Iconic Masters FNM Draft 2017-11-17 and Mirrodin-Time Spiral Retro Draft 2017-11-19

Iconic Masters released a week ago, and I tried my hand at a sanctioned Masters draft for the first time.  Iconic Masters is a great set for me -- big fun effects, lots of strong creatures, and just generally a powerful game environment with a nostalgic bent.  As often happens with these Masters sets, cards were downshifted in rarity, increasing the overall power level.  IMA has a ton of 5/5 and 4/4 fliers at uncommon and rare, so for example the 3/3 Phantom Monster sitting at common is not as strong as it looks.

Oddly, since the set was spoiled so long ago, content creators seemed to have forgotten about it, so there were not many pick order or strategy guides for this set.  There were a lot of people at the LGS interested in drafting it, but very few who knew much about the set aside from what valuable cards were in it, so I actually had a little bit of a preparation advantage over the more experienced players, who did more money-drafting than usual.

The format was single-elimination pod drafts with $35 entry.  First place prize was 2 packs and second place was 1 pack.  Here's what I drafted:

My first pack rare was Graven Cairns, a red-black dual land worth a few dollars.  I went with Ulcerate, one of the best uncommons in the set.  Pick 2 gave me one of the most iconic of iconic creatures, Serra Angel.  Third pick I passed on some probably better cards to take Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir, the card I most wanted from this set for my Commander deck.  By the end of the pack, I looked like white-blue but was still very open.

I had been taking mana ramp cards (which draft guides seemed to think should go highly), so the Rune-Scarred Demon in Pack 2 seemed like a good top end if I ended up back in black.  Pristine Talisman came from an unexciting pack (I think it had a lot of good red cards).  Seeker of the Way (formerly a strong uncommon in KTK, now a common) is an easy pick for a white deck, and then I made a greedy choice to take Thran Dynamo out of a pack with a Doom Blade.  The Dynamo has a little money value, but Doom Blade was by far the better card for the deck I was building.  After a second Seeker of the Way, I realized my path was toward white aggression, although as you can see from the two Sandstone Oracles, I was still not quite sure.

The first picks of my third pack were synergistic with the white aggro plan (with a minor lifegain theme), so that's where we ended up.

Here is the deck I built:

I was sad to cut the top end cards and ramp, but I felt that the 2-drops packed so much power in this deck that I shouldn't dilute that power, and instead I could use my 3/4/5-drop fliers as finishers.  Survival Cache is amazing in this build because it curves out with Seeker (which is 2/2 Prowess and gains lifelink when you cast a noncreature spell) or Ajani's Pridemate to give life, power, and card advantage.  All the Rebound spells are good with Seeker, and Seeker is good with Pridemate, so as long as I could get those guys out early I would be hard to race.

My primary sideboard had a little more defense and specialty removal depending on what kinds of opposition I faced.  Sustainer of the Realm is really good for blocking 4/4's, and this set is full of them.

Here is the ramp package that I decided wasn't good enough for main deck and was only a marginal sideboard plan:

Turn 4 Rune-Scarred Demon would have been great, but I thought it wasn't worth the risk of clunkiness.  I think the set is designed for the mana ramp cards to fit best in a red-green deck full of X spells and massive creatures.  Another thing I realized was that Teferi is probably an insane Limited card in the right kind of deck, but I just didn't have enough blue to make it worth playing the number of islands I would have needed for him.

Round 1 vs F.
F was on Jund (black-red-green) midrange with bad mana fixing.  He had a bunch of aggressive red creatures.  First game I kept a hand with 2 Swamps on a mulligan to 6, and by the time I drew my Plains on turn 3, I felt like I had to add a creature rather than cast Survival Cache -- in hindsight I think I should have used the Cache first because it was my last chance that game to draw cards from it.  I lost pretty quickly and was one loss from elimination.  Next game went much better, and I was able to win pretty easily.  Third game he got his Kiki-Jiki out, but my lifegain and powerful curve kept me in it, and I won with 4 life remaining.  Win 2-1.

Round 2 vs. A.
A seemed to be on a more focused draft plan than some of the other folks, with a pretty focused blue-black deck with a minor mill theme.  He had an Oblivion Stone, which made life horrible for me.  In the first game he got a Jace's Phantasm down, and I played around Oblivion Stone as well as I could by holding back Serra Angel, but after he killed everything but Phantasm it was 5/5 and I was racing against time.  He had Ojutai's Breath to tap down my Serra and Sustainer of the Realm on consecutive turns for the win.  Game 2 I battled with everything I could, getting my best 2-drops followed by Survival Cache.  He got the Oblivion Stone again and rebuilt with small fliers that milled my deck.  I took him down to 1 life but lost to a lethal attack while also sitting with an empty library.  Loss, 2-0.

