Strixhaven, Round 4 (WUBRG Drafting)

My Friendly Local Gaming Store (FLGS), Intergalactic Plastic, has had an excellent pattern of running "old" drafts with boxes they have.  Last night, they held a Strixhaven draft!  As you might expect, I dropped everything to go!

This is a format I'm actually familiar with!  Three years ago, I ventured back to my New Hampshire FLGS, Games Ahoy!, protected by my recent COVID shots and a mask, for my first in-store drafts since early 2020.  I was so excited to draft in person again, I went to three June drafts in 2021, where I went 1-2 each time.  I went back over my notes in preparation for this draft, and that did help a lot.  However, as you'll see, I failed in my basic WUBRG needs.  

The drafting was fun.  I grabbed a lot of lessons, which paid off.  I also kept seeing good Lorehold cards, of which I took three Expels.  That card was great for me!  I picked a Zimone, a Needlethorn Drake, and a Rootha, because I remembered that those were all great.  Here are all my picks:

I picked that Onyx over a Channel.

See the issue?  I only got three dual lands.  While drafting I passed up a Cultivate and an Archway Commons, which seems like quite a mistake now.  (I don't remember what I took over them.)  There is a bit of a reason for the lack of lands: to my right was another WUBRG drafter.  In fact, it was the same player that drafted WUBRG with me this week!  They gobbled up most of the campuses before I could even see them.

I am reminded of when F Zero X would tell me I had a rival.

On the plus side, I drafted a ton of removal.  All three Expels went in.  I also followed my recommendations from 2021 and ran 18 lands instead of 17.  Here's what I put together:

My Learn-board was twice as big as my dual lands.  I did go heavy on the forests.

In the first round I was paired up against a Witherbloom (Golgari) player who had Dina and a bunch of life gain effects.  I think I lost the first game and won the second.  (I could have that backwards.)  In the game I won, I mulliganed once and put Rise of Extus on the bottom.  I was in such a drawing/searching frenzy with spells and Quandrix Apprentice that on the turn I won, I completed the cycle and drew the Rise of Extus, without having shuffled.  We drew game 3; my opponent later said I had the coolest deck of the night. 0-0-1.

In the second round I was matched up against an aggressive Silverquill (Orzhov) deck with a lot of good small utility creatures.  This match went better in many ways.  I won game one while controlling the board for a long time, but lost game two pretty quickly.  In game three, we had time called on us when my opponent was around 17 life and I was at around 5.  Unfortunately, my only creature was Zimone, though she was getting some counters from a Sparring Regimen.  On turn 2 of our 5, I got my opponent to 15, had a mess of lands out, and played Onyx.  On turn 4, I attacked again to put them to 12, but I could only muster four instants/sorceries (I ran out of mana) so Onyx dropped them to 4.  I was so close!  0-0-2.  Here was the final state of the game:

Just two more!

In the final round, I was up against a Prismari deck that had a lot of good utility spells.  Unfortunately, in both games they got stuck without many creatures.  I was able to keep their board mostly clear, even when I got stuck without one of my colors.

Good thing I have all those Expels in hand.

I was able to win the first two games.  In the second game, Dragonsguard Elite got in for a bunch of damage as it grew.  1-0-2.

This went marginally better than my prior Strixhaven outings!  I think I did a good job gobbling up removal as it went around, but I missed a bit on the balance between lessons and lands.  I think another 1 or 2 dual lands would have made a big difference, as I was sometimes stuck without the right color.  I actually think that 18 lands was the right call!  In many games I was wishing I had more land to run out because I often had a lot of spells to cast.

Strixhaven drafts are super fun, though.  There are so many different ways to lean, even if you're running all five colors.  I remember having a blast pulling off a bunch of Lorehold shenanigans in past drafts.  If you get a chance to do one, take it!

Mod3rn Hor12ons "Tour" (WUBRG Drafting)

We did a not-chaos-but-still-wacky thing this week: a draft where each player opens one of each of the three Modern Horizons sets that have been released: Modern Horizons, Modern Horizons 2, and Modern Horizons 3.  One of our group aptly named this format "Mod3rn Hor12ons Draft".   

We had to open them in the normal 1, 2, 3 order.

