FNM Chaos and Eldraine Drafts 2019-11-29 and 2019-12-06

These posts are a little late, but I wanted to get into them because both are examples of drafts that we can learn a lesson from.

The draft turnout has been a little sparse in the last month.  For Thanksgiving week, we did a Chaos draft with 8 people.  Here are my picks, from bottom left to top right:

First pick rare was the pretty bad Overwhelming Denial.  Green looked good for a couple packs, but I started seeing red and white cards I liked.  Toward the end of the pack I was seeing really good blue and black cards, and I probably should have switched.  But my red and white were fine.

Pack 2 gave me an absolute bomb for a slow deck.  The foil rare Oracle's Vault was accompanied by an Irrigated Farmland.  Then I got some more good artifacts and stayed in white/red.

Third pack rare was Bonescythe Sliver, which managed to wheel back to me.  I tried just a little to make blue fit because again I saw really strong blue cards, but in the end it didn't make sense because I didn't have enough color fixing for blue.

The end result was a lot of removal, some mostly small and aggressive creatures, and a couple card advantage engines.  Here's the deck I made:

And here are the leftovers/sideboard:

I'm not sure if this was the best way to build the deck, but it wasn't bad.  I think I could have pivoted into blue-black when I saw it was open and had a very good control deck.  There was another person drafting white-red at the table, and he ended up with a powerful pure aggro deck full of cards I had hoped would come back to me.

Anyway, I lost the first round 0-2 against my neighbor on the right who had ended up in white-blue-black.  Second round I won 2-0 against a kind of mediocre blue-green deck.  Then I ended up splitting with my third round opponent for a $5 prize.  We did play one round 3 game for fun, and I won on tempo although he was slowly accruing powerful card advantage.

My final game record was 3-2 and my played match record was 1-1.  So the deck was fine, but it wasn't exactly what I want in either an aggro or control deck in draft, and I don't think it's correct to call a deck midrange when it's half aggro and half control.

Oracle's Vault and Sunset Pyramid made for a pretty sweet combo in the late game - I could peek at my top card before activating Vault each turn.

The value was not amazing in this draft.  Bonescythe Sliver is worth a few dollars because people like slivers for casual play.

The next week, we drafted Throne of Eldraine even though we only had 8 players again.  Here's what I did:

Hushbringer was my pack 1 rare.  I feel like Lucky Clover is a strong position at the start of a draft because there are so many adventure cards and you only have to double one before you've gotten your card back from casting Lucky Clover.  I took the Secretkeeper straight away and decided to try to make mill (dump cards from library to graveyard) work.  After an on-theme So Tiny, I bounced around between blue, red, and white, with white appearing most open.

Pack 2 rare was a bomb, but unfortunately in blue-black.  I had been letting black go and wasn't sure I could get into it.  Fae of Wishes was a pretty easy second pick, and then most of the rest of the pack was in white-blue, so I stuck with it and didn't push for black very hard.  Ninth pick Ardenvale Tactician is ridiculously late, as it is generally considered the best white common.

Pack 3 had Blacklance Paragon at rare.  I took the pretty alternate art foil Tactician without a lot of consideration.  I had hoped for more Secretkeepers, and I finally got a second one here.  I got a bunch more of the cards I wanted in this pack.

So the final result was a mix of white knight cards, white-blue artifact-matters cards, and blue mill cards.  I decided I wanted to go hard on the mill, and I built this:

I originally had Acclaimed Contender in this deck, but I realized it was unlikely I would have a knight on the battlefield to trigger it unless I added some of the worse knights from the sideboard.

Fae of Wishes meant I had some interesting considerations in sideboard.  Since it can get basic lands, I prepared to bring in off-color cards with a basic land of the correct type if I ever had the opportunity to cast it with Lucky Clover.  Searing Barrage and Return to Nature were my most likely targets for this.

Looking back, I think I had really good knight, flier, and tempo cards, and I should have ignored the mill plan and gone with cards like Flutterfox and the better knights (Acclaimed Contender, Vantress Paladin) instead of Secretkeepers.  In my games, I was back and forth between having good mill or good aggressive starts.

Round 1 I lost 0-2 against a nasty white-black deck with Doom Foretold.  I almost got the mill win in the second game.  Round 2 I lost 1-2 against blue-green stompy with several Garenbrig Paladins after winning game 1 with a terrific aggressive/tempo hand.  Round 3 I wasn't going to play unless I had a pairing since I was 0-2.  I got paired up against a 1-1 black-red deck, and I gave him the win before we started but played the full match for fun.  In this one I won 2-1, milling him in the first game and winning the normal way in a hard-fought third game.

My final game record was 3-5 and my played match record was 1-2.

Anyway, the lesson I took here was that you shouldn't try to play a mill deck unless you really get the right cards.  In this case, I needed maybe 1-2 more Secretkeepers and probably worse attackers or better removal in order to make mill Plan A.

Oddly, I drafted 4 rares and 2 foils but only 5 uncommons.  There isn't much money value here.

I went again this week, but we didn't have enough people to draft, so I just played Commander.  Things should pick up again after the holidays.

Thanks for reading and I hope you learned something like I did!

FNM Throne of Eldraine Draft 2019-11-22

Hey folks, another week of Eldraine draft in the books!

This time we had 12 players, drafting as 2 tables of 6.  This meant only 3 rounds of play as well.

I've found that 7 players feels pretty similar to 8, but once you get down to 6, the quality of cards you see gets noticeably thinner (particularly in terms of duplicates and synergy cards), and you are more rewarded for finding the open colors.  That said, I railroaded the heck out of this draft.

Here's what I took, from bottom left to top right:

First pick Great Henge was easy.  The card does a ton of stuff to snowball the game in your favor, and all it asks is that you have a 4- or 5-power creature in the mid-game.  I hadn't played green yet in this format, and I've been impressed with the green decks I have faced, so I decided I was going to play green unless it was a completely dead color.  The next two picks I had the choice between Bake into a Pie or Outmuscle.  On pure power level, Bake is a more reliable removal spell (instant speed, kills anything, harder to thwart), but I went with Outmuscle because it is also very good and I really wanted to signal people downstream to stay out of green.  This also gave a strong signal that I was not taking black, and it's no surprise that the player to my left ended up in black.  5th pick Keeper of Fables made me think green must be open enough for my purposes, but it dried up a bit as the pack went on.  My second color was still entirely undecided, although I probably wasn't going to make it in mono-green.

