Kingdom Neapolitan Commander Draft

The holiday season bestowed an adventurous spirit in us.  We had six players and (somehow) decided to run a Neapolitan Commander Draft with the addition of the Kingdom EDH roles.  This might have been the first ever Kingdom draft, and is almost certainly the first Kingdom Neapolitan draft.  The resulting game was one of the best multiplayer games of magic I've ever played.  There's a LOT to unpack in the four words of this post's title:

• Neapolitan Commander Draft:
• This is a Commander draft where players draft one pack each of the three (as of the writing of this post) commander draft sets: Commander Legends, Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur's Gate, and Commander Masters.  
• There are some additional rules: each mono-colored and colorless creature gets two additional abilities: Partner and Choose a Background.  
• This was my third Neapolitan Commander Draft.  The prior one was less than three months ago!  
• There's some discussion about whether you need to open the packs in release order.  The downside is that the only five-color legends are in Commander Masters, the third set, which matters because of the color identity rule.  We decided to randomize the order.  Then we rolled to open them in reverse-release order: Masters, Baldur's Gate, Commander Legends.
• We decided to (mostly) forget about the pick-two-cards-at-a-time aspect of Commander drafts.  The first pick from each pack was two cards, but then every subsequent pick was only one card.  (This really did solve the problem of people forgetting to pick two cards each time.  I highly recommend this!)  
  
• Kingdom EDH:
• I posted about this five years ago, cataloging all the different versions and describing the version one of my groups uses.  (We used them a lot with five players in Oathbreaker.)  As a quick refresher, here are the roles we use:
• King: The only revealed role.  They have more life and need to outlast everyone else (except the Knight).
• Knight: They win with the King, but they (like everyone else) aren't revealed until they die.
• Barbarians: There are two of them.  They win if the King dies while one of them are alive.  Barbarians know who the other Barbarian is.
  
• Our version differs from the "standard" in that we dropped the Usurper role in favor of a random choice of four alternative roles:
• Gravedigger, who wins if the three people die while they are alive.
• Black Knight, who wins if the Knight dies first, or if they kill the Knight, or if they outlast everyone.
• Villager, who when they die return at half life on the opposite team of the person who killed them (if a Barbarian or Knight/King kills them).
• Doppelgänger, who secretly becomes the role of first person that dies.
• Since we had six people, we had two of these random roles instead of one.  If I have done this before, it was never in draft and only once or twice.  
• How we combined them:
• We wanted people to know their role before drafting, so we assigned them first.  No one knew what the roles of the other people were.
• We randomized seating for the draft.  (We got real lucky and got the order we were already sitting in!)
• Before drafting, we let the Barbarians know who the other Barbarian was without telling anyone else.
• After drafting, we randomized seating for actual game play.
• Only after we were all seated with our decks to play did we reveal who the king was.

I got my role and was determined to draft based on it.  I will wait to reveal what that role is until after you see my draft picks so you can try to guess based on them.

Six draft sets and six face-down Kingdom EDH roles.

Commander drafts are a bit weird because you are simultaneously figuring out colors while looking for a commander (or combination) that supports those colors.  I did not get a five-color commander (but someone else did) so I had to pick and choose between colors.  I really wanted to be in red, because removal seemed vital to my role, so I committed to that early.  I didn't see good black removal early on, so that was kind of out.  Green, white, and blue had some good removal as well as some other cards that seemed relevant, so they were all in the mix to support red.

It wasn't until the third pick during pack two that I mostly committed to Izzet with Lozhan.  All my adventures and dragons could double as removal.  At that point nearly all of my picks were in Izzet.  Here are my picks:

I nabbed multiple dragons before I saw Lozhan!

I didn't think blue would be the choice, but it worked out great.  I can't really go any further without talking about my role, so, here we go.  If you want to try to figure it out based on my picks and what I said, do that now.  Otherwise, just scroll down.  I'll put some space before I continue below.

 

10

9

8

7

6

5

4

3

2

1

Hopefully that's enough lines!

I got the Knight!  What a great role!  I can't block for the King, but I could kill threats, so removal seemed really useful.  I stuck with Izzet, even though that meant I didn't get to use a lot of great cards including Kirtar's Wrath, Acidic Slime, and Jahiera's Respite.  Here's what I built:

Two colors is so weird.

 

We sat down to play and the king revealed themselves.  They were running Pianna and Sarevok.  That seemed like a pretty good combination.  To their left was Minsc and Boo, Timeless Heroes.  Then me, the Knight, running Lozhan.  Then Aryel.  Then The Ur-Dragon.  (I was WUBRG with envy!)  Then Azusa and Alharu.  

Unlike the rest of my compatriots, I have played quite a bit of this.  So I admitted to the group that it was common for all players to start out claiming to be the Knight.  I followed that up by pouring on the role-playing with "my liege" and "your majesty" at every chance.  Some of the others joined suit, most notably Azusa/Alharu.  It was great.

