FNM Draft 2018-04-13

It was about a month since my last FNM draft, so I was ready to play!  The store guy suggested we do Rivals of Ixalan, but the players voted him down and it was Chaos Draft again.  Next week is Dominaria prerelease, so once that set comes out I think the store will be back to normal set drafts again.  We had 16 players, so two normal tables of 8.  Play was 4 rounds with a cut to top 4 but 5-8th place each receiving a booster.

The pool included a few Masters packs, and I was lucky enough to get an Eternal Masters pack, along with Shadows over Innistrad and Dragons of Tarkir.  I put EMA first because it was most likely to have a very strong card to build around.  Here's my draft, from bottom left to top right:

First pick was interesting, as the pack had three money cards in it.  I passed on the powerful Chain Lightning and a foil Ashnod's Altar, which is not great in draft, to take Duplicant.  Duplicant has a weird and unique ability, but at its heart it's a colorless unconditional exile spell attached to a creature, and even at 6 mana that's an excellent deal.  Second pick Declaration in Stone was pretty easy -- another unconditional exile?  Sure.  Azorius Charm probably wasn't the best card in the next pack, but it fit with the first two picks for a controlly deck.  White and blue both seemed available, so I just started grabbing everything in those colors.  At the end of Pack 1 I was thinking white-blue fliers.

A side note on white-blue fliers, an archetype I have been getting better at:  Normally, a good white-blue fliers needs 2 things: fliers and cards that slow down the opponent's more efficiently costed creatures.  That can be removal spells, big blockers, or chump blockers.  Blue and white have the highest frequency of fliers in every recent Magic set, and blue also has unblockable creatures, so this is a deck you can build in pretty much every draft format including chaos draft.  By drafting this, I was able to largely ignore the mixed messages sent by other synergies and for example avoid trying to work with 3 cards that support Heroic and 4 cards that support Delirium.  Two things that go a long way in the fliers deck are big blockers and tappers, and I was looking for these in packs 2 and 3.

So in pack 2 I opened Nephalia Moondrakes, which is a blue flier, but as a 7-mana 5/5, it's more like a control finisher (a card you play at the end of the game after neutralizing the opponent's threats) than the 3/2 and 2/2 fliers that a typical fliers deck thrives on.  I did pick it because it is a very strong creature, but I wasn't as excited about it as you might think.  Second pick however was amazing, a 2/1 flier that makes it easier for your other creatures to attack.  The rest of this pack made it very clear that my colors were very open -- particularly when Luminous Bonds came back around at 10th pick.  I was very happy to get 3 more removal spells, a tapper, and more 2-drops and 3-drops.  Daxos of Meletis might not have been the best card in the pack, but he was the right colors and he has an ability that can take over the game if he starts getting hits in.

Pack 3 opened with another straight-up game-winning card in Secure the Wastes.  As an instant, it can either ambush multiple attackers or put a bunch of attackers on the field for you at end of turn.  Then someone passed me Vraska's Contempt, and I felt good about how my draft was going, so I took it because it's an expensive card I can play in Standard.  The rest of the pack didn't disappoint: more fliers and more proof that I could have any white card I wanted.  Aerial Responder was an amazing get at 4th pick (2/3 flying vigilance lifelink).  The dark horse here is Cathar's Shield.  It doesn't look like much, but an equipment that adds 0/3 and vigilance to a small flier solves two problems at once: having a good blocker and being able to attack with my fliers into opposing fliers.

Here's the deck I built:

Making cuts was hard, as usually happens when I end up getting everything in the color I want.  It's a good problem to have.  I cut Cloud Mantis in favor of Drownyard Explorers at the 4-slot because I felt like I had enough fliers already and needed to not lose to 3-power creatures.  I was a little light on 2-drop and 3-drop creatures but had plenty of cheap removal spells to make up for it.

I had a lot of viable sideboard cards, but this is as deep as I went in the matches:

The first two were just curve-improvers when I ran into a deck that developed slowly in game 1, and the Moondrakes came in a few times when I was on the draw.  Scribe was a blocker and potential psyche-out card against my first opponent (but I didn't draw it).

Round 1 vs. D.
D. was playing red-green.  I mulliganed to 5 in the first game, then failed to draw lands very quickly, but I almost managed to come back because D. was playing very conservatively.  His early game was the very weird Epochrasite with a Skeleton Key.  Since it was taking him forever to damage me, he ran through quite a few cards, and that's why I brought the Scribe in for game 2.  His attacks stopped as soon as I had a blocker that could kill something, which was weird because he also had Ulvenwald Mysteries, which rewards him for trading creatures.  Eventually, he did win.  In game 2, I got off to a somewhat better start and at one point had 3 fliers, but he had the right removal and we came to a standstill with him at 2 life.  He built his board up faster, but was still extremely conservative attacking, and won with only a couple minutes left in the round.  Loss, 0-2.

Round 2 vs. J.
This was a pretty easy match in the loser's bracket.  J. was Sultai (blue-black-green) and didn't really have anything scary going on.  At best he made a bunch of small creatures.  There was an interesting moment that I called a judge for -- I had Warkite Marauder and he had an untapped Nightshade Peddler soulbonded to an untapped 2/2, and I wanted to know what would happen if the Maurader targeted the Peddler on attack.  Ruling (which I assume is correct) was that the Peddler would become 0/1 with no abilities and the 2/2 would thus lose deathtouch until end of turn, but afterward they would remain soulbonded and the 2/2 would gain deathtouch back.  Neato.  Win, 2-0.

Round 3 vs. N.
N. is an odd duck, so I made sure to play very clearly and cleanly.  He had white-red.  In Game 1 it looked like I was sure to lose for a long time, but I drew enough removal to hold him off when I was at 3 life.  My Sigardian Priest did a ton of work, and eventually I found Secure the Wastes and was able to bust through with 6 tokens before he remembered he had a flashback spell in the graveyard that could have killed the Priest (I had also forgotten).  This game took a long time, so he was worried about timing out, but I got my Aerial Responder rolling in game 2 and never was in any real danger.  Win, 2-0.

Round 4 vs. R.
R. was playing blue-black.  In game 1 he didn't draw his third land until way too late and I won easily.  In game 2 he had a better start but I had better cards.  My combat tricks and Aerial Responder were better than his two black lifelinkers, and once I got Daxos out on top of my other good attackers, he conceded.  Win, 2-0.

So after a really bad start, I came back to 3-1 and finished in 5th place.  Not bad, although if I had won the first round I might have had more trouble winning in the winners' bracket.  Either way, I think 3-1 is about right for this deck with its high number of powerful or efficient cards.  I made a few mistakes, including forgetting to equip Cathar's Shield with my open mana a couple times, but mostly I think I played pretty optimally.

Here are my rares and foils:

I drafted 8 rare/mythic, which is way above average -- it was about 1/3 of all the rares in my pod.  I only drafted 5 uncommons vs. 9 expected, but the rares more than balanced that out.  Duplicant and Secure the Wastes are each about $3, Warkite Marauder is about $1.25, and Vraska's Contempt is a big $12 based on Standard demand but will probably drop toward bulk once it rotates out.  I also received a booster pack for 5th place, and I took Return to Ravnica.  So in total, my draft was worth over $20 now, but probably has under $10 long term value unless the RtR pack is good.

So not a bad end for the Chaos draft season of Ixalan block.  I look forward to Dominaria prerelease next weekend!