Modern Horizons 3 Draft, Round 2 (WUBRG Drafting)

My FLGS, Intergalactic Plastic, has a great habit of running drafts of past sets.  This weekend it happened again; they arranged a Modern Horizons 3 draft for last night.  At the current moment in Magic: TG history, however, these look-back-drafts are very common.  I want to include a brief note to set the stage for future historians of the arcane.  

Spider-Man is the current standard set.  It was released three weeks ago.  The set has faced some negative feelings from players.  Drafts are either not firing or are underwhelming.  Here's what I understand are the problems, independent of the quality of the actual cards in the set:

• The set is smaller than most recent standard-released sets.  (Compare 193 draft cards in Spider-Man as opposed to 286 in Duskmourn.)  
• Product fatigue is setting in to the die-hard magic players.  More and more sets are being released each year.
• Simultaneously, there have been supply issues especially since Final Fantasy.  I often feel like I want more chances with some sets that have come and gone, but I think my sentiment is now more widespread for sets from this year.  Players may be more interested in drafting Tarkir: Dragonstorm than a new set.  
• The official draft format for the set is Pick-Two in pods of four people.  I don't understand the point of the four-person pods.  I don't think the math behind any rationales I've heard of would actually make for a more fun experience with two pods of four rather than one pod of eight.  (This is my personal take.)

With all that in mind, many game stores have been handling the backlash by running non-Spider-Man drafts ever since the set's release.  You may have the opportunity in your local area to get in on a look-back-draft too!  

I did not do well in my first MH3 draft last year, so I was looking to improve my record.  This is the kind of set where WUBRG drafting should prosper!

• There is a common ten-card cycle of three-color fixing lands.  
• There's a bunch of green mana fixing.
• There are MDFC lands in one and two colors.
• The Onslaught fetch lands were reprinted.

If hubris provides you with elevated schadenfreude, this post is for you.  I was set up to do well.  I had reviewed my notes from last time and have drafted a ton in the past year.  I was ready to prove my prowess.  We had twelve people total so we got in to two pods of six and opened the first pack.

I got nervous early on in the drafting, as I didn't get any of the Landscapes in the first pack.  I shouldn't have worried, however, as they showed up later.  I tried hard to pull more removal than I did last year, but that only went okay.  I'm not sure what was worse, though, that I had few win conditions or few mid-range creatures.

What is the bigger hole here?

Cuts were easy because I took so many lands.  I have a picture of what my final deck looked like, but my deck for the first round had one more landscape and one fewer of the basics in this photo.

Which basic was swapped out for the extra Perilous Landscape initially?  Answer coming in the first round description.  Hint: I'm an idiot.

I faced off against a cool Orzhov deck, "Enchanted by Unicorns".  It lived up to its name in both games, getting Nyxborn Unicorn on two creatures.  Later in the game we had five bestowed enchantments between the two of us.  I got some little creatures, Sarpadian Simulacrum and Retrofitted Transmogrant, but it wasn't enough to keep up.  My opponent was at 49 when I lost.  

In the second game I got Eladamri Korvecdal out for the first time.  And... that was about it.  I had a Copycrook in hand, but could never seem to get that second blue mana source.  (Go look at the image above to see why.)  I drew Angel of the Ruins and sacrificed one of my landscapes to go get a second plains.  

There are two plains in the image above.  I added the second after this game.  I had to grab yet another Forest instead.  I am an idiot.  Yes, there were other ways for me to generate white mana, but nothing I could search for.  In the meantime, my opponent got a Guide of Souls down as part of their wide field.

Eladamri alone can't hold that line.

Shortly thereafter, with a forest atop my library, I plainscycled the angel just to get a shuffle.  That wasn't enough to save me, but this time my opponent won at a paltry 30 life.  0-1.

In the second round I was pitted against Temur Eldrazi.  I got my Volatile Stormdrake down on turn two, but it got slapped with Utter Insignificance, a cool removal piece.  My opponent played Writhing Chrysalis on turn four.  I nearly played Null Elemental Blast, but remembered about Devoid.  They followed that up with a Kappa Cannoneer on turn 5 and Wumpus Aberration on turn 7.  Sadly none of those were targets for the Null Elemental Blast and I could not keep up.

In the second game I had a slow go and got out my Obstinate Gargoyle on turn 5.  My opponent followed that on the next three turns with the Cannoneer, Wumpus, and Chrysalis in that order.  I Dog Umbra'ed the Wumpus and bestowed my Gargoyle with my Nyxborn Hydra.  My opponent didn't let off the gas, though.

Hello, Warped Tusker.

I was dead again, this time before I could even get a hold of any red mana.  0-2.

For the third round, both pods had a drop, so the people that would have had byes got matched up together in cross-pod combat.  That was me representing my pod and a Jeskai Energy deck from the other.

I played a turn three Obstinate Gargoyle.  My opponent Copycrooked it.  They followed that up with a Satya, Aetherflux Genius, attacking for 8.  I killed it with Breathe Your Last on my next turn, but the damage was done.  A Voltstorm Angel came down.  I Trickster's Elked it and slowed things down.  I risked a Wheel of Potential for 5 cards, but it didn't pan out.  Once my Gargoyle was dead, my opponent played their own Volatile Stormdrake.  I did get Eladamri down, but then my own drake was a bust because I couldn't trade it for a flying blocker when I needed it to stay alive.

In game two, my opponent got an early Conduit Goblin out, but was stuck on three lands.  They put my Eladamri in a Static Prison.  I killed the goblin but they had a second one.  My life total got perilously low, but I drew into my Wight of the Reliquary on turn seven.  I went for the dumb value play by bestowing it with my Hydra for a turn eight 8/8.  It was finally time to start swinging in.

Nope.

I only got to attack once before they played the drake.  We had to call a judge to correctly rule that the Wight had summoning sickness, but it didn't matter because the Conduit Goblin was sitting with plenty of energy.  Haste from the goblin, Vigilance from itself, Trample and +4/+4 from the Hydra.  0-3.

0-3 without a single game win.  Oof.  Five colors doesn't always work out, but this was especially bad.  I was low on bombs.  Low on removal.  (Again!)  Low on efficient creatures.  

I think I need to blame myself more than the set.  WUBRG has got to be feasible here, and I know I made a lot of mistakes.

• I got too greedy on lands at the end of pack three.  I thought I was really lucky to see so many, but I should have been trying to fill other gaps.
• I drafted some cards I wanted more than cards I should have been taking a few times.
• I didn't build my mana base carefully enough.  I probably should have counted some of the MDFC lands as lands and run one or two more spells.  
• Null Elemental Blast was a dud.  
• More stuff like the Retrofitted Transmogrant and adept creatures would have been good.  

In total I have a 1-5 record in MH3 drafts.  I don't know when I'll get a chance again, but when I do, I'll be ready!

I still had a lot of fun.  It was fun to hold out as long as I could in all those impossible situations.  It was fun to plainscycle that angel and not even search, but just see if my opponent could figure out what grand mistake I'd made.  Drafting is always so fun.  

I wish Happy Magicking for you too, win or lose!