Chaos Gets Some Games in Late

I got a chaos draft running on Thursday evening.  We had a couple of young drafters, which was excellent.  Things ended a bit early and I only got one single-game round in on the draft that night.  I'm hoping to catch some of the drafters to play our games in the next few days.  If so, I'll update with those.

We had seven total people and decided to do single game rounds.  I actually like seven for drafts!  It's big enough that you get a lot of diversity in packs and being odd means that if we run single-game rounds on the fly, then the person sitting out usually doesn't have to sit for very long.  Anyways, here's what we opened:

Applejack approves of these packs.

The Wilds and Innistrad Remastered packs are some I've won recently and... I like opening LotR.  Here were my picks:

Cryptolith Rite seems like a sign that I'm doing the right thing.

I got enough cards that seemed good that I didn't even run Phial of Galadriel.  Here's the deck I put together:

Lots of green is fine with me!

In the first round I played against a temur deck with lots of efficient creatures.  In this game, I actually started off strong.  I got WUBRG lands out, dropped Treetop Snarespinner, and kept my life at 21.  I didn't draw much else, but I spent my mana putting counters on creatures with the spider.  My opponent dropped Kavu Primarch and then attacked for 15 when my spider wasn't ready to block safely.  Down to 6, I dropped more counters on Snarespinner so it could block the Kavu and live.  On the next attack, I was able to take out three attackers without losing anything, though I did take more damage and went to 2.  My opponent still had a few creatures, but I figured I needed to hit back, which I safely could with one creature given what was on the board.  I had three blockers and they had three creatures with a smallest power of 2.  

Then they drew into removal... and that was the end of that.  0-1.

See that tapped Faunsbane Troll?  I shouldn't have attacked with that.

Three Days Later...

I didn't get to get in any other games that night.  Thankfully I was able to catch up with two of the other drafters on Sunday and get our games in!  I love that we were able to make these happen!

In this second round, I was up against a Mardu (mostly Orzhov) aristocrats deck.

Some nifty combo pieces here!

Bartolomé del Presidio hit the board on turn 2.  I had Worldsoul's Rage in hand, but Bartolomé was always out of range because they kept playing other creatures.  On turn 4, I had two other land in hand and Karakyk Guardian.  I tried casting the Rage on their Mardu Devotee, an obvious play mistake.  They sacrificed it to Bartolomé, fizzling the spell so I didn't get to play out my extra lands.  I died before I got the Guardian out.  0-2.

My third round was against a speedy Jeskai deck of efficient creatures.  This time I used the Worldsoul's Rage successfully, taking out Heartfire Hero before it got bad and ramping me into the Karakyk Guardian on turn 5.  That was enough to keep me on top for the win.  1-2.

This was not a great showing for me, but it doesn't whet my desire to draft at all.  I'm ready for another one!  I... wait, what?

Bonus Round!  3-Player Cutthroat!  

The three of us decided to play an extra game together.  Getting to use your draft deck for extra innings is great!  We shuffled up (two of us took our free mulligan) and we were off to the races.  

The cutthroat rule is that when you attack, you attack both opponents, who can block together.  Damage that goes through is dealt to both opponents.  (Combat-damage-to-players effects only trigger once.)

I started off slow in the first three turns, but became the archenemy after getting Faunsbane Troll out, then Wildwood Scourge with five counters.  The board continued to develop and I got even more creatures out.

Stormkeld Vanguard is on its adventure, but it came out soon after.

The end of the game drew near.  My left opponent had a Mist-Syndicate Naga with Spirit Mantle on it, getting in for damage each turn.  I had the most life, but my right opponent had Transcendent Master at level 12.  I drew New Way Forward.  Excellent!  No longer needing my left opponent's unblockable naga to kill the other player, I attacked with my Sagu Wildling to kill them.  My remaining opponent then attacked with the Transcendent Master.  I played the New Way Forward.

... and I only had seven cards atop my library.

Oof.  Does that make my record 1-3?

I couldn't draw the eighth card, so I was dead.  What a great way to end a game, though, with everyone relevant right up to the last turn!

I hope you get some great games in too!  Happy Magicking!