Board Wipes in Chaos (WUBRG Drafting)

Board wipes aren't very chaotic, but they are very good.  (One of my first decks I was proud of as a kid packed a lot of red/white board wipes.)  We had a very interesting nine-person draft two days ago.  I chose my picks ahead of time to celebrate my football team's recent impressive victory.

Maize and Blue!  The Ravnica theme was unintentional. 

 

Since there were a lot of us and an odd number, we went for single-game rounds again.  (I'm sure some of the players are getting sick of this.  I'm sorry!)  The packs were all over the place, with a block of 6 Theros Beyond Death.  (Those actually work great with other sets.)  Here's what we opened:

Lottery ticket donated by one of the players.

 

A question came up about Wastes.  Should players be allowed to add Wastes to their decks?  It makes sense that if only one player opens a set with Wastes, it would be a bummer for multiple people to have unplayable cards just because other packs won't have them.  On the fly we decided to allow players to add up to two wastes.  I would like to see what other people think, so here's a poll, using STAR voting: https://star.vote/zcke3ayk/. 

My picks were unexpectedly thin on mana fixing.  One other person went WUBRG and yet another tried, but wound up in Gruul instead.  I only got two fixing lands, but I also had Glamorous Outlaw, which is just about as good.  I very nearly passed a Springmantle Cleric until I realized it had pseudo-converge.  (It helps to read cards!)  Most notably, I picked up two board wipes: Starfall Invocation and Unstable Glyphbridge.  Here are all of my picks, in order:

Removal and removal and more removal.

I went heavy on removal, even after cutting Drown in the Loch and Thraben Charm.  Here's the deck I built:

Missing: all the fixing lands I wish I'd picked.

I managed to get in seven rounds of the eight possible!  The only person I missed was the person who went 4-0, which I think means they won the draft.  As with last time, my WUBRG rival who was dead set on winning his first match against me wanted to drag out the drama; we played last.

I first battled the Gruul player.  I got one of my lieutenants out, Harnesser of Storms, an otter who granted tons of value.  The otter saw lots of play that night.

Unfortunately, this one was a nonbo to exile.  I really wanted the fixing too!

My value kept me in the lead and I won.  1-0

In the second round, I went against a Selesnya deck.  I got all my colors and I think I curved into Alesha, Who Laughs at Fate plus Iroas's Blessing.  Combined with my other removal, I kept the board clear and just kept swinging in with Alesha.

I even got the Outlaw out.

Alesha is great, even if I didn't have anything to get out of the graveyard.  2-0.

In round three, I was up against a Golgari deck.  I started slow, but got out a 2/2 spirit, thanks to Phantom Interference with Sorcerer's Wand as my opponent built up their board.  Then I dropped a big Springmantle Cleric.  I was at 20 and thought I was safe and swung in with the cleric.  Then Garruk's signature spell appeared.

Note I did not have the mana for either of the board wipes in my hand, so it wasn't a misplay.

The picture shows my death.  It's almost like there's a downside for running five colors.  2-1.

In the fourth round, my very courageous opponent ran a Boros deck with lots of quick critters.  I had a fist full of removal, but I was missing the mountains and swamps to cast most of them.  Luckily I got to four-for-one with Starfall Invocation.  

I wish I had that Paragon of Modernity!

I still didn't have a board, though, and then they played Rite of the Dragoncaller.  I was pretty freaked out until I read Pharika's Libation more closely.

I wonder whether that's the first time that Rite has ever been sacrificed to the libation!

I got the 2/2 flying spirit from Phantom Interference again and kept a death grip on the rest of the board.  It managed 16 damage over eight attacks.  The remaining four damage came from a Rolling Thunder that I think took out two creatures as well.  3-1

For the fifth round, I graduated from 2-color guilds to 3-color shards and wedges.  (This was not planned.)  I faced off against a really aggressive Mardu deck that promised a short game by playing an early Ripples of Undeath.  I got some good blockers early, one of which was the Harnesser of Storms.  That got upgraded with a Sorcerer's Wand (combo!) and I just started picking off the little creatures and played Alesha.  My opponent had a good Take for a Ride.  

