Here's what I picked, bottom left to top right:
Pack 1 had Narset and at least one other good uncommon I don't remember, plus Storrev at rare. I like Narset a lot, and she is proving to be very popular in multiple formats and runs around $3 a copy right now. Second pack was missing a rare planeswalker. Spellgorger Weird was a good card that goes well with Narset. Finale of Revelation is basically Braingeyser, which is pretty good but not the same level of bomb as some of the other mythic rares in this set. The next few packs didn't really support blue-red, so I just took best card available for the rest of the pack.
Going into pack 2, I didn't really know what I was playing. I hoped that maybe I could slide into green to get color fixing like New Horizons and just play best cards available. As it turned out, the player to my left took Storrev from my first pack and stuck with black-green, so in pack 2 I wasn't getting passed many cards in either color. The rare in my pack was Solar Blaze, which looks good but really doesn't kill much in a lot of decks. In Hindsight, Huatli is not a great first pick and requires some build-around to be really good. I probably should have drafted something else, but I don't remember what it might have been. Second pack foil Dovin was a pretty easy pick though, since I had a fair number of blue and white playable cards, and he fits a spells or proliferate strategy. Then I got a series of very good white commons and a Callous Dismissal, and I veered strongly into white-blue.
Pack 3 was another iffy pick. The rare was Silent Submersible, which is not very good, and the planeswalker was Ob Nixilis, which is very good but requires double black mana. After a bit of thought, I ended up with Lazotep Plating, which is a counterspell for targeted removal that also makes an instant speed blocker if needed. Second pick I was much happier with the snowbally Grateful Apparition (or maybe Grateful Dead?). The rest of the pack was weird and inconsistent, and I took a few more off-color cards and as much mana fixing as I could find.
Since one person got to our draft table late, we lost some time on deckbuilding and I was really pushed to try to finish in time. Here is what I ended up with -- the original version had Lazotep Plating instead of Courage in Crisis, but I realized I had a lot of proliferate and not enough ways to get counters on my creatures.
The Law-Rune Enforcers make a neat combo with Nahiri, but I managed to go all night without drawing her. Huatli combos with my 1/3 and 2/5 creatures, and Evolution Sage is the only creature she demotes. With Gateway Plaza and 3 artifacts that make any color of mana, I could splash pretty easily, especially for red and black sideboard cards. My hope with this deck was to control the board until I could get a repeatable proliferate effect like Evolution Sage, Grateful Apparition, or Merfolk Skydiver going, or just find room to attack with fliers.
In hindsight, this deck has a lot of "air," or cards that don't do much except draw more cards. That's fine if everything else is extremely strong, but it can make it difficult to catch up from behind. CABS Theory (Cards that Affect the Board State) would say my deck with just 11 creatures (including Callous Dismissal) is just not enough. Most of my impactful sideboard cards were off color-though, so I couldn't really add them without disrupting my already iffy mana.
Here's the sideboard:
I sided in Spark Harvest against particularly bad planeswalkers, and Krovod against aggressive decks. Electromancer and Jaya's Greeting were hard to know what to do with, since I wasn't likely to cast them early in the game. Aside from Lazotep Plating (which sometimes started in main deck) and lands, everything else stayed out.
How about the matches?
Round 1 vs. Blue-Red Kefnet Spells
This round went really well. He didn't have good removal for my things, and I had the perfect answers to Kefnet (Law-Rune Enforcers and Dovin Baan). I took over in the air. Win, 2-0.
Round 2 vs. Grixis Bolas (blue-black-red)
First game I was off to a fine start, but I ran Dovin into a No Escape that I suspected he had. Eventually he got the mana to cast Bolas and then Kaya, and I was too far behind. Second game I developed a nice board of 3 creatures, and then he got to 6 mana and was able to exactly destroy all 3 of them with Finale of Eternity. I almost got up to 12 mana in this game to cast my own blue Finale, but it didn't happen. Loss, 0-2.
Round 3 vs. Black-Green Samut
This round was just a beating. He had at least 2 copies of Samut and a bunch of creatures, and he did well over 20 damage both rounds (killing planeswalkers and my own life total), usually with creatures that took advantage of Samut's haste, pump, or both. In both games I thought I was about to stabilize at a low life total, and he just played something big to attack for the win. Loss, 0-2.
I considered playing a 4th round for fun, but decided to drop. At 2-4 in games, I don't think this was a totally bad deck, but it was certainly lacking something. It also had bad timing drawing the right cards when I needed them, but that just happens. I never managed to find a window to cast Finale of Revelation, I never drew Nahiri, and I only had Narset when opponents didn't have card draw. Grateful Apparition and Evolution Sage are kill-on-sight removal-magnets.
How about take-away value?
I drafted 1 mythic rare and no rares. I did have 12 uncommons and 4 planeswalkers, which are both above average. Overall, I ended up with about $8 of card value. Foil Dovin is just $2 but has potential to be popular enough in Commander to go up.
Maybe next time things will go better. Over 3 drafts I haven't had any stupid bombs, so I've mostly had to scratch together synergistic uncommons and commons to make my decks work. And it can work, as my great finish in week 1 can attest.
Thanks for reading!
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