So not quite good enough for prizes, but I felt pretty good about the deck I drafted, and if a few things had gone differently, I might have finished better.  I don't think I made any obvious mistakes other than noted above, which is good considering a lot of these cards were not very familiar to me.

Here are the best value cards I drafted:

The foil cards aren't actually worth anything.  At about $3, Thran Dynamo is one of the "chase uncommons" in this set along with Urza's Bauble.  Rune-Scarred Demon is about $2 as this is its first reprint ever.  Teferi is a little over $3.  All three of these cards are valued mainly for their use in Commander and casual play, so I expect them to retain or gain value tempered by any future reprints.  Still, a return of about $8 from a $35 draft is bad and I probably had the worst value at the table, as I saw other people with multiple $10 and $20 singles.  None of the high-value cards passed by my seat, so even if I had gone full-greed, I don't think I would have broken $15.

I drafted about 8 uncommons and 2 rares, both below expected for 3 packs.  But I think I drafted about as well as I could have for a first pass, and this was a fun break from Ixalan.  And I'm super excited to have Teferi now.

Since the draft went quickly, I stuck around and tested Standard with my Black Torment of Scarabs Control deck against P's white-blue God-Pharaoh's Gift deck.  I went 3-2 in games, getting lucky with my graveyard-exiling cards a few times (I even searched up Scavenger Grounds with Razaketh's Rite once).  It was good practice for both of us.


And now for something completely different!

For my birthday a couple months ago, I bought myself a sealed tournament pack each of Mirrodin and Time Spiral.  Each was $30, containing roughly the equivalent of 3 booster packs plus 30 lands.  I missed both of these sets while I wasn't playing, so it was fun to get a chance to try them out.  Mirrodin (2003) is the set that introduced equipment and a bunch of overpowered artifact-themed cards that continue to dominate in Modern.  Time Spiral (2006) was an homage to classic Magic sets, with a time theme and lots of nostalgia cards.  It also includes a seemingly random assortment of "timeshifted" reprints.  For some perspective, both these sets were before the mythic rare rarity or the planeswalker card type existed.  Over the Thanksgiving holiday, Mike and I did a Winchester draft from these cards for some retro-Magic fun.

Here are the decks we came up with.  I'm white-black, and he's black-red.  (The one blue card in my deck has Morph).

My deck was heavy on defense and had some good suspend cards.  Mike's deck was more aggressive and had a nasty assortment of slivers.  In games, Mike went 2-1.  I also played a two games against Eric's pared down Kalemne Commander deck, and he won them both easily.

How about value?

Time Spiral had a few non-bulk cards at each rarity, with the best dollar value in Paradox Haze ($3), Trickbind ($3.50), and the very bizarre Norin the Wary ($5).  Rift Bolt is still a surprising $1.50 after a reprint in IMA.

I got a little lucky with the artifact land cycle in Mirrodin, opening the two best in Ancient Den ($2.20) and Seat of the Synod ($1).  Beyond those and a few other cards slightly above bulk, Duplicant ($3), a sneaky removal spell with combo potential, was the only single with any real value.  It would be well over $10, but it has seen multiple reprints.

Another thing to note (aside from the bizarre pro-player collector card included in TSP) is that the basic lands in these sets have some minor value.  I love the metallic look of the Mirrodin lands.  They are iconic and unique.  The Time Spiral lands are a little less pretty in general, but a few are interesting.  The TSP illustrations are darker overall than normal basic lands, especially the Plains, which are more black/gray than white.

All told, the total value of the TSP cards is probably in the $15 - $20 range, and the total value of the Mirrodin cards is closer to $9 - $12.  Not amazing, but it was fun to try these out, and a few of these cards are Modern or Commander staples.

Thanks for reading!  I hope to play more Iconic Masters or retro drafts in the future, but if Ixalan is what's running, I'll probably end up doing that instead.

FNM Draft 2017-11-03

Hey!  I got to go do another Ixalan draft.  From what I hear and read, most people are getting tired of XLN draft already, which is unfortunate because there are 2 more months of the format.  But this is only my second draft, so I'm fine with it.

Lets get right down to it.  There were 26 players, which meant I was at a table of 9.  Here is my draft, from bottom left to top right:

The second best card in my first pack was Charging Monstrosaur.  Last time I passed the rare and took Monstrosaur, and this time I have to admit I let the value push me to Huatli even though Monstrosaur might have been the better pick.  Next two packs had some strong white dinosaurs (Bellowing Aegisaur in each), but I went for the black cards instead.  I have been trained to go aggressive in this set, and I was looking to get some auras and low drops with evasion.  Again, the dinosaurs next to Huatli might have been an awesome start, but it just wasn't the start I was looking for.  I did take dinosaur-themed white cards with my 4th and 5th picks, but then I got a run of packs that played toward my black aggressive plan.

