Here's my draft, bottom left to top right:
Calix was a nice thing to open in pack 1. I don't think I've drafted any mythics yet in this format. This left me with one primary objective, if green-white was open: Get as many good enchantments as possible. Lucky for me, the next two packs had very good green enchantment creatures. The Nyx Lotus was a pure money pick, as it's rarely a good card in this draft format. The green cards kept coming, and I was feeling pretty close to mono-green after pack 1. The very late Chainweb Aracnir was a nice surprise, along with a couple other uncommons.
Second pack was amazing. In addition to the Dream Trawler, there was a foil Gravebreaker Lamia and several very good uncommons. Dream Trawler is one of the hardest cards to beat in this format, and I've seen advice to splash it if you open it, which is really unusual for a card with two double-color requirements. Fortunately, I was already in green, which is typically the best color for splashing. I saw less green in this pack because my neighbor to the left was also in green (even with all my good picks in pack 1, I was passing plenty of good cards also). I started to prioritize mana fixing heavily.
Third pack rare was Storm's Wrath, a card I've opened several times. I really struggled between Staggering Insight and Mystic Repeal. After that, it was just as much fixing and good cards in my colors as I could find. Nyx Herald and Eutropia were surprising good cards later in the pack.
Here's my basic deck:
The hard part here was that I could build a very reasonable white-green deck without Trawler, Eutropia, and Staggering Insight. But Eutropia and Dream Trawler both gave much-needed evasion to close out games. I tinkered with the exact cards some but mostly played this deck as my main.
Here are the sideboard cards:
The top row is my "aggro auras" sideboard, for when I take out the blue cards and all the mana fixing cards. Second row is my enchantment and artifact removal. I brought them in every match, and I probably should have had them main deck. The problem was that I wanted to make sure I didn't get run over by aggressive decks without many enchantment creatures, and I was already wasting a few slots on mana fixing.
So how did it go?
Well, I'd heard that this format can go to decking, and this was the first time I really experienced it.
First match was against white-blue. Game 1 I got the Dream Trawler out and rolling, and it seemed like I couldn't lose. But I wasn't careful enough and got it killed by a combat trick. Between all my lifegain stuff, I got up to 58 life this game, but I couldn't close it out. I also managed to get Calix up to ultimate and resurrect 3 enchantments. He was running a main deck Sweet Oblivion, and he milled me out. With less than 15 minutes on the clock, I sided to my white-green aggro cards and won a very quick one. Then in the third game we went to time. Draw, 1-1-1.
Second match was against Abzan (white-black-green). Game 1 was almost the same as my previous game 1. This time, my Dream Trawler was answered by Rise to Glory bringing back Dreadful Apathy from the graveyard (since it comes directly onto the battlefield, it doesn't have to target the creature it is attached to, so hexproof doesn't matter). I topped out at 40 life before he started bringing me back down, but eventually he milled out. I probably should have stayed in the main deck at 1-0, but I switched to the aggro deck. Anyway, he had a very aggressive draw and I made a pretty bad mistake.
He put Dreadful Apathy on my Nexus Wardens to attack past them, and on my turn I should have cast Return to Nature on it while his mana was tapped, but I talked myself into casting it in his next attack step instead. Of course, as soon as it was his turn, I realized with his mana up he could exile my creature in response to my cast. So I made one of the cardinal errors of making mistakes: following it with another mistake. I cast my spell anyway when he went to attackers, and of course he exiled my guy. After the match we were talking about it, and he suggested at that point I should have just held my Return to Nature and waited for a better time to use it. He was right. But I lost the game and we went to turns in game 3 and ended in a draw. He was ready to go so he gave me the win. Draw, 1-1-1.
Third match was against a good black-green deck. He had been drafting to my left, and he knew I had Dream Trawler, so he said "Ok, beat me fast with your Dream Trawler." And of course he won 2-0 very quickly. The most disheartening part was that in game 1, he completely countered my Binding of the Titans. Chapter 1 gave him cards to escape from the graveyard. Chapter 2 he had an Omen of the Dead to flash back the escape creature I was trying to exile. And Chapter 3 he had Cling to Dust to exile the creature I was trying to bring back. It was insane! In the second game, I mulliganed to 6 and gambled on a hand with a Plains, an Island, and a bunch of green cards that were good in the matchup. It took me 2 extra turns to find my third land, and by that time I was too far behind. Loss, 0-2.
So that was interesting. I learned some good lessons. On post-evaluation, I realize I probably should not have been playing Siona or Binding of the Titans. With only 3 auras in the deck, Siona failed to find an aura every time I cast her. She was slightly better after I brought in the 3 aggressive auras from the sideboard (and took out Staggering Insight). Binding of the Titans is ok, but it wasn't really helping as much as other cards might have. Staggering Insight itself was a little hit-or-miss in this particular deck. When the board started to clog up, it didn't do a ton. I would have liked more fliers to go with it, or at least a Captivating Unicorn to open things up.
Calix was excellent, and so was Destiny Spinner, but they had the odd effect of making me want to keep my Omens on the battlefield instead of sacrificing them to scry.
I never had a chance to put Eutropia into play, even playing through almost my whole deck twice. I think she would have been pretty valuable as a secondary way to make a big flying attacker.
So what did we get?
I drafted 4 rares, 11 uncommons, and 6 Nyx lands, so that was pretty good. I was able to draft a bunch of the lands because I ran into quite a few late packs with nothing in my colors. Nyx Lotus is about $5, with some possible long-term interest for EDH. Calix is about $3.50, Dream Trawler is about $2.50. and the Temple is about $1. So overall, I came pretty close to getting my $15 back.
Not the best result, but good learning experience. Thanks for reading!
No comments:
Post a Comment