Lost Caverns of Ixalan: WUBRG Drafting

I made it to an LCI draft!  This is a great set to draft a bunch of colors, and it's not because of the land, but because of the most recent trend in new magic sets: a cycle of basic land cyclers.  

To be fair, I had forgotten about the five new land cycling dinosaurs.  When I noticed them in the packs, I knew I had a chance.  Here were my picks:

Yeah, I started with dinosaurs right off the bat.

With these cards, I built the following deck:

The blank sleeve is for a Forgotten Monument that I traded right after the draft.

Getting the mana was a bit tough because I somehow managed to only draft the white discover lands.  I would have really liked to get some in other colors!

In my first round, I was matched up against someone who was playing for the second time.  Nevertheless, she had managed to draft a competent Golgari deck.  I won the first game.  Time got called during the second, but I still won a few turns in.  There were dicey moments in both games, so it was quite exciting.

In my second round, I was up against Boros with lots of crafting, including a splash of blue for two Master's Guide Murals.  I put up a good fight, but I got out-valued, and lost both games.

There was no third round.  The draft had gotten started late and the store needed to close.  I was left desiring more, but knowing full-well that I probably won't get another chance for a LCI draft before the format rotates.  Such is the holiday season! 

I really think that focusing on three things can make LCI WUBRG drafting work:

• Grab the land cyclers.
• Grab other useful low-cost spells.
• Grab the discover lands.

I also really appreciate how basic land cyclers are more common in packs.  I hope this trend continues and that future chaos drafts will be full of them.

The One Ring Remains Hidden in Chaos: WUBRG Drafting

I managed a nice little chaos draft on a Sunday afternoon.  I followed my own advice from last time (and Logan did too) and opened Ixalan first.  (Ace actually mentioned that if you open March of the Machines, you have a higher probability of getting a Companion... I will definitely be keeping that in mind!)  

Here's what we opened.  (I picked the same three packs as last time.  I have fallen into a chaos rut.)

Lost Caverns of Ixalan has its pre-release at the end of this week, so people wanted to open some old Ixalan.

I did not get a companion to build around this time, sadly.  Nevertheless, I got passed a bunch of cards that seemed great for five colors; I didn't have to make many very hard picks.  Then, however, in the third pack, I opened one of the most valuable cards I've opened in a draft: The One Ring.  Here are all my picks:

Immediately in a sleeve.

I had plenty of non-basic lands this time around.  I quickly built this deck. (I needed all the islands in order to have any chance to cast Invoke the Winds.) 

 

With an odd number of people, I prefer to do single-game rounds and see how many people we can each match up with.  We managed to get all 10 matches in!

In the first round, I was up against a first-time drafter running a well-built Golgari deck.  The game was running pretty even, with creatures dying on both sides evenly.  I spent a turn getting Sharknado down, then got played Vivisurgeon's Insight the following turn to get my 5/5 Flying Shark.

The Infinitokens got a work out today!

See that Rise of the Witch-King in the picture?  It killed my Shark immediately and gave my opponent a big beatstick back from the yard.  Thankfully, the three cards I drew made the difference, and I popped out a bunch more creatures and overwhelmed them.  

These were all from that one game!

In game 2, I was matched up against a Temur value deck.  I started off by trading over and over again with Master of Death.  Nevertheless, I fell behind in the life totals quickly, but I felt like I was about to stabilize when I lost to a spell I can't remember that made my opponent's creatures unblockable that killed me at 5.

In game 3, I was matched against another first-time drafter piloting a Grixis deck.  Sadly, they got extremely mana flooded, even with a number of card draws.  I managed to overwhelm them before they could get into normal card mode.  I did draw The One Ring midway through the game, but I had enough cards in hand that it didn't seem necessary to play.

In game 4, I fought the only undefeated player at the table, playing a Boros Aggro Humans deck.  Perimeter Sergeant kept got on the board and kept getting past my blockers, especially after Eowyn, Lady of Rohan came down and granted it first strike every turn.  I got some chump blockers in, trying to get something that would survive a flow from the Sergeant, but it kept getting bigger power with the help of equipment and counters.  I had a Chrome Courier made bigger by Lagrella. I got Wingspan Mentor down, but had to spend my man doing things other than activating it.  Finally I got Sharknado again, which meant fliers and blockers to keep things in check.  I think I was able to win two turns later.

I went 3-1 and with that win had a three-way draw with the Boros and Temur players.  I guess that is a downside of single-game rounds: the lack of tiebreakers.  

This was a super fun draft!  All the decks seemed really good, and I escaped just barely.  (I won one of the games at 1 life... but I don't remember which one it was.  I'm sure someone will remind me.  In the future, there'll probably be an update after this.)

Chaos to 60 Cards: WUBRG Drafting

Open the Ikoria pack first.  Open the Ikoria pack first.  Open the Ikoria pack first...

I held a four-person chaos draft last night.  It went really well, but I need to learn an important lesson: Open the Ikoria pack first.

