Repack Draft #(n+8): Infused with Sunburst (WUBRG Drafting)

I ran a little free draft for students last Thursday.  Eight people came out, one of them a first-time drafter.  I even managed to snap one of the most boring show-your-packs photos:

Not in an octagon, however.

We agreed on single-game rounds (with a free first mulligan).  There was quite a bit of table talk.  People were mentioning about how I liked to draft five colors and that could be dangerous.  Well, I still managed to get some good WUBRG-enabling and enabled cards.

Hello, triple Infused Arrows!

In deckbuilding, I really wanted to run Talon of Pain (Norin has a bad feeling about it) but I remembered that Boros Battleshaper wins games and ran that instead.  I didn't like the idea of dropping some removal, but as it turned out, I had plenty.  Here's the deck that I ran for the whole night:

Also land cyclers in four colors!

People really wanted to play against me and stayed late to do so, so I managed to get all 7 games in, which was super!

In the first round, I was up against a Grixis Amass/Mill deck.  (The Amass part was on purpose; the Mill part was a product of two copies of Surrounded by Orcs.)  I was able to keep the big creatures off the field and won, but with only four cards remaining in my library!  Dangerous!  1-0.

In the second round, I was paired up against an Azorius deck.  I did not understand just how good Dream Trawler is in limited.  It's real good!  I was able to get in off the table, but I almost died.  I was real glad that I avoided these two from being on the battlefield at the same time:

So nasty together!

I escaped that round with a win.  Whew!  2-0.

In the third round, I was up against the first-time drafter who had put together a good Glint-Eye deck.  They got a bit stuck on land and I overwhelmed them (I think I got Garrison Sergeant with Opaline Bracers in this one) but it was an excellent first showing and I applaud them for running four colors!  3-0.

In the fourth round, I was up against a Simic deck that packed a blast from the past.

It's startling to me how an amazing card from the early days can be so less menacing now.

Fishing Pole showed up here, keeping the Blastoderm mostly at bay.  I got the Battleshaper down and after the Blastoderm faded away, I was able to keep supremacy of the board and win.  4-0.

In the fifth round I was up against someone who treated their Magmatic Channeler as the commander of their Mardu deck.  They cast it three times during the game by getting it back from the yard with other spells!  (I appreciate all my removal!)  This was a tough one and, to be honest, I got real lucky here.  I got the Battleshaper out, but it got murdered.  I then managed to assemble the Garrison Sergeant + Opaline Bracers (with 4 counters) combo, and I just happened to attach the Fishing Pole to it after attacking.

Seems like a good choice for Act of Treason!

Two important rules helped me out here:

1. My opponent didn't have any gates (I did) so the sergeant didn't have double strike while on my opponent's side of the board.  I was only facing 7 damage instead of 14.
2. (More importantly) I still controlled the Fishing Pole, so when the Act of Treason untapped the creature, I got to put a 1/1 fish into play, which seemed very willing to block the sergeant.

Whew!  After surviving this combat, I was able to pull out the win, but I definitely got lucky here.  5-0.

In the sixth round, I was up against an Abzan lifegain deck.  I was once again able to put together the Sergeant + Opaline Bracers combo, but that turned into just a Fish-generation machine.

Guess who I moved the bracers over to?

5/5 Fish helped me win the game, but not before Gargos showed it's face on the battlefield!  Thankfully I got it off before my opponent could target it with a spell and won the game.  6-0.

My seventh and final opponent was my current student rival who is working to defeat me at least once!  They have been going WUBRG lately and didn't disappoint this time.  They even had Reap and Sow in their deck, but had to cast it without the entwine and only to search because they were so desperate for one of their colors.  That could have been devastating to me!  The real story about this game, though, is that all three of my Infused Arrows showed up to party.  Serrated Arrows was good in Homelands, but Infused Arrows is an absolute beast in WUBRG limited.  With 12 counters in total, I had complete control of what stayed on the board.  They even dropped their own Gargos!  (Two opponents in a row!  How is that possible?)  I think I took out the hydra with alternative removal so I was left with tons of arrows counters at the end.  7-0.

This deck worked out really well.  I did get real lucky and escape some tight situations.  I really enjoy running these free drafts and the students seem to have a good time too.

Until next time, Happy Magicking!

Mystery Booster 2 Draft (WUBRG Drafting)

At our chaos draft last night, all seven of us agreed to do Mystery Booster 2.  This is my first!  Let's do it!

