Here is my full draft, starting at bottom left with Vengeful Rebel.
Pack 1 had Disallow, which is a surprisingly high dollar card (about $4) considering I'm not aware of a lot of decks using it competitively. The best card for draft was Vengeful Rebel, and I happily took the good card over the $4 card. Cruel Finality was the only other black card in the pack, so I thought I'd send a bit of a message with the pick as well. Second pick was Rishkar's Expertise, which is a pretty strong card that I would love to play. I had a notion that I'd end up in green, but that dried up pretty quickly (I have to admit the Lifecraft Cavalry and Barricade Breaker picks were both influenced by Rishkar's Expertise). Thopter Arrest is a very good removal at 3rd pick, and when I got a Dawnfeather Eagle (a common that is better than a lot of uncommons and rares) later in the pack, I shifted my thoughts toward white over green. Meanwhile, I was seeing a ton of blue cards, but I stuck with black.
Going into Pack 2, I was ready to shift into either green or white (or even both, as my Pack 1 had a couple good cards in each of those colors and not enough good black to be stuck in it). I opened a pack with Quicksmith Rebel, a very strong red card. The uncommons were Giften Aetherborn, Hidden Stockpile, and Monstrous Onslaught, a very strong double-green spell. All 4 were good, and I don't even remember if there were good commons too. This was a defining pick -- taking Rebel would have completely changed my draft by forcing red, and passing Onslaught would mean all but giving up on green. Based on the way black had flowed to me in Pack 1, I thought I could send Hidden Stockpile around the table if I took the Aetherborn, so that's what I did. I was also very conscious of needing 2-drop creatures after Pack 1 (which had none). And as you can see, the Hidden Stockpile did come back for my 8th pick! My next 2 picks were nice white fliers, and then Pack 4 was a shocker -- three people had passed on a Fatal Push! I don't know what they took over it, but I saw a Renegade Map and Skyship Plunderer still in the pack also. Anyway, Push (a $5 uncommon that is also very good in draft) was a no-brainer. On my 6th pick, there was a Midnight Entourage waiting for me. This was another amazing get, as it synergized with my two first-pick Aetherborns on top of just being straight up good. Obviously, no one was wanting black much (it's possible that someone else was taking black and just got a better card in the same pack). Later in the pack, I ended up with a bunch of blue cards that no one wanted, including a mediocre rare and the Plunderer, who is way too good to go around the table twice.
Pack 2 is where you cement your colors and deck themes, and Pack 3 is where you just take the best stuff you can to fit. At this point, I was solidly black and probably white-black, and I also valued Aetherborn to go with the Entourage. I had a minor revolt theme to support as well, and by the end of the pack, I had developed a minor artifact theme. My Pack 3 rare was Insidious Will (a second counterspell featuring Baral in the art, after Disallow), so I again did not draft my rare. I don't remember what all was in the pack, but I do think there were a few very nice green cards. There was also a foil Aether Hub, which is a reasonable bet to maintain or even gain value over time (it's about $5 now after being over $20 when Kaladesh released). It probably wasn't the best pick, but I did get Die Young from the pack to wheel, and Die Young might have been my second favorite card in the pack anyway. After that first pick, it was just a parade of black and Aetherborn. I considered passing Restoration Gearsmith to see if it would come back around, since it was clear no one else wanted to play it, but I counted the remaining cards and realized someone would probably just take it over a bad common before it came back.
In the end, I feel like I had a good pool in terms of synergy and broadly playable cards, but without the mega bomb level cards that I had last time (Release the Gremlins, Walking Ballista).
Here is my deck as I started.
It wasn't too hard to narrow it down, and I felt very good about it. I played 16 lands, with a nudge toward black mana based on having a lot more black than white mana symbols. I couldn't activate Welder Automaton except with Aether Hub, but I felt like it helped me with the artifact theme of a few of my cards and with staying on curve.
Here is my opening sideboard.
I ended up pulling out a couple of artifacts from my initial deck build, which made Underhanded Designs in the main deck a bit sketchier than I realized. After my round 2 matchup, in which I was punished by his Perilous Predicament twice, I was convinced to put in Predicament instead of Designs. I didn't realize it is an instant, which is way better for this kind of effect than being a sorcery.
With 13 people, we were playing 4 rounds of Swiss with a cut to Top 4. I like having a small pool of opponents, but going to top 4 instead of Top 8 is a huge difference, because you don't automatically get in even at 3-1.
Round 1 was against D. He is a Magic dad whose son was also present. He seems pretty familiar with the set but is definitely not the highest level of player. He was playing white-red "vehicles" with a splash of blue. Game 1 I got Hidden Stockpile rolling -- that card is great once you get your first Servo. I won pretty easily. Game 2 was more even, and he made a big attack with Start Your Engines and two vehicles plus a creature. I was able to kill the creature and take him down to 1 with an easy kill the next turn, but I was down to 3 life myself and all he needed was to draw a creature to crew one of his vehicles for the win. He drew...Wrangle. And he killed me with one of my own creatures. Game 3 was the one time that I got Underhanded Designs to work as a removal spell. I actually sideboarded out a Plains for Torch Gauntlet, which was risky but didn't hurt me. I took the match 2 - 1 and felt pretty good about my chances.
