Sorry, I forgot to answer your last question. In P1P1 of this draft I would take Kuldotha Phoenix if it were there instead of Ezuri. I wouldn't take this as a committment to draft Metalcraft though, just as a committmnent to be pretty heavy Red. The Phoenix is quite good in any deck whose manabase can support him, even if you have a low chance of rebuying him – a 4/4 flier is pretty good almost all of the time.

There are certainly a lot of rares (and uncommons) I would pick in the first pack that are strongly going to incline me to draft a certain archetype. I'm wary of jumping into Infect pick 1 pack 1 because the quality of the Infect deck, at least for triple Scars draft, is highly dependent on how many Infect drafters there are at the table.

In the case of this P1P1, I would definitely have started out Infect if I had opened a Hand of the Praetors, Skithiryx, or Tangle Angler, and I probably would have taken a Cystbearer or a Plague Stinger if they had been in the pack. The problem with going Infect with this particular P1P1 is that the two Infect creatures that are there are among the worst available and the two enablers (Painsmith and Trigon) are only good in the Infect deck. Another thing to note is that while Tangle Angler and Skithiryx are both great in the Infect deck, they are also quite good in non-Infect decks too. Hand of the Praetors is only playable in Infect decks but he's so incredibly good in those decks he's totally worth giving up flexibility for.

Most of the other Scars archetypes either have enough variety of support or are deep enough for the frequency that they are drafted that it's OK to commit early if there's a truly bomby card for that archetype. So stuff like Hoard Smelter Dragon, Indominitable Archangel, and Argent Sphinx are always worth taking and "commiting" to in P1P1. Additionally, those cards don't really commit you to an archetype, just a single color, since they are all playable even if you have zero artifacts or zero other cards of the same color.

Cards that require a more significant commitment, either in color (Kuldotha Phoenix, Volition Reins, Spikeshot Elder, Koth) or in archetype (Myrsmith, Embersmith, Venser), should be considered, but it's usually right to take them P1P1 unless there's something else pretty close in power level.

I do see images now 🙂 Thanks guys.

Joe, I see a lot of these articles talk about opening flexible. Are there any bombs that would cause you to force an archetype?

Argent Sphinx, Hand, Skittles, Hoard-Smelter Dragon, Indomitable Archangel.

Say for instance if your Kuldotha Phoenix was in P1 instead of Ezuri, do you take it and try to force that metalcraft deck?

Other than that, great article! It's nice to see drafts in written form from time to time instead of just video, and I thought the insights here were solid.

Images have been added.

Hi the_cardfather,

Believe me, we've been working since launch to get the images, both from the draft and the MTGO gamestates, up and running.

It will hopefully be fixed soon. 🙂

Thanks!

For the editor: Some of the artwork in the gameplay section (I assume MTGO screenshots) aren't showing up in IE. Please work on that.