Two Multiplayer Drafts: Chaos and Bloomburrow at a Store (WUBRG Drafting)

I was just in the most chaotic draft I've ever participated in.  In a good way, for sure.  And it was in a store!  And then I did another one!

I went to Krum's World for their 1pm Friday draft today.  I found out about it last week.  I didn't go, but while exchanging emails with the owners last week, I learned that they often run chaos drafts and then play multiplayer games starting at 30 life.  That sounded right in line with the kind of thing I'd like, so I planned to go today.  

There were seven people ready to do the draft.  That meant that after drafting we were going to be splitting into a three-person game and a four-person game.  We were then asked whether we wanted to do three draft/play boosters or a single jumpstart pack followed by two draft/play boosters, which was something they had done at least once before.  

I decided immediately that I was just "Along for the ride" and would do whatever the consensus was.  If you go to participate there, I highly recommend adopting that mindset.  It was chill and fun and light-hearted.  That attitude will go far.  I think that most of the people I played with had limited magic experience; multiple people told me they had been playing about a week.  

The consensus was for the Jumpstart option: we opened one Jumpstart pack followed by drafting two packs in the group.  I picked a Foundations Jumpstart pack and a March of the Machines and Bloomburrow boosters.  Other packs people picked, starting to my left and going around, were:

• Brothers' War Jumpstart, March of the Machines, Aetherdrift
• OG Jumpstart, Bloomburrow, Bloomburrow
• OG Jumpstart, Bloomburrow, Duskmourn
• OG Jumpstart, Duskmourn, Bloomburrow
• Foundations Jumpstart, Duskmourn, Aetherdrift
• Foundations Jumpstart, Bloomburrow, Bloomburrow

We opened the Jumpstart packs first, I got the Ninjas pack, a Blue-colored set, which was pretty cool.  (I wish I had gotten the Multicolor pack, but that would have been a bit too amazing.)  After opening Jumpstart, some people swapped out the packs they were going to open to draft, which is a cool idea I've toyed with in the past, and made a lot of sense so people could adapt to what their Jumpstart was.  (Thus, my list above is certainly a little bit wrong.)

Then we got to drafting.  I figured I would need a lot of mana fixing to "balance out" the amount of Blue I would need to run, so I picked lands quickly.  I also knew that evasion would be more important in multiplayer than in duel-magic.  

I asked whether we were zone drafting.  Zone drafting is when only one pack is allowed to be in transit between any two players while drafting.  This means that if one player finishes a pack and there's already a pack waiting for the next player, they have to hold on to theirs in their hand until that space opens up.  They didn't know what Zone Drafting is here, and seemed to be okay with packs piling up.  Thankfully it didn't get too bad.

On the good side, there was lots of friendly table talk during the drafting.  It was clear this group liked to do weird stuff, which is just excellent.  

With all that in mind, here are all the cards I got:

Listen, I did not run Skittles.  I know you think I should have, but I felt like that card carried a big "I'm the Archenemy" sign on it.

And then we got another surprise.  We each picked a color and then got a random promo card from that color for our decks.  I picked blue and got Aether Channeler, which seemed really strong in combination with Ninjutsu and especially with the Gossip's Talent I got. 

Here's the deck I built from this:

So much mana-fixing!

This was a real five-color ninjas deck.  I was psyched.

I got slotted into the three-player pod game.  My opponents were wicked nice: a Golgari deck with some graveyard recursion to my left, and a Boros deck with some surprisingly fast hitters on my right.  I got Nightveil Sprite out on turn two, which I planned to do some ninja shenanigans with.  Unfortunately, it got Chainsawed, a card itself which gathered seven counters over the course of the game.  I got stuck without green for a bit then, while the Boros player got Cleon out and hit me for eight with the help of Mirran Banesplitter.  I got Aether Channeler down and drew Hidden Grotto!  The next turn I killed Cleon with Invasion of Ulgrotha and made the Golgari player defend it. 