These are the least exciting-looking packs.

I was terrible at drafting this.  I whiffed on two tribes (one by being an idiot), let my greed get the better of me, and passed a Mox Poison.  However, my desire for playtest cards actually paid off.  Here are all of my picks, in order:

Goblin Lackeys on picks 2 and 3.  Then no great goblins.

It's important to point out that the packs for this draft came from two different boxes.  (15 from one and 6 from another.)  According to the other players, there aren't doubles in the same box.  

I ditched the Goblin tribe and realized I never drafted any merfolk, so Map to Lorthos's Temple was out, sadly.  Here's what I went with:

Arcades and two Axebane Guardians.  Let's go!

 

 

Since we had seven, we decided to do single game rounds with the first mulligan being free.  Right away I was paired up against a WUBRG player who had pulled O-Kagachi.  Unfortunately, they got stuck on Red/Green land and even their Hymn of the Wilds couldn't get them out.   

The Burning-Tree Emissaries weren't even in their hand at the same time.

That was the worst of luck.  1-0.

In the second round I was up against a player who often runs Rakdos.  I kept a many-land hand and they got flooded.  I had a turn-4 Arcades the Strategist, so I was feeling pretty solid, except that Arcades wasn't strategic enough to block Order of Yawgmoth.  Those discards cost me dearly, especially when I pitched my second island only to draw Spined Megalodon the next turn.  The Rakdos removal killed Arcades and my other creatures and I perished.  1-1.

The third round had me up against someone who first-picked Hogaak.  Their Golgari deck went deep into the graveyard recursion theme, complete with Buried Alive and Brood of Cockroaches.  They played an amazing turn two Rotting Regisaur! 

The Mox Poison is so on theme for the Regisaur.

Thankfully one of the best cards I played with was in my hand: Questing Cosplayer!  That card is so good.  My opponent realized they had to attack into the trade, which I gladly took.  Sadly, they didn't draw another land for many turns, and I was able to keep up the tempo to win.  2-1

My fourth and final round was epic.  It went extremely long.  My opponent was playing Bant and had pulled lots of good cards, including Teferi, Time Raveler, Noble Hierarch, and Uro.  I got the Questing Role on my Spined Megalodon and was hoping to break through, but my opponent got their third plains with Brightling and was able to bounce it back to keep the shark in check.

This seems like it was the state of the game for many turns.

Uro hit the board multiple times and I was down 32 to 20 even after dealing some dribs and drabs of damage.  Teferi kept bouncing my creatures every few turns, but Momir Vig, Simic Visionary kept my hand full of creatures.  I played creatures every turn for over ten turns, and searched all but one of them up to put on top of my library.  With all that value, I finally broke through.  The final attack included a 9/9 Quirion Dryad, the Questing Megalodon, Arcades and two Axebane Guardians, and a 10/10 A Girl and Her Dogs, and it was only barely enough damage to win that turn.  This was a monster battle line game and the win wouldn't have happened without Momir Vig.  3-1

The 3-1 was enough to net me second place in the draft.  I wish I had been able to get games in with the remaining two players.  I was really glad with how my deck performed.  I bet I would do well in another MB2 draft.

Happy Magicking!  

Repack Draft #(n+7): Fix it for a Gold Star (WUBRG Drafting)

Last week Tuesday I sat down with three students to do a free repack draft.  We started passing the packs around.  Nine picks in to the first pack, a fifth person showed up.  We were expecting them, but to be too late to join in.  Technically they were too late, but we really wanted to have a fifth so we could play Star.  So... we came up with a quick "patch":

• We let them open two packs immediately and make nine picks from the 30 cards within.
• The remaining 21 cards were shuffled and then six cards were selected to be the remainder of the pack that would be passed around the table. 
• We all waited for them to finish before we continued with the draft.
• Monetarily this wasn't a problem because these were repacked cards from a large amount of bulk that had been donated to me.
• Benefits for them:
• They got to make the best few picks from two packs at the same time.
• They could use that information to optimize two good colors. 
• Downsides:
• They didn't know what kinds of things had been being passed so they weren't up on any signals that had been made.  
• They were limited in the number of cards that fit their color choices in the two packs.  

(I'm sure there's a better way to handle this.  Let me know what more fair processes you've used!  Both for repack and normal-pack drafts.) 

