FNM Draft 2018-12-21

This week they were still firing Ultimate Masters drafts, so of course I wanted to do that again!  But they had just filled one when I arrived, so I signed up for the next one in case enough people showed up.  I also signed up for the normal Guilds of Ravnica draft just in case they didn't.

Between the UMA excitement and the fact that it was just before Christmas, GRN only had 7 people signed up.  The store runner filled the 8th slot, and I drafted with the expectation that UMA would still get enough people and I'd have to drop early.  So I drafted fast and loose and looked for money cards more than usual, but I still ended up with a deck I was excited to try.

Here is my Guilds draft, bottom left to top right:

The rare in my first pack was Midnight Reaper, which is very good but not a bomb, and the pack had several other good black cards.  I've played black a lot in GRN, so I wanted to try something different and get some other drafters to fight over black.  The Unicorn gave a good lead into an aggressive white-based deck.  The first half of the pack I tried to force Boros, but it looked like red was not very open, and I wasn't sure of my second color by the end of the pack.

Pack 2 had Etrata at rare.  She's very good but I wasn't playing Dimir, so I took the premium removal instead.  I started to see good green and Selesnya cards in this pack, so I jumped on it, and I tried to draft the more aggressive ones when given the choice.  Bounty of Might is the kind of card that can win games out of nowhere if I can get a few damage in early.

Pack 3 I did some rare drafting but then solidified the plan of Selesnya aggro.

My deck looked like this:

I made a mistake with the basic lands for the photo -- there are 7 of each and not 8, because of the 2 Selesnya Guildgates, putting the total at 16.  The main plan of this deck is to play Healer's Hawk and then make it bigger, laying down creatures every turn and winning through pump effects and evasion.  Bizarrely, it's a pure Selesnya deck without any cards that use the Selesnya guild mechanic, convoke.

I was excited to go into round 1 and try it out, but I got paired up with the store runner, who wasn't playing, so it was a free win.  Then the UMA draft filled up, so I dropped at a virtual 1-0 and got ready to draft again, for higher stakes!

Here's my UMA draft:

Pack 1 had All is Dust at rare, a $5 card that isn't super easy to use in draft.  The uncommons were build-arounds that I wasn't sure about, so I went to Wild Mongrel, a card that is very good with all of the madness and graveyard themes.  For the rest of the pack, I was not seeing madness cards that I was hoping for, so instead I drafted generically good removal spells and other cards that went with a graveyard theme, and I was pretty certain I'd play black by the end of it.

Pack 2 was exactly what every UMA drafter wants to see: Liliana of the Veil is both a $70+ card and an oppressive planeswalker.  I was super excited but played it calm while everyone else around the table was joking about the cool cards they hoped to open.  The table actually got in a little trouble for looking up card values on their phones -- technically they are supposed to let a judge answer any questions and not use their phones during the draft.  After another Last Gasp, I saw some madness cards, Basking Rootwalla and Grave Scrabbler, and I took them aggressively because I had failed to wheel a Twins of Maurer Estate that I wanted in pack 1.  Apprentice Necromancer set up the possibility of some graveyard shenanigans, but I didn't have a good payoff for it yet.  I was very happy to wheel Gurmag Angler from the Basking Rootwalla pack.

Fulminator Mage in Pack 3 was not the best card for my deck, but it is an $8 card that is likely to rebound in value, so I felt fine taking it as a sideboard option in case I ran into anyone with something nasty like Celestial Colonnade.  After that, I got a rush of big nasty green stuff.  Woodfall Primus and Walker of the Grove gave me two cards that can nearly be straight up win-the-game combos with Apprentice Necromancer, and I had several quick ways to get them in the graveyard.

Just like the last time I drafted UMA, deckbuilding was hard!  Here is what I ended up playing:

I had some really powerful cards, but I was kind of in between strategies.  Delve competes with reanimation, but I really didn't have much reanimation.  I didn't have a ton of discard outlets, and I didn't want to play bad ones like Patchwork Gnomes just to make Grave Scrabbler better, so I just kept the more powerful ones.  Shirei is a bonkers combo with Fume Spitter, but without one it's just a bad 2/2.  Technically it also combos with Apprentice Necromancer, but that's sketchy as well.  I went with 1 copy of Kodama's Reach because I couldn't decide between 2 or 0.  Likewise with Hooting Mandrills, Grave Scrabbler, and Death Denied.  Slum Reapers are not great, but they seemed synergistic enough with my other removal to be worth playing both copies.  I was happy with this deck but very uncertain that it was the optimal configuration.

