FNM Draft 2018-03-16

This week, Masters 25 released, and I was itching to try it out in draft.  When I got to the store, an 8-person single-elimination Masters draft had just started, and I was the first signup for the next one.  Since there was time to spare, I signed up for the normal FNM draft, which was going to be chaos draft.  If enough people got in for Masters, I would just drop from the chaos draft (and there were 9 people in the chaos pool, so it might be a mercy on everyone else for me to drop anyway).

Here's where I was in chaos draft when the pool filled for Masters:

This draft looks like a train wreck, but I think I could have turned it into something.  It has lots of color fixing.  I was a little unfocused because I knew I was likely to drop, possibly without playing a round.  When you drop from a draft in progress, you just keep everything that you have at that time, including unopened and unfinished packs.  I forgot to keep the rest of the pack that I was passing, so the rest of the table got about 8 - 9 extra cards.  I opened the third pack because someone from the table was interested.  Thaumatic Compass is cool, but there was nothing super exciting.

So here's the record scratch sound, and then we start the "real" draft:

If you aren't familiar with Masters 25, it's a "nostalgia" reprint set.  Each card has a watermark of the symbol from the set where it first appeared, and M25 includes at least one card from every "normal" set ever released, including Commander and Conspiracy sets, and running through the most recent set, Rivals of Ixalan.

The other twist with M25 is that rather than creating a balanced draft environment with broad groups of cards that fit in predefined decks, they designed the set to be full of strong 2-card combos and cards that answer those combos, plus they tried to let each color be played aggressively, midrangey, or controlly (as opposed to normal draft environments where for example blue might be only playable as a control color and red as an aggro color).  This makes drafting kind of chaotic, and I really didn't know what would be successful.  I went in with a few preconceived ideas about what I might want to try.

In Pack 1, my rare was Brion Stoutarm, a strong white-red legend.  I didn't feel like locking into WR right off the bat, so I opted for Freed from the Real, which is a flexible spell that can be used as removal or a combo enabler.  Pick 2 Brine Elemental is also a combo enabler -- if I had found Vesuvan Shapeshifter, it sets up a combo where you can keep the opponent from untapping ever.  The rest of the pack was all over the place, and Ash Barrens and Cultivate opened me up to playing more than 2 colors.

Pack 2 rare was Hanna, Ship's Navigator, a card that I think is only printed in M25 to help alleviate the severely limited supply of foil copies for Commander players.  Fallen Angel is strong though and worked with Phyrexian Ghoul in some sacrifice combos, but the rest of the pack shifted away from black as blue and green seemed open (Murder of Crows was a strong signal).  When I saw the foil Accumulated Knowledge come back around, I knew I was almost guaranteed to get all three (and maybe more in Pack 3), so I snagged them.

In Pack 3, I was feeling very blue-green, so I almost passed Prossh before remembering I had pretty good mana fixing and an Elvish Piper to cheat creatures into play.  I took Ihsan's Shade with the same mentality (at least as a sideboard card against white).  The Broodhatch Nantukos were nice pickups to help me survive against aggressive opponents.

Deckbuilding was hard, and I used almost my full 15 minutes making cuts.  In addition to the usual trouble with having too many playable cards, the lack of set themes to give direction also made it tough.  Was I combo?  Control?  Ramp?  In the end, I tried to fit a little of everything, so that I wouldn't be just dead if I couldn't assemble a combo.

Here's my deck:

The mana base looks sketchy, but Ash Barrens and Cultivate really do a lot of work.  Chartooth Cougar searches for a Mountain if needed, hence 2 Swamps but only 1 Mountain.  Also, a trick I learned from playing Tarkir block Sealed: playing a lot of morph creatures helps make up for bad mana.

I had some tough choices narrowing down morphs.  These three pairs are all 2-drop morphs with very different effects when flipped (the Nantuko doesn't have a flip effect, but you can put it into combat attacking or blocking and flip it to reveal that you'll make a lot of insects):

I decided Nantuko was best because it is better as a 2-drop (played face up) than the others.