In the first four turns, three important things happened.  First, Minsc & Boo played two mana dorks and was able to attack with 4/4 Boo on turn three.  Second, Aryel played Wyrm's Crossing Patrol, which dealt a bunch of damage the first few turns and continued to be a factor in the game.  (In fact, they used Dread Return once to get it back.)  Third, on my turn four, I played Sulfurous Blast and took out a bunch.

Cast during my main phase, I took out a lot.

This seemed like a good move to slow down my opponents without hurting the King.  This sent a good signal that I was the actual Knight, but I didn't have them convinced yet.  

Even though Minsc & Boo had lost some tempo, they had a big turn with Boarding Party cascading into Avenging Hunter.  The Initiative was in play and the Boarding Party hit me for 6.  

We had both The Initiative and The Monarch out later in the game.

I played Lozhan on my fifth turn.  On my sixth turn I cast Livaan and killed a threat to the King with Lozhan's trigger.  Around the same time, Aryel put an Assault Suit on a Nefarious Imp and started passing it around the table, but only to people they thought wouldn't attack the King.  Confidence in me being the Knight was waning. 

The +1/+1 counters came later.

 

I honestly commented that I was nervous the Barbarians wouldn't rush the King soon.  Everyone else had taken significant damage, but the King still had 37 life.  I started throwing around comments about which roles I thought people had.  I got greedy and Lozhan died to the Ur-Dragon player's removal.  Then, on their (Ur-Dragon's) turn 7, the Barbarians revealed themselves and started swinging in: they were the Ur-Dragon and Minsc & Boo.  On that same turn they had played enough ramp to cast The Ur-Dragon (the creature).  Of course, the two random-role players also didn't want the Barbarians to kill the King (at least not right away) so the Barbarians became the Archenemy for the moment.

On the King's turn 9, they built up enough to kill the Minsc and Boo Barbarian.  Upon dying they revealed their role.  Sure enough, they were a Barbarian.  (It's not usually good to lie about that.)

On Aryel's turn 9, they claimed to be the Black Knight, then attacked me to 7.  Azusa/Alharu finished me off on their turn 9.  I revealed my Knight role.  They did not reveal themselves, so they weren't the Black Knight.  

At this point, it's important to point out the dynamic.  The remaining (supposed) Barbarian was trying to kill the King.  The (supposed) Black Knight and other unknown player both probably needed the Barbarian to die before the King.  So, the King had some competing interests.  They wanted the Barbarian to not be able to kill them, but had some incentive for them to live so the other two wouldn't focus on them next.  

The one case where that wouldn't be true is if one of the random-role players was the Gravedigger.  In that case, they would win so long as any of the other players died first.  (Even if it was the King, they would win and the Barbarians wouldn't.)  In that case, everyone else would want the Gravedigger to die next.  At the table there was a bunch of suspicion that Azusa/Alharu was actually a Gravedigger.

Aryel seemed distraught that they hadn't killed me, so it seemed more clear that they were actually the Black Knight.  On their next turn (10) they killed Azusa/Alharu, who revealed themselves to be... the Villager, not the Gravedigger!  Their life was reset to 15, they continued in the game with the rest of their current state, but didn't join one of the other teams, since a non-Barbarian/King/Knight had killed them.  They continued their turn by playing Slaughter the Strong, which among other things killed the Ur-Dragon.

The Ur-Dragon player surprisingly let it go to the graveyard, but the reason for that became evident on their next turn (10) when they cast two huge spells.

A 10/10 and a copy of Ur-Dragon.  Seems good.

On their following turn (11) the King played Githzerai Monk, which prevented the Ur-Dragon player from killing him.  On the King's next turn (12), they swung back and killed the Ur-Dragon player.  They were the Barbarian, as claimed.  The remaining three players: King, Villager, and (supposed) Black Knight were each on their own.  The Villager had built up a a strong board and the King hadn't done much.  On their turn 13, they took out Aryel, who revealed themselves to be the Black Knight they had claimed.

Then there were two.  And one brownie left.

Sadly my teammate didn't have enough to hold on and on the Villager's next turn, their 14th, they attacked and killed the King.

What a game!  This was so fun!  Even though I died second, the game continued to be exciting for me and it was fun to see everything play out.  The Minsc and Boo player pondered how it would have gone if they'd've started attacking the King straight off instead of throwing their damage around.  I honestly don't know!

If you are thinking about trying this format, please do!  It worked really well with six and I expect it would also be fun with the usual five.

There are some changes I would like to make to the format/resources:

• I would like to update the original role cards to make it more clear how they work with the roles we added.
• I would like to make an FAQ of clarifications.
  
• I would like to give the Barbarians an extra option: any of them can reveal their role during any non-combat phase (and without using the stack).  This could be relevant whenever something references opponents/teammates and also because teammates cannot attack each other.
• I would like to clarify how the Villager works.  How do you know the role of the player that killed you?  I would like to change it so that the player who kills the Villager is forced to reveal themselves.
• When the Villager "undies" I would like them to have the option to shuffle any cards in their graveyard/exile into their library.  That way if they died from decking, they can stay alive for a meaningful amount of time. 
  