Here are the packs we opened.  Thanks to Matt for venturing all the way back to Dragon's Maze!

I got pretty lucky, because I lost a lot of dual lands to the other drafters early on, especially in pack 1.  That is usually the worst thing for me, but in this case, it turned out to be great.  I got fewer dual lands, instead got some higher spell picks, and that helped me in all of my games.  I needed nearly every spell I could get.  And it's all because of Ikoria.

Here are my picks.  If you look at the first card I picked in the second pack, you'll see that I needed to pump the brakes on dual lands and focus on as many spells as possible.  (First pack is on the left, picks go from front to back.) 

Right... companions.

Yorion called out a challenge to me and I took them up on it.  Thankfully that was the first card of pack 2 so I had barely enough time to draft the spells to play a 60-card deck.  If I had opened Ikoria third or if my table had passed me more dual lands in pack 1, I might have been stuck with some real bad cards.  I even pushed it a little bit and took the fancy Kamigawa island instead of a spell midway through pack 2.  As it is, I ran 35 of the 39 spells I drafted, not including Yorion.  My sideboard only had 3 spells!  (I really wanted to run Goblin Test Pilot, but I just didn't think it was good enough.)

I also got lucky because I got passed a bunch of removal.  Red was underdrafted at the table, and I was able to grab Voltage Surge, Fires of Victory, and Foray of Orcs all pretty late.  I think I undervalued Foundry Helix; I probably should have run that too.

Here's the deck I ran:

So many cards!

We got a bit of a late start, so we only got to play about half of the games.  We finished round 1 and then played one game in round 2.

My first match was against a strong Golgari deck with a bit of graveyard recursion.  Both games were wars of attrition.  In the first game, removal on both sides kept big creatures off of the board for the most part.  I tried to remove Glissa, Sunslayer with a kicked Fires of Victory during combat, only for Bombadil's Song to not only keep Glissa alive, but fizzle the Fires, negating my draw.  They drew off the combat damage for an effective 3-for-1 play.  I luckily had Fog on the Barrow-Downs in my hand, which stuck for the rest of the game.  I forced a good trade with Efreet Flamepainter and managed to pull ahead with Yorion's help.  

In game 2, I mulliganed down to 5, but got really lucky on my draws.  Jelenn Sphinx came out, but got Possessed Sinisterly, so I kept off the attacks for a while.  Once I had a chance to get Yorion out, the Sinister Possession came off the sphinx and I was able to attack and force some trades, all while Smeagol, Helpful Guide was out.  I gave the sphinx the ring and once I was twice-tempted, I got to start looting, which put me on top enough to win the game.

We only had time for one game of round 2, where I was matched up against a brutal Esper deck with lots of menace.  Thankfully my removal all showed up.  Foray of Orcs, Deal Gone Bad, and Immolation all picked off targets, with a Fire Prophecy waiting in the wings when I swung out for lethal.  

I got real lucky last night, but I'm really glad I took up Yorion's challenge!

Looking Back: Homelands Draft on Nov 20, 2017

Just about six years ago, a student of mine decided to hold a Homelands draft.  They bought a box online (it was much cheaper than the $500+ they are now), got 8 people together, split the cost, and we drafted the box.   

My student wanted to draft this set specifically because the cards are considered to be quite bad.  In 2017, Didgeridoo was the most valuable card in the set, coming in around $5.  (Our draft happened just after the little spike that appears at the end of 2017.)  Today the individual cards are worth about twice as much.  Many of the "chase" cards experienced a big bump in the beginning of 2021, but have settled down.  (At the time of Homeland's release, I remember a lot of excitement around Autumn Willow, the first creature with base Shroud.  Deep Swawn can get shroud and Svyelunite Priest can grant it to something else.)

Homelands was released in 1995; the "36 packs of 15 cards in a box" hadn't become a standard for boosters yet.  Instead, for Homelands, they tried 60 packs of 8 cards each.  (Also, when 3-set blocks became normal, Homelands was considered the second set of the Ice Age block, followed by Alliances.  When Coldsnap was released in 2006, the "block" was reconfigured to be Ice Age/Alliances/Coldsnap.)  We each got 6 packs and drafted them individually.  

I took a few photos of packs I opened.  Serrated Arrows was the right pick in the second pack. 

I didn't draft WUBRG.  I can't remember whether it was because I kept seeing good red cards, or because I didn't see many of the (bad) Homelands tri-color lands.   Looking back, I wish I had tried harder!  That could have been more fun if I saw enough of the lands.

I can't complain about how the draft went, though!  I knew the value of Serrated Arrows, having played with it in 1995, and again in Time Spiral block limited.  They kept coming around, so I kept grabbing them.  I also saw lots of Anaba Shaman, so I got them as well.  I don't have a photo of all the cards I drafted, but I do have a shot of the 23 cards that I think made up my deck:

I went 3-0 quite easily.  I kept nearly every other threat out of the game with direct damage and arrows. 

