Raffine, Chaos Seer (WUBRG Drafting)

I got another chaos draft in this week.  We had a smaller group, four drafters, and had a blast.  Someone said this was their favorite way to play magic, and I agreed completely.  We picked twelve different packs!  Here's what we opened:

 

The Ikoria-opener got Kaheera, but was unable to build around it, sadly!

I picked removal pretty highly, even over some rares and fixing.  The most important picks, however, were the first two I made: Raffine and Boon-Bringer Valkyrie.  Thankfully some good mana-fixing made it back around the table.  This was made a lot easier because (for the first time in forever) I wasn't fighting anyone for WUBRG supremacy.  

After taking Gwaihir, I tried to build a bit of bird-kindred.  After that I had two chances to add Balmor to my pile, but I turned it down for Artillery Blast and then Pixie Illusionist.  As much as I like Balmor, I think those were the right choices. Here are my picks:

Getting passed a rare dual helped!

I nearly cut the Valkyrie while deck building.  Luckily I was heaviest in white, so I figured it would be okay to keep the two-pip spell in.  (I did cut the Unexpected Windfall, though I was torn about it.)  Here's the deck I put together:  (I really think I could have built this better, please feel free to critique my choices!) 

All of my opponents played green, but I still got the Gaea's Might!

In the first round I was up against a Simic player.  In the first game, I got Raffine out, but it got put into Witness Protection.  (That is such a good card, and I think they played it in most of their games!)  That was a bit sad, but they got hit with the mana screw, so I had plenty of time.  I got Thran Power Suit on my Legitimate Businessperson, so the Witness Protection helped pump it up a little bit.  After a bit, I also got Hulking Metamorph down, which was happy to become a Raffine.

This ended game 1.

In the second game, instead of having a dearth of land, my opponent got flooded.  I got the Boon-Bringer Valkyrie down, which was almost enough to win on its own.  1-0.

Note: we knew we were going to try and get all three rounds in, so we purposefully avoided matching up the two winners for the second round.  (I like doing this because then the draft winner might not be decided after the second round.)

In our second round I was up against a Jund deck, which was extremely surprising because this player always drafts a savage white weenie horde that often runs me over early in our games.  Well, this was an efficient Jund weenie horde, and some of them got pretty brutal.  

1/1?  No, this is a 7/3 Blazing Rootwalla.

Nevertheless, I had enough removal to stay alive.  The Valkyrie won me the first game and Raffine came in early to win me the second.  The Valkyrie is a bomb the turn it comes in and Raffine is a bomb if it sticks around to attack.  I won both games.  2-0.

In the third and final round, I was up against Jund deck #2!  Like... what???  This time I made good use of Mimic, which I ran primarily for the mana fixing, but then never sacrificed it all night.  In the first game, I won with the air supremacy of the Valkyrie and Gwaihir.  In the second game, my opponent used two cards (Morgul-Knife Wound and Cut Down) to kill the Valkyrie.  That was probably the right choice!  Thankfully, my Hoarding Ogre did a lot of work and helped me power out the rest of my team.  Raffine got to play with four +1/+1 counters on it.  I was pitching removal to keep other removal with the connive triggers and won again.  3-0.

This deck was wicked fun to play.  I'm definitely branching out from needing to be green-centered, which makes sense now that there's more support in other colors as well.  

I'm still addicted, though.  I hope I get to draft again soon!

Neapolitan Commander Draft, Round 2

Just one year after a first Neapolitan commander draft, we did a second.  This time was different because:

• We incorporated the enormous Baldur's Gate Wilderness dungeon.  
• We had nine people!  A new record for our "little" drafts!

Since we had nine, I tried to get us split up into play pods of 4 and 5, where that second one would play a Kingdom game.   (I really want to draft Kingdom EDH.)  I was unconvincing, so we did three pods of 3 instead.

Important item that I have to address: We didn't do a championship game of 3 with the three winners for two reasons:

• My game finished much later than the other two, so it would have been awfully late to start another game, and
• I didn't think of it.

We did use the bonus rule that extends the one used in Commander Masters: 

• Mono-colored (and colorless) legendary creatures are considered to have the Partner ability, even if it's not printed on the card, and
• Mono-colored (and colorless) legendary creatures are considered to have the Choose a Background ability, even if it's not printed on the card.
  

(If "monosexual" wasn't already a thing, I would nominate using that word for this rule.  Y'know, because they have partner, so they're attractive to other legends.... I think I'm funny.)  This facilitates more combinations of legends (and backgrounds) to make things more creative and unique.

We randomized seating and gathered around two tables.  Each player would be playing with the two people three seats to their left and right.  

"Isn't this picture kind of obvious?"  Yes, to whoever said that last night, but it's still awesome.

The drafting itself was pretty wild.  In a Commander Draft, instead of picking one card each turn, you pick two.  That means that in these packs of 20, the only packs you see a second time are the ones you open, and you just get the two cards remaining.  I had to remind myself multiple times: "Oh, I won't see these again."  

