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!
No comments:
Post a Comment