Time Sidewalk in Chaos: WUBRG Drafting

We had six at our last chaos draft, a first in recent times!  The selection of packs was excellent, but I brought some special packs for myself:

• First pack: Ravnica Remastered, which I bought on my honeymoon at Alaska Robotics, which is a little art gallery downtown in Juneau, Alaska that also carries games and comics.  It was not obvious ahead of time that they had gaming supplies, but the local bookstores sent me in the right direction.  I don't know that they hold events there, but the store is super cool and the cashier was wicked nice.  If you are on a cruise, as we were, it's very easy to get to from the rest of the town. 
  
• Second: Dominaria Remastered, which I picked up at the end of my honeymoon at Rain City Games in Vancouver, British Columbia.  This is a big store with walls of board games and a big space to play games.  The staff was super nice and I wish I'd had time to play there.  This store is in a cool international mall.  
• Third: I was hoping to have a third pack from my travels, but a later COVID diagnosis cancelled those plans.  So, I followed my habits and opened Streets of New Capenna. 
  

 Here's what the six of us picked to open overall:

13 of 18 Possible Unique Sets!

I've opened some Time Spiral Remastered packs in chaos drafts before, but the Ravnica and Dominaria Remastered seemed more fun somehow.  (Maybe I just got really lucky with these two packs.)  Here are my picks:

Naturally, I'm most excited about Time Sidewalk.

I felt really good right off the bat.  My first two picks from the Ravnica Remastered pack were both dual lands.  Combined with the World Weary and Alabaster Host Intercessor, I felt really confident in my first seven cards.  (Of course, I was determined to run Time Sidewalk.)  I do think I probably took Xira Airen too soon in pack 2, as she probably would have made it around the table.  

Here is the deck I built from these picks:

Enough color fixing?  Not really.

(I started with Invasion of Segovia and put the Deadly Derision in later.)  The biggest question I had for the night was: How good is Time Sidewalk?  Luckily, I was able to answer that question!

In the first round I lost to the player who won the tournament.  They ran a quick Selesnya deck that steamrolled me in the first game.  In the second game, I exiled Time Sidewalk from my opening hand.  Boom!  Four Time Walks shuffled into my deck!  I drew three of them in a row early on the game, which turned them into nothing-burgers as I didn't have a land to drop on any of those turns.  I lost that game as well.  Me: 0-1; Time Sidewalk: 0-1.

In the second round, I was up against a quick Mardu deck.  My opening hand was rewarded with the Time Sidewalk, but with only one land. 

Let's Walking Go!

I lost.  I put up a fight, but I did wind up losing that game.  I fell behind and just couldn't catch up.  I may have blown my chance by searching up a Forest off of World Weary.  I drew two Time Walks after that, but didn't have the proper land to cast it and another spell that same turn.  Had I grabbed an Island instead, it could have worked out.  (Maybe I should have mulliganed that hand.)  I did manage to pick up the next two games, though, mostly on the back of Xira Arien and Nexus of Becoming, two good cards that get even better together.  In game 3, I also hard cast Time Sidewalk for an extra turn, which seemed a bit crazy.  Me: 1-1; Time Sidewalk: 0-2.

We didn't have enough time to get a third match in last night, but I kept my deck together and got a match in today on SpellTable against one of the other drafters.  My opponent had a strong Izzet deck.  I got slapped in the first round by efficient little aggro creatures, including an Erebor Flamesmith, and some counterspells that kept me out of the game.  In the second game, I drew Time Sidewalk in my opening hand. 

And the land to support it!  LWG!

It was on!  Storm God's Oracle slowed my opponent down and I got Xira out and even cast one of the Time Walks.  Unfortunately, my Nexus of Becoming got countered and I didn't keep up.  I got Hinata down against a field of some small creatures with 10 life left, thinking I could turn it around.  Unfortunately, Hinata perished in a Mine Collapse and the remaining critters were enough to kill me.  Me: 1-2; Time Sidewalk: 0-3.

Is Time Sidewalk bad?  It's certainly bad if you don't have it in your opening hand.  if you do, however, 4x Time Walk seems like a real benefit.  It does unbalance your deck a bit, though, as you suddenly have four new non-land cards in there.  I can't imagine that it's not worth it, though!  I can't imagine a situation where you have an opening hand with Time Sidewalk that you're keeping and you don't exile it.  Please share your opinions on this!  No matter what, it was really fun to run it.