The two main combos (other than the obvious Elvish Piper + any creature) are Lorescale Coatl pumping and Horseshoe Crab or a "Freed" creature making a ton of tokens or damage.  I conservatively held back on Curiosity and Quicksilver Dagger because I was afraid too many auras would be setting me up for blowouts, but in hindsight maybe I should have gone all-in on the combo.

Here are the sideboard cards I ended up using:

I think there are a number of ways I could have built the deck better, but it was pretty functional in the form I played.

Round 1 vs. R.
He was white-red drafting to my left, so he had the Brion Stoutarm I had passed.  Game 1 he didn't get his white mana and I won pretty easily.  Game 2 he had a lot of goblin tokens, Savannah Lions, etc, and I was drawing too many lands to keep up.  In game 3 we finally both had things clicking, and it was a slugfest.  Before the round went to time, we got clarification on overtime rules for single elimination: 5 turns as normal, and afterward the first person to gain life or deal damage would win.  This normally favors the person who gets to play turn 6, but he had Brion out able to gain life and deal damage at instant speed.  I positioned myself to get turn 6 by waiting to pass to him for turn 1 right after we went to time.   I survived one nasty attack with the sideboarded Lull.  Then after he tapped Brion on my turn 4, I flipped my Brine Elemental (which he hadn't seen to that point) to make sure he couldn't untap again during his turn 5 or my turn 6.  When turn 6 came around, I was able to attack freely with Ghost Ship for the win in a game I might otherwise have lost.  Win, 2-1.

Round 2 vs. S.
S had a black-red deck full of Ruthless Rippers and other tiny threats.  It mostly seemed annoying but innocuous, until late in the first game, he played a 7-damage burn spell on me, then played Izzet Chemister and picked up the spell from the graveyard to use again the next turn.  Second game went similarly, but I couldn't mount any attacks for a long while.  He assembled a nasty repeatable combo using Chemister, Hell's Caretaker, and several spells that bring dead creatures back into play, so I knew I was running out of time to win.  I Pipered in Prossh on his attack to ambush his attackers, but learned that Prossh's "cast" ability is a nonbo when you cheat him into play.  Then I flipped Brine Elemental to keep him tapped and had two attack phases to kill him.  He had just enough blockers to stay alive at 1 after two attacks, and I lost.  Loss, 2-0.

The card that surprised me the most in quality was Ghost Ship.  It was almost always a relevant blocker or a relevant attacker, even though I never needed to regenerate it.  This set has a lot of little creatures that get outclassed by Ghost Ship or Lorescale Coatl pretty quickly, and Murder of Crows was practically a bomb.  Evasion is also hard to come by, and the ground gets gummed up, so big-butt fliers are particularly good.  Ash Barrens was also quite good as an Evolving Wilds variant.  Accumulated Knowledge felt bad, in part because I never drew more than 1 in a game.

It was a fun and challenging draft.  I'd love to do it again, but I doubt anyone locally will be interested after this first week, because people generally don't like this set for value and it's hard to convince 7 other people to do a $30 draft resulting in $15 of cards when they could do a $10 draft resulting in $5 instead.

Speaking of value:

This was not a good value draft for me.  I drafted 2 rare/mythic, which is below average, and 17 uncommons, which is way above average.  My 3 foils is right on average, since this is a set with 1 foil in every pack, but they were all bad commons.  I passed a few cards worth $3 - $5 or so, with Rest in Peace and foil Dark Ritual being about the top end.  Prossh is one of a subset of cards in M25 where there is almost no demand for the regular version ($1) but the foil version (~$50) is a hot commodity because this is the first ever foil printing.  Elvish Piper at about $2.50 is the best card I pulled, and I'm happy because I like this art better than the one already in my Commander deck (8th Edition).  Total draft value was probably less than $10, even including the Chaos draft.

All in all, I enjoyed playing M25, and I wish that it was better priced for people to want to draft it again.

Thanks for reading!

FNM Draft 2018-03-09

Another Friday Night, another Chaos Draft.  Next week they might be on Masters 25 as it releases, but it looks like the general trend is Chaos until Dominaria comes out in April.

