Chaos Draft: Unfinity in the Mix (WUBRG Drafting)

I got to run a little chaos draft on Saturday with three other people.  I thought I was in real trouble because I didn't take enough lands.  As it turns out, I got lucky enough that it worked out anyways.  

Here's what we drafted:

Nine different sets in twelve packs, pretty good.

Yes, there are three Unfinity packs, all taken by the same person.  This brought up some unexpected rules questions that we had to decide on the spot, because the normal Unfinity draft rules don't work very well.  Here's what doesn't really work and what we decided to do, mid-draft:

• Attractions.  
• Normal, official rule: "If you want to use Attractions in Limited formats (Booster Draft and Sealed Deck), your Attraction deck must contain at least three Attraction cards and may contain duplicates. In Booster Draft specifically, Attractions are drafted like other cards in the booster pack. If you don't draft at least three Attraction cards, you won't be able to use an Attraction deck."
• We just had to straight up ignore this rule.  If you only drafted one or two Attractions, that's enough for a deck.  If you manage to get some awesome combo out of that, then good for you.
• Stickers:
• Normal, official rule: "In Booster Draft events, sticker sheets aren't drafted. After you open an Unfinity booster pack, remove the sticker sheet before drafting any cards. Each game, choose up to three sticker sheets from among the ones you opened. Again, you can use the same ones each game or switch it up."
• This really wouldn't work, because then only the player who opened Unfinity would get access to stickers.  In this case, it would highly incentivize everyone to open at least one Unfinity pack, which would make the draft a bit less chaotic.  
  
• Instead, we put all the sticker cards in a collective pile and agreed that when someone did an action with stickers, they could browse through the cards and choose any of the available stickers. 
   

Those rules seemed to sit well with everyone, and they worked out just fine during play.  (I had one sticker-relevant card, and I just ignored it's effect, mostly because I didn't have many tickets.

Here's what I pulled in the draft:

Left-to-right, front-to-back, as normal.

I failed to pull any Open an Attraction cards, so those Attractions were useless.  The biggest problem here is the lack of lands.  I did not get enough dual lands.  I had to resort to pulling non-land fixing, like the Nervous Gardener and Wose Pathfinder.  Both of those are good cards, but I don't know that I would have taken them as early as I did.  

Another thing I worked for was 6-mana spells to combo with the Imoti that I grabbed second overall.  I tried very hard to get more, but there just weren't that many.

Cutting was tough.  Here's the deck that I ran with:

Two white and two red mana-producing lands was tough to look at.

 

Since I didn't have enough mana-fixing lands, I planned early on to revert to my strategy of choosing to be on the draw instead of the play whenever I got to pick.

In the first round, I was up against a Temur value deck.  Both games were a big comeback for me, as I took an early beating, then managed to claw my way back into the game.  (I think my wins were at 5 and 6 life, respectively.)  Turn 2 suspending of Gargadon seemed really good, except my opponent just held on to an Essence Scatter to deal with it.  In the first game, a pair of Swiftfoot Boots kept me on my heels and my removal in my hand.  I had to get a big board down before I could finally safely start to hit back.  In the second game, he had a great combo with the new Krenko and Floodhound.  Each turn he was gaining a hasty goblin and either drawing a card or putting counters on all his creatures.  I thankfully managed to keep the numbers of goblins down and cast Rune-Brand Juggler the turn before Krenko went to a 5/5.  Unfortunately, on their next turn, I couldn't activate the juggler because I needed to use Artistic Refusal to counter a new threat and Krenko went up to 6/6.  I was able to kill it the next turn in combat with the juggler and Iridescent Blademaster, and then turned the tables for the eventual win.

In the second round, I fought an Orzhov deck with very efficient creatures.  I won the first game decisively, but the second was one of the best limited games I've played in a while.  My main adversary was the card Wispdrinker Vampire, which paired well with nearly every single creature he cast.  He also had a Concordia Pegasus that became his ringbearer, making it unblockable.  I dropped to seven life, then drew into Six-Sided Die.  I was ready to use it to kill the vampire when he attacked next, since I had a Glitterflitter ready to block.  Instead of swinging in full, which would have killed me without my trick, he saw the card in my hand and just hit with the pegasus. I kept saving the Six-Sided Die for combat, worried that I wouldn't roll above a  to kill the Wispdrinker.  I started to swing back on the ground with the Blademaster and enough mana for two activations, finally bringing him below 20.  (He had gained a lot off the Wispdrinker.) 

Finally I got a Doom Blade to deal with the pegasus, after going down to 2 life.  He played another little creature, and the Wispdrinker trigger put me to 1.  I had no choice and had to use the Six-Sided Die (I should have responded to the spell with it).  I rolled a 5.  Byebye, vampire!  After that the tide turned quickly.  I got a few more very useful creatures and the Iridescent Blademaster along with Wose Pathfinder were able to push through the blocks for the second win.  What an amazing game!  