I didn't get to attack with her first!

I had the perfect response with a timely Hussar Patrol, but they still got the Alesha graveyard trigger.  Thankfully I had the necessary removal to keep everything under control, even with the card (from graveyard) economy, and win.  4-1.

In the sixth round I faced a neat Esper deck.  This was the player who opened Ikoria, then drafted and built around Gyruda.  Amazing!  He got to cast Gyruda twice, since he saved it after I killed it the first time.  

Byebye, combo pieces!

Swiftblade Vindicator held it's own in this game.  After Gyruda hit the second time, I nearly had a perfect Unstable Glyphbridge cast, except that it got Gitaxian Anatomist, which survived.  They rebuilt their board with Rite of Belzenlok, which got off.  

I needed the rite and the demon in the same photo.

Thankfully I had Dreadful Apathy for the demon.  I didn't even need to let the self-damage play out, though.  I transformed the Glyphbridge using the artifacts I'd milled, and won in the air.  5-1.

Final round!  I was up against my rival, who has also taken up a WUBRG mantle.  Unfortunately, they hadn't managed to draft a single fixing land.  I got stuck without much land and only had Stuffed Bear to fend for itself for many turns.  Later on he played real converge, and I played my fake converge card.

I'm glad mine had a higher casting cost.

We got locked down a bit, then he surprised my Vexing Gull with 

Double Vexation.

Swiftblade Vindicator hit again.  I strategically put Iroas's Blessing on it.  Then I won shortly after this:

I finally comboed the Stuffed Bear with a board wipe!

The Swiftblade Vindicator and the bear won the game in, I think, two turns. 6-1.  7-0 against my rival.  Oof!  (You know who my football team is; I don't take these long streaks for granted!)

All in all, my removal won for me over and over.  I can barely believe I only lost one game to a lack of colors.  I got really lucky!  

My games were wicked fun!  The back and forth of combat superiority is exactly the sort of thing I like.  Maximizing value on the board wipes was especially satisfying.  It'll be a long time before I get two of those again.

If you didn't already, please vote in the poll above!  I would like to use that to help us decide what to do in the future.

Once Upon a Time Chaos Came to Thanksgiving (WUBRG Drafting)

Last night we had a chaos draft, two days before Thanksgiving.  Feeling festive, I chose sets that create food: Bloomburrow, Throne of Eldraine, and Lord of the Rings.  Here's what everyone opened: 

A nonagon as regular as the packs themselves.

Wow, we had nine people!  That morning we were at four, and somehow we got lucky enough to get five more!  A real Thanksgiving miracle!

I got two multi-colored lands in my first four picks, so I figured I was pretty safe and took my foot off the (mana-fixing) gas.  Unfortunately, that wasn't the case and I only got two more in the entire draft.  Also, there were two amazing WUBRG cards opened that I never saw, Progenitus and The World Tree!  The good news is that some other cards provided great mana fixing: Mental Journey, Rootrider Faun, Freestrider Lookout (though I only triggered it once), and my very first pick, Once Upon a Time.  That last one was surprisingly good.  Here were all of my picks:

I picked three rooms and didn't play any of them.

Since we had an odd number of people and everyone was very chill, we ran with single-game rounds so we'd get to play a bunch of people.  I managed to play seven of the eight possible opponents before they'd left.  (I stayed up late!)

In my first round I was up against an out-of-town visitor running a Rakdos deck.  I got to cast Once Upon a Time on my first turn and found an island.

A much-needed Island!

My opponent got stuck on three swamps and I won by beating with big stuff.  Thanks, Colossal Dreadmask! 1-0.

