FNM Throne of Eldraine Draft 2019-11-22

Hey folks, another week of Eldraine draft in the books!

This time we had 12 players, drafting as 2 tables of 6.  This meant only 3 rounds of play as well.

I've found that 7 players feels pretty similar to 8, but once you get down to 6, the quality of cards you see gets noticeably thinner (particularly in terms of duplicates and synergy cards), and you are more rewarded for finding the open colors.  That said, I railroaded the heck out of this draft.

Here's what I took, from bottom left to top right:

First pick Great Henge was easy.  The card does a ton of stuff to snowball the game in your favor, and all it asks is that you have a 4- or 5-power creature in the mid-game.  I hadn't played green yet in this format, and I've been impressed with the green decks I have faced, so I decided I was going to play green unless it was a completely dead color.  The next two picks I had the choice between Bake into a Pie or Outmuscle.  On pure power level, Bake is a more reliable removal spell (instant speed, kills anything, harder to thwart), but I went with Outmuscle because it is also very good and I really wanted to signal people downstream to stay out of green.  This also gave a strong signal that I was not taking black, and it's no surprise that the player to my left ended up in black.  5th pick Keeper of Fables made me think green must be open enough for my purposes, but it dried up a bit as the pack went on.  My second color was still entirely undecided, although I probably wasn't going to make it in mono-green.

Wildborn Preserver is a weird but fairly powerful creature, and I was happy to stay on-color.  For the next two picks, I stretched a little to make sure I could get some green creatures with high power for the Henge.  Deathless Knight also has nice interaction with Great Henge. Fourth pick Grumgully made it easy to set my second color as red.  He synergizes with the green non-human creatures I had been picking, and the first-pack Scorching Dragonfire was by far the strongest non-green card in my pool.  Green wasn't very open in the later part of the pack, but red was still pretty good.

Third pack my rare was Sundering Stroke, which is a very good but expensive spell.  There was no way I was going to get the bonus mode out of it in this deck, so I went the safer route with a second Grumgully.  A couple of packs were duds, but Syr Carah and the Garenbrig Paladin were excellent cards that I was delighted to find.  In the end, I don't think green was super open, but I managed to bully my way into enough green and find an open support color.

Here's my deck:

Some interesting decisions here.  First, I like to have plenty of removal, so I put Redcap Melee and Return to Nature, both of which are typically sideboard cards, into the main deck.  Redcap Melee is very good, and I think it's worth it to sacrifice a land for a 4-damage instant.  Second, I don't think 2 copies of Seven Dwarves or the Wildwood Tracker are really very good, and Sporecap Spider is usually more of a sideboard creature, but I decided to include them over cards like Garenbrig Squire because of the non-human theme.  This left Syr Carah and Garenbrig Carver as the only creatures that wouldn't benefit from Grumgully or trigger Wildborn Preserver and Keeper of Fables.

With a few red creatures pretty low on the curve, I couldn't go as heavy on green mana as I would have liked, so I ended up with a 10-7 split of red and green sources, plus Rosethorn Acolyte.

Here is what I had access to in sideboard:

Lots of humans and underpowered cards.  I hear Rosethorn Halberd is good, but I didn't try it.

How did it go?

Round 1 vs. White-Red Aggro.

This guy usually plays anything but aggro, but he got pushed into those colors this time and ended up with some very strong cards and a great deck.  Highlights included Bonecrusher Giant and Outlaws' Merriment.  First game he ran over my pretty good hand before I could get set up -- I played Keeper of Fables on turn 5 with a possibility of stabilizing the next turn with Great Henge, but he Trapped it in the tower and attacked for lethal.  Second game I did better but he had Outlaws' Merriment and his own Syr Carah, and I just couldn't keep up with the value.  Loss, 0-2.

Round 2 vs. Black-Red.

I didn't see much exciting at high rarity in this deck, but it wasn't bad by any means.  First game, Wildwood Tracker into Seven Dwarves into Grumgully was as good as advertised, and I won handily.  Second game he had a nice advantage, but I was about to turn it around.  I cleared his board and was at 8 life and about to win, when he played a 3/1 Rimrock Knight, gave it haste and 4 power with Crystal Slipper, attacked for 4, and then Flung it for the last 4.  In the deciding match we got off to pretty equal starts, but I was able to destroy Revenge of Ravens with a clutch Return to Nature and slowly build one of the most absurd board states I've ever had in limited, with both Henge and Grumgully to make most things enter with +2/+2, and Henge, Syr Carah, and Keeper of Fables drawing extra cards every turn.  Win, 2-1.

