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.
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.)
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:
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.
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