FNM Draft 2018-06-22

Another Friday, another Dominaria draft!  And I learned a new rule this time!

We had 25 people, and I was at the lone table of 9.  Here's my draft, bottom left to top right:

I'm sure the first picks are getting repetitive at this point.  I get bad Pack 1 rares, so I pick common removal.  I went back and checked, and my first picks in 6 drafts have been 2 Eviscerate, 2 Vicious Offering, 1 Blessed Light, and a lone rare, Forebear's Blade.  I like drafting around removal, but it would be nice to start a draft with a bomb uncommon or rare sometime.  Anyway, this week my rare was Cabal Stronghold, which I grabbed on second pass.  The pack I opened had some good green cards, but I started seeing enough good green deeper in Pack 1 that I gravitated toward it.  3 Dark Bargain is too many, but there was really nothing better.  In a later pack I even saw a foil Dark Bargain and passed it.

Then Pack 2 teased me by offering both Settle the Score and Eviscerate.  The rare was the super narrow Kamahl's, a card I've seen a number of times in these drafts.  There was also a foil Tetsuko, and if not for the black removal (or if this had been Pack 1) I would have maybe taken it.  Then I finally got a break and was passed Aryel, a true take-over-the-game rare.  I needed more mana fixing but took it anyway on upside.  Then green came through on the next four picks, and I found myself being pushed toward saprolings.

Pack 3 was rough again with The First Eruption at rare, and I took the Knight of Malice as a generally good 2-drop that has synergy with Aryel, followed by another Grow from the Ashes to help cast Aryel.  Pick 3 Phyrexian Scriptures was another surprise gift, and I snapped it up.  I found some other gems here, Whisper (who is good in combination with Slimefoot - once you get to 8 mana, you can instant speed return creatures from the graveyard to play at the cost of making two saprolings), Spore Swarm, and a Soul Salvage that I desperately wanted to wheel.

Building the deck was difficult, and I'm not sure I got it exactly right.  I could have cut Aryel, but she has so much potential to wreck the game that I hated the idea of not using her.

In my first version, I had Ancient Animus main, but I switched to Broken Bond toward the end because I was always siding it in and everyone plays artifacts in this format.  This deck is basically an unfocused Saproling deck with some other things going on.  I cut all the artifact creatures even though they work well with Phyrexian Scriptures -- I'm not sure it was right move, but many of the saproling cards have some synergy with it as well.

Sideboard was functionally 2 cards, although I did have some ability to transform into a low-to-the-ground aggressive deck if I wanted.  Broken Bond is a very good card, and in the future I will try to main-deck a copy.

Round 1 vs. UR Wizards.
Game 1 was competitive, but I had the right removal and pushed through for the win.  Game 2 he completely crushed me playinf first.  Game 3 he mulliganed down to 2 cards -- I would never go that low in Limited, just hoping to scry to a land -- and it took me a while to win because I had more answers than threats, but the outcome was never in question.  Win, 2-1.

Round 2 vs. 4-Color Control.
This was a wild deck with Muldrotha and 2 Seal Away defining the four colors.  It had a ton of removal, and the high number of exile removal made it hard for me to use my graveyard.  In Game 1 I cleared away a bunch of stuff with Scriptures, and he killed my remaining creature, so I was stuck topdecking with 5 life.  I drew Dark Bargain and went down to 3 life for an Aryel I couldn't cast and Settle the Score.  He played the hexproof turtle and won.  The second game was even wilder, and I had the advantage on board for most of the game but he kept it close.  Meanwhile, I milled away a lot of my cards.  He destroyed Scriptures this time, and then he played Muldrotha with Memorial to Folly backup (to keep getting Muldrotha if needed), and I eventually conceded with 4 cards left in my deck and only a minute or two left in the round.  He also taught me a rule I did not know, below.  Loss, 0-2.