Here are my picks:

I misread Invasion of Regatha.  I didn't even run it.

I got plenty of lands and was able to put together what I thought was a good five-color deck.  I had a bit of a token/lifegain theme going.  Here's my deck:

My 2-drop pile is never that big!

We randomized seating and sat down in our circle.  To my left was A on Mardu, then B running Izzet, C, also on Izzet, and finally D playing Simic.  We play Star with the opponents to our direct left and right (so that we don't have to skip players when switching turns), so the two Izzet players were my teammates.  We were also playing with the Cutthroat Combat rule, which is where when a player attacks, both of their opponents are the defenders.  They block as normal, but any unblocked creatures damage both defending players.

The game started slow.  B went first.  On my second turn I played Dawn of Hope, which surprisingly didn't get a lot of interest from the rest of the players.  I would have been able to make better use of it, but instead I got stuck behind on land drops.  I was two land drops behind on turn 6, but I was fine life-wise because it was a battle of little creatures and some removal had come out early.

I think this is from before my seventh turn.  Still at 20 life.

A couple times I was spending 4 at the end of my opponent's turn to create a 1/1 lifelinking Soldier, then saving my mana to get the extra card draw.  Nevertheless on the seventh turn I didn't draw a land again.  Player A followed this up by slamming down a Dawnfeather Eagle and attacked for six in the biggest successful combat so far.  Thankfully B helped deal with some of those creatures over the next few turns.  (They followed this up by getting mana flooded.)  I got lands on turns 8 and 9, but still hadn't grabbed any blue mana sources.  

My life dropped to the lowest, but I caught back up with lifelink.  I missed the land drop on turn 10 and again on turn 11, but I did get a really well-timed Perilous Predicament to take out three creatures.   

Boom!  (The 9 life total is me.)

That cleared out my opponents' creatures and I swung in for six.  On their next (12th) turn, B swung big and dropped A down to 1 while D was at 2.  C followed up by attacking for 1 more.

Both of my opponents were at 1.  On my 12th turn, I cast Twin Bolt to win!  

Pew pew!

I was actually afraid of some counterspells that I had seen floating around, so I first swung out with my team.  My opponents seemed defeated, so before damage, I cast the Twin Bolt.  No counters.

B and C duked it out for a few turns and B won it shortly thereafter.  

I'm so glad we got to add our fifth person in because I really enjoy multiplayer formats.  (More wackiness is good for me!)  It also gave me a chance to remain competitive even when I was stuck on low lands.   

If you haven't drafted Star yet, I highly recommend it!

Aetherdrift Draft (WUBRG Drafting)

I got in an Aetherdraft at FNM last week.  It was quite fun and I would like to give it another try sometime.  Here's how it went!

I went in to the draft dry, but was happy to discover that all ten gain-lands are in the set.  As you can imagine, that helped a ton.  Additionally, a bunch of good rares came around to me.  I was in a pod of six strong players, and I'm not really sure whether being with more advanced players increases the likelihood of rares coming around.  I did get a little deep into double-pipped spells.  Here're the order of my picks:

These picks were kind of all over the place.

I did want to run the Cursecloth Wrappings and the Agonasaur Rex and the Spectacular Pileup.  That might have been a bad idea, except that I was pretty heavy in all three of White, Black, and Green.  Here's the deck I ended up with:

I started with two Aetherjackets and swapped one out for the Cloudspire Skycycle.

In the first round I was paired up against an Esper deck.  In the first game I found out just how good Skyserpent Seeker is.  I am already drawn to deathtouch creatures, but this one really helps fix your mana as well.  I got to use it's Exhaust ability three times this game, as it got bounced once and I got it back another time via Rise from the Wreck.  I ramped up to 14 lands and dealt the finishing blow with Engine Rat activations.  In the second game, I felt pretty confident, though I was sad to lose my Venomsac Lagac.

Died because it got saddled.

I got the Skyserpent out again, but I got too comfortable.  My opponent cast Haunt the Network two turns in a row for 5 and 7 life to kill me!  Game three went better, however, and I won after getting the Agonasaur Rex out on turn 5.  1-0.

In the second round I was up against self-described "Big Dumb Green" (actually Golgari).  In the first game they played two Migrating Ketradon and Hazard of the Dunes and killed me.  In the second game they got mana screwed after keeping a 1-land hand.  Nevertheless, they came back from 5 and through both of my boardwipes (Spectacular Pileup and Explosive Getaway) to win.  1-1.

