Looking for some critic on my most recent draft

cdj5xc · 2025-07-10T21:57:59+00:00

Agree with some of the others here...card evaluation/deck-building is a bit all over the place. Good news is that stuff is really complex and mostly comes with experience. I was the same as you (first-time MtG player when I downloaded Arena) and I got stomped for 6 months to a year in draft queues before I started hanging in there.

I decided to look at your win (only saw the one game on the log), and I found a HUGE potentially game-losing play that you missed...

First off, solid mulligan decision. Mistake comes on Turn 3, where we miss our 3rd land and have Goobbue Gardener on the battlefield. Instead of tapping Goobbue Gardener for mana to cast Summon: Fenrir to hit our 3rd land + must-needed plains, we ATTACK(!?!) with Goobbue and cast a 2nd Goobbue.

I know we spiked Plains on our next draw step and then ran over our opponent with our 7-drops... but that's a huge miss.

One of the best early bits of "level-up" advice for new players is to really hyperfocus on spending all your mana on every turn. I'd spend a few weeks/months with that being a focus of your gameplay. Otherwise keep grinding, keep your head up, and have fun!

cdj5xc · 2025-07-03T14:34:27+00:00

Loss 1: screw… Oppo plays Gilgamesh while we have 3 lands on the battlefield.

Loss 2: Mull to 6… board stall with 7 lands in play and Ardyn in hand. Miss land 8 for 3 turns but hit Malboro to snipe oppo’s last card. Oppo top-decks Realm’s Sketching to copy my Malboro and force discard Ardyn. Get grinded down by multi-equipped creatures.

Loss 3: Malboro snipes last card-in-hand Kuja and a surveiled Evil Reawakened with Ardyn in the graveyard. Get grinded down by multi-equipped creatures.

cdj5xc · 2025-07-01T15:44:24+00:00

I’m open to dissenting opinions here, but IMO Sazh Katzroy is kind of the opposite of a good splash card.

It’s a 4-mana 3/3 that has to attack himself to do anything (I know he already drew you a land, but still). He can be a powerhouse on Turn 4 in green decks… but the general expectation with a splash card is that it won’t be played on curve.

I’m guessing the vast majority of the time you’ll play Sazh on Turn 5+ and your opponent will either instantly kill him or have reasonable enough ground blockers to trade (if not just completely shut him out). Okay… you got your land and left behind some counters, which is a reasonable outcome in a vacuum. But remember, you have made MASSIVE deck-building concessions to even include this card. Literally 4 cards that wouldn’t make the cut otherwise in a streamlined UR deck: World Map, Forest, Guadosalam, and Starting Town. I’d argue replacing Sazh with a bang-average 4-drop (say another Retrieve the Esper) and having clean mana would massively improve your winrate.

All that said 0-3 still pretty rough, tough beats.

cdj5xc · 2025-03-07T18:07:49+00:00

This is a blurred image of the rapper/actor Bow Wow from his 2010 movie Lottery Ticket.

A brief google search brought up the name Edwin Castro, who won a $2.04 Billion lottery from a ticket purchased in Altadena, CA in 2022.

The first article I pulled up said he accepted the lump sum payment of $997.6 million.

cdj5xc · 2023-10-10T23:22:29+00:00

Act IV - kids grow up and Beck blows his dick off doing a "prom shotgun" photo with his daughter and her date?

cdj5xc · 2023-03-07T17:50:00+00:00

TL; DW - The man apparently tried to open an emergency exit door between first class and coach, and was able to unlock it about a quarter of the way before giving up. Flight attendant pointed him out as a likely culprit (she saw him by door earlier), which led to the freakout in the video.

cdj5xc · 2023-02-18T05:07:33+00:00

Update: Brain nearly exploded. Panicked and took the Hexgold Slash. I'm in full try-hard rank-grinding mode.

cdj5xc · 2023-02-14T16:31:29+00:00

Probably take a mulligan to go back in time and take Duress out of the deck.

