Kaldheim Round 2 (WUBRG Drafting)

My FLGS (Friendly Local Gaming Store) just got new digs!  On New Year's Day, Intergalactic Plastic (IGP) moved to a new building a mile north of their previous location.

No visible street sign yet, but the window decorations are coming along!

They are great about mixing it up with old draft formats, but this one is real old!  It has been three-and-a-half years since I draft triple-Kaldheim at my makeup draft weekend.  This was very exciting!

There were nine people at the draft, and a lot of weird stuff kept coming around.  I very nearly picked multiple Demon Bolts, but in the end got none.  Nevertheless, I drafted a bunch of removal, though I didn't do a good job of being spread out among my colors.  Here's are all my picks:

At a glance, it looks like I drafted a bunch of White, but...

I also got (yet another) Aegar.  I don't know exactly why, but I really like him.  He was all over a bunch of my March of the Machines drafts.  Because of that, I definitely focused on giants, which paid off.  I wanted to run the Doomskar, but I just didn't have enough white to support a 2-pip spell.  Thankfully, Battle of Frost and Fire worked well as a boardwipe.  With all of the color-fixing snow lands I got, I felt pretty good.  However, another player pulled even better WUBRG stuff than I did and got both Esika and The World Tree.  (I am so jealous!)  Still, I was able to put together a good deck:

I didn't have the Waking the Trolls in there in the first round.

In the first round, I was matched up against someone who I'd lost to the last time I drafted at IGP.  This time they had an aggressive Mardu deck, but without many snow lands.  I lost the first game, but won the second.  

They did the thing!

The third game was really tight.  I had Tergrid's Lantern down and had two life while they were at four.  I had just enough mana to sacrifice Path to the World Tree, play a land I drew, and equip my new Bear token with the wings to be able to block the angel.  If I drew a land.

Here's the board right before I sacrificed the Path.

So, first I tapped the lantern.  (The bird died.)  Then I sacrificed the path and I drew... the only swamp in my deck.  (I already had the Shimmerdrift Vale producing black mana.)  My bear was able to block the angel, and on the next turn I tapped the lantern three times, getting them to discard both cards and sac the angel.  I won the following turn. 1-0.

In the second round, I was up against someone who had been playing since Thanksgiving!  They had a nice Bant deck and in the first game stopped me from awakening a bunch of trolls.

Sad!

I still won off of value, especially since I got to sacrifice Path to the World Tree again (third time of the draft).  In the second game, I had to use Search for Glory to tutor up a snow dual.  

Got that White mana-fixing.

I got some treasures off of Goldvein Pick and that allowed me to cast Tergrid front side, who led me to victory.  2-0.

The third round had me up against a tough Boros player.  I'm not really ready to deal with more aggressive decks!  I lost game one both because they had an awesome start and I kept a bad hand that didn't lead into anything.

Where's my red?  Could there be a downside to running five colors?

I got more aggressive with my hand in game two and mulled to five.  I got lucky and my opponent got mana flooded, so I got to get out of the gate even after being stuck on one land for two turns.  Battle of Frost and Fire completely turned the tide and I pulled out that game.  The mana problems continued in the third game.  My opponent mulled to five and got stuck on two lands.  I played a slow but strong game and won with the help of my fourth sacrificing of Path to the World Tree.  3-0.

This draft went really good, though there was a lot of luck involved.  Here's some thoughts in case Kaldheim ever comes up again:

• Grab those dual snow lands!  Mana fixing + snow is awesome.
• Horizon Seeker is great!  
• Ravenform is pretty good removal for big stuff.  
• There's lots of removal.  Grab it!
• The giants were really good.  With Basalt Ravager, it's really good.  Having all the changelings was really helpful too.
• I love drafting!

Happy Magicking!