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.