Wildborn Preserver is a weird but fairly powerful creature, and I was happy to stay on-color.  For the next two picks, I stretched a little to make sure I could get some green creatures with high power for the Henge.  Deathless Knight also has nice interaction with Great Henge. Fourth pick Grumgully made it easy to set my second color as red.  He synergizes with the green non-human creatures I had been picking, and the first-pack Scorching Dragonfire was by far the strongest non-green card in my pool.  Green wasn't very open in the later part of the pack, but red was still pretty good.

Third pack my rare was Sundering Stroke, which is a very good but expensive spell.  There was no way I was going to get the bonus mode out of it in this deck, so I went the safer route with a second Grumgully.  A couple of packs were duds, but Syr Carah and the Garenbrig Paladin were excellent cards that I was delighted to find.  In the end, I don't think green was super open, but I managed to bully my way into enough green and find an open support color.

Here's my deck:

Some interesting decisions here.  First, I like to have plenty of removal, so I put Redcap Melee and Return to Nature, both of which are typically sideboard cards, into the main deck.  Redcap Melee is very good, and I think it's worth it to sacrifice a land for a 4-damage instant.  Second, I don't think 2 copies of Seven Dwarves or the Wildwood Tracker are really very good, and Sporecap Spider is usually more of a sideboard creature, but I decided to include them over cards like Garenbrig Squire because of the non-human theme.  This left Syr Carah and Garenbrig Carver as the only creatures that wouldn't benefit from Grumgully or trigger Wildborn Preserver and Keeper of Fables.

With a few red creatures pretty low on the curve, I couldn't go as heavy on green mana as I would have liked, so I ended up with a 10-7 split of red and green sources, plus Rosethorn Acolyte.

Here is what I had access to in sideboard:

Lots of humans and underpowered cards.  I hear Rosethorn Halberd is good, but I didn't try it.

How did it go?

Round 1 vs. White-Red Aggro.

This guy usually plays anything but aggro, but he got pushed into those colors this time and ended up with some very strong cards and a great deck.  Highlights included Bonecrusher Giant and Outlaws' Merriment.  First game he ran over my pretty good hand before I could get set up -- I played Keeper of Fables on turn 5 with a possibility of stabilizing the next turn with Great Henge, but he Trapped it in the tower and attacked for lethal.  Second game I did better but he had Outlaws' Merriment and his own Syr Carah, and I just couldn't keep up with the value.  Loss, 0-2.

Round 2 vs. Black-Red.

I didn't see much exciting at high rarity in this deck, but it wasn't bad by any means.  First game, Wildwood Tracker into Seven Dwarves into Grumgully was as good as advertised, and I won handily.  Second game he had a nice advantage, but I was about to turn it around.  I cleared his board and was at 8 life and about to win, when he played a 3/1 Rimrock Knight, gave it haste and 4 power with Crystal Slipper, attacked for 4, and then Flung it for the last 4.  In the deciding match we got off to pretty equal starts, but I was able to destroy Revenge of Ravens with a clutch Return to Nature and slowly build one of the most absurd board states I've ever had in limited, with both Henge and Grumgully to make most things enter with +2/+2, and Henge, Syr Carah, and Keeper of Fables drawing extra cards every turn.  Win, 2-1.

Round 3 I got a bye, which was a win, so I got prize money ($12) for a 1-1 "real" record for the second time in a row.  Lucky.  I don't think my deck was super, but I do think it had a chance in just about any matchup.  I've played red in every ELD limited event I've played, and now I've played every red/X color combination.

The other thing I did again was only draft 2 rares and 7 uncommons, going below par on both.  Luckily, Great Henge is about a $10 card, so I wasn't too bad on draft value this time.

Afterward, I got in a nice fun game of Commander and lost to a cool new Faeries deck behind the new Brawl commander Elala.

Thanks for reading!

FNM Throne of Eldraine Draft 2019-11-08

First an aside about Pioneer.  I love the idea of the Pioneer format, and I made my budget Modern Burn deck into a free Pioneer deck using only cards that I already own (although now I'm ordering 2 more Wizard's Lightning, which is dirt cheap).

https://www.mtgvault.com/nathangw/decks/pioneer-wr-wizard-prowess/

I've gotten a chance to play it a little casually.  It did well against an Arclight Phoenix/Thing in the Ice deck, with Searing Blood being good against the Phoenix.  It also did well against a Sram/Aetherflux Reservoir "storm" deck, as long as I could stay ahead of the Reservoir coming down.  I played one game against a black-green control deck and narrowly lost, getting the opponent to 1 life before they started gaining back too much life with Courser of Kruphix.

So that's exciting, but how about draft?

We had 10 people, so it ended up as a single pod for 3 rounds of play.  Here is my draft, from bottom left to top right:

My first rare was Doom Foretold, which I think is ok but not really where I want to start a draft.  The pack also had some good removal, but I have liked playing red in Eldraine and decided to try Syr Carah.  I followed up with a couple of my favorite red commons, and decided I was probably leaning toward red-black or red-white knights.  I'm not sure what is the correct pick slot for Gingerbrute.  I have found them obnoxious to play against, and they are pretty ok for the long game, especially if you have ways to pump them up.  In the rest of the pack, I found a couple more good red cards and some blue as well.

Pack 2 had several cards I liked, but I went with the biggest knight payoff.  Second pick was really tough -- Lucky Clover vs. Castle Embereth, and some other fine cards.  After I took the Clover, I saw a second one two picks later and passed it.  Once I ran across Inspiring Veteran, two Trapped in the Tower, and a Youthful Knight, I decided I was solidly in white-red.

Pack 3 had yet another white knight payoff card, and it was an easy pick.  After that I just loaded up on knights and adventure cards (for the Clover).

Here's my initial deck:

Deckbuilding was a little trickier than I expected.  I wanted to include the Clover, but I didn't get enough good adventures to make it work (Shepherd of the Flock and Merchant of the Vale aren't great to copy).  I was really disappointed to never see a second Brimstone Trebuchet.  In the end, I felt like I wanted to be an aggressive deck, and since my low drops were more white than red, I ended up cutting the powerful Syr Carah in favor of 16 lands and easier things to cast.  Trapped in the Tower is good when the goal is to push damage through, but I took out some of the more expensive removal spells.

Here's what I had in sideboard.  I could have switched to a more midrange version of the deck by replacing cheap cards with more powerful alternatives, but I didn't in the games I played.  After the first round, I replaced the Owl (which didn't fit very well, despite being a very good card) with Claim the Firstborn.

Results?

