I made it to another draft at my Friendly Local Gaming Store (FLGS), Intergalactic Plastic. This was their last draft before they move to a bigger location, which is pretty exciting! IGP is different from other gaming stores because they have a ton of budget memorabilia like old He-Man and Transformers toys for sale. It's pretty great.
They also do a great job of running older sets for drafts. I haven't drafted Foundations, nor Bloomburrow, but I got in yet another Wilds of Eldraine draft. This set is very kind to me! I don't know if that's a personal thing or that it's just very good for 5-color drafting in general. (I would ask my intelligent readers for feedback, but I think it's nearly impossible to leave comments in Blogger for weird cookie reasons.) This time was no different!
The drafting portion seemed crazy. There were a lot of valuable cards getting passed around. I think that's because I got really lucky in my seating:
- The store owner was seated to my right, and he didn't care about passing money because he has a huge collection. (I don't feel bad about this. You can sit next to me anytime!)
- The person to my left had never drafted here before and hadn't drafted in a while (Wilds was new to them) and they were expecting rares to be redrafted at the end. Oof. I 100% feel bad about this. (I wrote a post nine years ago about the pros and cons of redrafting. The cons still outweigh the pros to me.) I will touch back on this later, but I don't want to spoil things.
In addition to directly where I was sitting, there were two or three other people at the table (of eight) who hadn't drafted before. Given all of that, I drafted some crazy stuff:
I didn't get much in the way of land-based mana-fixing (LBMF?). One of my WUBRG friend/foes was at the table, but they didn't even wind up running all five colors. Nevertheless, this group seemed to know that lands were good. Thankfully I got some other ways of fixing. (Collector's Vault is real good!) I got removal and I got tons of crazy enchantments. I started off without the Forced Fruition, then realized that was a bit cowardly of me (props to my WUBRG friend for the appropriate peer pressure) and put it in. Here's what my deck looked like:
In the first round I was up against an aggressive Boros deck piloted by a first-time drafter and relatively new magic player. We took our time so I could make sure everything made sense, but at the beginning of game 2 I realized there was a misconception about mana you could spend to pay for spells. (E.g. 2R is not equal to RRR.) The second game went way better for them. I was doing okay, playing without green, then they had a big turn that flipped control of the board.
Time was almost up, so I played Forced Fruition, then played Expel the Interlopers, choosing 0, the next turn. They played a few spells on turn two after time, went to one card in the library, and I had enough to keep them stuck. Time was called and I won the match with one win. 1-0.
The second round had me up against the drafter to my left, running Golgari adventures & food. He was clearly a skilled player, but had been out of the scene for a while. He gobbled me up in the first game, though I extended it with all that removal. In the second game he got a bit mana screwed and it was enough for me to charge in with a bunch of little guys. The third game was really tight and I held out at low life for a while, but ultimately got knocked off. Despite all of my removal, their synergy was too strong and they played their cards really well. They went on to win the final round to win the tournament 3-0. (I hope they thought the packs they won were a good substitute for passing rares!) 1-1.
In the third round I was up against the store owner! They had a really quick and aggressive Selesnya deck, but the MVP of the match was definitely Gingerbrute. In the first game they got me down to 12 on the back of that cookie alone. I was honestly looking to get to five mana so I could activate Agatha just to give my creatures haste so I could block the dang thing. I got the food golem off the table another way and won with Asinine Antics on their turn (how is that card fair?), followed up by Song of Totentanz, powered (on the second attack) with Agatha's pump. In game two, Gingerbrute came out again, but this time beefed up with Royal Role from Betroth the Beast. A Titanic Growth sent me down to 11, and I had to change priorities to kill it with Rip the Seams the next time it attacked. It's a good thing I did, because it got another Titanic Growth the next turn. Nevertheless, I was in danger and fell to 3 life to their 16. I slowed the board back down, kept attacking for small amounts of damage in the air, and they were out of a hand. I didn't have good gas in my hand, though, so I played Forced Fruition, hoping they would have a limited number of spells and I could outplay them.
Their second spell was Spider Food, killing my potential-game-winner and drawing them 13 other cards. They played a bunch, discarded a lot, and I dug in. Thankfully, I had held Asinine Antics back to deal with whatever they got in their big draws, and that kept me alive in the ensuing combat. After I got the board back in control, I drew Song of Totentanz and won that turn. I can't believe I pulled that off. 2-1.
Wilds of Eldraine is a really fun draft set. The card pool is so varied with all the Enchanting Tales that you have to expect anything. I hope I get to draft it again!
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