There were 22 people, and I was at a table of 7.  This time we had Return to Ravnica block sets in the mix for the first time, so we had almost every Standard set between RtR and the present, minus Tarkir block, but including both Conspiracy sets and maybe a few Masters packs.  My table didn't get any Masters packs this time, which was unfortunate because the cards are just generally stronger in those sets.  Here is my draft, bottom left to top right:

First pack wasn't too exciting.  The rare was Call to Unity, and there were a couple pickable uncommons, but I took Daring Demolition because it's always good.  The RtR pack that came to me next was very interesting though.  I had fun with the extort ability on a Basilica Screecher in Chaos Sealed at GP Houston, and I noticed the pack had 3 creatures with extort, plus two white-black cards, plus a few other playable cards in those colors.  I decided I could probably get one of those bunch to come back around, hopefully an extort creature.  So I took the foil Basilica Guards and went all in on an extort-themed control deck.  The other two extort creatures both came back, so I was able to double up on the Basilica Guards.  When Kalastria Nightwatch came at 6th pick, it was an easy choice for a finisher because it combos with extort (extort lets you gain and drain 1 life for 1 mana when you cast any spell, and Nightwatch gains flying when you gain life).

Second pack had the unplayable Madcap Experiment at rare, and I again took a removal spell first.  The first few picks were pretty good, but then it dried up, so I was pretty sure people just to my left were also in white and black.  I was ready to add a third color if I had to, but I was seeing no color fixing, even from sets like RtR with common dual lands.

Third pack Tamiyo was my normal rare and I also had a Hanweir Battlements as a dual-face rare.  Tamiyo can be super strong, so I took her on the off chance that I could somehow splash.  The rest of the pack fit pretty well into my original plan though, and I even got a second Kalastria Nightwatch at the end of the pack.

Weirdly, it turned out that two other people at my table were also drafting white-black.  I guess it isn't a surprise considering the strength of some of the early packs.  But since I was in such a weird archetype looking for blockers, cheap spells, card draw, and lifegain-matters cards, I still got most of what I was looking for.  I also had a minor subtheme of heroic mechanic, so cards that target my creatures were slightly better.

Here is the deck I built.  There are 9 Plains and 8 Swamps.

I wasn't sure about some of the final cuts, but I felt like this deck was what it was supposed to be.  I had lots of creatures that could block a 3/3, some fliers to add pressure, and some ways to pump the blockers bigger.  Blood Fast and Puzzleknot gave me card draw, and Tethmos High Priest could also give me card advantage (heroic - when it is target of a spell I cast, I can return a creature costing 2 or less to the battlefield).  All I had to do is keep my Basilica Guards alive and kill or block enough opposing threats, and I would be able to win the long game.  Attacking with Kalastria Nightwatch or other creatures was the main way to finish the game, but bouncing and repeating extort triggers using Aegis Automaton or draining slowly with Claim of Erebos on a defender were other plans.

Here are my main sideboard cards:

I never ran into many enchantment creatures (from Theros block), so Iconoclast never came in.  Smuggler Captain was an odd duck.  I had a chance to draft it earlier in the pack but Sinuous Vermin seemed much better, and when I finally did draft it, there weren't many more cards in the pack.  I picked Tandem Tactics (which made my main deck on its own), but thinking about the card more, it is probably best in Pack 1 or 2 so that you can use it for a more impactful card in a later pack, or for guaranteed value, you can choose a basic land as its target (this would remove the fail case of the named card no long being in your deck because you already drew it).  Anyway, as a 2/2 for 4 that tutors for a card you want the opponent not to know about, I didn't think it was worth it.

Round 1 vs. B.
B is a good regular player at FNM.  He had a red-green monsters deck.  Both games my plan worked well and I won, although they were also both very close games -- I was at 5 and 1 life at the end.  In the second game, he made what might have been a game losing mistake by not fully reading a complicated Conspiracy card (an 11/11 Ignition Team).  I also made a mistake in thinking Die Young added -1/-1 counters instead of only lasting until end of turn, but it wasn't nearly as bad.  Win, 2-0.