Round 3 I got a bye, which was a win, so I got prize money ($12) for a 1-1 "real" record for the second time in a row.  Lucky.  I don't think my deck was super, but I do think it had a chance in just about any matchup.  I've played red in every ELD limited event I've played, and now I've played every red/X color combination.

The other thing I did again was only draft 2 rares and 7 uncommons, going below par on both.  Luckily, Great Henge is about a $10 card, so I wasn't too bad on draft value this time.

Afterward, I got in a nice fun game of Commander and lost to a cool new Faeries deck behind the new Brawl commander Elala.

Thanks for reading!

FNM Throne of Eldraine Draft 2019-11-08

First an aside about Pioneer.  I love the idea of the Pioneer format, and I made my budget Modern Burn deck into a free Pioneer deck using only cards that I already own (although now I'm ordering 2 more Wizard's Lightning, which is dirt cheap).

https://www.mtgvault.com/nathangw/decks/pioneer-wr-wizard-prowess/

I've gotten a chance to play it a little casually.  It did well against an Arclight Phoenix/Thing in the Ice deck, with Searing Blood being good against the Phoenix.  It also did well against a Sram/Aetherflux Reservoir "storm" deck, as long as I could stay ahead of the Reservoir coming down.  I played one game against a black-green control deck and narrowly lost, getting the opponent to 1 life before they started gaining back too much life with Courser of Kruphix.

So that's exciting, but how about draft?

We had 10 people, so it ended up as a single pod for 3 rounds of play.  Here is my draft, from bottom left to top right:

My first rare was Doom Foretold, which I think is ok but not really where I want to start a draft.  The pack also had some good removal, but I have liked playing red in Eldraine and decided to try Syr Carah.  I followed up with a couple of my favorite red commons, and decided I was probably leaning toward red-black or red-white knights.  I'm not sure what is the correct pick slot for Gingerbrute.  I have found them obnoxious to play against, and they are pretty ok for the long game, especially if you have ways to pump them up.  In the rest of the pack, I found a couple more good red cards and some blue as well.

Pack 2 had several cards I liked, but I went with the biggest knight payoff.  Second pick was really tough -- Lucky Clover vs. Castle Embereth, and some other fine cards.  After I took the Clover, I saw a second one two picks later and passed it.  Once I ran across Inspiring Veteran, two Trapped in the Tower, and a Youthful Knight, I decided I was solidly in white-red.

Pack 3 had yet another white knight payoff card, and it was an easy pick.  After that I just loaded up on knights and adventure cards (for the Clover).

Here's my initial deck:

Deckbuilding was a little trickier than I expected.  I wanted to include the Clover, but I didn't get enough good adventures to make it work (Shepherd of the Flock and Merchant of the Vale aren't great to copy).  I was really disappointed to never see a second Brimstone Trebuchet.  In the end, I felt like I wanted to be an aggressive deck, and since my low drops were more white than red, I ended up cutting the powerful Syr Carah in favor of 16 lands and easier things to cast.  Trapped in the Tower is good when the goal is to push damage through, but I took out some of the more expensive removal spells.

Here's what I had in sideboard.  I could have switched to a more midrange version of the deck by replacing cheap cards with more powerful alternatives, but I didn't in the games I played.  After the first round, I replaced the Owl (which didn't fit very well, despite being a very good card) with Claim the Firstborn.

Results?

Round 1 vs. White-Black Knights.  This guy was seated to my left, and I could tell he was not having the draft he wanted.  His first pick was The Circle of Loyalty, and after that I think he was all over the place before settling into his colors.  I was surprised to go back to my draft order and see that some of the best white cards I drafted were passed to me by him in the second pack.  These games were tight races, but I won them both.  Win, 2-0.

Round 2 vs. ???

My opponent left without telling the store, so I got a free win.

Round 3 vs. White-Black Flying.  This was another knight-heavy aggressive deck, but I think it was quite a bit better than my first opponent's.  In the first game, I only drew 2 Plains until I was so far behind that I couldn't catch up.  In the second game, I had a brief board advantage until he used Silverflame Ritual to pump 4 creatures.   I also whiffed completely when digging for a knight with Acclaimed Contender, and my 2 Trapped in the Tower were mostly dead cards against his several fliers.  Loss, 0-2.

I had 2 wins, which was good enough for $10 store credit.  My drafted cards were worth almost nothing, so it was nice to get something back.  For once, I was below the pack average on both rares (2) and uncommons (8).  I don't think my deck was great, but it was far from horrible.

I look forward to drafting Throne again.  Maybe I'll get in on the green cards at some point?  I've found red to be pretty open so far and played it in every sealed or draft deck, and I haven't played green at all yet.

Thanks for reading!