What do you think of these changes?  

Bonus Addendum!  The Barbarians want to show off their decks as well!

Ur-Dragon:

Minsc & Boo:

Wilds of Eldraine 4 (WUBRG Drafting)

I made it to another draft at my Friendly Local Gaming Store (FLGS), Intergalactic Plastic.  This was their last draft before they move to a bigger location, which is pretty exciting!  IGP is different from other gaming stores because they have a ton of budget memorabilia like old He-Man and Transformers toys for sale.  It's pretty great.  

They also do a great job of running older sets for drafts.  I haven't drafted Foundations, nor Bloomburrow, but I got in yet another Wilds of Eldraine draft.  This set is very kind to me!  I don't know if that's a personal thing or that it's just very good for 5-color drafting in general.  (I would ask my intelligent readers for feedback, but I think it's nearly impossible to leave comments in Blogger for weird cookie reasons.)  This time was no different!

The drafting portion seemed crazy.  There were a lot of valuable cards getting passed around.  I think that's because I got really lucky in my seating:

• The store owner was seated to my right, and he didn't care about passing money because he has a huge collection.  (I don't feel bad about this.  You can sit next to me anytime!)
• The person to my left had never drafted here before and hadn't drafted in a while (Wilds was new to them) and they were expecting rares to be redrafted at the end.  Oof.  I 100% feel bad about this.  (I wrote a post nine years ago about the pros and cons of redrafting.  The cons still outweigh the pros to me.)  I will touch back on this later, but I don't want to spoil things.

In addition to directly where I was sitting, there were two or three other people at the table (of eight) who hadn't drafted before.  Given all of that, I drafted some crazy stuff:

I wish I could have run that Grave Pact!

I didn't get much in the way of land-based mana-fixing (LBMF?).  One of my WUBRG friend/foes was at the table, but they didn't even wind up running all five colors.  Nevertheless, this group seemed to know that lands were good.  Thankfully I got some other ways of fixing.  (Collector's Vault is real good!)  I got removal and I got tons of crazy enchantments.  I started off without the Forced Fruition, then realized that was a bit cowardly of me (props to my WUBRG friend for the appropriate peer pressure) and put it in.  Here's what my deck looked like:

Removal, removal, removal, board wipe, removal, one-sided board wipe, ...

In the first round I was up against an aggressive Boros deck piloted by a first-time drafter and relatively new magic player.  We took our time so I could make sure everything made sense, but at the beginning of game 2 I realized there was a misconception about mana you could spend to pay for spells.  (E.g. 2R is not equal to RRR.)  The second game went way better for them.  I was doing okay, playing without green, then they had a big turn that flipped control of the board.  

Some pretty good spellslinger-enablers.

Time was almost up, so I played Forced Fruition, then played Expel the Interlopers, choosing 0, the next turn.  They played a few spells on turn two after time, went to one card in the library, and I had enough to keep them stuck.  Time was called and I won the match with one win.  1-0.

The second round had me up against the drafter to my left, running Golgari adventures & food.  He was clearly a skilled player, but had been out of the scene for a while.  He gobbled me up in the first game, though I extended it with all that removal.  In the second game he got a bit mana screwed and it was enough for me to charge in with a bunch of little guys.  The third game was really tight and I held out at low life for a while, but ultimately got knocked off.  Despite all of my removal, their synergy was too strong and they played their cards really well.  They went on to win the final round to win the tournament 3-0.  (I hope they thought the packs they won were a good substitute for passing rares!)  1-1.

In the third round I was up against the store owner!  They had a really quick and aggressive Selesnya deck, but the MVP of the match was definitely Gingerbrute.  In the first game they got me down to 12 on the back of that cookie alone.  I was honestly looking to get to five mana so I could activate Agatha just to give my creatures haste so I could block the dang thing.  I got the food golem off the table another way and won with Asinine Antics on their turn (how is that card fair?), followed up by Song of Totentanz, powered (on the second attack) with Agatha's pump.  In game two, Gingerbrute came out again, but this time beefed up with Royal Role from Betroth the Beast.  A Titanic Growth sent me down to 11, and I had to change priorities to kill it with Rip the Seams the next time it attacked.  It's a good thing I did, because it got another Titanic Growth the next turn.  Nevertheless, I was in danger and fell to 3 life to their 16.  I slowed the board back down, kept attacking for small amounts of damage in the air, and they were out of a hand.  I didn't have good gas in my hand, though, so I played Forced Fruition, hoping they would have a limited number of spells and I could outplay them.

Nope.

Their second spell was Spider Food, killing my potential-game-winner and drawing them 13 other cards.  They played a bunch, discarded a lot, and I dug in.  Thankfully, I had held Asinine Antics back to deal with whatever they got in their big draws, and that kept me alive in the ensuing combat.  After I got the board back in control, I drew Song of Totentanz and won that turn.  I can't believe I pulled that off.  2-1.

