Final Fantasy Draft 2 (WUBRG Drafting)

Last night I got to draft Final Fantasy again.  Just like with the prerelease, the store's draft was sold out with twenty players.  (The draft scene at Intergalactic Plastic is really great right now!)  Right before the draft I was chatting with a bunch of people.  The plan was to organize us in three pods of 6, 6, and 8.  I casually mentioned that I liked bigger pods; 10 and 10 would be my preference.  I knew that wasn't going to happen.  I did not lobby for it.  I don't think either the owner or store manager heard me say that.  

The next thing I know, we are organized into two pods of 10.  I do not know how that happened.  I really hope I'm not to blame for that.  (I feel like I have a history of causing this kind of trouble!)

The drafting part was a bit crazy.  Here are all my picks:

So many legends!

 

Here are some thoughts in bullets:

• I passed a bunch of fixing towns early on in pack one, and only got two.  In pack two, I first-picked one because I was feeling quite desperate!  Then I got no more.  Thankfully, in pack three, I got a ton and things came together.  
• I kept picking Balamb T-Rexaur.  It's so good, and was especially excellent given all the green I was running.
• Muldrotha as my first pick was stunning.  Even if I wasn't pre-planning to run five colors, at that point I don't think I could have chosen differently.
• I drafted the Laboratory Maniac because of how good it would have been for my opponent in my final match of the night before.  It seemed to go really well with the Muldrotha as well, as I could be a bit more cavalier about milling myself.  Along that line, I picked the Shinra Reinforcements, Random Encounter, and Esper Origins.  The land-cycling creatures also played into this strategy and I wish I'd taken more of them.  
• The issue with multiple fixing cards in the same pack happened again.  This was the situation with my fourth-from-last pick:

You've got to be kidding me.

Here's the deck I ended up with:

Seven multi-lands!  Let's go!

My original deck included Random Encounter and PuPu UFO, but they came out in favor of the Gaius van Baelsar and Town Greeter over the course of the night.  

In my first match, I was up against one of my favorite people to play against, this time running a synergistic Jeskai deck.  They got out Ultima (the creature) on turn five of the first game.  I was stuck on four lands and Blitzball for a long time, but got Jenova and Kuja out early to hold the fort down.  One of those four lands got wasted by Ultima.  (It became like a Wastes, not destroyed.)  I killed Ultima the next turn with Airship Crash, which is just awesome removal in this format.  I then stupidly whiffed on Mountaincycling my Hill Gigas because my lone Mountain was already on the board!  Kuja flipped and Jenova built up a Wizard token to 4/5 after a while and my opponent had to block and kill it, netting me four cards!  Jenova was trying to get noticed as an important piece of my self-mill strategy too!  At that point my opponent was flooding out so they scooped to move to game two.

In that second game, Ultima died in the same way (though I killed it before it could mess with my mana base).  Kuja flipped again.  My opponent got flooded even harder, sadly; they only drew into two new spells that weren't in their opening hand before I got going.  This was so frustrating for them and that sucks!  1-0.

In the second match I was matched up against another synergistic deck, this time Rakdos Wizards, complete with Cornered by Black Mages, Mysidian Elder, and Black Waltz No. 3.  In the first game I was really slow on land.  Jenova sat out as a blocker without any support for a while until Gladiolus Amicitia showed up.  They pumped each other up and I got in some good swings with Jenova.  I played Vincent Valentine, who died to Vayne's Treachery, then Omega, who died to Odin, who in turn died to Airship Crash.  After Odin was off, I just kept hitting with my remaining creatures and won.

In game two, an early Reno and Rude put them ahead on life and cards.  My Ignis Scientia got Cornered by Black Mages.  I started clawing my way back into the game and got the T-Rexaur down, getting my life total back on track.  Then they played Odin again, killing the dinosaur.  I played two blockers to have a chance against the summoned norse god...

And then I got Phaged out of existence.

In game three, I played a turn 4 Kuja who died to Sephiroth's Intervention, but not before enlisting one wizard token.  Jenova later made that a bit bigger and Ignis helped me get the mana I needed and the Shinra Reinforcements and Cloud of Darkness kept me alive.  I later flashbacked Esper Origins to get Maduin for the first time.  Omega came down right around when time was called, but it was enough for me to swing in on turns two and four of time and win on the latter.  2-0.  What a match!

In the third round I was up against Selesnya Chocobos.  I went six turns of the first game without green mana, which was the worst color for me to be missing.  I played Gladiolus on turn seven to finally start to fix my mana, but he got imprisioned in White Auracite right away.  The birds stomped all over me.  For the second game, it's important to note that I had sided the Laboratory Maniac out for Gaius.  We went very long, the power on the board swinging back and forth.  Multiple times my opponent said they might have to mill me out.  (Whoops!)  Thankfully I played Muldrotha late (that drew some surprise as it was the first time I'd cast it) and used the card advantage to overpower for a slow win.  

Here's my board at the end of that second game.

For the third game, I definitely sided Lab Man back in, then aggressively burned through my library.  I saw all three T-Rexaurs and only had to land cycle the first.  Jenova helped again immensely.  They had some extremely powerful synergy with Zanarkand and Chocobo Kick, using the kicker to put it back in their hand to power out another big creature!  My opponent was really mana flooded in this game, but that kept them in.  I barely managed to deal with each of the big creatures, mostly thanks to Gaius.  Then one of my T-Rexaurs pumped up by two Jenova counters died while I was attacking.  That meant I got to draw eight cards.  After discarding at the end of turn, I kept Muldrotha and Lab Man in hand.  

Just in case.

I didn't need to worry about decking, however, because I won shortly there after with big beats from Gladiolus.  3-0.

Okay, I have a few remarks about this:

• The format really seems slow enough to facilitate the five-color strategy.  It's a bit fragile mana-wise, but it's doable.  
• I need to thank my previous opponent the night prior for getting me into a self-mill mindset that powered up Muldrotha and Lab Maniac.
• Take the lands and take the landcyclers!
• Unfortunately there will be some packs with multiple fixing cards, so be prepared to make some tough choices.
• Ignis Scientia is great.  
  
• I still haven't tested the five-color-equipment strategy, going for five-color-Legends instead.  I'm not sure I'll be able to deviate from that, though I expect the equipment army is really strong too.  
• This format is just wicked fun.  I love playing with cards from the games I know (that's mostly 1, 4, and 6 with some 2 and less 3, 5, and 7).  
  

If you count both of the last two drafts (one was best-of-1, one was best-of-3 matches) then my overall match record is 7-1, with games at 10-3.  I don't know which is more appropriate.

I hope you get to try to draft WUBRG in this format.  Happy Magicking!