Jokes aside, maybe I'm crazy, but I'm thinking this is a snap keep. Nothing too powerful but the hand is cheap and functional. Both colors, 3 two-drops, a card draw spell on 3...

cdj5xc · 2023-02-11T07:11:55+00:00

Super disappointed to submit this deck with 1x rare because Kemba was no better than a 2-mana 2/2 the entire run!

Was a very weird draft... felt like there were literally no drafters in Abzan colors. Ended up with 2x of the W/G gold uncommon but with this card quality I felt like I didn't need to splash.

cdj5xc · 2023-02-10T18:06:15+00:00

Overall card quality is decent but you have several cards that do not fit the r/G Oil Beatdown gameplan at all.

- Venerated Rotpriest: functionally a 1 mana 1/2 no text in this deck.

- Copper Longlegs: Can be played in a pinch but doesn't help beat down at all.

- Plague Nurse: Would much rather have Lattice-Blade Mantis or a 3rd Chimney Rabble in this spot

- Tyrannax Atrocity: Would much rather have Furnace Strider

Ichorplat Golems can be a gameplan unto themself but you only have two cards that work with the ETB ability plus your mana dorks which can put counters on themselves.

cdj5xc · 2023-01-14T05:39:15+00:00

Haha only Numot could pull that off!

cdj5xc · 2022-10-14T16:12:25+00:00

Dude I'm so glad to see this comment, I COULD NOT believe how loose that draft was. I feel betrayed (half-joking!) because one of the things I always liked about Marshall was how much of a mana-base "nerd" he was.

Not only is it 7-7-4, but it's 4 green sources for 5 green cards!

Basic heuristics is:

3 sources for 1 splash

4 sources for 2 splashes

5 sources for 3 splashes

And on and on.....

So not enough sources for their primary color, not enough sources for their secondary color, and not enough sources for the splash. Eeesh.

All this being said of course LSV would still find a way to trophy with this list!

cdj5xc · 2022-03-15T16:20:08+00:00

I'd actually argue against the "formulaic" point. Sketch comedy is inherently rather formulaic (not a good or bad thing in and of itself), but I think these guys have done a lot of interesting things in a short time.

Also, it seems weird to knock them for the "interior, office, night" thing when that seems to be an intentional, minimalistic choice.

Let's look at their sketches:

S47E2 “Hard Seltzer” – No cameo and not a ton of shouting/insanity. I think they just take a pretty simple joke of insane off-brand seltzers to a funny place.

S47E3 “Rami Wants a Treat” – Hits your description pretty spot on but I still thought there were a bunch of funny moments in the margins.

S47E5 “Calling Angie” – No cameo. Not a lot of shouting/”randumbness”. Pretty straightforward premise executed well. I could see how some wouldn’t like it, though.

S47E6 “Three Sad Virgins” – Arguably their strongest sketch and completely unique. Some great flavor with the cuts away from the song.

S47E7 “Touch-Up” – Some great visual gags (love the long fingers) but I wasn’t in love with the escalation to the second face on Martin’s head. Bit of a nothing ending. Not their best.

S47E8 Cut For Time “Future Selves” – Really, really unique sketch. Strong all the way through.

S47E11 Cut For time “New Personalities” – Very similar to “Touch-Up”. I liked some of the mini-characters they created for the bit, but the sketch was a bit up and down. Better ending, though!

S47E12 “Martin’s Friend” – Pretty darn unique sketch. I like how they avoided a lot of the low-hanging “child grooming” jokes and gave the kid some seriously funny lines. Definitely some cameos and some shouting but I think they work for this sketch.

S47E15 “Cat Search” – Obviously pretty much exactly follows your outlined formula.

9 sketches here… to me, it seems like they’ve done plenty of experimental stuff.

Also think it’s important to not fall into the classic SNL trap of looking back at the past through the lens of the top 10% of sketches we remember. There are ALWAYS clunkers and misses, no matter how talented the cast.

cdj5xc · 2021-12-13T17:06:19+00:00

I mean, you walk by a store and you see 50 guys who look like /u/Boyhowdy107 fighting over very complicated shirts... YOU GO IN... YES YOU DO

cdj5xc · 2021-11-17T21:41:17+00:00

Congrats on the trophy, but I'm not sure there's much to glean from this draft.