In the third round I was up against a different Esper deck.  I got stuck on 4 land in the first game and lost to a big Ooze Patrol.

Triskaidekaphile would like this game.

My opponent got absolutely mana flooded in the second game and I was able to pull out the win.  The third game went crazy when they played The Speed Demon.  I got stuck in the position where I had to try to get the demon to kill them.  

Close to the end of the game.

In the end they had just enough to kill me, but lost with them at 5 life (and I think with four cards in their library).  What a great game!  1-2.

This is quite a fun set.  I mostly avoided the vehicles, which I think was probably fine, except for Veloheart Bike, which I would take again.  I'm not sure what more I could have done in five colors, but I'd definitely like the chance to give it another shot.  Hopefully I can sneak another in before too long!  Let me know if you got something better going.

Happy Magicking!

Repack Draft #(n+6): A (Non-EDH) Kingdom Draft

I ran a repack draft last night for students on campus.  We had five people and the group was in the mood for something weird.  We decided to do a Kingdom draft.

To help catch up, here are some useful references:

• My description of Kingdom EDH variants and the version we use. 
  
• The Kingdom Commander draft we did last year.
  

We agreed on the following rule modifications before playing: (I'm not sure whether these have become part of the listed rules yet.)

• Since we're not doing commander, the starting life total is 20, except for the King, who has 26.  (There was some discussion over whether we should make it 27.)  This is instead of the 30/40 life totals when playing the EDH version.
  
• We agreed that the Barbarians are able to reveal themselves at instant "speed" and without using the stack.  There are a few reasons for this:
• It can be used by one of the Barbarians as a signal to the other that they're going to throw caution to the wind and go big after the King.
• It can be used in conjunction with opponents/teammates-matter cards.
• You can't attack teammates, so your creatures can't be forced to attack teammates by things like goading.
• If the Doppelgänger becomes the King because the King died first, then the Doppelgänger must immediately reveal themselves as the King.  Additionally, in this case, if the Barbarians killed the dead King, then they do not win and must now kill the Doppelgänger-King.

Before drafting, we shuffled the role cards and dealt them out secretly.  (I'll keep this to myself for a bit longer.)  We were drafting using the repacked packs I put together for my students.  (I use these to run free drafts for students.  Thank you to the people who donated cards to me!)  Only one of the participants was drafting for the first time, and they did great.  Here were my picks:

I feel like there are a lot of bombs here.

I drafted for my role.  If you want to try to guess what that is, I'll give you ten lines before revealing it.

10

9

8

7

6

5

4

3

2

1

Knight!  I was the freaking Knight again.  I mean, I like being the Knight and I know how to draft for that, but I would like to be something different.  Anyways, as you can see I had a lot of removal and some control elements and tokens.  I had a lot of playable cards and wound up slimming it down to this: 

Only one green card, but it still counts as WUBRG!

We randomized seating and sat down around the table.  Around the table from me were: A, playing Orzhov; B, the King, on Bant; C, on Rakdos; and D, playing Jund (the first-time drafter).  Then we all closed our eyes, the Barbarians opened their eyes to see who each other were, then closed their eyes, then we all opened our eyes.  

In case you've never played this format, let me explain that it's common for everyone not-revealed to pretend to be the Knight.  I was loudly protesting my loyalty, but so was everyone else.

The King goes first, so the play order was B, C, D, Me, A.  The first few turns zoomed by, then on C's turn 3, they played Trespasser's Curse on the King.  (That was a pretty Barbarian move.  In any case, they are clearly not the Knight, which you already knew, but A, B, and D didn't.)  The curse had the intended effect: the King slowed down on playing creatures.

The game, underway.

We continued to build up incrementally.  A got a sweet Warrior tribe going.  I had Shatter the Sky in hand, but I held off.

I always love it when someone puts a tribe together from random packs.

Things kicked off on D's turn 6, when they attacked A with a 4/2 creature, who blocked with one of their 1/1 warrior tokens.  Two things happened after the block:

• C revealed themselves to be a Barbarian.
  
• D cast Titanic Growth and Gaea's Gift on the attacking creature.  Boom!  A big hit on A.
  

In the next few turns, I kept building up my board and swinging in on C whenever possible.  (The King really wanted that curse gone.)  I had a big turn with Kingpin's Pet, Dragon Fodder, and a token created from Xerex Strobe-Knight while embalmed Anointer Priest was out.  That netted me a bunch of life and had me looking like a genuine threat.