I did that because all this time the Golgari player had been stuck on one land.  He drew his second swamp on turn six and started to draw more lands thereafter.  He cast Deep-Cavern Bat that turn, a good creature in a multiplayer game like this.  On my next turn, I dropped Rocketeer Boostbuggy, which turned out to be vital.  I needed those treasures and cast-ninjas were at least good at crewing!  On my next turn I killed the battle, freeing Grandmother Ravi Sengir, who slowly built up counters.  I also got Prosperous Thief out and gathered even more treasures.  Unfortunately, the Boros player was stuck on four land just as the Golgari player was starting to take off.  

Taken sometime around this part of the game.  I think.

 

On my next turn I got to four treasure tokens.  You know who likes four tokens?  Baylen does.  I played him and then passed the turn.  At the end of the Boros player's turn, I tapped the four treasures to throw the counters on Baylen.  There was no doubt at that point, I was definitely the archenemy.  (Maybe I should have put Skithiryx in after all.)

I started swinging in then, trying to keep my opponents at relatively even life totals.  I was still attacking very conservatively for two turns, but then the Boros player dropped Mirrorwing Dragon on their eleventh turn.  I have played with Zada many times.  I know how that card works.  I also knew that they had Unleash Fury in their hand, because it had been exiled by the Deep-Cavern Bat and come back. 

I didn't have the time to keep being conservative.  I swung in big at the Golgari player, killing them with Baylen's trampling power.  I still had a bunch of blockers and a lot of life.  Either the Boros player didn't know what they could do with that Unleash Fury or they didn't think they had enough to take me out, but they didn't attack all in, instead tapping out to get .  On my next turn (I think turn thirteen) I bounced the dragon with Moonsnare Specialist.  Ravi Sengir was big enough to kill him by itself, so I sent her in and won.

That game was wicked fun.  My two opponents were super nice and the game wound up being pretty close.  The other pod finished and then I was asked whether I'd stay for another one.

Heck yes.

We were supposed to start at 4pm, but didn't actually get to setting it up until closer to 4:45.  We had five total drafters, which meant we were going to do a single game of five instead of combinations of three and four.  

Looking back, perhaps I should have suggested a Star draft.  It didn't cross my mind... Kingdom did, but that seemed like it would be too complicated.  A star draft would have been great in this instance, though.  

This time the group was not interested in the Jumpstart option and we instead decided to all draft Bloomburrow.  That made things hard for me, for sure!  To speed things up, we did two picks at a time.  That's not my favorite, but I was just along for the ride.

The mana-fixing was few and far between.  There isn't a nice cycle of common dual lands.  I did manage to get a Hidden Grotto and two Three-Tree Mascots, which promised to help a lot.  Here's everything I picked:

Where are my lands?!?

Lately I've been drafting so many non-basic lands that I haven't had to make a ton of cuts, but that wasn't the case here.  I spent too long, trying to decide whether to keep any cards with double-pips of the same color.  In the end, I put this deck together:

Sixteen basics?  I don't know how to play like that!

 

If this had been a duel, I might have chosen to draw instead of play.  As it turned out, I didn't need to worry.  I had three different basics in my opening hand, drew a fourth on the second turn, and used Heaped Harvest to grab the last one, my solo mountain.  This led to natural WUBRG on turn four, and a Barkform Harvester to boot.  

At this point we found ourselves in a time crunch.  A big storm had picked up, the lights flickered a bit, and one person had a dog at home.  We needed to try and finish as close to 7pm as possible.  I think two people ran three colors, one ran four, and one (aside from me) ran five.  Given the hurry, I don't think anyone noticed that I was successfully in five colors.  My Hidden Grotto showed up and I barely had to worry about colors at all.  

Play became sloppy here as we rushed to finish, mostly around suboptimal attacks.  The player to my left had Sinister Monolith down for many turns.  I tried to focus my attacks on them and whoever had the most life.  Flyers were in the spotlight; everyone wanted to know who had flying blockers each combat.  I had had Tangle Tumbler down and tried to get a +1/+1 counter on one of my creatures each turn, especially since I had trouble drawing into creatures.  Unfortunately that put a target on my creatures.  The Barkform Harvester died shortly after it hit 5/6.  It was around this point that our first player died.