Second pack I was really enamored with my black fliers and Mark of the Vampire, so I worked toward that goal.  I think the rare from my pack was Ashes of the Abhorrent, which is not good in Limited.  I took two Pirate's Cutlass highly to go with Desperate Castaways, and Lightning-Rig Crew incentivized me to go after pirates.  The first Cutlass I actually picked over Walk the Plank, just because I felt my deck was more likely to be bad if I didn't have the Cutlass than if I had one less removal spell.

Pack 3 I took the Pirate-themed sweeper to start.  The rare was green -- either Old-Growth Dryads or Shapers' Sanctuary (I saw both during the draft).  Then I added a good flier, two more auras, Sword-Point Diplomacy, and an aggressive 1-drop.  Diplomacy is a card that got panned in set reviews, but I want it to be good.  I played it at prerelease in red-black aggro, and this deck was shaping up to be far more aggressive, so it seemed like it might fit.  Skullduggery is a nice combat trick, and since I had missed on tabling a Sure Strike earlier in the draft, I was happy to get it.

In the end, I think I did pretty well, although I might have done better with white-red dinosaurs after picking Huatli (Aegisaur would have been particularly nice with Trove of Temptation).  As it turned out, my neighbor to the left was white-red dinosaurs with the Monstrosaur and two Aegisaurs that I had passed.  My neighbor to the right was blue-green merfolk, so that worked out well for me.  The deck that I ended up in was pretty close to some decks that I saw did well in Limited Grands Prix (I looked up the plural for that), so I was happy with it.  Auras are good in this format because the removal is mostly bad, although timely removal makes the auras look silly.

Here is the deck I settled on:

As you can see, the curve is ridiculously low, with turn 4 intended for auras and turn 5 onward intended for pump spells or other finishers.  The 4 one-drop "Keepers" and the Cutlasses ensure that I have mana sinks for the late game.  Lightning-Rig Crew is my only creature with defensive stats, although any creature can become big with auras or swords.  My main goal was to give myself lots of early damage (one-drop, Swashbuckling or one-drop, two-drop, Cutlass) with Mark of the Vampire to turn the race in my favor on turn 4.

Notably, I didn't splash for Huatli.  I missed a couple chances to get more pirates that make treasure (Dire Fleet Hoarder), which would have made it easier to splash without any lands.  Huatli is very strong in Limited, but she didn't fit my aggro plan well enough to bend the manabase.

Here are my sleeved sideboard cards:

I didn't think much about sleeving more white cards and having some plains ready, but it might have made sense if I ended up wanting Huatli.  As for the almost-rans, Deacon and Bishop were both slightly off since I had very few vampires.  Those two are great with a higher vampire count, and honestly Deacon might still have been great here as a 5/3 that occasionally has Mark of the Vampire or pumps Skymarch Bloodletter.  And I felt that Deathless Ancient was just a little too expensive for my 16-land manabase, and I had enough fliers.  I did bring in Contract Killing a couple times, particularly on the draw, and I tried Munitions as additional reach but never actually drew it.  Sword-Point Diplomacy came in a couple times and actually did some good work for me.  And I did have one match where I brought in Contract Killing, Trove, and Huatli just to see what would happen (what happened was I drew Huatli and couldn't cast her).

So how about the matches?

Match 1 vs. D.
D. was playing white-black but without enough vampires to be a true vampire deck.  He's kind of new to Magic, and his deck was so-so, but we ground to a standstill in game 1.  We reached a holding pattern where I was doing 2 damage and he was gaining 2 life every turn.  But he had cast Sword-Point Diplomacy early on, and he ran out of cards first, so that worked out but used up most of our time.  Game 2 I got off to a hot start and took him down easily, and we avoided running out of time.  Win, 2-0.

Match 2 vs. S.
S. is a regular who I've played occasionally before, and he had a good red-green dinosaur deck.  In game 1, I kept a 2-mountain hand and took way too long to draw my black mana.  In game 2, I had a much better start, but we maneuvered into a fast race where I would win if he didn't have something to stop some of my damage, and he did.  Loss, 0-2.