Wilds of Eldraine is a really fun draft set.  The card pool is so varied with all the Enchanting Tales that you have to expect anything.  I hope I get to draft it again!

Board Wipes in Chaos (WUBRG Drafting)

Board wipes aren't very chaotic, but they are very good.  (One of my first decks I was proud of as a kid packed a lot of red/white board wipes.)  We had a very interesting nine-person draft two days ago.  I chose my picks ahead of time to celebrate my football team's recent impressive victory.

Maize and Blue!  The Ravnica theme was unintentional. 

 

Since there were a lot of us and an odd number, we went for single-game rounds again.  (I'm sure some of the players are getting sick of this.  I'm sorry!)  The packs were all over the place, with a block of 6 Theros Beyond Death.  (Those actually work great with other sets.)  Here's what we opened:

Lottery ticket donated by one of the players.

 

A question came up about Wastes.  Should players be allowed to add Wastes to their decks?  It makes sense that if only one player opens a set with Wastes, it would be a bummer for multiple people to have unplayable cards just because other packs won't have them.  On the fly we decided to allow players to add up to two wastes.  I would like to see what other people think, so here's a poll, using STAR voting: https://star.vote/zcke3ayk/. 

My picks were unexpectedly thin on mana fixing.  One other person went WUBRG and yet another tried, but wound up in Gruul instead.  I only got two fixing lands, but I also had Glamorous Outlaw, which is just about as good.  I very nearly passed a Springmantle Cleric until I realized it had pseudo-converge.  (It helps to read cards!)  Most notably, I picked up two board wipes: Starfall Invocation and Unstable Glyphbridge.  Here are all of my picks, in order:

Removal and removal and more removal.

I went heavy on removal, even after cutting Drown in the Loch and Thraben Charm.  Here's the deck I built:

Missing: all the fixing lands I wish I'd picked.

I managed to get in seven rounds of the eight possible!  The only person I missed was the person who went 4-0, which I think means they won the draft.  As with last time, my WUBRG rival who was dead set on winning his first match against me wanted to drag out the drama; we played last.

I first battled the Gruul player.  I got one of my lieutenants out, Harnesser of Storms, an otter who granted tons of value.  The otter saw lots of play that night.

Unfortunately, this one was a nonbo to exile.  I really wanted the fixing too!

My value kept me in the lead and I won.  1-0

In the second round, I went against a Selesnya deck.  I got all my colors and I think I curved into Alesha, Who Laughs at Fate plus Iroas's Blessing.  Combined with my other removal, I kept the board clear and just kept swinging in with Alesha.

I even got the Outlaw out.

Alesha is great, even if I didn't have anything to get out of the graveyard.  2-0.

In round three, I was up against a Golgari deck.  I started slow, but got out a 2/2 spirit, thanks to Phantom Interference with Sorcerer's Wand as my opponent built up their board.  Then I dropped a big Springmantle Cleric.  I was at 20 and thought I was safe and swung in with the cleric.  Then Garruk's signature spell appeared.

Note I did not have the mana for either of the board wipes in my hand, so it wasn't a misplay.

The picture shows my death.  It's almost like there's a downside for running five colors.  2-1.

In the fourth round, my very courageous opponent ran a Boros deck with lots of quick critters.  I had a fist full of removal, but I was missing the mountains and swamps to cast most of them.  Luckily I got to four-for-one with Starfall Invocation.  

I wish I had that Paragon of Modernity!

I still didn't have a board, though, and then they played Rite of the Dragoncaller.  I was pretty freaked out until I read Pharika's Libation more closely.

I wonder whether that's the first time that Rite has ever been sacrificed to the libation!

I got the 2/2 flying spirit from Phantom Interference again and kept a death grip on the rest of the board.  It managed 16 damage over eight attacks.  The remaining four damage came from a Rolling Thunder that I think took out two creatures as well.  3-1

For the fifth round, I graduated from 2-color guilds to 3-color shards and wedges.  (This was not planned.)  I faced off against a really aggressive Mardu deck that promised a short game by playing an early Ripples of Undeath.  I got some good blockers early, one of which was the Harnesser of Storms.  That got upgraded with a Sorcerer's Wand (combo!) and I just started picking off the little creatures and played Alesha.  My opponent had a good Take for a Ride.  

I didn't get to attack with her first!

I had the perfect response with a timely Hussar Patrol, but they still got the Alesha graveyard trigger.  Thankfully I had the necessary removal to keep everything under control, even with the card (from graveyard) economy, and win.  4-1.

In the sixth round I faced a neat Esper deck.  This was the player who opened Ikoria, then drafted and built around Gyruda.  Amazing!  He got to cast Gyruda twice, since he saved it after I killed it the first time.  

Byebye, combo pieces!

Swiftblade Vindicator held it's own in this game.  After Gyruda hit the second time, I nearly had a perfect Unstable Glyphbridge cast, except that it got Gitaxian Anatomist, which survived.  They rebuilt their board with Rite of Belzenlok, which got off.  

I needed the rite and the demon in the same photo.

