FNM Draft 2018-02-25

This time there was a vote between Ixalan block draft and Chaos draft, and Chaos draft won.  It was a little unfortunate, because there were a number of new players who wanted to play the easier RIX format.  I voted Chaos, but I would have been fine with either, and if the vote had been closer I might have switched.  I do think the newer players had fun anyway.

Anyway, there were 19 of us, so we had a table of 7 and two tables of 6.  I was at the 7 person table.  There was one other guy I recognized, some of the others were definitely new players, and some I wasn't sure about.  Here's what I ended up drafting, lower left to upper right.

I won't say too much about the draft, as I got lucky and opened three red rares and my table was relatively inexperienced, so I was able to take quality cards throughout.  I opened Theros first because I'm less familiar with the set and thought others would be too.  Hammer of Purphoros might not be a true bomb rare, but it provides fantastic insurance against flooding out and makes the opponent worry about overextending.  Earthshaker Khenra is a goodish 2-drop but gets most of its power by also being a fantastic 6-drop.  And Glorybringer is of course a tremendous bomb.  Early in Pack 1 I thought green might be my second color, but Pack 3 had me firmly in black.

One oddball to note is Hold the Perimeter.  It's a Conspiracy card, and thus is designed for multiplayer.  In a multiplayer game, you get a guy who can block the goblins, and since everyone else has a goblin that can't block, they are incentivized to attack each other.  In 2-player Magic, it isn't quite as amazing, but getting a free blocker every game is pretty good value.  The biggest danger is that your opponent has an aura or equipment that can let the goblin attack well on turn 2 (for example One With the Wind).  But if that's a problem, you can just not use Hold the Perimeter in subsequent games.

My deck was a little different for the first two rounds, but my round 2 opponent C had some good advice about improving the configuration.  It was tricky because I had parts of numerous different synergies, lots of little 2- to 5-card sets that worked well together -- heroic, madness, zombies, constellation, +1/+1 counters, and so on.  Here's my final deck:

Note that Garbage Fire does 11 damage.  I had a ton of removal, some good blockers, and a few strong fliers, so that naturally made me a control deck.  Thermo-Alchemist was my MVP, since I almost always drew him.  I'm not great at playing control in Limited, and this was a good level-up FNM for me.

My sideboard was really deep with quite a few cards that could have been in the main deck, but these are the only cards I ever added situationally:

I won't go too deep into the two rounds I played against new/inexperienced players, because I want to focus mostly on one combat step against one of the regulars I played.

Round 1 vs. T.

He was playing Bant (white-blue-green).  Win, 1-0-1 (Our second game ended in turns).

Round 2 vs. C.

C is a regular and a judge, and I like him a lot but I always make mistakes playing against him.  I think part of it is that his play style is relatively quick and since he knows I know how to play, he doesn't over-explain what he's doing and responds immediately when I do something (like throwing his creature in the graveyard as soon as I announce a removal spell, which for example can make me forget that I'm also going to tap Thermo-Alchemist in response so that I can get the untap trigger and do an extra point of damage).  He was playing white-black with some weird splashes (he had an Assembled Alphas that he could only cast using Cavern of Souls or a dual land, and he had a Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger that he could cast with any color of mana by using a hidden agenda conspiracy).  I missed some easy stuff in the first game, but I'm not certain that any of it would have saved me.  In the second game I played a lot cleaner and got down to a draw step where if I had drawn an instant or sorcery I would have won with 2 points from Thermo-Alchemist, but I didn't and lost.  Loss, 0-2.

Round 3 vs. F.

F was the other regular at my draft table, sitting at the opposite end from me, and he had a Bant deck with many of the good white-blue-green cards that I was passing as I drafted my red-black.  In the first game we were fairly even until I was avoidably blown out in a combat step -- more on that below.  In the second game we both mulliganed to 6, and I kept a hand with 2 lands with Glorybringer as my scry card.  I put it to the bottom.  Things like that have happened to me before, and I really don't know what's the correct choice when the scry card is the best card in your deck but you aren't sure you'll get the lands to cast it.  As it turned out, I drew a bunch of lands and it would have been fine if I had kept Glorybringer on top.  He won the game without too much trouble.  Loss, 0-2.

Round 4 vs. J.

