FNM Draft 2017-10-13

So it's Ixalan time!  I hadn't drafted it yet, but I have read a lot of good articles and watched a couple draft videos, so I felt pretty well prepared.  The best draft advice I saw was Brian DeMars' just-published column on ChannelFireball, and it played a large role in my strategy.

We had 25 players in the draft, which made it a 5-round tournament.  They did a cut to top 4 because there was a big all-day PPTQ tournament at the store the next day and they didn't want to be up later than necessary (it normally would be top 8).

Here's the draft, from lower left to top right, with Merfolk tokens added for flavor.

At a glance it's just a Temur (blue-red-green) draft, but I actually made a major shift between Pack 1 and midway through Pack 2 out of red and into green.

My first pick tells most of the story on its own.  I opened Burning Sun's Avatar and Charging Monstrosaur.  BSA is the better card in a vacuum, but it also costs 3 red mana, so by taking it I would have been locking hard into red and passing the Monstrosaur, which my neighbor would certainly have drafted.  Instead, I took the slightly lesser bomb to remain flexible.  In hindsight, it may have been a lose-lose situation where I should have taken a non-red card.  I don't remember the best non-red card in the pack.  Anyway, the first half of this pack I was red-blue, and then I stopped seeing good red cards and took some merfolk synergy cards instead.

Second pack my rare was Growing Rites of Itlimoc (the "Gaea's Cradle" double-faced card), which was selling for over $15 when XLN released and has dropped to about $8.  I wasn't in green at the time, but I would have taken it for sure if I had been.  I took the strong Lightning Strike instead.  But it quickly became obvious that my passed BSA had put my neighbor in red, and I was kind of uncertain.  The high quality blue merfolk I had been seeing late in Pack 1 and early in Pack 2 signaled that blue merfolk were fully open to me, and when I saw Shapers of Nature halfway through the pack, I changed course and started grabbing every merfolk card I saw in both green and blue.  I even snagged Headwater Sentries (2/5 vanilla merfolk) because good flier decks usually need a ground blocker.

My Pack 3 rare was Captain Lannery Storm, a good aggressive red card.  I decided to let my neighbor have the good red stuff and take the must-answer aura One With the Wind instead.  Auras have had a reputation for being horrible, but WotC has figured out a sweet spot where some of the new auras are actually quite strong.  OWtW is probably the strongest of these, and considering how good it was in my deck, I wish I had seen more of them and I would first pick it in the future.  My next 4 picks were very good green merfolk cards, and I was locked in.

Here's my deck:

I briefly considered adding some red, but despite the high power level of my best 3 or 4 red cards, I went with zero-removal pure blue-green merfolk instead.  Ixalli's Diviner and the two Siren Lookouts were the only non-merfolk creatures in the deck, so almost every card I played was a hit for River Heralds' Boon and Deeproot Waters.  Siren's Ruse is technically a pirate payoff, but I had some really good enters-the-battlefield abilities to trigger, so it made the cut ahead of some other close calls.

I think the curve is pretty good.  Jungle Delver is pretty weak on its own, but it's good enough when you consider interactions with a turn 2 One With the Wind, the merfolk payoffs, and the Storm Sculptor.

Speaking of which, here is the sideboard:

I only used 3 cards out of this bunch.  Shipwreck Looter replaced Ixalli's Diviner in games where I needed to improve my aggression.  Grazing Whiptail came in once or twice on the draw against opponents with fliers.  And I brought in both Blinding Fogs once on the draw against a very aggressive opponent.  Dive Down is basically a counterspell for removal, but I already had several cards that do similar things, and I just didn't see enough removal to warrant it.

In my final match, I kind of wanted to sub in the red cards, but I didn't have mountains out and didn't want to take the time to reconfigure my mana base.  I'll be ready with a swap plan next time that I have actual strong cards in a third color.

So how did the games go?  Pretty well!

Round 1 vs. G.
He had a white-black vampires deck that was as on-theme as my deck.  But I had the stronger individual creatures, the nice tricks, and the tappers.  I just had to be able to do more damage than his lifelinkers, and he had a lot of those.  Win, 2-0.

Round 2 vs. J.
J was on black-red, with a mix of pirates, dinosaurs, and vampires.  I took Game 1 pretty easily on the play.  In Game 2 he played Rampaging Ferocidon, which makes both of us take damage for creatures entering play, and I had to play Deeproot Waters, which doubled my own damage.  I did eventually kill the Ferocidon, but I was too far behind.  Game 3 I got one of my good draws and won through a 4/4 lifelinker and some lifelink tokens on his side.  Win, 2-1.

Round 3 vs. A.
I play against A a lot at these things, and he usually shows me a trick or two I don't expect.  He was playing Jund (black-red-green) with a variety of stuff, but most notably a Thaumatic Compass, which gets extra lands out of the deck and eventually turns into a Maze of Ith (a land that can remove an attacker from combat).  His curve included some big dinosaurs.  In Game 1, we traded some hits, and he eventually got big creatures out that I was able to block just long enough with merfolk tokens.  My Storm Sculptors sealed the win.  In Game 2, I just had a very good draw -- the 2/1 flying Merfolk and Shapers of Nature with One With the Wind is 7 flying damage a turn starting on Turn 4, and that's hard to beat.  Win, 2-0.

