I 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

This is a recent email that I received from Paul Jordan aka PJ, that I thought would be useful to all of you Top8Magic fans. The images did not come out in the post, but the original file is here: Draftcap Instructions.

Enjoy

Matt

Draftcap Instructions (Courtesy of Paul Jordan)

Creating your own “Drafting With” series is pretty straight-forward. All you need is Magic Online and your own webpage. If you don’t have a webpage, you can easily create one at Google, which is what I’ve done.

Creating your webpage

To start a webpage at Google, first make sure you are signed in. Then just go to More > Sites

Then click on Create New Site. Go through the steps, choosing your site name and URL and you’re done.

Recording drafts on MTGO

Go to Menu > Settings > Gameplay and make sure the box for “Enable Draft Recorder” is checked.

MTGO will record all packs and picks and put them into Documents > Games > Magic The Gathering Online > Drafts as text files.

Converting those text files

Go to http://www.zizibaloob.com/convert_images.html and paste the contents of the text file into the Image Converter box and hit Convert Draft. Now there will be 3 boxes on the screen:

Image Converter (where you pasted your text file contents)

Output (what you copy for future use)

Preview (what it will look like on your webpage)

Copy the contents of the 2^nd box (output) onto your clipboard for the next step.

Adding a draft to your webpage

Back at your page in Google, click on Create Page. Enter in a page name and URL. If you’re going to be doing multiple drafts, you probably want a standard naming convention (draft_## or something like that) but it isn’t necessary. Once you have your name and URL, click Create Page. You’ll have a screen something like this:

Click on the HTML button on the top bar and paste the output from the draft converter and hit update. Now your screen should look like this:

You can now add comments, your decklist, or anything else. When you’re done, click Save on the top right of your screen. That’s it, you’re done.

Note – if you want to keep your decklist, you need to save it separately in MTGO during deck construction. To do this, when building your deck click “Save As” and save it as a text file. Then you can just copy/paste it into your commentary.

Fans,

As a frequent Magic Online and Finkel draft participant, I was thinking that there may be some good material there to write about.

What would you all like to see in a post about Magic Online drafting and Finkel Drafting? 

Let me know.

Best,

Matt