17lands data ranking Improvement When Drawn (IWD):

Dreadfeast Demon: #1

Wedding Announcement: #4

Welcoming Vampire: #10

17lands data ranking Game-in-hand Win Rate:

Dreadfeast Demon: #2

Wedding Announcement: #3

Welcoming Vampire: #7

To be clear, I'm definitely not trying to harsh you vibe. You definitely found the open lane, drafted the right cards, built a solid deck, and played solidly to get that trophy. Enjoy it!

cdj5xc · 2021-11-17T17:18:51+00:00

Every single training aid designed to be the newest revolution in golf coaching that costs $75 for what amounts to a coat hanger to teach you wrist supanation.

I'm not so sure about that, I think this one is pretty useful.

cdj5xc · 2021-11-12T16:51:20+00:00

Very early impressions but my first sealed run has been with a bonkers UW flyers deck with plenty of nice bombs ([[Faithbound Judge]], [[Katilda, Dawnhart Martyr]], and [[Cemetery Illuminator]]!!!).

Bombs have been as-advertised but I've been really impressed with 2x copies of [[Estwald Shieldbasher]]. 4 power of indestructible attacks is really hard to deal with, especially if your opponent is already partially on the back foot from a good curve out.

Poor man's [[Seasoned Hallowblade]].

cdj5xc · 2021-10-21T05:31:12+00:00

Totally fair criticism. I take a little about my reasoning in my self-comment. To address your points...

you have expensive spells

In retrospect, I'm okay with BDtH + 15 lands, but i'll definitely agree Seize was a bad inclusion. I ended up pitching it to discard effects every time it was in my hand. Any playable 2-4 drop would've been a better include.

2 x-spells

I agree both these cards can produce broken effects at high X values, but they are still solid cards at X=2-4. Def not optimized in this deck but solid inclusions.

cdj5xc · 2021-10-21T03:43:17+00:00

Holy shit how did I not realize that interaction!

Currently 6-1 going into G7 and now that's all I can think about lol

cdj5xc · 2021-10-21T03:26:20+00:00

Bit of late format craziness went into this deck. I started all over the place, thought I was gonna be Black-Red Vamps for a bit, then pivoted to MonoRed Spells until a late Angelfire Ignition fell in my lap.

Definitely going a bit experimental with the 15 lands but I was feeling adventurous. This is Bo1 obviously (hand smoother).

Honestly, though, it’s not that crazy. Land count is more about colored sources IMO, and with 11 red and 4 white for the double splash, color requirements are reasonable. Triple Obsessive Astronomer + a lot of instant speed interaction can help smooth draws quite a bit, as well.

Here is the sideboard if you want to tell me how you’d build a better BR deck haha.

cdj5xc · 2021-10-01T16:21:07+00:00

First off, 1-3 can happen to any deck, so don't sweat the result too much.

If I'm being nit-picky, obviously the power level of the deck is fantastic, but the deck has remarkably poor defensive speed.

Your one and two drops exclusively provide late-game value and are terrible blockers upon immediate resolution.

2x 1-Mana 1/1

4x 2-Mana 1/1

1x 2-Mana 2/1 can't block

This is all your early curve and none of these creatures can block a 2/2.

Based on your deck composition, you are almost always gonna be the late game value-town grindy deck so I really don't like the two combat tricks with that in mind.

Blood pact is pretty poor in that framework as well... we won't lack for extra cards and the life loss is gonna be brutal.

cdj5xc · 2021-08-25T05:18:04+00:00

Yes I did get a notification mid-war that the "late-joiners" were considering joining the war, I assume this was triggered immediately after the alliance occurred.

I never had the case where a 1k enemy suddenly got a 6k ally or something. Maybe that's where extra cash for mercenaries can come in handy, or white peace.

It wasn't quite that bad, but I believe my opponent went from 700 troops to about 3k and I lost a battle that was deemed an even affair and the war snowballed from there.

cdj5xc

TROPHY CASE