Round 2 vs. S.
S is another good regular, and he was in black-red aggro/tempo full of haste creatures, combat tricks, lifelink, and burn spells.  The first game I was able to set up my plan by putting Unquestioned Authority on a Basilica Guard and blocking just enough to stay in the game.  He did close to 20 damage to me and I spent another 10 or so life drawing cards with Arguel's Blood Fast, and I got the win in about 30 minutes after setting up Kalastria Nightguard.  The next two games he was able to leverage his attackers earlier or kill my Basilica Guards, and I didn't last long.  The scorecard below shows better than words what the kind of game this deck wants to play looks like.  Loss, 1-2.

Round 3 vs. B.
B had a blue-white fliers deck with maybe a splash of a third color.  I made a good fight of both games, but he just had too many fliers and my defenses were leaky.  In the first game, I demonstrated the repeatable extort using the bounce ability of Aegis Automaton once, and that got him to play a little more aggressively with his fliers.  I sided in the Shining Aerosaur and Cobbled Wings but it wasn't enough.  Loss, 0-2.

Round 4 vs. I.
He had a red-green monstrous deck that was far more monstrous than the other one I had played earlier.  He had quite a few creatures that could slowly become 8/8 or bigger, and that was trouble if I couldn't find my removal spells.  In game 1 we played pretty close but I became overwhelmed and lost.  I sided in Grip of Desolation, which really is a good card and probably should have been main deck anyway.  In game 2, I forced him to make bad blocks on my own monstrous Sinuous Vermin (8/8 with Goggles and Deviant Glee) and won.  The third game I started with all my removal in hand, and I canceled big creature after big creature until we were both mostly out of action.  He played a surprise Colossus of Akros, the biggest of all the monstrous creatures, and next turn he made it a 20/20 and won shortly after.  I had the right cards in my deck for it, but I had already used them.  Loss, 1-2.

I skipped Round 5 since 1-3 was going nowhere (honestly, 1-2 was unlikely to make the cut to top 4 anyway, but I was having fun).  My record in games was 4-6, which I felt was respectable since most of the games were close.  This deck was a ton of fun to play, and I felt good about how I engineered it from the beginning of the draft.

I was worried I would miss extort triggers, but I mentally added the mana to my spells before I cast them and tapped all the lands, and I don't think I missed more than maybe 1 extort trigger all night.

Probably the hardest part playing this deck was deciding when and how to block.  I rarely blocked a 2/2 with my 1/4 Basilica Guards even though they're built for it, because I didn't want to lose them to a combat trick.  Taking a little extra damage was usually worth it because I could drain it back over future turns.  The other tough thing was deciding how to use my removal.  In constructed control decks, you know what cards your opponent is likely to draw, so it's easier to make calculated decisions to lose life or use removal, but if I went to a low life total with this deck, there were literally hundreds of cards an opponent might have to punish me.

Some of the deficiencies of this deck I noticed while playing include:

• With so many defenders, it's hard to get a free win just by having a better curve out than the other guy.  Some board states I had literally no creatures that were allowed to attack or had power above 0.
• 0-power creatures don't deter attackers very well.  I generally felt a lot better once I had a 4/5 Kalastria Nightwatch or a Sinuous Vermin with 5 mana available.
• The heroic side plan didn't do much.  My Akroan Skyguard usually just stayed 1/1, although the occasions where I got Deviant Glee on it to make it a 4/3 were great.  But mostly it just meant I had a couple bad creatures and a couple bad auras in my deck.
• No real bombs meant I had to make my synergies work.  I would have felt a lot better if I could have added Tamiyo without wrecking my mana.

Overall, it was a ton of fun and I am happy to have gotten the practice playing a heavily controlling Limited deck.

Last, how about value?

I drafted 9 uncommons, which is as expected, and 2 mythic/rare, which is slightly below the 3 expected.  Tamiyo is about a $4.50 planeswalker, and Arguel's Blood Fast is about 50 cents.  The total value in this draft was right around $5, so not great, but I've done worse.  Tamiyo is likely to retain her value since she's been out of Standard for a while.

Thanks for reading!