Thankfully I had Dreadful Apathy for the demon.  I didn't even need to let the self-damage play out, though.  I transformed the Glyphbridge using the artifacts I'd milled, and won in the air.  5-1.

Final round!  I was up against my rival, who has also taken up a WUBRG mantle.  Unfortunately, they hadn't managed to draft a single fixing land.  I got stuck without much land and only had Stuffed Bear to fend for itself for many turns.  Later on he played real converge, and I played my fake converge card.

I'm glad mine had a higher casting cost.

We got locked down a bit, then he surprised my Vexing Gull with 

Double Vexation.

Swiftblade Vindicator hit again.  I strategically put Iroas's Blessing on it.  Then I won shortly after this:

I finally comboed the Stuffed Bear with a board wipe!

The Swiftblade Vindicator and the bear won the game in, I think, two turns. 6-1.  7-0 against my rival.  Oof!  (You know who my football team is; I don't take these long streaks for granted!)

All in all, my removal won for me over and over.  I can barely believe I only lost one game to a lack of colors.  I got really lucky!  

My games were wicked fun!  The back and forth of combat superiority is exactly the sort of thing I like.  Maximizing value on the board wipes was especially satisfying.  It'll be a long time before I get two of those again.

If you didn't already, please vote in the poll above!  I would like to use that to help us decide what to do in the future.

Once Upon a Time Chaos Came to Thanksgiving (WUBRG Drafting)

Last night we had a chaos draft, two days before Thanksgiving.  Feeling festive, I chose sets that create food: Bloomburrow, Throne of Eldraine, and Lord of the Rings.  Here's what everyone opened: 

A nonagon as regular as the packs themselves.

Wow, we had nine people!  That morning we were at four, and somehow we got lucky enough to get five more!  A real Thanksgiving miracle!

I got two multi-colored lands in my first four picks, so I figured I was pretty safe and took my foot off the (mana-fixing) gas.  Unfortunately, that wasn't the case and I only got two more in the entire draft.  Also, there were two amazing WUBRG cards opened that I never saw, Progenitus and The World Tree!  The good news is that some other cards provided great mana fixing: Mental Journey, Rootrider Faun, Freestrider Lookout (though I only triggered it once), and my very first pick, Once Upon a Time.  That last one was surprisingly good.  Here were all of my picks:

I picked three rooms and didn't play any of them.

Since we had an odd number of people and everyone was very chill, we ran with single-game rounds so we'd get to play a bunch of people.  I managed to play seven of the eight possible opponents before they'd left.  (I stayed up late!)

In my first round I was up against an out-of-town visitor running a Rakdos deck.  I got to cast Once Upon a Time on my first turn and found an island.

A much-needed Island!

My opponent got stuck on three swamps and I won by beating with big stuff.  Thanks, Colossal Dreadmask! 1-0.

For the second found, I was matched up against an Orzhov deck with dangerous 4-drops.  I got really lucky: Magma Spray took out a Resolute Rider and Flame of Anor took out a Dreadwurm before they could cause any trouble.  After that I was able to slowly build a very menacing board and won off of the value of things like Kemba, Kha Enduring.  2-0.  Here's what it looked like near the end:

I was confident enough to attack with Wonder.

My third opponent was a long-time wacky drafter here who had a "mostly Boros" Jeskai deck.  I was dead on turn 5.  Oof!  2-1.  My opponent went on to win their next three games in 5, 6, and 6 turns, respectively!

Here's me taking 11 damage on turn 4.

In the fourth round, up against a spellslinger Izzet deck, I got a free Once Upon a Time again.  

Sadly, no Island this time.

(I took the Alpine Meadow, which worked out okay.)  This time I managed to use the combo power of Kemba and Colossal Dreadmask.  Why pay to move the Dreadmask when you can just create a new cat who gets it?  Jem Lightfoote also helped me get in consistent damage.  Kemba's value outworked the "when you cast an instant or sorcery" izzet creatures. 3-1

In the fifth round I was fighting a Gruul deck and Once Upon a Time came up again!

Jungle Hollow was the pick here.

An island came up not too long later, which activated a really strong combo visible in that hand above: Nesting Grounds and Lazav, Familiar Stranger.  Want to commit a crime?  Activate Nesting Grounds, target a permanent you control with no counters and a permanent your opponent controls.  

Smooth Criminality.

Lazav was the key to my win here, outgrowing any threats that came my way.  4-1.

In the sixth round, against an Abzan life gain deck, Once Upon a Time showed up again.  This time I got the full awesomeness and cast it during my opponent's upkeep.

Rootrider Faun gave me some ramp this time.

My opponent's deck acted like Dina, Soul Steeper was the Commander.  There were a ton of little life gain effects.  This turned out to be my longest game of the night.  I got beat up a lot early, mostly due to Dina triggers.  Around the time she finally left the battlefield, I was at 6 life.  Soon after, my opponent got up to 46.  This Orchard Strider hit the board four times!

Not pictured: another Ephemerate effect a few turns later.