My opponents' creatures were like the Teen Girl Squad.

I think I won every game, but I'm not certain.  I do remember that I was helped by terrible draws for my opponents.  My MVP was absolutely the three copies of Serrated Arrows.  

It was really fun to play in this draft.  If I had the chance, I would probably do it again, but maybe not at the current cost of the box.  (It would probably cost at least $70 per person now.)  I would really like a chance to draft WUBRG in Homelands, though.  (I would still first-pick Serrated Arrows.)

Neapolitan Commander Draft

I went to a Neapolitan Commander Draft last night.  Each of the six of us opened, in order, Commander Legends, Commander Legends: Baldur's Gate, and Commander Masters.  This was a great idea that one of our students came up with.

Six Neapolitan Commander Draft sets

 

We included an important Commander Masters draft rule that I didn't know about: Mono-colored and Colorless legendary creatures are considered to have Partner, even if they don't have it on the card.  Thankfully, one of our alums knew this rule!  Since we were including Baldur's Gate, we added the rule that those legends also have Choose a Background to help facilitate more card and color combinations. 

By my count, there are 7 total legends in the sets who have WUBRG color identity, and... I didn't see any of them.  However, I was lucky enough to get passed an Archelos, Lagoon Mystic right away in the first pack.  Although I focused on the Sultai from that point, I took plenty of cards of other colors just in case I saw a WUBRG legend come up.  I also spent a little bit of effort on collecting gates, but only got three.  (Don't worry, it made a difference later!)  Here are my picks:  (Reminder: in a Commander Draft, you pick two cards instead of one each time you see a pack.)

First picks in front.  Left: pack 1; Right: pack 3.

In the end I didn't take enough Sultai cards.  Minimum deck size in a Commander Draft is 60 cards; the usual balance is somewhere around 24 lands and 36 spells.  Including Archelos, I only had 34 spells.  Deckbuilding was very fast; I took all the cards I could play and added five each of the relevant lands.  Here's the resulting deck:

I like these spells, but I needed more.

The eleven non-basic lands were a great boon, and they're even better with Archelos: all the tap lands enter untapped!  Opal Palace is amazing; two copies are even better.  The multi-color lands made up for the few colorless lands I had.  Some of my picks helped make up for the lack of spells, but all too often I found myself with my hand full of lands.  

We formed two random groups of 3 for our games and got to playing.  In Game 1, I was pitted against Belbe and Miara + Saervok.  Saervok hit the board and the life totals started to drop quickly.  I got Archelos down and managed to swing with it every turn, which kept my opponents slowed down.  (It also had Armory of Iroas, so it kept getting bigger.)  Scion of Halaster helped me filter out the many lands.  The life totals continued to drop; we each tried to get one of our creatures killed on each of our turns to avoid losing three life to Saervok.  (Having Miara with ways to kill her was a pretty good combo with Saervok!)  The Belbe player started to drop a lot of threats, so the Miara/Saervok player focused on them and took them out with 11 life left.  

Archelos got killed and I replayed it, but with four +1/+1 counters using both of my Opal Palaces.  On the next turn, I drew and played a second Basilisk Gate, then proceeded to use all of the cards I had except for one land to win the game.  

• For four mana, I played the last card in my hand, Manifold Key, and activated it to make Archelos unblockable.
• For four more mana, I activated both Basilisk Gates to give Archelos +4/+4.  (Now it had 10 power.) 
  
• I created an elf with Freyalise, then immediately sacrificed it to Ashnod's Altar to reequip Archelos with the Armory of Iroas.  
• With only one untapped land remaining, Archelos swung for the necessary 11 to end the game.

Our game ended fast, so we started another one while the other game was finishing.  This time my opponents were more wary of Archelos and I couldn't get it to stick for long.  When I did, I greedily used it to attack instead of as a blocker.  (I wanted their stuff to be tapped, but also to cash in on the extra Belbe-mana.)  The Belbe player got some good card draw going with Mask of Memory.  They soon got Giant Ankheg on the board, which got the two of us to attack each other even more.  When the Ankheg started swinging, I had no good means to soak the damage, so I died first.  Belbe died a few times on attacks.  The Miara + Saervok player was able to remove the Ankheg from the board and it looked like they would win, but the Belbe player drew into Exsanguinate and had enough to win with that alone.  

The other group had already finished and three people had to call it a night.  (I think the winning player over there won by dealing 23 damage to one player on the last turn!)  The remaining three of us were me, Belbe, and a player from the other group running Captain Vargus Wrath.  We got in one final game before even I needed to call it a night.  

I used Belbe-mana to power out Goliath Sphinx on turn 5.  I swang with it back and forth to keep my opponents' life low.  (I had confused Exsanguinate with Bond of Agony, so I was determined to keep the Belbe player at a life total below both of ours.)  The Vargus player built Izzet pirates well, however, and they got a group of dangerous flying creatures that kept me low as well.  I spent a bunch of turns drawing only lands. 

