Pencilling the date in. Sorry I couldn't make it yesterday. I totally forgot in the mess of getting Christmas shopping in and the tree and lights up.

How did last night's go? I assume that you had six since I didn't get called. For the two people who weren't wondering, I passed the test today.

As usual, I'll try to make this upcoming one.

If I can be there I will. Hopefully certain HoppingHobbits want be able to play 2 3/3 fear guys both games, and then Walk the Aeons both games for the win.

There are many levels of draft strategy, Walt. A good place to be is to look at the first pack and decide what the best card is. Then figure that if you got the pack without that card (ie, 2nd pick), what card would you take? That's a signal that you're sending to the person next to you. Also, you look at what color you would be passing the most quality cards in. Ideally, you would want the best card to be the only quality card in its color, so that you have totally cut that color off for that pack. That forces the people after you to take something else, and if you continue cutting your chosen color, then you are well set up to get that color from them in pack 2.

That said, it's much more important imho to draft reactively - to pay attention to what the person to your right is passing to you. If you realize several picks into the first pack that a certain color is wide open in front of you, you should usually switch into it. Most of the times that I have done so, I've been glad. Most of the times that I haven't, I've wished that I did, because it kept coming.

Most draft strategy boils down to trying to have as few people around you in the same colors as you as possible. The rest of it is trying to draft cards that work well together. Occasionally, you'll hate-draft a card, or try to send a false signal to someone to try to screw them. For instance, in a team draft where you are seated next to people from the opposing team, you may try to hook the person to your left into a color by passing a good card or two at the beginning, and then cutting that color as hard as possible.

I've forgotten most of that stuff lately, but mumford's draft walkthrough has awakened something that slept within me.*

*little Dune reference there

Yeah, reading your writeup was helpful. All things being equal with TSP I like to draft WR or WU, but since my first pack was devoid of anything good in any of those colors I settled on a Sporesower Thalid, Mumford then passed me a Might of old Krosa and a second Sporesower Thalid and I was set on green, I drifted in to red as my second color hoping to add removal but I only saw one grapeshot the entire draft. Ended up with a GR beatdown deck, but with no removal if I didnt win the race I was toast. Which made the games against LG frustrating as I might have won one of them if not for the Walk, and the fact that I skipped one of my turns with the damn f6 button.

Only match I won was against TheWalt and only because he gave me credit for a win, in our first insanely long game where I missclicked and gave myself manaburn on the turn I would have swung in for the win. I stabilized at 1 life thanks to fortune thief, and TheWalt slightly missplayed the Kaervek he had stolen out of my deck, which allowed me to kill it, and then sit back and build a huge sap army thinks to the 2 Sporesowers and another Thalid on the board.

Game 2 against TheWalt worked like my deck wanted to, curved up nicely and just beat him down.

Against Unforseen I never stood a chance in either game. Game 1 I played out one of my two swamps early only to see him play the Swampking, on top of some other large rare fatty.

Game 2 was the same, Swampking hit the board on turn 5, making the swamp I had in hand unplayable, a few more fatties after that and I had to concede.

Considering that Mumford would have shut me out of my favorite color if I had tried to force white, I felt OK about my draft, especially since I never saw any removal. Unsure if I did the right thing in splashing for Kaerverk, but I wanted to try him out. Oh and thanks for the Flagstones of Trokiar Mum, my taking wasn't rare drafting was it, seems like it was a pretty late pick and there was nothing else that great in my colors if I remember correctly.

That was a game difference there, and the other was my Sulphurous-deals-2 (or 3)-damage-to-everything-and-everyone was the second to last card in my library....

The other beating was a sound one though...

Yeah. I had 3 of the watchers. I also snagged 3 Devine Congregation, but it only got out once. I only had one Might Sliver.

One thing I've learned with drafts is add LOTS of land, of any possible colour you might be using. Once you construct your deck, only the land you've added to the sideboard can be used. I tried switching out some swamps for forests, but since I didn't have any extra forests, I had to add an island and mountain instead. not quite as useful.

yup. both myself and leapingnome tried to add lands during sideboard. wasn't happening. Unless there was a way to do it we couldn't find.

I figure it was because it was draft, and it saved the deck and sideboard as a group. perhaps we could have between matches, but I don't think it was possible between games.

That's good to know. When we do this again, I guess we should make sure everyone adds extra lands to their sideboard. I'll start working on a more official list of stuff we need to do when we draft, tips like this and such. I also drafted with some friends this weekend and had put this together. It's a tad long, but could be interesting.