This was a real war of attrition.  I swung in with Wonder, baiting a block as their lifetotal kept dropping.  Meanwhile Lazav got bigger and Kemba kept recruiting 2/2 cats.  

My board before I swung.  (The face down card is representing my 0/4 Wall.)

I kept chipping at that giant life total until Wonder got killed.  A few turns later I was going to have lethal, so they had to swing out at me.  I had enough to block everything (thanks, Cat tokens).  I was down to about six cards in my library, but still had lethal on the board and swung back for the win.  5-1

My opponent for the seventh and final round was my new rival, who had also drafted WUBRG and was running the World Tree mentioned earlier.  They waited for me to finish all my other matches so they would finally have a chance at defeating me.  They got to see nearly my entire deck by watching the match before.  So far they were 0-5 against me.  Were they prepared to win the WUBRG showdown and get their first win?  Nope!  Color screw!

I've been there.

My opponent didn't get any blue, so I was able to win quickly, especially with a bunch of my superstars.   

Pictured: superstars.

6-1, 6-0 against my rival.  They are super good-natured about it, thankfully, and I loved that they delayed the match until the very end of the night.  

Lessons and notes:

• Once Upon a Time is great, but I recognize that I got super lucky with 4 first-turn casts.
• Just because you draft Nesting Grounds to move your +1/+1 counters doesn't mean it can't be used to commit crimes.  This is what wacky drafting is all about!  Finding crazy combos across unrelated sets. 
  
• I didn't really use Food in any grand meaningful way.  Sorry, Thanksgiving. 
  
• I was really thought my time was up against my rival.  This is getting out of hand! 
  
• I still like drafting lots of Legends.

Mostly it was really fun to see all the creative decks people came up with.  I hope everyone had as much fun as I did.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! 

Rainbow/Star Magic

My link to the rules for the Star format on the right has become broken.  While writing about a recent Star Draft we did, I also discovered that the mtg.fandom wiki had (what I consider) some mild misinformation and that its links were also broken.

I want a place that I can refer to for a long time, so here's my own knowledge of the formats known as Rainbow and Star.

Rainbow

Rainbow is a five-player format that I first read about in the Magic Pocket Players' Guide, which was published in 1994.  

My cousin gifted me his copy many years ago.

 

In Rainbow, each player gets assigned one of the five colors, then everyone sits in a circle in the order on the back of a magic card.  You have to build your deck with only uncolored cards and cards of your given color.  Your teammates are the people to your right and left and your opponents are sitting across from you.  If both of your opponents die before you do, then you win.

Confusingly, turn order doesn't go straightforwardly clockwise.  That's because you don't want teammates taking turns after each other.  Instead, you skip over one player when you pass.  Thus, starting from the white-player's turn, the order would go like this: White -> Black -> Green -> Blue -> Red -> White.  (This is likely where the later name "Star" came from, as the turn order traces out a five-pointed star.  Good thing the Satanic Panickers didn't hear about this format!)

Star

Star is the same thing as Rainbow, but without the deck color requirement.  (The wiki linked above disagrees with me on the terminology.)  This makes things a lot more reasonable for casual play, as you don't have to sort out the colors beforehand.  

It's an excellent format, but I only recommend it for casual games.  Although there are teammates, there aren't well-defined teams, as your two teammates are enemies themselves.  This means that you aren't really relying on your teammates to do anything beyond attack each other and your opponents.  Although it's good for you if your teammates swing in for more damage than your opponents, in many ways it's really up to you to attack more than your teammates.  Speaking of attacking...

Cutthroat

Cutthroat is another relic of the Pocket Players' Guide, applicable to both Star and three-player magic.  It's great for speeding up these formats, but I haven't played by the exact original rules.  The rule I've used is that your attacking creatures can be blocked by either of your opponents, independent of who you declared them to attack.  Any combat damage dealt to one player actually lands on both defenders.  There are some complications:

• You may not be able to block creatures your teammate can.  For example, if we're attacked by a Mountainwalk creature and I have mountains but the other defender doesn't, then I can't block but they can.
• Combat damage triggers only on one of the players, so Ophidian-effects only trigger once.  (I'm sure there's an elegant rules-adhering implementation of this, e.g. a la Hydra Omnivore, but I don't know if there's anything official.)

I cannot emphasize how much this speeds games up.  There's already a bit of weird politicking that happens with teammates; removing the decision of who-to-attack cuts down on an enormous chunk of it.  If you're unsure, start with Cutthroat Star.

What is the original Cutthroat variant?  In addition to the above combat modifications, any other changes in life also affect both teamed-up players.  This happens on each player's turn: the two opponents share all life total changes.  From the guide: "If one of the[m] casts a Lightning Bolt on the other, they both take 3 points of damage."  (I honestly cannot tell whether this would be extremely fun or frustratingly hard to maintain.)

Practical Seating and Teams

In reality, sitting next to your teammates has some downsides:

• Teammates are more likely to share cards in their hands more often.  (I consider this a downside because it slows things down; you may not.)
• It's hard to see your opponents' creatures.
  