As the end of the game drew near, Vargus sent most of their army into the red zone.  One attacker threatened my exact life total against my tapped board, while the rest came at Belbe.  I used Sword Coast Serpent's Capsizing Wave to last another turn while the Belbe player perished.  On my next turn, I swung back, hoping my Treasure Keeper would meet a glorious end and find some more flying blockers (or anything) but my opponent chose correctly and it just went unblocked, along with the sphinx.  I then sacrificed to Ashnod's Altar and got Clockwork Fox.  I immediately threw that on the altar and got... more lands.  I died to flying pirates directly thereafter.  I don't think I had a path to survive that turn.  

I'm pretty happy with the one win I got.  More importantly, Neapolitan Commander Draft is an awesomely fun format!  I combines the fun elements of EDH with the unpredictability of Chaos Drafts.   If you choose to partake, I recommend using the rule we adopted: All colorless and mono-colored legendary creatures automatically have Partner and Choose a Background.  If your group does something different that works well, please leave a comment and let me know!  I am sure you will come upon some cool new unexpected interactions.  

Note: Thanks to Tristan for thinking of the name: Neapolitan Commander Draft.

Wilds of Eldraine: WUBRG Drafting

Drafts have not been firing at my prior FNM haunt of choice due to a sudden exodus of players.  (There's more behind this that I won't get into, suffice to say that the ad-hoc boycott seems justified.)  

Thankfully, a local group formed in response and I was invited to join in for a Wilds of Eldraine draft on Friday, which was during release weekend.  This was super fun and I got to know a bunch of people really well.  

Here's what I drafted in the 8-person group.  The left pile is the first pack, right is the third.  The picks go from first in front to last in the back.  (Sorry for the glare.)

That first pick Hatching Plans turned out to be just fine.

I prioritized Hatching Plans because I had taken a look at the spoiler and knew I could probably pick up some bargain-based cards.  As it turned out, I did manage to get a few, most notably the Diminisher Witch, which turned out to be extremely useful.  Other than that, I grabbed stuff that seemed good or might be good. 

Here was my deck after the matches ended:

That empty sleeve is in place of the third Diminisher Witch that I must have lost after the last match.

I probably should have run the second Brave the Wilds, but I forgot about it.  Also, initially my deck contained Wicked Visitor, Johann's Stopgap, and Rowan's Grim Search, but I sided them out partway through round 2 for the Flick a Coin, Compulsion, and Break the Spell.  I never cast the Wicked Visitor or Rowan's Grim Search, but the three spells I put in definitely should have been there from the start.  Especially Compulsion.  I ran four of them in a standard deck back in 2003, so I know how to use the card, especially for cycling lands away late in the game.  For the other two, Break the Spell is great against roles and Flick the Coin is tremendously good.  Especially when drafting WUBRG, and even more especially when having a bunch of bargain cards that would like to sacrifice a token.  The most important thing for this deck is that every time I cast Hatching Plans, I wound up drawing three cards off of it.  It was absolutely amazing.

In the first round I matched up against a fast Boros deck.  I think I lost 1-2, but it could be 0-2.  Either way I put up a good fight.  I definitely made some play mistakes, most notably using a Diminisher Witch to put a Cursed Role token on Kellan, the Fae-Blooded.  That was a problem because it counted toward's Kellan's bonus as well as didn't cause an opponent's role to fall off.  (Important: roles only replace others if they are controlled by the same player!)  Future note: Shrouded Shepherd is really good, and caught me off guard multiple times!  I should draft those.

In the second round, I faced off against a brutal Azorius deck that kept tapping my creatures down.  This is apparently a really good strategy against me, as evidenced by my loss earlier this summer to a similar style deck.  Solitary Sanctuary came out just about every game and was really hard to play around.  I won a close game 1, got steamrolled in game 2, and then got really lucky in game 3 to sneak out a second win. 

In the third round, I matched up against an Esper deck with lots of rats, including Lord Skitter.  In this match, I had more time to set things up, so Hatching Plans and Diminsher Witch both turned out to be extremely useful.  The games went the same as round 2: I won games 1 and 3 to round out another match win.  Unlike my other rounds, all three games were extremely tight.  I played a lot better and started to use Diminisher Witch as post-combat removal against creatures that blocked with a high toughness.

This was a really great and chill event.  Everyone was super nice and the stakes were happily low.  I felt pretty good about going 2-1 in my first WOE draft, even though all of my wins were squeaked out.  I hope I get to draft with this group again!

Chaos for Store Championships: WUBRG drafting

My usual Magic haunt wasn't running a draft last night, but another nearby store, Intergalactic Plastic, was running a Chaos Draft, so I went there instead.  I had been to the store before and picked up some cards, but I had never played there.  The draft was for their store championships; the person running it told me they like to hold chaos drafts for championship events.  

I thought there were lots of people there, but it turns out most of them were playing EDH and weren't there for the draft, which I think had ten people.  Most, if not all, of my match opponents were commander players first and foremost. 

