Welcome to part II of the unknown length part series on the Nettling Dad’s mono white draftravaganza. For the draft and deckbuild part see part I here.

Match Summary

This run started good 2-0. But then went off the rails for a 2-3 finish. I will not bury the lead, in game 3 my mana wasn’t perfect and I let it get to me and that propagated through the remaining games. So what do you do about it? You pick one game and call in the Benalish Dad for coaching.

Coaching Summary

A good discord chat thread and then a live screen share session and we had a solid breakdown and discussion of game 4, (details here). From that we identified a few key coaching points for me to focus on. They are:

1. mental fortitude – know what tilts you and step away if you can
2. prove it – if you read that they have a combat trick it is usually wise to make them prove it
3. plan – have a plan, update your plan, don’t get stuck in an outdated plan

There are couple other context points to hit.

1. I have been on hiatus from magic for 7 years, AFR was my first set back but as LSV points out in LR #614, ~”you cannot play matches in MID like you did in AFR, this ain’t a core set”. I am definitely digging out of a hole there. e.g., coaching point number 2 is something I worked on a decade ago and it is back with a vengeance.
2. Once AFR draft got boring I started grinding mono white weenie in standard 2022, once I learned the format I was winning a ton on autopilot and I think it actually caused me to lose my limited edge.

Coaching Details

The Benalish Dad provided a few step marks in my replays for us to focus on. I tried to remember where my mind was at in that moment and then compare to what I could see looking back at the replay later. In particular we identified that I was not seeing all of my options and that my lack of mental toughness (on tilt) was the root cause.

In both of these scenarios it is my turn. What’s the play? (post in the comments)

Conclusion

I now have some coaching points to work on. My plan is to isolate and focus on one point at a time until I level up then move on to the next. And then once I am better at these I will still lose games and we will still be able to recap and coach!

Let’s talk about black aggro aka blaggro. I had fun playing with a couple pieces in a recent draft. I got a trophy, but, it’s real early in the format, so get your grains of salt ready. Anyway, let’s go

Check out this 2-drop. It was bonkers for me. TBF, I think the value will drop as people learn the format. But for now, this bad boy grows big.

And having shown a opener lets look at a finisher that is better than you think on first glance.

In case you missed it the second part says “whenever a creature dies”. Which means ….

To see what I’m talking about check out the final game of this draft, but ignore the first few turns where my mind was off somewhere else: https://www.17lands.com/draft/713df7f4e51d4ddfb6e0f2a65bdaea90

Also please ignore the part of that one game where I forgot instants exists, that was a rough moment for me.

Alert! Alert! Alert! Contortionist Troupe is the real deal!

Seriously, XG get X counters is usually good and this team is a house. Only gets better in multiples. Buy Buy Buy!

Editor’s Note

Also note the pretty clever pun on contortionist, since it can “contort” itself into whatever power you need to turn on Coven! Brilliant design.