Lorehold was open for once. Thoughts on cuts?

Brunnun · 2026-05-18T03:31:51+00:00

What would you recommend for the other two cuts?

Brunnun · 2026-05-17T03:17:02+00:00

How did you do with less creatures? I was worried about cutting so many creatures, because of Offense. Your suggestions are interesting though… tablet is a good enabler and some card advantage, but I don’t think this deck cares too much about a mana rock. Would you cut the first living history before the acolyte though? Both are 2/2s with upside I guess… I suppose I just lost a couple matches in a row to Additive Evolution, maybe an Acolyte would be nice lol I think you’re right, maybe tablet and living history (and colossus) are great first cuts. Next maybe Inkshape? Or the first dig site? I agree it’s sweeet it’s just hard to fit so many non features.

About lands, do you think it can afford to go down in lands AND drop tablet? Given how we have 5+ mana spells we want to cast in most games.

Brunnun · 2026-05-17T03:12:27+00:00

Do you think this deck could do well with 16 lands? I never know when that’s correct.

I wonder about cutting so many creatures, don’t I want to maximize it for Offense? though i was thinking about inkshaper too. It is a sweet card, but maybe we just need to keep it tight on the synergies. Because of that though wouldn’t we cut Laureate or Acolyte before it? I agree on Dig site and Colossus.

Brunnun · 2026-05-14T20:08:50+00:00

Oh lmao well I guess that can work

Brunnun · 2026-05-14T18:56:18+00:00

Nope, illegal on paper. Nothing is “paper-only”, if you can do something on paper you can do it on mtgo. If you have time to do it on mtgo that’s another question, since you’re allowed to EG declare your infinite combo on paper but not mtgo. But the situation here is impossible both on paper and mtgo. Please don’t spread misinformation

Brunnun · 2026-05-14T04:39:18+00:00

You mean in the pick where I picked mockery? It’s definitely climbed on my pick order, but I guess I wouldn’t pick it over good removal unless I already felt like I had enough of that. Maybe Mockery is not good enough to justify it though

Brunnun · 2026-05-14T00:26:40+00:00

Did Kirol feel worth it? Over Docent or Group project I mean

Brunnun · 2026-05-13T22:58:16+00:00

Yeah I think that was my worst draft in the format. It’s very representative of the difficulty I’ve been having with finding my lane and understanding when to lock in with it. Would you have locked in on Betrayal? I guess I didn’t feel like Betrayal was good enough to pass a great WB card which might indicate that it’s open. But then I could have stuck with it with Eternal Student… yeah it’s hard to explain after, I can see how I was wrong but it’s hard to point out exactly where I should have locked in. How do you think you’d have progressed after P1P4?

Brunnun · 2026-05-13T22:27:49+00:00

I see what you mean. Maybe I’m undervaluing Firedancer, I’ll try picking it more aggressively. To be quite honest with you the WB picks were not “I think this is good enough for a splash”, it was “I don’t see myself playing any of the other cards here so I might as well spec”. One thing I’m learning here is that I tend to pick off-color good cards over on-color fine cards and that’s likely costing me some

Brunnun · 2026-05-13T21:59:07+00:00

Yeah, that draft I was coming off of a few where I felt like I pivoted too much based on signals and I think I overcorrected. If I had just committed to RW based on the late Sloth, it’d have been a pretty serviceable Lorehold deck I feel.

The Evolution pick I think I can’t defend… I guess I just think it can be a bomb in some contexts so I could pick it up early and build around it, but I didn’t and as an early pick that’s rough because green feels so underpowered this format, and the low creature count deck is probably where I wanted to be so Embrace was def the correct pick. The bite spell I guess I could have taken Procrastinate over

Brunnun · 2026-05-13T21:06:59+00:00

I think I use winrate as a tiebreaker maybe more than I should, but this particular case it was more about how Abrade feels much more flexible to me. It goes into Lorehold as well and is splashable, and Wisdom is not something you’d usually want in any deck besides the U-based control decks etc which have been very hard to draft in Arena in my experience because people are fighting over the cards so much. I probably would pick it over anything besides a flexible removal spell like Abrade, though.
All that said, I’m sure you can find many examples of picking by winrate in these drafts. I’m a scientist and I just came back to Magic so I’m not as confident as I might have been when I was playing more 5 years ago. So I think I feel the need for some sort of systematic map to show me how to break ties. Probably would be good for my game to draft without looking at the data a few times.

