We snuck in one more April draft on Monday. This is finals week for me. I tried to pick meaningful packs:
- Strixhaven, because the school year is ending.
- Amonkhet, because it's the beginning of the summer and it's about to get HOT here.
- Streets of New Capenna... this was not on theme, I just like opening this set!
Here's what we all picked:
Notice those three interesting packs to my right. Those were opened by my WUBRG Rival, whom I've mentioned in prior posts. They were sitting just to my right, which is the worst place for me! That means they can take all the multicolored lands before I even see them!
One excellent thing I did was to take a Snow-Covered land mid way through pack 1. That paid off when I grabbed a Frostwalk Bastion late in pack 2 and an Arcum's Astrolabe in pack 3.
I definitely got greedy in the draft, and often picked fancy-looking cards over lands. I have a problem with that. Here are all my picks:
I took the Depopulate, promising to myself that I would pick a bunch of multicolored creatures. As you can see, I failed to stick to that.
When the Grim Lavamancer was passed to me, I told them (my WUBRG Rival) that they should look it up first. They did and it is apparently now only worth a fraction of a dollar. Freaking power creep!
This deck was relatively easy to build. I kept in as much removal as possible. I'm really glad I kept The Jolly Balloon Man in. I managed to accidentally include some great combo pieces. Here's the finished deck:
We played single game rounds (with a free first-mulligan) and I think we managed to get 20 of the 21 possible matches in, and the last match happened afterwards to complete the Round Robin. (That's a sign of a great draft... to me anyways.)
In the first round I was matched up against a nifty Temur deck. I got Charred Foyer out on turn four, generating sweet value. I opened the Warped Space side a few turns later, but then it drew the hate.
I kept my lead in the value race, however, and pulled out the win. 1-0.
In the second round, I faced a speedy Boros deck. I got steamrolled. I kept a land-poor hand after the free mulligan with mostly islands. I continued to draw Islands as I died to Endrider Catalyzer and Most Valuable Slayer with Lightwheel Enhancement thrown in for good measure. I thought I bought myself some extra turns with some chump blockers, enough for me to get the land down and unleash The Rollercrusher Ride. Unfortunately those chumps got removed and then a Turn Inside Out beat me before I was expecting it. 1-1
My third opponent was a Golgari player who was also able to take me out with a two-creature team.
Both the Gluttonous Slug and the Conceited Witch have menace, putting me constantly on the backfoot. Many times I was one or two mana short of doing something smart with the Mirage Mirror and the Lesser Masticore. Sometimes I was able to pull off a kill. Unfortunately, Supernatural Stamina and Fake Your Own Death negated two of those. (They didn't happen at the same time, but I made my opponent pull them out for photo evidence of the repeated crushing blow. Is black death escapism a kinship?) 1-2 After that match, my opponent revealed that they had refrained from playing Terramorphic Expanse because they didn't want me to copy it and sac my mirror to solve my mana problems.
In the fourth round, I was against a tight Simic deck (actually Bant, but only white for Salvation Engine. Gastal Thrillseeker was good early on, but it did and the game became a war of attrition where both of our removal played a big role. I ran out of it when the Salvation Engine came out, but at that point there wasn't enough to crew it.
Haunted Screen helped me break the stalemate here and I won before more creatures showed up to crew the Salvation Engine. 2-2.
Haunted Screen showed up for me in the next round too, but my Mardu opponent was ready with an Untimely Malfunction to take it out.
Thankfully I had enough other gas to stay ahead and I won. 3-2.
Once again, my WUBRG Rival had engineered things so that we didn't play until the very end of the night. Thankfully my deck decided to shove combos in my face so hard that I couldn't miss them. My opponent played Springbloom Druid, a card I would have loved to have. My Jolly Balloon Man couldn't copy that since it's my opponent's, but I could copy it with the Mirage Mirror, then make a copy of my own.
It was an expensive combo, but I used it two or three times before the druid died. The mirror powered another combo, though. You can only activate Haunted Screen's ability once... but if you can get some +1/+1 counters on Mirage Mirror first, then you can activate it on multiple turns.
Thanks, Revival of the Ancestors for those initial counters. 4-2.
Takeaways:
- Three snow lands was enough to run the snow splash.
- I think I lost at least one game to a lack of mana fixing.
- I love drafting!
I hope you have some great drafts yourself. Happy Magicking!
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