Duskmourn, Round 1 (WUBRG Drafting)

I made it out to a Duskmourn: House of Horror draft at Intergalactic Plastic on week 1!  I did not do my homework ahead of time, but I was pleased to find that this set WUBRGs pretty well.  Even in a pod of only six (why oh why does 12 have to split to 6?) I was able to pull five of the common dual lands and three basic landcyclers.  I also managed to pull off a bit of "whenever an enchantment enters (or a door is fully unlocked)" synergy.  Unfortunately I didn't pick out enough rooms.

Here's what I drafted:

Two of my first picks were rare picks that didn't make it into the deck.

I had limited time for deck construction, but got this put together just in time:

Ghost Vacuum is really good at preventing opponents from getting delirium.

In the first round, I was up against a slick Boros control deck with more doors than Jim Morrison.  Both copies of Unable to Scream overperformed, locking down manifested tokens with ease.  I made a couple of mistakes.  In the first game, I let a Veteran Survivor level up.  That combined with a Tunnel of Hate put me on the back foot quickly and I never recovered.  In the second game, my opponent had all the answers for each of my plays.  Removal kept my creatures off the field.  In both games, Shattered Yard dealt the final point of damage.  0-1.

In the second round, I was up against a real clever Abzan reanimator deck with a bunch of finishers, including Fear of Abduction, Doomsday Excruciator, Miasma Demon, and Vile Mutilator and some ways to get them back from the graveyard.  Game one went back and forth.  I was very sad when my Cackling Slasher died because I had achieved the extra value. 

Brutal.

In the end, I the big beatsticks came out and I got overwhelmed.  In game two, I played a turn 7 Shroudstomper, which bit it immediately to removal.  I got to see the reanimation action, with Valgavoth's Faithful.  (They also had Rite of the Moth in their deck.)  I got Ghost Vacuum out, but my back was already against the wall.  I managed to suck up my Shroudstomper and one of my opponent's Broodspinners and spit them both out as 1/1 creatures, but it was too little too late against the Fear of Abduction and Miasma demon.  0-2.

We had a player drop, so in the third round I got a Bye.  Bummer!  1-2.

I think I may have gone too hard into mana fixing this time and missed out on some game clinchers.  Also, it's a bit hard to tell how good the landcyclers are in Duskmourn.  With two colored pips, they're actually pretty hard to cast in 5 coors.  Luckily for me, since I was pretty heavy in red and white, I never had to cycle them.  I don't know if I would be so lucky normally.

Both of my matches were really fun, despite the beatdown.  I hope I'll get to give Duskmourn another shot soon!

Low Green Chaos (WUBRG Drafting)

I got another chaos draft in.  I didn't have a good theme, but I did run a WUBRG deck with little green.  That's a bit rare for the maybe obvious reason that green is good at mana fixing. 

We had seven people, which, for an odd number of people, has a nice drafting property: if you open a 15-card pack (as opposed to 14) you get that extra "pick" at the end of the round.  We also agreed to do single-game rounds again.  (Though I expect my group may be getting a bit tired of that.)  Here's what we opened:

I am officially stuck in the Ikoria-first rut.

My pack-1-pick-1 was a mana (fixer) dork, Humble Naturalist, that I didn't end up using, mostly because it was in green.  Here are all of my picks:

Lorien Revealed was the best card in that LotR pack, sadly.

I tried to find a good theme as I was drafting and failed over and over. First strikers with Kwende didn't pan out.  Neither did Evolving Door.  (I didn't even take any colorless creatures!)  I actually first-picked the Humble Naturalist over Frondland Felidar, which I regretted as vigilant creature after vigilant creature came through the packs. 

However, I still got a ton of removal that served me very well.  Additionally, Lorien Revealed, Mental Journey, and Unfathomable Truths kept my hand refilled.  Here's the deck I built:

People told me Clash of Titans isn't good.  It seems good!

(My apologies; I failed to take a lot of photos this time!  That means my memory of the details for some of them is a bit hazy.)

