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Yesterday I took to the Modern Masters 2015 draft queues to try out the new format with a 6-2-2-2 / three round Swiss draft.
I faced off against a Jund Wither deck, Affinity, and a strange but explosive Grixis Wildfire deck.
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See below for what happened.
As I say in the videos, I'm very rusty with drafting, so in retrospect, I would've been more aggressive in picking some Affinity centric cards instead of taking some of the more versatile cards and hoping for the Affinity stuff to wheel. This may well have prevented the other player from also drafting Affinity, greatly increasing the strength of my pool. Draft basics, really, but this is what can happen when you don't play Limited for many moons. Regardless, the deck turned out pretty well.
I’m very, VERY confused at how you ended up in affinity. your pack one pick one bolt, followed by not taking the slaughtermaster. There’s no reason to spread out your early picks; commit to the archetype that best matches your first pick unless it becomes clear 4-5 picks in that it’s being cut. If we watch the rest of that pack, you have boros garrison or the bloodthirst dude, then burst lightning, fireslinger, another slaughtermaster, blades of velis vel or homonculous, then spikeshot elder. Goblin war-paint almost certainly still tables, dragonsoul knight still tables, and then the last picks in the pack are, as always, mostly crap. But that’s a much, MUCH stronger looking start than what you ended up with. Then you get P2P1 doublestrike flyer, duelist, and another burst lightning. I feel that would’ve lead you towards a much stronger deck than the affinity shell you ended up in.
That’s one way of doing it but I don’t think the only good way. Certainly it’s not what I’ve seen from some pro drafters.
In any case, it’s entirely possible I’m just unconsciously very biased toward Affinity for some reason.
I think you should motivate your picks more. It would be good to lay out a plan and explain how your picks would fit in that plan. Also for me the draft was very hard to follow. Especially the p1p5 Frogmite blew my mind, because until then you didn’t have any artfacts.
I have no experience with drafting MM2, so it could be that a p1p5 Frogmite is a huge signal to go for Affinity, but please explain so. As it was, it all seemed to be a bit random.
I’ve drafted MM15 five times, only because the credit from going 3-0 every time has made it not too painful to my wallet. Every time, it’s been one of the following: either A. you first pick the best card in a pack, decide what archetype it’s strongest in, and intentionally pick that archetype (passing first-pickable cards that don’t fit that archetype, or you find out you get cut 3-4 picks in and have to salvage from what’s open. For this reason, I recommend trying to stay heavy into one color of your archetype for those forcing picks.