The One Ring Remains Hidden in Chaos: WUBRG Drafting

I managed a nice little chaos draft on a Sunday afternoon.  I followed my own advice from last time (and Logan did too) and opened Ixalan first.  (Ace actually mentioned that if you open March of the Machines, you have a higher probability of getting a Companion... I will definitely be keeping that in mind!)  

Here's what we opened.  (I picked the same three packs as last time.  I have fallen into a chaos rut.)

Lost Caverns of Ixalan has its pre-release at the end of this week, so people wanted to open some old Ixalan.

I did not get a companion to build around this time, sadly.  Nevertheless, I got passed a bunch of cards that seemed great for five colors; I didn't have to make many very hard picks.  Then, however, in the third pack, I opened one of the most valuable cards I've opened in a draft: The One Ring.  Here are all my picks:

Immediately in a sleeve.

I had plenty of non-basic lands this time around.  I quickly built this deck. (I needed all the islands in order to have any chance to cast Invoke the Winds.) 

 

With an odd number of people, I prefer to do single-game rounds and see how many people we can each match up with.  We managed to get all 10 matches in!

In the first round, I was up against a first-time drafter running a well-built Golgari deck.  The game was running pretty even, with creatures dying on both sides evenly.  I spent a turn getting Sharknado down, then got played Vivisurgeon's Insight the following turn to get my 5/5 Flying Shark.

The Infinitokens got a work out today!

See that Rise of the Witch-King in the picture?  It killed my Shark immediately and gave my opponent a big beatstick back from the yard.  Thankfully, the three cards I drew made the difference, and I popped out a bunch more creatures and overwhelmed them.  

These were all from that one game!

In game 2, I was matched up against a Temur value deck.  I started off by trading over and over again with Master of Death.  Nevertheless, I fell behind in the life totals quickly, but I felt like I was about to stabilize when I lost to a spell I can't remember that made my opponent's creatures unblockable that killed me at 5.

In game 3, I was matched against another first-time drafter piloting a Grixis deck.  Sadly, they got extremely mana flooded, even with a number of card draws.  I managed to overwhelm them before they could get into normal card mode.  I did draw The One Ring midway through the game, but I had enough cards in hand that it didn't seem necessary to play.

In game 4, I fought the only undefeated player at the table, playing a Boros Aggro Humans deck.  Perimeter Sergeant kept got on the board and kept getting past my blockers, especially after Eowyn, Lady of Rohan came down and granted it first strike every turn.  I got some chump blockers in, trying to get something that would survive a flow from the Sergeant, but it kept getting bigger power with the help of equipment and counters.  I had a Chrome Courier made bigger by Lagrella. I got Wingspan Mentor down, but had to spend my man doing things other than activating it.  Finally I got Sharknado again, which meant fliers and blockers to keep things in check.  I think I was able to win two turns later.

I went 3-1 and with that win had a three-way draw with the Boros and Temur players.  I guess that is a downside of single-game rounds: the lack of tiebreakers.  

This was a super fun draft!  All the decks seemed really good, and I escaped just barely.  (I won one of the games at 1 life... but I don't remember which one it was.  I'm sure someone will remind me.  In the future, there'll probably be an update after this.)

Chaos to 60 Cards: WUBRG Drafting

Open the Ikoria pack first.  Open the Ikoria pack first.  Open the Ikoria pack first...

I held a four-person chaos draft last night.  It went really well, but I need to learn an important lesson: Open the Ikoria pack first.

Here are the packs we opened.  Thanks to Matt for venturing all the way back to Dragon's Maze!

I got pretty lucky, because I lost a lot of dual lands to the other drafters early on, especially in pack 1.  That is usually the worst thing for me, but in this case, it turned out to be great.  I got fewer dual lands, instead got some higher spell picks, and that helped me in all of my games.  I needed nearly every spell I could get.  And it's all because of Ikoria.

Here are my picks.  If you look at the first card I picked in the second pack, you'll see that I needed to pump the brakes on dual lands and focus on as many spells as possible.  (First pack is on the left, picks go from front to back.) 

Right... companions.