For the second found, I was matched up against an Orzhov deck with dangerous 4-drops.  I got really lucky: Magma Spray took out a Resolute Rider and Flame of Anor took out a Dreadwurm before they could cause any trouble.  After that I was able to slowly build a very menacing board and won off of the value of things like Kemba, Kha Enduring.  2-0.  Here's what it looked like near the end:

I was confident enough to attack with Wonder.

My third opponent was a long-time wacky drafter here who had a "mostly Boros" Jeskai deck.  I was dead on turn 5.  Oof!  2-1.  My opponent went on to win their next three games in 5, 6, and 6 turns, respectively!

Here's me taking 11 damage on turn 4.

In the fourth round, up against a spellslinger Izzet deck, I got a free Once Upon a Time again.  

Sadly, no Island this time.

(I took the Alpine Meadow, which worked out okay.)  This time I managed to use the combo power of Kemba and Colossal Dreadmask.  Why pay to move the Dreadmask when you can just create a new cat who gets it?  Jem Lightfoote also helped me get in consistent damage.  Kemba's value outworked the "when you cast an instant or sorcery" izzet creatures. 3-1

In the fifth round I was fighting a Gruul deck and Once Upon a Time came up again!

Jungle Hollow was the pick here.

An island came up not too long later, which activated a really strong combo visible in that hand above: Nesting Grounds and Lazav, Familiar Stranger.  Want to commit a crime?  Activate Nesting Grounds, target a permanent you control with no counters and a permanent your opponent controls.  

Smooth Criminality.

Lazav was the key to my win here, outgrowing any threats that came my way.  4-1.

In the sixth round, against an Abzan life gain deck, Once Upon a Time showed up again.  This time I got the full awesomeness and cast it during my opponent's upkeep.

Rootrider Faun gave me some ramp this time.

My opponent's deck acted like Dina, Soul Steeper was the Commander.  There were a ton of little life gain effects.  This turned out to be my longest game of the night.  I got beat up a lot early, mostly due to Dina triggers.  Around the time she finally left the battlefield, I was at 6 life.  Soon after, my opponent got up to 46.  This Orchard Strider hit the board four times!

Not pictured: another Ephemerate effect a few turns later.

This was a real war of attrition.  I swung in with Wonder, baiting a block as their lifetotal kept dropping.  Meanwhile Lazav got bigger and Kemba kept recruiting 2/2 cats.  

My board before I swung.  (The face down card is representing my 0/4 Wall.)

I kept chipping at that giant life total until Wonder got killed.  A few turns later I was going to have lethal, so they had to swing out at me.  I had enough to block everything (thanks, Cat tokens).  I was down to about six cards in my library, but still had lethal on the board and swung back for the win.  5-1

My opponent for the seventh and final round was my new rival, who had also drafted WUBRG and was running the World Tree mentioned earlier.  They waited for me to finish all my other matches so they would finally have a chance at defeating me.  They got to see nearly my entire deck by watching the match before.  So far they were 0-5 against me.  Were they prepared to win the WUBRG showdown and get their first win?  Nope!  Color screw!

I've been there.

My opponent didn't get any blue, so I was able to win quickly, especially with a bunch of my superstars.   

Pictured: superstars.

6-1, 6-0 against my rival.  They are super good-natured about it, thankfully, and I loved that they delayed the match until the very end of the night.  

Lessons and notes:

• Once Upon a Time is great, but I recognize that I got super lucky with 4 first-turn casts.
• Just because you draft Nesting Grounds to move your +1/+1 counters doesn't mean it can't be used to commit crimes.  This is what wacky drafting is all about!  Finding crazy combos across unrelated sets. 
  
• I didn't really use Food in any grand meaningful way.  Sorry, Thanksgiving. 
  
• I was really thought my time was up against my rival.  This is getting out of hand! 
  
• I still like drafting lots of Legends.

Mostly it was really fun to see all the creative decks people came up with.  I hope everyone had as much fun as I did.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! 

Rainbow/Star Magic

My link to the rules for the Star format on the right has become broken.  While writing about a recent Star Draft we did, I also discovered that the mtg.fandom wiki had (what I consider) some mild misinformation and that its links were also broken.