In the third round, I made some big hand-decision errors.  In the first game I kept a land that I thought had a forest but didn't.  Oops!  I died shortly thereafter.  In game 2, I had Bant land in my hand, then drew into a bunch of Rakdos creatures.  I did get a Treasure token off of Jewel-Eyed Cobra, but I had to use it right away as an eighth mana to pump up Iridescent Blademaster.  I died but put up a fight and got my opponent to 7.  I finally suffered the pain of trying to run five colors.  (That doesn't mean I'll stop!)

2-1.  Another excellent chaos draft in the books!

Repack Draft with Real Packaging! WUBRG Drafting

I ran another free draft last night with the repacks I've made.  One of my Christmas gifts was little bags for the packs, so for the first time things looked really good. 

The bags look awesome!

These packs were built mostly from a huge mess of cards that were donated to me nearly a decade ago by some students.  I decided to pay that forward to future students by repacking the cards into packs and running drafts with them.  

I sorted those cards by color to keep packs balanced.  My recipe for packs is: 2 cards of each color, 2 multi-colored cards, 1 artifact, 1 non-basic land, and 1 card from a mix of spells (not land).  Last year a nice IT person here donated an EDH-sized deck box full of bulk rares to the effort, so I've been including those in the place of that last any-spell-card.  (These definitely make things more fun!)

We had seven people last night.  Since we had an odd number, we did single-game matches.  (When we do this, we add that the first mulligan is free.)  Benefits:

• Matches go fast, so we keep the rounds unorganized.  When you finish your game/match, one of you gets matched up with the person who is waiting and you immediately start.  (It's best to prioritize whoever has played fewer matches so far.)  If all three of you have already played each other, then just wait for other matches to end.  (I did have a method for timing games, but I haven't done that in a long while.)  The benefit here is that a person who is waiting to play doesn't usually have to wait very long.
  
• It's more casual, because there isn't the intensity that can come in a best-of-three match.  (This is probably pretty subjective.)  It seems to be really good for newer players.
• You get to play against more people during the draft.  I am a big fan of this.

I do completely understand players who appreciate best-of-three matches more.  I have nothing against that opinion!  For in-store events, I feel the same way.  

I drafted WUBRG pretty aggressively, taking dual lands and land-cyclers as early picks.  I felt really good reviewing all my picks:

Left-to-right, bottom-to-top, as always.

I decided not to run the Sphere of Safety, and I think that was a fine choice.  After I got Krosan Drover, I went heavier into the land cyclers (getting five from Scourge!) and also grabbed that super-late Boros Battleshaper in pack 2, which won me multiple games.  (Seriously, that card was a house!  In the best situation, it's a 3-for-1: it's a big creature, keeps another out of combat, and forces yet another into the meat grinder.) Here's the deck I ran:

The curve looks high, but many of those are land cyclers.

We managed to get all of our matches in!  I was first paired up against an Izzet opponent.  I had to fight through some control, but once Boros Battleshaper hit, I was in control.  1-0

In the second round, I faced off against a Selesnya deck.  They got a bit stuck on having multiple copies of Steel Leaf Paladin in hand, but couldn't keep any of their smaller creatures on the board in order to have one to bounce.  I was able to finish them off before they could get a single one to stick.  2-0

In the third round, I was up against a Rakdos deck.  I didn't hit my land drops and couldn't get enough out to hold off a horde of smaller critters.  2-1

In the fourth round, I faced off against the player who drafted Triskaidekaphobia, a card which had already won them one game and lost them another!  They got it down near the end, but I was not near 13 and I had enough creatures to win.  They decided we would both lose one life when they were at one, so technically the card got a third kill.  3-1

In the fifth round, I was up against a neat Orzhov deck with lots of removal and little utility creatures: Samite Pilgrim and Kabuto Moth among them.  I went down to 1, but I got those taken care of with good combat and Razorfin Hunter.  I brought out Boros Battleshaper, and overwhelmed the board.  4-1

I need to point out that during this fifth round, my match was not the exciting one.  The Triskaidekaphobia player was facing who would be my final opponent.  That opponent played Doom Foretold and it came down to whether the phobia would be sacrificed before it could earn another win.  It did not.  Triskaidekaphobia killed four players!

I went into my game feeling quite confident.  My opponent was also on Orzhov, and was 0-5.  Everyone else was rooting for them, to force a 4-way 4-2 tie (all other games had finished).  I started off real bad.  Doom Foretold came out early and I was low on land.  I think I took six hits from Harvest Gwyllion before I managed to turn the tide and my opponent had to sac the Doom to itself to have an appreciable board state.  I went down to 5 and started hitting back with some fliers.  Boros Battleshaper came down again and I got greedy.  I attacked with too many creatures with what I thought was enough to block.  My opponent happily played Lead Astray on their turn, followed by what I think was Coordinated Charge to kill me with their two attackers.  4-2

What a great event!  I had a blast and I hope I get to do more of these!