Round 1 vs. White-Black Knights.  This guy was seated to my left, and I could tell he was not having the draft he wanted.  His first pick was The Circle of Loyalty, and after that I think he was all over the place before settling into his colors.  I was surprised to go back to my draft order and see that some of the best white cards I drafted were passed to me by him in the second pack.  These games were tight races, but I won them both.  Win, 2-0.

Round 2 vs. ???

My opponent left without telling the store, so I got a free win.

Round 3 vs. White-Black Flying.  This was another knight-heavy aggressive deck, but I think it was quite a bit better than my first opponent's.  In the first game, I only drew 2 Plains until I was so far behind that I couldn't catch up.  In the second game, I had a brief board advantage until he used Silverflame Ritual to pump 4 creatures.   I also whiffed completely when digging for a knight with Acclaimed Contender, and my 2 Trapped in the Tower were mostly dead cards against his several fliers.  Loss, 0-2.

I had 2 wins, which was good enough for $10 store credit.  My drafted cards were worth almost nothing, so it was nice to get something back.  For once, I was below the pack average on both rares (2) and uncommons (8).  I don't think my deck was great, but it was far from horrible.

I look forward to drafting Throne again.  Maybe I'll get in on the green cards at some point?  I've found red to be pretty open so far and played it in every sealed or draft deck, and I haven't played green at all yet.

Thanks for reading!

FNM Throne of Eldraine Draft 2019-10-18

So the store vote and decisions by the owner resulted in a new format for drafts (as long as there are enough people): $15 cash. 3-4 rounds Swiss, no playoff.  0 losses and 1 loss get store credit, and all others get no prize, much like prerelease.  We had 14 for draft on this Astros playoff night, so it was 2 tables of 7 and 3 rounds of play.

I have been listening to the Limited Resources podcast and reading what I can about this format, so I felt pretty well prepared, even with only 1 previous draft of the format.

Here's how the draft went, from bottom left to top right:

First pick Irencrag Pyromancer was pretty easy - she is a build-around but very powerful once you get her ability to go off a couple times.  (Incidentally, this card has also been celebrated for its art featuring a character who is not the typical supermodel bimbo.)  There were other good cards, but I felt good about this.  Then I got lucky in the next pack because my neighbor had drafted a foil rare, leaving a first-pick quality rare in Bonecrusher Giant.  (I didn't find out until after the draft, but his foil rare was Feasting Troll King, a strong card that also kept him from taking the cards I wanted.)  Sage of the Falls directly supports the Pyromancer, and then I got a couple good red removal spells to cement myself in red.  Hushbringer isn't anything special but I rare-drafted it because I didn't see much else in that pack.  Then I saw blue cards that were better than I should have seen at that point in the pack, and I rejoiced that red-blue seemed pretty open.  The Lucky Clover was a nice wheel from my original pack -- I did not expect it to come back at all, and it was easy to take a flier on it and try to support it with adventure cards.

Second pack rare was Fires of Invention, a card I don't think is very good in draft but might be wrong about.  So I went with the common removal instead.  Then I got another Sage of the Falls, which was great.  The next couple picks were situationally good cards in my colors, but which didn't support the direction my deck was headed.  I was able to go all red-blue in this pack and pick up a few better cards late, which firmly indicated I was in the right colors.

Third pack had a beautiful showcase mythic Brazen Borrower that was a slam dunk first pick, and then the hits just kept coming.  White seemed to be pretty open as well, since Harmonious Archon is a ridiculous card to be available 4th pick (I had also seen an Acclaimed Contender somewhere in the early-mid part of Pack 2 or 3).  Was everyone else playing black-green?  But then, they weren't playing green with adventures, because Edgewall Inkeeper shouldn't have been available where I hate drafted it either.  I don't know what was going on, but this was a strange confluence of good opens and the rest of the table drafting in my favor.  Second to last pick So Tiny?  Ok!

I found out the player to my left was in red some also, but I think he was 3 colors?  And the player to my right had the Troll King deck.

So here's the deck I built:

This was a case where I had so many good cards that I couldn't play them all.  But I had some clear directions.  Play the cards that draw a second card for turn.  Play the adventures.  Then I had a choice.  Play the knights for a tempo game with Joust?  Or play the 1/4s and try to win with value?  I went with the latter.  It's possible that either one would have been right, and it's possible I should have played Joust even without knights, or something in the middle.  But I like this deck.  It wants to live long enough get to Midnight on the clock through a series of annoying delaying tactics.

After playing, Thrill of Possibility was the card I liked least, as I tended to draw it later in the game without much to discard.  I ended up using it over Into the Story because I wanted to make sure I had plenty of redraws for the early game in order to play only 16 lands.  Witching Well was another possible fit for that slot.

Here was the sideboard (a.k.a. the cutting board):

The sideboard includes the "knight package" and other cuts.  Notably, I did not play Dwarven Mine because I have been convinced that these lands aren't good if you can't play them untapped, and my manabase was sketchy to do so.  Better to get all of my mana untapped than to sometimes get a free 1/1 on turn 8.  My 50/50 manabase was already skewed a little more toward red than it should have been in order to help cast Searing Barrage with the adamant bonus.  I ended up not sideboarding at all in these matches, as I didn't want to go below 16 lands and my base deck matched up well with what I was facing.

So how did it go?  Very well, but not without some tricky games.

Round 1 vs. Black-Green Food
This deck had Gilded Goose and Murderous Rider in addition to various other food payoffs.  I mulliganed to 6 on the play.  I had to decide early on whether to try to pressure him before he had enough mana to stay alive on food.  I decided to play toward the long game, and I think it was the right choice.  I even bounced a Fierce Witchstalker twice, ceding him extra food just to buy time.  The single game took the entire match time, and I finally won in turns after my Midnight Clock went off.  Looking at the score pad, I had to do 47 damage (maybe 50) total in order to win, mostly with faerie tokens from Stolen by the Fae.  I also had to freeze, bounce, or chump block a double-digit sized Beanstalk Giant for 6 or 8 turns.  By the way, Midnight Clock is amazing, and the hardest part about playing it is remembering to put a counter on it on your opponent's turns (the second hardest part is remembering to draw your normal card for turn if it goes off on your own upkeep).  I missed two triggers and it meant it took a turn longer to ring midnight.  Win, 1-0.

Round 2 vs. Red-Green Grumgully
This is a good player who was stuck with an average deck - he opened some good black rares and then pivoted into red-green when the table wasn't giving him black (he and my first opponent were both drafting at the other table, not mine).  He had some good aggressive plays, but I was able to stabilize and win both games.  I made a minor but notable error in one game, where I should have tapped Midnight Clock for mana to help cast Corridor Monitor, and then untapped the clock, in order to have enough mana to put an extra counter on the Clock.  He also made some next-level plays, like using a spell to destroy his own creature so that my adventure spell would be countered and I would lose the creature side.  Win, 2-0.