On turn 9, D attacked C, who was down to 5 or 6.  C was apparently sick of the game (they had drawn turn after turn of land) and pumped the attacking creature so they died.  This, actually worked in the Barbarians' favor, because on A's turn, they revealed that they were a Doppelgänger-turned-Barbarian.  A then turned their attention to me and in a big combat we both lost a bunch of our boards.

On D's next turn, they revealed themselves to be a Barbarian, relevant because they had Welder Automaton on the field, which they immediately activated twice.  At this point they were the only one with a creature with power 4+, and the life totals were K: 24, D: 8, Me: 12, and A: 8.  I cast Shatter the Sky on my turn, cleared the board, and D drew their card.

On D's next (11th) turn, they tapped out for Rust Goliath, which they had drawn off of Shatter the Sky!  Oof.  I had Enduring Victory in my hand, however, and killed it the following turn.  The King took A out and we both killed D on the next turn.  Victory for the Kingdom!

Lessons:

• Board wipes and removal are still really good for the Knight.
• The allowed revealing of Barbarians worked REALLY well.
• It seems silly that I went unrevealed at the end.  We decided that we should probably implement the following change: If the Knight is the last unrevealed player, they immediately reveal themselves.  (This shouldn't be a choice, because that might be too much of an advantage.)
• This format is really really fun!  I want to play it more. 
  
• I need to actually go into the other post and the card images and modify them to have these updated rules.
  

 If you've ever got a group of five, give this a try!

Innistrad Remastered Draft (WUBRG Drafting)

My local store, Intergalactic Plastic, is really good about running drafts for new sets, even if they're not mainline sets.  At the last minute, I got to participate in the Innistrad Remastered draft, and I'm not sure the universe could have given me a stronger signal pack-one pick-one.

Cryptolith Rite: "Go WUBRG."

The rest of the draft went quite well.  I prepared a small amount by looking up common color-fixing cards and I expected to see a lot of Abundant Growth.  Instead I pulled a trio a bunch of Wild-Field Scarecrows that put in work during the night.  Here were all my picks:

The person to my left got passed rare duals three times in a row in pack 2.  They passed two of them on to me.

I realized I had some good stalling cards, so I went high on my mana curve, though I didn't run the Ghoultree.  Here's my deck:

Skipped the six-MV slot and went straight to seven.

In was first matched up against an Orzhov deck with lots ways to sacrifice creatures combined with some token generators.

Here's an entire battlefield of their sac outlets.

In the first game, I mulliganed to four, but I got going quick and managed to hit perfectly with my removal to thwart sacrifice benefits and catch up on value.  Conduit of Storms helped me ramp, especially after flipping.  Bramble Wurm showed me just how good it was and I won.  In the second game I got Cryptolith Rite out right away and ramped off of that to stay ahead.  Again, Bramble Wurm proved to be great and I won again.  1-0.

In the second round I was up against an Azorius weenie horde deck heavy on spirits.  In the first game I kept up really well against the onslaught, but finally got swarmed out.  In the second game, I didn't even have a chance.

I mean, come on.

Double Lunarch Veteran along with Spectral Shepherd are pretty good.  Combine that with Tower Geist and that's a three points of value with every bounce.  I lost this game with my opponent at 38.  1-1.

In the third round I was up against a Rakdos vampires deck armed with blood and madness.  In the first game my removal came to play and Soulcipher Board helped me optimize draws.  I kept it tight until Bramble Wurm came out to play and I took over.  I flipped Cryptolith Fragment into Aurora of Emrakul before playing the wurm, which was nifty.  I won that game, but the second game was not as satisfying.  My opponent got stuck on only swamps, with a hand full of red spells.  I won before they could put up much of a fight.  2-1.  We played a third game for fun, and I got absolutely steamrolled.  Stensia Masquerade is really strong.  This round could have easily gone either way.

Sadly, I never flipped the Huntmaster, though I got it out a few times.  I was always too busy casting spells. 

I definitely have some takeaways here for WUBRG drafting Innistrad Remastered.  Even more than normal.  Basically: do it.