Sideboard was big, but the only cards I sided in were the bottom 4:

Fulminator and Thespian's Stage came in against certain lands, Crushing Canopy against the right targets, and Mandrills whenever I took out a land on the draw.

How did it go?

Round 1 vs White-Blue-(black)
I'm not exactly sure what this deck was trying to do, but it had elements of card advantage and fliers.  He had a Dark Depths but no way to activate it other than the slow way.  In both games I got Liliana down early and just kept him off cards.  In the first game I managed to use her ultimate ability to kill a couple lands while still keeping her alive.  On sideboard, I brought in Thespian's Stage to combo off his Dark Depths, but unfortunately did not draw it.  He mulliganed and was just pinched through the second game, and I achieved my Necromancer-Woodfall combo (if it's not obvious, you bring back Woodfall Primus from the graveyard, kill a land or something, then attack as a 6/6, then when it dies in combat or at the end of the turn, it comes back via persist as a 5/5 permanently and kills another land or something because it entered the battlefield a second time).  Win, 2-0.

Round 2 vs. Jund Madness
This was the drafter to my right.  He drafted a lot of madness cards, which explains why I didn't see much.  I had seen his deck operating in Round 1, and it had some explosive turns.  In the first game he mulliganed and kept a 1-land hand.  I got Liliana and a good start, and he was stuck on 1 land for a couple turns, so it ended up being a pretty unfair win.  I sided in Mandrills for a land assuming he would be playing first, but he surprised me by choosing to draw since his hands had been bad all night.  I had another fine start, and he mulliganed and was pinched on mana and colors again.  I played into an obvious trap with Liliana, making him discard Fiery Temper that he could cast on her with Madness to drop her to 1.  A few turns later he killed her with a Sparkspitter token, and he fought back into it as I drew land after land.  Just in time, I started drawing my big green creatures: Walker of the Groves, then a 7/7 Golgari Grave-Troll, then Woodfall Primus, and he never drew enough direct damage or evasion to finish me off.  Win, 2-0.

Round 3 vs. White-Green-(black) Heroic-Totem Armor
What a nasty deck.  He was drafting to my left, so I saw a lot of the good stuff that I had passed.  In the first game, he made a bad attack into my Wild Mongrel and I followed up with a turn 3 Gurmag Angler.  He was ready with Faith's Fetters, and he eventually assembled Staunch-Hearted Warrior with some totem armor on a turn when I was tapped out and couldn't remove in response with Last Gasp.  I made a bad block in forgetting that I couldn't circumvent the totem armor with a combination of damage and Last Gasp.  A couple turns later he was mashing through with Rogue's Passage for the win.  I sided in my land hate and Crushing Canopy for the next game and prepared to play the control role.  I mulliganed a hand that had exactly what I wanted -- Liliana and Last Gasp -- but only one land, and I kept an average 6-card hand.  There were a few people watching us play, and he showed off his hand to the person next to him, so I knew it was going to be rough going.  Without going into too much detail, I chose a line that gave me a chance to kill off all his creatures using Fume Spitter and Necromancer on Fume Spitter, followed by two consecutive turns of Slum Reapers, but he played another creature and was able to protect his Staunch-Hearted Warrior while bumping it up to gigantic proportions with auras, and I lost easily.  We discussed it a little afterward, and I'm pretty sure I played it the best I could have given the circumstances.  Loss, 0-2.

As this was the finals, he got the box topper, which turned out to be Through the Breach (~$80).

Overall record was 4-2 in games and 2-1 in matches.  I was happy to be able to make it to the finals, and I was happy to get to do some really fun things with Liliana and some other cards I have never played before.

Here are the cards I drafted that are more interesting long term:

In each draft I ended up with 1 mythic and 4 rares, which is well above average.  Dream Eater and Ionize are both around $2, and foil Bounty Agent is a little under $1 (I can imagine it becoming a card Commander players want, but probably never at a high premium).  From UMA, Liliana + Fulminator is about $80 combined, plus between $1 - $2 each for most of the other cards shown.  Foil Mistveil Plains is about $2 while foil Satyr Wayfinder is bulk.  So in total I spent $52 ($12 + $40) on drafts and got a value of about $90.  The GRN cards will generally trend down in value while the UMA cards will trend upward, so this was excellent even without any prizes.

I have been very happy to get to draft UMA twice, and I would draft it again anytime.  The format is very complicated and has some tough decisions and exciting payoffs.

Thanks for reading and Merry Christmas!

FNM Draft 2018-12-07

Friday was Ultimate Masters release day!  It was super rainy, so they were only doing UMA drafts and didn't have a normal Guilds of Ravnica draft.  UMA drafts were $40 single-elimination pods.  One started just before I got there, and in about 20 minutes we had enough people to start another.

