FNM Ravnica Allegiance Draft 2019-03-29

Time for a third crack at Ravnica Allegiance draft.  This time there were 23 people, so it was a 5-round tournament.  I was at a standard table of 8.

Here's my draft, from bottom left to top right.

This draft was about the longest I've ever gone without figuring out my colors and still ended up with a good deck.  As insane as it looks, I'm proud that I eventually figured it out.  Also, if you've been paying attention to my drafts in Guilds of Ravnica and RNA, it's pretty clear that I'm gravitating toward black an awful lot.

Anyway, pack 1 had a lot of good cards, but I ended up taking the $10 Kaya, who I was very unlikely to play.  In Limited she is mostly just a lifegain spell, and not a very good one unless you can get the opponent to attack her.  I didn't let this pick affect the rest of my draft.  A weak second pack had Scorchmark, and a better third pack paired it with Skewer.  I kept taking what I considered to be the best card in each pack, including a 5th pick guildgate for some reason.  The green creatures at the bottom of this pack were actually very good, and at the end of this pack I was thinking I might be Gruul (red-green).  I also had the beginnings of an aggressive Rakdos (black-red) deck.

The second pack gave me a much better Limited mythic in Mesmerizing Benthid, with the downside that I was very much not in blue.  I took it anyway, just in case I could make it work out.  Rix Maadi Reveler in the second pack wasn't a card I was super excited about, but the potential to draw 3 cards with it made it better upside than anything else.  Then I waffled back and forth between Rakdos and Gruul for a bit, and capped it off with some surprisingly good blue and white-blue cards at the bottom of the pack.  At this point I was very worried about the color situation, and I took two Gateway Plazas in case I ended up in more colors than I wanted to be.

I took a quick peek at my drafted cards before diving into pack 3, and it seemed like Rakdos was my most sure bet, so I picked Blade Juggler over a pretty excellent Gruul rare, Gruul Spellbreaker.  In hindsight, I'm not at all sure that Blade Juggler was the better pick for this particular deck, but she is one of the best commons and she played well for me.  I was super happy to get a third Plague Wight second pick, but that was nothing compared to the joy of finding a Priest of Forgotten Gods and several other great Rakdos cards in the middle of this pack.  A second Savage Smash was too good to pass up, and I finished with some good scraps that were playable or close.

So here is the deck I built, and I didn't change the main deck all night.

With 5 Spectacle cards and a low aggressive curve, I did my best to maximize my odds of doing damage to the opponent with every card in the deck -- almost every creature has an evasion ability or a way to do direct damage.

Black-red doesn't usually have to splash green for creature removal, but that's exactly what I did.  Reid Duke wrote a great little article about Savage Smash this week, and I found that it was exactly what I wanted in this deck.  It is very easy to use it to kill a creature and then also get 2 extra points of damage, and Collision // Colossus is a more potent and flexible version of this effect.  Since I was already planning on playing green, I used Rampaging Rendhorn as my curve-topper.  You'll notice I left out some of the biggest creatures I drafted -- they are great, but I was planning to get ahead early and stay ahead, and I didn't have room for 7-drops.

The worst part of the deck is the mana fixing.  I didn't manage to draft a single Gruul or Rakdos Guildgate, so I was stuck playing both Gateway Plazas.  They're really taxing in the early game, where I want to be playing Plague Wights and Blade Jugglers.  Hands with a Gateway Plaza put me in the awkward position of deciding whether to skip a turn early to get it in play or hold it back until I was done casting my creatures.

My sideboard was mostly expensive creatures and some lands, and one artifact removal spell.

My normal sideboard plan against decks with bigger creatures was to take out Swamp - Dagger Caster - Spear Spewer - Vizkopa Vampire and replace them with the bottom row of this picture: Forest - Consign to the Pit - Axebane Beast x2.  Axebane Beast is very good at Savage Smashing larger things, and it's way better than Dagger Caster when the opponent doesn't have any X/1s.

This deck worked out better than I expected.

Round 1 vs. Orzhov (WB)
This was practically a warm-up round.  I think it might have been his first RNA draft, and he had some cards in his deck that I would almost never play, like Thirsting Shade.  I do think his draws were a little bad, but his deck was underpowered as well.  Win, 2-0.

