Editor: Michael Mason. Wednesday 29th July 2004.
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Editor: Michael Mason. Wednesday 29th July 2004.
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AKA First Picks in Marvel Origins Draft In Sydney, we've played a fair few Marvel Origins drafts and have just started going "cRaZy" with the new DC Origins draft. VSParadise.com wanted me to share some of the "secrets" we've uncovered about Marvel format. Draft is used in the limited portion of PCQ events, so it's best to not ignore it completely for constructed. For new players interested in drafting, it can be a daunting experience but don't worry, as Marvel draft is actually quite balanced and fun, and with any luck this article will help you out. This article is a guide to the recommended first few picks in the 14-card booster of Marvel Origins and thus is quite narrow. I will try to follow this up soon with more info about later picks, plot twists details, deck builds and affiliations in the format and other random stuff that comes to me. (Note: I've found that DC draft is fundamentally different to Marvel so DON'T use the same system for picking cards - more on that later.) In Marvel, you'll find that fat characters are key. This is a drafting fundamental. A player hitting the curve each turn with the corresponding number (ie. 3 resource cost character on 3, 4 resource cost character on 4, etc...) will undoubtedly win if his opponent misses a few of them. If you look at the average attack/defence stats for a character you'll find the difference between 3, 4 and 5 drops are negligible and are easily made up for with plots twists and/or power-ups. The differences between the 5, 6 and 7 drops are much more considerable, thus being able to hit the curve is quite important. The most important turns of draft are 7, 6 and 5, as there are usually large chunks of endurance beat out of both players with each attack, but upon opening packs you'll find a strange lack of fatties, mostly lower drops and because they'll be passed around till late, they are not priority one. A lot of the rares in Marvel are Plot Twists, Locations and Equipment (36 of 77) and you'll find it a struggle to get solid characters for the end game in your draft deck, so keep this in mind before you first pick that Danger Room or Foiled. With all this in mind, here we go, as we enter the cream of the picks with; 7-Drops - You will rarely see these as the majority of them are rare, (duh!), but anytime you see one it will almost always be you first pick. The best are, (in order);
The exceptions to this must-first-pick club are; Mr. Fantastic, Scientific Genius - due to his total sub-par stats and ability, Annihilius, Destroyer of Life (unless you have Negative Zone. Good luck.), and Sub-Mariner, Ally of Doom - as you need to control Dr Doom to play him (getting Doomstadts are easy enough, but the 7's above are just better.) 6-Drops - If you don't get any of the Kings of Draft above, your first pick will no doubt be one of the great 6-drops. Fortunately, there are fantastic common 6-drops, making it more realistic to find these in a pack
Not recommended characters are; Master Mold, Sentinel Supreme (unless you love to play with Walls), Human Torch, Super Nova (deploy restriction and generally having sad stats/ability), Blastaar, King of Baluur (see Annihilius) 5-Drops and Plot twists - If you didn't find any of the suggested cards above in your packs, try not to make your sigh audible, but never fear as there are no doubt still great cards to choose. Now you should start considering the plot twists, or still the characters if there's one of the following;
The rest of the 5-drops are junk, and shouldn't be picked early unless you think a first pick Nimrod is incentive enough to draft all Sentinels (Translation: unless you are a fool). The best plot twists in a very, very rough order are;
After these top choices the remainder of the packs should come out reasonably easily. Similar teams are recommended because there's nothing worse than losing extreme amounts of breakthrough due to an "off-colour" character you can't reinforce. Realistically, a lot of these cards shouldn't come out in draft (i.e. rares) but I hope this article give you a heads up as to what to first look for when cracking your packs. There are still heaps of great cards, which I have probably not mentioned but I think I've mentioned most of the top choices. So next time rather than just cracking packs I recommend that you give drafting a go, it's one of the best formats VS has going for it! Luke "Like" Bartter Disclaimer: I'm just some random guy anyway, so if you disagree with anything I wrote, feel free to drop me a PM or just flame me or punch me in the neck next time you see me at SGC. I don't care if you had a good time reading, cause the idea that you feel like you wasted time reading this really gets me through the day. |
