Everyone was at one draft table, which makes signals a little weaker and ensures that you'll rarely get a second shot at any good card you pass. Here's my draft, from bottom left to top right:
Shadowspear is an amazing equipment, and as a colorless card it was an easy first pick. This pack had good uncommons as well, but I don't think I would ever pass Shadowspear in this format. This set doesn't have many good artifacts, but Entrancing Lyre is a good one too. It can usually remove their best creature, and if you have the mana for it, you can have two things tapped down for your attack (one on their turn and one on yours). This left me wide open on third pick, and I was able to settle into the colors other people were passing. Hero of the Winds and Commanding Presence led me toward a white heroic/aura plan, so my biggest task was to figure out my second color. Return to Nature is a great removal spell in this format, and I was shocked to find it at 7th pick, but then the red cards seemed better toward the end of the pack.
Pack 2 was a tough call. The rare was Eidolon of Obstruction, which is an unexciting rare (it plays pretty much like Youthful Knight, which was common in Eldraine). There were some pretty good commons, but I felt like Reverent Hoplite had the biggest upside since token creatures play well with the heroic ability of Hero of the Winds. The next couple picks were things I didn't want to spend such high picks on, but Banishing Light at 4th pick was great. It's one of very few cards that can answer almost anything in the format. The rest of the pack was cards that go well in the red-white aura/heroic deck I was working on. Karametra's Blessing in particular was a card I was very happy to find.
Storm's Wrath doesn't exactly synergize with the cards I was taking, but I think sweepers like this really go into any deck until proven otherwise. I took a few more just solid cards for the deck and then was rewarded with Anax, who is both a big beater and a nice buffer against removal. The bottom of the pack was mostly filler.
An interesting side note for this set is that the full-art Nyx lands are more desirable/valuable than normal basic lands, so people draft them instead commons that they won't play. This results in slightly better nonland cards being available toward the end of packs. I really like when sets are built with cards in the land slot that are desirable for drafting.
So despite having 3 really good green cards, I was clearly going red-white:
The hardest parts of building this deck were balancing pump/aura spells vs. creatures, and cutting 5-drops. I started with 16 or 17 creatures likely to make my deck, and I cut it down to 12, which is lower than normal for an aggressive draft deck, because I needed enough combat tricks and auras to take advantage of the creatures' abilities and to make Karametra's Blessing usually function as a 1-mana counterspell. Most of my cuts were at the top end of the curve, but the bottom end got hit too. Oread of Mountain's Blaze was a card I ended up being very impressed with, because adding power/toughness boosts to a 1/3 results in a much better brawler than adding the same boosts to a 3/1 like Leonin of the Lost Pride, which I cut. Also, being an enchantment creature is an upside with Karametra's Blessing.
I had 2 very good 5-drops and 4 more that were good enough to consider. I feel like there are decks where Skophos Warleader would be an all-star finisher, and it would have certainly had potential in this one. On top of that, the 6-mana flier Archon of Falling Stars is the kind of card that you almost always want to play in draft. In the end, I felt like I'd rather stick with my main plan and hope to pressure with instant speed spells rather than draw enough lands to stick 5- and 6-mana battlecruisers. Interesting in hindsight, the Eidolon of Obstruction that I passed would have easily made this deck, but the Reverent Hoplite that I picked instead did not.
Arena Trickster and Nyxborn Courser were both filler creatures that I wanted just for my curve (rather than playing a better 5-drop). Trickster is intended for the blue-red "cast spells on your opponent's turn" deck in Limited, but it had mild synergy with some of my spells.
I considered going down to 16 lands, but I played it safe at 17 and only cut to 16 on the draw.
To emphasize how much flexibility my pool had, here's my sideboard:
Entrancing Lyre is a main deck card almost every time, but I felt like I didn't have the flexibility with mana to rely on it as a relatively expensive removal spell in game 1. On turns 3-5 I want to be casting creatures and auras, and holding up mana for Karametra's Blessing, Indomitable Will, or the activated abilities of some of my cheap creatures. Triumphant Surge is another removal spell I felt was just too expensive and conditional. Mirror Shield looks like a great way to protect a creature buffed with auras, but again it costs 4 mana that I'd rather be using to pump power.
So how did it go?
Round 1 was against a grindy black-green deck with at least 3 Moss Vipers. First game I won pretty handily, and the second game I brought in the Entrancing Lyre and used it to great effect to keep pressure on during my attack step. This game showed the weakness of Hero of the Winds and Transcendent Envoy -- several turns I could only attack for 1 or 2 damage because I couldn't find my pump spells. Win, 2-0.