Round 2 vs. Simic (UG) with white sideboard
This guy is a good player who usually beats me.  He almost always plays big-creature green decks, and this was no exception.  I won a tricky game 1 in which he had to give me his Eyes Everywhere for a Plague Wight just to stay alive.  That card plays strangely -- I wanted to swap it back for his Guardian Project, but it was actually better for me to just keep it for scrying and not give him the opportunity to steal another creature from me.  I think generally if you're winning you want to keep Eyes Everywhere for yourself unless your opponent doesn't have access to blue mana.  Second game he did some massive sideboarding to add white so he could make better early game defensive plays.  I killed off his important creatures, like Senate Guildmage, and was able to roll through for another win.  Win, 2-0.

Round 3 vs. Simic
Another Simic deck!  He had a lot of tricky stuff like Applied Biomancy and Stony Strength to slow me down.  In the first game, he got the upper hand early and I was forced to play the control position.  Fortunately I had enough removal to make it work.  I took a hit to 2 life before eliminating his last creature, and then Priest of Forgotten Gods took over the game.  Priest is amazing with Dead Revels since you can cast Dead Revels with the 2 mana Priest adds to get back the two creatures you sacrificed (or better ones).  I sat at 1 life after casting a Blade Juggler, and he couldn't do anything as I chipped away with little creatures.  Second game he was a little pinched on lands, and I was able to play the aggressive role and burn him out while he still had expensive cards in his hand.  Win, 2-0.

Round 4 vs. Simic
Notice a pattern?  He was 2-1, but he had a very good deck using Growth Spiral to get bigger stuff into play faster than me.  Zegana, Sharktocrab, and Mesmerizing Benthid are all effective blockades against Plague Wights, and I had almost no way to answer Zegana if she came down on turn 3 and adapted into an 8/8 on turn 5.  These games weren't even close.  He also had good disruption to bounce my potential blockers.  Loss, 0-2.

Round 5 draw.  I was locked for top 8, so I got to intentional draw.

Top 8 vs. Simic
Unfortunately, I ended up paired with the same player who had beaten me in Round 4.  I fought hard in game 1 but couldn't keep up.  I mulliganed to 5 in the second game and never had a chance because his draw was good.  Loss, 0-2.

He got a promo Light Up The Stage and a share of the store credit prize, and I got a promo Conclave Tribunal.

I can't complain though, because it was another good run against a wide field.  6-4 in games and 3-2 in matches.  Rix Maadi Reveler was way better than I expected -- I drew 3 off it without discarding anything several times, and with two copies of Dead Revels I was sometimes able to cast it early for its normal cost then later get it back and cast it for the spectacle cost.  Savage Smash felt great most games, but when I had a 2/1 or 2/2 and the opponent had a must-kill 4/4 like Zegana, it was less exciting.  Spear Spewer was just bad the couple of times I drew it, and I probably shouldn't have played it.

Here are the rares I ended up with:

I drafted 5 mythics and rares, which is more than the 3 expected, but only 2 of them went into my deck.  I drafted 8 uncommons, which is slightly below the 9 expected.  The only card worth more than $1 (including Conclave Tribunal promo) was Kaya, so I roughly broke even on value.

I think the local store is going to switch to chaos drafts as we get into spoiler season for War of the Spark, which releases mid-April.  So maybe my next draft will be chaos!

Thanks for reading!

FNM Ravnica Allegiance Draft 2019-03-08

Second time drafting Ravnica Allegiance.  This time the attendance was down to 18, split into two tables of 9, and most of the people there were veteran drafters who have probably played this set a fair amount.

Note: If you don't see a link for a card I reference, it's probably visible in one of the photos.  I apologize for the glare in some of these.

Hey, I remembered to photograph the draft this time!  Here it is, from bottom left to top right.

Pack 1 rare was Cindervines, which you can see I took later when it came back around.  It's a nice card, but not for draft.  First pick there wasn't anything super strong, so I took the sneaky Gateway Sneak as a very good value card that's not hard to fit into any blue deck.  Second pack was not exciting, and I think Grasping Thrull was just the best card straight up.  I got a nice removal spell third pick, and I just took generically good cards for a few picks.  The 6th pick Gateway Sneak was a big surprise, because it either meant that I rate that card higher than some good players at the table or that it was just a very strong pack.  There was also a Skewer the Critics, but I doubled down on the Sneak.  Arrester's Admonition and a second Plague Wight also seemed very strong for their pick positions, and I continued to draft value without much regard for color.

