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!
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