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!