Yorion called out a challenge to me and I took them up on it.  Thankfully that was the first card of pack 2 so I had barely enough time to draft the spells to play a 60-card deck.  If I had opened Ikoria third or if my table had passed me more dual lands in pack 1, I might have been stuck with some real bad cards.  I even pushed it a little bit and took the fancy Kamigawa island instead of a spell midway through pack 2.  As it is, I ran 35 of the 39 spells I drafted, not including Yorion.  My sideboard only had 3 spells!  (I really wanted to run Goblin Test Pilot, but I just didn't think it was good enough.)

I also got lucky because I got passed a bunch of removal.  Red was underdrafted at the table, and I was able to grab Voltage Surge, Fires of Victory, and Foray of Orcs all pretty late.  I think I undervalued Foundry Helix; I probably should have run that too.

Here's the deck I ran:

So many cards!

We got a bit of a late start, so we only got to play about half of the games.  We finished round 1 and then played one game in round 2.

My first match was against a strong Golgari deck with a bit of graveyard recursion.  Both games were wars of attrition.  In the first game, removal on both sides kept big creatures off of the board for the most part.  I tried to remove Glissa, Sunslayer with a kicked Fires of Victory during combat, only for Bombadil's Song to not only keep Glissa alive, but fizzle the Fires, negating my draw.  They drew off the combat damage for an effective 3-for-1 play.  I luckily had Fog on the Barrow-Downs in my hand, which stuck for the rest of the game.  I forced a good trade with Efreet Flamepainter and managed to pull ahead with Yorion's help.  

In game 2, I mulliganed down to 5, but got really lucky on my draws.  Jelenn Sphinx came out, but got Possessed Sinisterly, so I kept off the attacks for a while.  Once I had a chance to get Yorion out, the Sinister Possession came off the sphinx and I was able to attack and force some trades, all while Smeagol, Helpful Guide was out.  I gave the sphinx the ring and once I was twice-tempted, I got to start looting, which put me on top enough to win the game.

We only had time for one game of round 2, where I was matched up against a brutal Esper deck with lots of menace.  Thankfully my removal all showed up.  Foray of Orcs, Deal Gone Bad, and Immolation all picked off targets, with a Fire Prophecy waiting in the wings when I swung out for lethal.  

I got real lucky last night, but I'm really glad I took up Yorion's challenge!

Looking Back: Homelands Draft on Nov 20, 2017

Just about six years ago, a student of mine decided to hold a Homelands draft.  They bought a box online (it was much cheaper than the $500+ they are now), got 8 people together, split the cost, and we drafted the box.   

My student wanted to draft this set specifically because the cards are considered to be quite bad.  In 2017, Didgeridoo was the most valuable card in the set, coming in around $5.  (Our draft happened just after the little spike that appears at the end of 2017.)  Today the individual cards are worth about twice as much.  Many of the "chase" cards experienced a big bump in the beginning of 2021, but have settled down.  (At the time of Homeland's release, I remember a lot of excitement around Autumn Willow, the first creature with base Shroud.  Deep Swawn can get shroud and Svyelunite Priest can grant it to something else.)

Homelands was released in 1995; the "36 packs of 15 cards in a box" hadn't become a standard for boosters yet.  Instead, for Homelands, they tried 60 packs of 8 cards each.  (Also, when 3-set blocks became normal, Homelands was considered the second set of the Ice Age block, followed by Alliances.  When Coldsnap was released in 2006, the "block" was reconfigured to be Ice Age/Alliances/Coldsnap.)  We each got 6 packs and drafted them individually.  

I took a few photos of packs I opened.  Serrated Arrows was the right pick in the second pack. 

I didn't draft WUBRG.  I can't remember whether it was because I kept seeing good red cards, or because I didn't see many of the (bad) Homelands tri-color lands.   Looking back, I wish I had tried harder!  That could have been more fun if I saw enough of the lands.

I can't complain about how the draft went, though!  I knew the value of Serrated Arrows, having played with it in 1995, and again in Time Spiral block limited.  They kept coming around, so I kept grabbing them.  I also saw lots of Anaba Shaman, so I got them as well.  I don't have a photo of all the cards I drafted, but I do have a shot of the 23 cards that I think made up my deck:

I went 3-0 quite easily.  I kept nearly every other threat out of the game with direct damage and arrows. 

