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