FNM Modern Horizons Draft 2019-06-28

It was kind of a dead night, but there were some MH1 drafts still going on.  At this point I guess everyone is done with War of the Spark, unfortunately.  I got there just after a draft had started, so I found some EDH games in the meantime.

I played my Intet Dragons deck in a 3-player game and then a 2-player game.  I was one turn from winning the first game when the other remaining player set up a combo that let him have infinite Hornet Queen tokens.  I won the 2-player game against Ninjas, but it was a pretty good close game.  I was a few turns into a 4-player game with my Cho-Manno deck when the Modern Horizons draft started.

We only had 7 players sign up for this draft.  Here's what I drafted, bottom left to top right:

That's a foil Fiery Islet ($60) -- hard to tell from the picture.  The normal rare was Hogaak ($6), so it was a pretty loaded pack overall.  After that, I tried to go with best card available.  Man-o'-War is an awesome draft card, so I was pushing toward blue and toward bounce synergies after I got one.  The super late Settle Beyond Reality made me wonder if I could sneak into white.

Second pack rare was Eladamri's Call.  Fact or Fiction is a great card, and I had a really hard choice on my second pick between second FoF or second Man-o'-War.  Then some nice red removal, and then only my second white card, the ridiculous Soulherder.  I didn't really know what to do, but I had some mana fixing ability so I just kept drafting best cards available in white-red-blue and occasionally other colors.

Third pack had another money land ($14), and as a bonus it helped me consider splashing green.  I took Goblin Engineer from a pretty weak pack just because it's a $3 card.  Urza's Rage and Blizzard Strix were both insanely good for where I picked them.  A 3-mana Lightning Bolt is always fine in draft, and the Strix is ridiculous with some of the other stuff I had.  I spent the rest of the pack trying to have enough snow permanents for Strix.

I built perhaps my most ambitious monstrosity ever from this pool:

Sorry about the glare -- that's Quakefoot Cyclops and Blizzard Strix in the 5-drop slot.

10 blue sources.  6 red sources.  3 white sources.  4 green sources.  Plus Springbloom Druid to help fix the mana.  Not bad for a 17-land draft deck, but still very ambitious.  I considered playing a Snow-Covered Swamp and Twisted Reflection, but I decided against it.

The main plan of the deck revolves around removal and combo engines:

Soulherder directly or indirectly combos with all of the cards around it to provide continuous value.  Blizzard Strix is ridiculous with Soulherder, letting you exile one of your opponent's creatures until their end step (because of when Soulherder triggers), while putting 2 counters on Soulherder and untapping the Strix.  Man-o'-War has a similar but less complex interaction.  Springbloom Druid lets you quickly ramp up your basic lands, emptying the deck of basics in a few turns if not answered.

I'm not sure Cunning Evasion is really good enough to play, but the prospect of making Strix and the jellyfish practically unblockable seemed fun.

I only played one "real" round, winning against a white-black deck 2-0.  Combos were assembled and the deck made a general nuisance of itself.  Then we split top 4, and I got 2 packs of MH1.

I did play a second partial match against the guy who had a bye, also in black-white, and we split 2 games 1-1.  He had some complex interactions as well and I made a ton of small but meaningful misplays.

I'm happy to have played MH1 draft a few times.  I think it will be over soon with M20 prerelease happening next week.

Ah, now there's a good shot of Fiery Islet's shininess.  As for value, this draft was great.  I drafted 3 rares, 13 uncommons, and 5 snow lands.  The singles are probably about $85 total value, plus two $6 sealed packs.  I expect the lands to mostly rise in value, kept in check only by the sheer number of money cards in this set.

Next week is M20 prerelease, and I hope it plays out relatively easy after all these high-complexity sets.

Thanks for reading!

FNM Modern Horizons Drafts 2019-06-14

So last week I said I wasn't very interested in playing Modern Horizons.  Well, it turns out that I'm a big hypocrite given the right circumstances.  The store was running a Modern constructed tournament and MH1 drafts, and the War of the Spark draft just wasn't going to have enough people.  So instead of doing the cheaper thing and playing Modern, I decided to try drafting MH1 with very little prep other than having looked at the card previews and price list.