As often happens with Masters sets, some people didn't really read up on the set or practice at all, so the draft was a bit pokey as people read their cards.  Masters drafts for some people are just about drafting the most valuable cards, and playing a deck is secondary.  The prize for the draft was the sealed box topper (since a draft is 24 packs, or a full box).  Box toppers range from about $16 to over $200 at current listed prices, with most worth more than the $40 entry, so I felt like it was worth it to try to win first and draft value second.  Plus, it's fun to play and it's fun to win.

Here is my draft, from bottom left to top right:

My Pack 1 rare was Seize the Day, which is a good card but not valuable, so I took what I thought was the best card, Fiend Hunter.  Second pick was a little tougher, since I was passed a foil Daybreak Coronet, which is a hard card to play in draft but very powerful.  I passed it for the Hero.  At this point I was thinking white-something heroic, and the Phalanx Leader seemed like a great indication that it would be open for me.  However, the white was a bit sparser as the pack went on and I drafted some red madness cards.

Second pack I opened Lord of Extinction, one of the cheaper mythic rares in the set.  I didn't want it, but my pick of Conflagrate was pretty questionable.  That card is really ok in a deck where you can ramp a lot and/or keep your hand full of cards and discard it, using it as a finisher, but in a normal deck I think you usually have a hard time casting it for more than X = 2 on either mode.  Entomb on second pick was a money card in a pack with nothing else I wanted.  Wingsteed Rider was another white heroic creature, but then I stopped seeing great white cards and went back into red.

Third pack Life from the Loam is a $9 rare, and since my deck was coming together ok at least in terms of having enough cards in my colors, I grabbed it.  Rally the Peasants was a great find for my white-red aggressive build.  Then later in the pack I got some very interesting and powerful red cards in Reckless Wurms and Young Pyromancer.

I had more than enough white and red cards, so cutting was tough.  Here is what I built:

I was going for aggression, with some madness, heroic, and spells themes.  I think it was a pretty good deck, but after I finished my games, I realized I actually had enough playable red cards that I could have played only red and had a much better manabase.  During my games I frequently wanted more red mana.  For example, casting Fiery Temper or Reckless Wurm for its madness cost almost always requires 2 red mana so that I could activate the discard outlet (like Faithless Looting), and casting Reckless Charge and then flashing it back costs 2RR.

If I was to rebuild the deck as mono-red, I would take out the six mono-white cards (although Rally the Peasants is almost playable only from graveyard), and add Nightbird's Clutches, Malevolent Whispers, Molten Birth, Undying Rage, Myr Servitor, and Hissing Iguanar, and probably replace a Mountain with the third Faithless Looting.  The white creatures are powerful, but they died too often and their costs are too white.

Here is my broad sideboard.  I only used Malevolent Whispers and Repel the Darkness.

Since we were playing in pod, I was paired against people I was drafting with, which was a little different from usual.  I generally don't "hate draft" cards that could be used against me, but I found myself seeing some cards in the matches that I wished I hadn't passed.  In particular, my neighbor on the left was white-black, so he had snatched up some good white cards that I had hoped might come back around.

Round 1 vs. blue-black stuff.
My first opponent had drafted across from me, and he was actually drafting for the first time ever, which is not something you expect to see at a $40 Masters draft.  He said he usually plays Commander.  His deck was not very focused, but he had plenty of fine cards.  In the first game, I kept a hand with 2 Plains and no Mountains, and it took a long time to draw a Mountain.  Fortunately for me, he wasn't doing much besides attacking with Dimir Guildmage.  I eventually got out my Hissing Iguanar, which I had completely misread and thought could do damage to any target with its ability.  We played the whole round thinking it could hit creatures, and it unfairly controlled the board.  I ended up winning the first game.  Second game I mulliganed down to 5 cards and kept 1 Plains.  He also kept 1 land, and we spent a while not doing much of anything.  He slowly built up and won the game.  Third game I finally got a good hand, and I was able to combo out my madness cards and overwhelm him.  Win, 2-1.