In this chaos draft, everyone was given the same three packs, Brothers' War, March of the Machines, and LotR Tales of Middle Earth, to be opened in that order.  (Perhaps I don't have to abandon the term "Wacky Draft", and can keep using that to mean three packs from any sets, chosen by each player.)  I love drafting all three of these packs, so I was excited.

I definitely undervalued some of the mana fixing and didn't get a second look at many of the land cyclers that I probably should have taken.  I didn't see many dual lands; I think I only saw one that I didn't take.  On the other hand, I saw a lot of big bomby creatures, so I took them.  Here were my picks:

Picks, by pack, left-to-right and front-to-back

I got some really big cards late, including the Goreclaw and the Argivian Avenger.  Even the Blanchwood Prowler, a last pick, turned out to be very helpful.  

Lately I've been running 16 lands with lots of color-fixing, but since I didn't get much fixing, I ran 17 lands instead, hoping I could go slow and play the game out until I could drop my big creatures.  I didn't wind up running Su-Chi Cave Guard, and I'm not sure whether that was a mistake on my part.  In the end, I was surprisingly low on blue spells this time around.  Here was my deck at the end (I don't think I made any changes during the tournament):

I should have taken the picture from further overhead.  Oops!

In the first round I was matched up against someone I'd played half an EDH game with directly before the draft.  He had put together an aggressive Boros deck.  I relied heavily on my removal to keep myself in the game until I could get my big threats out.  In game one, we were both very mana flooded.  I played Etali late and was able to transform it the following turn for the win.  In game two, Goreclaw helped me power out some early beats and I won again.  

I had a great chat with my first-round opponent while we waited for the second round to start.  It was at this point that I found out we were in a single-elimination tournament!  That's not my favorite, since I'm often on the losing end in the first two rounds and I really like playing. 

In the second round, I matched up with someone who had an absolutely amazing playmat.

Seriously, this is super sweet.

They were running a Rakdos deck and had gotten a bye in the first round so they hadn't played with it yet.  In the first game, they ran out two Mordor Trebuchets on turns 3 and 4.  I have used those to great effect in drafts, so I knew how powerful they were.  Thankfully, I was able to kill their other orcs and I only got hit a few times by flying goblin-boulders.  I managed to get enough big dudes to break the stalemate and win.  They made a bunch of changes to their deck for game 2 and it made a big difference, but I was able to win again.

In the third and final round, I was matched up again against Rakdos!  So much red!  In the first game we were both mana screwed for many turns, but I escaped it faster and won.  In the second game, I didn't get my colors until very late.  I thought I would be able to turn the tide as I drew into my lands, but a couple of unexpected blasts to my head ended it before I could start to play bombs.  In game 3, my opponent was mana screwed again for a few turns, and it gave me enough time to get my big beaters out.  Gandalf the White was a great turn 5 play that let me flash out a bunch of my other six drops.  I had lost a lot of life to efficient little creatures, so I had to be more aggressive than normal, but I was able to clinch the win.

One change I made this time around that I believe made a difference was to choose to draw instead of play.  I did this because I didn't have good fixing and needed to rely on my removal and deathtouch creatures to keep me in the game until I could play bigger things.  Many years ago I used to choose to draw, but most of the past two or three years I've mostly been choosing to play.  

I was really excited to win the tournament!  The prize was a Saruman of Many Colors, which seemed very appropriate! :)  Nevertheless, I felt very awkward having never played there before.  I hope I get to come back and do more drafts! 

Local Chaos Draft (WUBRG drafting)

I ran a chaos draft at the end of this weekend!  (This means I managed to trick three other people into chaos drafting with me.)  Here are the packs we opened:

I keep opening Ikoria hoping for some tri-land goodness.

These were pretty good packs for going five colors.  One of the players was advocating for New Capenna, and that sounded just fine to me!  Here's what I managed to pull:

From left to right, packs 1 to 3.  Pick 1 in front, pick 15 in the back.

I unintentionally drafted a very strong combo in the first two picks of pack 3: Mount Doom and The Mightstone and Weakstone.  

 

After drafting, I noticed what a great combo this was and started praying to Karona that I could pull it off.  Here is my deck:

 

Will 6 non-basics be enough?

 

Aside from the color fixing land, I had:

• A bunch of removal, including Torch Breath, which was a card I didn't know existed.
• Some treasure synergy, with Bootlegger's Stash (which I never saw), Big Score, and Jetmir's Fixer.  
• Some army cards (Grishnakh, Dunland Crebain, and Warbeast of Gorgoroth) to work with Mauhur.  
• And a bit of a deathtouch theme with a Nazgul, a Midnight Assassin, and a Riveteers Initiate. 
  

In round 1, I got matched up against a Gruul deck with a pretty good mana curve.  I managed to get enough removal to squeak out the first game, but we didn't finish the second before time was called.  We ended the five turns without a winner.