Round 3 vs. Blue-Black.
Here was a matchup against another 2-0 player.  His deck had Ayara, Lochmere Serpent, and Blacklance Paragon.  The first game was one for the ages, where he kept threatening to win and I had just enough answers, while also casting my Merfolk Secretkeeper three times with Lucky Clover out to mill 24 cards off his deck.  At the end of the game, he had 3 Swamps and no Islands after sacrificing them all to the Serpent, and he had 24 life while I was at 1.  He was digging for an Island to attack with the Serpent, and then he counted his graveyard and found there were none left in his deck.  Again, the Clock gave me the answers I needed just in time.  The second game was anticlimactic, as I stalled his creatures with Lucky Clover adventures and won with fliers.  Win, 2-0.

So 5-0 in games was really nice, a combination of pretty good play and a very good deck.  Most of my games were on the draw or mulligans, too.  Sometimes I have decks that are practically all commons, so it's nice to get some sweet rares.  All of the rares had their awesome moments, but Midnight Clock was the most fun.  Also, the 1/4s and 2/5s did a ton of work making opponents have no good attacks.  A 4/4 trampling Fierce Witchstalker doesn't do anything against a few of those.

The prize for going 3-0 was $30, which happens to be exactly the price of a Collector Booster, so I tried that lottery again.  Here are my draft rares and mythics, and then the collector booster contents:

I drafted 7 rare/mythic, and 10 uncommon, which is unusually high.  Of all this, the pretty Brazen Borrower is the overall winner at $23.  Bonecrusher Giant and Harmonious Archon are both between $1 and $2.  The Collector Booster has lots of good foil draft commons, but the money slots aren't very good.  Knights' Charge is from the Brawl decks and is about $5 but will probably drop when the reprints hit the market soon.  The borderless Wildborn Preserver is about $4, and foil Yorvo is maybe $2 but is sure to drop to almost nothing over time.  The Faerie token, which has a curly banana Food on the other side, is also between $1 - $2.  I'm not sure whether the alternate art for Reaper of Night is awesome or whether it looks too much like a Kiss poster.  In any case, this was good value for my $15 entry and terrible value for my $30 of "free" money.

Thanks for reading!

FNM Throne of Eldraine Draft 2019-10-04

First draft of ELD!  There were a little over 20 people, so they did a Swiss draft (instead of the more recent pod drafts they had been doing). I was at a table of 7. 

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

This set strongly rewards near-monocolor decks with the adamant mechanic and some strong cards with multiple mana symbols of a single color, so I wasn't sure if that meant I needed to commit early or if I could wait like in a normal draft.  So I started with a land that could be played in any white deck but is best with a high amount of white.  There were good uncommons in the pack also, and it wasn't a super easy pick.  Next few picks were the best removal in the pack, and then I saw Brimstone Trebuchet, a card that I think is very strong.  It blocks faeries, benefits from knights, and does consistent damage in board stalls.  Revenge of Ravens is a card I had a hard time against in prerelease, and I think is pretty strong.  It's like a -1/-0 to your opponent's attacking creatures that also damages them.  Then I got some more removal and some low end knights to go with the Trebuchet.

Pack 2 I was still very open.  Gadwick the Wizened is a very strong Limited card, and I felt like I was ready to push red-blue with it.  The problem was blue just wasn't very open, and I took more red and artifacts instead.  In hindsight, I would rather have picked Slaying Fire from that pack.  Rampart Smasher was another big multi-red creature to go along with a couple of adamant cards from pack 1, but then I tried blue a bit in the middle of the pack before finishing with some artifacts and some unassuming black creatures.

Pack 3 rare was Faeburrow Elder, a good rare that I was sure I wasn't playing (I had been passing good green cards all draft).  The foil Faerie Vandal gave me hope for the red-blue "draw 2" deck, as did the follow up Mad Ratter.  Then a few more fine red cards, a good black knight, a reach for the blue draw spell, and - YES! - another Brimstone Trebuchet.

So what the heck was I playing?  Gadwick is so good, I put together the red-blue deck.  And I looked at it.  And I looked at my black cards.  The pro to playing blue was some very strong late game cards, at the cost of some difficult mana costs.  I only had two cards that could draw a second card for turn, so the draw-two payoffs were not going to be good.  The pro to playing black was more knight synergies, some graveyard loops, and easier mana.  So here's what I played:

And I'll tell you what, some of those black cards right at the bottom of the pick order turned out to be pretty good.  The starting lineup for the deck included 8 knights, plus 3 cards that can get a knight back from the graveyard.  The Barrow Witches can even loop with Order of Midnight if you have enough mana.  So my best draw was a Trebuchet and a couple of knights to get a good curve-out and extra damage, plus a Searing Barrage or Scalding Cauldron to kill something without getting in the way of my curve.  Note that this is a zero-rares deck.

Here are the sweet blue cards I ditched for this deck.  I had a pile of Islands ready in case I felt like siding in the blue stuff, but the black stuff ended up being fine.

Here's my other sideboard stuff:

I usually brought in one of the two artifact creatures for a land on the draw, or I would replace Jousting Knight when it was particularly bad in the matchup.  Jousting Knight is very bad, but it is also a knight, and it does present difficult blocks in the late game when you have mana to spare.  But if I was seeing something like Youthful Knight in the opponent's deck, I would switch it out.

Round 1 vs. UG Faeries
I had a bad first game and got run over, and I was close to stable in the second game but couldn't overcome his fliers.  Edgewall Innkeeper also drew him a ton of cards.  But he didn't want to stick around and gave me the win.  Win, 0-2.

Round 2 vs. WB
I don't entirely remember what was in his deck.  I think I mulliganed both games, and his deck was very good.  He ended up going undefeated on the night.  Loss, 0-2.

At this point I was 1-1 but hadn't won a game.  I think I had also drawn only 1 Trebuchet over 4 games, and I seemed to always have Jousting Knight in my opening hands.

Round 3 vs. Mardu Knights.
Now we got things working finally.  Trebuchets aplenty and just better curve outs than my opponent's clunky 3-color manabase.  Win, 2-0.

Round 4 vs. Temur Draw-Two
This was a pretty cool deck, but it too fell to the Trebuchet pelting.  In our second game, he was seeing a ton of cards from various loot effects, but he couldn't find a good answer for Revenge of Ravens and was using food just to get his life high enough to try to attack.  Win, 2-0.

