Opening night draft of War of the Spark! I don't normally go to opening night, and now I know why -- there were 37 people signed up to get a promo Bolas's Citadel and try their hand at the draft format. That meant 6 rounds!!!
I was at a table of 7, and I was looking forward to grabbing some big rare bombs in this set full of ultra-strong planeswalkers and god-eternals. How did it go? Well, it certainly didn't go how I expected. Here's the draft, bottom left to top right:
First pack rare was Parhelion II, which is a legitimate unbeatable bomb rare, assuming you have 4 power worth of creatures and get to 8 mana. So I ignored it and took the very good planeswalker instead. I liked Kasmina in my prerelease deck, so I thought she was worth starting on. Leyline Prowler seemed like the highest upside card in the second pack. My next three picks were honestly not that exciting; I think I was trying to feel out whether the base black-green deck was available for Leyline Prowler to branch into multicolor. And the rest of the pack was just a bunch of solid playable green and blue cards. Courage in Crisis is better than people realize right now -- it gives a lot of value in a proliferate deck (for example, adding 4 counters to Mowu).
Second pack rare was Karn, a $6 card that is nearly unplayable in Limited due to the dearth of artifacts in the set. Callous Dismissal is getting a reputation as one of the best commons in the set, and I didn't feel bad choosing it here. Next pick Kiora gave me some direction -- 4-power creatures were now much better. And Paradise Druid and New Horizons gave me the color fixing that I needed to start looking into cards outside of blue-green, which meant that after passing a Spellgorger Weird from the pack with New Horizons, I quickly nabbed one from the next pack, followed by two 4-power Turret Ogres.
Third pack rare was Ral, who honestly might have been great in my deck, but instead I took Flux Channeler to support my proliferate theme. Rescuer Sphinx was key as I had not been seeing fliers at the right time, and it gave me an easy-to-proliferate finisher if the ground was clogged, and Evolution Sage is another easy-to-trigger source of mass proliferate. I wasn't really sure about Narset in Limited, but I thought two copies was probably as good as anything else in those two packs. Turns out she's pretty good, even if I didn't have enough noncreatures to always find cards with her ability. The rest of the pack had a few good things, but I was really surprised to snag a Jaya's Greeting so deep. Red must have been really underdrafted in our pod.
In hindsight, I wonder whether Ral was the better pick at the top of pack 3, since almost all of my instants and sorceries are great to copy. I also wished I had gotten a Merfolk Skydiver. I saw two, but always when there was something I liked better near the beginning of a pack, and I wasn't able to get them to wheel back to me. I ended up with plenty of proliferate, but I was a little short on both fliers and ways to add counters.
Here is the main deck I played:
With two green mana fixers and most of my low drop cards being green, I played 9 Forests and only 8 non-forests, and that seemed about right. The hardest card to cast in this configuration was turn 3 Narset, so one of my last cuts was to go down to 1 copy. This is essentially a big-creature deck, and my best draws involved Kiora, who could ramp me into a Thundering Ceratok on turn 4 and draw me a card. I played the Snarespinner as a concession to small fliers that could pick off my planeswalkers, but I frequently sideboarded it out for a third Ceratok because Ceratok was my best creature to put +1/+1 counters on. Mowu was actually a little disappointing -- he grows faster than the Ceratok, but he doesn't trigger Kiora or Kronch Wrangler. Kiora was also great with New Horizons, providing 4 mana from a single land.
My sideboard had a lot of eligible cards.
I found over time that my best sideboard plan was usually to bring in Ceratok #3 for Snarespinner against decks without many fliers and to bring in Narset #2 against anyone with draw spells or when I was on the play. On the draw, I always sided out a Forest and never had much trouble with lands (aside from a couple mulligans, which worked out ok). Sarkhan's Catharsis and Kasmina's Transmutation (plus a Forced Landing I never really needed) gave answers to planeswalkers and specific creatures.
I'll spare the details on the matches. Long story short, I beat the better players and lost to a player who I normally expect to beat.