Rule 509.2
On one of my attack steps, I attacked Aryel (4/4) into a 3/2 and a 1/3 while holding Ancient Animus.  He asked me to order the blockers for damage before taking any more actions, and I said "What?"  He repeated, and I turned to a judge friend next to us and asked if that was true.  He confirmed.  The rules for blocking say that the attacker chooses damage order immediately after blocks are declared and confirmed legal during the Declare Blockers step.  I had thought this was done at the beginning of the damage step when the attacker decides how much damage to do to each blocker.  The difference is an advantage for the blocking player.  For example he could pump the creature I put first and make it impossible for me to kill either blocker because the second creature is off limits until I assign lethal damage to the first.  In this particular case, I think he was just making sure procedure was correct because he knew I probably had something in hand.  I ordered the 3/2 first, then cast Ancient Animus targeting the 1/3 (growing Aryel to 5/5 so she could kill both and survive), and he didn't do anything more, so the result was still exactly what I expected.

Round 3 vs. RG Goblin Pump.
I've played against this person with essentially this same deck previously.  He is a slow player and an even slower shuffler.  He had Siege-Gang Commander and some other good goblins, but I was able to navigate through it the first game and hold him off the second game.  When it went to time, I played super conservatively for the not-lose.  Fungal Plots did a ton of good work in this match.  Win, 1-0-1.

Round 4 vs. BG Saprolings.
This guy had different specifics but a lot of the same cards as me.  He was playing a little more aggressively with cards like Llanowar Envoy, a card I drafted but didn't even consider putting in my deck.  In the first game, I held him off for a while but he had more attackers than I could handle.  In the second game, I was doing pretty well and used Scriptures to clear a bunch of board and make my Spider a 4/6, but he rebuilt quickly with an Amaranthine Wall and Josu Vess, and he eventually won.  I wondered whether I had played Scriptures too early, but I'm not really sure (since it doesn't kill the wall anyway).  Loss, 0-2, drop.

I finished at 2-2 in matches and 3-5-1 in games.  Overall I thought this deck had some very powerful combos but they were hard to assemble.  In particular, Slimefoot generally gets killed on sight (this shouldn't surprise me because I always kill him on sight too).  An army of 1/1s is a lot better if you have a way to make them bigger, but I didn't get any of the several cards that do that.  Scriptures was pretty good, but it usually was followed by the opponent killing the one creature I had left behind.  If I had started my draft with Scriptures, I would have drafted more artifact creatures to make it more one-sided.

I drafted 3 rares, which is average, and 10 uncommons, which is slightly above the 9 average.  Stronghold and Scriptures are both around $1, and Rat Colony is still non-bulk (I have almost enough of them to start building a deck...), so the total value here is somewhere around $3.  Pretty bad.

I'm still enjoying these drafts, and based on attendance I'd say other people are too.  And I'm glad to finally know the correct way to deal with multiple blockers in combat.

FNM Draft 2018-06-15

It's Friday again, so if I'm going to write up last Friday's draft, now is the time!  I'll try to keep it short.

21 people, 3 tables of 7.  Here's my draft, bottom left to top right.

In the first pack, I saw Urza's Ruinous Blast at rare.  I'm sure it can be great, but I have been a little afraid to draft around a sorcery that requires a legend to cast it.  The pack had several good green cards -- the Thallid lord, the uncommon Kavu, and the common Baloth with kicker.  I felt like passing green would be more profitable than drafting it, so I went with the good common removal spell.  Second pack was weak and I took the Omnivore.  For the rest of the pack, I took whatever removal I could find and shied away from white and green, the colors I had passed in Pack 1.

The second pack was a tough choice -- just in black I had to choose between Cast Down, another Vicious Offering, Rite of Belzenlok, and Rona.  Since the first pack didn't give me a ton of removal, I went that direction and gave up the black bomb rare.  I hoped Rona might come back around since she is two colors, but it didn't happen.  The next pack was mediocre, but I got strong signals from the next three picks that I had effectively pushed my left side neighbors off blue and black.  Now with two Deep Freeze and multiple big fliers, I was liking the possibility of building a blue-black fliers deck.  I was still seeing a lot of red cards, but they just weren't very good.

Pack 3 Tetsuko was not my favorite card to take, but it gave me a good early blocker and a little evasion.  The rare in the pack was Hinterland Harbor, which didn't help me enough to be worth picking for money.  After that, the pack was solid blue.  I wasn't too surprised after passing a few good black cards to the right in the previous pack, and I was fine with it since Tempest Djinn was one of my best cards and required three blue mana.  The Cold-Water Snappers were nice because they are a strong combo with Arcane Flight.