Round 2 vs. white-black stuff.
This was a much more experienced player, and he was the one drafting to my left and grabbing my scraps.  In the first game, I mulliganed to 5.  When I played Hissing Iguanar, he waited to correct me on the targeting until I messed it up (he had been listening while I played the first round but didn't say anything because he didn't know what the card said until he read it for himself).  I blocked his 3/4 lifelink with a 3/1, and tried to use Iguanar's ability to kill it.  Instead I ended up just wasting more cards.  I couldn't catch up and lost.  In the second game, I had a great hand on the play, and I ran away with the game even through his Wall of Reverence that I had passed to him in the draft.  Third game he was on the play and had Turn 1 Fume Spitter and Turn 2 Conviction.  This combination of cards effectively stopped me from Fire-ing his Fume Spitter and made all my good creatures in hand vulnerable -- Young Pyro, Phalanx Leader, Hissing Iguanar.  I considered waiting and trying to protect something on Turn 4, but I decided instead to play Pyro and pressure his mana by making him pick up Conviction.  He did it, but then he unfortunately was holding more removal spells for my other guys.  He played 2 copies of Moan of the Unhallowed and I couldn't draw a creature to get back in it fast enough.  Loss, 1-2.

I felt pretty bad about losing the second round like that, but he played really well and had good tricks like Gods Willing (another card I passed).  I also felt bad about winning the first round by misunderstanding how a card works.  I would have loved to play a second draft, but it was 10 PM and I was ready to head out.  I don't think there were enough people who would have been interested anyway.

Here's my value.  I had a hard time getting the foils to show up, so you get this awkward angle that still doesn't really show them -- all the commons are foil except the 2 additional copies of Faithless Looting.

I ended up with 2 rares and 8 uncommons, both slightly below average, and 4 foils vs an expected 3 (every pack of Masters sets has a foil).  Faithless Looting and Fire // Ice are slightly premium foils and the other two are bulk.  So total value in this draft was a little under $20.  The caveat here is always that since it's a reprint set, these cards have already lost any "Standard" value so they're not likely to drop in value much if at all.

For me, I'm just happy to have copies of some of these, particularly Faithless Looting, which was getting stupidly expensive for a common with several printings because it's in huge demand for Modern.

I'd love to get another chance to draft this set, but it's not likely to happen.  One can hope!

Thanks for reading!

FNM Draft 2018-11-30

Another try at Guilds of Ravnica draft!  This format has been remarkably enduring, as I believe there were 27 signed up for 3 tables of 9.  The draft was 5 rounds.

Here's my draft, bottom left to top right:

Pack 1 Pick 1 was a very tough pick.  There was a mythic Trostani Dischordant, which is probably the best pick and also a $2.50 card.  Then there were three very good uncommons, Beacon Bolt, Dimir Spybug, and Glaive of the Guildpact.  Since the three gold cards lead toward very different decks, I felt like I could make a statement with the pick.  I was worried that I would have trouble building a good Selesnya deck, and I opted for the removal spell.  Second pick Experimental Frenzy seemed good.  I've only run into it once in draft before, and it was impressive.  Rampaging Monument is a card I think people undervalue.  I took Mausoleum Secrets just because it's a card I'd like to have, with no intention of playing it in the draft.  The rest of Pack 1 was cards I could play in either Dimir or Izzet.

Pack 2 led off with a literal bomb, Expansion // Explosion.  I got a string of good Izzet cards followed by some surprisingly late Dimir cards like Artful Takedown.  Drowned Secrets in the middle of the pack suggested that I was the only person taking much blue, and I grabbed it with the hope of lucking into a second one in Pack 3 to become a dedicated mill deck.

Pack 3 I opened another mythic, Divine Visitation.  This $4 card is hard to play in draft, but it's oddly good with Trostani, so I passed it to my lucky neighbor on the left and proceeded to pass him other Selesnya rares and uncommons for the remainder of the pack, including Emmara and Assure // Assemble, both of which also combo with Divine Visitation, and he thanked me heartily afterward.  My first pick Dimir Guildmage in this pack was with the idea still that I was going to be a Grixis (blue-black-red) control deck and maybe even a Drowned Secrets mill deck.  As the pack continued, I got a bunch of good Izzet cards that I was missing, including two Electromancers.  In the end, I could have drafted differently and had a good Selesnya deck or a good Dimir surveil deck (with the first pick Spybug), but my end result was somewhere between Izzet and Grixis.

So what to build?  I've played multicolor mashups in my first two drafts, and I decided to follow the guild focus this time and go pure Izzet.

Once I decided to take out the Dimir and black cards, it was easy to narrow down the rest.  The only nonblack cards I cut were Drowned Secrets, Gravitic Punch, and Thoughtbound Phantasm (which really needs a lot of surveil to work).  I didn't want to limit myself on sideboarding, so I grabbed a bunch of Swamps and put together a plan in case I needed to change up the deck.

In this format, you hear of "aggressive Izzet" and "controlling Izzet."  My deck was sort of in the middle, but leaning toward controlling.  That's not ideal, but I felt pretty good about it.  I played only 3 of my 5 Izzet Guildgates because I didn't want my starts to be too slow.