Round 2 was against T, whom I have played a number of times before. He's a good player and a good opponent, and he was black-red. In Game 1, I drew 6 lands and Thopter arrest, and I mulliganed into 6 spells and 0 lands. So I kept a 5-card hand with Aether Hub, and I scryed a nonland to the bottom. I did start getting lands after a very slow start, but I was way behind. Then he played Perilous Predicament and I had to sacrifice two "real" creatures to it, and I conceded in the interest of time. Next game was much better, and I had Gifted Aetherborn on curve, but he got me again with Predicament, and then with Subtle Strike, and the board disadvantage piled up to the point where I couldn't keep up. Loss, 0 - 2.
Round 3 was against B, who had been sitting to my left soaking up green cards during the draft. His first pick was foil Oath of Ajani, and he drafted white-green and ended up opening Nissa, Vital Force in his KLD pack. It's also notable that he only had 7 creatures in his deck, which is about half of what most people would consider acceptable in a limited deck. The rest of his cards were pump spells and removal like Nature's Way and Prey Upon. He is not a frequent player at the moment and he didn't know the cards from these sets very well, but he is definitely competent and fun to play with, if a little slow. On top of that, we were 5 minutes late starting because he was outside fixing a problem with his car when the round started, and he took a restroom break after game 1.
Game 1 I had to mulligan, and I kept a hand with only Plains, which got me off to an only slightly slow start. I was stabilizing on the board, and I played Midnight Entourage (next to a couple other creatures) with 5 life left against a Peema Aether Seer (3/2 that can spend energy to force a creature to block) and Ghirapur Osprey (2/2 flying). He played Lifecrafter's Gift to put two 1/1 counters on the bird, forced the Midnight Entourage to block, and attacked with both, causing me to go to exactly 0 from the 4/4 bird plus the Entourage's ability as it was killed by the Aether Seer.
In Game 2, he led off with Narnam Renegade (1/2 deathtouch) and I followed with Gifted Aetherborn and then Fatal Push to kill the Renegade so that I could get some good hits in early. This probably wasn't optimal use of Push, but we were way behind on time and I needed two quick wins. I got up to 26 life and used Thopter Arrest and Perilous Predicament to kill 3 more creatures. Then he pulled out the Arborback Stomper (5/4 trample, gain 5 life on ETB), which was a big counterswing, but I could still race him. He double pumped a 2-power creature with Highspire Infusions and used Nature's Way to kill my Aetherborn, and attacked me for 13. Still no problem, as he was out of cards and I had more creatures to play. I maneuvered him down to 6 life, and he also got me to 3 with a couple more unblocked Stomper attacks. I skipped an attack to build up enough defenses, then took him down to 3 with my Eagle, ready to win on the next turn if he didn't draw anything with haste or another pump (and I was holding a ready artifact/enchantment removal). He drew Nissa, attacked with a hasty 5/5 forest and his other creatures, and my optimal blocking configuration left me at...exactly 0 life. Loss, 0 - 2.
At 1 - 2 in matches and 2 - 5 in games, I dropped from the tournament.
In all, I felt like my deck and my play was pretty good but my luck was a little worse than normal. Variance is a part of the game, and I know that I benefit from it at times also. I have a tendency to be a little aggressive and force the opponent to have the answer, and that usually works pretty well for me in Limited. This time it did lose me a creature with Subtle Strike, and it also allowed opponents twice to beat me with a top-deck pull when I decided to put them one turn from losing instead of being conservative (although I wouldn't have beaten Nissa even if I was conservative, and I had less than 8 minutes left in the round at the time). I mulliganed more than my opponents, lost the opening dice roll every match, and had several keeper hands with the wrong mana colors. I only drew Midnight Entourage in the game where it could kill me, and I never managed to pair it with another Aetherborn. I never drew Weaponcraft Enthusiast. Sometimes I was forced to play Restoration Gearsmith or Aviary Mechanic without a target to stay on curve. My worst creature, Welder Automaton, was probably my most frequent creature in play. On late game boards, I felt like I was drawing a lot of lands.
But I also drew Fatal Push and my other removal frequently, and in the first match I did some very strong things with Hidden Stockpile. There are plenty of good things about this deck, and it is capable of playing good games even with its worse cards. I would have liked a few more rounds to see what I could assemble, but that's just how it goes sometimes.
A note on Fatal Push and Vengeful Rebel: It feels weird making sub-optimal plays to enable revolt, but I felt that the payoffs on these cards are sometimes enough to do it. I found myself a couple times attacking e.g. a 2/1 Welder Automaton into a bigger blocker to activate those cards. My first opponent blocked and enabled it. My second opponent allowed me to attack through.
Here are my rares and money cards:
I ended up with no value in rares, but instead with the best foil uncommon from KLD and the best uncommon from AER. This is actually the first time I have seen Fatal Push in AER Limited play (prerelease and 3 drafts), either in my cards or my opponents'. For raw numbers, I drafted 3 rares, which is what I would expect from 3 packs. I drafted 15 uncommons, which is 5/3 (167%) of what I would expect from 3 packs. Some of the uncommons and rares were late picks where I was just taking them over bad uncommons, and I only ended up playing 1 of my rares.
All in all a good time, but a poor performance that I feel fair blaming somewhat on natural variance. I do enjoy this draft format a lot.
Thanks for reading, and feel free to comment!
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