• The turn structure is hard to maintain.
  

The turn-passing point is important.  It's so abnormal to skip players' turns that it just doesn't work well in practice.  Someone will forget at some point and people will have to back up when the mistake is realized.  Don't do it!  Instead, sit next to your opponents, and just proceed in clockwise turn order.  This solves all of the downsides above.  Yes, maybe now it should be called "Pentagon" instead of "Star"; it's still better.  Again, if you are in any way unsure, do this.  I wish I had done this before.  (For the rest of this post, I'm going to assume players are seated in this orientation.)

Ranking Players

If your group wants more than just winners and losers, you can rank people in the order they leave the game.  The first player to die is in last place, followed by the other people who die in order.  The first player to win is in first place, followed by up to one other winning player. 

For example, if the five players are A, B, C, D, and E, and A dies, followed by C, then E, the ranking is:

1. B wins first prize for eliminating their two opponents first.
2. D wins second place for winning.
3. E is the best loser, for dying last.
4. C is the middle loser, for dying second, and
5. A is the first loser for dying first.

There can certainly be draws at certain spots due to simultaneous deaths.

Some Mediocre History  

Fallen Empires Rainbow: My first experience with this is in 1995, organizing a Rainbow match with decks constructed from Fallen Empires cards.  I was on Green and built a Thallid deck.  I feel bad for the person who was stuck on Red, though perhaps they could have built a better deck than we realized.  The pump knights were the real winners here.  We were young and some team rules were broken, so the dynamic wasn't quite right.  This was still wicked fun.  It worked well because of the lack of multi-colored cards in the set.

Onslaught Rainbow: Some college friends of mine and I split a box of Onslaught five ways and used that limited pool to build a deck.  I was on Blue and got lucky with an Arcanis the Omnipotent.  (I think the White player also got their legendary pit fighter.)  Unfortunately one of my opponents was goblins, which were quite good in that set.  Again, this was wicked fun and again this worked mostly because of the dearth of multi-colored cards at that time.

Star Drafts: I've done a few star drafts (two or three), all of which have all been fun, but we only implemented the practical seating arrangement this last time.  That made things go much more smoothly.  (And, as I mentioned there, I think that was the most that I've ever laughed during a Magic game.) 

I think I would even be willing to try the original Cutthroat rule!  Maybe.

That's my take on Star, and its predecessor, Rainbow.  I hope you get a chance to try it out!  Let me know if you learned this a different way or played it differently. 

Repack Draft #(n+5), Wishing on a Star (WUBRG Drafting)

I don't think I've ever laughed as much during a Magic game as I did last night.  At one point I was literally out of my chair, laughing on the ground.  My students are absolutely hilarious.  

I ran a free repack draft yesterday.  It happened with late notice (sorry) and it's deep into the semester, so there were only five of us instead of the big crowds we've had lately.

Five.  There was some talk of alternative formats as we were getting set up, so I threw out the idea of a Star Draft.  The link I had on the sidebar is dead, the mtg.fandom.com wiki page does not have the full correct information (in my own opinion), and the links from that page to their sources on wizards.com also seem broken.  Here's a quick explanation of the format, minus some details:

• It's a multi-player format where all five players sit in a circle.  The people directly to your right and left are your opponents.  The people across from you are your teammates.  (Yes, your teammates are each others' opponents, it gets messy.)
• If both of your opponents die (and you are still alive) then you step out of the game as a winner.  Up to two players can win.
• We played with the "cutthroat" add-on, to save time:
• Whenever a player attacks, all creatures are automatically attacking both opponents.  They can both use their creatures to "team block".  
• Any unblocked or trampled damage is dealt to both attacked players.
• Nitpick: the attacker actually needs to pick which opponent each creature is attacking, because any effects that trigger when "combat damage is dealt to a player" only triggers once.
• This speeds the game up because there is far less political discussion around deciding when (and who) to attack.
• As with multiplayer games, the first mulligan is free.  Since there aren't just two teams, the first player also gets to draw.
   

We drafted knowing that Star was the plan.  Here's what I pulled from the repacked "packs":

Pack 1: 3 guildgates in a row, followed up by 3 Coalition Honor Guards in 4 picks.

White was severely underdrafted.  I realized late in pack 1 just how great Flagbearer would be, so I grabbed those Coalition Honor Guards.  A lot of the other great cards I picked up I didn't see in the game, unfortunately.  There was a lot of table talk about people taking the dual lands, but then they didn't and I snagged a bunch at pretty late slots.

