Tome Scour and Some Thoughts on Limited

I don’t get a lot of opportunities to draft. Or at least I didn’t used to get a lot of opportunities to draft. Recently the group of us who play out here in the D.C. area has grown to the point where we can fairly regularly get eight people to draft once a week, so we do. We’ve done a couple of M10 drafts so far, with apparently pretty good results.

Even my fiancée is participating! I plan on having a primer in the next few weeks on how to get your significant other to play Magic. Hopefully that will be interesting, since a few people have asked my advice on the subject. I’d like to get my fiancée’s help to write it too, if she’s willing.

We’ll see.

Anyway, semi-regular drafting: For me, it’s probably a good thing. Drafting definitely tests different skills than my usual diet of Vintage. Creature combat is far more important, card advantage isn’t as simple as “Target player draws three cards,” and I’ve found it very difficult to combo turn one.

Unfortunately for me, I still don’t take drafting very seriously. When making my picks, I’m often tempted by “the danger of cool things.” I want to try new things. I’ve attacked with creatures before and used removal on my opponent’s mob. It’s old hat. Boooooring.

Take this nifty little deck, for example:

1x Ponder
2x Divination
1x Mind Control
1x Air Elemental
1x Rod of Ruin
1x Kraken’s Eye
1x Wall of Frost
1x Sleep
2x Ice Cage
2x Essence Scatter
2x Negate
2x Cancel
2x Traumatize
4x Tome Scour
17x Island

That’s right, I drafted TomeScour.dec, and I liked it.

The idea is that since everyone (well, the good players anyway) plays with 40 card decks and draw almost a quarter of their deck for their opening hand, in limited, milling becomes a viable path to victory. Tome Scour is a relatively large chunk of the remaining deck. The goal essentially becomes survival against your opponent's unquestionably better aggro capabilities. You're playing combo: mill before they run you over with dudes.

I hadn’t gone into the draft with this strategy in mind. I mean, I had heard about the possibility of this deck after M10 was released, and the prospect of creating it arose at our previous draft, but it wasn’t a strategy I was about to force.

Then Traumatize was passed to me for pick number five. Seeing nothing else in the pack that piqued my interest, I figured why not. Then I saw a Tome Scour. Then another. So by the end of the first pack I already had a pair of Tome Scours and a Traumatize. When the player five seats ahead of me table-talked about a second Traumatize that I later picked up, I knew I was in.

The deck seemed really good to me. I wish I’d had one more Sleep or maybe one more counter, but I wasn’t having problems with the deck’s contents.

Kraken’s Eye kept me alive for several turns against the more aggressive decks, and made me glad I hadn’t splashed red for the few extra removal cards and single Burning Inquiry.

Mind Control and Air Elemental were excellent answers to the aggro scourge. Mind Control even won me a game, taking control of a late-game Enormous Baloth that I rode to victory a few turns sooner than I would have been able to deck my opponent.

I would have loved to have drafted more Ponders. I don’t know where most players would rank Ponder, but I figure if it’s good enough to be restricted in Vintage it’s good enough to be played in my draft deck. In the previous week’s draft, I had three Ponders and was happy to draw them and have them in my opening hand.

Actually, the card I was most disappointed with, and remember having been disappointed with in previous limited events, was Ice Cage. It’s so fragile! And there are times where its fragility is just comically bad. For example, when the Cudgel Troll you’ve Iced breaks out because it’s been zapped by Oakenform. You went from taking zero damage to a shot in the face for seven, followed by several prospective fours, which kinda sucks!

Oh, I also feel like I had a relevant sideboard that wasn’t just the random artifact or enchantment removal card. Against the really aggressive decks, I could bring in three of those white cards that gain me seven life. Unfortunately, I can’t remember the name of that card, and I never brought it in, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Of course, the real problem with this deck (and, in fact, with most decks that I play) is that I play like a complete donkey 90% of the time.

In the pivotal game three of my first match, the situation was thus: My opponent, Josh, had several creatures in play with power equal to seven, including a 2/1 Coral Merfolk. I had seven life and had just drawn a Tome Scour to go with my in-hand Traumatize and six mana. I also had a Rod of Ruin in play.

“How many cards in your library?” I asked.

Josh counted them out in front of me. “Eleven,” he said.

“Okay,” I said. “Traumatize you.”

“That’s five right?”

And as soon as he said it, I knew I had lost. Actually, as soon as I’d announced and paid for Traumatize I knew I had lost. “Oh, no!” I said. “What am I doing?! I just lost.” My opponent readily agreed.

Because I’m an idiot.

Traumatize and Tome Scour against eleven cards left one card in my opponent’s library, just enough for him to draw one card and smash my face.

Of course, the proper play was to knock out his Coral Merfolk with my Rod of Ruin, pass the turn (I think with Negate in hand), let him draw a card down to 10, Traumatize and Tome Scour him next turn, and win the game.

Oh well. Next time I’ll be better.

The problem with playing so poorly, of course, is that I have this really cool draft deck that I want to play more. First, it was fun to win without attacking in a limited format. Second, I want to prove to myself that I drafted as well as I hope.

It’s sort of like that time during Time Spiral block when I drafted six Gathan Raiders and four Edge of Autumn (strictly for deck thinning, obviously) and absolutely dominated the dojo. I wanted to play that deck over and over because, well, hey, it seemed really good! Winning is fun!

What I’m left with is yet another draft deck that I think was a rousing success yet have no way to prove that and no opportunity to try again. It’s so disappointing.

Is this a common feeling for drafters?

Anyway, I’ll probably have a few more draft reports going forward. They won’t really be of any practical use to anyone, but it will be fun for me, and hopefully they’ll be entertaining enough to make reading them worthwhile.

Sound good?

Good.