War College - Limited Skillz
By Ben Isgur

This is going to be an intro to Limited, I'm going to run through Sealed and Draft basic strategy. Then I’ll build an example Sealed team from a recent Sealed tournament I played in.

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80 Horde Priest - Tichondrius
80 Alliance Rogue - Icecrown

Ben, One thing that I may have missed was an evaluation of Illiana's Holy Light. Is an on card heal like that relatively insignificant in a limited format? Good read, how did you end up doing?

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Sarcastic remarks should come in a different color. Then the forums would be more interesting to look at.

a 2 for 2 heal is pretty insignificant unless you are facing dots and it prevents auto death.  Then again if she has no good attack or ability usuage options and can afford to hang out for a couple ticks its okay to have just to be able to do something. A 3 for 3 heal on the other hand is pretty good especially if you can find a way to give the caster rerolls ( WoA totem, Mark of the Wild ).  A 2 for 2 could be worthwhile if you have a healing centric team that can just all of a sudden turtle and start healing itself ( tranquility, 3 for 3 heals, + 2 for 2 heals )

1811756:

a 2 for 2 heal is pretty insignificant unless you are facing dots and it prevents auto death.

The only reason why you might want to play it is that Illiana's attack is even MORE insignificant. :) In fact, once her cards are tapped out I would probably just always use her for heals (or even just move her every tick and do nothing else). I've seen players use her attack in Sealed/Draft and it always end in tears (like having her stuck for many ticks in one spot where her Protector is rendered moot).

Let's just say you're picking her mostly for Protector... you'd like a Sulfuras but seriously, that's 2 rares out of 4 packs and hoping nobody picks them up instead of you.

I question how a 3 for 3 is any better though. Same ratio. You'll get more up front but on the long run you'll still get attritioned at the same rate. On a 3/3 defensive character it's the equivalent of a 3 for 6 attack, while 2 for 2 is the equivalent of a 2 for 5.

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"The beatings will continue until morale has improved."
- Standard corporate management technique

Is 2 for 2 isn't worth it, what about 3 for 2? :-D

I think 2 for 2 is just as good as 3 for 3 also.

-c

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http://myworld.ebay.com/corle2/

Fools! Well don't cry to me when you roll your two dice and come up snake eyes. 

I suppose I'm biased because unless there is a reroll involved I generally detest the rate of return on most heals.

You think that's bad, a good part of the reason I lost my first match of NAC is when I rolled 0 on Bolvar's Retribution.

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"The beatings will continue until morale has improved."
- Standard corporate management technique

Jeriatric: I went x-0.

As far as Illiana's OCH, it's basically worthless, but you still cast it after tapping her cards, unless a weakly defended character is in range.

Corle: She has Rexxar attack with Master Tact, TYVM.

Also, part of the article got edited. It was submitted before Worlds stuff got posted, and had a complaint about there being no draft in high level events.

Whoops!

-Ben

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Isgee is, by definition, a snob.

I have a complaint: hate drafting is too good in this game compared to others I've played.

Magic has 8 players pods so hate drafting is ludicrously stupid. You have only 3/7 odds of facing whatever you pass. With 4 players in a pod, you're 66% likely to face any broken combo at the table, so you have high incentives to break them up.

Dreamblade also had 4 players pods, but an individual mini could be played in any team whereas here you have 2/3 of the cards in the packs only playable by picking a small subset of characters. Again, this makes hate drafting a much more viable strategy than picking a mid-pick card you might not even get to play.

Also: monster boosters. Ugh. Especially in SoW. If everything was Alliance or Horde it would actually be not too bad, since you'd have a lot of class-specific cards and class characters. Open 3 out of 4 SoW boosters as monster boosters, though, and I hope you weren't hoping to fill out a marginal character's ABC collection (or get a character for your stack of good ABCs that happened to fall in your lap without a corresponding character).

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"The beatings will continue until morale has improved."
- Standard corporate management technique

My complaint is that helwyn is too good.  With the unbelievable amount of otherwise unplayable demon cards you get passed in sow packs she can tick lock a character for the entire game.

In case you didn't catch the sarcasm, I too think that monster boosters are mostly duds in draft.

Helwen is flat out amazing, DClown, I hope that that is double satire in your post. I'll happily pick her every time I see her. Happily.

-Ben

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Isgee is, by definition, a snob.

I was just using her as a target for the butt of my overflowing container of demon cards joke, and that the best thing to do with most of those cards is use them as tick up fodder for helwyn.

I was making a triple satire. I haven't tested the format. Maybe Helwen isn't too terrible if you pick up 4+ cards? She might actually be quite good. My 5 honor guy for your 8 honor for most of the game sounds good, +utility from some of the cards. Dark Portal is quite good, for instance.

-Ben

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Isgee is, by definition, a snob.

Helwen seems like a solid mid-pick just because of the endless supply of Demon cards second pack, but I wouldn't pick it early...

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"The beatings will continue until morale has improved."
- Standard corporate management technique

Grimdron is the Ace up my sleeve.

Prepare to be afraid.

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"Yes, Ming Zhang gave Matt Whaite crabs. You read it here first."

-Brinkman