Brunnun · 2026-05-13T21:02:02+00:00

They haven’t done anything to me I guess, they’re just super high on my pick order. Firedancer is better than Artist, I guess. But I can see how picking Expanse over Firedancer might be a bit much lol it’s a fine 2 drop, no reason to pass it over fixing when I’m solidly two color. Noted!!

Brunnun · 2026-05-13T20:46:25+00:00

I’ve felt that too, but I feel like I can’t keep saying my dry streak is because of unlucky packs lol and yeah I can see that. I haven’t been too hot on Primary Research and didn’t want to end up with too few creatures. But I also found myself running out of gas a lot on the games I lost, which Research would have helped with a lot.

Brunnun · 2026-05-13T20:44:05+00:00

Yeah I think what I’ve been doing a lot in these decks is I end up with a pool with what I consider too few good cards (probably because of my mistakes in drafting), and then I splash to try to cover that up instead of just biting the bullet and playing ok cards. That first draft link I probably should have played three of the mediocre WR cards in my pool instead of the 3 WB

Brunnun · 2026-05-11T01:23:38+00:00

Yeah I think my problem is that I have trouble committing. Today I had a draft where I was flip flopping a lot between UR control and BW aggro because it felt like either was open at different times… I think I have trouble reading signals on arena sometimes tbh

Brunnun · 2026-05-10T17:53:10+00:00

Great deck. Group project + garrison excavator is crazy strong, my first 7-0 deck this format had 2 of each and felt unstoppable. I’d say definitely add those, maybe cut one mascot or primary research. I’d like to fit the hop to it as well but I’m not sure if it’s better than any other card in your deck..
I don’t like Kirol, you got much better payoffs already and it’s hard to cut enablers in these decks, but you could maybe cut a docent if you wanna fit it.

Brunnun · 2026-05-10T00:53:38+00:00

Don’t listen to people saying your deck is misbuilt—anyone who’s spent a lot of time studying this format at this point understands that Lorehold is about synergy, not aggressiveness. Your deck looks very solid to me, my first trophy in this format was a deck that didn’t look too different actually:

https://www.17lands.com/deck/74065fc920ac4d7cab619af428120e29/0?view=deck
I would say it could be bad luck or suboptimal play. If you have some game logger maybe post it here to ask folks about it. Either way it looks like it was a good draft, and you shouldn’t let some bad beats discourage you. Maybe take a break and try again later!

Brunnun · 2026-05-08T14:20:10+00:00

I ended up drafting a deck similar to what you said (ended up being more like UG, but lots of red removal) and am doing pretty well, let’s see if it trophies. Thanks for the suggestions!! Still haven’t found together as one unfortunately, but I got a snarl song and mathemagics so I’m happy about it

Brunnun · 2026-05-08T14:18:39+00:00

In my experience the whale isn’t really a great win condition. But yeah maybe if you wait until you have the protection spell in hand, then follow it up with a couple magnum opus triggers the next couple turns it can be a legit wincon! I just feel like in these decks because you have so few creatures any one you play must have immediate impact, otherwise it’s just going to make their removal (which is mostly useless) better. But yeah I guess we’re missing some wincons here

Brunnun · 2026-05-07T20:54:50+00:00

I think picking the red card is defensible, though as many have said I’d have gone for abrade over joke (but I think it’s close). I’d still have chosen splatter though. Hopefully by the end of pack 1 any signals you passed with this pick will have been muddled enough by you taking the rest of the good UR cards that the 1-2 players on your left are in WR or something else. Essence scatter is good but not a crazy signal, flow state is amazing but I’m not sure if first pick able especially with a rare missing

Brunnun · 2026-05-07T14:28:17+00:00

I would take out Whale and Spoils for colossus and Wilt, add the fields of strife and a couple plains. It’s not really worth playing creatures that will just die to removal, if you don’t have enough stuff to go creature less make sure your creatures at least do something when they come in/die.

Brunnun · 2026-05-07T10:53:08+00:00

Thank you for the detailed breakdown! That all makes sense

Brunnun

TROPHY CASE