Today, we’re going to take a bit of an aside here with Jimmy O’Brien. Jimmy O’B, a.k.a. ChaosJim, is a well-known player in the New Jersey area, notable for his 4th Place finish at the 2008 World Championship, as well as his >1800 post-Cities rating for the current season. However, he’s also known for professing a great interest in alternate formats: be it unlimited, limited, half-deck, or extended-modified, he’s always considering the options.
For this post, he’ll be discussing draft. So sit down, grab some popcorn…And maybe grab a box of Pokemon cards, too.
Draft
By Jimmy O'Brien
"A lot of people only play Pokémon events with sealed packs at prereleases, and even at those, several choose to not draft. Organized play doesn’t reward being good at drafting: there are no upper-level premier events that involve this format, and no added prize incentive to excel at Prerelease events, so it sort of makes sense. However, opening a box by drafting it can be a lot more fun than just sitting alone in your basement, alphabetizing the rares as you go.
I’ll try to cover a few different drafting topics as time goes by until something else demands my attention, but assuming you and your friends want to draft (or you want to host a draft as a TO or league leader), the first decision is: which set you want to draft. Right now, I like drafting Undaunted.
Undaunted won’t always be a good set to draft. So why do I like it right now?
1) Duplicates of Pokémon. There are two different Eevees and all of its evolutions. There are two different Houndours and two Houndooms, there are two Honchkrows and two Murkrows.
2) Consistency Trainers. Sage’s Training happens to be a gigantic asset in draft. Team Rocket’s Trickery is better than it is in constructed. Legend Box and Energy Exchanger have their place but aren’t top picks.
3) Set-up Pokémon. Mawile is good in general, has some nice synergy with Burned Tower. Misdreavus has Erika as an attack. Eevee, Oddish, Slowpoke, and Togepi are also better than nothing even if they’re clearly not superstars.
4) Solid Uncommon Stage 1s. The Eeveeloutions are alright, very consistent. Muk, Raichu, and even Slowbro are pretty good for draft.
5) Valuable Rares. I’ll admit, Undaunted falls a little short here. Smeargle is gigantic though, Vileplume sees play, and Umbreon and Scizor Prime round things out. Admittedly could be a lot better, but if this is the main reason you draft a set, you don’t need to be reading this article, you need to be looking over set lists.
So, given the above, it definitely serves as a crash course in how to potentially draft a good deck in Undaunted. It also – hopefully – gives you an insight into what makes an enjoyable draft: cards in a set that give you decks that do things. Every set will have the big Stage Twos that can win games, but I don’t enjoy games that turn into, “I got my stage 2 out, you didn’t…Lose now!”
( Unless I’m the one with the stage 2. )
HGSS has the same redeeming qualities for drafting I’ve listed above, except that they’re found in a different balance. The HGSS consistency trainers have a lot more value outside the draft, and the duplicates of top evolutions is a lot more important than the solid stage 1 uncommons.
Next time, I’ll take a look at some of the cards mentioned above, explain why it is I like them, and try to draw some parallels between them and cards in other sets."
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Thanks for that submission, bud!
In other news, Call of Legends is looking to be pretty bad for us competitive modified players; however, is it bad for draft? Given all of the massive basics, I have a feeling that this could be the case.