I wish we could have played the game to the end, but we ran out of time.  We agreed that after a final round we would give it to the player with the most life.  I was going second-to-last and it was clear that the last player was going to swing out at me.  On my turn I attacked with my Wax-Wane Witness and an unblockable Three-Tree Mascot, but the bat flew back to my library due to a Dire Downdraft.  I put myself into the top life spot, but I was vulnerable without my flying blocker. 

The last player swung out at me, but I still had some tricks up my sleeve.  I cast Sonar Strike and Take Out the Trash.  That three life and the loss of an attacker kept me at the top of the life game.  

I really don't like ending the game that way.  Especially in multiplayer, having a slight life advantage when everyone is around ten life is not that big of an actual advantage.  I wish we could have taken our time and really talked through the potential outcomes of everything, especially with the newer players.  Everyone was really cool about going over what could happen in different situations, so it could have really been good.  However, I understand there were outside forces causing us to stop.

 

I don't think there are a lot of WUBRG lessons here.  I drafted lots of land in the first game and that worked out well.  For the second game, Heaped Harvest was perfect for me and I took it from there.  I think I got pretty lucky.

Krum's is a bit of a hike for me, but this was exactly the chill way I like to play magic.  I hope I can make the trip again and experience whatever chaos they decide to run.  

Happy Magicking!

Chaos Shakes a Hand Full of Counters (WUBRG Drafting)

We ran a wacky draft last night.  I feel like all of my lessons came together... kinda.  We had seven people, so we did single-game rounds to try and maximize the number of matches we could get in.  One of our newcomers drove over an hour to attend!  It was great!  Here's what we all opened:

Five people in single-blocks, but it was still wacky!

I got lots of mana-fixing.  Here were all my picks:

I don't know what else was in the third pack I opened because... I mean... Teferi's Protection.

I want to talk about the last pack, where I picked Dimir Guildgate over Garrison Sergeant in pick three.  I knew I had taken the other two gates from the Guilds of Ravnica packs, so I figured that by taking that third guildgate, no one else would pull a 3/3 for five in Boros colors.  I may not be the best drafter, but this time I was right and I felt really excellent for doing that!

I got so much mana-fixing that I had some iffy cards in my deck, like Blazing Bomb.  I'm sure I should have run something different.  Feel free to criticize my deckbuilding!  

I actually replaced Flower // Flourish with the Blazing Bomb because the second mode seemed really bad.

I managed to play against five of the six possible opponents I had before we ran out of time.  I sat down in the first round against a slow Abzan deck.  We used removal on the few creatures each other had in the first few turns, as we were both mana flooded.  I had Jidoor in hand, so I cast Overture on turn 6 to put some pressure on.  Then I got Skyserpent Seeker down, one of the best Aetherdrift cards for me.  Even after exhausting it to have nine land on the board, I still had land in play.  My opponent killed it and on their eighth turn played Ardyn.   

Good thing I didn't give them a big graveyard to work with...

I had removal for it (Fate of the Sun-Cryst, I think) so they couldn't actually profit off of the milling I'd done for them.  Unfortunately, I didn't draw any answers for the 5/5 flying deathtouch version of my own serpent.  I lost with 12 lands on the board and another two in hand.  0-1.  (That player went undefeated on the night!)

In the second round I was up against one of our first-timers who also decided to run Abzan.  I got my favorite flying serpent again and exhausted it on turn 4.  They unfortunatley got stuck without white mana while I had plenty of land.  The serpent blocked a big attacker for a good trade, but my 6/6 Fractal Summoning token died to Murderous Compulsion.  WUBRG doesn't usually play aggressively, but thankfully it can be very flexible.  They got Kraul Foragers and started swinging, but I got Hill Gigas and kept the pressure on.  On their next turn, at 7 life, they attacked with the Foragers again, then played Dusyut Earthcarver, granting itself three +1/+1 counters.  I attacked again with my giant and they agonized over whether to block.  Either option was bad, though, as I had Pedal to the Metal in my hand and plenty of land.  1-1.  This game would have been way different if they'd drawn into some white mana, though.  Here's their hand at the end:

They were tapped out, so the Bestow Greatness couldn't save them that combat.

