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!