I want a place that I can refer to for a long time, so here's my own knowledge of the formats known as Rainbow and Star.

Rainbow

Rainbow is a five-player format that I first read about in the Magic Pocket Players' Guide, which was published in 1994.  

My cousin gifted me his copy many years ago.

 

In Rainbow, each player gets assigned one of the five colors, then everyone sits in a circle in the order on the back of a magic card.  You have to build your deck with only uncolored cards and cards of your given color.  Your teammates are the people to your right and left and your opponents are sitting across from you.  If both of your opponents die before you do, then you win.

Confusingly, turn order doesn't go straightforwardly clockwise.  That's because you don't want teammates taking turns after each other.  Instead, you skip over one player when you pass.  Thus, starting from the white-player's turn, the order would go like this: White -> Black -> Green -> Blue -> Red -> White.  (This is likely where the later name "Star" came from, as the turn order traces out a five-pointed star.  Good thing the Satanic Panickers didn't hear about this format!)

Star

Star is the same thing as Rainbow, but without the deck color requirement.  (The wiki linked above disagrees with me on the terminology.)  This makes things a lot more reasonable for casual play, as you don't have to sort out the colors beforehand.  

It's an excellent format, but I only recommend it for casual games.  Although there are teammates, there aren't well-defined teams, as your two teammates are enemies themselves.  This means that you aren't really relying on your teammates to do anything beyond attack each other and your opponents.  Although it's good for you if your teammates swing in for more damage than your opponents, in many ways it's really up to you to attack more than your teammates.  Speaking of attacking...

Cutthroat

Cutthroat is another relic of the Pocket Players' Guide, applicable to both Star and three-player magic.  It's great for speeding up these formats, but I haven't played by the exact original rules.  The rule I've used is that your attacking creatures can be blocked by either of your opponents, independent of who you declared them to attack.  Any combat damage dealt to one player actually lands on both defenders.  There are some complications:

• You may not be able to block creatures your teammate can.  For example, if we're attacked by a Mountainwalk creature and I have mountains but the other defender doesn't, then I can't block but they can.
• Combat damage triggers only on one of the players, so Ophidian-effects only trigger once.  (I'm sure there's an elegant rules-adhering implementation of this, e.g. a la Hydra Omnivore, but I don't know if there's anything official.)

I cannot emphasize how much this speeds games up.  There's already a bit of weird politicking that happens with teammates; removing the decision of who-to-attack cuts down on an enormous chunk of it.  If you're unsure, start with Cutthroat Star.

What is the original Cutthroat variant?  In addition to the above combat modifications, any other changes in life also affect both teamed-up players.  This happens on each player's turn: the two opponents share all life total changes.  From the guide: "If one of the[m] casts a Lightning Bolt on the other, they both take 3 points of damage."  (I honestly cannot tell whether this would be extremely fun or frustratingly hard to maintain.)

Practical Seating and Teams

In reality, sitting next to your teammates has some downsides:

• Teammates are more likely to share cards in their hands more often.  (I consider this a downside because it slows things down; you may not.)
• It's hard to see your opponents' creatures.
  
• The turn structure is hard to maintain.
  

The turn-passing point is important.  It's so abnormal to skip players' turns that it just doesn't work well in practice.  Someone will forget at some point and people will have to back up when the mistake is realized.  Don't do it!  Instead, sit next to your opponents, and just proceed in clockwise turn order.  This solves all of the downsides above.  Yes, maybe now it should be called "Pentagon" instead of "Star"; it's still better.  Again, if you are in any way unsure, do this.  I wish I had done this before.  (For the rest of this post, I'm going to assume players are seated in this orientation.)

Ranking Players

If your group wants more than just winners and losers, you can rank people in the order they leave the game.  The first player to die is in last place, followed by the other people who die in order.  The first player to win is in first place, followed by up to one other winning player. 

