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!