MtG Ixalan Draft Simulation

Whiptail. We're seeing a lot of fliers. Best case scenario, we take Favorable Winds amd hope we see more fliers. The Whiptail can eat the vampire AND the merfolk.

Grazing Whiptail has been picked.

siren

Easy Rile.

>shitty insect than Contract Killing
>filler Hill Giant than Pounce
Shouldn't have listened to trolls OP, i'm not participating on this one.

Next post will decide. Siren Stormtamer or Rile?

Rile.

Rile it is then.

parley

Rile was absolutely the wrong choice. Should have been Rigging Runner.

Sure Strike.

You took that shitty bug over:
>Fiery Cannonaid, amazing removal and reason to go into pirates
>Pounce, good green removal
>Bishop's, a bear with upside
>Dual Shot

Whiptail is an okay pick here, however if you end up going 3-color Pirates or Dinos you're going to be smacking yourself for not taking Unclaimed.

Rile was one of the worst cards in this pack. In no world do you take it this early. Should have been looking at:
>Siren
>Skullduggary
>New Horizons

>realizing I have no idea how to sideboard after years of EDH
Shit, I'm screwed for this prerelease

Seriously. I'm not the best at drafts, but even I cabn tell that a lot of the choices are really questionable. The first pack had a lot of choices for removal, so going for the creature-based one seems weird. Second pack had some color neutral options but a good variety of stuff, but picking whiptail for flyers when it's early enough that you can pick up more flyers later is also strange. Then going for a third color specifically for Rile when we have no Enrage dinos rather than going for literally anything else there except for the Blue and White stuff. And maybe even the blue and white stuff

Nest Robber is fun

Whoops, something came up and I lost the draft for the above.

Thankfully, we barely got anywhere with it so we don't lose much from a restart.

Any takers?

Sounds fine to me. I'd say to take either Marauding Looter here to build around it, or get Contract Killing for some level of removal.

Contract Killing.

Contract Killing. Let's actually take the good removal, for fucking once.
First-picking a two-color card and building around it is not smart deck-building. Wait and see if we pick UR then pick it up if/when it comes around again.

Contract Killing it is.

Deadeye tracker seems like a good choice here. Either that, or we could pick up another contract killing.

treasure map or the good old unconditional removal...

Tracker to help against running out of gass late game.
Bishop puts us into vampires which to early and there's still a got chance to get the commons.

I like a second Killing here. Tracker is good is the very long games, but it's also a 1/1 the turn you cast it, and playing it early doesn't let it snowball.

deadeye is probably the less shit option...in hindsight it would be better treasure map (both fuidicator, mana fixer and and mana accellerator) then contract killing...

Deadeye Tracker. Got to go for the money picks.

Deadeye Tracker has been picked.

NOW is the time to take a Skittering Heartstopper.
Not first pick with a fucking one-sided wrath as your rare.

Skithering to ruin the big dinos.

Let's go for Heartstopper again. It's good at every stage of the game and we've already got lots of black going for us.

Yeah, heartstopper is the right choice here

Skittering Heartstopper it is.

Isn't that one Cradle?

So, is it good or shit?

No, it's Lotus Vale.
It's good if you have evasion.

It's good if you've got a turn 1 flyer and you mulligan into both of them. Otherwise, it's trash.

Brazen Buccaneers or Dire Fleet Hoarder. Anything else is either garbage or requires synergy. I guess Tishana's Wayfinder is an option but do we really want to go BG in this set?

I think the Hoarder is the safe bet. I wouldn't really want to go for the Buccanners or Wayfinder. Going for a second color just for an efficient explore creature seems mediocre. If anything, I'd say to go for Skymarcher for a cheap flyer.

Weak pack. We probably want one of the explorers, though which one depends on color preference. I guess red gives us a chance at some Pirate synergies, but as we're looking like a controlling deck, I actually prefer the Wayfinder for some BG rock deck.

tishana's wayfinder

Unless there's any dissenting opinions, it looks like Tishana's Wayfinder is the pick. It is a shit pack.

Anyone else got any opinions or shall I go ahead?

Wayfinder sounds fine. Might be good if we end up pulling some stuff to go with Explore. Worst case we just ditch it later or use green to help fix up a 3 color jank

Tishana's Wayfinder picked then.

March of the Drowned, I think.

march of the drowned

You guys suck

March.

Looks like a unanimous March of the Drowned.

Also, I think we missed something wonderful when we skipped Dowsing Dagger.

