Kitty Time: SamP's Arena Cube Roto Draft Part 3

Not going to lie, this has been a very fun, and mind melting experience already. The fact that I have to consider really every card in the cube before I pick is a lot to take in. I want to be open to a lot of different strategies, but also I want to find my direction soon so I can get key pieces. It's a difficult balancing act that I am having fun trying to understand and balance. 

   Day 3: Yesterday ended really well. I did end up taking Mox Opal. Opal is going to pair really nicely with Currency Converter. Taking inexpensive cards that can also have a game warping effect is already something I want to do, and Mox Opal is as close to a Mox as I am going to get in this cube. It's also early enough to build around. 

   

I'm going to catch you up on the other pics as well. Both of the Goyfs have been taken. Ocelot Pride, Thoughtseize, both Hierarch's, Gut, Phlage, Ancient Tomb. It's also important to note that the drafter two seats or three seats away from me drafted Urza, Lord High Artificer. This could be a control win condition, but it may mean I will compete with them for some cards in the artifact lane. 

  I do want to call out what some of these decks look like through the start. It's interesting is that we have four different mono color drafters. I am one of them and so far I am on a black. 

We have the mono blue player that is clearly playing control with an artifact sub theme. 

We then have an aggressive but blink value-based monowhite drafter using Phelia, Solitude, Path to Exile, Elite Spellbinder and both of the Thraben Inspector variants that are in the cube. 

The monored player has Ragavan, Pyrogoyf, Ancient Tomb, Fable of the Mirror Breaker, Laelia, Fury and Chain Lightning. 

The other decks at the table are green X. We have the first player who is drafting Simic but mainly green. They have three fetch lands and two Mana dorks, Tamiyo, Inquisitive Student, Springheart Nantuko, Scythecat Club, and Six. 

We have a clear reanimator deck which is pick number two. They have Reanimate, Thoughtseize, Gut, Troll of Khazad-Dum, Sephiroth and Yagmoth. 

Then we have a Boros value pile. You could say it's boros good stuff; Swords to Plowshares, Ocelot Pride, Phlage, Goblin Bombardment, Lightning Bolt, Reprieve, Stone Forge Mystic and Arena of Glory. 

Then we have a Jund player with two fetch lands, Birds of Paradise, Barrogoyf, Icetill Explorer, Emperor of Bones, Fatal Push, Inti, Fear of Missing Out. 

Then we have the Strip Mine player who is playing Wrenn and Six , three fetch lands, Rofellos and Primevil Titan. 

  We have Dimir control / reanimator strategy with Crabomination, Fallen Shinobi, Sheoldred, Dark Ritual, Dauthi Voidwalker, Overlord of the Balemurk, Time Warp + Temporal Manipulation, Stock Up and Unholy Annex. 

  So that brings me back to myself and where I sit in all of this. I am the fourth pick out of 10. 

Pick 3, I took Deathrite Shaman. Desperate Shaman to me counts as really important interaction. There are two copies of each fetch land in the cube, there are also several very clear reanimator strategies. I am looking at Dauthi Voidwalker, Yawgmoth, Reanimate, Fear of Missing Out and Icetill Explorer all as really powerful ways to interact with the graveyard. So Deathrite Shaman being another black spell to follow up my Demonic Tutor and being able to interact with these strategies and potentially even ramping me, I was very high on my list. So I was able to take it and then immediately afterwards there's more powerful cars that were taken. I am thinking about my interaction and my potential threats. I am trying to balance the amount of interaction, with the amount of proactive pieces for my own game plan as well. So, Deathrite Shaman was an interactive piece in my mind, and then on the way back I noticed that Lurrus was not taken yet. 

  While I was doing this Roto draft, I was also drafting my IPA Cube at a bar. So I was kind of distracted during all of this. I thought for a long period of time about what I should take next and I looked at Lurrus as a very clear power outlier. So I ended up taking it on the way back to me. It works really well with Mox Opal, Currency Converter and other cards I have. It gives me a direction to go down.  I'm very early in the draft and I feel like having a direction of some kind that narrows my focus on what I want to draft is helpful in distilling down the massive amount of cards that are around and focusing in on something clear and proactive.