Round 5 vs. WR Knights
This time I think I just had the better Trebuchet deck.  I curved out into the 5/5 giant in game 1 and he had no answer.  In game 2, I pinged him to deck with Trebuchets.  Win, 2-0.

Wait, so I went from losing my first 4 games to winning 6 in a row?  With the round 1 freebie, I was 4-1 and made 4th place to begin top 8.

Top 8 Round 1 vs. BG Garruk
First game I was fortunate that he didn't draw enough lands, and I won pretty easily.  Second game he got Garruk into play and that card is straight up unbeatable.  If you don't have evasion on board, he makes wolves every turn that you can't kill or else he gives +3/+3 to everything.  If you do have an evasive creature, he kills it, draws a card, and then starts making wolves every turn.  Anyway, I played 2 more turns and conceded.  Third game was much fairer.  I got Revenge of Ravens out, but he had some very big and hard to kill creatures like Wicked Wolf, Fierce Witchstalker, and Deathless Knight.  He fought through my removal and kept himself alive with food to eventually overcome my defenses.  Loss, 1-2.

So that wasn't bad at all.  7-6 record is reasonable for a first draft, and I would draft Trebuchets again, next time without getting distracted by triple-blue blue cards.

Everyone at the tournament got a "Promo Pack," with an FNM promo and 2 weird stamped cards.  Here's mine:

Not bad.  I wanted a copy of Elderspell anyway.

Here is the rare/good stuff in my draft:

That's about as bad as it gets for value, although these are good cards, so who knows long term.  In all, I drafted a below-average 2 rares and an above-average 12 uncommons.

But wait, there's more!  For ELD they are selling "Collector Packs" as a new way to make a lot of profit off a little cardboard.  The pack has 15 cards, including a bunch of normal foils, a few "showcase" adventure cards (with alternate art and frame but not foil), a card from the Brawl precon decks (weird, but sure), a foil double-sided token, and one "extended art" rare or mythic.  The pack costs $30, which is $2 per card if you're counting.  I don't know how hard these will be to find in the long run, so I decided to see what's up while the store had a few in stock.

It's not obvious from the photo, but everything is foil except for The Circle of Loyalty, Tome of Legends (from Brawl), Tuinvale Treefolk, Elsa, and Rimrock Knight.  The Circle and foil Wishclaw Talisman are about $10 each and Tome of Legends is $3 (as of Friday), and the rest are mostly under a dollar.  Oddly, the Faerie // Food token card is also about $2 on TCGPlayer.  The prettiest card in the pack is the Silverflame Squire.  And the Ugliest is Wishclaw Talisman, which in addition to having gross dark art, also has some weird bubbling on the surface and a shallow crease on the back.

I already contacted WotC and they're sending me a new one, so that's nice.

Anyway, good times in Eldraine!  More to come!  Thanks for reading!

Throne of Eldraine Prerelease 2019-09-29

Prerelease time!

After a bunch of Gatewatch stories and 3 sets on Ravnica, we're going to a completely new place, where the only previously known characters are Will and Rowan from Battlebond, and Garruk, who has been missing from Standard sets since I believe M15, which was released in 2014.  This is a world of unsettling fairy tales and Camelot-inspired knighthood.

Mechanically, it is a set that heavily leans toward monocolored decks, and that is fairly unusual in itself.  There is very little color fixing outside of a few green cards, a couple artifacts, and one uncommon tri-land that can only make colored mana for knights and equipment.

I caught the Sunday morning prerelease, which is probably the least attended.  There were probably 15 or so people signed up.

Here's my deck:

My promo was Clackbridge Troll, which is very strong, and I also had a good amount of black removal.  My best color in general was white, with three rares.  So I built a white deck splashing black.  There were more than 10 minutes remaining to build, and I took a good hard look at Outlaws' Merriment.  Is it a stronger bomb than Clackbridge Troll?  Did I have enough red cards to replace the black cards?  I decided that I did, and I was able to help my manabase by replacing double-splash cards (Clackbridge Troll, Bake into a Pie) with single splash cards.  My red also had more knights than my black to wear Shining Armor.  So the black went into my sideboard below, and I started the red cards.

Dwarven Mine (and Witch's Cottage, by the same token) was an interesting math problem.  If I was only playing 5 Mountains, should one of them be Dwarven Mine?  I decided the chance of it entering untapped for its bonus was small enough that I'd rather just have mountains.  I'm pretty sure the math backs it up.

I'm also not sure if I had the overall mana ratio quite right.  12 white sources and 5 red was probably close, since I had 2 cards that required quad white mana and a few other cards that benefitted from extra plains, and I rarely wanted to cast a red spell before turn 3.

As it turned out, my only sideboard plan was to replace a Plains with Scalding Cauldron when I was on the draw, and occasionally replace something else with it on the play if it was good for the matchup.

How did it go?

Round 1 vs. White-Red
I think he was mainly in white also, but his deck was quite a bit different.  Game 1 he won easily when I couldn't find my Mountain and had several good red cards in hand.  Game 2 went very long but I pulled out the win.  And we went to turns starting around turn 3 of game 3, so the match ended in a draw.  Draw, 1-1-1.

Round 2 vs. Two Decks
He started with a blue-green deck, and I my Castle Ardenvale and a few fliers, and I managed to chump block his really big Beanstalk Giant enough times to win.  Second game he switched to his Mardu knights deck.  He had some good cards, but the manabase was really bad.  He was trying to play Arcanist's Owl and Elite Headhunter in the same deck, and that's just not tenable.  Win, 2-0.

Round 3 vs. Red-Green Aggro
This deck was full of top-heavy adventure creatures with combat trick spells.  I was on my back foot in the first game, and I tried to race in the second game but couldn't do it.  Loss, 0-2.

Round 4 vs. Mardu Knights
Here was another deck trying to play 3 colors.  It wasn't bad, and the games were very close.  In particular, he had an Archon of Absolution that was horrible for my mostly-white deck.  In one game I spent Joust and a red creature to 2-for-1 myself to get rid of it, and in the other game I drew my Mountain for my 5th land to cast Searing Barrage the last possible turn before it would have killed me.  Somehow I pulled out both games.  Win, 2-0.

And he had a good enough record to get the prize if he reported a win (I didn't), so we had agreed beforehand to split the prize if I won the match.  He took 4 packs and I took 3.

So my true match record was 2-1-1 and my record in games completed was 5-3.  Not bad!

Also, I never got to cast Outlaws' Merriment!  I had it in my hand twice with no red mana, and the rest of the time I just never drew it.  I think that card would have been super powerful on curve.

