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).
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:
Here's the deck I built from that:
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:
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.
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.
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!
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