Another Friday night has come and gone at the local Wizard's of the Coast...and another loss at the booster draft (I've only played in two). Sure, it wasn't entirely my fault, it was a booster draft, and it was three Apocalypse boosters at that. It was kinda unstable. But I just can't shake that feeling that I didn't do something right. So I came to the conclusion there was only one thing left to do, plead for help like a dog!
Well first maybe I should explain a little. A booster draft is when 6+ people (6 people in the case of the deck listed below) each buy 3 boosters. Everyone opens one, picks a card, and passes the rest to the right, pick a card pass to the right, and so on till no cards are left. Next you open the next pack and do the same thing passing the cards right, and the same with the last passing left again. Once you have 45 cards you sideboard the ones you don't want and add land. Decks can range from just about anything and playing mono color is next to impossible, especially in Apocalypse.
So let's look at the deck I played:
White Cards
Manacles of Decay
Dega Sanctuary
Standard Bearers X 5
Coalition Honor Guard
Helionauts X 5
Black Cards
Mind Extraction
Suppress
Necra Sanctuary
Necravolver
Phyrexian Rager
Red Cards
Bloodfire Dwarf
Dwarven Patrol
Green Cards
Lay of the Land X 2
Gold Cards
Fervent Charge
Captain's Maneuver
Soul Links X 2
Gerrard's Verdict X 2
Squee's Embrace
Flowstone Charger
Land
6 Plains
3 Swamps
3 Mountains
2 Forests
Sideboard
Coalition Flag
Angelic Crusaders X 3
Enlistment Officers X 2
Last Caress
Quagmire Druid
Mournful Zombie
Necra Disciples X 2
Bloodfire Infusion
Dwarven Landslides X 2
Putrid Warrior
Ok, any mistakes that immediately jump out, well maybe I shouldn't have passed up that Anavolver for the Honor Guard, but then I'd have played blue too. I passed up a Goblin Trenches, but then you'd have to sacrifice land. Anything else? Well...not a lot of big creatures (which hurt when I played a Razorfin Hunter/Quicksilver Dagger deck). Not much else I see. If you see any mistakes (ANY mistakes!) I might have made, have any suggestions for next time, or anything e-mail me duh_uh7@yahoo.com.
(message in reply to submission)
Logan,
Hi. I am a member of the CardShark team and saw your submission. I have some suggestions for your deck:
a few simple rules about booster draft are:
1. You should technically never run more than 40 cards.
2. You should run lots of creatures or creature removal (burn, creature destriction, counterspells, etc) 16 creatures or creature removal spells are good.
3. You should run about 6 to 8 other spells besides creatures
4. You should run 16 to 18 land (for 30 cards you ran way too few land)
I noticed your deck had 30 cards before land, so that is a problem. You ran too many non-creature spells. The more cards you run the less statistical chance of you drawing any 1 card (so you might draw some that aren't as good as others). For consistency, always run 40 cards total.
Also make sure to balance your land out amongst the colors.
You may have passed up some good stuff to draft, so I cannot comment on that, but given the cards you did draft here's what I would do:
White Cards
Manacles of Decay
Dega Sanctuary
Coalition Flag
Standard Bearers X 5
Coalition Honor Guard
Angelic Crusaders X 3
Helionauts X 5
Red Cards
Bloodfire Dwarf
Dwarven Patrol
Bloodfire Infusion
Gold Cards
Fervent Charge
Captain's Maneuver
Squee's Embrace
Flowstone Charger
Land
9 Plains
5 Mountains
2 Swamps
Ok, so what I just did was brought you down to 2 colors, increased your mana base considerably by running more land and a better ratio. We kept black in as a splash with 2 lands because fervent charge is
pretty good. You have some good b/w cards, but nothing that is that important. I know it is hard to not run all the cool cards, but sometimes you have to do it. You could run a few of those b/w cards, increase your swamps and get rid of some of the flagbearers and helionauts. (not all of them mind you, but some).
Now you have a nice ratio of 24 cards, 16 land, 17 creatures, 7 spells. Your spells are awesome for red and white and your angelfire crusaders get bigger with red. You have mass board control with your bloodfire dwarf and bloodfire infusion and some really have hitting cards with captain's maneuver! This should be a finisher or used to save a creature as a combat trick or to do more damage to an opponent as a combat trick.
Hopefully all this makes sense. Finally I will list all your cards again and put a rating next to them (* = bad, ** =ok, *** =good, **** =awesome) You should only play 3's and 4's if possible.
White Cards
Manacles of Decay ****
Dega Sanctuary ***
Standard Bearers X 5 ***
Coalition Honor Guard ****
Helionauts ***
Black Cards
Mind Extraction **
Suppress ***
Necra Sanctuary ***
Necravolver ***
Phyrexian Rager ***
Red Cards
Bloodfire Dwarf ****
Dwarven Patrol ***
Green Cards
Lay of the Land X 2 ***
Gold Cards
Fervent Charge ***
Captain's Maneuver ****
Soul Links X 2 **
Gerrard's Verdict X 2 ***
Squee's Embrace ****
Flowstone Charger ***
Land
6 Plains
3 Swamps
3 Mountains
2 Forests
Sideboard
Coalition Flag ***
Angelic Crusaders X 3 ***
Enlistment Officers X 2 ***
Last Caress **
Quagmire Druid ***
Mournful Zombie ***
Necra Disciples X 2 ***
Bloodfire Infusion ****
Dwarven Landslides X 2 ***
Putrid Warrior ***
Hope this helps. Enjoy.
Matthew (CardShark Support Team)
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