Edge of Eternities (WUBRG Drafting)

I made it to my first Edge of Eternities draft last night!  This was my first time drafting at The Conclave in Lakeland, an interesting store that is only open on Friday and Saturday nights.  We had eleven players and drafted in two pods but played games across the pods.  I was in the six-person pod.

I started off thinking that Edge of Eternities would be tough for WUBRG drafting, but it very much is not because of the prevalence of landers.  I actually wish I had drafted much differently because I ramped early and often and always had all my colors.  Here's what I drafted:

I did a pretty good job opening packs!

Pack three was a wild ride.  Not only did I open a second Beyond the Quiet, but I was then immediately passed the Singularity Rupture.  I couldn't believe it!  I felt like this draft was mine to win!  Here's the deck I built:

Potential deck name: "Oh, My Landers!"

My notes are a little less thorough this time.  (I think that happens when I'm playing at new places.)

I started off with the first-round bye and got in half of an EDH game with some other patrons.  (I'm sorry we didn't finish during the round!)  In the second round, I was paired up against a fast Rakdos deck.  It became clear to me just how strong the Warp mechanic is, though I hadn't really drafted much of it.  (It plays very similarly to adventures!)  In game one, I kept up with most of their creatures, but then they played Tannuk and I didn't keep up.  

In game two we both got flooded (I was flooded pretty much every game, but that was on purpose with all my landers.)  I played a Fungal Colossus for 2 but the game went long.  At the end I had three cards in my library and knew one of them was a basic land and two were Glacier Godmaws.  I learned to hold lands in my hand so I could give them haste with their landfall trigger, which is what I did, and won with one card left in my library.  

In game three, I was doing pretty well, but my opponent played Mutinous Massacre and stole my Fungal Colossus and swung when I was at four life.  I wasn't completely out of it, though, because I cast Drill Too Deep to bring the charge counters on my Larval Scoutlander to ten and chump block.  I really thought I was going to survive, but they had one more trick.

Pain for all, loss for me.

1-1, including the bye.  That player went on to win the draft.

There was only one other person at the draft that I knew from before, so naturally I was matched up against them and their Dimir control deck.  I want to mention that they are an extremely honorable player who is very interested in minimizing shallow play mistakes on both sides.  They made comments about things I could do and I did my best to do the same.  This was one of the best and weirdest limited matches I've ever had!  Every game came down to tiny libraries.  It might have been in my best interest to pad my deck with a few cards, but I didn't think to do that.

In game one, I played a first Godmaw but didn't have the extra land to give it haste.  This forced them to cast their own Singularity Rupture (what?!) nuking the board and milling me for 11.  I played my second Godmaw the next turn, but again didn't have land.  They managed to remove that as well and I conceded when we both had two cards on our libraries (but it was their turn).  I was going to die to combat damage the next turn, but I had my second Beyond the Quiet in my hand, which I thought they didn't know about.  (They did; they had been paying good attention at the end of my previous match.)  I didn't have a chance to win anyways with the two cards remaining in my library.

In game two, we played another war of attrition.  The amount of removal is so high and the fact that we both had big board wipes meant that we weren't over committing.  They played the first Singularity Rupture, milling me for 11 again.  I followed that up with my own, but then on my turn they still had six cards on their library while I only had five.  Once again I was behind by one!  Thankfully, I was able to win again after drawing my last card with the hastiness of the Godmaw.  They were stuck with multiple creatures in the "Warp Zone" including Quantum Riddler and Codecracker Hound because they just couldn't afford to draw any extra cards.  

In game three we were a bit rushed.  I played both Beyond the Quiets to stay in the game, but they had enough medium-sized creatures and only played one or two at a time.  I lost when they were at seven.  (Cards, not life.  What do you think this is, Magic?)  On my last turn, I surveilled to see the Singularity Rupture I needed on the top of my library.  1-2, including the bye.

I needed that in my hand instead of on top of my library.

Here are some quick lessons, notes to myself for doing this again in the future:

• Even though I didn't win a match against an opponent, the lander strategy seems real good for going WUBRG!
• Ramping works, so it would be okay for me to take more common big things.  I passed up some Pinnacle Kill-Ships that I wish had been in my pool.  
• I need to take both of the above points with a huge grain of salt because I'm not always going to get such a crazy amount of board wipes.   
  

This was so much fun!  I really hope I get to try it out again soon and really push for a bimodal mana curve.  I'm also really excited to Edge of Eternities packs in wacky drafts!  