J. had a blue-black deck.  Win, 2-0.  I did finally draw my Glorybringer in this match for the first time all night.

So, what was my learning experience mistake?  In the first game against F, I had a pretty good defense set up with a couple ground blockers.  He had a 3/3 (not the one pictured below, but functionally the same), and then he cast a Phantom Monster (3/3 flier), and I played Keepsake Gorgon, thinking I would shoot down the Phantom Monster if I couldn't find another way to stop it.  His next turn he attacked with Phantom Monster and cast Kor Sky Climber, and now I was looking at 6 damage per turn from fliers if I didn't do something.  With 7 mana up, I decided I needed to pressure his life total and make him either block or get into a race he would have trouble winning.  So I attacked with Keepsake Gorgon and Sinuous Vermin, as below:

I'm not sure if this was a truly bad attack.  My plan on this attack was to use the Gorgon's ability if the blocks lined up right, and use the Rat's ability instead if it was unblocked.  F. thought about it for a minute, then set up both his untapped creatures blocking the Rat.  I used the Gorgon's monstrous ability targeting the 3/3, and he cast Ajani's Presence in response, making both creatures indestructible.  I lost my Rat, he kept all his creatures, and I blew the Gorgon's ability without killing anything.  With the two fliers still alive, he easily won.

What I should have done was pass priority in the blockers step.  I was already giving up the Rat in trade regardless of whether he had anything, so my best option was to make him show me what he had.  If he didn't cast anything, I could trade the rat with the Kor.  If he did cast Ajani's Presence (or any trick), I could then use either of the monstrous abilities in response, most likely the Gorgon's to kill something before it became indestructible.  I would still lose the Rat, but he would have to lose something also.

In any case, this was an excellent learning experience.  F. is a quiet guy and didn't say anything about anything, but I'm sure he realized that I messed that one up.  He was probably comfortable just trading the Kor for the Rat and making sure I didn't get to make it into a 5/5.  My guess is that if I had passed priority, he would have done the same and held Ajani's Presence for a better moment.

One potential silver lining from my mistake was that he would have probably kept the Ajani's Presence mana up in order to counter my Gargoyle's ability (or another spell) no matter when I tried it, so I might have been in trouble anyway.  In chaos draft, you really have no idea what your opponent might have, and Ajani's Presence is a pretty excellent card to be holding when the other guy has an on-board single-use "destroy" effect.

Anyhow, the final result was that I went 2-2, which was just shy of the record needed to make top 8, and my game record was 3-4-1.  That was a disappointment considering how strong the deck looked, but we have to learn and move on.

Here are my rares and money cards:

I drafted 9 uncommons, which is average, and I drafted 5 rares vs. the expected 3.  Glorybringer is about $3.50, Earthshaker Khenra is about $1, and Lord of the Accursed is about 50 cents, so my total value was maybe $5 for the draft, all from cards that will probably go down when they rotate from Standard.  The zombie might hold some value for casual play.

So it's another draft in the books.  Thanks for reading, and I welcome any comments!

FNM Draft 2018-02-09

I've played some RIX Sealed, but this was my first time in the Rivals of Ixalan draft format.

Oddly, there were not very many people for draft.  Maybe it was the rain, or maybe they all had hot Valentine's dates, but we had 11 people, 3 of whom had never drafted before.  So it was a bizarre single pod of 11, which meant that people might see more duplicate cards and higher quality cards in general, but you were less likely than normal to see cards you want come back around to you.

Anyway, somehow I completely killed it with this draft.  Here is the draft in order, from bottom left to top right:

First pick rare was a strong merfolk card, and it looked better than the couple of removal spells in the pack.  Second pick I took an aura that's very good in aggressive strategies and in the merfolk colors.  Third pick a strong rare was still in the pack, so I hedged toward possibly shifting colors by taking it over less powerful cards, although the Jungleborn Pioneer that eventually came back to me was probably my other best choice there, since it goes really well with Deeproot Elite.  Since Jungleborn Pioneer is a common, I wasn't worried about eventually getting one or two, and I went with the rare.  Merfolk Mistbinder at 5th pick was a good sign that other people were going to let me have my merfolk, and Hunt the Weak is just a great removal spell that I would take for any green deck.  Toward the end of the pack I was happy to see Jade Bearer and the Jungleborn Pioneer.

Second pack first pick didn't have anything that really excited me.  The rare was Induced Amnesia, which is not very good in Limited.  I took Crested Herdcaller because it's a very good uncommon in my colors, although it ended up not making my final deck.  The next few picks were just generally useful on-color cards, and then I was off to the races with Silvergill Adept, another Curious Obsession, and 2 Mist-Cloaked Heralds to put the Curious Obsessions on (which I had been waiting for).

