fork crown (which is technically a lug, I guess) are reallllllly dope, like medieval almost. One design aspect that might have been overlooked is that since the fork crown is so wide and prominent, it hits the downtube if you rotate the fork enough. Not a huge deal, but it would be nicer not to even think about that. I didn’t notice it or even think about it once on my ride yesterday, so this is a small issue. The WTB horizons set up super wide on the Blunt 35 rims, so they ride nice and plush. I might even convert them to tubeless after writing this. The Novatec hubs seem nice, also, even though they’re kind of an off brand from what I usually get. The sound they make is nice and loud, and unique. The 1x system currently on the bike is fine except I might switch out the derailer for something with a clutch, which will hold the chain tighter (yesterday I was backpedaling a few strokes and dropped the chain - again, not a big deal because it never came off when pedaling forward). I get the sense that this old 9s XT RD is a bit used since it allows for a good amount of chainslap. All this being said, I think I might get a Compass / Rene Herse or White Industries double crankset when I strike it rich. Until then, this 11-34 or whatever it is might be replaced with a SunRace 11-42 or something with a wider range.

I’ve ranted enough. I’m moderate-to-severely hungover and don’t feel like scrutinizing over writing quality today, so it’s probably a bit more conversational than it would be normally. Read it in a Bukowski voice and imagine I’m writing with a fifth of whiskey on my desk and a cigar between my lips. Over & out.

--Adam

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