13-Player Repack Draft (WUBRG Drafting)

12 students showed up to my free draft yesterday!  I can't believe it!  I haven't run that big of a magic event since grad school!  I was ill prepared: I ran out of sleeves for everyone and barely had enough land.  Still, we managed to have fun and make it a worthwhile draft!

I got lots of multi-colored lands (caveat: I made the recipe for these repacks) but I may have hurt myself by taking them over some removal I saw.  (Especially given how well I drafted on Friday.)  Nevertheless, I felt pretty confident when reviewing my picks.

Talon of Pain is a workhorse.

Notes:

• The two people that saw Draco before me were both commenting that I should take it.  (I wasn't sure what it was until I saw it.)  I have a bit of a reputation.  As the draft went on, I realized it would be bad for me to actually run it, but I ran it anyways.  That became important later...
  
• I didn't take any cards that needed two of the same color!  I was really excited about that and it made it really easy for me to cast all of my spells.
• I got lots of removal, which was all based around little bits of damage, but much of it was repeatable.  

As I mentioned above, I kept Draco in, but I also kept Stratadon in.  I had so many multi-lands that didn't have basic land types that these turned out to be a bit detrimental.  Here was my deck after cuts:

This is possibly the flattest mana curve I've ever had.

 

Since we had 13 people, we set up single game rounds and just played as many as we each could.  This was a bit problematic for a few pairs because their games lasted over an hour.  (In hindsight I probably should have just acted as a facilitator and not played myself.)

I was almost never color-screwed. I think that in three games I started off with a turn 1 guildgate, followed by Gateway Plaza on turn 2, which was great.  I went 3-2, and I think my games were in the following order.  (I will certainly edit any mistakes as I learn about them!)

In round 1, paired against a Bant deck, I got both Infused Arrows out on turns 4 and 5, with four counters each.  I then got a few creatures out and was able to keep my opponent's board clear long enough to push through for the win.  I was really excited because my opponent was able to cast a Scaled Wurm off of some ramp and I got it off the board immediately.  1-0.

In round 2, I was matched up against an opponent running mono-green stompy.  On turn 2 they got out Scorned Villager.  I couldn't cast a spell on my second turn, so it flipped on their turn 3, and they powered out a Spined Wurm with their five mana.  I stalled as well as I could, but I got shorted on lands and could not get answers fast enough.  The Spined Wurm survived with Trollhide on it and I died from that and other creatures.  1-1.

In round 3, I fought an aggressive Rakdos deck.  We traded creatures to removal a bunch.  I took a bunch of damage to Battle-Rattle Shaman, then made a bad decision to Arrest it.  My opponent immediately dropped a more threatening creature.  I thankfully drew into removal, then backed it up with my own creature.  My opponent used Spontaneous Combustion (sacrificing the shaman) to reset the board, but I was down 7-14.  We had a few "draw, land" turns and then I drew into a chain of creatures that were enough to win the game.  2-1.

(I may have the next two rounds backwards.)

In round 4, I was up against another 5-color deck!  They had pulled Sisay and drafted for it, but never got another legend.  They didn't have the multicolored land support that I did, however, and got stuck without any green sources after eight turns and had to use a Diabolic Tutor to get a forest.  Up until that point I had kept things locked down with removal (thank you Infused Arrows) and was pinging each turn with a Razorfin Hunter.  I drew like a pro and kept the board locked down while I added creatures faster than my opponent to win.  3-1.

In my last round, I faced a Grixis deck, played by a Rakdos-enthusiast.  My cards were coming out slowly compared to my opponent, but I thought I was going to be able to catch up.  I played my Scab-Clan Giant--an excellent card--thinking I was going to get a good 1-for-0.  Instead, my opponent followed that up with an amazing combo:

Oof.  Act of Treason followed by Mind Extraction caused me to empty my hand of all my colored cards.  Brutal!  I did not recover from that.  The Heliophial was able to take out a creature, and I nearly stabilized at 2 life.  Unfortunately, I got stuck with only Draco in hand, but couldn't cast it. 

1 mana short.

I lost soon thereafter.  3-2.

This was great fun!  I met some cool people outside of our department and played five great games of magic against five people.  We didn't complete as much of our potential round robin as possible, but I think everyone enjoyed themselves.

Angled to cut the names out.