Other Takeaways:

• I need to play better, especially when playing around counterspells.
• Remastered packs are really fun in a chaos draft!  (Maybe I just had bad luck with the Time Spiral Remastered packs I've opened before.)
   

Wilds of Eldraine 3 (WUBRG Drafting)

I am extremely lucky.  Not only did my local store, Intergalactic Plastic, hold yet another Wilds of Eldraine draft, but I got lucky over and over throughout the night, as you'll see.

I reviewed my previous WOE draft notes and had a good plan going in to this one: grab Evolving Wilds, Crystal Grotto, and Scarecrow Guide whenever I could and maybe get lucky with a rare dual man-land.  There were eight people in the draft pod, so I felt pretty good.  Unfortunately, I think I've gained a bit of a reputation at the store, so people might have taken the lands early.  In total, I only got three.  I also remembered to push into multi-colored adventure cards, which is a really good plan.  In addition to that, a lot of fairies came my way, so I went pretty heavy into that tribe.  Here were my picks.

That fifth-pick Restless Fortress was real helpful!

Making cuts was tricky, and my deck wound up really being Grixis with a Selesnya-splash.  I did wind up cutting Archive Dragon to keep Leyline of Anticipation.  That was a really good choice.  Here is the deck I ran:

The curve is low, but there are no land-cyclers that often occupy top slots.

In the first round, I was up against Selesnya with lots of enchantment (and role) trickery.  The first game was pretty evenly matched and I won eventually.  My opponent made some good changes, and I started the second game without great mana in my hand, except that I could cast the adventure on Cruel Somnophage.  I used it on turn two and whiffed and said goodbye to a bunch of my lands.

Nooooooooooooooooooo!

My oppponent got me down to 2, but I managed to find some land, and got the Somnophage and gained the advantage on the board, except for a mean little combo my opponent had with Redtooth Vanguard and Spellbook Vendor:

A very solid combo!

Thankfully I got enough attackers down to overcome this graveyard recursion and won the game.  1-0.

The second round was all about Leyline of Anticipation.  I was up against Jund rats, including Song of Totentanz and Ratcatcher Trainee, which I think is a great card.  I got the Leyline in my opening hand all three games and I even had it in my first hand that I had to mulligan.  I am certainly now very biased towards that card, but for good reason:

• Every creature in your hand becomes potential removal because you flash it in then block.
• Creatures on adventures become rattlesnakes that discourage your opponent from attacking.  (I looked for an old wizards article where Anthony Alongi first described the term "rattlesnake" but I couldn't find one.)  This happened to me in this round; I had three adventured-creatures just waiting to come out:
  

 

• Vantress Transmuter is way better, because both it and its adventure can be played at instant speed.

I think I came back from 4 in game 1.  I lost game 2 quickly.  Then I won game 3, coming back after being down to 2.  Both wins were because the leyline let me play all my creatures during my opponent's turn.  They used Gingerbrute's evasion ability in response to my new creatures many times.  This all let me save my targetted removal for the bigger threats. 2-0

In the third round I was paired up against Sultai food and adventures.  It was here that I learned just how good Chancellor of Tales is.  (That would have been great in my deck!)  The first game was a long slog where I went down to 3, but I got my faerie tribe activated with Talion's Messenger and Obyra.  I made some incorrect choices with the placement of the +1/+1 counters from the messenger, but I had enough card advantage that I just overwhelmed in the air in the end.  (Also, Cruel Somnophage was great on the ground.)  I started the second game with the Leyline on the board and used that a ton.  We went to time and I won in the last turn with extra removal in my hand.  3-0.  Here was the board state on turn 0 or 2 of time:

Quick Study is so good!

I did a lot of things right, but I also just got really lucky:

• I got a lot of great things passed to me late in the draft.  These packs are deep, but I also got really lucky.
  
• Leyline of Anticipation started on the battlefield in 4 of my 7 games!
• I came back big in four games, from 2, 2, 3, and 4 life when my opponent was still at or close to 20.  (I think they were all 18+.)  Many of these were thanks to Restless Fortress that gained me a ton of life.

I really like Wilds of Eldraine drafts.  All three I've done have been very different, but I've had amazing results.  I hesitate to say conclusively that this set is perfect for WUBRG drafting, because I just got so dang lucky last night.