For example, if the five players are A, B, C, D, and E, and A dies, followed by C, then E, the ranking is:

1. B wins first prize for eliminating their two opponents first.
2. D wins second place for winning.
3. E is the best loser, for dying last.
4. C is the middle loser, for dying second, and
5. A is the first loser for dying first.

There can certainly be draws at certain spots due to simultaneous deaths.

Some Mediocre History  

Fallen Empires Rainbow: My first experience with this is in 1995, organizing a Rainbow match with decks constructed from Fallen Empires cards.  I was on Green and built a Thallid deck.  I feel bad for the person who was stuck on Red, though perhaps they could have built a better deck than we realized.  The pump knights were the real winners here.  We were young and some team rules were broken, so the dynamic wasn't quite right.  This was still wicked fun.  It worked well because of the lack of multi-colored cards in the set.

Onslaught Rainbow: Some college friends of mine and I split a box of Onslaught five ways and used that limited pool to build a deck.  I was on Blue and got lucky with an Arcanis the Omnipotent.  (I think the White player also got their legendary pit fighter.)  Unfortunately one of my opponents was goblins, which were quite good in that set.  Again, this was wicked fun and again this worked mostly because of the dearth of multi-colored cards at that time.

Star Drafts: I've done a few star drafts (two or three), all of which have all been fun, but we only implemented the practical seating arrangement this last time.  That made things go much more smoothly.  (And, as I mentioned there, I think that was the most that I've ever laughed during a Magic game.) 

I think I would even be willing to try the original Cutthroat rule!  Maybe.

That's my take on Star, and its predecessor, Rainbow.  I hope you get a chance to try it out!  Let me know if you learned this a different way or played it differently. 

Repack Draft #(n+5), Wishing on a Star (WUBRG Drafting)

I don't think I've ever laughed as much during a Magic game as I did last night.  At one point I was literally out of my chair, laughing on the ground.  My students are absolutely hilarious.  

I ran a free repack draft yesterday.  It happened with late notice (sorry) and it's deep into the semester, so there were only five of us instead of the big crowds we've had lately.

Five.  There was some talk of alternative formats as we were getting set up, so I threw out the idea of a Star Draft.  The link I had on the sidebar is dead, the mtg.fandom.com wiki page does not have the full correct information (in my own opinion), and the links from that page to their sources on wizards.com also seem broken.  Here's a quick explanation of the format, minus some details:

• It's a multi-player format where all five players sit in a circle.  The people directly to your right and left are your opponents.  The people across from you are your teammates.  (Yes, your teammates are each others' opponents, it gets messy.)
• If both of your opponents die (and you are still alive) then you step out of the game as a winner.  Up to two players can win.
• We played with the "cutthroat" add-on, to save time:
• Whenever a player attacks, all creatures are automatically attacking both opponents.  They can both use their creatures to "team block".  
• Any unblocked or trampled damage is dealt to both attacked players.
• Nitpick: the attacker actually needs to pick which opponent each creature is attacking, because any effects that trigger when "combat damage is dealt to a player" only triggers once.
• This speeds the game up because there is far less political discussion around deciding when (and who) to attack.
• As with multiplayer games, the first mulligan is free.  Since there aren't just two teams, the first player also gets to draw.
   

We drafted knowing that Star was the plan.  Here's what I pulled from the repacked "packs":

Pack 1: 3 guildgates in a row, followed up by 3 Coalition Honor Guards in 4 picks.

White was severely underdrafted.  I realized late in pack 1 just how great Flagbearer would be, so I grabbed those Coalition Honor Guards.  A lot of the other great cards I picked up I didn't see in the game, unfortunately.  There was a lot of table talk about people taking the dual lands, but then they didn't and I snagged a bunch at pretty late slots.

