A Limited EDH Attempt

Some friends and I decided to try an EDH draft yesterday.  Here's what we decided to do:

* Draft 3 packs as usual.

* Choose any creature you drafted to be your general.

* Include all cards legal with that general in your deck.  In other words, all cards that don't include colors or mana symbols not included in the general's colors and casting cost.  Draft some green cards you don't want to use?  Too bad; if your general is green then you have to include them.

* Each deck must have at least 40 cards.  (As with regular EDH, your general doesn't count as one of those cards.)

* Ignore the Highlander part of EDH; if you draft multiple copies of the same card, include all of them in the deck.

We wacky drafted this (meaning use any 3 packs you want).  Packs used included: Return to Ravnica, Gatecrash, Magic 2013, Avacyn Restored, Innistrad and Alara Reborn.

We then each built our deck and played three cutthroat EDH games.  I ran a Grixis Grimblade deck for games 1 and 2 and switched to Bloodbraid Elf for game 3.  Nathan's general was Bant Sureblade all three games.  Victor chose Sewn-Eye Drake to lead his army in game 1 and Esper Sojourners in games 2 and 3.  Victor wound up winning all three games!

Some interesting notes:

* Drafting a three-color creature was really vital, if only to make sure you have a deck with enough spells to fill out a deck.  In the last game my red-green deck had only 16 spells.  Oof. 

* I had to run Vampiric Fury even though I had no vampires.  :)

* Nathan had too many spells to stick to a 40-card deck.  I think he wound up with about 44.

* The drafting part was really complicated.  We allowed ourselves to review our previous picks at any time, which seems vital.  I was often conflicted about whether to choose cards to go with Bloodbraid Elf or Grixis Grimblade.  It was very tough.

* It was common to choose basic land over a spell to avoid taking something you did not want in your deck.

* Taking mono-colored creatures early on was good because they were more likely to fit in any deck (and creatures are good).

* 40 life per player may have been too much.

* Extort was way too powerful.  We had exactly one extort card between the three of us and it was a powerhouse.  This has been a problem with all multi-player limited formats I've seen, though.

* All three of us had a lot of fun!  We will definitely do this again!

Things I would like to change for the next attempt:

* Draft 4 packs instead of 3.  This might make it easier to play with 2-color generals (for those that don't have access to Alara-block packs).  It should also help give players more general options.

* Draft Anaconda style.  Want to change your entire strategy mid-pack?  Go for it!  Seriously, this sounds like a lot of fun.

* Lower the life point total to 30 or something like this.

* Lower the lethal general damage to 16 or something in that area.

Please let me know if you give this format a try or have ideas to improve it!

WittCon X Magic Results

WittCon X was a blast!  We had four different decks for our EDH tournament and seven different people show up for the sealed tournament.

In EDH: Darren ran a The Mimeoplasm deck; Victor played Doran, the Siege Tower; Aaron brought his Karador, Ghost Chieftain deck; and I used Radha, Heir to Keld.

Since there were four of us, we played rounds of 2HG.  We gave each team 60 life but ruled that 21 damage from any single commander was still enough to kill an entire team.  60 may have been too much life, but we were still able to finish three rounds (and nearly finish a fourth).

Aaron, apparently channeling this guy, managed to win each round, winning the tournament.

In the sealed tournament, Aaron again saw success and managed to go 5-1, losing only to Campbell.  His was the best record, meaning he won both tournaments that day.  This earned him two picks from the WittCon prize pile at the end of the convention. :)

Another great year in WittCon Magicking!  With any luck there'll be even more magic contestants next year!