NYC Draft: Spiders, Turtles, Turtles

There's an extra sense of excitement when your FLGS runs an "alternative" draft that doesn't follow a normal set of packs.  So I was real excited when, at the last minute, I was able to go to the NYC Draft at Intergalactic Plastic: Spider-Man, TMNT, TMNT.

It is true that there's a lot of spiders and pizza in New York.

We had exactly eight people, so I'm sure they were happy I came as well!  I didn't plan ahead, which is probably good, because then I might have tried to build a Villains theme... which would have been bad because the "bad guys" in TMNT don't have the villains type.  In the end, I did get a bit of a menace theme instead!  Here are all my picks:

I was looking for J. Jonah Jameson for a deck too!

Most importantly, check out all the land cyclers; I got seven in total!  Including two Bebops, two Rocksteadys, and a Bebop & Rocksteady!  Because I got all those land cyclers, I made the dangerous decision to run only 15 lands.  I think that was too much and I should have gone 16 instead, because I did mulligan a lot.  Nevertheless, here's my deck:

Only two cards in the five and six-drop piles don't have landcycling!

In the first round I was up against a very aggressive Rakdos deck.  In the first game, they played Raphael, Tough Turtle on turn two, which wound up being the MVP.  My life total got too low too quickly and I couldn't catch up.  In the second game, I got Bebop & Rocksteady on turn four, but my opponent handled them with The Spot's Portal.  My Ninja Teen came out the next turn, though, and I learned just how amazing that card was, especially with all the land cyclers.  I out-valued my opponent and won.  In game three, I got J. Jonah Jameson out early, then Bebop & Rocksteady.  My opponent was stuck on three lands and couldn't keep up.  1-0.

Before the next round, I got in a bonus game against an Orzhov Ninjas deck a friend was running.  I died to Dark Leo & Shredder.  I put up a fight and kept trying to remove it, but continually failed.   

In the second round, I was up against another Rakdos deck, but this time control-focused.  They played Raphael, Tough Turtle on turn two of the first game, but didn't lay down an absolute barrage of creatures right after, so I got back into the game.  Sadly, South Wind Avatar came down a few turns later, and the combo of creatures hurting me when they came in and left was enough to take me out.  

That card is not from the Avatar: TLA set.  TIL.

In game two, Hobgoblin came down early and got in some big hits, but I was able to deal with it.  Sadly, South Wind Avatar came out again and I lost a lot from it.  I hit it with Retro Mutation late, but my life total was real low.  I finally stabilized at 1 (against my opponent's 24) with the help of Ninja Teen.  At ten lands, I matched my opponent's creatures with my own for many turns and got them under 20 life.  I knew I had limited time, so I needed to keep the pressure on, then use Ninja Teen sneaking to get a creature back in my hand and replay it.  I was keeping enough blockers up to stay alive until my opponent drew Death in the Family and I was toast.  We played a bonus third game and I lost that one too, without facing down the South Wind Avatar.  This loss was not a fluke.  1-1.

In the final round I was up against a removal-filled Abzan deck.  In the first game I got out Bebop & Rocksteady, but they got Grounded for Life.  My opponent, meanwhile, got a Michelangelo, Game Master and a Lurking Lizards out and just kept hitting.  

They got pretty big.

In game two, I got J. Jonah Jameson down on turn three and was ready to go off.  Unfortunately, my opponent Grounded them for Life, then did the same thing to the Putrid Pals I played.  Thankfully I kept drawing into creatures and they drew into lands and more lands.  I was able to win with a flying attack of Sun-Spider with Hard-Won Jitte among others.  In game three, my opponent played Transdimensional Bovine and used that to power out a bunch of good cards.  I played creatures, but they ate it to removal.  (They said they were packing eight removal cards!)  My opponent got six creatures down with the help of Friendly Neighborhood and I could not keep up.  1-2

 

Here are my takeaways:

• Some nights I take better notes than others.  I definitely feel more pressure to keep up the pace of the match at the stores.   
• I got lucky with my game wins.  I think this could've (should've?) gone worse than it did. 
• I'm not sure what to say about massive amount of land cyclers.  I really like them, but perhaps 15 lands is too few and I should have run 16 instead.  When I went with 17, I felt like I was getting flooded all the time.  Maybe 16 is the sweet spot.
• Everything Pizza is amazing.  So many games I got to seven mana and that card made a difference.  Two copies was great.

