Last night we had a chaos draft, two days before Thanksgiving. Feeling festive, I chose sets that create food: Bloomburrow, Throne of Eldraine, and Lord of the Rings. Here's what everyone opened:
Wow, we had nine people! That morning we were at four, and somehow we got lucky enough to get five more! A real Thanksgiving miracle!
I got two multi-colored lands in my first four picks, so I figured I was pretty safe and took my foot off the (mana-fixing) gas. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case and I only got two more in the entire draft. Also, there were two amazing WUBRG cards opened that I never saw, Progenitus and The World Tree! The good news is that some other cards provided great mana fixing: Mental Journey, Rootrider Faun, Freestrider Lookout (though I only triggered it once), and my very first pick, Once Upon a Time. That last one was surprisingly good. Here were all of my picks:
Since we had an odd number of people and everyone was very chill, we ran with single-game rounds so we'd get to play a bunch of people. I managed to play seven of the eight possible opponents before they'd left. (I stayed up late!)
In my first round I was up against an out-of-town visitor running a Rakdos deck. I got to cast Once Upon a Time on my first turn and found an island.
My opponent got stuck on three swamps and I won by beating with big stuff. Thanks, Colossal Dreadmask! 1-0.
For the second found, I was matched up against an Orzhov deck with dangerous 4-drops. I got really lucky: Magma Spray took out a Resolute Rider and Flame of Anor took out a Dreadwurm before they could cause any trouble. After that I was able to slowly build a very menacing board and won off of the value of things like Kemba, Kha Enduring. 2-0. Here's what it looked like near the end:
My third opponent was a long-time wacky drafter here who had a "mostly Boros" Jeskai deck. I was dead on turn 5. Oof! 2-1. My opponent went on to win their next three games in 5, 6, and 6 turns, respectively!
In the fourth round, up against a spellslinger Izzet deck, I got a free Once Upon a Time again.
(I took the Alpine Meadow, which worked out okay.) This time I managed to use the combo power of Kemba and Colossal Dreadmask. Why pay to move the Dreadmask when you can just create a new cat who gets it? Jem Lightfoote also helped me get in consistent damage. Kemba's value outworked the "when you cast an instant or sorcery" izzet creatures. 3-1
In the fifth round I was fighting a Gruul deck and Once Upon a Time came up again!
An island came up not too long later, which activated a really strong combo visible in that hand above: Nesting Grounds and Lazav, Familiar Stranger. Want to commit a crime? Activate Nesting Grounds, target a permanent you control with no counters and a permanent your opponent controls.
Lazav was the key to my win here, outgrowing any threats that came my way. 4-1.
In the sixth round, against an Abzan life gain deck, Once Upon a Time showed up again. This time I got the full awesomeness and cast it during my opponent's upkeep.
My opponent's deck acted like Dina, Soul Steeper was the Commander. There were a ton of little life gain effects. This turned out to be my longest game of the night. I got beat up a lot early, mostly due to Dina triggers. Around the time she finally left the battlefield, I was at 6 life. Soon after, my opponent got up to 46. This Orchard Strider hit the board four times!
This was a real war of attrition. I swung in with Wonder, baiting a block as their lifetotal kept dropping. Meanwhile Lazav got bigger and Kemba kept recruiting 2/2 cats.
I kept chipping at that giant life total until Wonder got killed. A few turns later I was going to have lethal, so they had to swing out at me. I had enough to block everything (thanks, Cat tokens). I was down to about six cards in my library, but still had lethal on the board and swung back for the win. 5-1
My opponent for the seventh and final round was my new rival, who had also drafted WUBRG and was running the World Tree mentioned earlier. They waited for me to finish all my other matches so they would finally have a chance at defeating me. They got to see nearly my entire deck by watching the match before. So far they were 0-5 against me. Were they prepared to win the WUBRG showdown and get their first win? Nope! Color screw!
My opponent didn't get any blue, so I was able to win quickly, especially with a bunch of my superstars.
6-1, 6-0 against my rival. They are super good-natured about it, thankfully, and I loved that they delayed the match until the very end of the night.
Lessons and notes:
- Once Upon a Time is great, but I recognize that I got super lucky with 4 first-turn casts.
- Just because you draft Nesting Grounds to move your +1/+1 counters doesn't mean it can't be used to commit crimes. This is what wacky drafting is all about! Finding crazy combos across unrelated sets.
- I didn't really use Food in any grand meaningful way. Sorry, Thanksgiving.
- I was really thought my time was up against my rival. This is getting out of hand!
- I still like drafting lots of Legends.
Mostly it was really fun to see all the creative decks people came up with. I hope everyone had as much fun as I did.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
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