FNM Throne of Eldraine Draft 2019-10-18

So the store vote and decisions by the owner resulted in a new format for drafts (as long as there are enough people): $15 cash. 3-4 rounds Swiss, no playoff.  0 losses and 1 loss get store credit, and all others get no prize, much like prerelease.  We had 14 for draft on this Astros playoff night, so it was 2 tables of 7 and 3 rounds of play.

I have been listening to the Limited Resources podcast and reading what I can about this format, so I felt pretty well prepared, even with only 1 previous draft of the format.

Here's how the draft went, from bottom left to top right:

First pick Irencrag Pyromancer was pretty easy - she is a build-around but very powerful once you get her ability to go off a couple times.  (Incidentally, this card has also been celebrated for its art featuring a character who is not the typical supermodel bimbo.)  There were other good cards, but I felt good about this.  Then I got lucky in the next pack because my neighbor had drafted a foil rare, leaving a first-pick quality rare in Bonecrusher Giant.  (I didn't find out until after the draft, but his foil rare was Feasting Troll King, a strong card that also kept him from taking the cards I wanted.)  Sage of the Falls directly supports the Pyromancer, and then I got a couple good red removal spells to cement myself in red.  Hushbringer isn't anything special but I rare-drafted it because I didn't see much else in that pack.  Then I saw blue cards that were better than I should have seen at that point in the pack, and I rejoiced that red-blue seemed pretty open.  The Lucky Clover was a nice wheel from my original pack -- I did not expect it to come back at all, and it was easy to take a flier on it and try to support it with adventure cards.

Second pack rare was Fires of Invention, a card I don't think is very good in draft but might be wrong about.  So I went with the common removal instead.  Then I got another Sage of the Falls, which was great.  The next couple picks were situationally good cards in my colors, but which didn't support the direction my deck was headed.  I was able to go all red-blue in this pack and pick up a few better cards late, which firmly indicated I was in the right colors.

Third pack had a beautiful showcase mythic Brazen Borrower that was a slam dunk first pick, and then the hits just kept coming.  White seemed to be pretty open as well, since Harmonious Archon is a ridiculous card to be available 4th pick (I had also seen an Acclaimed Contender somewhere in the early-mid part of Pack 2 or 3).  Was everyone else playing black-green?  But then, they weren't playing green with adventures, because Edgewall Inkeeper shouldn't have been available where I hate drafted it either.  I don't know what was going on, but this was a strange confluence of good opens and the rest of the table drafting in my favor.  Second to last pick So Tiny?  Ok!

I found out the player to my left was in red some also, but I think he was 3 colors?  And the player to my right had the Troll King deck.

So here's the deck I built:

This was a case where I had so many good cards that I couldn't play them all.  But I had some clear directions.  Play the cards that draw a second card for turn.  Play the adventures.  Then I had a choice.  Play the knights for a tempo game with Joust?  Or play the 1/4s and try to win with value?  I went with the latter.  It's possible that either one would have been right, and it's possible I should have played Joust even without knights, or something in the middle.  But I like this deck.  It wants to live long enough get to Midnight on the clock through a series of annoying delaying tactics.

After playing, Thrill of Possibility was the card I liked least, as I tended to draw it later in the game without much to discard.  I ended up using it over Into the Story because I wanted to make sure I had plenty of redraws for the early game in order to play only 16 lands.  Witching Well was another possible fit for that slot.

Here was the sideboard (a.k.a. the cutting board):

The sideboard includes the "knight package" and other cuts.  Notably, I did not play Dwarven Mine because I have been convinced that these lands aren't good if you can't play them untapped, and my manabase was sketchy to do so.  Better to get all of my mana untapped than to sometimes get a free 1/1 on turn 8.  My 50/50 manabase was already skewed a little more toward red than it should have been in order to help cast Searing Barrage with the adamant bonus.  I ended up not sideboarding at all in these matches, as I didn't want to go below 16 lands and my base deck matched up well with what I was facing.

So how did it go?  Very well, but not without some tricky games.

Round 1 vs. Black-Green Food
This deck had Gilded Goose and Murderous Rider in addition to various other food payoffs.  I mulliganed to 6 on the play.  I had to decide early on whether to try to pressure him before he had enough mana to stay alive on food.  I decided to play toward the long game, and I think it was the right choice.  I even bounced a Fierce Witchstalker twice, ceding him extra food just to buy time.  The single game took the entire match time, and I finally won in turns after my Midnight Clock went off.  Looking at the score pad, I had to do 47 damage (maybe 50) total in order to win, mostly with faerie tokens from Stolen by the Fae.  I also had to freeze, bounce, or chump block a double-digit sized Beanstalk Giant for 6 or 8 turns.  By the way, Midnight Clock is amazing, and the hardest part about playing it is remembering to put a counter on it on your opponent's turns (the second hardest part is remembering to draw your normal card for turn if it goes off on your own upkeep).  I missed two triggers and it meant it took a turn longer to ring midnight.  Win, 1-0.