I'm not convinced that picking two cards is actually a good plan, because we had multiple instances of packs going around with the incorrect number of cards.  I don't know how it happened, but it happened a lot.  Even Zone Drafting didn't save us.  I think that one pick per person would help this happen, and I don't think it would slow things down too bad.

In deck construction, you still have to adhere to the color-identity rule, so there are some goal picks as far as legends are concerned.  In descending-excellence order:

• Dream: open a WUBRG legend in Commander Masters, of which there are a few. (This is a good argument for reversing the order of
  
• Awesome: grab a two-color legend that has partner.  That way you can match it with a legend of whatever third color you want.
• Pretty Good: pull a three-color legend. 
  

I tried to draft as colorless as possible in order to keep my legend-choices open.  Despite the fact that two other players voiced having the same strategy partway through, it still paid off.  I wasn't able to get either of the first two scenarios, but I did draft Amareth early in the first pack.  Then, amazingly, I got Sek'Kuar halfway through the third pack.  Since they overlap in green, I focused the end on drafting that so I could figure out what to do in the end.  Here are all my picks:

A lot of good stuff came around.  These packs are deep.

I counted up my cards and realized that if I went with Amareth I actually had fewer playable cards; just enough to make a deck.  I didn't want to think about cuts, so I took the coward's way out and just went with that.  Here's the deck:

If I had taken one moment and recognized that I didn't have enough total devotion to white to make Heliod a creature, I might have changed my mind.

Our game went long, so we only played the one.  I sat down against Akiri, Fearless Voyager to my left and Malcolm + Ardenn to my right.  My opening hand had some ramp as well as You Look Upon the Tarrasque, Jahiera's Respite, and Torrential Gearhulk.  Those three cards would sit in my hand for a long time.  When I hit five mana, I purposefully left myself vulnerable multiple turns, trying to tempt someone into letting me profit off of Jahiera's Respite.  My opponents got The Initiative and started trading it back and forth, venturing through the Wilderness Dungeon.  

I played Amareth, who got slapped with Martial Impetus.  I unwillingly swung it into the Akiri player multiple turns, and the Azorius player started to rise in power, playing a bunch of efficient creatures.  I continued to get attacked, but only by one creature at a time, never enough to warrant the Respite.  Then, finally, after Amareth had racked up 14 commander damage against Akiri, Malcolm, Ardenn, and two tokens attacked me:

Four is worth it!

That was enough to get me branded as a probable-Archenemy.  There was some talk about how I probably had more fog-effects, but then the Akiri player dropped a Kirtar's Wrath to reset the board.  With all their treasures, it didn't take long for the Azorius player to regenerate their board presence.  On my turn, I left six up and didn't keep any blockers back.  Guess what happened on the next Malcolm-Ardenn turn?

Six is definitely worth it! 

Now I was definitely in the archenemy seat.  With all my mana and Amareth's ability, I got a lot of stuff down.  Since my dragon was no longer goaded, I swung into the Malcolm-Ardenn player and claimed both the Initiative and the Monarch.  Finally, I went into the Wilderness, though I didn't exactly need the land.  

 

I swung in for damage and played a bunch of creatures with my gobs of land.  Unfortunately, Fiendlash came down on Akiri, who had been gaining +1/+1 counters from Drillworks Mole.  With a power of 9, my opponents happily colluded to get Akiri into combat.  I was able to prevent a multi-turn combo by killing Akiri with Band Together.  Before combat damage could be dealt.  Of course, that would trigger the Fiendlash, but I was able to also give my creatures lifelink with Heliod, keeping myself above zero.

I kept myself alive with You Look Upon the Tarrasque, then swung in on my turn to kill the Akiri player and deal as much as I could to the Malcolm-Ardenn opponent.  I gained 20 off of Heliod-granted lifelinkers and took a lead of 21 to 8.  (Combo alert: Trailblazer's Torch + Heliod is good!  Your opponents will not want to block whoever holds the torch.)  If I could survive the next attack, I could win on my turn.  I had Shimmer Myr on the board, a few blockers, a hand of cards, and lots of mana.       

I was still surprised by the total power of the attackers, but when they came in, I flashed out some artifact blockers and managed to block what was necessary (and use lifelink) to stay above zero.  I had 2 life.  I was going to win!

Oh wait.  My opponent dealt me combat damage.  And I have The Initiative.  That means they get The Initiative.  Where are they moving to in the Wilderness dungeon?

Uh-oh.

The first card flipped was a land.

I wasn't so lucky with the others.

And thus ended one of the absolute best EDH games I've ever played.  And it was in limited.  The other two games had ended long before, but multiple people in them told me this was one of the most fun drafts they had ever done.  I wish I could have squeezed another game in, but it was definitely time to close up.

I hope you enjoyed reading this, and I hope you get a chance to try a commander draft of any kind if you haven't already.  Happy Magicking!