 

In the first round, I was paired up against a Golgari deck, and I drew into all the removal I needed, including Holy Cow as a flash-in blocker.  Not to mention I learned just how good Sentinel of the Nameless City is.  1-0.

 

In the second round, I was matched up with a Mardu opponent who often goes WUBRG, but just couldn't force it this time.  (I'm sure that's partly why I actually got lands!)  This was a long fight, but I managed to pull it off, thanks again to my plentiful removal.  2-0.

In the third round I was up against a fast Boros deck.  This time Nimble Brigand showed off, as each piece of removal made it unblockable, meaning it was sneaking in for Ophidian-level card advantage.  I feel like I kept playing removal, then drawing a replacement removal spell off the Brigand to get me ready to kill next turn's creature.  3-0.

 

The fourth round was extra fun because my opponent had managed to build two functional decks: Orzhov and Gruul.  (That seems really hard to pull off!)  I didn't know about the second deck and definitely struggled against the Orzhov, as it got down some efficient small creatures that kept me on my back foot, but I managed to pull it off.  4-0.  Bonus: we played again, but with the Gruul deck.  That was wicked fun.  I took a lot of early damage, but was stabilizing at 9.  Then they played Kogla and Yidaro, and haste-smashed my face down to 2.  I played Mirrorhall Mimic on my next turn and had them fight as though it was the second-incarnation of the legend rule.  After that, Obscura Initiate was able to get in for damage while bringing my life total back up, slowly but surely until I won.

The fifth round happened in a make-up round today.  This needs a little bit of explanation: after I had great success with Keruga earlier in the week, one of the other drafters followed the Ikoria-first plan.  They were lucky enough to open a companion: Lurrus, and drafted around it, resulting in what they described as a "really bad Lurrus deck" in Esper.  In our match they out-removaled me, showing off a wealth of 2-mana prison-effect-enchantments.  Although I killed Lurrus as soon as it appeared (they never attacked with it all night) they were able to keep me on my back foot deep into the game.  

 

Lurrus + don't-pass-priority = Utter Insignificance lands a second time.

 

I dragged it out with all of my own removal, but couldn't keep up with their quantity of creatures.  4-1.

What fun!  My deck was really fun to play and I had a good balance of mana-fixing lands and two powerful blue landcyclers to boot.  Once again removal was the key to victory, but perhaps I should switch up the packs I choose and get out of the rut I'm in.  Until next time, happy magicking!

Keruga Patiently Waits in Chaos (WUBRG Drafting)

On one hand, I should stop writing these because now people are also drafting WUBRG with me.  On the other hand, I really like writing these.

We had a big chaos draft on Thursday.  I had recently won a LotR:ToME pack, so I opened that, an Ikoria pack, and a Murders of Karlov Manor pack.  We had seven people, and opened a wide array of packs.  Very wacky!

Bloomburrow made it's first appearance at one of our drafts, in force!

I opened Keruga and immediately committed to mana value 3+ spells.  It's actually really fun to start off this way and have something to build around.  I only made a couple money-motivated "illegal" picks: 

Someday someone will set up a trade with my bot, so I can't ignore a $5 card.

Unfortunately, I had a hard time finding fixing.  This is probably because there were two other WUBRG drafters at the table!  I only got one non-basic mana fixer, two basic land cyclers, and one Crossroads Candleguide.  Oof.

I realized there was a bit of a strategy here, but I didn't foresee how strong it would be: cast pacifism-style cards like Prison Sentence to neutralize my opponent's creatures, then get Keruga out and draw for each of them.  (There were actually more white cards like that going around; I should have taken them all!)

Here's the deck I built, with Keruga as my companion:

My mana curve looks less flat when there's nothing in the 1 and 2 slots.