Not everyone may love the idea of a NYC-themed draft, but this was fun for me because I hadn't done a TMNT draft before.  Happy Magicking to you, whether your next draft takes place in New York or not! 

Foundations Draft #2 (WUBRG Drafting)

I missed some chances for TMNT drafts, but I did get in on a Foundations draft at my FLGS, Intergalactic Plastic, last night, with seven other people.  I have a little mantra that "I'm never disappointed opening a Foundations pack" so it seemed like it would be fun to do another one.  This followed the pattern.

One of the other drafters successfully interfered with my photo.  Well, now they're stuck in the blog!

In some ways, this Foundations draft reminded me of a Chaos draft.  The set is so big that there are a large variety of cards that come around.  The player to my right did manage to draft five Gnarlid Colonies, for their Big Green deck, though.  And the draft archetypes are pretty consistent.  Maybe I just have the wrong impression.

A lot happened during the draft, though.  I stared off with Elenda, Saint of Dusk, but then passed on a bunch of synergistic stuff and accidentally went pretty blue.  In pack two I got a bunch of great green cards.  Pack three was where things went real wild, though.  I opened Muldrotha, which has done me well in draft before.  Then I got passed two Homunculus Hordes in a row and suddenly I was hoping I had more ways to draw cards.  Thankfully I had already taken a Spectral Sailor and then Tatyova, Benthic Druid came along later in pack three.  Here are all my picks:

I actually got worried that I might not get into all five colors.

Throughout all of this, I very nearly failed to actually get enough five color support.  Although I only grabbed two lands, I got lucky with the Goldvein Pick, Burnished Hart, and Grow from the Ashes.  

I waffled back and forth about whether to run the Homunculuses.  In the end, I really wanted to, so I did.  That was a good choice.  I also didn't start with Slagstorm, but I had it maindecked after the first round.  Here's the deck I was running by the end of the night:  

Beautiful Homunculuses and all.

In the first round I was matched up against a Sultai deck with lots of graveyard-based value.  They started off with an Infestation Sage on the first turn, then a Strix Lookout.  I had drawn Spectral Sailor, so I played that during their turn, then got my Homunculus Horde out two turns later.  They played Dreadwing Scavenger and managed to get lots of value off of it.  With the Sailor out, I drew another card on turn five to go to two Homunculuses.  They saw the danger and used Eaten Alive with their Strix to take out my original (non-token) Homunculus Horde.  I was down in life, but on the next turn I activated the Sailor again to get two tokens again.  My opponent played Lathril, and I cast Run Away Together on the Sailor and the Dreadwing Scavenger in order to try to keep my life total up.  Thankfully I had drawn into Tatyova, so I could play her, play a land, and run my horde up to four.  On the next turn I played another land to get eight and then cast Quilled Greatwurm, one of my best threats.  I swung to bring the life totals close (my eleven to their fourteen) and get some +1/+1 counters.  One of my horde died, but I played another land next turn to get up to fourteen and win.

In game two, my opponent got some real synergy going.  They played Mischievous Mystic on turn two, which sailed right over my Nessian Hornbeetle, and turned their next turn Think Twice into a faerie as well.  I played another groundling, Cephalid Inkmage, but then they played Abyssal Harvester, followed up by a Gutless Plunderer on their fifth turn.  I convinced the Harvester to Run Away Together with my Hornbeetle, then played Tatyova, which my opponent Imprisoned in the Moon.  I Broke the moon's Wings and then played an Evolving Wilds and fetched to draw two cards.  My opponent started the seventh round of turns when time was called with me at twelve life and my opponent at seventeen.  My opponent started to pull neat tricks with the Plunderer's ETB effect and the Abyssal Harvester, but I was able to stay alive for the five turns without even casting the Homunculus that'd been in my hand the whole game.  The game ended with me at four life.  1-0.  