We had 7 people, our biggest home draft in recent memory.  We decided again on single-game rounds and got to drafting.  Here's what I picked:

Is Garth actually five colors?  Oor-Tael is only UG (though I always thought it was WUG).

Note: I may have messed up the order of some of my picks from pack 1.  (I forgot to take the picture first!  I do think I reconstructed it pretty close to correct.)  While drafting, there was lots of table talk about how underpowered the first pack was compared to the other two.  It didn't exactly work out that way for me, because I spent a lot of picks in pack 2 on mana-fixing instead of strong spells, which worked out really well.  I didn't even wind up running the Battle Plan, because I felt like I had enough without it.  All in all, the drafting process felt a lot like a Neopolitan Commander Draft: the synergy was lacking, but there were some consistent themes. 

I also tried to synergize some Enters-the-Battlefield effects, after picking up Soulherder.  What happened instead is that I had some good +1/+1 counter action with Cursed Wombat.  Here's the deck I built from those cards:

Aside from winning, I really wanted to cast Garth!

I really expected to get some comboing with Soulherder + Munitions Expert and Garth.  The counters turned out to be much more fortuitous.  

Though we each had 6 possible opponents, the rounds took varying lengths.  Players got in between 4 and 6 matches.  I managed to squeeze 5 in before the end of the evening, so this post is a bit longer than normal.  (Having irregular numbers of rounds does also help prevent some ties in records too.)

In Round 1, I was up against an Orzhov deck.  Lots of colors paid off right away, because I got Soulherder out with the Cursed Wombat.  Unfortunately, my opponent was ready.

Boo, Flay Essence.

The game slowed down a lot.  I had Larry Niven's Disk in hand, but my opponent slapped a Seal of Cleansing on the board, so it stayed it in my hand.  I played an Idol of False Gods that was useless for many turns because I lacked a source of colorless mana.  (I swapped it out after that first game.)  After a while, my opponent started to build up a bit of a force.  I drew one of the best things I could in that case, my Twisted Landscape.   The Seal of Cleaning immediately took out the Idol, which meant I got Nevinyrral's Disk out and popped it the following turn, taking out three creatures.  I followed that up by drawing into enough value to win.  1-0.

In Round 2, I faced off against a Gruul deck, which was held back by mana problems.  I got ahead, but then my opponent started to wrest control of the board from me.  Cursed Wombat kept me alive until I discovered another combo in my deck.  In one turn, I cast Sweep the Skies for five thopters, and the next turn I played Kudo and swung in with some Bear-sized thopters.  I won shortly thereafter.  2-0.

My opponent's Wren's Run Hydra, did get a bit bigger too.

In Round 3, I lived the dream and cast Garth on turn 5!  

I think having the book should count as a free Arena token. 

I was matched up against the only other WUBRG deck at the table.  As you can see, they were pretty well stacked up against me.  Sadly, Garth died to a Toxic Deluge after my second turn.  Thankfully, that was enough time that I was able to cast a Black Lotus, which was pretty exciting.  (That's two different power-nine cast in three drafts!)  Unfortunately, without Garth I didn't have enough gas to stay in the game and I lost the WUBRG battle.  2-1.  (I am starting to doubt that I'm even the best WUBRG drafter in my group!)

In round 4, I was pitted against a really fast Selesnya deck.  This is what I was facing on their second turn:

Guide of Souls is real good in this format.  Just sayin'.

I lost three turns later.  I don't even know if I played anything menacing at all.  That player ended up winning the draft with a 5-1 record.  They were one of only two people that managed to play everyone!  2-2.

In my fifth and final round, I was matched up against the only player who managed to beat the winner!  Yikes!  They were running a Grixis deck that had a lot of value cards.  The game was extremely tight; we went back and forth trading control of the board.  As the end approached we were tied at 5 and I had the awesome Soulherder + Cursed Wombat combo, and then I drew Kami of Jealous Thirst, which was just enough to secure the win.  

I just barely squeaked out with this one!

Final record: 3-2, which was technically enough to put me into second place.  Sweet!

This format felt like an overpowered chaos draft.  Like a normal chaos draft, synergy was hard to come by (though extremely gratifying).  The individual cards, however, were certainly stronger.  Immediately after doing this draft, I was ready to do another one.  (I know it will be better to wait, though!)  Although the cost of this draft was on the expensive side, I would definitely recommend it to anyone who likes oddball prescribed drafts.

