Drafting with 6 was a little weird, and the new players made it more confusing. You would think that it would be easier to get what I want, but they took things I didn't expect. Also, 6 people means only a card pool only 75% as deep as in an 8-person pod, so everyone's deck should be a little less tight than normal. Here's what I ended up with (bottom left to upper right):
Pack 1 also had a foil Sword-Point Diplomacy, but my main choices other than Entrancing Melody were One With the Wind and Jade Guardian, as well as the Adanto Vanguard that managed to wheel back to me. I did consider first-picking the Vanguard just to take a card that wasn't going to leave my neighbor likely to be in my colors, but Entrancing Melody was too objectively strong. For a few picks I tried to force merfolk, but it was quickly apparent that someone else was culling the merfolk cards. I did a good job getting 2-drops though! There was a lot of good black, red, and white coming around by the end of the pack, and maybe I should have switched into two of those colors.
My pack 2 rare was Captivating Crew, and in hindsight I would have taken it and tried to do something in white-red. Instead I drafted some middling blue cards and some legitimately good white cards in this pack.
Pack 3 rare was Goring Ceratops, a white top-end creature that I felt might be worth picking if it came back around. The Imperial Aerosaur is generally better, and I followed it with more white-blue nonsense. You'll notice I took a land near the end -- the leftover cards were all black and red commons, so I decided to be nice and not take anything I couldn't use.
After the draft was finished, my suspicions were confirmed; my neighbor to the left was blue-black pirates, and my neighbor to the right was blue-green merfolk. I was playing the blue dregs when I should have had red or black as my second color. I even had some chances at good green cards in pack 2, but I stuck hard in order to play Entrancing Melody.
If you haven't been following Ixalan, you might not realize that white-blue is one of the two color pairs (along with black-green) that are not actually supported in XLN draft.
Here is my deck:
And to illustrate how awkward white-blue is, here are my creatures split up by type (pirate, dinosaur, human, merfolk, vampire). That's right, I was playing White-Blue Five-Tribes. I saw an Arcane Adaptation late in the draft, but I didn't have enough payoff cards for it to have been worth making all my creatures the same type.
All that said, I don't think this is a terrible deck. It has a good curve and combat tricks, although not a ton of removal. I also made sure to get good ground blockers and fliers to support the standard white-blue fliers archetype that exists in most draft formats.
Here are my sideboard cards:
Some could have easily been main deck cards. I didn't have a high power level in general, so it was sometimes hard to choose between various "filler" level creatures and effects. Pirate's Cutlass is good in the right deck, but my pirate count was low and I really wanted to be using my mana on more creatures to spread the board rather than making one big creature.
Round 1 vs. Z.
He hadn't played in a long time, but he knew what he was doing. White-red dinosaurs. I sided in the Dreadnaught after seeing several 5-power creatures in game 1, but it wasn't working. Loss, 2-0.
Round 2 vs. C.
I was expecting to get paired to a new player, but C. had a first round loss as well. He was the drafter on my left, and he's a good player. I had a bad mulligan and missed my second land twice, but he also had a just plain better plan. In game 2 he had a 2/2 flier with Mark of the Vampire (+2/+2 lifelink) backed up by the Siren Stormtamer who can sacrifice to counter a spell that targets his creatures, so I was in kind of a hopeless race. Loss, 2-0.
I had a bye for Round 3 and was unlikely to make top 4, so I dropped.
Like I said, I don't think my deck was terrible, and I don't think I played particularly poorly. It just wasn't good enough to overcome my draws. I played first all 4 games but always felt like I was playing catch-up. I never drew Entrancing Melody, and I never had my combat tricks when they would have been most effective (the one time I did have a pump spell, my creature got bounced).
So that's the end of triple XLN. Next week is Rivals prerelease, and in a couple more weeks we get Grand Prix Houston with Limited format. I'll have to get good at RIX sealed fast!
Here are my rares and premium cards:
Glacial Fortress is a couple dollars, and the rest are under 50 cents. I drafted 2 rares, which is less than the 3 expected, and I drafted 12 uncommons, which is a little more than the 9 expected.
Time to put this draft format to rest and gear up for the new one!
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