In the second round I was up against an Izzet Terror deck.  In the first game they had a quick Firebrand Archer, then Mocking Sprite, then Goblin Surprise, which they used to pump up the Archer and kill my Gleaming Barrier.  Turn five brought a Heartfire Immolator.  I had sacrificed Burnished Hart so my fifth turn was enough for Muldrotha to show up.  It got Imprisoned in the Moon (seriously?) and that attack put me to two life.  I thought I still had a chance, though, and went down swinging.  Involuntary Employment gave me the Immolator, which I sacrificed to kill the Sprite.  I had Witness Protection and the Nessian Hornbeetle to help me stay alive, but it wasn't quite enough and I died on the next turn.  

In game two, my opponent had Balmor out and two Mocking Sprites on turn four.  I thankfully wiped it all with Slagstorm.  They were stuck on three land for a bit, giving me the chance to get things going.  They wound up starting to play Tolarian Terrors, super cheap with all the spellslinging they'd been doing.  Things were looking pretty dicey when I was at four and they had twenty two life:

My big beaters spent a lot of time moonwalking.

I got real lucky and drew the Broken Wings again.  I ate one of the serpents, and started attacking with my Wildwood Scourge and turned the game around and won.

In game three my opponent played Leyline Axe for free, but got stuck on two then three land.  I'm not an aggressive deck, but I was able to win before they recovered.  2-0.

In round three I was up against Boros Angelic Goblins.  They played a turn one Goblin Bushwhacker and a beefed up Goblin Boarders on turn three.  I managed to keep them down, but then the angels started to come out.  Serra Angel (which I did put in Witness Protection) followed by two Vanguard Seraphim.  I nearly stayed alive, but those two kept flying over my ground blockers.  

They were too good to forget about the Bulk Up in the yard, sadly.  My Inspiring Call did not draw me into any answers in the last minute.

In game two, I got Burnished Hart down early, but they got a Sun-Blessed Healer and then the Goblin Boarders again.  With my extra land, however, I got a Homunculus Horde down with the Spectral Sailor.  In four turns I was up to seven Homunculuses and was starting to get their life total back down to twenty.  (It had gone up to thirty.)  I Involuntarily Employed their Dazzling Angel, their last blocker, and they scooped before I could activate the Sailor and gain seven life.

In game three, I kept a hand with two mountains and Slagstorm, figuring I could let them get ahead and then three- or four-for-one them.  That's not how it happened, though.  They got a Dazzling Angel then just kept drawing land while I built up a squad of attackers.  Things were going great until they played Herald of Eternal Dawn, which they'd sided in against me.  They tried to kill me with an attack and a Bulk Up, but I was able to bounce it with Run Away Together and win before it could stick back on the board.  3-0.

Some thoughts: 

• I really lucked out.  I was down by a game in the last two rounds and pulled out exactly the cards I needed multiple times.  And I only survived the first round because we went to time.  (Normally I'm the one behind when time is called.)  
• This was a much better showing than my previous Foundations draft.  I'm now 4-2 in total.  I guess WUBRG is feasible with only two fixing-lands.
• Triggering Homunculus Horde is really fun.  Any kind of repeatable draw engine will do! 
• I'm surprised I had better luck with the Homunculuses than Muldrotha and the Quilled Greatwurm put together. 

This is a fun format to run five colors in.  Give it a try!  

Happy Magicking! 

Chaos drafts with Ooze (WUBRG Drafting)

I got to hold another wacky draft last night with four other people, the first since the TMNT set released.  I told my group I was going to open a Lorwyn Eclipsed and a TMNT pack, but wasn't certain about the third.  Without a moment of hesitation, one the players said Bloomburrow.  It was so obvious!  The natural middle ground between Lorwyn and radioactive-ooze-infested NYC!

Everything we drafted.  My packs: no ooze, some ooze, lots of ooze, in that order.

I did not do a good job getting multi-colored lands.  I passed on many early on and then they got taken before coming back around.  Oops.  At the beginning of pack 2 I thought about trying to go Enchantress after the Sterling Grove showed up.  I did not see many enchantments after that, sadly, so it didn't wind up running the Grove.  One interesting thing that happened is that one player opened a pack with some money they didn't want to run.  I was very clear in that you are allowed to keep any pack like that and open a new pack.  Here's everything I took:

I also, like, didn't read Terminal Velocity right.  I am bad at reading cards.