Round 1 vs. Esper (white-blue-black) Control. Lost game 3 in overtime turns. Loss, 1-2.
Round 2 vs. Jund (black-red-green). Win, 2-1.
Round 3 vs. Esper Teferi Jace Control. His deck was really strong but he had no mana fixing and couldn't find his third color twice. Win, 2-1.
Round 4 vs. Red-Green? splashing Finale of Glory. Win, 2-0.
Round 5 vs. Blue-Red Spells with Invade the City as a finisher. Draw, 1-1-1.
Round 6. Intentional draw into top 8.
Top 8 Round 1 vs. Red-Green undefeated. This match was untimed, and we played carefully and took about an hour to finish. Win, 2-1.
Top 4 split. Nice!
Some general thoughts on the cards and the format:
- I really struggle with playing fast enough with this kind of deck. It's not that I actually play slowly, but there are a ton of actions. Consider for example casting Crisis in Courage with Flux Channeler and 2 cards that have counters. First you trigger Flux Channeler, roll two dice upward, then you resolve Crisis in Courage, putting a die on 2 on its target and then rolling the other two dice upward again. The net result is 2 counters on 3 targets, but you can't do it carelessly in case the opponent interacts with the spell in some way or you forget to do all your actions. Now, consider that this often happens in the same turn that I also use Narset's and/or Kasmina's downtick abilities. For Narset, I have to roll the die down 2, look at 4 cards from the top of my deck, choose and show one to the opponent, and make some feeble attempt to randomize the other three to the bottom of my deck. For Kasmina, I have to roll the die down 2, find my Wizard token, draw a card, choose and discard a card. There are a ton of interactions in the deck that require this kind of careful play, and the net result was that two of my matches went to turns, a third was the last match to finish in the round, and my top 8 match went super long. These games were fun and rewarding, but man.
- Evolution Sage, Flux Channeler, and Rescuer Sphinx are very good, which also makes them lightning rods. If they didn't die immediately, I was likely to win. But usually they died immediately. I particularly like having Rescuer Sphinx pick up a 4-power creature so that I could trigger Kiora extra times. Picking up New Horizons is also pretty good.
- Kasmina gains you a ton of virtual life. Most of the time I just used her Wizard tokens to chump block for her or for me, and at least a couple times I got a third Wizard by proliferating. Kiora can also gain you a ton of life if the opponent chooses to attack her.
- Remembering the static abilities on the planeswalkers is rough. My opponents and I forgot about Kasmina's taxing ability a couple times, and I missed Kiora's card draw at least once. But the grand prize goes to Narset. I "gotcha'd" two very good players with her. First one played a creature with "draw a card" when it enters the battlefield, and the second one activated Erratic Visionary on his own main phase. Both times I had to quickly blurt "Don't draw a card!" as they reached for the library, and the second guy had the additional feel-bad of having to discard anyway (I kind of gave him a chance to go back and not activate, but he stuck with it).
- My opponents had fewer broken bomb rares than I expected, and fewer planeswalkers. Maybe this format isn't as bomb-heavy as we thought. There is a good amount of power at all rarities.
- To complement the previous point, if you didn't notice, I managed to draft zero rares or mythics. I would not have expected to top 4 a War of the Spark draft without some kind of amazing rare, but once again I managed to do great with a bunch of strong synergy cards instead. I had 11 uncommons, which is roughly what you would expect in a draft with no rares.
So in summary, I went 10-6-1 in games played, and 4-1-1 in matches played. This felt really good. Kiora was often the MVP of the long games, using 4-power creatures to dig for more 4-power creatures. The shorter games often involved a Ceratok with 4 or more +1/+1 counters.
The prize was a pile of random old foil promos, plus the new Augur of Bolas promo, plus $38 store credit. I lost the photo somehow, but none of them were super exciting. There was also a Bolas' Citadel promo for attending.
So that was fun, and it was also exhausting. I recommend this format if you like complex, value-laden games.
Thanks for reading!
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