Round 2 was another white-red player. He had a lot of the cards I had grudgingly passed during the draft, and our decks were quite different from each other. He also had a Purphoros with the constellation alternate art. First game I made a 5/8 vigilant Oread of Mountain's Blaze. He eventually got a Captivating Unicorn, which is a very frustrating card to play against with so many flash enchantments and enchantment creatures in the format, as well as an ineffective Purphoros, but I had just enough power to cross the finish line. I also made a mistake in this game, missing the "create a 1/1 human soldier" trigger on Commanding Presence at least twice. Second game he had the better draw and won. Third game was back according to plan, and I think I still had an unused Banishing Light in hand when I won, "just in case." Alseid did some great work as a first turn play with its lifelink. He played Purphoros twice in the match but was never able to get enough devotion to make it a creature (and lost both games). Win, 2-1.
Round 3 was against someone brand new to Texas who was playing at this store for the first time. Very nice guy and I hope he comes back. He was playing blue-black Kiora Bests the Sea God. This card has been nicknamed "Kiora Wins the Game," and I didn't realize just how true that is until I saw it in action. On the turn after they play it, you have your last chance to attack (into an 8/8 hexproof) before all hell breaks loose. The next turn, all your stuff is tapped for 2 turns and they get to attack you for free, and the last turn they steal your best thing and attack again. This means that you can't really survive the card by playing creatures onto the board as chump blockers, and the only feasible way to beat it is to remove the saga itself. So in game 1 I had built a good board presence, had no idea how he got to 2-0 with this deck full of filler, and then he played Kiora and won. I sided out my less effective cards (Storm's Wrath, Dreadful Apathy, Mountain) and brought in pure gas (Infuriate, Leonin of the Lost Pride, Aspect of Manticore). Second game on the play I was just fast enough to race his mana, and third game I had a dominating draw with Alseid and Shadowspear both gaining me tons of life. I finished with 45 life and Banishing Light in hand waiting for Kiora to appear (with Shadowspear out, I would have had my choice between Kiora and the Kraken token, which would have been an interesting decision in itself). Win, 2-1.
Two notable things happened in this match. Early in game 2, I had a situation where I made a feel-bad mistake after incorrectly assessing timing. I attacked with the 3/1 Leonin, with Karametra's Blessing in hand. He cast Threnody Singer, which was going to debuff my Leonin to 2/1 and block it. I looked for a moment and then said, "Karametra's Blessing with the trigger on the stack," not processing that the Singer wasn't blocking yet. He started to say ,"ok, trigger on the stack..." and I suddenly realized I wanted to catch it blocking and didn't care about the triggered ability and said "Oh wait, I want to cast this after you block, is that ok?" He looked for a second and then agreed to let me do it, but I immediately felt bad and told him he doesn't have to let me. I shouldn't have asked to change the order. In hindsight, I realized (a) neither of us caught that Blessing wouldn't give hexproof anyway because Leonin didn't meet the requirements, and (b) it is possible that I would have preferred to deal the 4 (or 5 if we both missed the interaction) damage to him rather than kill the Singer in combat (and it's possible but unlikely he would have chosen to block my 4/3). So anyway, mistakes were made, and I don't intend to do that again.
Second thing was we found a really tricky rules interaction that no one at the store was sure how to process. He played Ichthyomorphosis on my Transcendent Envoy that was enchanted with Commanding Presence. The weird part of this is that Commanding Presence grants a normal ability (first strike), a triggered ability, and +2/+2 all in the same text block. It was clear that it would lose the first two, but we and the store experts/judges weren't sure about the boost. In looking at the rulings for Ichthyomorphosis, I think we did it right -- it kept the +2/+2 and lost the other abilities, making it a 2/3 with no other abilities. In the third game, he used Ichthyomorphosis again, on Anax with Shadowspear attached. It became a 1/2, but I could have re-equipped the spear to give it the trample and lifelink again. Weird stuff.
So the end result was that I was the only 3-0 player, with a game record of 6-2. Not bad! The payout was $25.
This time I drafted 2 rares (below average) and 11 uncommons (above average). The only card with any real value was Shadowspear at about $5. The Nyx lands are pretty popular right now and mostly have market price of about 40 - 50 cents on TCGPlayer.
All in all, I felt like I did a good job assessing the cards in this draft, both for drafting and for deck building/sideboarding. I never drew Storm's Wrath, and I only drew Shadowspear once, which makes the result even more impressive. All of the 2-drops in the main deck were great, and the heroic mechanic in this set has to be scary to play against, as you can take surprise losses or trades in combat when the heroic player only has 1 or 2 mana available, and on defense you can just lose the game out of nowhere. With 3 creatures attacking, for example, Infuriate on a heroic creature can add 6 extra damage for 1 mana.
I also think I did a good job of being judicious with removal. A deck like this doesn't have to remove everything, because it either ends up making them play from behind and lose creatures in combat, or it wins races by surprise with a flurry of combat buffs. Banishing Light is a truly precious commodity to be saved for the biggest bombs that are indestructible or otherwise hard to answer.
Thanks for reading!
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