My opponents' creatures were like the Teen Girl Squad.

I think I won every game, but I'm not certain.  I do remember that I was helped by terrible draws for my opponents.  My MVP was absolutely the three copies of Serrated Arrows.  

It was really fun to play in this draft.  If I had the chance, I would probably do it again, but maybe not at the current cost of the box.  (It would probably cost at least $70 per person now.)  I would really like a chance to draft WUBRG in Homelands, though.  (I would still first-pick Serrated Arrows.)

Neapolitan Commander Draft

I went to a Neapolitan Commander Draft last night.  Each of the six of us opened, in order, Commander Legends, Commander Legends: Baldur's Gate, and Commander Masters.  This was a great idea that one of our students came up with.

Six Neapolitan Commander Draft sets

 

We included an important Commander Masters draft rule that I didn't know about: Mono-colored and Colorless legendary creatures are considered to have Partner, even if they don't have it on the card.  Thankfully, one of our alums knew this rule!  Since we were including Baldur's Gate, we added the rule that those legends also have Choose a Background to help facilitate more card and color combinations. 

By my count, there are 7 total legends in the sets who have WUBRG color identity, and... I didn't see any of them.  However, I was lucky enough to get passed an Archelos, Lagoon Mystic right away in the first pack.  Although I focused on the Sultai from that point, I took plenty of cards of other colors just in case I saw a WUBRG legend come up.  I also spent a little bit of effort on collecting gates, but only got three.  (Don't worry, it made a difference later!)  Here are my picks:  (Reminder: in a Commander Draft, you pick two cards instead of one each time you see a pack.)

First picks in front.  Left: pack 1; Right: pack 3.

In the end I didn't take enough Sultai cards.  Minimum deck size in a Commander Draft is 60 cards; the usual balance is somewhere around 24 lands and 36 spells.  Including Archelos, I only had 34 spells.  Deckbuilding was very fast; I took all the cards I could play and added five each of the relevant lands.  Here's the resulting deck:

I like these spells, but I needed more.

The eleven non-basic lands were a great boon, and they're even better with Archelos: all the tap lands enter untapped!  Opal Palace is amazing; two copies are even better.  The multi-color lands made up for the few colorless lands I had.  Some of my picks helped make up for the lack of spells, but all too often I found myself with my hand full of lands.  

We formed two random groups of 3 for our games and got to playing.  In Game 1, I was pitted against Belbe and Miara + Saervok.  Saervok hit the board and the life totals started to drop quickly.  I got Archelos down and managed to swing with it every turn, which kept my opponents slowed down.  (It also had Armory of Iroas, so it kept getting bigger.)  Scion of Halaster helped me filter out the many lands.  The life totals continued to drop; we each tried to get one of our creatures killed on each of our turns to avoid losing three life to Saervok.  (Having Miara with ways to kill her was a pretty good combo with Saervok!)  The Belbe player started to drop a lot of threats, so the Miara/Saervok player focused on them and took them out with 11 life left.  

Archelos got killed and I replayed it, but with four +1/+1 counters using both of my Opal Palaces.  On the next turn, I drew and played a second Basilisk Gate, then proceeded to use all of the cards I had except for one land to win the game.  

• For four mana, I played the last card in my hand, Manifold Key, and activated it to make Archelos unblockable.
• For four more mana, I activated both Basilisk Gates to give Archelos +4/+4.  (Now it had 10 power.) 
  
• I created an elf with Freyalise, then immediately sacrificed it to Ashnod's Altar to reequip Archelos with the Armory of Iroas.  
• With only one untapped land remaining, Archelos swung for the necessary 11 to end the game.

