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:
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:
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.
Here's the deck I put together:
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.
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.
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!
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