• I think I would have been fine without the Cryptolith Rite, though it certainly helped.
• No one was taking Wild-Field Scarecrow.  Take them.  Stall with them.  Then sac them for lands or use them to help you emerge big things if you need to.
• Bramble Wurm is great.
• If you're not familiar with the emerge mechanic, don't be afraid to take those things.  The emerge payment makes things much cheaper and they usually give you some value on the cast as well.  
• The gap I had in mana value between 3 and 7 wasn't actually that bad.  Conduit of Storms and the Scarecrows helped me gather extra mana.
• Turn 3 Conduit, Turn 4 flip it, Turn 5 Bramble Wurm is a good sequence.  It's not a waste of a turn to spend all your mana to flip the Conduit after combat.  

The pieces are there to run all the colors, even though it seems like there's no support. 

Happy Magicking!

Secret Chaos Commander Zada (WUBRG Drafting)

I have a Zada EDH deck.  I know how to play Zada.  Thus, I was very happy when she came around during a wacky draft on Wednesday.

My name is Zada; I'm a hedron grinder.  Okay, I'm getting ahead of things!

We had six drafters.  This was my first wacky draft of 2025, so I had picked my packs accordingly:

• Foundations, for all the good things I'm bringing from 2024.
• New Capenna, because of New Year's Eve in NYC.
  
• Mystery Booster 2, because who knows what the heck could happen in 2025.  (And definitely not because it was burning a hole in my pocket.)
   

Here's what we all opened:

We turned them inwards this time.  RIP my inner consistency pedant.

My draft went really well.  Zada was my fourth pick.  I was also really excited when the playtest card from my third pack tabled.

I picked Fists of Flame directly before Zada!  Combo-rific!

This would have been a really interesting draft to do progressive-style, where you choose each pack after drafting the previous one.  Then I could have tried to pick packs with good cantrips for Zada.

I had enough lands and enough cards that were irrelevant to the deck that it was pretty easy to put it together.  Here's how that looked:

No forests, but plenty of green sources.

We decided to do single-game rounds and were able to complete the round robin!  I was matched up first against an Izzet spellslinger deck.  They had an early strong combo going with Erudite Wizard and Furtive Analyst.  I flipped my Khenra Spellspear early and thought I was going to win off of the Spellstalker's swings.  I got a bit too bold and swung all out to put them at 11 while I was at 6.  I then played Dreamdew Entrancer to freeze and block.  Sadly, my opponent said no with Rewind.  0-1.

I love Rewind.  Sometimes.

Nevertheless, I felt good going into the second round, this time against a Jund player who was at their first draft.  This game was fast, because Gitaxian Spellstalker is real good.  My opponent was at 11, but I realized I could win off of the double-prowess triggers.  I played Imprisioned in the Moon, attacked, cast There // They're // Their to make the Spellstalker unblockable, then Crumb and Get It (without the gift, I think).  My opponent cast Savor to put it back to 9/9, but I had a final trick up my sleeve.

I did not bargain it.

Stonesplitter Bolt for zero put it back at 11/11 and hit for lethal.  1-1.

In the third round, I was up against a player running a synergistic Dune-Brood deck (the colors, not with the actual nephilim) they named "Lifegain Soup".  (I was the only one who went WUBRG.  I'm regaining my reputation.  They were close, though!) 

They also have very similar sleeves!

Their secret commander was Rocco, Cabaretti Caterer, the only red card in their deck.  I drafted a lot of removal, but had still built up quite the board as our game progressed.

Here's Rocco, searching up Fetid Gargantua.

Thankfully, my commander showed up for the first time.  Zada helped me block a big attack.

Pro: Angelic Intervention pumped my entire team.  Con: I couldn't rechoose the color for the copies.

I swung back the next turn with the combined power of They're (even though I only chose one creature: Zada) and Fists of Flame to win.  2-1.

Fists of Flame is in my Zada EDH deck.  Ignore the delicious smoky salsa.

I got cocky going into round 4 against a Golgari deck.  Once again there was a secret commander: Polukranos, Unchained.  

Um... hi.

I foolishly kept a six-land hand.  I had no answers to Polukranos, who ate me for dinner.  2-2.

In the fifth and final round, I played against an Esper deck with lots good value.  Zada showed up, but I had to throw her in the way during a big combat.  We had a few combats that acted like board sweeps, but they continued to outvalue me.  After the last one, they played High Fae Trickster at the end of my turn, then equipped and attacked on my turn for my death.  2-3.  This opponent ended up winning the draft on this win.