Our game ended fast, so we started another one while the other game was finishing.  This time my opponents were more wary of Archelos and I couldn't get it to stick for long.  When I did, I greedily used it to attack instead of as a blocker.  (I wanted their stuff to be tapped, but also to cash in on the extra Belbe-mana.)  The Belbe player got some good card draw going with Mask of Memory.  They soon got Giant Ankheg on the board, which got the two of us to attack each other even more.  When the Ankheg started swinging, I had no good means to soak the damage, so I died first.  Belbe died a few times on attacks.  The Miara + Saervok player was able to remove the Ankheg from the board and it looked like they would win, but the Belbe player drew into Exsanguinate and had enough to win with that alone.  

The other group had already finished and three people had to call it a night.  (I think the winning player over there won by dealing 23 damage to one player on the last turn!)  The remaining three of us were me, Belbe, and a player from the other group running Captain Vargus Wrath.  We got in one final game before even I needed to call it a night.  

I used Belbe-mana to power out Goliath Sphinx on turn 5.  I swang with it back and forth to keep my opponents' life low.  (I had confused Exsanguinate with Bond of Agony, so I was determined to keep the Belbe player at a life total below both of ours.)  The Vargus player built Izzet pirates well, however, and they got a group of dangerous flying creatures that kept me low as well.  I spent a bunch of turns drawing only lands. 

As the end of the game drew near, Vargus sent most of their army into the red zone.  One attacker threatened my exact life total against my tapped board, while the rest came at Belbe.  I used Sword Coast Serpent's Capsizing Wave to last another turn while the Belbe player perished.  On my next turn, I swung back, hoping my Treasure Keeper would meet a glorious end and find some more flying blockers (or anything) but my opponent chose correctly and it just went unblocked, along with the sphinx.  I then sacrificed to Ashnod's Altar and got Clockwork Fox.  I immediately threw that on the altar and got... more lands.  I died to flying pirates directly thereafter.  I don't think I had a path to survive that turn.  

I'm pretty happy with the one win I got.  More importantly, Neapolitan Commander Draft is an awesomely fun format!  I combines the fun elements of EDH with the unpredictability of Chaos Drafts.   If you choose to partake, I recommend using the rule we adopted: All colorless and mono-colored legendary creatures automatically have Partner and Choose a Background.  If your group does something different that works well, please leave a comment and let me know!  I am sure you will come upon some cool new unexpected interactions.  

Note: Thanks to Tristan for thinking of the name: Neapolitan Commander Draft.

Wilds of Eldraine: WUBRG Drafting

Drafts have not been firing at my prior FNM haunt of choice due to a sudden exodus of players.  (There's more behind this that I won't get into, suffice to say that the ad-hoc boycott seems justified.)  

Thankfully, a local group formed in response and I was invited to join in for a Wilds of Eldraine draft on Friday, which was during release weekend.  This was super fun and I got to know a bunch of people really well.  

Here's what I drafted in the 8-person group.  The left pile is the first pack, right is the third.  The picks go from first in front to last in the back.  (Sorry for the glare.)

That first pick Hatching Plans turned out to be just fine.

I prioritized Hatching Plans because I had taken a look at the spoiler and knew I could probably pick up some bargain-based cards.  As it turned out, I did manage to get a few, most notably the Diminisher Witch, which turned out to be extremely useful.  Other than that, I grabbed stuff that seemed good or might be good. 

Here was my deck after the matches ended:

That empty sleeve is in place of the third Diminisher Witch that I must have lost after the last match.

I probably should have run the second Brave the Wilds, but I forgot about it.  Also, initially my deck contained Wicked Visitor, Johann's Stopgap, and Rowan's Grim Search, but I sided them out partway through round 2 for the Flick a Coin, Compulsion, and Break the Spell.  I never cast the Wicked Visitor or Rowan's Grim Search, but the three spells I put in definitely should have been there from the start.  Especially Compulsion.  I ran four of them in a standard deck back in 2003, so I know how to use the card, especially for cycling lands away late in the game.  For the other two, Break the Spell is great against roles and Flick the Coin is tremendously good.  Especially when drafting WUBRG, and even more especially when having a bunch of bargain cards that would like to sacrifice a token.  The most important thing for this deck is that every time I cast Hatching Plans, I wound up drawing three cards off of it.  It was absolutely amazing.