This is a $20 draft with slightly premium cards, so there was some element of money-drafting, but not as much as in a set like Ultimate Masters.

First draft, bottom left to top right:

My Pack 1 rare was Cloudshredder Sliver.  I had no idea whether it would lead to a good deck, and it isn't a money rare, so I went with a "safe" pick of unconditional removal instead.  Mist-Syndicate Naga, on the other hand, can snowball on its own, so it was a pretty easy pick 2.  I'm not sure why I took Sisay -- must have seemed like a bad pack.  After that it was a lot of black and blue, and the two 1-drop changelings at the end to help with ninjitsu.

Smiting Helix is just a regular removal spell if you can't pay the flashback, but it was the best I could do in this pack.  The rare was Ayula's Influence.  Third pick Fallen Shinobi was a gift.  Just as Cloudshredder Sliver would have been great if I was already in the white-red sliver deck, this was about the best possible blue-black ninja card I could have been passed.  Marit Lage's Slumber was a bit of a long shot, since drafting enough snow cards to wake up Marit Lage is highly unlikely.  In the rest of the pack I prioritized temporary removal because either of my ninjas could take over the game if they got a single hit in.

Fiery Islet is close to a $20 card, so that was an easy pick.  So was Ingenious Infiltrator, another extremely strong ninja.  The rest of this pack didn't offer a lot for my deck, but I was already in pretty good shape.

Here is how the deck looked:

That's 4 basic islands and 8 basic swamps, for a total of 9 black sources, 7 blue sources, and Cave of Temptation that could make both expensively.  The main thing I felt like I was missing was more 1-drops and 2-drops to get the ninjas going as early as possible.  Cordial Vampire is a little awkward with the BB cost.

There wasn't much sideboard material worth using.

Round 1 vs. Blue-Black Urza and Ninjas
I only got to play one round with this deck because these pod drafts were single elimination.  My opponent was also playing black-blue ninjas.  He had more of the common ninjas and none of the rare ones, but the common ones are powerful enough.  He also had Urza, which is just plain unbeatable after a turn or two.  I won the first game off a fast Fallen Shinobi, but I lost the next two as he managed to keep me off my ninjas long enough to build his own advantage.  Loss, 1-2.

So I signed up for another one!

I'm pretty proud of this draft.  I was getting really good black cards early, and some goodish white cards.  In the third pack I took the removal spell in Settle Beyond Reality over Lightning Skelemental because I felt like the Skelemental's casting cost was too difficult.  Well, when Skelemental came back late in the pack, I put on the brakes and reconsidered my position.  The red cards I took afterward weren't amazing, but I did like Goblin Champion a lot better than second-to-last, and the fact that there were so many red cards still in these packs suggested the color was very open.

Second pack had a $25 Force of Negation, so that was a no-brainer.  But then I started looking into red cards.  Fifth pick Pashalik Mons was quite late for a card that has a fair amount of support both by goblins and changelings.  After that, it was all about red and goblins and aggressive cards, and the result shows both how open red was and how much other people were drafting black, which was still my default second color.

Third pack rare was Astral Drift.  Defile still looked like a great removal spell at this point.  As the pack went on though, I kept getting red cards, including a couple oversized beaters in Alpine Guide and Ravenous Giant.

After some debate over whether to play mono red or black-red or red with a splash of black, I ended up going with the third option:

In my first draft, Defile was better than Mob, but this deck definitely preferred Mob with such a low Swamp count.  Goblin Matron meant I effectively had 2 copies of Mons, which was also great because she is an easy sacrifice to his ability.

I'm not sure this deck was optimal, so I prepared the sideboard plan to go either more or less red as needed:

The card I was most torn not to play in the main deck was Endling.  It requires not only two black mana to cast, but also black mana to activate most of the abilities, so I only brought it in when I felt I needed a higher impact but slower card.