Some thoughts on cards and the format in general:

• These games can become a slog if the board gets full of little creatures.  Fliers and other evasion were very important in my wins.
• I didn't think twice about main-decking True Love's Kiss in this format.  There are a ton of artifacts and enchantments running around, including a fair number of artifact creatures.  I would probably main-deck it in draft also.
• The draft format looks like it will have some very fast decks (anything based around knights or red) and some very slow decks (anything based around food).  Creatures tend to be top-heavy and I had a hard time finding good blockers for anything over 2 power (although getting two copies of Giant Killer mostly made up for that).
• Because the creatures are so top-heavy and many have 1 toughness, I was able to turn Rally for the Throne into a 2-for-1 combat trick a couple times.
• I ran into a couple Ardenvale Paladins, and they were good roadblocks at 3/6.  I wish I had one in my pool.
• Shepherd of the Flock's adventure was a good trick to use with Giant Killer.  Also, no one expects two Giant Killers in the same deck.  Sometimes there wasn't a good target for it, but it always at least did good work as a tapper.

Here are my spoils (plus 3 unopened packs):

The foil Outlaws' Merriment was a nice bonus because it meant I got an extra rare in my pool.  The Shepherd of the Flock is one of the new "booster fun" showcase cards with alternate frame and alternate art.  They show up rarely in regular packs, and regularly in the new Collector Boosters that are currently selling at around $30 each (for 15 cards).  Overall, my cards opened are worth somewhere in the $10-15 range, although that changes (and mostly drops) quickly after a set releases.

I look forward to drafting for monocolor (or almost monocolor) decks for the first time ever.  I think this last happened in Theros block maybe, which was before I was playing again.

Thanks for reading!

FNM Chaos Drafts 2019-09-06 and 2019-09-20

Hey, I figured out how to make my photos auto-resize, I think.  Let me know if it looks better/worse.

The LGS has gone to chaos drafting the last few weeks of M20 season, and that makes me happy.  Unfortunately, I have had poor luck getting there on time to join a draft, and several times the 8-person draft pod has filled just before I arrived.

The first time I tried to Chaos draft (Aug. 30), I ended up playing Modern instead.  I used the Soulflayer deck.  This was the week after Hogaak and Faithless Looting were banned and Stoneforge Mystic was freed, so I expected maybe less graveyard hate.

Round 1 vs. Karn Ramp.
This was a wild deck that was all in on ramping to big stuff while also playing a full suite of Karn and artifacts for him to bring from the sideboard.  Game 1 he locked me out of the game with Ensnaring Bridge.  Game 2 I got him with a just-fast-enough Soulflayer.  And game 3 he played Tooth and Nail entwined on maybe turn 4 or 5 and won on the spot.  Loss, 1-2.

Round 2 I had the bye, so I was still theoretically in it at 1-1.

Round 3 vs. Humans.
This seems to be a pretty good matchup, as most of their cards don't kill or stop a Soulflayer with hexproof.  The one card I don't want to see is Meddling Mage, if they know to name Soulflayer.  I lost the first game without him really seeing what I was doing, and then I won the next two games.  Win, 2-1.

Round 4 vs. Humans.
This time I won the first game in a long, grindy fashion culminating with me hard-casting Netherborn Phalanx to burn him out with his big board of creatures.  The next two games I wasn't able to assemble a good Soulflayer fast enough.  Loss, 1-2.

So 1-2 actual matches played in Modern, and 4-5 in games.  Not terrible considering I never play Modern.  People did seem tickled by the deck.

Oh, but I was going to talk about drafting.  Flash forward to Sept. 6.  So now the chaos draft format is 2 options:

1. Pay $12 and get a random assortment of Standard and other cheap packs.
2. Pay $5 plus price of packs to play any 3 different packs you want.

It's pretty balanced still because if some people buy expensive Masters packs, it helps everyone have stronger cards, not just the person who paid more.  The Masters pack might have more chance at a bomb rare, but the packs often have great commons and uncommons as well, compared with a Standard pack that might have a bomb rare and nothing else exciting.

So of course I did the buy-your-own for more excitement.  I had some store credit to burn anyway, so the total cost was $10.  I took War of the Spark because getting a planeswalker in draft is usually good, and then Masters 25 and Ultimate Masters for maximum power.  The person next to me said I should open the strongest pack first, but I went with WAR first to ramp up the excitement.

Here is my draft, bottom left to top right:

Unfortunately, my WAR pack was very weak.  The rare was Deliver Unto Evil and the planeswalker was Teyo.  In 20-20 hindsight, Teyo would have been good in my deck. but I went with a pure good card in Spark Harvest.  I can rarely resist common black removal when nothing else catches my eye.  The next pack was Mirrodin, and it had a couple equipment more powerful than they normally make now.  I felt like Viridian Longbow was both good and had combo potential (like if I got a Horseshoe Crab in M25).  I just took random good stuff for the rest of the pack.

Pack 2 had a very good rare, although I wasn't really in white.  After that, the blue and black were rolling again and I tried my best to get mana fixing.

Pack 3 I was taking Celestial Colonnade regardless because it's a $14 card, but it was also perfect for helping me splash Vindicate.  A quick word on bounce-lands (Izzet Boilerworks and Rakdos Carnarium): Bounce lands are very strong in draft because they let you play fewer lands overall in your deck and still hit your mana.  I was very happy to get 2 of them.  The real coup here was Agent of Treachery and Murmuring Mystic.  Those cards are super strong, the first one stealing anything and the second one making a constant stream of birds.  Scholar of the Ages was also nice to get on the wheel, even though it was yet another 7-drop.

Here is the deck:

I was really excited about this deck, but a little worried because it was 4 colors and slow to get going.  I had really strong removal and a great top end, full of cards that provided more than 1 card of value.

I played against another ambitious deck, white-red with several planeswalkers from WAR and Core Set 2020.  In the first game, I was handling his stuff until he got to Parhelion mana.  Second game was long and we ended up going to time.  I was forced to make slightly suboptimal attacks with the Colonnade to try and win before turns ran out, and ended up just barely losing the game.  Loss, 1-2.

I played a second match just for fun with someone else who had lost, with red-green monsters.  He had a troublesome hexproof Vine Mare, and I lost the first game to it.  Second game I got Murmuring Mystic out to block it with tokens forever, and once I assembled the loop of Soul Salvage and Scholar of the Ages (which lets me get removal spells back from the graveyard continuously for the low price of 10 mana), he conceded.  Third game I somehow out-muscled a fast God-Pharaoh's Statue.  Win, 2-1.

I liked this draft a lot and was sad to lose in one round.  Good stuff.

