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.