Round 1 vs. Blue-Green Snow
This guy was already bummed because he felt his spot had been taken and the guy in his spot opened a $100 foil Yawgmoth.  In game 1, he only drew Forests and wasn't able to cast much against my aggressive start.  In game 2 he did better, and I was in danger of losing to my own Ravenous Giant's damage, but I drew Goblin War Party and entwined it for the big winning attack.  Win, 2-0.

Round 2 vs. Grixis (Blue-Black-Red)
I won the first game pretty quickly again.  Second game on the draw turned into a slog.  I had Pashalik Mons, a Vengeful Devil, and an endless supply of goblins, but not enough mana to kill his unblockable creatures in time.  In the third game I managed to Throes of Chaos into Goblin Matron into Mons, and I kept ahead on tempo long enough to win.  Afterward, he showed me a Crypt Rats he never drew that would have stymied my plans (assuming I didn't have Mons on board).  Win, 2-1.

I split the prize with the other 2-0 player, 4 packs of MH1 each.  So one bad draft and one good draft, and a razor-thin margin between the two.

My rare count was off the chart -- 7 in one draft and 6 in the other.  Each draft had one ~$20 card and a bunch of cheap ones.  And I got 8 uncommons in each draft, which isn't bad considering the number of rares.  The snow-covered lands are money cards in this format as well, worth 50 cents to a dollar each.  I got 6 total, which is average.  Overall my face value was probably about $50 - $55, plus 4 packs that the store sells for $6 each, so that's pretty good.  I immediately traded a few of these cards for some lands for my Oathbreaker deck (more on that in a different post perhaps).

Thanks for reading!

FNM War of the Spark Draft 2019-06-07

This weekend is the Modern Horizons prerelease, so there wasn't a huge crowd for War of the Spark draft.  In fact, we only had 8 sign up, so it was a single pod and 3 rounds of play.

An interesting wrinkle was that this was the first time that the London Mulligan was in effect.  Instead of going down a card and scrying 1 after a mulligan, now you take a full 7 cards then and put some to the bottom of your deck equal to the number of mulligans.  So you still end up with 6 cards after first mulligan, but you have slightly better selection of what to keep.

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

First pack I opened was pretty average pickings, with Living Twister at rare.  That's a good card in the right context, but I've drafted one before and it felt awkward enough that I mostly left it in sideboard.  It would be much better if it cost RGG and you could splash it in green decks.  Anyway, the uncommons were all "pretty good" and I went with the planeswalker.  Next pack had no rare, so I took a Paradise Druid that enables a lot of flexibility.  Then a couple really good black removal spells and a surprising 5th pick Evolution Sage.  I have loved proliferate in this format, and Evolution Sage is a great card because it makes otherwise-useless late land draws have a spell effect.  With Evolution Sage and Davriel, could I get into a proliferate/planeswalker deck like I had Week 1 of the format?  3 of my next four picks also had proliferate, so now I just had to make sure I had enough planeswalkers and +1/+1 counters to make it work.  It was clear in this pack that no one else was drafting much green (although someone took a second Pollenbright Druid that I had my eye on), because the power level of the late green cards was quite high.

Pack 2 cemented me in black with the very talented Massacre Girl.  I was sad to pass a Kaya in the first pack (along with a bunch of other good black/green cards), but I was gifted with a Kaya in the second pack.  Deathsprout is a good removal + ramp and color fixing spell.  I took a Gateway Plaza fairly high on the chance that I could splash in a powerful pack 3 rare.  I wasn't sure after pack 1 whether black was really open enough, but two Toll of the Invasion came to me later than I expected and I snagged them with little thought.

Pack 3 was where my planeswalkers really came together, with the snowbally Ugin leading a parade of 4.  Ob Nixilis at 7th pick was particularly unexpected -- 6 players didn't want a planeswalker that kills 2 creatures, pressures the opponent's life total, and can also be used to turn your own creatures into card draw?  Ugin's Conjurant also went way later than I feel it is should.  Maybe the pack had 4 on-color cards that fit people's decks better, but I doubt this was the 5th-best card in the pack.