It's unlikely that I'll get to run another one of these before the year is up, but I'm really glad I managed to make two happen this semester!

Magic Packs Wedding Gift

I was given an excellent wedding gift from my long-time friend Phil: Magic Boosters!  Specifically, five boosters: Coldsnap, Rivals of Ixalan, Dominaria, Battlebond, and Dominaria United.  

 

He told me that the dates of these packs are meaningful to the little family I'd just built, so here's what I've put together:

• Coldsnap, July 2006.  This is from far before I met my spouse, but this is when I was doing lots of drafts with Phil.  This is clearly an homage to our friendship, not my marriage.  To be honest, I can't wait to draft this pack!
  
  
• Rivals of Ixalan, January 2018.  It was during this set's run that my wife and I had our first date and then started officially dating.
  
  
• Dominaria, April 2018.  This is when the two of us introduced our daughters to each other and started doing things as a group of four.
  
  
• Battlebond, June 2018.  This is when I met all of my wife's friends and family at her daughter's birthday party.  (I also did some Battlebond drafts with my daughter and we won one of them!)
  
  
• Dominaria United, September 2022.  This is right after our family made our big move.  We united and made a big change together.  We both started new jobs during this set's run. 
   

Of the five of these, I am planning to open Rivals of Ixalan, Dominaria, and Dominaria United at my next chaos draft.  I might substitute Coldsnap in if there are other packs opened with snow-covered lands, or the Battlebond if there's any chance of a team format.  

Thank you, Phil!

Wilds of Eldraine 2 (WUBRG Drafting)

My local store, Intergalactic Plastic, ran a Wilds of Eldraine draft last night.  These "throwback drafts" are both a blessing and a curse for me.  A blessing because I like mixing things up and a curse because I have so far missed all my chances for a Murders of Karlov Manor draft.  I understand the desire, though: most people who are able to draft often are getting burned out of the current set by now.  I won't complain, especially since WOE is really fun and I had a blast last night.

I looked back at my notes from the previous WOE draft I did.  A lot of that was very specific to the way that draft went, though: Hatching Plans is really good with the Bargain mechanic, and it was very unlikely that I'd get to pull two Hatching Plans.  

My first picks from packs 1 and 2 were Azorius mythics: Hylda and Will!  I didn't run either of them, even though I probably had enough support to get Hylda running.  I also was easily swayed by the prettiness of the Enchanted Tales cards to pick many of them.  (A Curiosity from my first pack even wheeled, and that did amazing work for me.)  Also:

• I was smart about prioritizing helpful lands high, but even then I only got 4.  Two Scarecrow Guides helped round out my mana-fixing needs.
• Multi-colored adventures were a great WOE-specific thing to draft.  (I ran 4 of them.)  
• I drafted a ton of red removal, which turned out to be the best part of my deck.

Here's a photo of all of my pulls:

Hylda and Will sat out this time.

I had a hard time making cuts.  I cut Will because I didn't think the ability would be very helpful.  I cut Hylda because I didn't think I had enough tapping support.  I did go down to only one white card: Charmed Clothier, which was excellent.  Here's the deck I ran:

So much "direct damage".  (I won't stop using that term.)

In round 1, I faced an aggressive Boros deck with lots of little creatures and combat tricks.  I got lucky in that my removal paired up well against those little creatures and that they got a bit mana flooded.  In both games I took quite a bit of damage early on, but came back to overwhelm them.  We finished early and were able to get through most of a third game before the round ended.

I faced my fiercest opponent in round 2.  They had a Sultai Food-and-Adventures deck that was very effective.  Our first game lasted so long that the other matches at our table ended before we finished.  To be fair, we had a bit of a rules quandry that took around five minutes to sort out.  I got stuck at 3 or 4 land and was on the back foot for much of the game.  I went down to 2, but crawled back up with the help of some food and, of course, a large helping of red burn.  They got an Icewrought Sentry that threatened to break through my defenses.  I managed to bounce or keep it tapped for a string of turns while I got in for chunks of damage here and there.  Then I finally had enough big beaters on the board to safely swing big two turns in a row.

In the second game of round 2, we were extremely low on time, so we played quickly.  We made good use of the time (my opponent was desperate for a win and I wasn't going to take away the chance by slow playing) and the board was pretty jammed up when time was called.  Here's the state on turn 3 after time: 

On turn 4 of time, I was able to get enough damage in to win the game.

