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.
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