I hope you have fun drafting this set too.  Happy Magicking! 

Jumpstarting a First Pack in Chaos (WUBRG Drafting)

I gathered packs while on a trip and luckily my regular group was okay with trying a Jumpstart-1 Draft-2 event, so we did that last night.

(Feel free to skip to the image of the packs we opened if you don't care to hear the story of the packs I chose.)

I have long hoped to find a stable magic scene "Up North" Michigan.  (For my purposes, Up North means the Northeastern part of the Lower Peninsula.  Maybe that counts as the region from Alpena to Charlevoix?  I'm not really sure on the boundaries.)  I don't get to get up there every year, but it's a common place for me to visit in summers.  

In 1994, I opened a Revised starter deck at a long-gone store in downtown Petoskey.  This was shortly after I started playing and my pack contained the first Gaea's Liege and Millstone I had ever seen.  I bought an Unlimited Serra Angel at a paintball store in Cheboygan in the late 1990s.  I participated in a M13 (I think) prerelease at a store that I believe was called Battlegrounds near where Mim's currently is on the east outskirts of Petoskey.  Another store showed up in downtown Petoskey, though I didn't buy anything there and I don't remember the name.  (I think it was near the intersection of E. Mitchell St. and Waukazoo.)  That one seemed really promising, but it either moved or was replaced by a store outside of downtown but conveniently near Plath's butcher on Mitchell and S. Division.  I found them in 2020 during the pandemic.  I wasn't willing to play in store then, but I bought a box of Ikoria boosters.  I really looked forward to returning there to play someday.  Unfortunately, they did not make it. 

I returned this year after many years away.  Nevertheless, I found some new Magic vendors.  I figured I wouldn't get to play, but I did buy a pack from each of them to use when I returned home:

• I bought a March of the Machines Jumpstart pack from Enchanted Knights in Cheboygan.  I was really excited to find this because they run weekly events and have an active discord.  Enchanted Knights also has a location in Mackinaw City that I've been to many times since the Mackinaw Crossing shopping area took over (in the late nineties, I think).  That is a store that specializes in medieval weapons and clothing and got D&D stuff in more recent years, but I don't think I ever saw any Magic cards there.
• I bought an Innistrad Remastered pack from Nerd Ferguson's in Mackinaw City, which I had been to before.  I don't remember whether they had Magic before, but they did now.  I did learn that they are owned by the same people as Enchanted Knights.  Interestingly, I don't think they run events at this location.
• Petoskey is back on the map!  Though not downtown, the Fortress of Fandom is east of Bay View in the same plaza as D&W Fresh Market.  They had a bunch of normal packs, but then also a Fate Reforged among them, which I figured would be most wacky.  This store has a ton of space and it looked like they had big boxes of cards.  Hopefully in the future I can return and spend a while going through them with my want list.

I bought the first of those, the March of the Machines Jumpstart pack, on a bit of a whim.  It wasn't until later that I hoped I could get three packs to draft with.  We went to Mackinac Island this year, and I am pretty confident that there's no place to buy Magic cards there.  Luckily, my group agreed to try out the Jumpstart-1 Draft-2 format that I'd done before at Krum's, so I got to use all three.

To continue with the Michigan theme, I offered each of my players a can of Vernors, the oldest soda in the country.  I found out there are three flavors this summer and I was ready with all of them: Original, Black Cherry (limited time), and Boston Cooler (limited time).

No one chose the original.

 

You've heard about my packs; here's what everyone opened:

Will Jumpstart 1, Draft 2 become a thing?

One interesting aspect of this is that you don't have any information about what everyone else is doing after pack one.  (I mean, I don't anyways, but other people seem to be able to glean information.)  My Jumpstart was the Overachiever 2 pack and I got very lucky with a Faerie Mastermind for my random card.  

(Why are older Wizards.com pages so broken?  Looking at the March of the Machines Jumpstart possible pack lists page, each pack has multiple "Creatures" sections, non-creatures are included in the second Creatures part, that second non-creatures part is re-included in an "Other" section, many of the hoverover cards are wrong, and the overall card count is listed as "20/0".  I've seen other old pages similarly troubled.)  