Creature + Aura + Equipment + Pumping Emblem = dead Kyle

This was such a fun draft and reminded me just how much I love chaos drafting!  I love getting to play a bunch of different people and see awesome combos across the board.  Not only combos, I love to see the creative things people pull off in their decks.  This night was no disappointment.

Happy Magicking!

Foundations Draft, Round 1 (WUBRG Drafting)

I made it to a Foundations draft at Intergalactic Plastic on Friday, my first one so far.  The set will be a part of standard for five years, so hopefully it won't be the last.  (I do expect people will get a bit tired of drafting it, but maybe it can cycle back through.)

I did not prepare at all, but when sitting down people told me about the gain land duals, and I grabbed a bunch of them.  There are some other great fixing support in the set.  Looking back, I should have paid better attention to what colors the duals I grabbed were covering.  Nevertheless, here's what I picked:

That's Empyrean Eagle hiding behind Perforating Artist.

There were so many cool cards that I wanted to cast.  I initially ran Genesis Wave and Ghalta, just hoping to make them happen.  The lands didn't really work with so many green pips (mana symbols), so I took them out over the first two rounds.  At the end of the three rounds, my deck looked like this:

There're still a lot of fun cards in there.  Unfortunately lots of foils too.

In the first round I was matched up against a Jeskai deck run by someone who often goes WUBRG.  This time they were running four copies of Think Twice!  I won game one because I got Extravagant Replication and was able to press on the gas with Perforating Artist.

 

Ragavan is a Perforating Artist copy.

The following two games were not as fruitful.  Genesis Wave and Ghalta got stuck in my hand and High Fae Trickster kept me always on the back foot while the Jeskai value engine did its thing.  0-1. 

In the second round, I was paired against a very aggressive Golgari deck.  In the first game I got pounded by a turn 5 Overrun.  I have lost many limited games to Overrun over the years, but they don't usually curve perfectly into turn 5.  

That 16 became a 1.

More often they happen on something like turn 7.  Which is what happened in game 2.  Oof!  I played well in both games, and I thought I could hold on in the second one, but they Exsanguinated me the next turn.  0-2.

In the third and final round, I was again facing a Golgari deck, this time against someone I don't think I've played before.  They got mana flooded in the first game, so I took that.  This was after taking a mulligan and using Evolving Wilds on turn 1.

 

My first time seeing this shortcut: bottom the land for the mulligan, but just keep it aside to fetch with the Evolving Wilds on turn 1 to avoid searching and reshuffling.

In the second game, they dropped a turn 3 Phyrexian Arena.  That really set the tone of the game.  I managed to draw enough removal (thanks, Incinerating Blast!) to stay in the game.  Perforating Artist, my MVP of the night, came in and I was ready to speed up the clock that Phyrexian Arena had put them on.

Late in game two.

Naturally, they sacrificed the Phyrexian Arena to the artist's raid trigger.  Oops!  Luckily, I drew into more removal and was able to win the game.  1-2.

Foundations draft takeaways:

• There are gain lands and plenty of other fixing support.  You can definitely go for WUBRG!  Do it!
  
• I shouldn't have tried to force Genesis Wave.  
• There are a lot of good fliers in this set.  

I feel like there's more I should have learned.  I really hope this format continues to be popular so I can get some more in.  I already heard some people say they were sick of it, so that may be wishful thinking.  

Happy Magicking!

Baldur's Gate Commander Draft #2

I got a four-person CL: Baldur's Gate Commander draft going today.  We decided to use the Wilderness dungeon, which is awesome.  We also decided to change the way we drafted.  Although we still made two picks when we first opened a pack, we only picked one card at a time after that instead of two.  (We did an extra 2HG game after the normal commander game.)

Why not Wilderness?

The drafting part did not go great for me.  I floundered on colors in the first pack.  At the beginning of the second pack I pulled Baba Lysaga and tried to go Golgari.  In pack three I counted my playable spells so far and realized that wasn't going to work.  Here were all my picks:

A late decision was made when I picked Rilsa Rael.

When I counted, I realized I didn't have enough cards.  In a Commander Draft, you want about 37 playable spells (including your command zone) to pair with 23 lands.  There's a real danger with drafting too many of the lands (mostly gates) that you might not be able to get enough spells to fill out that 37.  After my first five picks in pack 3, I had 22 in Golgari.  Despite the fact that I'd been drafting things to sacrifice to Baba Lysaga, I had to switch to Dimir.  I got lucky because I saw a bunch of blue coming around, but even then I was only barely able to get a deck.