As it turned out, the player on my right was blue-red and not disrupting me at all, and the player on my left was blue-black-red.  That didn't surprise me because I passed several packs left early on that had a good black card (Spark Harvest, Ob Nixilis's Cruelty) even after I took one.  Davriel may or may not have been the best card in pack 1, but he led me down the right path either way.

Here's the deck I played:

I had enough color fixing to splash in Jaya pretty painlessly, but I decided it wasn't worth it because her static ability does literally nothing without other red cards, and I had enough removal spells without her.  Kiora looks a little sketchy in this deck too, as I cut all but 2 and a half creatures with 4 power (Ugin's Conjurant being the half).  She does give extra mana or pseudo-vigilance to a creature with her untap ability though.

Between Kaya's 3BBB and Bleeding Edge's 1BB costs, I wanted plenty of black sources.  Emergence Zone is an interesting ability though, so I ended up playing Gateway Plaza even though I might not have needed the expensive flexible mana source in a 2-color deck.

This deck looks like it only has a meager 9 creatures to go with several green cards that require creature targets, but it also makes creatures with Toll of the Invasion, Bleeding Edge, and Ugin.  Plus, Lazotep Reaver makes 2 creatures.

Here's the leftovers and sideboard:

I never sided in anything other than Shriekdiver (either replacing Iron Bully on the play or a Swamp on the draw).  There were some cards in the sideboard, most notably Kronch Wrangler, that would normally make my main deck, but didn't fit well enough here.  With Banehound and several big vanilla beaters, I definitely could have shifted gears into a creature beatdown deck, but it didn't seem better than what I was doing.  Return to Nature would normally be a great sideboard card, but in War of the Spark, most of the enchantment and artifact slots have been replaced by planeswalkers, so it is very niche.

Round 1 vs. Bant (white-blue-green)
He had some bad cards in the main deck, so I'm not really sure what was going on.  Must have had difficulty finding his colors during the draft.  I did a good job being patient after seeing No Escape with my Toll of the Invasion and won with careful play.  Win, 2-0.

Round 2 vs. Gruul (red-green)
The highlights here were Neheb and Nissa.  I won the first and third games, and lost the game where he got Nissa into play.  I had a 4/4 and a removal spell for the first land he turned into a creature, but when Nissa comes out and immediately goes to 6 loyalty, she's almost impossible to kill before her mana and creature advantage takes the game out of reach.  In the following round, my opponent noted that Bleeding Edge is a sorcery, and I played it as an instant several times this round, which I feel bad about in hindsight.  I think I'll have the store transfer some of my credit to this guy, because it's possible I wouldn't have won the match if either of us had known.  Win, 2-1.

Round 3 vs. Izzet (blue-red)
This was the drafter to my right, so he had passed me quite a few of my cards.  The first game was close, but I eventually got in front with Kaya and Ugin.  Second game I snowballed a couple creatures and a planeswalker to victory with Courage in Crisis.  Win, 2-0.

So I won the draft!  3-0 in matches and 6-1 in games.  I'm getting a good feel for what is good and what is not in War of the Spark, and proliferate with planeswalkers seems to be pretty good.  Courage in Crisis, which looks like a pretty average card, is an all-star.  I will draft Pollenbright Druids and Evolution Sages all day if I can, and play them with whatever color planeswalkers are available.

As for spoils, I got $15 store credit and a FNM promo Dovin's Veto ($6.50).  Ugin is about $5 right now, and the other cards I drafted are mostly bulk.  I only drafted 2 rares, but 15 uncommons (vs. 9 expected) might be the most I've ever had.  That goes to show how open my colors were.  My 6 planeswalkers were also double the expected 3.

I'm still enjoying War of the Spark, and I'll try to get more drafts in before we return to the lower-complexity world of Core Set 2020.

Thanks for reading!