I didn't take a photo of my deck, so here's a list:

• Mana Value 2:
• Shire Scarecrow
• Razorfin Hunter
• Crossbow Infantry
• Three Tree Rootweaver
• Shipwreck Singer
• Absorb Vis (because it's more likely to cast for the land cycling)
  
• Mana Value 3:
• Kingpin's Pet
• Squall
• Ironfist Crusher (because it has morph)
• Orzhov Euthanist
• Mana Value 4:
• 3x Coalition Honor Guard
• Anaba Shaman
• Fodder Cannon
• Benalish Heralds
• 2x Orim's Thunder (Because of the kicker)
• Mana Value 5:
• Air Servant
• The Mouth of Sauron
• Charmed Clothier
• Mana Value 6:
• Shoreline Ranger
• Troll of Khazad-Dum
• Scab-Clan Giant
• Lands:
• 3x Izzet Guildgate
• Dimir Guildgate
• Boros Guildgate
• Azorius Guildgate
• Golgari Guildgate
• Cabaretti Courtyard
• 2x Plains
• 1x Island
• 2x Swamp
• 1x Mountain
• 2x Forest

One of the nice things about drafting Star is that because you're sitting next to your opponents, you don't need to move between the drafting and playing phases.  Speaking about seating, I need to set the stage.  Going clockwise from me, we had:

• Player A, Opponent, playing Izzet, who got the early pressure on the board.
  
• Player B, Teammate, on Rakdos.  He was actively antagonistic towards me and nearly targeted me with Mudbutton Torchrunner's death trigger.  That might have destroyed the dynamic of the game, so I'm glad it didn't happen! 
• Player C, Teammate, running Mono-Green.  He got absolutely mana flooded.  At one point he had 7 Forests in play and 5 more exiled by Bag of Holding.  Oof.  
• Player D, Opponent, who managed WUBRG as well.  This student is definitely my rival.  We chose to sit this way because they have not yet defeated me and wanted this chance to finally make it happen.  (I think I was 4-0 against them going in to this event.)  
  

I also need to explain that all four of the other players were my students, and they really enjoy messing with me. 

The game started slowly, with only small creatures and the aforementioned Bag of Holding in the first two turns.  

Everything's still pretty okay at this point.

On turn 4, player D dropped a Spectral Searchlight, a card I normally appreciate that did extra work in this format.  (I am sad that it doesn't burn people anymore.)  I got stuck on three lands with a bunch of 4-drops in my hand, which was bad because on A's fourth turn, they played Quaketusk Boar after asking D for one of the searchlight's mana.  (I always hear "Catalyst, grant me Life," whenever anyone shares with this.)

Player B and I didn't have enough blockers to deal with that for multiple turns, so our life totals dropped.  I quickly found myself with the lowest.  D got a Splatter Thug and unleashed it, but I got my fourth land and one of the Coalition Honor Guards came down to help slow the bleeding.

Everyone quickly learned how Flagbearer worked (and there was much gnashing of teeth) but I still refused to block the Boar on A's second turn.  This drew the ire of B, who started plotting with D against me.  The cross discussions started getting hilarious, as B was going off about how terrible I am.  On my following turn, I got my fifth land and dropped Charmed Clothier, who gave the Honor Guard the Royal Role.  Flagbearer + Ward was pretty good, and with these blockers we stopped the Boar's beatings. 

D had still not taken damage and was alone at 20 life.  They gained 2 and went to 22 and were clearly running the game.  B got in some hits, so the other life totals got lower and lower.  I think the boar died in combat after it was blocked by the Clothier and one of B's creatures.  I played a Troll of Khazad-Dum and then it was time to start attacking.  

Apparently a terrifying board.

Splatter Thug couldn't block, so on the troll's first attack, it ate D's Wall of Tanglecord.  (I killed that instead of two smaller creatures so that my other little creatures could become more threatening.)  I also dropped the Benalish Heralds for some more gas.  On the following turn, A, now at 5 or 6 life, had no blockers and D had only two.  I attacked with the troll.  Then all this happened:

Not pictured: the flagbearer that was forced to be the target.

Player A cast Deceive the Messenger to get a third blocker, only for C to drop Nature's Claim to kill D's Steel Wall.  At that moment, I was at 7 life and Player D had 26.  A died.  On their turn, B cast Lava Axe at my head (thanks!) then attacked and killed C, so Player B exited the game as the winner.  At some point I laughed so hard, I went on the ground laughing; I think that was from the Lava Axe.

It was down to me and my rival, with me at two life and them at twenty.  The troll had completely demoralized them, though, reminding them of other come-from-behind victories I'd managed in the past.  I played a second flagbearer and started swinging with the troll.  I couldn't wait because I passed them Immortal Phoenix and knew it could hit the board at any time.  

In the intervening turns, they played Leyline Invocation for 6 and I dropped the morphed Ironfist Crusher and continued to swing with the troll.  It was looking dicey, but they bounced it the following turn for a Silver Drake, planning to kill me in the air the next turn.  I killed that plan by destroying Spectral Searchlight with Orim's Thunder, taking out the drake with the damage.  With the fractal gone, I could swing in more safely and attacked for 8 with one of my 2/4s.  The following turn the troll won the game.

So, B and I won.  (By ranking, it was B in first, me in second, D in third, C in fourth, and A in fifth place.)  Other than my teammate Lava Axing me (grumble, grumble) this was very much how Star games play out.  I highly recommend this if you want a fun five-player format!

... and we'll see whether my rival is able to defeat me next time we meet!