 

In round 2, I was up against a Bant deck with lots of mana fixing.  I pushed through a victory in game 1, and then game 2 went to time with a battlefield full of creatures.  In one of the first extra turns, I cast The Mightstone and Weakstone with Mount Doom on the board.  I was ready to clear out the board and swing in for the win.  However, on my opponent's turn, they tapped down my bigger blocker and swung in for the win.

 

In round 3, I matched up against an Esper deck with a lot of good value cards.  I was winning the first game and tapped my attackers out to put my opponent at 1, while I was safely at 13.  Then they played both Shriekdiver and Flowering of the White Tree, just enough to hit me for exactsies.  In game 2, I was on the back foot.  My opponent had gotten an extreme amount of value out of Cirith Ungol Patrol, using it to profit off of the times I had to use my removal on other creatures.  (I never quite had enough to kill the patrol outright.)  Although I had had the upper-hand early on, my opponent was clawing back into the game with all the extra life and card draw.  Then I drew The Mightstone and Weakstone while Mount Doom was on the board.  I activated Mount Doom the following turn and cleared all but my best two creatures, winning the game shortly thereafter.  Yes!  

 

While not quite a WUBRG-based accomplishment, Mount Doom + The Might- and Weakstones seems like a pretty good combo achievement to get in draft.  Also, 1-0-2 is pretty good for me.  

 

Let's hope I get to hold another of these drafts soon!

 

   

Chaos at a store: WUBRG drafting!

I saw that Nostos Boutique in Ipswich, MA, ran chaos drafts, so I headed over there two weeks ago to meet a friend and draft.  Sadly, they cancelled the event.  While there, two sisters visiting from Alabama also showed up for the draft.  The four of us decided to head over to Webb Games for their FNM draft scheduled slightly later.  We were the only ones there to draft, so we just held our own 4-person chaos draft.

An excellent smattering of packs from the current standard format.

I managed to get a good amount of color fixing from my picks:

I don't know why I get so hung up on Ivory Tower.  I loved the card many years ago, and it's quite good if you can get it to work... but that's pretty hard to do in draft.

 

From these cards, I built this deck:

Back on the 17-land train this time.

This deck was problematic, but really fun to play.  I did a great job of picking lands from across all the sets, which made things work out well.  I didn't have much of a hard time fixing colors, and in multiple games I had WUBRG on or before turn 5!  I do think I was too excited to take the battles; I probably should have gone for the multi-color flip-creatures instead.

Some of the great cards (aside from the lands) were:

• Invasion of Zendikar: Explosive Vegetation has been real good for drafting WUBRG.  This is even better.
• Roaring Earth was just amazing.  It's good both either early game or late game and it works especially well with the auto-fetch lands from New Capenna.
• Big Score helped me fix mana and my hand.  Excellent!
• Raffine was an excellent payoff for going five colors, though in one game I had to stop attacking because I nearly decked myself.
  

I lost the first round to my friend, who won the whole thing 3-0.  I lost the second round as well, but won the third round.  The three of us tied in a cycle, each beating one of the other two.  Sadly I don't remember more about these matches, as it was two weeks ago!

However, the true winner of the draft was not my friend, but my last opponent.  That round was great, because she managed to draft a tribal deck in a chaos draft!  Her rat tribe had: Karumonix, which gifted her other rats toxic; Blightbelly Rat; Nezumi Freewheeler; and one at least one other, which I think was Nezumi Prowler.  Amazing!

I hope I get to do more chaos drafts and post about them here!

LotR: Tales of Middle-Earth WUBRG Draft #2

Two weeks ago I had the opportunity to draft Tales of Middle-Earth again, so I took it.  This time I was playing at Webb Games in Topsfield, MA, which is a really nice and clean store.  They run Monday night drafts, and 20 people showed up.  (I wish more places near me ran non-FNM drafts!)

We split into two pods of 10.  I think I was lucky enough to be the only person drafting WUBRG in the store.  Here's what I grabbed:

Picks, left-to-right and front-to-back.

This was a really fun set of cards to play with.  I didn't have a great base of creatures, but there were plenty of other things to make up for it.  Here's the deck I built:

Deck.  I've been risking it and going with 16 lands lately.

The usual color-fixing suspects continued to be very helpful, but there were some extra great cards:

• Mirkwood Spider: Deathtouch blockers give me time to get into my colors and draw the bombs.
• Ent-Draught Basin: This card was great in limited.  +1/+1 counters are great.  I even used it on an opponent's creature to remove it with Eowyn, Fearless Knight.
• The best card was easily Anduril, which I won multiple games with.
   

I won my first round, though I don't remember what the deck was like that I played against.  (Sorry, it was two weeks ago!)  I won both games with Anduril.  In the second of those wins, my opponent destroyed it, but I got it back with Rise of the Witch-King.  

I drew my second round.  My opponent had Horn of Gondor, which is really good, and which he aggressively mulliganed to.  We each took a game, but didn't finish game three.  After turns had finished, he tried hard to convince me to throw game three to him, because he thought he would have been able to win if we kept going.  I didn't go for it, and I don't know whether I should have gone along with it.

