In a prior article I said that the most important choice you make in a draft is the first two cards you select. The initial two cards set the pace for every selection you make for the remainder of the draft. This was true for Dark Crisis and remains true for Invasion of Chaos.
Before entering into a draft, it is wise to familiarize yourself with the commons in the set and how they can be combined together. This will assist you in recognizing potential strategies based on a small number of cards offered to you in your first two packs. For example, a card like D. D. Borderline sets you up for a stall strategy, so if you select it as one of your first choices you will want to focus on assisting the stall with cards like Stealth Bird, high DEF monsters, or a card like Recycle.
Choosing cards that do not support the central strategy of your earlier selections can easily lead to a deck with no direction and nothing cohesive. In order to best support your odds of winning the draft tournament you will need to work on recognizing which cards are deceptive in their uses, either good or bad.
In this article we shall look at the contents of a few sealed packs of Invasion of Chaos and I shall evaluate the options available to the player drafting from these packs. I will detail the strategies available for the cards in each set of packs and the decisions that will be faced by the player selecting from them.
Pack Set 1
Pack 1:
Dark Driceratops (Rare)
Big Koala
Terrorking Salmon
Sea Serpent Warrior of Darkness
Ryu Kokki
Amphibious Bugroth Mk-3
Chaos End
DNA Transplant
Begone, Knave!
Pack 2:
Stray Lambs (Rare)
Sea Serpent Warrior of Darkness
Don Turtle
Gale Lizard
Ryu Kokki
Amphibious Bugroth Mk-3
Chaos End
DNA Transplant
Begone, Knave!
Oddly enough, this player has received two nearly identical packs. Fortunately for this player, the contents of the packs offer some good options.
The player here can easily support a beatdown strategy. He or she has several good single tribute monsters that can easily overpower an opponent. Dark Driceratops is the best among them, boasting 2400 ATK and Fairy Meteor Crush-type damage. In order to use these tribute monsters, the player will need to draft lower level monsters to offer for the tributes. To a certain degree, Sea Serpent Warrior of Darkness and Stray Lambs could be used for this purpose. Fleshing out the host of attackers are Big Koala, Terrorking Salmon, and Ryu Kokki.
The player also faces what will happen with the cards he or she doesn't select. Gale Lizard may not be that important now, but if it gets passed on, the card could easily wind up in another player’s deck, lying in wait to disrupt the tribute monsters. If the drafter allows the two-tribute monster Big Koala to enter someone else’s grasp, the monster may come after him or her later.
My suggestion for this draft is to focus on obtaining the muscle, in the form of Dark Driceratops and Ryu Kokki. Stray Lambs would be nice to use, but it comes at the loss of strong monsters. The Sea Serpent Warriors of Darkness can be overlooked for now, as more monsters will be available in the other draft packs.
Pack Set 2
The player drafting from this set has a good card to theme a deck around: Wild Nature’s Release. There's even a nice Beast monster to support it, with Big Koala in the same pack.
The set of packs has good monsters for a beatdown deck and also has Chaos Sorcerer to use in a Chaos-themed deck. The inclusion of the super rare Wild Nature’s Release should focus this player’s attention on the Beasts. While it would be nice to combine Big Koala with Stray Lambs, it would mean giving up Wild Nature’s Release.
My recommendation is for this player to take advantage of the super rare, drafting Big Koala and Wild Nature’s Release. He or she should keep an eye out for Beast-type monsters from this point on, along with anything that would support Beast-type monsters.
Pack Set 3
Player 4 faces a wide array of cards that can easily lend themselves to various strategies. He or she can use Neo Bug with Gigantes, focusing on Earth monsters. He or she can combine Chaos Sorcerer with either Getsu Fuhma or Ojama Black, but unfortunately not both. Terrorking Salmon and Energy Drain can be used for a better offense. Neo Bug could even be used with Multiplication of Ants it the player so desired.
Given the circumstances, I would side with Neo Bug and Terrorking Salmon. While Gigantes would also be a worthy choice, it requires Earth monsters in the graveyard, leaving it with a good chance of being dead weight in your hand.
Drafting can sometimes mean we will need to pass on cards that we would otherwise have liked to use. The limit on how many cards you can select makes this inevitable. My hope is that these examples have shone some light onto the thought and planning that goes into these selections.
Until next time, remember . . . priority = 42.
Send all comments, suggestions, and Menchi recipes to Curtis@Metagame.com.