Happy drafting!

Five-Color Contagion Spreads in Chaos: WUBRG Drafting

We did a chaos draft with five and three of us wound up in WUBRG!  Let's get right into it.  Here's what we opened:

13 different packs!

Yes, you see that right, FUTURE SIGHT!  It's not that often that we open such old (and cool) packs in our little draft group.  That was awesome! :)  Less interesting, this time I decided ahead of time to mix it up and avoid the Ikoria-LotR-Capenna rut I've been in.  I opened Ikoria, Zendikar Rising, and Strixhaven.  Here are my picks:

Yet another Mythos.  How many times did I cast it for full value?

Two multi lands.  Oof.  I was not the only person on the hunt for mana fixing; two other players went WUBRG!  60% of us had five colors in our decks.   Five years ago I was able to win a Ravnica Allegiance draft with six people with one other WUBRG drafter.  33% maybe, but 60%?  I grabbed some extra fixing, including Wizard's Rockets, Valakut Awakening, and Farfinder. 

I did pick up on a bit of a +1/+1 counter theme, which paid off.  I had three ways to pay it off: Temperamental Oozewag, Envoy of the Ancestors, and Deepwood Denizen.  

I hope you like glare.

Here's the deck I put together:

Very light on Blue.  I might not have been the most evenly balanced WUBRG player there!

Two of my opponents were WUBRG, "mostly Jund" (according to them) and the other two were on Esper!  (Crazy that we fell into so few categories!)  Since we had five players, we agreed on single-game rounds.  (When we do this, we give everyone a free first mulligan.)  Everyone was pretty aggro (maybe not me) so we were able to complete the round robin.  

I was immediately matched against one of my two WUBRG opponents.  I got steamrolled, especially after my opponent got a Bayou Groff on turn 3, sacrificing Serrated Scorpion for a bunch of value.  I put up a fight; I was able to remove the Groff, but didn't keep up as I got swarmed with other threats.  0-1.

In the second round, I played against one of the Esper players who had a strong control element in their deck.  I got a good sequence of creatures out, and got to use the Deepwood Denizen with Prowling Felidar to get cheaper and cheaper draws.  I cast Mythos of Vadrok, but without the bonus.  The Denizen allowed me to outvalue my opponent.  1-1.

In the third round, I was up against the other WUBRG player, who had drawn a lot of attention by winning with flip-Etali.  He had already gotten to cast an opponent's Inevitable Betrayal with it.  Here we go!  I started off doing pretty good value-wise, killing two creatures with the Mythos.  (I got the bonus--thanks Wizard's Rockets!--though it didn't matter because they were dead.)  I got a bit stuck on missing lands, but I was keeping up.  Until Etali landed.  

I donated my Fatal Attraction to the dinosaur's cause.

Etali flipped two turns later.  I was able to get some strong things down, including a 7/7 Fractal off of Leyline Invocation, which meant the Deepwood Denizen was drawing cards right away.  (That Denizen was really great!)  Unfortunately, it only got to draw one, because I needed it to block the 11/11 trampling not-quite-toxic-not-quite-infecting Etali, so I only took 9 damage, putting me at 5 life and 9 poison counters. I still had an out I could draw: Baleful Mastery could save my life.  Sadly, that is not what was on the top of my deck.  1-2.

In round four I was up against the final Esper deck, running Horn of Gondor.  Guess what landed on turn 3?  I was ready, though, and my Mythos three-for-one'd the token and two other creatures.  

Meaningless Rockets bonus #2!

On turn 4, another human hit the board and I had to react again, this time with Baleful Mastery.  Turn 5? Disciple of the Sun.  Well, I was stuck on five Sultai-colored lands, and a Boros-shaped hand.

My final hand.

1-3.  Though, in one way, I was lucky, because that Horn player had one more match to go after me (vs Etali) and that was when they combo'ed off:

Yeah, that's Horn of Gondor + Coat of Arms.  Those ad cards are all human tokens, each getting +7/+7.  Simply amazing!  The best part of chaos drafting is the wild comborific interactions across distant sets.

I am honestly not sure what else I could have done to improve.  I made a small play mistake in game 1, but I don't think it made the difference.  I think I need to draft tighter when the table is making it tough.  Nevertheless, this was a wicked fun draft and I think all five of us had a great time!