Round 3 was crazy.  My opponent was running a mono-white mix of aggro and control that seemed very strong.  Especially when, in game 1, they played Blind Obedience, followed a few turns later by Dawn of Hope.  

Brutal.

With every spell they cast, they could pay three more to Extort and also draw a card.  Thankfully, Johann showed up in both games and helped me match the value my opponent was getting.  

Thankfully also a combo!

In the first game Johann comboed with Season of Growth.  If I couldn't cast the top spell from my library, I would drop a creature, scry that card away, and then have a second chance of a playable spell up top.  That value helped me win the first game.  In the second game, my opponent got the combo again.  Luckily I found Johann and Curiosity on a flying otter that got in every turn.  With the extra card draw, most turns I got to play a spell off the top. I managed to win on turn 2 after time was called.  

I never expected to go 3-0, but this deck did work really well.  So many of the cards created a ton of value and I only had one game where I was short on my colors.  The red burn is really strong in this set, and although I took a ton, I also passed a lot.  I'm very excited that this came together so well!

No Repeats Chaos Draft (WUBRG drafting)

I chaos drafted with some friends today.  The best part: we didn't open any two of the same pack.  Here's what we opened:

Am I getting too predictable in my pack choices?

The drafting started really well.  Three dual lands came around easily and I grabbed them, and I expected to get more.  Somehow I didn't keep my eyes open for other modes of mana fixing, and that cost me in the end.  I often had unplayable cards in my hand because of one or two missing colors.  I really dropped the ball there.  

The atmosphere was excellent, however.  The experienced player to my right opened the Mystery Booster second so that they would pass to the right, towards the younger players.  They were smart enough to know that I would have a hard time resisting the playtest card and wanted the younger players to have a chance to see and play with it.  (It worked; they took it.)

After three packs, here's what my picks looked like: 

As always, these are left-to-right, front-to-back.

 

You may notice that I got a single Tales of Middle Earth card, but the remainder of the picks are only from Wilds of Eldraine, Brothers' War, and Strixhaven.  That's because the player to my right pulled the trigger on his Agent of Acquisitions to claim the rest of the Tales pack.  

Nevertheless, this was a really fun draft deck, mostly because I got really lucky during the drafting:

1. General's Enforcer tabled a few times and I grabbed it because I like to run multi-colored things.
2. In pack 2, I saw Halana and Alena, Partners and Errant and Giada.  I was very excited about the cross-set synergy.
3. Finally, in pack 3, I opened War of the Last Alliance then immediately saw Greta and Loran.  Together with the Ognis I had already found, I was ready for my legendary tribal deck to go off.
   

Here's what the deck looked like:

Only three non-basics, and only in three colors.  Who am I?

I don't think I made the best choices for the deck, but I never went back and fixed it because the games just kept going and it was too fun to play.

In the first round, I was up against Gruul aggro, which went very smoothly.  They played some nice mana-fixing rocks and I sat with dead cards in my hand for most of the two games I lost.  I put up a fight in game two, but it wasn't enough.  In the first game, I actually thought I had a chance to come back from 1 life after I played a Bloodfell Caves, went up to 2, and had enough to win on blocks against everyone but a 1-power attacker.  The caves would have given me enough fixing to run stuff out.  Unfortunately, my opponent had removal and that was that.  0-1.

In the second round, I faced an aggressive Orzhov deck that also put me on the ropes early.  Once again I was stuck with dead cards in my hand and I lost in two games.  In both games I had trouble dealing with Black Knight's protection from white. 0-2.

In the third round I played against a slick Simic deck with a neat balance of aggro and control.  (Is that what midrange means?)  I lucked out in both games, however, and managed to get my legendary human gang moving with General's Enforcer.  

Greta also combos well with Meticulous Excavation

After Greta, Errant and Giada and Halana and Alena both came down in excellent fashion.  I ground out two wins, but neither of them were easy.  1-2.

This was an amazing draft!  I loved going through cards from 12 different sets, and it was even more amazing with the inclusion of a Mystery Booster.  I would love to do this again, even it meant another 1-2 showing!

