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!
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