Since I had the Terminal Velocity and knew half of what it did, I decided to stack up on big creatures, putting a big tail spike on my mana curve:

Also, I had two cards that triggered with Firesong and Sunspeaker, so I clearly had to run them.

We decided to do duels and I managed to get through three of them before the night ended.  In the first round I was up against a Yore-Tiller colored deck with some sweet cards, including a Ragavan they'd pulled!  (This is where all the dual lands I'd passed went.)  They started the first game off with Candlestick, which turned out to provide great value.  I got Demon Wall out on turn two, but they attacked with Nanoform Sentinel with the Candlestick on turn four and had a trick to it.  I played April O'Neil, Hacktivist, and she got me great value!  They played Fear of Isolation, which I hit with Iroas's Blessing.  They Sternly Dismissed April, but I recast her.  They attacked and killed April with a Poison the Waters post combat after I blocked.  Thankfully I had built up enough of a hand and got Oblivious Bookworm and Captive Weird out, immediately transforming the Weird into Compleated Conjurer, exiling Undercity Dire Rat.  My opponent played Ragavan, but it was a bit late in the game.  I attacked and played the Dire Rat, then had enough mana for Peerless Recycling with Splicer's Skill spliced onto it at the end of their turn.  I played April for the third time and the next turn played Altanak which brought me the win shortly after.

In the second game my opponent had to mill twice.  I played really conservatively and was able to outvalue them.  They got an early Fear of Isolation, but I had Take out the Trash ready for it.  I got out Rocksteady, Crash Courser on turn six, but had to play carefully around their Squirrelanoids.  I played A Mysterious Creature (actually Shady Informant) and used that as the main attacking threat.  After my opponent dealt with that, I played out the Altanak I had in my hand and won again.  1-0.

In my second round, I was up against an Azorius deck that had picked it's colors with a pack-1-pick-1 Dream Trawler.  The game started off slow with me playing Offender At Large face down on turn three, but it got waxed the next turn by Fate of the Sun-Cryst.  They got Cult Healer down and played Staggering Insight on it.  (Thankfully lifelink doesn't stack!)  I tried to Overkill it, but they had Shelter waiting.  That healer later got a Nyxborn Unicorn on it as well.  I double blocked the whole thing with Compleated Conjurer and a face-up Shady Informant, willing to make the trade.  My opponent had other plans (again).

Freaking Surge of Salvation!

This was going to be a 3-for-2 in my favor.  (Cult Healer, Staggering Insight, and the hero token at the cost of my two creatures.)  Instead I got 2-for-1'ed and I had to hit myself with the Shady Informant's death trigger.  It was like having to target your own stuff with Festering Goblin all over again!  I died shortly after that.

In game two they got down Warren Elder and I had a hard time dealing with it.  I got Acolyte of Affliction down and got Firesong and Sunspeaker, and even got to gain five off of Brilliance Unleashed with them.  They played Dream Trawler, however, and won off of that.  1-1.

In round three I was up against an Esper player that had been competing with the Dream Trawler player for cards.  In the first game we traded little threats with removal.  They hit my creatures with Anchovy & Banana Pizza and The game was slow and I got Nobody and Oblivious Bookworm down on turn nine.  They played Altar of the Goyf, but I killed their only creature with Take out the Trash + Splicer's Skill.  I used Terminal Velocity with Altanak because I read the card wrong.  (Read the cards, Kyle!)  I still had enough on the board to win.

In game two I just had nothing and got run over.  The played Hullcarver into Judge Magister Gabranth into Adventurer's Airship into Henchbots.  

Game three was more competitive.  Gabranth came out early again, and they used Run Away Together when I targeted him with Overkill.  I played Threats Around Every Corner, which helped.  I just could not keep up with their fliers.  The Prima Vista hit, then Rook Turret and Hullcarver again.  1-2.

I definitely had some play mistakes in here and I likely could have built a better deck.  Let me know what you would recommend!

This was the kind of draft where I was ready to draft again right away afterwards.  I had so much fun!  Happy Magicking!