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!
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