Hello Condemned! I hope you’ve had a great week so far. If you missed yesterday’s post, you should totally check it out. I revealed a new Condemned, Punchline! It was the perfect time to show it off, because I had a draft last night at Highlander Games!

I specifically want to talk about last night’s draft because it was such an unusual draft. We only had 4 Condemned for 5 players: Ophid, Daisy, and 2 GRips. This can and will happen in draft, and I wanted to talk about important considerations that you need to keep in mind when you don’t necessarily want to draft a Condemned. Let’s dive in!

The biggest challenge that I saw was that I was not getting passed Condemned that I wanted. If you’re getting passed Hot Paws, Beam Swords, Lugg Boots, and Spiky Helms, Daisy can be a great choice. However, you really need the added support to take advantage of her ability. Similarly, if you’re getting passed Football Armor, GRip can be an excellent choice. One guy in our draft pod managed to pull at least one of each Football Armor, setting up that sweet, sweet Armor Set Bonus on him and his Spiked Bat!

But I wasn’t getting that. Further complicating things, my first pack’s rare slot was none other than an Exo-Legs. If there was ever a time to rare draft, THIS IS IT! These things are just too good to pass up. Shielding as a mechanic is very strong, and you need to be ready to grab armor with Shielding as much as you can. It will buy you time.

As we drafted through the first pack, I noticed a lot of Events and Preparations being passed around. What few Weapons we saw were fought over, and each one you passed, you likely didn’t see again. This definitely affected the choices we made. Everyone was able to draft enough Weapons, though! We even had a few Vials of Viles get passed around. Good times, right? Well, the challenge came when I noticed that there weren’t many Condemned to draft. I was going to be forced to take the generic inmate instead, and that meant I needed to pivot just a smidge. I had grabbed a Riveted Greaves, expecting to get a heavyweight Condemned that never came. The Greaves are amazing if you can get the right Condemned to use them. I wasn’t getting that, and when I had a chance to draft a second Greaves, I passed on it because I wanted more threats of my own.

It was about halfway through the first pack when I realized that I wanted to go generic inmate instead of a named Condemned. This pivot changed what I drafted only slightly. I still grabbed a Stitch Plate when I got them, and I still grabbed a healthy assortment of Melee and Ranged Weapons. Here’s what I drafted:

I wound up using all my Weapons and all but one Armor. Take a guess which one. I also removed Medical Nanobot Field, Splash, and a single Punji Board as I didn’t feel like they would necessarily be as useful as I would like. It turns out the Splash actually would have been more viable than the Punji Board, but that’s hindsight for you…

Overall, I went 2-1 on the evening. It was a ton of fun, and I noticed that there were a lot of interesting plays from my opponents. As I mentioned above, one person drafted GRip, a full Football Armor set, and then set his Spiked Bat up to a beefy 7/5 smashing stick. It’s definitely doable, and he used it to strong effect!

That’s going to wrap up this edition of Draft Talk. Hopefully this inspires you to listen to The Fool and take the blank slate. Happy drafting, and I’ll see you in The Arena!