Something a little different this time. I rarely open packs without playing some kind of game, because it's usually a waste to just open them (so often at the store I see people tear open all their prize packs and get just nothing they want out of them). So I have a bunch of unopened packs from various sets.
My friend Mike and I did a Winchester Draft with 6 packs, half from Oath of the Gatewatch and half from Aether Revolt (mainly because I was hoping for Grasp of Darkness and Fatal Push for my constructed decks).
Follow the link to learn more about Winchester. It's a hybrid of Winston and Rochester, and the basic idea is that it's a quick and relatively fair draft you can do with two players. Since it's two players and 6 packs, the card quality is very bad -- imagine a Sealed pool where you semi-randomly get to keep half the cards you open to be your card pool.
Here are the decks we ended up with. We played 4 games and made some changes as we went, but this is the final version.
Nate's Deck - 4-and-a-Half Color Artifact Synergy
The colors are so bad in this format that I always go for a control strategy. I had an awesome mana curve with most of my creatures as 5-drops (Never do this in any other format or you will always lose!). Both my rares were pure value cards. Lifecrafter's Bestiary is awesome in a slow game, and after starting with a Wastes in my deck for Walker of the Wastes, I realized that having a Forest to activate the second ability of Bestiary was probably better. Ruins of Oran-Rief was great in this deck, although the downside is that my expensive creatures all became even more expensive when I started adding the little bonuses from Bestiary and Ruins. The 5-drop creatures were all just plain bigger than Mike's creatures. And Efficient Construction was a legitimate way to pull ahead (although it's yet another mana to spend when you cast something).
The secret to making this mana base work is that most of my low drops are colorless, so I usually had plenty of time to find whatever colors I was missing.
Mike's Deck - Temur Revolt Surge
Mike played a much more straightforward deck full of good 2- and 3-drops and powerful removal. Again, both of his rares were basically value cards. Jori En, Ruin Diver did good work every time she was played (usually that same turn). Aid from the Cowl is kind of bad, but it occasionally gives you free stuff. The Void Grafter actually beat my spells once or twice with its ETB effect, and Shock and Brute Strength let Zada's Commando outright defeat my big creatures in combat.
In the end, we played 4 games, and we each won twice. Playing formats with bad cards can be fun because it lets you enjoy interactions that you wouldn't even play in Sealed or Draft. And since all of our rares were value cards rather than beatdowns, the commons were able to shine even more than normal. The other two rares that we didn't play were Whir of Invention and Hedron Alignment, both of which are about as unplayable as it gets in any Limited format.
The value inside these packs was horrid, although I did get a Fatal Push I wanted, and this foil Hidden Herbalists is kind of pretty.
Have fun with your packs, don't just open them for nothing!
Nate
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