First Pick: Cracking Some Packs

[Paul]

Graham's training for the MTGO Community Cup continues with some drafting tech. Jer weighs in with his strategies too.

[theDreamer]

This was, inexplicably, put up yesterday, despite being the latest First Picks video?

[Lacerta]

Jer is crazy to first pick a Gremlin Mine over a Porcelain Legionnaire.

Also, Dementia Bat is awful.

[Ollie, don'tcha know!]

Blinding Souleater is such a good pick for drafts.

- Leaves your colours open (although strongly benefits from White to be fair)
- Controls whatever is strongest at the moment, and therefore keeps up with their curve very well
- The 1/3 body is insane. In the Scars block, where there are so many 'Deal 1-2 damage' cards, 3 toughness is incredible

However, I have not been playing Magic for too long. I may be wrong. To be honest it could be because I just love the card art

[Lord Carol]

Why is this video 489MB on iTunes? That's ten times the file size of anything of equivalent length! It makes it impossible to watch, as my external harddrive can't process it that quickly!

Can it be compressed in any way?

[MrParivir]

Yeah like the above, sorry to be a pain but could you upload a lower quality version. Your podcasts are over an hour, yet only ~250mb, this is strangely large for the file length and a smaller version would be very much apprieciated.

[phlip]

Blip has a couple of different encoded videos, if you know where to look for them...

• Source - Quicktime H264/PCM 1280x720, 555MiB
• Blip SD - M4V H264/AAC 640x360, 257MiB
• Blip HD 720 - M4V H264/AAC 1280x720, 490MiB

As for the vidcasts... they presumably compress a lot better, since it's just a static camera... most of the shot doesn't change much from frame to frame, which is good for compression.

[MrParivir]

257? Much better thanks a bunch phlip!

[HungryHungryHobo]

The hurt of that draft was gremlin mind over blinding zealot over legionnaire and Blind Zealot which while you do have to hit with it for removal its intimidate makes it a pain in the ass in limited, so I've always seen it to be worth its merit as a pick and a pain in the ass anytime I see it in limited where removal is scarcer.

[Ottoman]

Why all the hate for Defensive Stance? I mean, it's obviously not particularly good in a draft, but surely it has its place.

[Graham]

I'm sure it does, but I can't fathom. It's really not a good card.

[Lacerta]

I guess you can use it to neuter annoying 1/1 poisoners like plague stinger?

But that's pretty marginal.

It's bad because its uses are so limited that it's going to be a dead draw most of the time and because there are so many more effective cards for either buffing your own creatures' toughness or neutralizing your opponents' creatures.

Any card which does two things that work against each other is not fun to play. Particularly if neither of those things is very useful to start with.

[lagillesp]

Kinda upset you guys thought the green infect overrun would wheel in the first pack.