I felt confident in the third round, but it was not to be.  I won game 1, but lost both games 2 and 3.  They played a permissive Azorius deck and kept my things tapped down.  I sided in Ioreth, but they did a good job of keeping Sting off the board and closed out the round in strangling fashion.  All three of these games were close, though!

This continues to be a really fun set to draft!  I think I could do better than 1-1-1, and I should probably prioritize land cyclers over some of the other fixing.  Of particular note here, I didn't draft any Lorien Revealed, which is an absolute house of a card.

I did hear from others that this set might be losing some interest drafting-wise, but I really hope I get to do it at least once more!

Notorious WUBRG: LotR: Tales of Middle-Earth Draft

I missed the first week of drafts, but got out on Friday (June 30) for my first LotR draft.  TL;DR: I went 1-2 and I love this set for WUBRG drafting.

Going in to this draft, I had played at the prerelease, so I knew about the landcycling cycle, Shire Terrace, and Wizard's Rockets.  I only managed to pull three land cyclers, one terrace, and two of the rockets, but I also grabbed two Wose Pathfinders, an Inherited Envelope, a Shire Scarecrow, and even a Delighted Halfling!  For everything else, I focused mostly on picking rares, legends, and removal.

Picks, first to last, first pack on left.

I actually found that I had too much additional color fixing, and didn't run the Delighted Halfling nor the Inherited Envelope.  Here was the final version of the deck:

My deck.  The curve was pretty low, but that was okay.

This was super fun.  I never wound up activating the ability on the Mines of Moria, but that didn't hold me back.  

I lost my first match 0-2 to a really well-focused Blue/Green Scrying Elves.  There were real good cards for that in our six-person pod, and my opponent kept dropping relevant legends over and over.  I managed to draw both games out longer than I had any right to, but still got overrun big time.

In the second round, I won 2-0 against White/Green Hobbits & Food.  My opponent was never able to get any big pieces together and I had real good answers to everything they played.  After the match they threw two more colors into their deck and we played another game.  That actually worked really well for them because they had drafted 4 Entish Restoration, which I had either ignored or not seen.  That card is real good!  (Not as good as Harrow, but better than Roiling Regrowth.)  

The third round, against Black-Red, was the closest.  I won game 1 handily, but (finally) had trouble with colors in games 2 and 3 and lost 1-2.  All three rounds were fun.

Tales of Middle-Earth in General

This set may be one of the best for 5-color drafting, because it isn't a core strategy.  For many recent sets (e.g. March of the Machines and Dominaria United) there are other people at the table drafting WUBRG, which makes it more difficult.  That was not the case here.  If you go for it, you're likely not competing for a bunch of fixing.  This is very similar to the problems I had drafting Ravnica Allegiance after Guilds of Ravnica.  I rarely ran into people drafting five colors in guilds, but they were all over the place in allegiance, even though there was only slightly more payoff in that second set. 

Additionally, this is a slower, grindier format than some drafts.  You are likely to have some time to build up your mana base and play the bombs you pulled.

Having said all that, there is actually a wealth of color-fixing in the set.  Here's a quick run-down of my favorites, from best to worst:

• Lórien Revealed: Big blue draw spells are one of the reasons to run a bunch of colors.  These cards often sit in packs way late and can resolving one can easily result in a win.  Combine that with the land cycling, and you've got a real winner.  Draft this card.
• Shire Scarecrow: A colorless creature that filters mana and can block pesky bears is awesome.  The one I had got me out of a bunch of jams, to the point where my opponent had to kill it with removal.
• The rest of the land-cyclers: Creatures are good.  If you need the land instead, then you can do that.   
• Shire Terrace: Yes, fetching colors is good in a land.
  
• Entish Restoration: I never played this in the draft, but Harrow was good.  

Those are all great cards for a non-WUBRG-enabling set, and that doesn't include the Wizard's Rockets and the Wose Pathfinders, both of which are also great.  This set is more WUBRGy than people realize.

Give it a try!  I'm not going to get to FNM again for a bunch of weeks, so you won't be competing with me.

Notorious WUBRG: March of the Machine Draft #3

I drafted again!  There's a clear issue: as with Conflux and Ravnica Allegiance and others, there is a problem with this set: drafting 5 colors is too popular.  In a pod of 6, after one or two cards had been pulled from the first pack, two people (not me) announced they were probably going "5 color good stuff".  The result is that I only got 3 dual lands.  Here's what I drafted:

Only three dual lands!  Urf.

I made up for the lack of lands a bit with the Beamtown Beatstick and the four land cyclers.  With those I took a risk and only went with 16 lands.  Here's the deck:

Enjoy my bad lighting.

I was heavy in black again, but black is really fun to play in this set.  Aetherblade Agent is great.  Deadly Derision seemed like a definite include.  The two Gloomfang Maulers were excellent.  And I felt like I had to run Horobi, Death's Wail.