That match was fast enough that we played a little Standard while waiting for the round to end.  I had my Torment of Scarabs Control deck (I would call it Scarab Control, but now everyone would think that means a Scarab God deck), and he had a deck that he said would beat all the popular decks if anyone would actually try it -- it was a green-white energy-fog control deck with Consulate Surveillance and Cataclysmic Gearhulk or Hostile Desert as win conditions.  Game 1 I got a long slow win with Torment of Scarabs, just enough removal, and a Torment of Hailfire X=5 to finish the job.  Second game we had to abandon because the round ended, but he cancelled both Torment of Scarabs and Gifted Aetherborn with Ixalan's Binding.  My sideboard plan of going heavy on creatures and bringing in Duress was pretty effective, but he was probably going to win the game.  I do like my deck -- I have a couple replacements in the mail to update it, but the general plan is the same.

Match 3 vs. N.
N. is an interesting opponent.  It's an understatement to say he has an odd personality, and a lot of people have a hard time playing with him because he doesn't always get the rules right.  His deck was white-black with Vraska, and it was unusually potent.  He still made bad errors like blocking my 3/3 with only one of his 2/2s while I was tapped out, but Vraska does a lot to fix those problems.  In game 1, I got him down to 4 and managed Vraska for a little bit, but he never gave me an opening for Dinosaur Stampede and he forced me to discard them with Heartless Pillage.  Game 2 I had to fade Wanted Scoundrels and eventually managed to trade a Cutlass-wielding pirate for it.  I put the free mana to good use and got the win.  Game 3 I was off to a strong start until I again ran into Heartless Pillage and Vraska.  There were several points where I could have gotten the win if he had not had the right move to stop what I was waiting to do, but he killed my stuff and swamped me with board advantage.  We were deep in turns, and I tried to just survive for a tie, but he got enough power on the board that I didn't have a chance.  Loss, 1-2.

Match 4 vs. K.
I almost left at this point, but K. convinced me to stick around, so I did.  He is another newish player, and his deck was white-red with 3 Legion Conquistadors (the 2/2 that lets you pull the rest out of your deck into your hand).  In the first game, I got a little stuck on colored mana and while it ended up close, I eventually lost.  This was the match where I put in Huatli and the two treasure-making cards for my sideboard plan.  Game 2 was a flawless victory from a mulligan to 5 cards on the play -- my hand included Rigging Runner and Swashbuckling, and that's hard to effectively block.  Game 3 ended up being a good back-and-forth, and I eventually won. Win, 2-1.

I was going to play Match 5 since 3-2 is technically alive to make top 8, but the guy said he didn't mean to stay in, and he conceded up front.  I asked the tournament runner if it was worth sticking around to see if I got in, and while he never says never, he said I could probably leave if I wanted (based on the pairings, it looked to me like I was probably the worst of many 3-2 players).

So what did we learn?  My final game record was an even 5-5.  I think my deck was good, but not as good as it could have been.  Maybe pushing Huatli in and playing more midrange would have been better.  She isn't as good as Vraska, but she does warp the game when she's in play (as I learned from playing against her at prerelease).  I have been conditioned to think that auras are always good in this format, but I ran into enough removal that I did get 2-for-1ed a few times.  The haste on Swashbuckling almost never matters, but it's still a good spell on turn 2 with almost any of the 1-drops in the format.

I also would have been curious to see how my deck would have turned out if I stuck to W-R dinos from the beginning of the draft.  There were several draft picks I would have liked to have back even for my final deck, but I don't think they were necessarily wrong at the time.

I was also super disappointed by Dinosaur Stampede.  I thought I'd be able to get a win or two just by throwing that on 2 or 3 attackers, but it always got stuck in my hand without a good window to cast it.

I never drew Fiery Cannonade, which was a bit disappointing because my deck might have synergized well with it on many boards.

Achievements unlocked:

• Win a game by casting Skymarch Bloodletter while opponent is at 1 life (drain for 1 when enters the battlefield)
• Win a game by using the activated ability of Blight Keeper (7B, tap, and sacrifice to drain opponent for 4)
• Turn Skullduggery into a 3-for-1.  Opponent attacked with a Encampment Keeper (1/1 first strike) and I double blocked.  He cast 2 instant pump spells and I responded with Skullduggery.  Nice.
• Never have a Desperate Castaways that can't attack when it wants to.  The 3/2 split with Castaways and Cutlass seemed just about right, and having Castaways turn into a 4/4 attacker on turn 3 is always nice when it happens.

Spoils?

Nothing too exciting after Huatli, which is hovering around $6-7.  Kumena's Speaker and Kitesail Freebooter both have seen some play in Modern, which makes them slightly interesting while not actually valuable right now.  In total, I drafted 1 rare and 1 mythic, which is slightly below the 3 rares expected in 3 packs.  I passed a couple rares worth minor money, like Thaumatic Compass, but I didn't see anything of high value after Huatli.  I drafted 12 uncommons, which is a bit above the 9 expected.

All in all, I enjoyed this draft, and I'm excited to try again.