Chaos Draft: Unfinity in the Mix (WUBRG Drafting)

I got to run a little chaos draft on Saturday with three other people.  I thought I was in real trouble because I didn't take enough lands.  As it turns out, I got lucky enough that it worked out anyways.  

Here's what we drafted:

Nine different sets in twelve packs, pretty good.

Yes, there are three Unfinity packs, all taken by the same person.  This brought up some unexpected rules questions that we had to decide on the spot, because the normal Unfinity draft rules don't work very well.  Here's what doesn't really work and what we decided to do, mid-draft:

• Attractions.  
• Normal, official rule: "If you want to use Attractions in Limited formats (Booster Draft and Sealed Deck), your Attraction deck must contain at least three Attraction cards and may contain duplicates. In Booster Draft specifically, Attractions are drafted like other cards in the booster pack. If you don't draft at least three Attraction cards, you won't be able to use an Attraction deck."
• We just had to straight up ignore this rule.  If you only drafted one or two Attractions, that's enough for a deck.  If you manage to get some awesome combo out of that, then good for you.
• Stickers:
• Normal, official rule: "In Booster Draft events, sticker sheets aren't drafted. After you open an Unfinity booster pack, remove the sticker sheet before drafting any cards. Each game, choose up to three sticker sheets from among the ones you opened. Again, you can use the same ones each game or switch it up."
• This really wouldn't work, because then only the player who opened Unfinity would get access to stickers.  In this case, it would highly incentivize everyone to open at least one Unfinity pack, which would make the draft a bit less chaotic.  
  
• Instead, we put all the sticker cards in a collective pile and agreed that when someone did an action with stickers, they could browse through the cards and choose any of the available stickers. 
   

Those rules seemed to sit well with everyone, and they worked out just fine during play.  (I had one sticker-relevant card, and I just ignored it's effect, mostly because I didn't have many tickets.

Here's what I pulled in the draft:

Left-to-right, front-to-back, as normal.

I failed to pull any Open an Attraction cards, so those Attractions were useless.  The biggest problem here is the lack of lands.  I did not get enough dual lands.  I had to resort to pulling non-land fixing, like the Nervous Gardener and Wose Pathfinder.  Both of those are good cards, but I don't know that I would have taken them as early as I did.  

Another thing I worked for was 6-mana spells to combo with the Imoti that I grabbed second overall.  I tried very hard to get more, but there just weren't that many.

Cutting was tough.  Here's the deck that I ran with:

Two white and two red mana-producing lands was tough to look at.

 

Since I didn't have enough mana-fixing lands, I planned early on to revert to my strategy of choosing to be on the draw instead of the play whenever I got to pick.

In the first round, I was up against a Temur value deck.  Both games were a big comeback for me, as I took an early beating, then managed to claw my way back into the game.  (I think my wins were at 5 and 6 life, respectively.)  Turn 2 suspending of Gargadon seemed really good, except my opponent just held on to an Essence Scatter to deal with it.  In the first game, a pair of Swiftfoot Boots kept me on my heels and my removal in my hand.  I had to get a big board down before I could finally safely start to hit back.  In the second game, he had a great combo with the new Krenko and Floodhound.  Each turn he was gaining a hasty goblin and either drawing a card or putting counters on all his creatures.  I thankfully managed to keep the numbers of goblins down and cast Rune-Brand Juggler the turn before Krenko went to a 5/5.  Unfortunately, on their next turn, I couldn't activate the juggler because I needed to use Artistic Refusal to counter a new threat and Krenko went up to 6/6.  I was able to kill it the next turn in combat with the juggler and Iridescent Blademaster, and then turned the tables for the eventual win.

In the second round, I fought an Orzhov deck with very efficient creatures.  I won the first game decisively, but the second was one of the best limited games I've played in a while.  My main adversary was the card Wispdrinker Vampire, which paired well with nearly every single creature he cast.  He also had a Concordia Pegasus that became his ringbearer, making it unblockable.  I dropped to seven life, then drew into Six-Sided Die.  I was ready to use it to kill the vampire when he attacked next, since I had a Glitterflitter ready to block.  Instead of swinging in full, which would have killed me without my trick, he saw the card in my hand and just hit with the pegasus. I kept saving the Six-Sided Die for combat, worried that I wouldn't roll above a  to kill the Wispdrinker.  I started to swing back on the ground with the Blademaster and enough mana for two activations, finally bringing him below 20.  (He had gained a lot off the Wispdrinker.) 

