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 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:
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.
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.
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!
No comments:
Post a Comment