Round 4 vs. B.
B had black-green merfolk-pirates.  It was pretty similar to my deck, but with removal instead of tap-down.  In Game 1, we got to a stall on the ground, and I was playing my turns a little slowly, and he told me (paraphrasing), "This is going to take a while, so play faster please."  I tried to pick it up a little bit, but I wasn't worried about time because this deck just wins or loses pretty fast in general once I get certain cards.  A couple turns later, I drew One With the Wind and was able to break the stall and win pretty quickly.  After drawing my hand for Game 2, I failed to notice that I had 2 forests and no islands (I thought I had one of each).  I'm not sure whether I would have mulliganed, but in any case I never drew any third land and I conceded after a few turns discarding to hand size.  Game 3 I think I set him off again because I wasn't doing my Deeproot Waters triggers right -- I would cast a creature, say "pass," then put a token on the table.  He made a noise like he was going to protest but didn't say anything.  It turned out to be a pretty good game, but he got me with removal and I was dead on board.  I deliberately attacked with my flier, cast my pump to drop him to 4, then passed and conceded.  We had something like 15 minutes left in the round.  Loss, 2-1.

Round 5 vs. C.
C was playing one of the coolest (and trickiest) draft decks I've ever seen -- Grixis (blue-black-red) spells.  He had a lot of the weird rares no one wants -- Sunbird's Invocation, Primal Amulet, and Search for Azcanta (this third one is generally good, but the other two are hard to build around in draft).  In Game 1, I had a slow hand that included two Jungle Delvers.  He kept putting out swamps and islands, and I had no idea what he was doing.  I had finally started developing a board when he put down Sunbird's Invocation and the action began.  Invocation lets him play extra spells for free, Amulet reduces their cost and copies spells on its flip side, and Azcanta (flipped) finds more spells.  He may have only had 4 or 5 creatures in his whole deck, but his turns were ridiculous and he was not missing any triggers or making any mistakes.  He was also communicating very clearly and had the good humor that my previous high-skill opponent seemed to lack.  I gave up after it was clear he could destroy anything I played with his insane card advantage.  Second game I mulliganed twice and kept 5 cards on the play.  I got off to a pretty good start, but again I was eventually stuck with just a Jungle Delver and enough mana to double activate it.  I got a Watertrap Weaver with a +1/+1 counter and dropped him to 2 life, but he killed my Delver and started playing blockers, and I needed something like a flier or a Tempest Caller.  I drew a River Heralds' Boon and made a poor attack -- my 3/3 into his 1/4, 2/5, and 2/3.  I knew he would block and I would kill something, but I failed to think through his position to realize that his safest move was to block with everything and not just the 1 or 2 creatures I was hoping for.  I also ignored the fact that he knew I had a combat trick.  I cast the pump (a mistake on top of a mistake), but my 5/5 wasn't big enough to survive and traded with his 2/5.  A couple turns later, as I was dying, I drew Storm Sculptor.  It would have worked well with the Weaver (assuming no removal), but I couldn't cast it because I didn't have a creature to bounce.  I don't know how likely it was that it would have worked, but I really shouldn't have made my bad attack.  So I can partially blame these losses on land flood (both games), and partially on misplays, but this guy also had a cool deck and was a fun opponent, and I'm fine that he won.  Loss, 2-0.

So the final tally was 3-2, but it was a "good" 3-2 based on strength of schedule, and I was 5th/6th place and got 3 packs as a prize.  As a general rule, going 3-0 and then losing 2 is way better than going 0-2 and then winning 3.  In games I was 7-5, which is pretty good for me.

Some thoughts about this draft and the format:

• I won every die roll to play first.  I also won the first game every match except the last round.  Sometimes a little luck helps.
• The last two opponents seemed like the sort of "semi-pro" players I always hope to avoid.  I always play a little anxious and make more mistakes when I'm against someone who obviously plays many hours of Magic and lots of tournaments.  It's good practice though.  I was sort of surprised to see those people this Friday, but I guess since the prize is a bunch of packs and store credit, it will bring those people out even if there isn't a good promo.
• After about 10 PM, I get a lot sloppier because it's late for me -- I will be more impressed than anyone if I ever keep winning against the top level players in the final rounds of one of these events.  Essentially, I'm already at my worst when I start playing the most important games.  There's no easy fix for this other than practice -- I'm not going to change my sleep schedule to do better at FNM.
• This was a super easy deck to win with -- having multiples of my best cards made it feel almost like a constructed format deck, with more consistency than usual from game to game.
• I already said it, but One With the Wind was excellent.  Shapers of Nature was also great, but I never had a situation where its second ability came up.  Attacking with open mana to threaten a +1/+1 counter allows for attacks I couldn't normally make.  And also just having a 3/3 for 3 is good when you can play OWtW and another 2-drop creature on Turn 4.
• Explore is really good, but it feels bad most of the times that you get a land.  I know it's drawing a card, which ultimately helps, but getting an undersized creature feels bad in this deck.  Ixalli's Diviner is the swingiest, as an 0/3 is usually almost useless, but a 1/4 can block well and attack a little.
• I did make at least one mistake with explore, leaving a Shaper Apprentice on top mid-game when I really needed something more impactful.
• I feel like this was a very good draft for me -- I had a very good deck without even playing two of my first picks.
• In most formats I want several removal spells.  In this deck I had none and I never really missed it.  The tapping effects were good enough to race against bigger creatures most of the time.

Here's the loot:

I drafted zero rares, which is 3 fewer than expected, and 7 uncommons, which is 2 fewer than expected.  Since both my foils were commons with no real value, that means I drafted essentially no money.  The best money cards I passed were Growing Rites of Itlimoc and a foil Field of Ruin.  Winning 3 packs essentially gives me a do-over for my $10 entry.

So this was about as well as I've ever done in a draft, and I feel pretty good about this format.  I'm not sure if it's as interesting as HOU-HOU-AKH was, but I'll try it out some more.

Thanks for reading -- I had a lot more to say than usual.

Nate