Here's my Sept. 20 draft, from a slightly less expensive WAR, Modern Horizons, M25 pool:

The rare in my WAR pack was Tomik, who is good as a general value creature but not first-pick exciting.  Davriel was also not super exciting but it saved me from starting another draft with Spark Harvest.  The next couple packs were not that great also, so I just went with creatures and removal.  Presence of Gond gave me a direction for my draft as the kind of true value card that I just love (once again, Horseshoe Crab would have been great).  After that, Flickerwisp pulled me into white (at which point I wished I had Tomik), and Bloom Hulk pulled me toward +1/+1 counters.  Mishra's Factory as second to last pick was very surprising, as it's a good card in almost any deck.

Pack 2 rare was Astral Drift, which doesn't give a lot of value in Chaos, but the foil Valiant Changeling caught my eye.  After a few unexciting picks and a Pacifism, I grabbed Imposter of the 6th Pride as a way to possibly cast Valiant Changeling on turn 3.  At this point I was firmly in white-green, but with the possibility of splashing blue off my 2 Azorius lands.

Pack 3 was a killer.  It had a $16 Blood Moon plus a bunch of cards I would have loved in my deck, topped by Swords to Plowshares.  I took the Blood Moon with heavy heart.  After 3 straight fight spells, I got my next great payoff, Abzan Falconer.  This worked well with all the +1/+1 counter cards I had been collecting.  After that it was more of the same stuff, creatures and removal, but I was happy to get repeatable lifegain with Student of Ojutai right at the end of the pack.

Here's the deck I built:

I didn't have anything really bomby in this draft, but I felt like I at least had some synergy cards.  There were a lot of picks I second-guessed after the draft, but the decisions were hard.  Simic Ascendency was one card I passed that would have been pretty good, maybe in place of Angelic Exaltation, which only works when I have several creatures and can attack (parity/winning) but is bad when behind.  I also missed a chance at the white-green bounce land early in a later pack, hoping it might wheel back to me.

I'm not sure if I was greedy or not in only playing 16 lands.  Search for Tomorrow, Skittering Surveyor, and Hope Tender all provide some kind of ramp or land assistance.

Round 1 vs. Simic Counters
This guy had a lot of the cards I wished I had drafted.  Simic Ascendancy, Salt Road Quartermasters, and Phantom Tiger (which I misread during the draft).  First game he got stuck on 2 lands and I had a great draw, and it wasn't really a game.  Second game he had some big creatures I couldn't find the right answers for.  And third game he got his counters cards all going along with some timely combat tricks, and I got stuck on only white mana with green answers in hand.  Loss, 1-2.

So that was that!  I think my deck was better than it showed in one match, but not super.

So 3 weeks of fun but not winning play.  I also got some sweet Commander games in, so that was good.  Here is the notable stuff from the drafts:

Blood Moon and Colonnade (which I immediately traded, as indicated by the misspelled surrogate card in the photos) were the only real money, with Vindicate also worth a few dollars, but I got a few other Modern-playable cards and had fun.

Next weekend Throne of Eldraine releases, bringing some new things to limited.  See you at the prerelease!  Thanks for reading!

FNM Modern Horizons Drafts 2019-07-26 and 2019-08-16

Since the store switched its primary format to Modern, the drafts are just pod drafts, which means sometimes you only get to play one round with a deck and it's over.  This is ok, but I really prefer playing 3 or 4 rounds to get acquainted with a deck.  Anyway, I have been less interested in doing a full write-up for these drafts since I can't really make a great assessment of a deck that only goes 1-2 rounds.

That said, I still have some photos and brief thoughts on a couple drafts.  Here is my Modern Horizons draft from July 26, bottom left to top right:

I haven't had great luck drafting Defile with first picks.  It's a great card but utterly useless as a splash removal, which is why I am now thinking Mob is a better card to pick early.  As you can see, I tried to do blue-green snow with this deck.  I was shocked to get a Fact or Fiction third from last pick.  This was a strong signal that blue was open.

Next pack I got my favorite jellyfish.  I don't remember the rares in these packs at this point.  I tried to pivot to black again but was quickly pushed back to blue-green.  Glacial Revelation is bonkers good in a snow deck.

Third pack Morophon was a pretty good top-end card that can go in any deck.  Then I was super happy to get two Blizzard Strix, because those are great in any deck with enough snow support.  I didn't have much creature support in the first two packs, so pack 3 was my spot to make up for that.  The late Winter's Rests were also key to a good snow deck.

Here is what I built:

There are some powerful things going on in this deck, but it has a suspect mana base and not a lot of early game defense.  I probably shouldn't be playing Archmage's Charm with just 7 blue lands and 2 Astrolabes.  I considered trying to go mill with the two Streams of Thought, but I didn't feel like my defense was good enough to win that way.

Round 1 vs. Mono Black
This guy had a great black deck with multiple copies of Defile and all the good common black creatures.  He beat me in two games, and neither was particularly close.  He had enough removal for all my creatures and I was stuck with a bunch of leftover cards in hand that I couldn't deploy fast enough.

I drafted 6 rares, but the value of the draft is only about $10.

On August 16 I got two drafts in.

First draft:

I'm not sure if Unsettled Mariner is really first-pick material, but it's interesting so I took it.  After that, I got into actually good red and green cards and stuck with that for most of the draft.  Springbloom Druid is a legitimate first pick card, fitting in any color pair or multicolor deck.  The red-green archetype involves lands in the graveyard (like Igneous Elemental), so it is great there.

Second pack I went back to my favorite common jellyfish even though it was off color, and then I got two blue-green Talismans to help cast it.

Nurturing Peatland is a $10 rare still, and as a bonus it also helps the lands-in-graveyard theme.  Two Cleaving Slivers and a Volatile Claws gave me a way to end games explosively -- both together results in all my creatures getting +4/+0 at instant speed.

After this draft, some of the other drafters were so disappointed with their pools, or the rares that were opened, that they wanted to just start over.  But I was excited to try this red-green lands-in-graveyard / slivers deck.  I don't have a screenshot of the deck, but it was red-green splashing for the Man-o'-War and sometimes Winter's Rest.

Round 1 I played against a blue black ninjas deck.  I dropped the middle game when he had the lifelink ninja and a couple others out, but I won the round 2-1.

Round 2 was against a hyper aggressive white-black changling deck with nasty slivers and Amorphous Axes.  I lost the first game and sideboarded out my slower cards to counter his aggression.  Second game was a tight win, and third game we both made some errors (most notably he didn't attack all out for lethal because he wasn't tracking our life totals), but I pulled it out.  Win, 2-1.