I ended up drafting on Saturday with some friends, only five of us so it was a bit goofy. I'm now trying to figure out how to teach someone how to draft better. Two of us at the draft a fairly decent. One of the guys is good at the game, but his theories regarding draft are a bit off. Another guy is not that good at drafting, but sometimes put together a decent set of cards. Finally, the last guy is the one I'm trying to work on. He's really bad at drafting and has been dead set against getting better, until this weekend.

So, this friend of mine is very bad at drafting, even by his own admission. He won't draft that much because every time he does, he simply loses two games and drops. These would be pre-release drafts, or side events at tournaments. At the draft we did he went 0-4, not even winning a single game. He asked for my advice regarding his deck, but after looking through it I realized that working on his deck wasn't going to help him improve at this point. I have to start the process before deck construction.

In order to better understand the draft, I'll run through my account of it. Given the people I was drafting with, I was fairly certain there would be only one other Blue drafter at the table. If you can get into a color which only one other person is drafting at a table of five, then you'll be pretty set. However, I wasn't set on taking Blue beforehand. Deciding upon a color before the draft is generally a bad idea. Sure, if you know everyone hates a color, such as Green, then keep an eye out for it and hop into it when it looks like a sure bet.

When we sat down, I was going to be passing to one of the guys who I figured would take Green, and probably go into an even three color split. It was also likely that none of those colors would be Blue. Feeding me was my friend who I'm trying to work on. I was confident he would start picking up Black, as that is the color I have seen him draft pretty much every time. If he would open a Black removal spell, then it would be likely that he'd just settle into the color at all costs. The other potential Blue drafter was feeding him, so I would have an idea as to what Blue would be like in the third pack I saw.

I cracked open my first pack and found it was full of good stuff. I don't recall everything that was in it, but I believe the big decision was between Strangling Soot and Shadowmage Infiltrator. In the end, I went with the Infiltrator and sent the Soot along. Black/Red would definitely get picked up along the way. The second pack didn't have too much in it, so I swiped a Nightshade Assassin, thinking I could butt into Black by taking the heavy Black cards. The third pack came along and I picked up a Fathom Seer and decided there that my draft was probably going to be Blue. From there on out, I started picking up Blue cards. I nabbed a late Snapback, and I believe a Careful Consideration along the way.

The draft was looking pretty good and I cracked open my second pack. I flipped to the back of the cards and found Sol'kanar hanging out back there. At the time, I didn't have too much happening in other colors, but I did have the Shadowmage. Splashing into Red seemed all right, and I knew there were other Black drafters at the table, so I put the Swamp King into the pile. Notable picks from this pack were a Terramorphic Expanse and a Gemstone Mine. I felt those would help with the splash into the third color.

The last pack had Nicol Bolas sitting in the back. I pondered this one for a while. Nicol Bolas is not a card I would really consider taking most of the time. However, this draft was just with friends and playing him in the deck would be pretty funny. Not only would it be funny, but it would be doable. I passed him in favor of a Looter, hoping nobody would gank him so I could grab him the second time around. The Looter is better for several reasons; he's easy to cast, he gives you card quality, he is evasive, and he does damage while drawing cards. I was pretty happy when Nicol came back around and tossed him into the pile.

The notable cards from this draft that made it into my pile:

• Shadowmage Infiltrator
• Sol'kanar
• Nicol Bolas
• 2 Fathom Seer
• Careful Consideration
• 2 Crookclaw Transmuter
• Errant Ephemeron

I also had a Teferi's Moat, which seemed pretty funny at the time.

I went 4-0 with the deck and only lost one game with it to the mono-White deck. Nicol Bolas only hit the board in one game, but he was able to connect and basically ended the game. The rest of the time he was discarded to Mindstab and buried by Psychotic Episode. The deck was pretty goofy because it was essentially splashing two colors, Black and Red, for Swamp King, Infiltrator, Bolas (bad splash, but funny), and a Lightning Axe. Against the White deck, I even sided out all of the Red in order to pull in White for Teferi's Moat (though he did have a Pardic Dragon).