Here is the deck:

Most notably:

• 10 islands, 7 swamps.  I would have gone higher if I had any fixing, because Tempest Djinn on turn 3 is so strong.  I was worried about getting stuck unable to cast my black removal spells.  My normal plan was to play only Islands from turn 1 until I was required to play a Swamp, in order to maximize the chance of getting Djinn down, even if I didn't have it or 3 Islands in my hand yet.
• I love Deep Freeze, and as long as I have fliers, I would play as many copies as I can draft.
• 2 Snappers and just 1 Arcane Flight.  So many of my creatures already fly that I didn't want to risk getting stuck with Arcane Flights and no good targets.
• All of the card draw.  Even Befuddle.
• I didn't play Gilded Lotus because my highest casting cost (including kickers) is 6, so ramping from 5 to 8 is pretty irrelevant.  With only 2 colors in my deck, the fixing is also irrelevant.
• The thing I missed most was no way to return cards from the graveyard, since I had several good ways to mill myself.

Sideboard:

In some decks Thallid Omnivore is amazing, and in others it's just a 3/3.  This is the second kind of deck.  The Candle is ok if specifically needed, but I never needed it.  The most useful card here was Unwind.

Round 1 Bye.

Starting with a match win is nice, but I hate losing a round of practice while everyone else is playing.

Round 2 vs. Sultai (UBG) Saprolings.

He had a great deck with all the Saproling cards, including the lord and Omnivores.  I never saw a blue card during the games, but he showed me Muldrotha afterward (yikes).  He also had main deck enchantment removal (Broken Bond), and that was what probably won him the first game as he was able to free his Omnivore from Deep Freeze.  I got way behind in the second game and just hung on as long as I could.  Loss, 0-2.

Round 3 vs. UG Historic.

This deck seemed like sort of a goodstuff deck without a heavy theme.  He had Traxos and a lot of artifacts, but he also had big green creatures.  He is a good player, but I often give him trouble.  Game 1 he got ahead, and I battled and battled and eventually lost.  Games 2 and 3 I got my Tempest Djinn going early and won very tight games.  Win, 2-1.  I felt good about this one.

Round 4 vs. Esper (WUB) Turtle Combo.

Game 1 I was in great shape with a strong board, then he made two good combos: First he played Divination with Naru Meha to draw four cards.  Then he played Cold-Water Snapper and followed up by putting Serra's Wings on it.  Snapper + Arcane Flight is good, but Snapper + On Serra's Wings is almost unbeatable.  I had no way to attack through it, so I just left all my fliers up to block and hoped I could either mill him out or get through with Tetsuko.  He picked off my fliers with removal and started attacking for the win.  Second game I brought in Unwind, which gave me exactly two answers for the turtle combo (the other one is casting Blink of an Eye on On Serra's Wings in combat).  We both got big boards, and at the pivotal moment, he had a Snapper out and I was holding Blink.  He cast a removal spell on a Deep Freeze I had on his Pegasus Courser, which would have let him start attacking with the turtle in the air.  I decided to cash in the Blink to get my Deep Freeze back and try to race...and he immediately cast On Serra's Wings on the turtle.  Game over.  Loss, 0-2.

I dropped at 2-2.  I was 1-2 in matches and 2-5 in games, but I felt like my deck was not quite that bad.  I think it would have been much better with maybe 2 ways to get cards back from the graveyard.

Here are my best pulls:

The value is pretty bad here, less than $5 total.  I drafted 2 rares vs. 3 expected, and 9 uncommons, same as expected.

I also made some sweet trades.  I've enjoyed getting into trading a bit, and I'm happy to trade stuff I'm not using for cards that have stable value.  Here's what I got for 3 Aether Vials and a bunch of lower value cards:

Some of these are for Standard or Modern, some are for Commander, and some are just "Magic currency" (fetchlands, Ballista).

I'll probably try Dominaria again tonight!  Thanks for reading!

FNM Draft 2018-06-01

Time for more Dominaria draft!  It continues to be popular, and this time we had 29 people split into tables of 8-7-7-7.  I was at a table of 7, and this was how my draft went, from bottom left to top right:

Pack 1 had Fall of the Thran at rare, which is more of a constructed card (I actually passed it twice).  Shanna was interesting as the legend in the pack, but I decided to go with the removal spell.  I didn't blink in stringing together 4 more removal spells to begin the draft.  Seal Away was the biggest surprise at 5th pick, and it wasn't the only card I valued highly in the pack, as somehow Haphazard Bombardment came back around to me.  I ended up with a ton of removal and only a couple creatures, but that was fine by me.  I was probably some combination of white-red-black, but I had enough colorless and splashable spells that I was completely open to switching colors if Pack 2 gave me a green or blue bomb.