I didn't take a photo of my deck, so here's a list:

• Mana Value 2:
• Shire Scarecrow
• Razorfin Hunter
• Crossbow Infantry
• Three Tree Rootweaver
• Shipwreck Singer
• Absorb Vis (because it's more likely to cast for the land cycling)
  
• Mana Value 3:
• Kingpin's Pet
• Squall
• Ironfist Crusher (because it has morph)
• Orzhov Euthanist
• Mana Value 4:
• 3x Coalition Honor Guard
• Anaba Shaman
• Fodder Cannon
• Benalish Heralds
• 2x Orim's Thunder (Because of the kicker)
• Mana Value 5:
• Air Servant
• The Mouth of Sauron
• Charmed Clothier
• Mana Value 6:
• Shoreline Ranger
• Troll of Khazad-Dum
• Scab-Clan Giant
• Lands:
• 3x Izzet Guildgate
• Dimir Guildgate
• Boros Guildgate
• Azorius Guildgate
• Golgari Guildgate
• Cabaretti Courtyard
• 2x Plains
• 1x Island
• 2x Swamp
• 1x Mountain
• 2x Forest

One of the nice things about drafting Star is that because you're sitting next to your opponents, you don't need to move between the drafting and playing phases.  Speaking about seating, I need to set the stage.  Going clockwise from me, we had:

• Player A, Opponent, playing Izzet, who got the early pressure on the board.
  
• Player B, Teammate, on Rakdos.  He was actively antagonistic towards me and nearly targeted me with Mudbutton Torchrunner's death trigger.  That might have destroyed the dynamic of the game, so I'm glad it didn't happen! 
• Player C, Teammate, running Mono-Green.  He got absolutely mana flooded.  At one point he had 7 Forests in play and 5 more exiled by Bag of Holding.  Oof.  
• Player D, Opponent, who managed WUBRG as well.  This student is definitely my rival.  We chose to sit this way because they have not yet defeated me and wanted this chance to finally make it happen.  (I think I was 4-0 against them going in to this event.)  
  

I also need to explain that all four of the other players were my students, and they really enjoy messing with me. 

The game started slowly, with only small creatures and the aforementioned Bag of Holding in the first two turns.  

Everything's still pretty okay at this point.

On turn 4, player D dropped a Spectral Searchlight, a card I normally appreciate that did extra work in this format.  (I am sad that it doesn't burn people anymore.)  I got stuck on three lands with a bunch of 4-drops in my hand, which was bad because on A's fourth turn, they played Quaketusk Boar after asking D for one of the searchlight's mana.  (I always hear "Catalyst, grant me Life," whenever anyone shares with this.)

Player B and I didn't have enough blockers to deal with that for multiple turns, so our life totals dropped.  I quickly found myself with the lowest.  D got a Splatter Thug and unleashed it, but I got my fourth land and one of the Coalition Honor Guards came down to help slow the bleeding.

Everyone quickly learned how Flagbearer worked (and there was much gnashing of teeth) but I still refused to block the Boar on A's second turn.  This drew the ire of B, who started plotting with D against me.  The cross discussions started getting hilarious, as B was going off about how terrible I am.  On my following turn, I got my fifth land and dropped Charmed Clothier, who gave the Honor Guard the Royal Role.  Flagbearer + Ward was pretty good, and with these blockers we stopped the Boar's beatings. 

D had still not taken damage and was alone at 20 life.  They gained 2 and went to 22 and were clearly running the game.  B got in some hits, so the other life totals got lower and lower.  I think the boar died in combat after it was blocked by the Clothier and one of B's creatures.  I played a Troll of Khazad-Dum and then it was time to start attacking.  

Apparently a terrifying board.

Splatter Thug couldn't block, so on the troll's first attack, it ate D's Wall of Tanglecord.  (I killed that instead of two smaller creatures so that my other little creatures could become more threatening.)  I also dropped the Benalish Heralds for some more gas.  On the following turn, A, now at 5 or 6 life, had no blockers and D had only two.  I attacked with the troll.  Then all this happened:

Not pictured: the flagbearer that was forced to be the target.