In the first round I matched up against a fast Boros deck.  I think I lost 1-2, but it could be 0-2.  Either way I put up a good fight.  I definitely made some play mistakes, most notably using a Diminisher Witch to put a Cursed Role token on Kellan, the Fae-Blooded.  That was a problem because it counted toward's Kellan's bonus as well as didn't cause an opponent's role to fall off.  (Important: roles only replace others if they are controlled by the same player!)  Future note: Shrouded Shepherd is really good, and caught me off guard multiple times!  I should draft those.

In the second round, I faced off against a brutal Azorius deck that kept tapping my creatures down.  This is apparently a really good strategy against me, as evidenced by my loss earlier this summer to a similar style deck.  Solitary Sanctuary came out just about every game and was really hard to play around.  I won a close game 1, got steamrolled in game 2, and then got really lucky in game 3 to sneak out a second win. 

In the third round, I matched up against an Esper deck with lots of rats, including Lord Skitter.  In this match, I had more time to set things up, so Hatching Plans and Diminsher Witch both turned out to be extremely useful.  The games went the same as round 2: I won games 1 and 3 to round out another match win.  Unlike my other rounds, all three games were extremely tight.  I played a lot better and started to use Diminisher Witch as post-combat removal against creatures that blocked with a high toughness.

This was a really great and chill event.  Everyone was super nice and the stakes were happily low.  I felt pretty good about going 2-1 in my first WOE draft, even though all of my wins were squeaked out.  I hope I get to draft with this group again!

Chaos for Store Championships: WUBRG drafting

My usual Magic haunt wasn't running a draft last night, but another nearby store, Intergalactic Plastic, was running a Chaos Draft, so I went there instead.  I had been to the store before and picked up some cards, but I had never played there.  The draft was for their store championships; the person running it told me they like to hold chaos drafts for championship events.  

I thought there were lots of people there, but it turns out most of them were playing EDH and weren't there for the draft, which I think had ten people.  Most, if not all, of my match opponents were commander players first and foremost. 

In this chaos draft, everyone was given the same three packs, Brothers' War, March of the Machines, and LotR Tales of Middle Earth, to be opened in that order.  (Perhaps I don't have to abandon the term "Wacky Draft", and can keep using that to mean three packs from any sets, chosen by each player.)  I love drafting all three of these packs, so I was excited.

I definitely undervalued some of the mana fixing and didn't get a second look at many of the land cyclers that I probably should have taken.  I didn't see many dual lands; I think I only saw one that I didn't take.  On the other hand, I saw a lot of big bomby creatures, so I took them.  Here were my picks:

Picks, by pack, left-to-right and front-to-back

I got some really big cards late, including the Goreclaw and the Argivian Avenger.  Even the Blanchwood Prowler, a last pick, turned out to be very helpful.  

Lately I've been running 16 lands with lots of color-fixing, but since I didn't get much fixing, I ran 17 lands instead, hoping I could go slow and play the game out until I could drop my big creatures.  I didn't wind up running Su-Chi Cave Guard, and I'm not sure whether that was a mistake on my part.  In the end, I was surprisingly low on blue spells this time around.  Here was my deck at the end (I don't think I made any changes during the tournament):

I should have taken the picture from further overhead.  Oops!

In the first round I was matched up against someone I'd played half an EDH game with directly before the draft.  He had put together an aggressive Boros deck.  I relied heavily on my removal to keep myself in the game until I could get my big threats out.  In game one, we were both very mana flooded.  I played Etali late and was able to transform it the following turn for the win.  In game two, Goreclaw helped me power out some early beats and I won again.  

I had a great chat with my first-round opponent while we waited for the second round to start.  It was at this point that I found out we were in a single-elimination tournament!  That's not my favorite, since I'm often on the losing end in the first two rounds and I really like playing. 

In the second round, I matched up with someone who had an absolutely amazing playmat.

Seriously, this is super sweet.

They were running a Rakdos deck and had gotten a bye in the first round so they hadn't played with it yet.  In the first game, they ran out two Mordor Trebuchets on turns 3 and 4.  I have used those to great effect in drafts, so I knew how powerful they were.  Thankfully, I was able to kill their other orcs and I only got hit a few times by flying goblin-boulders.  I managed to get enough big dudes to break the stalemate and win.  They made a bunch of changes to their deck for game 2 and it made a big difference, but I was able to win again.