Pack 2 gave me an interesting decision instead: Icy Manipulator or Josu Vess.  I still think it's a toss up, even though I was short on creatures and strong on removal.  In the end, I went with the Icy because it was guaranteed not to come back to me, while Vess had a tiny chance of not coming around.  Second pick was an easy choice to take the mana fixer for what was shaping up to be a very controlly deck.  I was really happy to hit a run of creatures in the middle of this pack.

I was pretty clearly black-red at this point, and I got another tough choice to start Pack 3.  The rare was Torgaar, which would have been bonkers in some cases.  I forgot that it has the life-changing ability and went with the very safe Settle the Score instead, thinking it would be unfortunate if I could never afford to cast Torgaar with my relatively low creature count.  In the end, I don't know which is the better pick here.  My next five picks were again all removal spells, but they were even better than some of the removal that I already had, so I gobbled them up.  I took The Eldest Reborn over Squee, another creature that would have easily made it into my deck, although it is far less threatening than Josu or Torgaar.  Red must have been very open, because I was very surprised to get a Skizzik right at the end of the pack.

I found out afterward that the guy to my right was drafting blue-green, which explains some of the great cards I was passed in the first and third packs.

Here is the deck I built:

I think this deck is a Dominaria specialty.  My removal was so strong that I cut down to my 9 best creatures, far fewer than I would normally ever be comfortable playing.  Fungal Infection is also sort of a creature, and Memorial to Folly gets a creature back, and The Eldest Reborn gets a creature back from either player's graveyard, so the 9 is more like 12 - 14 depending how much of a creature you consider a 1/1 Saproling.  The Saprolings do have synergy with Thallid Omnivore and Vicious Offering, and they can hold a Sorcerer's Wand, so they weren't complete non-factors.

The Eldest Reborn and Haphazard Bombardment are both 3-for-1 deals, even though they're both expensive and slow, and I had a few 2-for-1 or better creatures even if none of them were legitimate bombs, so the hope was that I could hold off any threats and slowly get ahead on cards.

Sideboard plans:

With 13 removal spells in the main deck, what's in my sideboard?  Just 7 more removal spells with special uses.  I have made the mistake before of having splashable cards in the sideboard without preparing the lands I need, but this time I made sure I had my two Plains ready to sub in for a Mountain and a Swamp when I needed my white spells (remembering that Skittering Surveyor also lets me find a Plains if needed).  Seal Away and Blessed Light were in case the opponent was bringing dead things back from the graveyard.  Fiery Intervention is for artifacts and creatures with 5 toughness (Pardic Wanderer, Untamed Kavu).  Some of these also get enchantments.  Radiating Lightning is for things like Llanowar Elves and Saproling tokens (if 3 Fungal Infection isn't enough!).

I'm not sure what the Candle is for, and I never played it.  It's better when you have ways to bring it back from the graveyard.  I also had some other sideboard cards like Yargle that just weren't good enough to consider.  Yargle can win games fast, but he needs a completely clear path to do it.

I wasn't sure if this deck would be "too much removal," but my creatures were just worse than my removal spells, so I was kind of stuck with it.  Play first vs. draw first has been an interesting decision for me in Dominaria draft.  Because I had early game removal and late game card advantage, I chose to draw first every game.  I think this is exactly the kind of deck that wants to draw first.

Round 1 vs. BG.
This guy was the other black drafter at my table, and he had Josu Vess and probably Torgaar too.  I only got to my third land in game 1, and while I put up a little fight, there was nothing I could do with 3 mana and a bunch of 4-mana removal spells, so I lost.  The second game was the opposite problem.  He had nice threats like Josu and Untamed Kavu, and I drew too many lands when I really needed my removal.  He was a bit more conservative on attacking than I think he needed to be, and it took him a little longer to win both games than it should have.  I think I could have won this match with more average draws.  Loss, 0-2.