The other drafters were Green/Black, Black/Red, White/Red, Black/Red. Obviously, there were problems with the Black/Red decks, one went 2-2 and the other was 0-4. My friend drafted the losing Black/Red deck. I spoke with him about the draft when he had me run through his cards afterwards. While looking at his cards, I found that he could not have built a better deck than what he had, so that was good. Unfortunately, he couldn't build a better deck because he didn't have 23 cards that were good enough for the deck to begin with. I suggested he replace the two main deck Plunders for something, anything, else. There was nothing in the sideboard. It was then that I realized that I had to start earlier in the process, and help him out with the actual draft.

My first question was, "Why did you draft the colors you did?" He explained that he took Black because his first pick was a Nightshade Assassin; this was his first mistake. Settling into a color on the first pick is generally suicide. There were three other players drafting Black, even I took a few Black cards early in the first pack. Black had dried up, and I had jumped ship long before the first pack was finished. He was feeding me, so I can't imagine he saw much more Black than I did with the other two Black drafters before him.

Rather than settling into his colors after the first pick, I advised him to keep his options open for most of the first pack. Simply watch for the best cards in each pack and take those. Once you start to see better cards coming from a certain color, start moving into that color. At one point, during the draft, I had started taking White when a Knight of the Holy Nimbus tabled (the White stopped coming after that). That first pick isn't you should base your colors on, it should just be the best card from the pack. If that card happens to be in one of your colors by the end, that's great. Time Spiral has enough playable cards that losing out on a pick here and there won't hurt you that much.

The other point that I couldn't figure out was why he didn't have any cards in his sideboard that were in his colors. My friend told me he took all the cards in his colors that came around and the cards in his sideboard were the cards he took when there was nothing for his deck. My advice here was that should have been a pretty big signal to get out of the colors he was in. He had several Green and White cards, mostly in the form of slivers. After reviewing how everyone drafted, it made sense that he had so much White and Green, since those colors were only drafted by one other person respectively. This is where the idea of signaling comes into play, which is much more difficult to explain.

There were signals that Green and White were open with late Temporal Isolations and Sporesower Thallids coming around. Since my friend had plenty of White and Green cards in his sideboard, it seemed pretty clear that the signals were there and he should have jumped into the colors. The Black had dried up early, as had the Red, there were signals telling him to stop taking those cards.

Now, the big question is this: "How do I help him better understand how to actually draft?"

It looks like I have to work on choosing your colors, reading signals and card evaluation.

Other interesting things from the draft.

• One of the other guys had decided to draft Black/Red before we started and went 2-2.
• Two of the guys hate drafted Errant Ephemerons early on in either the first or second packs and didn't move into Blue.
• Sol'kanar was played nearly every game (except against the White deck in which I sided him out), and he was able to swampwalk every time.
• Nicol Bolas hit play in one game. Gaze of Justice was flashbacked against him, but was countered by a Spiketail Drakeling. Then, a second Gaze was flashbacked, but he was rescued by a Snapback.

Hey Fed, I'm thinking of heading down to Dallas for the Grand Prix in February. I have a couple of questions.

Will you be in attendance?
What sort of wisdom could you impart for my trip to Dallas?

We need more posts in this thread, because I'm totally off the WoW and back on the MTGO. I'm playing almost every day, in some way. Last night I did a draft where I sadly lost in the first round. Then I cheered Leaping on to victory as I watched him play a Coldsnap league match. Then we played some draft decks against each other (the one I had just 0-2'ed with, and the one he drafted the last MTGO night).

That was a blast, btw. Anytime anyone wants a "fun game" using any old TSP draft deck you've got lying around, let me know. I've got a ton of them.

I won my first Time Spiral draft tonight (4322), playing a different archetype for me - B/R. I'd say my favorite color in TSP is Blue, then Red, then Black, then it's hard to say. Favorite archetype is U/R.

Anyway, here's the decklist if it is of any interest to anyone. If not, well, forgive your brother a moment of euphoria:

8 Mountain
9 Swamp
1 Assassinate
1 Basal Sliver
1 Bogardan Rager
1 Coal Stoker
2 Corpulent Corpse
1 Empty the Warrens
1 Evil Eye of Urborg
1 Faceless Devourer
1 Fallen Ideal
1 Flowstone Channeler
1 Ib Halfheart, Goblin Tactician
1 Keldon Halberdier
1 Mana Skimmer
1 Mogg War Marshal
2 Rift Bolt
2 Strangling Soot
1 Sudden Shock
1 Undying Rage
1 Urborg Syphon-Mage
1 Viscid Lemures