Player A cast Deceive the Messenger to get a third blocker, only for C to drop Nature's Claim to kill D's Steel Wall.  At that moment, I was at 7 life and Player D had 26.  A died.  On their turn, B cast Lava Axe at my head (thanks!) then attacked and killed C, so Player B exited the game as the winner.  At some point I laughed so hard, I went on the ground laughing; I think that was from the Lava Axe.

It was down to me and my rival, with me at two life and them at twenty.  The troll had completely demoralized them, though, reminding them of other come-from-behind victories I'd managed in the past.  I played a second flagbearer and started swinging with the troll.  I couldn't wait because I passed them Immortal Phoenix and knew it could hit the board at any time.  

In the intervening turns, they played Leyline Invocation for 6 and I dropped the morphed Ironfist Crusher and continued to swing with the troll.  It was looking dicey, but they bounced it the following turn for a Silver Drake, planning to kill me in the air the next turn.  I killed that plan by destroying Spectral Searchlight with Orim's Thunder, taking out the drake with the damage.  With the fractal gone, I could swing in more safely and attacked for 8 with one of my 2/4s.  The following turn the troll won the game.

So, B and I won.  (By ranking, it was B in first, me in second, D in third, C in fourth, and A in fifth place.)  Other than my teammate Lava Axing me (grumble, grumble) this was very much how Star games play out.  I highly recommend this if you want a fun five-player format!

... and we'll see whether my rival is able to defeat me next time we meet!

Three Strikes, but Chaos Isn't Out (WUBRG Drafting)

I ran a little chaos draft last week.  It initially looked like we might have 10 or 11 people, but then a little Florida flu went around town and we were down to five.  Nevertheless, we had a good selection of packs.

So much chaos, we couldn't even line up the pentagon well.

I did pretty well in the draft.  I thought I took more removal than I actually wound up with.  The real problem was that we were extremely short on mana-fixing.  (I think I managed to be the only WUBRG player, but not for good reasons.)  Here were my picks:

Pick 1, pack 3: a rare lesson.  Bonus!

Looking back, I thought that all my instant-speed card draw would make a bigger difference than it actually did.  I also thought that would all combo real well with Manaplasm.  I felt like my deck would be able to make things happen.  Here's what I put together:

My office apologizes for the glare.

We had five players and got a bit of a late start, so we went for single-game rounds.  I managed to play three of my four opponents.  In the first round, I was matched up against a Mardu player, who got out an absolutely nutty combo on turn 2.

Kumano Faces Kakkazan + Mauhur = beats

I dragged the game out a bit, but I was on the back foot the whole time and lost. 0-1.

In the second round, I faced an Abzan deck.  I felt like things were going pretty well until turn five, when Glissa, Herald of Predation hit the board.  I had already exhausted a removal piece and I was never able to keep up with all the incubators that kept dropping.

The three rules cards are all incubators with +2/+2.

I was slowly devoured by Phyrexians.  0-2.  (That Phyrexian domination won the draft 4-0.)

In the third round, I was up against an often-WUBRG drafter who still managed a Witch-Maw deck in our fixing-desert packs.  Guess what?  I got steamrolled.  My opponent got value-creature after value-creature.  They named Mutagen Connoisseur with Natural Unity, which was a great choice.  I held it together, but then The Goose Mother came out.  I did kill off a Bounding Felidar that hit the ground, but it was after it gave out a turn of +1/+1 counters.  It was not enough to hold off the onslaught.  0-3.

I don't even remember how I held on in each of those games.  The Workshop Warchief never saw the battlefield.  I think the Undercity Scrounger was one of my winners, because it helped me with some fixing.  I never learned, so I didn't get to cast the Teachings of the Archaics.  I never even got to scry off of Rivendell.  I still had a lot of fun, especially just trying to keep up with all the things headed at me.  With some more chances, I think something would have come together, even if it wasn't a winning something.

I can't wait to do it again!