In the first round, Horobi actually turned out to be great.  My opponent was on Boros equipment and backup.  (With Sram and two Reyav!)  Horobi temporarily shut down any equipping.  My opponent correctly noticed that they could use backup on my creatures.  In fact, if I pull Horobi again, I'm hoping I've got a bunch more backup creatures myself, because that seems like a good strategy.  I lost game 1 badly, squeaked out a win in game 2, swinging for lethal at 15 while I had only 1 life.  That wasn't enough and I lost game 3 pretty quickly.

In the second round, I lost to one of the five-color decks.  They ran a ton of discard effects and I just couldn't keep up.  They dropped Yarok both games and I managed to get it back on the board after I removed it.  I got beaten brutally in two games.  This was still a really fun match, as it was cool to see my opponent's deck go off.

I ran Tetsuko Umezawa again, and it worked great again, comboing with Valduk... again.  It managed to keep me alive a little bit longer in round 2, and then it helped me blow out my round 3 opponent in two games.  Tetsuko Umezawa is such a great card.  Valduk isn't quite as good as the Brudiclad I got in my first March of the Machines draft, but it's still great.

1-2 isn't great, but I had a blast again!  I don't know whether I'll get to sneak a fourth draft in before the next set.  We'll see!

Notorious WUBRG: March of the Machine Draft 2

I did a bit better in my second March of the Machine draft!  Here's what I picked:

(In order, left to right and bottom to top.)

Naturally, I was most excited that I got passed the foil Invasion of Alara!  Here's the deck I built:

 

I should have taken Zirda out, as they didn't really contribute much.  As always, the deck was super fun to play, though I think I could have used a few more dual lands.

In my first round, I played against a relatively new drafter and beat them.  In the second round, I played against a strong green + something (white?  red?  It's been a few weeks...) deck.  I lost one game bad, and squeaked out the other two wins.

In the third round, I got obliterated by a fast red (and black?) deck.  2-1 is not too bad!

It turned out that the Archpriest of Shadows and new Glissa were very strong.  The archpriest helped me bring things back and Glissa was great, even though I didn't have a lot of synergy in other phyrexians.  It just didn't matter.  The Beamtown Beatstick was also great; creating treasures can obviously be very helpful.  In the end, I often couldn't keep up with the removal everyone else had and that usually cost me a game.   

I hope that I can get another draft in!

Notorious WUBRG: March of the Machine Draft

I made it to opening draft weekend for a main set!  Woohoo!

And it went super well.  I think this is the first time I've enjoyed a draft format so much that I bought a box of draft boosters from the store immediately afterwards!

Here's what I drafted (as usual, the first pack is on the left):

I took some basic lands early... sue me.

I got a bit scared after the first pack when I hadn't seen many dual lands and took none.  Pack 2 was real generous on lands, and I took as many as I could.  There were a full 8 people in my pod, so I opened the Brudiclad that I grabbed for the ninth pick.  (There was a third rare in there, another (non-foil) Heliod!)  That Brudiclad wound up being part of an amazing combo that I kept getting with Tetsuko.

Yes, I would like to make an unblockable 2/1 every turn.

One opponent commented that I had a Legendary Tribal deck.  Here's what the final version of my deck looked like:

I probably shouldn't have run the Heliod.

In my first round, I was up against a pretty aggro Rakdos deck.  I felt real good after turn 3 in game 1; I managed to have lands of all five colors out and got Aegar out there.

Actual game shot.  Of my side, anyways.

Aegar got killed before my next turn, and I wound up losing that first game pretty decisively, but I overwhelmed my opponent and won the second.  Unfortunately, the final game went much like the first and I lost the round 2-1. 

In the second round, I got a bye (someone dropped).  After a few minutes, I managed to find table space to play casually against the person in the other pod who had a bye (they had 7).  They were also running WUBRG, but they had the huge luck of first-picking Jegantha, who they ran as a companion.  We traded games before running out of time (we spent a bit of time clearing space on a side table).

In the third round, I matched up against Gruul big things.  Multiple times we were at an impasse because we both had huge creatures and couldn't swing without dying.  Twice we both had Ancient Imperiosaurs!  (I wish I had taken pictures!)  I snuck a win in game 1 by hitting (exactsies) for 19 in one turn after we both built up big boards.  Game 2 was a quicker overwhemling defeat.  In game 3, we went to time.  Turn 5 was mine, I was down 3 to 19 (again) and I swung out.  My imperiosaur had deathtouch and 19 power, but my opponent managed to block all of my other creatures and put two blockers on the dinosaur.  We drew at 3-2.  Close!

So, I technically went 1-1-1, but it felt more like 0-1-2.  I had so much fun!  Like I said above, I immediately bought a box of drafters.  This set actually feels a lot like Strixhaven; the Multiverse Legends cards act like the Mystical Archive. I'm not sure that the common dual lands show up often enough, but it's very similar.  Get out there and 5-color draft this set!