Since we had an odd number again, we did single-game matches.  I got five rounds in before my opponents were all gone.  In the first round I was matched up against one of my WUBRG opponents.  I was able to get the lock-down strategy out, with the Prison Sentence, Sigarda's Imprisonment, and Amphibian Downpour keeping creatures at bay.  With my own Kami of Jealous Thirst sitting pretty, Keruga drew four when it landed and I rode that value to victory.

Thank you, pseudo-general, for the four cards!

I noticed, after passing, that I missed the combo with the Kami's activation discount.  Whoops!  I kept that in mind going forward, though.  1-0.

In the second match, I faced someone who hadn't yet beaten me in a draft.  Of course they were also running WUBRG!  (And they managed to get Turn 5 "natural WUBRG", meaning one of each basic land, two games in a row!  Nice job!)  This was a hard-fought battle.  I played Keruga early and drew into my lockdown spells.  I got dropped to 2 while they were at 25.  I had stayed alive only because I got good timing on Amphibian Downpour (what a card!) to turn three creatures into frogs.

Those ad/art cards are Amphibian Downpour copies.

My opponent cast Liesa, then tapped their imprisoned Dorothea to crew their Aetherwing.  As they entered combat--which meant that Liesa could swing because of Tuktuk Rubblefort--I cast Vanquish the Weak, then responded to it with the Downpour to both get the extra storm copy and avoid the Liesa trigger.  That value play saved me a bunch of life, but I still went down to 2 a few turns later.  Luckily, I drew into another great combo in my deck: Go-Shintai of Hidden Cruelty, which happily kills the Downpour's 1/1 frogs.  The Kami of Jealous Thirst also came down and I was able to turn the tide, gain life back and eventually win. 2-0.

In round 3, I was up against a player I had never beaten in draft, playing a nifty simic deck.  I got the luckiest possible hand and draws.  I had the following sequence of turns, starting (of course) on turn 3: Prison Sentence, Axebane Ferox, Amphibian Downpour (on their turn, for an extra card storm bonus), Finch Formation with the offspring, and finally Keruga on turn 7 to refill my hand.

Yes, I would like to draw six cards!

I won shortly thereafter and broke my losing streak against that player.  (Sorry!)  3-0.

In the fourth round, my Keruga streak was snapped, but only because I didn't need it.  I was up against a strong Naya player and managed to delay a lot of the game with the help of Kami of Jealous Thirst and a surprise Reach for the Sky that put in a lot of work.  I got off the always-powerful Lorien Revealed, which brought Izoni to my hand for the first time.  Izoni immediately gave me board presence with the two spiders, and I got two more on the next turn.  

People probably hate it when I take these pics.

I brought Keruga to my hand but won before I needed to cast it.  4-0.

The hubris set in before round 5, and I was matched up against someone who beats me frequently in short order with an efficient horde of small creatures.  They always run white and this time were on Orzhov.  I kept a slow hand and regretted it five turns later when I played Keruga without drawing a single card.  

I have a bad feeling about this.

I lost two turns later.  4-1.

 

This was stupendous!  A lot of my WUBRG strategies paid off:

• I opened Ikoria first and built around Keruga.
• I took mana fixing high, which helped me get over the land deficit.
• I ran very few spells with two of the same colored mana symbol.  ("Pips?")

Even better, we saw a ton of cool combos.  In addition to the ones I showed, the player who beat me had Jalum Tome, which made extra value with their Containment Construct.  Wacky drafting continues to be my favorite draft format!

 

I Answered a Long-Time Question. LotR: Tales of Middle-Earth #3 (WUBRG Drafting)

What happens if you draft a ton of land-cyclers?  For a WUBRG deck, it seems like a solid plan: if any of them shows up in your hand, it's never a dead card, which is a common problem when running many colors.  Could this be a winning strategy?

I answered this question at a 10-person Tales of Middle-Earth draft at my Friendly Local Gaming Store, Intergalactic Plastic, last night.  The landcyclers just kept coming in, so I kept taking them!

Here were my picks:

Pack 1: a five-card streak of land-cyclers.

