I had a lot of fun with this Magical draft. After about five days of no drafts and drafts that did not start or complete properly. MTGO seems to be back in business let's see if I can get back in business with our next edition of the show after the jump. (more...)

Looks like they finally brought drafts back up on MTGO and they seem to be running without a hitch at this point.  Hopefully some information will be posted as to what was happening and how it is not going to happen in the future.  Look for some Shadowmoor draft walkthroughs coming as soon as I can.  Unfortunately, I may not get a chance to do a draft for a while. I have a wedding to attend tomorrow and the day after that, I am heading out to Vegas with the wife to look at some properties and find an apartment to rent as well as I have a job interview.  I will be bringing my laptop out there so there is a chance that I will get a draft in while I am there.  If I do get a draft in before I leave, I will let everyone know and I will get it posted as quickly as I am able. draftbetter

Things are not going well over at the headquarters of Wizards of the Coast. Even though we had almost 10,000 drafts fire without a hitch before this past Saturday night, something has gone majorly haywire. Every time they bring the server down trying to fix the problem, it ends up being the same problem over and over again. I will be monitoring the situation as closely as I can. However, I won't be able to draft until everything is fixed. Keep an eye on this space as I will put up content as soon as I am able to do so. draftbetter

I have been looking to get a draft in since some time on Saturday night. However, if you have been in the draft room on MTGO at all since about that time, you know that there has been... problems. Drafting is currently down and was giving out issues all day Sunday and Monday until they finally just killed them all. I will try and get a draft in as early as possible when they bring them back up.

There has been a bunch of new visitors in the last couple of days/weeks since I got this site up and running. I wanted to share some information for those users who might have some questions as to what this blog is about. I am trying to establish a site for the betterment of all levels of Magic: The Gathering players. I have a long way to go as well and I am trying to get better along with everyone else. This is a page on how things will work, and here's a quick FAQ for you. I started this project with Draft One. I have posted my picks and gameplay all the way through to my last draft which was Draft Thirteen. I've posted a couple of live draft reports that I was able to attend as well. It's been a lot of fun and it's been frustrating at times, but I think that I have improved a bit with the help of the comments (Thanks everyone). I plan to continue this project for as long as I am able. So if you haven't done so already, go check out my older posts and you can see how I got to where I am now. draftbetter

Don't worry, I'm not just posting because it's the 25th post. I have some content for you as well. I was taking a break from drafting and wanted to try a sealed deck with the new set. I don't know what normal is for a sealed since I have only done this one, but I ended up strong in three colors as no matter how I built the deck, I could not go two colors without playing some really horrific cards. It didn't help that I didn't end up with a single artifact of any kind and I also did not open any chase cards. I ended up with what was a black green deck splashing red. Every spell I had was playable with either black or green mana symbols except for the two puncture bolts that I had. I still had as many red mana symbols as I had black and green symbols. I tried one of the casual events as it was the closest to firing and I didn't have a lot of time to wait around for another one. Let me tell you, this was a mistake. This five round tournament ended up running for almost seven hours. I appreciated the extra time to build the deck as I had an extremely tough build and I took a while to come up with my final deck, but the rounds dragged on forever. My opponent in the final round almost timed out his entire 45 minute clock before he conceded game three to me. My pool was OK, but nothing amazing. Highlights include 2X Gloomlance, 2X Puncture Bolt, Incremental Blight, 2X Wildslayer Elves and Boartusk Liege. Plus some quality filler cards. I won the first round quite easily with my quality creatures and quality cards. I then proceeded to lose my next three matches. Every one of those matches I lost in two games and in every single game, I had mana problems. One game, I have 13 of 17 lands in play, hand or graveyard with twenty cards left in my library when I died. Most games though, I start with a three land hand and I am out of the game before I have my fifth land down. My mana cost average was totally fine at just above three. I didn't feel the need to play eighteen lands. It was never a color issue as I was just short mana most of the time. I won my final match, but even that was not easy. I started with a two Gloomlance, Incremental Blight and four lands hand. I figure that I can wipe his board if he is swarming, or if he doesn't have many creatures, I can use the 'lances. He ends up with a Safehold Elite on turn two and a Steel of the Godhead for the Elite on turn three. I take two hits before I am able to kill it with the Gloomlance, netting me a three for one with the discard. He then animates it with the B/R animate haste +2/+0 spell, without paying the red part of it. I use my other Gloomlance to kill it again and get his last card in hand with the discard. Then I finally started drawing creatures and I won with exactly one life as he kept using the Smolder Initiate on his and my spells. I was stressing there for a while. That's it for now. I promise to try and keep the project going with a draft or two this next week, we'll have to see. If anybody else has a different experience on the sealed side, let me know in the comments. If you want to see my deck, you can let me know how poorly I built it. I am still not sure what makes a good sealed for this format. Until then, Draftbetter