Second pack gave me another pile of non-bombs.  The rare was Lavinia, which again I was able to draft when it wheeled.  I think this pack had one or two common removal spells, but I took the Spire Mangler as a card that can play several roles.  Priest of Forgotton Gods isn't a bomb rare, but it's another flexible card that I could combine with afterlife cards.  And then came the Hero of Precinct One.  I didn't feel like white was very open in Pack 1, but this was coming from my left.  I thought on it a bit, and decided I could probably go Esper (white-blue-black, with the guildgates centered on white) or Mardu (white-black-red, with the guildgates centered on black) and get the multicolored cards I needed to fill it out.  My blue was better than my red at that point, but I drafted a couple gates to keep both possibilities open.  Final Payment was in a pack with Teysa Karlov, a very strong synergy card with other things white-black is doing in this set, but I have really liked Final Payment and decided good removal was something I needed more.  I was not at all excited about Lavinia when I opened the pack, as her abilities are completely irrelevant in draft, but now with Hero of Precinct One I was happy to add her as a multicolored creature.  The rest of the pack was guildgates and filler.

Pack 3 rare was Growth-Chamber Guardian, another good but not amazing creature for Limited, and I was nowhere near playing green.  Grotesque Demise is one of the best common removal spells along with Final Payment, and it wasn't too hard to pick.  I was happy to pick up a second Blade Juggler and Imperious Oligarch, and then the Pestilent Spirit was a really nice pickup.  I wasn't playing red to take advantage of its unique ability, but 3/2 menace deathtouch is just fine.  I got some more guildgates because I was almost certain I would be playing 3 colors (especially with a second Arrester's Admonition), and Dead Revels was a nice surprise toward the end of the pack.  Expose to Daylight is almost a card I would main deck, but it's definitely a card I want to have available.  The last 5 packs had almost exclusively green and red cards, and it was clear that those colors were wide open.  The guy to my left was happy with that, as he was maybe the only one at the table drafting that color pair.

Here's the deck I started with, and I didn't change my main deck for the tournament.

Even though I was in Orzhov for the most part, this deck was very different from the one I played 2 weeks ago.  That deck was full of removal and 1-power deathtouch creatures to play attrition and win with a flier or two.  This week's deck was lighter on removal and fliers, but it has a low curve of good attacking creatures, along with strong card advantage engines (Gateway Sneak, Blade Juggler) and tempo pieces (Arrester's Admonition).  The other deck wanted to be on the draw, and this one wanted to play first.  The deck's biggest vulnerability is limited and temporary ways to deal with really big opposing creatures, so I needed to be proactive.

I had barely enough playable cards, so cutting down to 23 was far easier than usual, so I spent more time figuring out the mana base.  I wanted about equal black and white to cast my 2-drops but also enough blue to usually cast a Gateway Sneak on turn 3.  The key was realizing that all of my gates make white.  With the manabase pictured, I have 8 black sources, 8 white sources, and 6 blue sources.  I felt pretty good about that, and it rarely betrayed me.

Here is all I sleeved up for a sideboard:

In a normal deck I might have played Orzhov Locket, but between my low curve and good card draw I felt like it was unnecessary.  Expose to Daylight was great to have for sideboarded games, but otherwise I really didn't want to play any of these cards.  Normally my cut was Footlight Fiend or Lavinia, depending on the opponent's creature sizes -- Footlight Fiend stayed in when there were targets it could kill with its triggered ability.

The Games:

Round 1 vs. Azorius (white-blue) fliers
He had a good pile of fliers along with the normal Azorius removal and blockers.  Sphinx of New Prahv, 2x Skatewing Spy, 2x Azorius Knight-Arbitor were cards that I had a hard time with.  To make matters worse, in the second game I drew all five of my gates before any untapped lands, which made everything really slow.  Loss, 0-2.

Round 2 vs. Azorius Clear the Mind
This was a version of a deck I played against the previous week, full of just card draw and removal and a couple Clear the Mind to keep from running out of cards.  The player was one of the store guys, and a good player.  First game he showed Sphinx of Foresight and scryed three cards to the bottom.  He only played one land and conceded after a few turns.  Terrible luck.  Second game he scryed with the Sphinx at the start of the game again.  He had a slightly better start, and I ran a cute line of attacking into the Sphinx with a Plague Wight while holding Grotesque Demise.  The first time he didn't block, but he couldn't figure out what I had and blocked the second time.  I killed the Sphinx after the Wight trigger dropped it to 3/3, and he never got back in the game.  Win, 2-0.