Round 2 vs. Red-Green Grumgully
This is a good player who was stuck with an average deck - he opened some good black rares and then pivoted into red-green when the table wasn't giving him black (he and my first opponent were both drafting at the other table, not mine).  He had some good aggressive plays, but I was able to stabilize and win both games.  I made a minor but notable error in one game, where I should have tapped Midnight Clock for mana to help cast Corridor Monitor, and then untapped the clock, in order to have enough mana to put an extra counter on the Clock.  He also made some next-level plays, like using a spell to destroy his own creature so that my adventure spell would be countered and I would lose the creature side.  Win, 2-0.

Round 3 vs. Blue-Black.
Here was a matchup against another 2-0 player.  His deck had Ayara, Lochmere Serpent, and Blacklance Paragon.  The first game was one for the ages, where he kept threatening to win and I had just enough answers, while also casting my Merfolk Secretkeeper three times with Lucky Clover out to mill 24 cards off his deck.  At the end of the game, he had 3 Swamps and no Islands after sacrificing them all to the Serpent, and he had 24 life while I was at 1.  He was digging for an Island to attack with the Serpent, and then he counted his graveyard and found there were none left in his deck.  Again, the Clock gave me the answers I needed just in time.  The second game was anticlimactic, as I stalled his creatures with Lucky Clover adventures and won with fliers.  Win, 2-0.

So 5-0 in games was really nice, a combination of pretty good play and a very good deck.  Most of my games were on the draw or mulligans, too.  Sometimes I have decks that are practically all commons, so it's nice to get some sweet rares.  All of the rares had their awesome moments, but Midnight Clock was the most fun.  Also, the 1/4s and 2/5s did a ton of work making opponents have no good attacks.  A 4/4 trampling Fierce Witchstalker doesn't do anything against a few of those.

The prize for going 3-0 was $30, which happens to be exactly the price of a Collector Booster, so I tried that lottery again.  Here are my draft rares and mythics, and then the collector booster contents:

I drafted 7 rare/mythic, and 10 uncommon, which is unusually high.  Of all this, the pretty Brazen Borrower is the overall winner at $23.  Bonecrusher Giant and Harmonious Archon are both between $1 and $2.  The Collector Booster has lots of good foil draft commons, but the money slots aren't very good.  Knights' Charge is from the Brawl decks and is about $5 but will probably drop when the reprints hit the market soon.  The borderless Wildborn Preserver is about $4, and foil Yorvo is maybe $2 but is sure to drop to almost nothing over time.  The Faerie token, which has a curly banana Food on the other side, is also between $1 - $2.  I'm not sure whether the alternate art for Reaper of Night is awesome or whether it looks too much like a Kiss poster.  In any case, this was good value for my $15 entry and terrible value for my $30 of "free" money.

Thanks for reading!

FNM Throne of Eldraine Draft 2019-10-04

First draft of ELD!  There were a little over 20 people, so they did a Swiss draft (instead of the more recent pod drafts they had been doing). I was at a table of 7. 

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

This set strongly rewards near-monocolor decks with the adamant mechanic and some strong cards with multiple mana symbols of a single color, so I wasn't sure if that meant I needed to commit early or if I could wait like in a normal draft.  So I started with a land that could be played in any white deck but is best with a high amount of white.  There were good uncommons in the pack also, and it wasn't a super easy pick.  Next few picks were the best removal in the pack, and then I saw Brimstone Trebuchet, a card that I think is very strong.  It blocks faeries, benefits from knights, and does consistent damage in board stalls.  Revenge of Ravens is a card I had a hard time against in prerelease, and I think is pretty strong.  It's like a -1/-0 to your opponent's attacking creatures that also damages them.  Then I got some more removal and some low end knights to go with the Trebuchet.

Pack 2 I was still very open.  Gadwick the Wizened is a very strong Limited card, and I felt like I was ready to push red-blue with it.  The problem was blue just wasn't very open, and I took more red and artifacts instead.  In hindsight, I would rather have picked Slaying Fire from that pack.  Rampart Smasher was another big multi-red creature to go along with a couple of adamant cards from pack 1, but then I tried blue a bit in the middle of the pack before finishing with some artifacts and some unassuming black creatures.

Pack 3 rare was Faeburrow Elder, a good rare that I was sure I wasn't playing (I had been passing good green cards all draft).  The foil Faerie Vandal gave me hope for the red-blue "draw 2" deck, as did the follow up Mad Ratter.  Then a few more fine red cards, a good black knight, a reach for the blue draw spell, and - YES! - another Brimstone Trebuchet.