I got a 6-pack split for my trouble, and it was on to draft 2:

I think Giver of Runes is an absolute bomb, as she makes it very hard for the opponent to interact with you once her summoning sickness wears off.  I got into white-black pretty quickly, and I was looking for anything that worked well with the white blink spells or changelings.

Second pack I was getting almost nothing in white, so I experimented with other colors and got a couple black ninjas.

Third pack I finally first picked a Changeling Outcast.  I never get this card because other people pick it so high, and it's good!  It enables ninjas, and it wears equipment and auras well.  After a couple more changelings, I was lucky enough to get Valiant Changeling, an amazing 2-drop in the right draw.  The way its ability works, if you have another changeling in play, it gets the full discount because the other changeling counts for 5+ creature types on its own.

Building this deck was tough because I had a lot of candidates for useful last spells.  I really wanted to play Fallen Shinobi because it just wins the game once it starts hitting, and I had multiple early evasive creatures to enable it, so I splashed it on three Islands.  As it turned out, I always drew either the Shinobi or an Island, which was terrible.

Generous Gift was a card that impressed me.  It always at least made a tempo play against the opponent, and sometimes it could win a combat against a double block.  But it had some interesting fringe uses as well, such as turning my Putrid Goblin into a 1/1 and a 3/3 at instant speed.

Round 1 I played against maybe black-red?  Now I can't remember.  I lost the first game by failing to make a lethal attack, but then I bounced back and won twice.  Win, 2-1.

Second round was against a red-green deck without any lands-in-graveyard cards.  He had lots of early creatures and a lot of good mid-game synergies, like Mother Bear plus Bogardan Dragonheart.  I really couldn't get a foothold and lost in two games.  Loss, 0-2.

I think this deck was pretty good, but it was missing a couple more strong interactions.

Here's what I came away with on the two nights.  I'm consistently drafting more rares and more snow lands than the rest of the table, aside from the last draft where I had zero snow lands.

Thanks for reading!

This post is going up extra late because I was having trouble with Blogger saving -- maybe because my Google account space was almost full.

FNM M20 Draft 2019-07-12

M20 is out and...the store has changed its FNM format.  Now the Modern tournament is the official FNM event, and drafts will be done as pod side events on demand.  This has the upside that if you want to draft, you aren't stuck in 5 or more rounds of play to get to top 8, but it also means you get less play out of your draft money.  The draft is single elimination, so normally people will play 2 rounds and then the top 2 will split the prize (8 packs first place + 4 packs second place).

I sat out of Modern again and played an M20 draft.  Here's what I took, bottom left to top right:

First pick was an easy $15 card in Leyline of the Void.  It's basically unplayable in draft though, so my real draft started with Skittering Scorcher and a couple common black creatures.  Rabid Bite and Shared Summons suggested that green was open, and I shifted into it hard.  The Leafkin Druid that wheeled was a great indicator that I was right; that card is one of the best green commons, and it fits well in the blue-green or red-green Elementals deck.

The rare in pack 2 wasn't memorable, and I've done enough practice drafts that I'm not sure what it was.  I had a couple good enough black cards from pack 1, so I took Yarok's Fenlurker just as a solid value card.  Meteor Golem and Blood for Bones are also 2-for-1 cards, so I felt like I could make a nice grindy deck based on out-valuing the opponent.  Second pack I took the Golem over Barkhide Troll because I thought the Troll was more likely to come around, and it did!

Pack 3 rare was Mystic Forge, which is so bad that it came back around to me.  It might be good in a colorless constructed deck though, as it's close to a better Experimental Frenzy aside from the colorless requirement.  Anyway, 2 Murders and another Yarok's Fenlurker were nice picks, but I was really shocked to see a 4th pick Steel Overseer.  In the early game, it can just grow and grow until it's the biggest thing, and often the opponent can't attack into it without it blocking and growing itself bigger than their attacker.  Field of the Dead is very hard to play in draft, but it's a card I think will be popular in Commander and maybe also other constructed formats.  I was happy to get a second Mammoth Spider near the end of the draft as another way to stabilize my slow deck.

Here's my deck:

All things considered, this was a basic black-green deck with no special theme.  It had a fair amount of incidental lifegain, several 2-for-1's, great removal, and the possibility to incidentally combo into a turn 4 Meteor Golem or Feral Abomination with Gorging Vulture and Blood for Bones.

The sideboard had more than pictured, but this is the gist:

I had the ability to go aggressive with some of those top row cards, but I didn't use it.  On the draw, I always took out a land and usually added Gift of Paradise in addition to any other changes.  It's possible this deck would have been ok with 16 lands and 2 Gift of Paradise on the play, but I didn't want to risk it.

Round 1 vs. Red
I think this was just straight red.  It had the uncommon Chandra and her Regulator, but they never showed up together.  The value plan was great here.  Win, 2-0.

Round 2 vs. White
He had a first round bye so I didn't know whether his deck was going to be good.  He had Cavalier of Dawn and Loxodon Lifechanter, a bunch of anonymous support creatures, and some Pacifism.  I won the first game over a slow grind.  The second game he was on the offensive, and I made him work for it but he won without taking any damage.  Third game I got to some dire spots but was slowly working my way out of it and probably would have won with unlimited time.  But the game went to time, and the sudden death rule is that the player with the most life at the end of the 5th turn wins, so he played defense and maintained his high life total long enough to take it.  Loss, 1-2.

And that's that!  I got 6 rares and 13 uncommons, which are both unusually high numbers.  Between Leyline of the Void and 3 other $1 - 2.50 rares, I got about $20 in value, and Leyline is almost guaranteed to maintain or increase its value long term, so that was good luck for a draft.

I also played a game of Commander that went for a fairly satisfying 2 hours.  One player (Yidris) had a lot of stormy cascade-y stuff and probably could have won sooner, but he held back and let everyone have a chance to play a bit.  The Niv-Mizzet, Parun player had a hard time finding his red lands and took a long time to get going.  The third player was playing my Cho-Manno Lifegain deck.  He got a couple of the good things out at various points -- the Cho-Manno + Pariah combo, Elesh Norn, and a 37/37 Serra Avatar, but we managed to break past those.  I was playing Intet Temur Dragons And I got a little stuck on mana as the game went on, but otherwise got to do my stuff.  I had Kefnet the Mindful out practically the entire game but was never able to activate his card draw and rarely had him turned on to attack or block.  So I'm replacing him with God-Eternal Kefnet, who can at least attack and block while being relatively hard to kill.

Thanks for reading!