Duress

Might as well take a Duress. Not sure it's even payable in the main, but there's really nothing else.

Only other option might be Commune for color fixing, but that's assuming we actually use Green.

Unless there's any dissenting opinion, this is a Duress pick.

Any other suggestions?

I think green / black could work, in a midrange deck. Maybe we pull Vraska

I think we should still take Duress here even if we're going for Green. Better to wait and see how multicolor develops still.

Duress it is then. And ouch, not a black pick in sight.

Time for the difficult choices.

New Horizons if we're staying green, Opt if we wanna try and go blue

Shipwreck Looter? Blue seems somewhat open and we want Pirates for our March.

It's a choice between Adanto Vanguard, Opt and New Horizons, with the last one being in solid third place. Are we really sticking with BG?

here. We only have 1 green card so far. If we're going blue, I think we want the creature for March and possible Pirate synergies over Opt.

I'd vote for either Horizons or Vanguard. Vanguard is a solid card and I think we still have time to go for WB vampires, while New Horizons will be useful fixing if we want to branch out or ramp later.

I can see it, plus we can discard a pirate and get it back later if we need it. I'll go with Looter over Opt like in Vanguard is good, but I feel like if we start going white we'll get stuck in vampire synergy that isn't too good.

Choice seems to have narrowed down a bit:
>Adanto Vanguard for a solid 2-drop vampire synergy in the future.
>Opt for cheap card draw, plus it's in the pirate colors which we already have a card for.
>New Horizons for color fixing and ramp, plus we already have a green card.
>Shipwreck Looter for the pirate synergy we already have.

Most popular choice in the next three posts decides it. One suggestion a post, please.

I'm voting shipwreck Looter - blue black pirates seems like a solid tempo deck.

We'll have enough pirates in black to make March of the Damned worthwhile, we shouldn't splash blue just for card draw and vampire synergy isn't worth it. Let's stick with BG and go New Horizons.

I've already argued for Looter so I'll go for that.

I'd say Horizons. I'm interested to see if BG can actually work.

Shipwreck Looter picked.

We've only got one card in green and one in blue, so we're not locked into either yet. We should avoid being too schizophrenic in the future though and eventually settle on one, or the other. We should have a solid idea of our color identity once we're done with the first packs.

Blight Keeper here. Tiny evasion is nice, and the only other thing would be the mill enchantment which is meh

Blight Keeper can turn on Raid and is on color. Seeing 4 white cards here is kind of weird and maybe we should take this as a signal, but none of them are actually good so I think we stay on course for now.

Get the bat

Unanimous Blight Keeper pick.

Another test.

Well blue isn't an option here...Spreading Blight?

Ceratops, probably. I think we go B/Green of Blue, depending on what is open in pack 2 at this point.

Spreading Rot is beyond garbage. It's not going in the deck even if we pick it. Spiked-Tailed Ceratops is the better choice out of the two green options.

Also, the AI seems to have picked two cards each from red and blue and one from white, black and green each. Based on that, I think going BG is probably the safer bet, less competition for the good shit.

5 mana for mediocre LD is bleh. I'd say to go with either of the Green cards.

Fair enough - I'd think the ceratops is better than the merfolk here

Spike-Tailed Ceratops it is.

Field of Ruin for removing problematic lands (which this set does have) or Pirate's Prize for card draw and more blue?

Field of Ruin. Better to go for something color neutral that can also offer some fixing.

field of ruin for now

Field

Prize. We're going to need enough playables, so I don't think we want to pick lands for now.

Field of Ruin it is.

Jesus Christ, this is bad. Should we just go with Unknown Shores for this one?

Yeah, might as well go with the shores. Not much else useful there. This first round has been rough.

Shores it is. Pack 2 better be good.

Fuck it, grab shores

Unknown Shore picked, not like there was any choice.

On the next pick, the only choice in our colors was Dire Fleet Hoarder. It's another pirate at least.

On the last pick that's a choice for us to make, we're presented with this. I was tempted to just randomly pick one but in case you guys actually want to go white at some point, I'll let you decide.

Ritual, since why not card draw

Ritual seems more relevant if we ever go for vamps, and making sure somebody else doesn't get it is fine

Ritual over Looming Altisaur.

Ritual of Rejuvenation it is. The following pick was Headwater Sentries.

Here's what we've gotten so far. First pick of the second round coming up shortly.

Bad news, it isn't pretty.

Repeating barrage, red was cleaned last pack, so could pick some up coming back the other way if no one else is in it.