The LGS has gone to chaos drafting the last few weeks of M20 season, and that makes me happy. Unfortunately, I have had poor luck getting there on time to join a draft, and several times the 8-person draft pod has filled just before I arrived.
The first time I tried to Chaos draft (Aug. 30), I ended up playing Modern instead. I used the Soulflayer deck. This was the week after Hogaak and Faithless Looting were banned and Stoneforge Mystic was freed, so I expected maybe less graveyard hate.
Round 1 vs. Karn Ramp.
This was a wild deck that was all in on ramping to big stuff while also playing a full suite of Karn and artifacts for him to bring from the sideboard. Game 1 he locked me out of the game with Ensnaring Bridge. Game 2 I got him with a just-fast-enough Soulflayer. And game 3 he played Tooth and Nail entwined on maybe turn 4 or 5 and won on the spot. Loss, 1-2.
Round 2 I had the bye, so I was still theoretically in it at 1-1.
Round 3 vs. Humans.
This seems to be a pretty good matchup, as most of their cards don't kill or stop a Soulflayer with hexproof. The one card I don't want to see is Meddling Mage, if they know to name Soulflayer. I lost the first game without him really seeing what I was doing, and then I won the next two games. Win, 2-1.
Round 4 vs. Humans.
This time I won the first game in a long, grindy fashion culminating with me hard-casting Netherborn Phalanx to burn him out with his big board of creatures. The next two games I wasn't able to assemble a good Soulflayer fast enough. Loss, 1-2.
So 1-2 actual matches played in Modern, and 4-5 in games. Not terrible considering I never play Modern. People did seem tickled by the deck.
Oh, but I was going to talk about drafting. Flash forward to Sept. 6. So now the chaos draft format is 2 options:
- Pay $12 and get a random assortment of Standard and other cheap packs.
- Pay $5 plus price of packs to play any 3 different packs you want.
So of course I did the buy-your-own for more excitement. I had some store credit to burn anyway, so the total cost was $10. I took War of the Spark because getting a planeswalker in draft is usually good, and then Masters 25 and Ultimate Masters for maximum power. The person next to me said I should open the strongest pack first, but I went with WAR first to ramp up the excitement.
Here is my draft, bottom left to top right:
Unfortunately, my WAR pack was very weak. The rare was Deliver Unto Evil and the planeswalker was Teyo. In 20-20 hindsight, Teyo would have been good in my deck. but I went with a pure good card in Spark Harvest. I can rarely resist common black removal when nothing else catches my eye. The next pack was Mirrodin, and it had a couple equipment more powerful than they normally make now. I felt like Viridian Longbow was both good and had combo potential (like if I got a Horseshoe Crab in M25). I just took random good stuff for the rest of the pack.
Pack 2 had a very good rare, although I wasn't really in white. After that, the blue and black were rolling again and I tried my best to get mana fixing.
Pack 3 I was taking Celestial Colonnade regardless because it's a $14 card, but it was also perfect for helping me splash Vindicate. A quick word on bounce-lands (Izzet Boilerworks and Rakdos Carnarium): Bounce lands are very strong in draft because they let you play fewer lands overall in your deck and still hit your mana. I was very happy to get 2 of them. The real coup here was Agent of Treachery and Murmuring Mystic. Those cards are super strong, the first one stealing anything and the second one making a constant stream of birds. Scholar of the Ages was also nice to get on the wheel, even though it was yet another 7-drop.
Here is the deck:
I was really excited about this deck, but a little worried because it was 4 colors and slow to get going. I had really strong removal and a great top end, full of cards that provided more than 1 card of value.
I played against another ambitious deck, white-red with several planeswalkers from WAR and Core Set 2020. In the first game, I was handling his stuff until he got to Parhelion mana. Second game was long and we ended up going to time. I was forced to make slightly suboptimal attacks with the Colonnade to try and win before turns ran out, and ended up just barely losing the game. Loss, 1-2.
I played a second match just for fun with someone else who had lost, with red-green monsters. He had a troublesome hexproof Vine Mare, and I lost the first game to it. Second game I got Murmuring Mystic out to block it with tokens forever, and once I assembled the loop of Soul Salvage and Scholar of the Ages (which lets me get removal spells back from the graveyard continuously for the low price of 10 mana), he conceded. Third game I somehow out-muscled a fast God-Pharaoh's Statue. Win, 2-1.
I liked this draft a lot and was sad to lose in one round. Good stuff.
Here's my Sept. 20 draft, from a slightly less expensive WAR, Modern Horizons, M25 pool:
The rare in my WAR pack was Tomik, who is good as a general value creature but not first-pick exciting. Davriel was also not super exciting but it saved me from starting another draft with Spark Harvest. The next couple packs were not that great also, so I just went with creatures and removal. Presence of Gond gave me a direction for my draft as the kind of true value card that I just love (once again, Horseshoe Crab would have been great). After that, Flickerwisp pulled me into white (at which point I wished I had Tomik), and Bloom Hulk pulled me toward +1/+1 counters. Mishra's Factory as second to last pick was very surprising, as it's a good card in almost any deck.
Pack 2 rare was Astral Drift, which doesn't give a lot of value in Chaos, but the foil Valiant Changeling caught my eye. After a few unexciting picks and a Pacifism, I grabbed Imposter of the 6th Pride as a way to possibly cast Valiant Changeling on turn 3. At this point I was firmly in white-green, but with the possibility of splashing blue off my 2 Azorius lands.
Pack 3 was a killer. It had a $16 Blood Moon plus a bunch of cards I would have loved in my deck, topped by Swords to Plowshares. I took the Blood Moon with heavy heart. After 3 straight fight spells, I got my next great payoff, Abzan Falconer. This worked well with all the +1/+1 counter cards I had been collecting. After that it was more of the same stuff, creatures and removal, but I was happy to get repeatable lifegain with Student of Ojutai right at the end of the pack.
Here's the deck I built:
I didn't have anything really bomby in this draft, but I felt like I at least had some synergy cards. There were a lot of picks I second-guessed after the draft, but the decisions were hard. Simic Ascendency was one card I passed that would have been pretty good, maybe in place of Angelic Exaltation, which only works when I have several creatures and can attack (parity/winning) but is bad when behind. I also missed a chance at the white-green bounce land early in a later pack, hoping it might wheel back to me.
I'm not sure if I was greedy or not in only playing 16 lands. Search for Tomorrow, Skittering Surveyor, and Hope Tender all provide some kind of ramp or land assistance.
Round 1 vs. Simic Counters
This guy had a lot of the cards I wished I had drafted. Simic Ascendancy, Salt Road Quartermasters, and Phantom Tiger (which I misread during the draft). First game he got stuck on 2 lands and I had a great draw, and it wasn't really a game. Second game he had some big creatures I couldn't find the right answers for. And third game he got his counters cards all going along with some timely combat tricks, and I got stuck on only white mana with green answers in hand. Loss, 1-2.
So that was that! I think my deck was better than it showed in one match, but not super.
So 3 weeks of fun but not winning play. I also got some sweet Commander games in, so that was good. Here is the notable stuff from the drafts:
Blood Moon and Colonnade (which I immediately traded, as indicated by the misspelled surrogate card in the photos) were the only real money, with Vindicate also worth a few dollars, but I got a few other Modern-playable cards and had fun.
Next weekend Throne of Eldraine releases, bringing some new things to limited. See you at the prerelease! Thanks for reading!
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