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!
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