Sideboard
1 Ancient Grudge
1 Bewilder
1 Bogardan Rager
1 Cyclopean Giant
1 Divine Congregation
1 Dreadship Reef
1 Ground Rift
1 Ivory Giant
1 Jedit's Dragoons
1 Lim-Dûl the Necromancer
1 Locket of Yesterdays
2 Mindstab
1 Paradox Haze
1 Plunder
1 Reiterate
2 Skulking Knight
1 Think Twice
1 Tolarian Sentinel
1 Truth or Tale
1 Viscerid Deepwalker

The final game came down to this: I was at 1 life after his attack, he was at 10, and I had 8 Fear damage I could do (2 Corpulent Corpses, one of which had Undying Rage). I needed to topdeck a burn spell to get the final 2 damage - I had a Sudden Shock and a Rift Bolt among the 27 cards in my library, having already cast one Rift Bolt earlier. During my upkeep, I told my opponent "Topdeck or not? =)" Got the Bolt, and he had no bounce or other relevant spells. Woohoo!

After testing a bunch of different decks (most of which did NOT work), I finally came up with this BUR setup... right now it's 2-0 vs. a 9 pt and a 10 pt opponent. Some of the cards that have me smiling (and winning) lately are Curse of the Cabal, Ignite Memories, and Phthisis. Ignite Memories is fantastic on a turn where a suspend creature comes into play, in the post attack main phase (after opponent has had the opportunity to cast some instants, generally lower mana count, during battle). Works best on about the 6th or 7th turn, when the opponent is still waiting for that last land or color to cast some phatties...

1 Gemstone Mine
1 Giant Oyster
6 Island
2 Mountain
1 Sol'kanar the Swamp King
6 Swamp
1 Undertaker
1 Curse of the Cabal
1 Cyclopean Giant
1 Dark Withering
1 Deathspore Thallid
1 Dreadship Reef
1 Fathom Seer
1 Fool's Demise
1 Gorgon Recluse
1 Ignite Memories
1 Keldon Halberdier
1 Lightning Axe
1 Looter il-Kor
1 Mana Skimmer
1 Ophidian Eye
1 Phthisis
1 Rift Bolt
1 Snapback
1 Think Twice
1 Urborg Syphon-Mage
1 Urza's Factory
1 Viscerid Deepwalker
1 Viscid Lemures

Sideboard
6 Forest
4 Mountain
1 Mystic Enforcer
6 Plains
1 Amrou Scout
1 Ashcoat Bear
1 Assembly-Worker
1 Basalt Gargoyle
1 Benalish Cavalry
1 Bogardan Rager
1 Bonesplitter Sliver
1 Children of Korlis
1 Chromatic Star
1 Clockspinning
1 Cloudchaser Kestrel
1 Coal Stoker
1 Detainment Spell
1 Durkwood Baloth
1 Faceless Devourer
1 Fallen Ideal
1 Foriysian Interceptor
1 Fortify
1 Ghostflame Sliver
1 Ground Rift
1 Herd Gnarr
1 Hypergenesis
1 Jedit's Dragoons
1 Magus of the Candelabra
1 Mogg War Marshal
1 Molder
1 Paradox Haze
1 Pardic Dragon
1 Pendelhaven Elder
1 Pentarch Ward
1 Phantom Wurm
1 Psychotic Episode
1 Quilled Sliver
1 Sangrophage
1 Screeching Sliver
1 Sprout
1 Stonewood Invocation
1 Subterranean Shambler
1 Temporal Isolation
1 Terramorphic Expanse
1 Thallid Germinator
1 Tolarian Sentinel
1 Tromp the Domains
1 Venser's Sliver
1 Walk the Aeons
1 Wormwood Dryad
1 Yavimaya Dryad
1 AEtherflame Wall

We should have an afternoon draft sometime where you can join in!

You know, now that mumford has given us the Ultimate Draft Solution, we can do drafts with more or less any number of people (even numbers, obv). So I'm up for a 4-man round-robin or whatever sometime, if others are. We don't just have to do monthly 8-mans, is all I'm saying. I'll be taking a couple days off this week if anyone's interested in an afternoon draft that would be good for 1D.

-----change of subject-----

I drafted again the other night. I felt like I drafted crazily and without commitment to my colors (I was in three colors and never sure which 2 I was really going to play). I lost in the first round, having made a ton of mistakes. A TON. For the love of God, it's the most basic thing in the world to leave untapped the lands that you might want to use on your opponent's turn! Instead, I tapped ALL my mountains and left a swamp untapped, for which I had no spells or effects. GAH! To top it off, my opponent was a bit of a jerk.