In addition to the eight land-cyclers, I also got two Shire Terraces, two Wose Pathfinders, and a Shire Scarecrow.  With all that mana fixing in place, I just packed the rest of the deck with removal, good creatures (mostly legendary), and the Ent-Draught Basin that I enjoyed playing with at my last ToME draft.  Here's what that all looked like:

I probably should have run Ioreth, among other things. 

 

I do think I made some big deckbuilding mistakes, including running Gwaihir.  Although Serra Angel is quite good, I already had plenty of cards in the 6-mana slot.  I probably would have benefited from more cards lower in the curve.  Maybe.

All of my games started in the same dreamy way: play a land on turn 1 and land-cycle a card from my hand at the end of my opponent's next turn.  Such great mana-fixing!

I started off matched up against an Izzet spell-slinging deck with some payoffs in Fiery Inscription, Erebor Flamesmith, and Gandalf the Grey.  I thought I had stabilized in game one at 7, but then my opponent neutralized my blockers with Fire of Orthanc and swung for the win.  Game two had a similar finish, when I thought I would be able to get back in the game, but they killed then tapped my creatures and swung in for exactly enough to kill me.  In both games, Faramir, Prince of Ithilien kept me alive way longer than I deserved to be, but it wasn't enough.  Oof!  0-1.

They killed one blocker and tapped the other two.  Shields down!

As I mentioned last time, one of my students has yet to defeat me in a draft.  Well, they got matched up against me in the second round.  They were also running Izzet and actually had some better removal.  In the first game we kept each others' big threats off the table for a while, but I got enough to overwhelm them.  In the second, they played There and Back Again and got Smaug out.  Thankfully, I had a Banish from Edoras.

Smaug's treasure horde seems to be missing!

I won that game as well.  1-1.

In round three, I was matched up against the player who sat to my right while drafting.  (Thanks for passing all the mana fixing!)  They opened The One Ring, which I thankfully I didn't see in our match.  They were running Dimir with a tiny white splash for Pippin.  Their deck was focused on getting tempted by the ring and amassing orcs.  I just couldn't keep up.  I came close to winning game two, but I forgot about Cirith Ungol Patrol's ability and they created a food token that saved them when I swung in.  They had a sweet series of the next few turns that pushed them ahead and I lost again. 1-2.  (I forgot to take a good photo!  Whoops!)

Another match was going long, so I snuck in a speedy bonus round against a player I had only played once before, but had lost to.  They were running Izzet (of course) and also had good removal.  I lost game one after a back and forth struggle, then things got real brutal in game two.  I actually got ahead in life, but they got down Fall of Cair Andros late and that was enough to crush me.  Each turn they kicked one of my creatures off of the field and made their Orc army bigger.  I couldn't swing in because they would be able to kill me on the swing back, and my creatures just kept getting picked off.  I thought I would die once they all got finished off, but instead another card killed me.

I only had 14 cards in my library. :(

That was a real beatdown.  1-3.

For the original question, Is a ton of land-cyclers a winning strategy?  My answer to that is no.  Landcyclers alone do not make a deck.  Even eight of them is not enough to carry the day.  Although I did a pretty good job of having all my colors, I think my mana curve was too heavy.  (I also didn't have any good combo synergy.)

Aside from that, I'm not sure what else I could have done to turn all these land-cyclers into a winning deck.  Nonetheless, it was wicked fun to play this deck because I never got stuck on land.  ToME is a really fun set to draft, and all my opponents were really fun to play against. 

Repack Draft: #(n+4) (WUBRG Drafting)

Ten years ago some students gave me a bag of bulk cards.  For many years I ran nearly-free repack drafts, which became just Free in the past few years.  I don't know how many of these I've run, but this is the fourth time I've written about one here (thus the numbering n+4).  Last time we hit 13 people, and last night we had another big crowd of 12.  My pack "recipe" is:

• 10: 2 cards of each color, mono-colored.
• 2 Multicolored cards.
• 1 Uncolored card.
• 1 Non-basic land.
• 1 further random spell.

