Drafting with BDM: Getting Past Not Passing Blademaster
bdm | March 15, 2010 | 4:56 pmI recently tweeted about having an Ally problem. I can’t seem to pass a Kazandu Blademaster and am always entertaining fantasies about white allies in the third pack. Seriously my last 5 or 6 drafts have all hinged on me either first picking or getting passed an early Kazandu Blademaster. I have been either blue-white or green-white allies — or all three — pretty much every time.
The green-white deck has paid off multiple times but it is just as often due to better non-ally cards than to the allies themselves — two different Rampaging Baloths have pulled out wins for two different “ally” decks. I decided not to draft a base white deck this time out and even had to pass a Blademaster in the second pack.
It ended up being a pretty odd deck with only 9 actual creatures and 6 enchantment based creatures — 4 Zektar Shrines and 2 Zendikons. I ended up leaving a handful of creatures in the board as well as my equipment in order to make the deck more of a all-in burn style of deck. With the Zendikons and Shrines both resulting in trample creatures I decided that I wanted to play with Claws of Valakut over the equipment in order to win the game in one or two big turns.
The deck performed beautifully and only dropped one mana flooded game en route to winning the draft. I certainly could have built the deck slightly differently but how about my draft picks? What would you have done differently?
2 Claws of Valakut
1 Zektar Shrine Expedition
3 Zektar Shrine Expedition
1 Goblin Bushwhacker
1 Shatterskull Giant
1 Spire Barrage
1 Searing Blaze
18 Mountain
1 Highland Berserker
2 Skitter of Lizards
1 Goblin Roughrider
1 Plated Geopede
2 Crusher Zendikon
1 Torch Slinger
1 Inferno Trap
2 Burst Lightning
1 Deathforge Shaman
Sideboard
1 Welkin Tern
1 Runeflare Trap
1 Bojuka Bog
1 Claws of Valakut
1 Shoal Serpent
1 Kazuul Warlord
1 Mountain
1 Quest for Pure Flame
1 Island
1 Adventuring Gear
1 Hellfire Mongrel
1 Mold Shambler
1 Forest
1 Relic Crush
1 Shoreline Salvager
1 Explorer’s Scope
1 Goblin Ruinblaster
1 Khalni Garden
1 Sunspring Expedition
1 Magma Rift
1 Teetering Peaks
1 Trusty Machete
1 Smoldering Spires
Is there anything sweeter than getting passed not one but TWO Burst Lightnings?
Having drafted decks that I would characterize “all burn” before, I find that Hellfire Mongrel can often function as a 4 damage burn spell by itself as well, often putting the final nail in the coffin. Your opponents will have to race you by dumping creatures onto the board, and thus you can almost treat Hellfire Mongrel like another enchantment based source of damage.
1st Pack/2nd Pick
What happened there?
You had Kor Skyfisher AND Trusty Machete to choose from.
I actually thought the sight of 2 Trusty Machete was sweeter. Passing up the first Machete pack 1 pick 2 for a Kazuul Warlord was somewhat surprising to me as Kazuul Warlord didn’t even make the deck. Trusty Machete is amazing AND can find a home in any deck, which both are assets I always gun for during my first pack.
However, taking Kazuul Warlord and aggressively drafting red for the rest of the draft kept many of the players out of red, thus creating the amazing red deck you see here, even if Kazuul didn’t make the deck. My draft community doesn’t follow color signals that well though, so in my case I’d have ended up picking the Machete anyways…
I would have grabbed the Trusty Machete p1p2 as well.
P2 p3 most likely would have taken molten ravager as they are very good with claws of valakut
P2 p8 Highland Berserker over shortcutter I assume this is what you are talking about. you have 1 playable ally at this point…
The problem with passing the Warlord is that it would have put someone into red for at least a splash. Then he probably doesn’t get passed all that hotness in pack 2.