In the third and final round, I was matched up again against Rakdos!  So much red!  In the first game we were both mana screwed for many turns, but I escaped it faster and won.  In the second game, I didn't get my colors until very late.  I thought I would be able to turn the tide as I drew into my lands, but a couple of unexpected blasts to my head ended it before I could start to play bombs.  In game 3, my opponent was mana screwed again for a few turns, and it gave me enough time to get my big beaters out.  Gandalf the White was a great turn 5 play that let me flash out a bunch of my other six drops.  I had lost a lot of life to efficient little creatures, so I had to be more aggressive than normal, but I was able to clinch the win.

One change I made this time around that I believe made a difference was to choose to draw instead of play.  I did this because I didn't have good fixing and needed to rely on my removal and deathtouch creatures to keep me in the game until I could play bigger things.  Many years ago I used to choose to draw, but most of the past two or three years I've mostly been choosing to play.  

I was really excited to win the tournament!  The prize was a Saruman of Many Colors, which seemed very appropriate! :)  Nevertheless, I felt very awkward having never played there before.  I hope I get to come back and do more drafts! 

Local Chaos Draft (WUBRG drafting)

I ran a chaos draft at the end of this weekend!  (This means I managed to trick three other people into chaos drafting with me.)  Here are the packs we opened:

I keep opening Ikoria hoping for some tri-land goodness.

These were pretty good packs for going five colors.  One of the players was advocating for New Capenna, and that sounded just fine to me!  Here's what I managed to pull:

From left to right, packs 1 to 3.  Pick 1 in front, pick 15 in the back.

I unintentionally drafted a very strong combo in the first two picks of pack 3: Mount Doom and The Mightstone and Weakstone.  

 

After drafting, I noticed what a great combo this was and started praying to Karona that I could pull it off.  Here is my deck:

 

Will 6 non-basics be enough?

 

Aside from the color fixing land, I had:

• A bunch of removal, including Torch Breath, which was a card I didn't know existed.
• Some treasure synergy, with Bootlegger's Stash (which I never saw), Big Score, and Jetmir's Fixer.  
• Some army cards (Grishnakh, Dunland Crebain, and Warbeast of Gorgoroth) to work with Mauhur.  
• And a bit of a deathtouch theme with a Nazgul, a Midnight Assassin, and a Riveteers Initiate. 
  

In round 1, I got matched up against a Gruul deck with a pretty good mana curve.  I managed to get enough removal to squeak out the first game, but we didn't finish the second before time was called.  We ended the five turns without a winner.

 

In round 2, I was up against a Bant deck with lots of mana fixing.  I pushed through a victory in game 1, and then game 2 went to time with a battlefield full of creatures.  In one of the first extra turns, I cast The Mightstone and Weakstone with Mount Doom on the board.  I was ready to clear out the board and swing in for the win.  However, on my opponent's turn, they tapped down my bigger blocker and swung in for the win.

 

In round 3, I matched up against an Esper deck with a lot of good value cards.  I was winning the first game and tapped my attackers out to put my opponent at 1, while I was safely at 13.  Then they played both Shriekdiver and Flowering of the White Tree, just enough to hit me for exactsies.  In game 2, I was on the back foot.  My opponent had gotten an extreme amount of value out of Cirith Ungol Patrol, using it to profit off of the times I had to use my removal on other creatures.  (I never quite had enough to kill the patrol outright.)  Although I had had the upper-hand early on, my opponent was clawing back into the game with all the extra life and card draw.  Then I drew The Mightstone and Weakstone while Mount Doom was on the board.  I activated Mount Doom the following turn and cleared all but my best two creatures, winning the game shortly thereafter.  Yes!  

 

While not quite a WUBRG-based accomplishment, Mount Doom + The Might- and Weakstones seems like a pretty good combo achievement to get in draft.  Also, 1-0-2 is pretty good for me.  

 

Let's hope I get to hold another of these drafts soon!