My Crystalline Giant had shown up in the first game, but it really started to make a fun impact in the third round.  I was paired up against a player run-... Golgari!  Really?!?  I got the Crystalline Giant down turn 3 and it started to accrue counters while my opponent was stuck on four land.  I got some lazer-cut counters from some friends, so I used them to physically choose things instead of rolling dice.  (Hopefully my opponents didn't get sick of reaching into my cupped hands to pull out the next counter!)  Later on I drew into Waxen Shapethief and had to count out a second set of the ten tokens to use.  

The left-hand tokens came in that order, top-to-bottom.

I traded the giant in combat shortly thereafter, which might have been the wrong play.  They played Exdeath, a card which has been good to me lately.  It flipped on the first turn, so I hit it with Abrade.  Then I felt safe to use Jidoor's Overture, which dumped 10 cards into their graveyard.  Unfortunately, they had a good play for their next turn: Rise from the Wreck.  

Getting two off of it in a chaos draft is pretty good.

Exdeath came down again and flipped into an 18/3 creature.  I was at 17 life.  I drew into Fenrir and played it, searching up an unnecessary land.  They sacrificed their Golgari Locket to make Exdeath a 19/3 and swung in.  I played Teferi's Protection to buy me another turn.  Then I drew into nothing and died on the following attack.  1-2.  That was a sweet way to die, though.  Overture did lose me the game, but at least I got to put a +1/+1 counter on my Blazing Bomb for it.

In the fourth round, I was up against a Mardu deck with a bunch of synergistic cog pieces that all threatened to combo off together.  I got the Crystalline Giant down on turn three again.  "Kill it before it gets Hexproof," had been floated around the table, so it met a quick end to Hellish Sideswipe.  I acted like an aggro deck again, however, getting down Eshki on turn five and triggering her ability on turn six.  A 6/6 vigilance, trample, ward {1} creature is a crusher.  I swung in with Eshki and some friends (Streaking Oilgorger and Frost Trickster) a few times and put them on the ropes.

Vigilance is good.

By the end, my opponent managed to get hellbent with Bloodhall Priest to get the trigger and take out the Frost Trickster, but it wasn't enough and I pulled it out before anything comborific could kill me.  2-2.

In my fifth and final round I was up against a Witch-Maw (everything but red) self-mill deck from another of our first-time attendees.  Their deck had a cool combo with two Carrion Cruisers and some neat recursion tricks to keep things going, as well as Dredger's Insight to profit off of these tricks.  I was initially unaware of this, so I used Jidoor to cast Overture again.  I think I stymied some of that combo payoff because they did not like the cards that went down.  Nevertheless, I played without green mana for the whole game and they pulled off another brutal combo.  They played Warden of the Grove followed by Divine Visitation and started spawning Serra Angels every turn.  Then they dropped a Bramble Wurm for good measure.  I had Death Begets Life in hand and just needed to draw into that green mana to clear the board.  

They used something to bring Swallowed by Leviathan from their yard to their hand, then swung with a massive board.  I cast Righteous Blow on a small attacker, hoping to draw out the counterspell, but they didn't bite.  

One of those angels isn't attacking because it was just created.  The other two are not tapped, despite the die.

I took a bunch of damage but stayed alive at 1 life.  However, I both failed to draw into a green and they still had untapped mana for the Leviathan to swallow whatever I cast.  2-3.  I died with four green-mana-requiring cards in my hand.  At least I can't blame this loss on casting Overture when I shouldn't have!

The lesson I should probably take away from this is that I might have drafted too many lands.  I had ten and probably passed up some bomb-worthy cards in the meantime.  I'm not sure I'm willing to learn that lesson, though, as I only got mana-screwed one time all night (last game) and I did have six green sources in the deck to support about 7 green mana pips.  Similarly, I didn't get some of my good bombs during the night because I got mana flooded on more than one occasion.  And aside from Eshki and Hill Gigas that showed up here, Garrison Sergeant really is a bomb in this deck, and Jeskai Shrinekeeper had the chance to go big too.