A year ago, a nice employee here gave me a bunch of "reject rare" cards, which I've been using in that final random spell slot instead, which makes the packs a bit more exciting. 

Unfortunately, I may have finally run out of cards.  I had 60 packs ready to go for yesterday, of which we used 36.  While making those packs, I started to run out of multicolored cards and had to change the recipe:

• 10: 2 cards of each color, mono-colored.
• 1 Multicolored card.  (-1)
  
• 2 Uncolored cards.  (+1)
  
• 1 Non-basic land.
• 1 rare card
  

I had to stop at 60 packs because I ran out of blue cards.  So... I might be stuck for a while.  (It's not easy for me to just take from my own collection because everything is sorted and entered.  However, when I'm adding cards to my database, if I already have a bunch of that card, I instead add it to the cache I build these packs from.  So, I will slowly rebuild things, but it's quite slow.)  

Anyways, here's how the draft went!  I made these picks:

I was not expecting the rares would get passed around the table!

I ran all 12 of the lands I pulled: 11 guildgates and 1 Evolving Wilds.  I added one of each basic and that was my 17 lands.  Here's the full deck:

Yes it's a flat curve, but it's also a low-power format, so it all evens out.  (Ha!)

I pretty much just went for removal and bombs, then filled it out with some middling creatures.  There are a couple of combos that I got to utilize too!  We had a lot of people, mostly all casual players, so people wanted to do single game rounds instead of multiple in order to play more people. 

In the first round, I was matched up against who I think was the only other WUBRG player at the event.  I realized that I should have first sat down with them to help make cuts for their deck, as they just took all the cards they drafted and added a bunch of land.  Nevertheless, they absolutely steamrolled me!  First turn Phantasmal Bear, followed by another 2-power creature next turn, followed by a Boneyard Desecrator on turn 4 did me in.  I was able to get both Razorfin Hunters out, but I focused on taking out the little threats while my life total suffered.  I thought I would survive one turn with the pumped up desecrator attacking, but it got Tilonalli's Crown and swung for enough to finish me off.  0-1.

In round 2, I was matched up against a stalwart Naya deck, run by someone who reminded me that they've never beaten me in a draft match.  In addition to their creatures, they ran Staff of the Sun Magus and Recumbent Bliss, which slowed me down a lot.  My removal won out in the end, so I continued my winning streak against them.  We played a second game later where I got to use a sweet combo: Sparkcaster + Maul Splicer.  Bonus!  1-1.

My four 3/3 Golems thank you both.

In the third round, I was paired up against an opponent who I think was at their first draft.  They had put together a cool Golgari deck, heavy in black.  (I didn't see any green cards.)  I had a tricky situation to work around when they had Maggot Carrier, Magus of the Bridge, and Dreadhorde Invasion.  There were a couple of turns where I had a trusty Razorfin Hunter and Infused Arrows (with three counters left) to hold things off.  Every turn I kept my hunter untapped waiting to see if the Magus would swing in.  They intelligently kept it back and instead teased me by attacking with the Maggot Carrier.  I soaked that 1 damage every turn because I didn't want it to be a 2/2 Zombie token instead.  After it didn't attack, I would kill the new Zombie Army that the Dreadhorde Invasion had created, then rinse and repeat.  After drawing lands many turns in a row, I got the cards to break the stalemate and overwhelm.  2-1.

In my final, fourth round, I was matched up against an Izzet opponent.  We went back and forth removing each others' small threats, until I had enough to cast my Rhox Pummeler.  That, um, did not go well for me.

Essence Backlash for 6 damage.  Oof!

Shortly afterwards, though, I managed to get another combo going: Razorfin Hunter + Zagras, which meant I was pinging things for deathtouch damage.  I was able to pull out the win from there.  3-1.

This was a great event and we had lots of people come out.  Hopefully someday I'll have enough cards to put more packs together and do it again!