Had a great coaching session with LordTupperware (nee Ethan Saks) where we spent some time going deeper on draft and weighing picks. There was a great argument early in pack 2:

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Returned Pastcaller is a B+, just a powerful 2:1 that has a real ethreat. Combat Professor has been climbing the ranks and is probably the top mono-white card at B-/C+. But we’re midway through pack 2, so context matters more. (Note 17lands wasn’t installed on my laptop due to corporate firewalls). At this point I had a good base of aggressive white cards but still not settled. Also: I did not have an Environmental Sciences.

I argued with Ethan a fair amount and I think he was right I was wrong. I wanted the Pastcaller because I wanted to increase my ceiling. Ethan argued for the Combat Professor because, while there were whispers of red, it wasn’t super open and I had no splashing tools. Thus the odds that it sits idle in the sideboard are significant. And lo and behold, that’s what happened.

This gave rise to my latest homework assignment: recognizing in draft when the values of the cards change because of context. In the example above, the Returned Pastcaller dropped in value to a B- while Combat Professor in an aggressive white shell rounds closer to B.

Raw Card Power x Likelihood of Playing – (Compromised Pick to Enable Splash)

Draft log

P1p7

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After pretty good Prismari-ish open, a Mage Duel in P1p4, I felt like it was worth speculating on a narrow, but potentially powerful, Witherbloom. It didn’t really pan out, but a good example of the “low cost speculate” since Tome Shredder isn’t really much more than a D+/C-.

deck

0-2

Lost to Hofri, holy cow killing everything twice is a tall order. But ultimately this deck was just a little too finicky, trying to get cute with double-strike shaman was not enough to reliably pressure opponent. Maybe I should have swung into Lorehold, but just a rough draft.