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With the Vintage Super League and Standard Super League, it's clear that efforts are being made to promote the production of more video content to promote Magic as a game. A really cool promotional event that was held last night was a Modern Rotisserie draft featuring Marshal Sutcliffe, Chris Pikula, Randy Buehler, Adam Prosak, Aaron Forsythe, Rashad Miller, Sam Black, and Brian David Marshall.
If you're not familiar with Rotisserie Draft, it's a format in which cards are drafted from a giant card pool rather than specific packs. That is to say that the first drafter starts by picking any card legal in Modern to potentially play as a one-of in his/her draft deck. A pick order is determined, and players draft first-last, then last-first over and over until an agreed upon number of cards have been drafted by all players. When drafting out of card pools we see a feature called "the wheel", in which the last drafter starting with his/her first pick and the first drafter starting with his/her second pick take two cards per round to both make sure that everybody is getting the same number of cards per round and also to balance the fact that picking last is rather poor.
The picks for this draft can be found here. There's a lot of picks worth discussing in this draft, but one that had me raising my eyebrow was Marshall's first pick Batterskull.
There's a good argument to be made in that pretty much any deck will probably want this card, but it's definitely not the first pick in terms of just picking something with raw power. If you just want to pick the strongest card, then the pick may very well be Snapcaster Mage.
This is not to say that Marshall's pick was wrong. That's a ludicrous notion in a format played for fun. It's also worth noting that Marshall ultimately won the draft. I just think that it's interesting that Marshall first picked a card that probably wouldn't be in my personal top 20 for options to first pick in the format.
All of the matches for this draft were broadcast on the drafter's respective Twitch channels. At this point in time, Randy Buehler has uploaded his videos to YouTube, which I hope that other drafters follow suit on.
As a conversation starter, what would be your first pick in a Modern Rotisserie Draft?
Look at the first drafts of everyone. Each player did one of two things: strongly signal what color they were going to plunge into by choosing the best card in that color, OR choose a neutral card and allow everyone else to tell them what they were drafting. Seen from that perspective, the best two colorless threats going first pick (Batterskull, Wurmcoil) makes a lot of sense.
Are they actually the best colorless cards though? Would you rather have Batterskull over Sword of Fire and Ice? In a control deck, maybe. Even still, it’s so detrimental to hate draft early on rotisserie that I would easily send a strong signal of what I want if I had the luxury of the first pick.
It’s great that you are drawing attention to this awesome event, but I’m kind of disappointed that the ultimate result is spoiled mid-page without warning. I realize that some people may just want a summary, but you may want to either hide the spoiler information or not mention the results at all. Just a suggestion. Something I really enjoy on QS is that some side magic content is linked in the free section and for me a I tend to enjoy them more if I don’t know the results until the end.
A fair criticism. My apologies. I was trying to cover my bases on the inevitable comment that “Marshall’s pick couldn’t have been wrong, he won”, but you’re right, there should have been a spoiler tag or something.
Would you rather have any equipment, including Batterskull, over Umezawa’s Jitte? I don’t know how many of you have had the pleasure/displeasure playing against it in limited but even in a format with constructed powerhouses the card advantage that card generates is absolutely ridiculous.
Forgot it was banned/not legal in modern, please disregard my previous post.
What I am most curious about is if this draft fired again, how would these players change their picks. Sword of Body and Mind, for example, could easily be a first pick. That card is brutal in draft formats. Also, Tarmogoyf going so low was strange to me as well.
Are there other cards that should have been picked higher?
I agree that his first pick was great. No matter what he chose, his other choices would not make it around to his next pick. That is usually how it goes on drafts when you make first pick.
If he picked snapcaster mage, he lost the chance of acquiring the card’s best two targets in path to exile and lightning bolt. Marshall did eventually get Maelstrom Pulse and Adrupt Decay, but both are not as good choices for snapcaster as Bolt and Path; it would force him to go three colors in draft instead of just black/green.
As for batterskull himself, in draft, he is a curve topper for aggro that can make any creature on the board a threat when he dies, and in control, well, we all know how amazing he is in control. Either way you shake it, it is one of the best cards in draft format, and making it your first pick does not commit you to a color or a strategy. I think he did well with his pick.