Here are my two main sideboard plans:

The first group of 10 cards is the Dimir package.  I would take out 2 Mountains, 2 Swamps, Izzet Locket, and some less effective blue and red cards.  The Bats are good against decks that can't block fliers and the Vapors is amazing against some aggressive decks.  Of course, the two aren't very compatible.

The second sideboard, Drowned Secrets, is for slow matchups where I'm not going to lose to aggressive creatures.  Milling opponents out is very possible in this format.

Gravitic Punch can be a beating with Erratic Cyclops, but I didn't ever feel like I just needed to do more direct damage and had the spare mana to do it.

Round 1 vs. White-Blue Fliers
White-blue isn't a supported deck in this format, but he made it work pretty well with a bunch of aggressive white creatures.  I won the first game after he was kind of stuck on lands.  Then I boarded in the full Dimir package and drew the black cards but not the black mana in Game 2.  Game 3 was a long slog, and we went to turns.  He had a bit of an advantage but I was able to stave him off until we finished in a draw.  Then he gave me the win because he was just playing one round and heading out, so that was nice.  Draw, 1-1-1 (official match win).

Round 2 vs. Golgari (black-green).
This was one of my store nemeses, and his deck had nice aggressive starts.  Golgari Guildmage did a lot of work, and his green stuff was bigger than I could deal with.  The second game was close but I couldn't find the last points of damage.  Siding into black didn't help.  Loss, 0-2.

Round 3 vs. Boros (white-red).
His mana wouldn't cooperate, and he seemed to be just playing a whole bunch of tiny white creatures.  I ran over him pretty easily and finally drew Expansion // Explosion for the first time of the night.  Win, 2-0.

Round 4 vs. Dimir Campaign.
This deck was built with a lot of good surveilling and a Disinformation Campaign, one of the most maligned cards in the format.  He also had Etrata, who is a good removal spell and roadblock, but otherwise less scary than she sounds.  In the first game he built up a big advantage by casting Campaign over and over.  I realized this was the matchup for Drowned Secrets.  In Game 2 I took out Experimental Frenzy for Drowned Secrets, and I played it on turn 2.  Turns out that when every card you cast is blue, you can mill out a slow opponent pretty quickly.  He also was surveilling and drawing extra cards a lot, which sped up the process.  Game 3 on the draw I took out a Mountain and brought Frenzy back in.  I had Drowned Secrets on turn 4 and then got my Frenzy going later after I had played out my hand.  Frenzy is awesome fun to play, and I highly recommend it.  In this game I essentially had the mill win and lethal attack coming up on the same turn.  Win, 2-1.

Round 5 vs. Boros.
At 3-1 I was able to take an intentional draw this round and make top 8, but I played 2 exhibition games with my opponent to pass the time.  He had a pretty nasty aggro deck, and we each won one game with no sideboarding.  Draw, 1-1 (official intentional draw 0-0-3).

Top 8 Round 1 vs. Golgari with white splash.
He was 4-0 with a draw into the top 8.  I had a rough time keeping up with his bigger creatures and lost in two.  I guess my deck's biggest weakness is decks with a lot of big creatures, as my removal and creatures are very limited above 4 power and 4 toughness.  Loss, 0-2.

I was gifted the top 8 spot anyway by getting the win on the first round draw, so it was fair enough that I couldn't do better.  It was also about midnight when we started the round and my brain was turning to mush, but I don't think that mattered much -- these games were not winnable with my draws.  They gave us 2 FNM promos for the round, Sinister Sabotage and Thought Erasure, with winner getting to pick, and my opponent took Sinister Sabotage.

The guy who I passed all the good Selesnya cards made the top 8, so I guess I really helped him out.  I'll have to find out how far he got.

My "real" final record was 6-7-1 in games and 2-2-2 in matches (one of which was just 2 games for fun).  So even though I was in top 8, the overall result was middling.  I do like playing this draft format more than I thought I would, but I haven't had a really great deck yet.

Here's what I came away with:

Experimental Frenzy is about $2 and everything else is available on TCGplayer for less, for a sum total of about $6 - $8.  I drafted 5 rares, which is above average, and 7 uncommons, which is slightly below average.

I'm excited about drafting Ultimate Masters next Friday.  It's expensive but it should be fun.  I've already done one mock draft on draftsim.com and I'll do some more before the end of the week.  Based on other Masters drafts I've done, I might be able to get an advantage by drafting to win while others draft for money.  They're going to open a box for each draft pod, and the prizes will be the box toppers, which range in value from about $30 to over $300 in presale prices.