Finally I got a Doom Blade to deal with the pegasus, after going down to 2 life.  He played another little creature, and the Wispdrinker trigger put me to 1.  I had no choice and had to use the Six-Sided Die (I should have responded to the spell with it).  I rolled a 5.  Byebye, vampire!  After that the tide turned quickly.  I got a few more very useful creatures and the Iridescent Blademaster along with Wose Pathfinder were able to push through the blocks for the second win.  What an amazing game!  

In the third round, I made some big hand-decision errors.  In the first game I kept a land that I thought had a forest but didn't.  Oops!  I died shortly thereafter.  In game 2, I had Bant land in my hand, then drew into a bunch of Rakdos creatures.  I did get a Treasure token off of Jewel-Eyed Cobra, but I had to use it right away as an eighth mana to pump up Iridescent Blademaster.  I died but put up a fight and got my opponent to 7.  I finally suffered the pain of trying to run five colors.  (That doesn't mean I'll stop!)

2-1.  Another excellent chaos draft in the books!

Repack Draft with Real Packaging! WUBRG Drafting

I ran another free draft last night with the repacks I've made.  One of my Christmas gifts was little bags for the packs, so for the first time things looked really good. 

The bags look awesome!

These packs were built mostly from a huge mess of cards that were donated to me nearly a decade ago by some students.  I decided to pay that forward to future students by repacking the cards into packs and running drafts with them.  

I sorted those cards by color to keep packs balanced.  My recipe for packs is: 2 cards of each color, 2 multi-colored cards, 1 artifact, 1 non-basic land, and 1 card from a mix of spells (not land).  Last year a nice IT person here donated an EDH-sized deck box full of bulk rares to the effort, so I've been including those in the place of that last any-spell-card.  (These definitely make things more fun!)

We had seven people last night.  Since we had an odd number, we did single-game matches.  (When we do this, we add that the first mulligan is free.)  Benefits:

• Matches go fast, so we keep the rounds unorganized.  When you finish your game/match, one of you gets matched up with the person who is waiting and you immediately start.  (It's best to prioritize whoever has played fewer matches so far.)  If all three of you have already played each other, then just wait for other matches to end.  (I did have a method for timing games, but I haven't done that in a long while.)  The benefit here is that a person who is waiting to play doesn't usually have to wait very long.
  
• It's more casual, because there isn't the intensity that can come in a best-of-three match.  (This is probably pretty subjective.)  It seems to be really good for newer players.
• You get to play against more people during the draft.  I am a big fan of this.

I do completely understand players who appreciate best-of-three matches more.  I have nothing against that opinion!  For in-store events, I feel the same way.  

I drafted WUBRG pretty aggressively, taking dual lands and land-cyclers as early picks.  I felt really good reviewing all my picks:

Left-to-right, bottom-to-top, as always.

I decided not to run the Sphere of Safety, and I think that was a fine choice.  After I got Krosan Drover, I went heavier into the land cyclers (getting five from Scourge!) and also grabbed that super-late Boros Battleshaper in pack 2, which won me multiple games.  (Seriously, that card was a house!  In the best situation, it's a 3-for-1: it's a big creature, keeps another out of combat, and forces yet another into the meat grinder.) Here's the deck I ran:

The curve looks high, but many of those are land cyclers.

We managed to get all of our matches in!  I was first paired up against an Izzet opponent.  I had to fight through some control, but once Boros Battleshaper hit, I was in control.  1-0

In the second round, I faced off against a Selesnya deck.  They got a bit stuck on having multiple copies of Steel Leaf Paladin in hand, but couldn't keep any of their smaller creatures on the board in order to have one to bounce.  I was able to finish them off before they could get a single one to stick.  2-0

In the third round, I was up against a Rakdos deck.  I didn't hit my land drops and couldn't get enough out to hold off a horde of smaller critters.  2-1

In the fourth round, I faced off against the player who drafted Triskaidekaphobia, a card which had already won them one game and lost them another!  They got it down near the end, but I was not near 13 and I had enough creatures to win.  They decided we would both lose one life when they were at one, so technically the card got a third kill.  3-1

In the fifth round, I was up against a neat Orzhov deck with lots of removal and little utility creatures: Samite Pilgrim and Kabuto Moth among them.  I went down to 1, but I got those taken care of with good combat and Razorfin Hunter.  I brought out Boros Battleshaper, and overwhelmed the board.  4-1

I need to point out that during this fifth round, my match was not the exciting one.  The Triskaidekaphobia player was facing who would be my final opponent.  That opponent played Doom Foretold and it came down to whether the phobia would be sacrificed before it could earn another win.  It did not.  Triskaidekaphobia killed four players!

