Wednesday, February 28, 2024

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!

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