FNM Draft 2018-05-18

Third week in a row drafting Dominaria!

This time there were 30 players, and we had tables of 8-8-7-7.  I was at a table of 7.  Here's my draft result, from bottom left to top right:

First pack had The Antiquities War at rare and Shanna as the uncommon legendary.  With nothing else too exciting, I went textbook and took the uncommon removal spell.  Second pack had Whisper, who seems like an interesting build-around but might not have been the strongest pick.  Fight with Fire is a legitimate pick, but I can see now that I was probably overvaluing black here, or maybe the packs were just weak.  I thought the Rat Colony strategy might work if I could find enough of them, plus some evasion like Tetsuko in a later pack.  Blue was definitely available, and I should have identified it sooner.

Pack 2 was a chance to solidify my colors, but with Kamahl's Druidic Vow at rare and Danitha Capashen as the legendary, I went safe with Wizard's Lightning, an easy card to splash along with Fight with Fire.  Second pack foil Merfolk Trickster was appealing as I thought it might have some actual dollar value, and I knew blue might be open from the previous pack.  I continued to take black cards, but Rona was a nice pickup to go with my other legends and artifacts.  And then at the end of the pack, no black, but more good blue cards.

Pack 3 rare was Shalai, and I considered going another direction but decided she was powerful enough that I could probably splash her in.  I stuck with black and blue through the rest of the pack.

Afterward I found out that four of the seven players at my table were drafting black, which explains why I got some black cards but not consistent quality, and not in the second half of packs.  The player to my left was white-green with a black splash, and the player to my right was white-red.  Since I was getting two packs from that side, it explains why my red and white never blossomed.  I think we were all confusing each other to some extent, because two other good players (both of whom I played against later) got stuck in 3-color decks like me.  One more point of note is that my deck would have been radically different if I had opened the Shalai pack first (or if I had drafted Shanna out of the pack I did open).  I probably would have ended up in white-green, which was certainly somewhat open to me.

So this was a challenging deck to build.  I had some tricks, auras, and Lances to go with my Rats and try to build an aggressive blue-black deck, but with only 3 rats and no Tetsuko, it seemed like a fragile plan.  So my remaining choice was whether to splash red or white in a more conservative blue-black deck.  I went with white because the two white legends supported my historic subtheme, and they both made my other creatures more powerful.  Here's the final version (I tweaked it to this after losing round 1):

I wasn't super happy with this deck, but I did check off the important boxes of unconditional removal and late game evasive creatures.  My creatures mostly had low stats for their cost, so I felt like the Shield was better than the Lance, but that might have been wrong.

I have been drawing first in this format, but I wasn't sure if that was right for this deck.  I chose to draw in my first game but chose to play first after that.

Here's the sideboard / stuff I didn't play:

I had Chainer's Torment in for round 1 but never drew it.  Aside from switching to the aggro plan, there isn't much here in terms of situational sideboard cards.

Round 1 vs. Mardu (white-black-red)
As I mentioned before, this was another player from my table.  He was also the person I lost to at the end of last Friday.  In the first game, I had an advantage and I actually think I made a game-losing mistake:

He had D'Avenant Trapper and Pardic Wanderer.  I had two tapped fliers that had just attacked to take him down to 4 life, and my life was at 8.  I also had the Shield of the Realm.  He had two or three cards in hand and I had Shalai and Whisper in hand with 8 mana (each of them cost 4, and Shield costs 1 to equip).  What would you do after combat?

Here's what I did: I cast Shalai and equipped the Shield.  This left me protected against most damage-based removal and some amount of pump spells, and it protected my two other flying creatures.  On his turn, he cast a Jousting Lance, tapped Shalai with the Trapper's ability, and attacked for lethal.  If I had cast Whisper instead of equipping Shalai, I would have had at least Whisper untapped to block the Trapper, and the Wanderer with the Lance would have only hit for 7.  I think casting both creatures would have been the better play, because it would have taken two removal spells or some other source of damage to get his attack through.  The problem with my play was that I lose to any historic spell.

In game 2, I made another mistake early -- I attacked with a Relic Runner and he blocked with a 2/2, then I flashed in the Merfolk Trickster targeting his creature, and it didn't change the combat outcome at all and we traded (I didn't want to lose the Relic Runner because it's good late when I start playing historic spells).  I was thinking the Merfolk reduced the creature to 0/1 like Warkite Marauder does, but that's not the case.  What's worse, I could have played the Merfolk before combat to tap his creature and gotten the damage in safely.  I held up for a while, but he kept killing my legendary creatures, and he eventually cast a Jaya's Immolating Inferno killing 3 of my creatures at once and won easily.  Loss, 0-2.

Round 2 vs. Abzan (white-black-green)
This guy was sitting to my left to draft, so I knew a lot of his likely cards based on what I had passed him.  He had Shanna in every game.  First game I was able to get over the top with fliers, but the second game he overpowered me with Shanna.  I mulliganed down to 5 on the play for game 3 (seeing two zero-land hands) and kept a hand with Stronghold Confessor, Relic Runner, and 3 lands.  Since I was desperately short on cards, I cast Confessor for B even though it's much stronger when cast for 3B, hoping to catch some early damage.  It worked out pretty well, and I drew and cast both my Sphinxes, but his card advantage took over eventually and I lost to Shanna riding on a Pegasus.  Loss, 1-2.

We had extra time so we also played one game of Standard and my black deck lost horribly to his spell-based control deck.

Round 3 vs. ???
I was willing to go another round just to see if I could get something out of the draft deck, since it had been playing pretty well even in the losses, but my opponent, who was also 0-2, suggested Standard instead and I said "Why not!"  So we played 3 games and I won all three pretty easily.  He has an aura deck (similar to this deck but a Jeskai version featuring Sram) that plays right into the hands of my deck.

Overall, I finished 1-4 in games and 0-2 in matches played.  I don't think my deck was that bad, but on reflection I made mistakes both in the draft and in the first round of play.  I think I played pretty close to optimally in the second round match.  Rona is definitely a good card, but I never had a historic card in the graveyard when I cast her, and the one time I was able to activate her second ability, it was a land.  Likewise, I never used Whisper's ability.  So they both just played as overpriced 2/2's.  The best part about losing (for me at least) is that it makes me take a closer look to see why I lost, so I certainly learned more than I do when I'm winning.

Here is the draft value:

I only drafted 1 rare this time vs. 3 expected on average, and I drafted 12 uncommons vs. 9 expected.  I was happy to find out that the Merfolk Trickster is about a $9 card.  Shalai is still around $3.50 and Rat Colony is now around 35 cents for the cheapest available copies.  So on current prices the draft was worth maybe $13 or so.

Thanks for reading!  I'm going to take at least next week off from drafting -- three in a row is a lot for me!