ACR Draft #8 - Esper

(The weird number is for my own bookkeeping: I'm keeping my own log of every draft I do now.)

So I figured out how I want to do replays and commentary. Here are the games, please leave comments! (But be gentle, it's the first time the Intarweb has heard my voice.)

Round 1: Game 1, Game 2, Game 3
Round 2: Game 1, Game 2
Round 3: Game 1 (MIA), Game 2, Game 3

I can't find the draft record either (Where'd they go? I thought it was in C:\Documents and Settings\(me)\Application Data\Wizards of the Coast\Magic Online\3.0, but nothing's been recorded there for months!), so here's the decklist:
1 Court Homunculus
2 Darklit Gargoyle
3 Esper Stormblade
1 Ethercaste Knight
1 Tidehollow Sculler
1 Aven Squire
1 Ethersworn Shieldmage
2 Parasitic Strix
1 Brackwater Elemental
1 Frontline Sage
2 Cloudheath Drake
1 Glassdust Hulk

1 Path to Exile
1 Call to Heel
1 Excommunicate
1 Oblivion Ring
1 Resounding Silence
1 Traumatic Visions

1 Mistvein Borderpost
1 Arcane Sanctum
7 Plains
6 Island
2 Swamp

Relevant Sideboard:
1 Cancel
1 Bone Splinters

One comment: I boarded in Cancel a lot, so maybe I should have played that instead of Excommunicate (the card I boarded out most often).

Incremental Growth Reborn?

So I haven't written anything about my Grand Prix. In short, with the three byes, I went 3-0 then 0-3. In the PTQ I lost my first round, won 7 straight, then lost playing for the Top 8. (I do have some interesting thoughts about playing for the Top 8, though.)

I went to Boise this past weekend and went an abysmal 2-4 with the same deck. I lost to a Five-Color Blood/Control player who Top 8'd and a pretty awful Doran player, and some other gems like a Makeshift Mannequin deck with lots of removal and Shriekmaw (fair enough) and Oona's Prowler and Beacon of Destruction as a win condition (not cool), and then another Naya deck (of course in the hands of a terrible player) with fatties like Blitz Hellion, Spearbreaker Behemoth, and Knight of New Alara, threatening to dome me with Brion Stoutarm and, wait for it, Minion Reflector. FML.

The moral of the story? Play an inherently powerful deck next time! My deck was probably fine against the metagame, but those random decks are actually pretty awful for my deck. The first one generates card advantage off of Makeshift Mannequin vs. my deck's zero card advantage and disruption. The second Naya deck has more fat than I do, so if I don't get a blowout hand, he's going to win most of the time if I go to combat, and his deck has reach with Brion Stoutarm. Especially in a place like Boise, I need to make absolutely sure I can beat random decks off the radar. Faeries and Five-Color do that for sure. I should have made a push to play Faeries.

Anyway, I won't be worried about playtesting Constructed for the next month, so until then there is Limited. I plan on doing more MODO reports on this blog, with draft recaps and also some videos of my replays and DVD-style commentary where I reflect on what I did, instead of the live commentary that is prevalent. I'll also have some more thoughts about my mental game, since I've been thinking a lot about it. It's good to be able to find the right play, but of course the goal is to find it in a timely manner every time.