So what the heck was I playing?  Gadwick is so good, I put together the red-blue deck.  And I looked at it.  And I looked at my black cards.  The pro to playing blue was some very strong late game cards, at the cost of some difficult mana costs.  I only had two cards that could draw a second card for turn, so the draw-two payoffs were not going to be good.  The pro to playing black was more knight synergies, some graveyard loops, and easier mana.  So here's what I played:

And I'll tell you what, some of those black cards right at the bottom of the pick order turned out to be pretty good.  The starting lineup for the deck included 8 knights, plus 3 cards that can get a knight back from the graveyard.  The Barrow Witches can even loop with Order of Midnight if you have enough mana.  So my best draw was a Trebuchet and a couple of knights to get a good curve-out and extra damage, plus a Searing Barrage or Scalding Cauldron to kill something without getting in the way of my curve.  Note that this is a zero-rares deck.

Here are the sweet blue cards I ditched for this deck.  I had a pile of Islands ready in case I felt like siding in the blue stuff, but the black stuff ended up being fine.

Here's my other sideboard stuff:

I usually brought in one of the two artifact creatures for a land on the draw, or I would replace Jousting Knight when it was particularly bad in the matchup.  Jousting Knight is very bad, but it is also a knight, and it does present difficult blocks in the late game when you have mana to spare.  But if I was seeing something like Youthful Knight in the opponent's deck, I would switch it out.

Round 1 vs. UG Faeries
I had a bad first game and got run over, and I was close to stable in the second game but couldn't overcome his fliers.  Edgewall Innkeeper also drew him a ton of cards.  But he didn't want to stick around and gave me the win.  Win, 0-2.

Round 2 vs. WB
I don't entirely remember what was in his deck.  I think I mulliganed both games, and his deck was very good.  He ended up going undefeated on the night.  Loss, 0-2.

At this point I was 1-1 but hadn't won a game.  I think I had also drawn only 1 Trebuchet over 4 games, and I seemed to always have Jousting Knight in my opening hands.

Round 3 vs. Mardu Knights.
Now we got things working finally.  Trebuchets aplenty and just better curve outs than my opponent's clunky 3-color manabase.  Win, 2-0.

Round 4 vs. Temur Draw-Two
This was a pretty cool deck, but it too fell to the Trebuchet pelting.  In our second game, he was seeing a ton of cards from various loot effects, but he couldn't find a good answer for Revenge of Ravens and was using food just to get his life high enough to try to attack.  Win, 2-0.

Round 5 vs. WR Knights
This time I think I just had the better Trebuchet deck.  I curved out into the 5/5 giant in game 1 and he had no answer.  In game 2, I pinged him to deck with Trebuchets.  Win, 2-0.

Wait, so I went from losing my first 4 games to winning 6 in a row?  With the round 1 freebie, I was 4-1 and made 4th place to begin top 8.

Top 8 Round 1 vs. BG Garruk
First game I was fortunate that he didn't draw enough lands, and I won pretty easily.  Second game he got Garruk into play and that card is straight up unbeatable.  If you don't have evasion on board, he makes wolves every turn that you can't kill or else he gives +3/+3 to everything.  If you do have an evasive creature, he kills it, draws a card, and then starts making wolves every turn.  Anyway, I played 2 more turns and conceded.  Third game was much fairer.  I got Revenge of Ravens out, but he had some very big and hard to kill creatures like Wicked Wolf, Fierce Witchstalker, and Deathless Knight.  He fought through my removal and kept himself alive with food to eventually overcome my defenses.  Loss, 1-2.

So that wasn't bad at all.  7-6 record is reasonable for a first draft, and I would draft Trebuchets again, next time without getting distracted by triple-blue blue cards.

Everyone at the tournament got a "Promo Pack," with an FNM promo and 2 weird stamped cards.  Here's mine:

Not bad.  I wanted a copy of Elderspell anyway.

Here is the rare/good stuff in my draft:

That's about as bad as it gets for value, although these are good cards, so who knows long term.  In all, I drafted a below-average 2 rares and an above-average 12 uncommons.

But wait, there's more!  For ELD they are selling "Collector Packs" as a new way to make a lot of profit off a little cardboard.  The pack has 15 cards, including a bunch of normal foils, a few "showcase" adventure cards (with alternate art and frame but not foil), a card from the Brawl precon decks (weird, but sure), a foil double-sided token, and one "extended art" rare or mythic.  The pack costs $30, which is $2 per card if you're counting.  I don't know how hard these will be to find in the long run, so I decided to see what's up while the store had a few in stock.

It's not obvious from the photo, but everything is foil except for The Circle of Loyalty, Tome of Legends (from Brawl), Tuinvale Treefolk, Elsa, and Rimrock Knight.  The Circle and foil Wishclaw Talisman are about $10 each and Tome of Legends is $3 (as of Friday), and the rest are mostly under a dollar.  Oddly, the Faerie // Food token card is also about $2 on TCGPlayer.  The prettiest card in the pack is the Silverflame Squire.  And the Ugliest is Wishclaw Talisman, which in addition to having gross dark art, also has some weird bubbling on the surface and a shallow crease on the back.

I already contacted WotC and they're sending me a new one, so that's nice.

Anyway, good times in Eldraine!  More to come!  Thanks for reading!