The mistake I do think I made is that I should have run Fire-Rim Form instead of Blazing Bomb.  I just didn't have enough 4+ mana non-creature spells for the bomb to be an actual bomb.

Let me know if you think I'm being too stubborn.  

Happy Magicking!

Final Fantasy Draft 4 (WUBRG Drafting)

It's getting difficult to find stores that still have Final Fantasy packs for drafts.  For those of you reading in the future, this set is selling like hotcakes.  There is the expectation that there will be another big shipment to distributors sometime in July, which is at least a week away.  I looked into going to multiple places for a draft yesterday, but most stores are sold out and are drafting other things.  

I am on a mission to do Final Fantasy drafts.  For me, this set is so fun.  I hope that's enough justification to tell you that I turned down two chaos drafts yesterday.  I avoided both one at a new store one at my normal FLGS, Intergalactic Plastic.  It feels like cheating, both on the store and my love of chaos drafting.

"I'm on a Final Fantasy Walkabout right now, Liz."

So hopefully, dear reader, you and my friends at IGP can forgive me this transgression as I continue to be entranced by the allure of this set.

I knew that Armada Games would still have packs as they had announced that they had enough for over 30 people at the end of Tuesday's draft.  So, I made the trip over there again last night.

I don't know exactly how many people there were in total, but it was around 16.  I went into a pod of eight and got to drafting.  

This is perhaps my worst Final Fantasy draft performance, but with what might be the best story so far.  Before I get into the details, and without giving away the tale, I need to point out that the premiere WUBRG payoff card of this set is The Wandering Minstrel.  Opening that card is the dream and would make me feel great just like drafting Chromanticore did back in Theros block.  It could even get passed in a late pack after people were clearly not in five colors.  Fourth draft could really be time for a payoff.

The first pack was terrifying.  I only had one land and two land cyclers until I was passed an Ice Flan at the very end.  It may not seem like much, but that did calm me down quite a bit.  Here are all my picks:

Nice job on centering the shot, Kyle.

The second pack was all bombs and fixing, amazing.  One thing I noticed is the lack of multi-fixing packs this time.  Nerve-wracking, but totally fine as I got to a much better balance.  The Diamond Weapon put me back on the self-mill plan, though I didn't draft much to complement that aside from the Cloud of Darkness I'd already taken.  I got greedy on the third pack, taking The Water Crystal and Edgar, not expecting to actually run either of them.  Nevertheless, had more removal going than last time.  Also of note, this was my first limited Final Fantasy event without Ignis Scientia!

Here's the deck I built: 

Look at that pile of six-drops.

 

You may have some right to criticize me here for straying from my WUBRGiness, as the only white card that remained was Cloudbound Moogle.  I did cast it, however, so I think I'm still adhering to both the spirit and mission of playing five colors.

As we were building decks, the person furthest from me in the pod was showing off their nasty Boros equipment build.  Then we played.  In the first game, they killed me in seven turns.  I didn't have any good plays until turn six, and by then Giott had swung a bunch and earned a ton of card advantage.  In the second game, let me just say that Lightning is a good card.  They killed me on turn six.

Zack Fair saved Lightning from Firaga.

My opponent was wicked nice and agreed to two more bonus games.  I died in both of them.  In the last one I lasted long enough to get Omega down, which they Ultima'ed.  Even worse: I went first in all four of those games.  What a deck!  They hadn't been able to get any mana fixing, but it didn't matter as they went undefeated in our pod.  0-1. 

For the second round, I was paired up against the drafter who had been sitting to my right.  On turn two of the first game, they played The Wandering Minstrel.  My jaw hit the floor.  In the first or second pick of pack one, they'd got the Minstrel.  Then they ran WUBRG.  Sitting on the worst side for me.  No wonder I only got one land that whole pack!  They were living the dream!  And then...