I went into my game feeling quite confident.  My opponent was also on Orzhov, and was 0-5.  Everyone else was rooting for them, to force a 4-way 4-2 tie (all other games had finished).  I started off real bad.  Doom Foretold came out early and I was low on land.  I think I took six hits from Harvest Gwyllion before I managed to turn the tide and my opponent had to sac the Doom to itself to have an appreciable board state.  I went down to 5 and started hitting back with some fliers.  Boros Battleshaper came down again and I got greedy.  I attacked with too many creatures with what I thought was enough to block.  My opponent happily played Lead Astray on their turn, followed by what I think was Coordinated Charge to kill me with their two attackers.  4-2

What a great event!  I had a blast and I hope I get to do more of these!

Ravnica Remastered: WUBRG Drafting

I loved drafting Ravnica (RGD) block.  I was pretty good with Return to Ravnica (RGD2).  I got in a lot of Guilds of Ravnica and Ravnica Allegiance drafts and did quite well.  Ravnica Remastered?  I got this.

Or not, because I went 1-2.

I went into the draft knowing next to nothing about the set.  (I still feel that way.)  In the first pack, I saw a lot of gates going around, both in the new and old borders.  So... I didn't worry about taking them.  Unfortunately that strategy didn't pay off as they were scarcer in the second and third packs.  I managed to get 7, but I really needed more.  Here were my picks:

Packs left-to-right, picks front to back, as usual.

I was so excited to see that Gate Colossus in pack 3!  My normal rare-drafting tendencies went out the window.  I was not bummed to see a dearth of gates-matters cards, as that made 5-color drafting tricky in Ravnica Block #3, but I should have known that it wouldn't be enough.

Here's what I would try if I were drafting this again.  And... this might only change my picks slightly.

• More gates.  As always, you're always going to run the dual lands you get.  That card is definitely going to make the cut.
• Get those XXYY-cost creatures.  The cycle is so good.  They're hard to cast, but if you take enough gates, you should be able to make it happen a lot of the time.
• There's lots of removal in this set.  It's good.

Here's the deck I ran.  (I did make some sideboard changes in rounds 2 and 3.)

I took this photo long after the event.  Missing is a Blind Obedience I traded.

In my first round, I faced off against an Izzet deck that was a bit low on spells.  (I think they said their deck was split 20 spells/20 lands.)  I was able to capitalize on that, though the second game was nearly lost because they threw out an overloaded Cyclonic Rift.  I rebuilt my board as fast as I could and got in for the last damage, but it was definitely close at the end.  

In the second round, I was up against Tristan, who is becoming quite the blockade for my decks.  He had a Rakdos deck with a white splash for one or two Blind Hunters, which is a card that did a lot of work for me back in Guildpact.  His deck was quite fast.  I lost game 1, but Blind Obedience stymied his assualt and helped me outvalue to win game 2. (Extort is real good.)  In game 3, I was trampled again.

In the third round I faced a strong Dimir deck with loads of good removal, especially multiple Undercity Embraces, when I always had only one creature.  My opponent never gained the life off of it, but it didn't matter and I lost in two or three games.  (I don't remember for certain.)

I don't think my deck underperformed.  I think I underperformed.  In the drafting stage.  I got stuck without the necessary colors multiple times.  (I think this is the first draft where my friend, JC, would have said 5 colors caught up to me.  He would be very happy.)  Of course, it's possible that my plan above would be equally bad, with the XXYY spells often being just as unplayable.  

However, this is a remastered set.  So... I'll probably never get the chance to draft it again.  Which is too bad, because it is really fun.  I like that you're mixing all the guild mechanics together from the last two decades, e.g. Haunt + Extort + Afterlife.  It is perhaps the most fun Ravnica draft format ever.  Even if I'm bad at it.