Pack 3 rare was Deadeye Tracker.  I didn't see anything I had to have in the merfolk theme, so I took the foil Siren Stormtamer as another evasive blue 1-drop for Curious Obsession that also doubles as protection for my best creatures.  Pick 2 was a nice surprise in Ripjaw Raptor, a devastating curve-topper that my merfolk deck in no way deserved to have access to.  For a good chunk of this pack, the hits kept coming, as though everyone else was thinking "Ok, let's give the one guy drafting merfolk exactly the cards he wants."

Here is the deck I ended up building:

I had to make some hard cuts to come up with the optimal deck.  Since I had such a strong low end, I pared down to 15 lands knowing that I would have some keepable hands with only 1-2 islands and some mix of the cards below.

I ended up cutting a lot of good cards -- Crested Herdcaller and Siren Lookout are both cards I would almost always play in a green or blue deck, and Jade Guardian is going into almost all merfolk decks, but they just didn't fit here.

After the low-drop blue cards, these 1-drops and 2-drops make for explosive turn 2 and 3 plays:

Then finally these double-merfolk cards clog up the board and make a lot of counters with Deeproot Elite, and Kopala and the Stormtamer make it hard for the opponent to interact with the now-giant creatures:

With the various duplicate cards and the abundance of merfolk, this deck was deadly and consistent.  My best start didn't even involve a 1-drop; I played Woodland Stream tapped, then turn 2 Deeproot Elite, turn 3 Silvergill Adept and Jade Bearer (adding a total of three +1/+1 counters), then turn 4 Jade Bearer and another merfolk (three more counters) to attack with a 5/4 Silvergill and 4/4 Deeproot Elite on a turn when many decks are just casting their first 3/3.

Here are my most likely sideboard cards, although I had a lot of options if needed.

I had a round 1 bye, so that started me off 1-0 and helping in a game with one of the new players.

Round 2 vs. P.
P was playing Naya (white-red-green), and I never really got to see much of his deck to know whether it was heavy dinos or something else.  In game 1, we both mulliganed to 6 and kept hands with 2 lands.  He had a mountain and a forest, and I had two islands, but I also had Mist-Cloaked Herald and Curious Obsession, and I was able to draw extra cards into lands while he was not.  In the second game, he mulliganed to 5 and I had a vicious start that he couldn't keep up with.  Win, 2-0.

Round 3 vs. N.
N was in red-green dinosaurs.  In the first game, I mulliganed to 5 and kept a hand with a Mist-Cloaked Herald and Silvergill.  He got off to a strong start while I missed a few curve spots (I also made a mistake of not casting Silvergill on turn 3 after drawing a merfolk to reveal, but I don't think that was the difference in the game).  In the end, I got the Herald pumped up to 5/5 but I couldn't keep up otherwise and I lost.  I sideboarded in the River Darters and took out two of my higher cost non-merfolk.  Second and third game blur together for me -- in both games I had good curve-outs and just built up huge boards of attackers before he was able to stabilize.  Win, 2-1.

Round 4 vs. E.
With only 11 players in the event, E and I were the only 3-0 players, and we were able to take an intentional draw into first and second place.

Bonus coverage, Commander game with B and E.
Since we had to wait for the other games to end, we joined B in a Commander game.  I was playing my Intet the Dreamer deck (Temur - blue-red-green).  B had two of the partner Commanders: Thrasios, Triton Hero and Vial Smasher the Fierce, meaning he was in every color except white.  E had a mono-white equipment-based deck with Balan, Wandering Knight.  I was going to sit back a bit on my big dragons and blow up the board, but my Nevinyrral's Disk got destroyed before I could untap it.  Atarka, World Render was a bit of a threat, but in the end, direct damage from Vial Smasher took me out and took E out soon after.

Standings.  I ended up in first place for the draft!  Since E and I had drawn, we split the first and second place prizes evenly.  2-0 in matches and 4-1 in games.  Plus 0-1 in Commander.  ^_^

I feel like I was very lucky to get such a pure merfolk deck, and as many strong uncommons and rares as I did.  I have had very good luck with merfolk in Ixalan block, as my best three decks (draft or sealed) have all been blue-green merfolk.  In total, I drafted 6 rares, which is twice the expected number, and 12 uncommons, which is 4/3 of the expected number.  Here are the money cards and rares:

Unclaimed Territory, Ripjaw Raptor, and Deeproot Elite are all in the $4 range, and Kopala and foil Siren Stormtamer are in the $2 range, so I also ended up above expected value and the $10 draft fee.

Here is the additional prize:

The token has a Saproling on the back.

All in all, it was a great draft.  The only downside is that I wish I could have played more rounds with my draft deck, because it was very fun and I think extremely strong.