   
   After Lurrus, I really wanted to pick up another piece of interaction and something that would work well with countering all of the aggressive Decks that I'm looking at. So if I'm facing down Ocelot Pride or a Phelia, I want some ways to catch back up. I ended up taking the Meathook Massacre. I feel like this is a win condition and also away for me to extend the game by boardwiping and gaining a lot of life in the process. So I took that very highly. With Lurrus it's something I could just play from my graveyard for two Mana using Lurrus' ability to slowly drain my opponent out using some kind of a sacrifice outlet. After that pic a lot of other really good cards went and this is not very surprising cuz we're in still in the top 100 cards in the entire cube out of 540. However Massacre got me thinking about an aristocrats type game plan. Also the artifacts that I am also looking at, I didn't think would be prioritized as much by other people. So, I took a gamble and grabbed Marionette Apprentice.

   This was such a perfect card for my deck because I already had MOX opal and I wanted a way to grind out the long game. It made two bodies for 2 mana, it's something I could recur very easily and it worked really well with what Lurrus is trying to do, which is replay cheap spells out of the graveyard. It also combos with treasure tokens from currency converter or other artifacts that I might pick up later to enable my Mox. Nobody else has been blatantly saying I'm playing artifacts just yet outside of potentially the blue player. The blue player picked Urza second pick, however they didn't pick any other artifacts afterwards. That is, until pick 7 with Retrofitter Foundry. Then, my nightmare scenario; they also take Bauble on the way back. Perfect card to pair with Mox and Lurrus. Ouch.

     I'm really at this point I'm still focusing on mainly black. It would be really nice to be able to stay in a one color for as long as possible in my opinion. It just makes my manabase that much easier. It also allows me to stay flexible and watch what other people are doing and jump into a color only if I feel like it's really open. I think that's important because I'm looking at some of the fetch lands getting taken pretty highly and I personally would like to take a fetch that maybe goes in a color that other people are not taking so I can get my key pieces early. So I ended up taking Chthonian Nightmare as a follow-up to Apprentice and Meathook. Is so perfect for my deck because it works well with sacrifice/aristocrats plan. It also basically gives me another copy of Lurrus. I feel like if I'm going to go into the strategy, I should prioritize something that's going to give me a redundant effect in case Lurrus is answered.

Side note: I'm really excited about with this deck as I feel like it counters a lot of the other really strong decks at the table. I'm looking at very aggressive mono red right next to me and I'm looking at a mono white deck on the other side. Those are some of the strongest decks that you can play, however I feel like my deck can gum up the board, gain some life and replay lots of different cards to be able to out value them in the long game. I will be able to go toe2toe with those decks by making cheap creatures that you don't necessarily want to deal. I should be able to stall the board so I have time to find and cast my board wipes. I will need time to tutor, find my answers and have a lot of ways to interact. That's my game plan right now. Just a pure Lurrus value, long game, mid-range type of a game plan. 

   Now the blue player is somewhat concerning because they interact really well with like my bigger spells. However, if you're in mono blue you don't have access to board wipes, and you don't have access to a lot of good creature removal. So my deck I think is also going to be able to pressure a control player very early and get underneath them while they're trying to set up late game engines. So I feel pretty good about my spot. Luckily enough, after I picked up Chthonian Nightmare I picked up Bitterblossom.

Bitterblossom to me in this cube is one of the strongest cards. There are Planeswalkers in this Cube and there are a lot of ways to make tokens in this Cube. I wanted a way to pressure my opponent and pressure their Planeswalkers but also add to my proactive game plan. Give me a body to sack to a Chthonian Nightmare, give me bodies to win with Meathook Massacre and Marionette Apprentice. I'm imagining stalling the game to a point where I have five flyers in play and I just end up winning with a boardwipe to drain for final points of damage. The cheap fliers should also do a good job of blanking my opponents threats with these really difficult to interact with pieces. 


So, I'm looking at my next couple of pics and I'm very excited with where the deck's going. I have a game plan. I also have a need for fixing and removal, and I'm thinking about jumping into white or red or even blue but definitely not green. Green seems to be very contested. Blue and Red seem to be contested as well on the splash. So I'm looking at white and red because the cards that I'm interested in are not going to be the same as the current drafters in those colors. II'm also thinking about taking more graveyard interaction with Agatha's Soul Cauldron and I think that's going to be my next pick because it combinations with Deathrite and some of the key Lurrus pieces like Selfless Spirit and Zack Fair. Or even the cards that my opponents are going to be playing that I want to get rid of like, Dauthi and Yawgmoth.