Round 2 vs. RG.
He said his deck was terrible, and from what I saw in the games, it certainly wasn't very good.  He did have a Siege-Gang Commander that he never played during our matches, and I suspect he tried to build around it with some lower quality goblins.  Game 1 was a pretty easy win.  Game 2 we both mulliganed, and I kept a hand with 5 lands and Sorcerer's Wand.  I drew more lands and he got the win.  Game 3 he got a couple good hits in but I had my removal and took the match.  Win, 2-1.

Round 3 vs. BR.
Here I saw Josu Vess again, and he had some other nice stuff like Helm of the Host.  This was the match where I finally got my Haphazard Bombardment going.  The weird thing about that card is that I had so much creature removal that I usually cast it on one "real" target and 3 lands, which isn't bad in itself.  In this case, it kept him from having mana to cast things like Josu and Fight with Fire kicked.  Game 1 was just me trading removal for creatures until he ran out of creatures.  He played Helm and I used Bombardment on it plus 3 lands, destroying it on the second try.  I got him to 7 with Omnivore (3/3) in play and Fungal Infection in hand.  I think his hand was empty.  On his end step I cast Fungal Infection on my own creature just to make a Saproling -- this was a little risky because he could have drawn a creature, but it turned my clock into two turns instead of three, and gave me a buffer to do something tricky with Omnivore's ability if needed.  He didn't draw anything and I won in two turns.  I brought in my artifact destruction for the next game.  He played Josu Vess early and got a huge hit in by pumping it to 9 power and lifelink with its third attack, putting him ahead 25 - 3.  I didn't panic, killed Josu the next turn and then reanimated it with The Eldest Reborn.  After he took care of it, we were both down to almost no resources, and I started hitting him with Aesthir Glider.  I held Invoke the Divine up just in case he had a burn spell or haste creature, knowing that at worst I could cash in my bird to gain 4 life.  But the bird got him.  Win, 2-0.

Round 4 vs. RG.
This was the same guy I lost to the last two times I went to FNM to end my night, so I was primed for revenge.  He had a pretty nice red-green deck with several beatdown rares including Multani.  These were good games, but I had my removal running how it was supposed to and Skizzik to close things out fast.  In the second game I had one of my more aggressive starts and he just couldn't keep up.  I was partially sideboarding out Fungal Infection in the previous three matches, but it was great here against his Llanowar Elves and Saproling tokens.  Interesting thing I learned in this match was how Skizzik really works.  I had just assumed it stays in play forever as long as you kick it, but my opponent brought it up as a question and I called judge to make sure.  The way it's worded, it checks at the end of each of your turns whether it was kicked, but once it has been cast kicked it stays kicked forever, so it does stay in play.  And he even stole it once for a turn, but it's still kicked and stays in play.  The exception would be if it gets exiled and returned to battlefield, in which case it would "start over" as a new creature and not be kicked.  Anyway, I won 2-0.

We were early, so we played twice more for fun, and we each won one.  Interesting interaction in one of the extra games -- he had Multani in graveyard when my The Eldest Reborn reached phase 3, but it would have been a mistake to choose it as my target because he could have returned it to his hand in response.  So I ended up picking a much worse creature instead.

At this point I was 3-1 in matches, and we had exactly the right number of people at 9 points or more that everyone could draw into top 8.  Officially, I ended up 8th place, but since I stuck around to wait for the other 5th round games (non-top 8) to finish, other people left and I got one of the four FNM promos (yay!) in addition to my 5 packs and $7 store credit.

So final score was 3-1-1, and 8th place.  In games I was 6-3, or 7-4 if you count my extra games.  I was very happy with this deck and would play something like it again if I got so lucky to draft all the good removal.  I could tell it was kind of soul crushing to play against it and just have all your creatures die one after another, then be forced to discard cards and have your own stuff come back from the dead and kill you.

So what did I come away with?

I only drafted 1 rare this time vs. 3 expected, and 12 uncommons vs. 9 expected.  Rat Colony is about 65 cents now and Seal Away is just over $1, so my draft itself was about as close to worthless as possible.  So it's a good thing I won my games!  Cast Down promo debuted at above $4 and is dropping, and the 5 packs are about $15 retail.  Add that to the $7 store credit, and we're at about $26 - $28.  That's not bad.

Thanks for reading!  I hope to get a couple more DOM drafts in before the return of the Core Set this summer.