 

I only managed 36 spells instead of 37.

 

I picked Rilsa Rael instead of a black/blue commander + blackground combo partly because Rilsa's mana value worked better with Cloudkill. 

 

My opponents were:

• To my left: Skanos Dragonheart with Agent of the Shadow Thieves. "Shadow Skanos".
• Across: Gut, True Soul Zealot with Noble Heritage.  "Noble Gut".
• To my right: Livaan, Cultist of Tiamat with Hardy Outlander.  "Livoutland".
  

Two other players were running green, that's why I couldn't make it happen.

Skanos got the start and things moved quickly.  I got Safana down on turn three, followed the next turn with Passageway Seer.  In between those turns, I had accepted Noble Gut's deal, so Safana had two +1/+1 counters.  I started the combat by attacking the Skanos player.  I got my initiative bonuses from Safana and the Seer and passed the turn.

I dealt first salsa blood.

I took the deal again on Noble Gut's fifth turn.  They wanted the Initiative, and Coronation of Chaos made them unable to block so Gut stole the initiative.  

Team goaded.

On my subsequent turn, I played my commander, Rilsa Rael, gave my Tymora's Invoker deathtouch so it would go unblocked and I could safely attack with my goaded creatures.  On the next turn, Shadow Skanos (their turn five) attacked me for 7 commander damage with all their buffs to take the Initiative.  I thought that was good, because then Noble Gut swung hard at them knocking them down to 14 with their growing army of skeletons and taking the Initiative themselves.  Livoutland continued to get some things out, but didn't have any big threats on the board yet. 

 

On their sixth turn, the Skanos player got out an enormous Ambitious Dragonborn and started challenging the Gut player as the archenemy.  On my sixth turn, I attacked Gut for a bunch and got the initiative yet again by playing Aarakocra Sneak.  I was charging through the Wilderness dungeon, hoping to get that sweet benefit of completion for my creatures.  This time I was at Grymforge, so I got to goad one creature each of my opponents controlled.  (I should have spent more time thinking about this.)  On their seventh turn, the Skanos player cast Giant Ankheg.  

That goaded token means they're going somewhere else.

Shadow Skanos came at me and this is where I made a misplay for the ages.  With all his buffs, Skanos was a 16/16 creature that now had trample.  I was at 7 Skanos commander damage.  I need to block at least three of that damage.

Chump blockers, I choose you!

Four toughness is enough to keep me alive, right?  Right?  

Nope!  Skanos had deathtouch as well from its shadowy background.  That means 14 damage is trampling over.  

First to draw blood and first to die.

21 commander damage exactly!  And the bloodbath continued!  On the very next turn, the Gut player swung out and killed the Skanos player.  Unfortunately, the Livaan player had taken the Noble Gut deal, so they couldn't respond by attacking back on their seventh turn.  They equipped Livoutland with Saddle of the Cavalier and played some other creatures.

The Gut player gathered their resources on their (eighth) turn, but couldn't win.  The Livaan player, however, had drawn to Two-Handed Axe and cast the Sweeping Cleave part to win in combat.

What a great game!

Since that had finished pretty quickly, we randomized teams and played a Two-Headed Giant game.  

I got teamed up with the Skanos who killed me. 

We were able to win without me even playing Rilsa Rael, because I got to play Juvenile Mist Dragon, locking down their creatures that were benefiting from Noble Gut's two +1/+1 counters that they were getting.  

 

Tap those big guys down!

When they tried to kill the dragon shortly thereafter, I had Blur ready to go.  Oops, locked down again!  They got their blockers untapped, but were down to 10.  I drew really well and Sea Hag's Aquatic Ingress got us in for the kill.

Yeah, Skanos was doing a lot of the damage.

We almost had time to do an Archenemy game, but it wasn't in the cards.  Nevertheless, this was a really fun draft.  There is a lot of breadth to the cards in Baldur's Gate and with the Choose a Background combinations, games are always very different.  I like chaotic things, but I am always excited to do a straight-up Baldur's Gate draft.

 

I have been brainstorming ideas for packs themed around the New Year.  I know that it's well past that holiday, but I haven't done a chaos draft in 2025 yet, so I'm reserving the right to celebrate that with a theme.  (I wish I had some Masters 25 packs!)

Happy Magicking!