Hot on the heels of one of the WORST 3-0 decks I’ve ever piloted, we should probably try this again. Except not rely on absolute variance to drag me across the finish line.

Draft log

Well this draft was a mess. Opened a bomb, though a narrow one (gold, rogue deck). I fought fought fought for that lane, but it felt terrible and finally gave up 2/3 of the way through the pack and eked out a medium landfall deck. Let’s review.

P1p1

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Very clear-cut Zareth. 5 mana, can ambush a creature and steals cards out of their graveyard? This is an A and is worth fighting for. Buckle up and let’s draft some rogues!

P1p2

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Is Swarm Shambler good? So it gets bigger, you feed mana into it and it grows. Check. Kind of irrelevant trigger ability. Relic Golem is nice in the rogue deck, can be both payoff and enabler. Straightforward Golem.

P1p3

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Subtle Strike is one of my favorite tricks, it leaves a counter and can often lead to a very clean 2-for-1. The Vine Gecko is a powerful card in the kicker deck. If I didn’t have a P1p1 bomb, I would have taken the gecko. In fact, upon reflection, I should have taken the Gecko, period. It’s too much more powerful.

P1p4

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An off-color flip land versus a slightly-earlier-than-when-you-want-to-take-it Packbeast. Still, doesn’t feel great how empty “rogues” are.

p1p5

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Okay, a reasonable flip-land that’s on-color. That feels good. Zero rogues is starting to flash red though.

p1p6

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Aaaand we’re back to feeling bad. Brushfire is a good narrow card and maybe was the signal here? Practiced tactics? Lots of yuck. It’s hard not looking back with hindsight bias, but I think this is where I take a higher power card instead of a C-/D+ card that’s in “my lane”

p1p10

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Skipping ahead to pick 10, this is where I give up on rogues. It’s clear that RG is completely open, there are zero cards in blue or black and haven’t been any good ones in a while.

Summary

Well this is the epitome of an ‘off-ramp’ deck. Would have been nice to have snagged some of those earlier cards but I suppose it’s a …deck. Ironically, I’m victorious through the first two rounds mostly on the strength of facing poor decks and picking up flip-lands with the Hellion/Stomper. And then close out the third round against a BW… but not clerics deck. Wow.

3-0

Never give up and never surrender! You never know what will happen even with a bad deck. And the power of the off-ramp is very real. Just imagine how this deck would have done with the extra Brushfire & Gecko!