They got a second Minstrel in pack three.

I immediately expressed my jealousy (hopefully in a pleasant way).  I actually could not believe how lucky I was; I had somehow drafted a good amount of mana fixing in a deck while the player to my right was on the WUBRG strategy and smartly took a lot of fixing as well.  (Even though it was their first time drafting five colors!)  

Back to the match... they were heavily green focused, with Goobbue Gardener, Balamb T-Rexaur, Prishe's Wanderings, Reach the Horizon, and seven towns.  Ramping for days.  As the first game continued, my opponent got stuck one mana off from activating the Minstrel and I was able to outlast and win with a lot of help from Clive.  In the second game, they ramped into a turn four T-Rexaur.

The ramp is real.

Thankfully I had a Sephiroth's Intervention ready to go on my turn.  They responded by playing the Minstrel next turn, followed by a Jumbo Cactuar the next turn.  Still on their turn, I had Lunatic Pandora in play, five lands, a Malboro, Diamond Weapon (with no permanents in the yard), and a comes-into-play-tapped town in my hand.  I needed a basic to pop the Pandora on their turn, but I didn't want to pitch the Malboro.  I surveiled away a T-Rexaur (noooo) so then swampcycled the Malboro.  And then I drew into Overkill.  

Pictured: a 10,000/-9992 creature.

The next turn I had enough for the Diamond Weapon.  "I have one of those." my opponent said.  What was going on with this draft?

Theirs never showed up and my Diamond weapon was enough to win the game.  I was very effusive to my opponent about how crazy this was.  I know I was in a good mood because I won, but I really want to think that if I hadn't pulled off a victory, I would have been acting the same way.  1-1.

In the third round I was up against... Boros Equipment.  Thankfully this deck wasn't as brutal as my first round, though they had some great late game cards.  They played their own Clive, which met with Sephiroth's Intervention.  Not only did they have one, there was apparently a third Clive opened in our little pod of eight.  What a crazy draft!  I can't believe this all happened-... No, no more sidetracks.  Stick to the match.  They got down Item Shopkeep with Warrior's Sword and I couldn't come up with enough blockers to stay alive.  I played a last-chance Random Encounter and didn't get to win.  (I might have scooped too early and should have played it out.  Oof.)  In game two, I had a well-timed Firaga that wiped their board.  After that, they got mana flooded while I got in with Hill Gigas to win.  In the third game, they turned on the jets and raced in.  I got Black Waltz No. 3 down, but that wasn't enough to keep me in the game.  1-2.

We're not entirely done, though!  My round two opponent had drawn the bye that final round, but wanted to play more.  I gladly took them up on it!  (Seriously, if you see me at a draft and want to try to squeeze in some exhibition games, please ask me!)  We played two more bonus games.  I won both, but the second game game close, as they got the Minstrel on turn two, then Bard's Bow turn three.  I got stuck without any quick cards, but they were not fast enough before I was able to stabilize.  Omega got down and that saved the day.  I love this attitude from them, though, because they were as undeterred as I am when losing a bunch.  I'm really glad that I got to play eleven games with my deck!

I do have some new thoughts:

• Qiqirn Merchant would have gone a long way.  It blocks and then powers some great draw.
• I never cast Travel the Overworld.  I either didn't have the two blue or I needed to spend my mana on creatures that turn.  I don't know whether I would draft this highly again, especially if I'm so low on blue like I was.
• Even though I went 1-2, I actually think this set is better for WUBRG than I previously thought.  Pro-side evidence: two people were able to draft five colors with competent mana bases.  Con-side: Neither of us won a match against someone not running WUBRG.  I definitely see opinions on both sides of this.  It's not the same as in Ravnica Allegiance where I was competing with someone else going WUBRG in a pod of six and still won the draft, but it's way better than trying to do this before dual lands were common in packs. 
  

That's enough to say that if you're WUBRG drafting and think someone else at the table might be doing the same thing, you don't have to give up right away!  Whatever you're running, Happy Magicking!