Round 3 vs Simic (blue-green)
This was a rough matchup, and he had some very strong Simic cards like Sharktocrab and Zegana.  We split the first two games, and I was on the defensive for much of game 3 after mulliganing to 5 cards.  We got close to time, and we both made some errors, but his were a little more vital (a couple guys were watching us and talked through it afterward).  When the game went to time, I basically had to survive for the draw, because I wasn't likely to build up enough to win.  I missed a trigger on Debtors' Transport to get a couple spirit tokens, but he misplayed a couple of his adapt abilities.  In the end, I just stayed alive and we drew the match.  1-1-1.

Round 4 vs. Esper stuff.
This was the guy who was sitting to my right and passing to me for 2 of the 3 packs, so I was surprised to see he was in the same colors as me.  He had the Teysa that I had passed in Pack 2, and a couple Final Payments that I remembered.  In the first game he didn't seem to value blocking Gateway Sneak when he thought I might have a trick.  He went after them harder in the second game, but both games ended up fairly easy wins.  Win, 2-0.

Round 5 vs. Azorius/Esper.
He had 9 match points and I had 7.  I was not sure if I was going to make top 8 by drawing in Round 5, but a store guy told me my tiebreakers would get me in just as we were shuffling up to play.  We decided to intentional draw but played a game just for fun.  I kept a two-Swamp hand and drew another Swamp to get off to a very slow start, and he managed to keep enough pressure on that he was able to mill my library out with Screaming Shield.  Unofficial 0-1.

Top 8 Round 1 vs. Esper.
I think I was the bottom seed in the Top 8, and I was matched up against an undefeated opponent on the draw.  We played a super tight game, and both my Hero of Precinct One and my card drawing engines proved instrumental as I was able to out-race Ill-Gotten Inheritance.  In the second game, my hand was Wight, Hero, and my enchantment removal spell with 4 lands, and I drew even more lands.  He was stuck with a bunch of lands, too.  When he put down Ill-Gotten Inheritance on turn 4, I killed it immediately.  I took the advantage and felt far ahead, but then he played Kaya's Wrath to kill all 3 of my creatures at the time.  My topdecks were better than his though and I won the round.  Win, 2-0.

I got to choose between FNM promo Militia Bugler and Mortify.  I didn't really have a preference, so I let him have the Mortify for his EDH deck.  Then the top 4 players split the prize and we each went home with $18 store credit.

In the end I was 7-4-1 including the unrecorded game, and I felt pretty darn good about that.  I liked playing this deck and it was better than I expected.  I also made fewer gameplay mistakes.  The main ones I noticed were land sequencing and the missed trigger I noted.  I do think I have been evaluating cards well during the draft.  Some individual card notes:

• Plague Wight looks average, but it's really good if you are planning to attack to win.  It can attack fearlessly into anything with 1 toughness or 1 power, and it can threaten to trade against 3/3s.  Plus, a lot of the 2/2s that would trade with it are better creatures that the opponent doesn't want to lose, like guildmages.  Put all that together, and it attacks a lot and either triggers spectacle for turn 3 Blade Juggler or trades in combat with better/more expensive creatures.
• I wasn't sure how often I would activate Priest of Forgotten Gods, but it was a great ability to have access to.  One time I sacrificed two creatures that had neutralizing enchantments on them, and another time I sacrificed one creature with an enchantment and one creature that was the target of a removal spell on the stack.  Activating it to cast Dead Revels for its spectacle cost was great too, as I could even return a creature I sacrificed or have enough mana to cast something like Grasping Thrull afterward.
• Similarly, Final Payment is just great.  Sometimes you pay 5 life, and that's usually fine when you're killing a 3/3 or bigger.  Other times you have Hero of Precinct One out and you sacrifice a token but make another token because it's a multicolored spell.
• Drill Bit is not a card I would usually want to play in the main deck, but it worked well in this setup.  I could sometimes cast it for its spectacle cost on turn 3 and also play another 2-drop creature.  I never got the sweet sequence of Arrester's Admonition into Drill Bit, but both were fine on their own.

After drafting no rares or foils last time, I ended up with 5 rares and 3 foils in this draft.  One average, 3 packs would have 3 rares and half a foil.  I also took 10 uncommons vs. 9 expected.  None of these cards are super valuable, with $1.75 Light Up the Stage worth the most, but again the store credit (and the fun of playing) makes it all worth it.

Thanks for reading!