Unfortunately, March of the Machines Jumpstart doesn't have dual lands like the thriving lands found in many other Jumpstarts.  It does have landcyclers instead, so I did get a Tidal Terror.  Drafting the remaining two packs was very interesting.  Although I didn't know it until afterwards, the other Jumpstart pack colors were Green, Green, and Blue!  Of the four of us, two colors were in very high demand.  I wasn't sure I'd be able to go WUBRG, but then dual lands kept coming around.  I took the Unseal the Necropolis because that kind of things works well with landcyclers.  Here were all of my picks:

 

As the group yesterday told me, I'm "honor bound" to do things like first-pick rare duals at this point.

 

Here's the deck I built from that:

Another very low mana curve!

I didn't realize at the time, but I was running Team Surveillance with Fear of Surveillance, Namazu Trader, Ephara's Dispersal, and near-surveil-effects like Soulcipher Board, Djinni Windseer (scry), and Oracle of Tragedy (looting).  All of this could work well with Unseal the Necropolis, though I didn't really get that synergy throughout the night.      

We played a best-of-three round robin.  In the first round I was up against the player who got an insect pack from Jumpstart 2022 and built a Selesnya deck.  I got Namazu Trader down on turn 5 and Fear of Surveillance followed.  I cast Unseal the Necropolis, only for my opponent to mill a Deadbridge Goliath.  That pumped a Sylvan Shepherd up to 7/8, followed by a Purple Worm next turn.  I got Ride the Shoopuf on the board, but didn't get a second green source in time and died.  In game two, he got a nasty three-card combo going:

A cycle of pain for me.

If there's a big enough creature, Nessian Hornbeetle places a counter each turn.  When that counter gets placed, Iridescent Hornbeetle makes a creature.  When more creatures exist, Snow Villers gets bigger.  Rinse and repeat.  I held out for a while, but eventually got overrun. 0-1.

In the second round, I was up against another Selesnya deck, this time from the Brothers' War opener.  They played Iron-Craw Crusher early as a prototype and survived a complicated combat with Gaea's Gift.  I got the Namazu Trader down as well as Tidal Terror.  Then they played Aettir and Priwen.  Yikes!  Before they could equip with it, I double-blocked the Crusher with the Trader and Terror.  They didn't draw another creature, so I won.  

In the second game, I got Faerie Mastermind down.  They played Ingenious Smith, finding the Iron-Craw Crusher again, but had a hard time getting their fourth land.  I held out by nuking the board with Fire Magic, then later got Referee Squad to slow down the Crusher for a while.  They played Aettir and Priwen and didn't hesitate to equip it to the Crusher.  I lost chump blocker after chump blocker as they hit in with a 24/12 every turn.  I played Lightfoot Rogue to try and get one more turn, but they played Spare Dagger and killed it before I could block, killing me.  

Which is more impressive, the dagger or the fact that another player had a Prototype token ready to go?

In the third game, my opponent kept a one-land hand.  I got stuck on two land, so they had time to catch up.  Thankfully, Fire Magic rescued me again and I took out four of their creatures with just the one-mana one-damage version.  From there I had a clear path to victory.  1-1.

In the final round I was up against "Dimir Ice", based on a blue Investigate pack from Jumpstart 2022.  In game one, got Faerie Mastermind down on turn two again.  They played Stitched Mangler and Vampire Spawn and I suddenly needed things that could win combat against 2/3s.  They kept stunning my potential blockers and I took four damage over and over.  Thankfully I got Djinni Windseer to stand up and stabilized at four life then win with that and other fliers.

In game two they got Vedalken Engineer out and then Enduring Tenacity.  I knew how combolicious that was so I dropped it with Minimus Containment.  Unfortunately, that was the wrong target.  

Yeah, see that equipment there.  That turned out to be worse.

I did my best to stop Vorpal Sword from going off, but they got the mana for it.  I kept killing their creatures, but then they played Oneirophage and I didn't have a flier.  (They also played Teferi's Puzzle Box, which just wrecks with the Oneirophage.)  

In the third game, they kept a very risky hand: one island, but with a Delver.  It did not ever flip, but they almost made it happen with a second land on turn four into the Vedalken Engineer, who powered out a Magnifying Glass the next turn.  I got my Tidal Terror out and put Astral Wingspan on it to win the game.  2-1.

Three of the four of us went 2-1.  We all played each other, so opponents' records are not a good tiebreaker.  On the first tiebreaker (game record) I fell out, having been 4-4 instead of 5-3.  The other two tied on that, so the winner of their match won that way.  

I am not sure how I feel about Jumpstart-1 Draft-2.  It was maybe not as fun as when I played in the multiplayer games a month ago.  Next time I would start with a pack that has a Thriving land at least.  Let me know what you think if you try it.

Happy Magicking!