Not wanting to take this defeat lying down, I immediately drafted again. I once again didn't settle on my colors - I had a decent R/B deck going, but when opportunities came to draft good blue cards, well, I'm a sucker for blue in TSP. However, at the end of the draft I looked at what I had and realized that there were no blue cards that I REALLY wanted to play - none that justified messing up my manabase, anyway. I did splash a Dralnu, Lich Lord (off 1 island and 2 terramorphic expanses) because he could give Flashback to my many removal spells. Ironically, I never ended up using that ability, but I did get hurt by several Slipstream Serpents because I played an island (as in, multiple opponents hit me with him). To make matters worse, when Dralnu takes damage, you sac permanents. I WAS BEING ATTACKED BY A SLIPSTREAM SERPENT, DRALNU WAS DAMAGED, AND I DIDN'T HAVE THE SENSE TO SAC THE ISLAND! Which I had no use for after casting Dralnu ANYWAY! Gah!

I'm sure that Dralnu can be wonderful, and is probably a house in Sealed because it's slower, but I believe that I would have been far better off over the course of this draft if I had played any random guy and not used blue in the deck at all. There may be a lesson here about not playing blue unless it's a main color or you're spashing an absolute bomb, because there are several creatures who can only attack if the opponent controls an island.

Anyway, in spite of bad play, I managed to win the draft (I've won two out of eleven now). Interestingly, I believe that both drafts that I have won I was R/B, and both times I was helped by Fallen Ideal (black enchantment granting flying and Sac a creature: +2/+1 until EoT), which is particularly a good card in R/B with Goblins - any card granting you more than 1 creature really enjoys it, and I had a Mogg War Marshal (which can give +6/+3 all by itself) and an Empty the Warrens. It's probably also really good in G/B, if you have a bunch of guys tossing out Saprolings every few turns.

Speaking of Saprolings, the last play of the draft was probably one of the better ones I made; he had no untapped creatures, and I had Dralnu coming in for lethal damage. Rather than just swinging, I enchanted him with Fallen Ideal first, just in case my opponent was holding a Sprout or something. After doing my best to screw games up and lose, it felt good to do something small but right at the very end.

You know, several times in the draft I thought that I had lost a game that I managed to come back and win. Steven Brust says that wars are generally fought poorly and are won when, at a critical time, someone fails to make a mistake. I think that describes my Magic experience lately.

I'm just now getting into my Timespiral phase of MtG. Played in a sealed PTQ on Saturday... 70 players total (which from what I was hearing, is about 30 or so less than the previous couple of PTQs held here... which had people excited about chances of payouts at the end of the day (top 24 received prizes). Not much of a concern for me, though, with my limited TSP knowledge I was just there to have fun.

The packs I cracked to make a list for were pretty good... strong in green with a variety of thallid options, Tromp, and the Theolonite Hermit who spawns saprolings and gives them all +1/+1. Also had a nice sideboard Hivestone in case you run up against a Sliver deck. Unfortunately, that was not the card pool I would be playing from.

The cardpool I was playing from had Flagstones of Trokair and Norin the Wary (Foil! ooooOOooO!). Without Pandemonium, Norin is about useless. I did get a Magus of the Scroll, however, so that sorta made up for Norin.

My cards basically told me to play a Sliver deck. 2 Watchers, 1 Might, 1 Gem, 1 Dementia, 1 Firewake, and a few others. I ended up the day 2-4-1 (7 game wins, 9 game losses), 38th out of 70 (47 people finished). I heard that the top ranked player in Louisiana was there, and he had around 3 losses (did not make top 8), so that makes me feel a little better.

Bonehead plays might have cost me a game or two, but there wasn't anything totally out of line in my gameplay. I did probably stretch it a little by going 5 colors, but with gemhide, prismatic lens, chromatic star, and terraformic expanse, I probably only had mana troubles in 2 games.

In my last game of the day, I was up against a 13/13 Clockwork Hydra, Akroma, Sacred Mesa, and a Griffin Guided Durkwood Baloth. I lasted about 4-5 turns longer than I would have expected, and probably could have overcome any combination of 3 of those bombs, but 4 did me in. My last swing was nullified with 5-6 flying pegasi in my attempt to finish my opponent off with one of my slivers getting through and firewaking/sudden shocking my opponents 11 life.

Good times though!