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!