I finally got to do a Brothers' War draft! It was excellent! I was at a store I'd never been to before and everyone was quite nice.
Surprisingly, I pulled to draft five mana-fixing lands, and had quite an effective deck. I really wish I had more chances to draft this set. Here's what I picked, pack by pack (left-to-right), from bottom to top in order of the picks:
My first three picks were all lands, which seemed pretty good. I picked up a lot of bombs as I went, as well as a bunch of rares that I didn't wind up running. Here's what my deck looked like at the end:
I had some exciting grabs and combos that I wasn't expecting:
- Drafna + Ivory Tower: Drafna was great with lots of artifacts, but especially great with Ivory Tower. Multiple times I put the tower ability on the stack, then bounced it to my hand to get an extra life. (It didn't hurt that I could then replay Ivory Tower and copy it later.)
- Sarinth Greatwurm + Evolving Wilds: Yeah, this was real nice. I think I missed a bunch of triggers from opponents' land drops, though.
- Astral Cornucopia + Battery Bearer: When X=2, this is a 6-mana spell. If you also have Drafna, then you can recur it if you need cards. Both of these spells were just great, though!
- Door to Nothingness: There's a bit of a story here. I was in a draft pod of 8, all 7 people I hadn't played with before, quite a few of who were newish players. (There were at least two first-time drafters.) The group was very fun, and there was some friendly table talk while packs were getting passed around. At one point, people start commenting on the Door to Nothingness and how funny it was and that it kept getting passed. Well, I pulled it when it came to me and I told people I would try to activate it.
I finally did in round 3! My opponent had a howling mine out, so I was at a ton of life on Ivory Tower, and then I got to the door and cast it. I activated it the following turn and won the game. I feel like this has to be some kind WUBRG-drafting achievement. - The prototype artifact creatures are really good to draft. They're flexible, so you can either use them early or late game, and if you don't have the needed color for them, you can bring them out later. I would say I should have drafted more of these, but other cards were really good too, so I'm not sure.
I also got hit with perhaps the best card to play against a WUBRG deck, especially one that is getting domain all the time. I lost the first round decisively to mono-red. It looked like I might pull game one out, as he was severely mana flooded. However, he had an 8-drop that walloped me: Sundering Titan.
I couldn't believe it! I lost five lands, half my mana base, and bit it a few turns later. (I still can't believe it.)
Overall I went 1-1-1 and had a great time! I really hope I get to do this format again, but unfortunately I think the new set comes in before I'll have my next chance.
