Subject: Stronghold Booster Draft Date: Tue, 24 Mar 1998 17:01:27 +0100 From: Gregor Wernet Hi everyone. A few weeks ago I wrote an article about SH in booster drafts and sealed. Having played quite a few SH drafts, I want to write about my experience. I will only talk about SH only drafts now, as mixing TE and SH results in a completely different environment, depending on the number of TE boosters, and I mostly drafted SH only. Artifacts: Shifting Wall, Bullwhip and Hornet Cannon are all expensive but worth it. Black: Mostly substandard creatures and a few great cards requiring a heavy commitment to black (Dungeon Shade, Death Stroke). This often results in one person drafting black and the rest ignoring spells that they could not splash anyway. If you feel lucky, try to seize the black position in a draft and look for a good side color, e.g. blue (lots of flyers). Black is easily splashable for Lab Rats, which is recommendable if you have no other buyback spells. Buyback spells win games, so always try to have some. This does not include Brush with Death, which is very slow and too mana-consuming. Blue: Blue got some some great defensive creatures (Hammerhead Shark, Dream Prowler), it got a good counter and a the best buyback spell in SH (Mind Games is awesome!). It got cheap, offensive flyers and library manipulation (Sift is soooooo good!). Contempt does not seem to be that good, as it is very situational (contempting spikes is NOT a good idea). Green: Green got a big boost in SH. The Wurms and Colonies justify splashing green for them, unlike the green in TE. It is possible to get 3-5 of these fatties, which can make for an effective fatty deck. The L. Basilisk, the Skyshroud Troopers and the Spike Worker are also good green creatures. The basilisk is especially brutal with some kind of damage prevention (Samite Blessing). If you play green, it will be easy to get a few Skyshroud Archers late in the booster. Play 1 and keep the rest in the sideboard for blue decks. Provoke is a very good cantrip that lets you get rid of those annoying utility creatures (or just about anything smaller than a Spined Wurm). Mulch is not very useful, as you risk decking yourself if used in multiples. Red: Red got some good spells and removal (Shock, F. Blade, Fling, Mob Justice, Seething Anger), but it has definitely the weakest creatures in SH. Mogg Bombers suck and Flunkies have too much of a drawback in a standoff situation. Craven Giant and F. Shambler are both weak, and the 1/1's just aren't worth it. Overall, red seems like a splash color for the spells; try to avoid the creatures - use your other color(s). White: White got good, defensive creatures (V. Monk, Y. Knight, En-Kors), a (in drafts, at least) good removal spell, a nice buyback spell and two good enchantments (especially Samite Blessing, this card creates the perfect blocker in addition to protecting your creatures from DD. Theme cards: The walls: The black, white and green walls are great, the blue one is good and the red one is at least playable (well, it got a great wall in TE, after all). Licids: All the licids are quite good, simply because of their blocking capabilities. Their abilities are useful, too. They also have a bit of a beatdown potential, as they are bigger than their TE counterparts. Slivers: They are all quite nice as 2/2 for two mana, and their abilities can come in handy (I recently won a draft with two victual slivers; the lifegaining won several games). And I still don't think it is wise to play a Sliver Queen in Limited, even after being stomped with one in the fourth round :-). General overview: Almost all the successful decks I have seen used green, blue or white for their creature base, mostly because of the lack of decent red or black creatures. The green creatures are incredibly fat and have useful abilites, making green an excellent but slow offensive color. White has great defensive cards; a good white SH-deck can deal with any creature assault. It also has a very good flyer (Spirit en-Kor) which can be the finisher. Blue has good defensive creatures, flyers and cool spells. Combined with black or white, a flying assault deck is very strong. Black and red both have good spells, but they have few good creatures. So try to avoid red as a main color, and only go for black if you seem to be the only one. Good weenie decks are almost impossible to make; creature standoffs are much more frequent than in TE drafts. Good ways to break a stalemate include flyers, pure fat and Spikes. The ability to move tokens effectively lets you decide which creature blocks your 4/4 creature. That's all for this time; i hope you enjoyed this post. -- Gregor Wernet