Raffine, Chaos Seer (WUBRG Drafting)

I got another chaos draft in this week.  We had a smaller group, four drafters, and had a blast.  Someone said this was their favorite way to play magic, and I agreed completely.  We picked twelve different packs!  Here's what we opened:

 

The Ikoria-opener got Kaheera, but was unable to build around it, sadly!

I picked removal pretty highly, even over some rares and fixing.  The most important picks, however, were the first two I made: Raffine and Boon-Bringer Valkyrie.  Thankfully some good mana-fixing made it back around the table.  This was made a lot easier because (for the first time in forever) I wasn't fighting anyone for WUBRG supremacy.  

After taking Gwaihir, I tried to build a bit of bird-kindred.  After that I had two chances to add Balmor to my pile, but I turned it down for Artillery Blast and then Pixie Illusionist.  As much as I like Balmor, I think those were the right choices. Here are my picks:

Getting passed a rare dual helped!

I nearly cut the Valkyrie while deck building.  Luckily I was heaviest in white, so I figured it would be okay to keep the two-pip spell in.  (I did cut the Unexpected Windfall, though I was torn about it.)  Here's the deck I put together:  (I really think I could have built this better, please feel free to critique my choices!) 

All of my opponents played green, but I still got the Gaea's Might!

In the first round I was up against a Simic player.  In the first game, I got Raffine out, but it got put into Witness Protection.  (That is such a good card, and I think they played it in most of their games!)  That was a bit sad, but they got hit with the mana screw, so I had plenty of time.  I got Thran Power Suit on my Legitimate Businessperson, so the Witness Protection helped pump it up a little bit.  After a bit, I also got Hulking Metamorph down, which was happy to become a Raffine.

This ended game 1.

In the second game, instead of having a dearth of land, my opponent got flooded.  I got the Boon-Bringer Valkyrie down, which was almost enough to win on its own.  1-0.

Note: we knew we were going to try and get all three rounds in, so we purposefully avoided matching up the two winners for the second round.  (I like doing this because then the draft winner might not be decided after the second round.)

In our second round I was up against a Jund deck, which was extremely surprising because this player always drafts a savage white weenie horde that often runs me over early in our games.  Well, this was an efficient Jund weenie horde, and some of them got pretty brutal.  

1/1?  No, this is a 7/3 Blazing Rootwalla.

Nevertheless, I had enough removal to stay alive.  The Valkyrie won me the first game and Raffine came in early to win me the second.  The Valkyrie is a bomb the turn it comes in and Raffine is a bomb if it sticks around to attack.  I won both games.  2-0.

In the third and final round, I was up against Jund deck #2!  Like... what???  This time I made good use of Mimic, which I ran primarily for the mana fixing, but then never sacrificed it all night.  In the first game, I won with the air supremacy of the Valkyrie and Gwaihir.  In the second game, my opponent used two cards (Morgul-Knife Wound and Cut Down) to kill the Valkyrie.  That was probably the right choice!  Thankfully, my Hoarding Ogre did a lot of work and helped me power out the rest of my team.  Raffine got to play with four +1/+1 counters on it.  I was pitching removal to keep other removal with the connive triggers and won again.  3-0.

This deck was wicked fun to play.  I'm definitely branching out from needing to be green-centered, which makes sense now that there's more support in other colors as well.  

I'm still addicted, though.  I hope I get to draft again soon!

Neapolitan Commander Draft, Round 2

Just one year after a first Neapolitan commander draft, we did a second.  This time was different because:

• We incorporated the enormous Baldur's Gate Wilderness dungeon.  
• We had nine people!  A new record for our "little" drafts!

Since we had nine, I tried to get us split up into play pods of 4 and 5, where that second one would play a Kingdom game.   (I really want to draft Kingdom EDH.)  I was unconvincing, so we did three pods of 3 instead.

Important item that I have to address: We didn't do a championship game of 3 with the three winners for two reasons:

• My game finished much later than the other two, so it would have been awfully late to start another game, and
• I didn't think of it.

We did use the bonus rule that extends the one used in Commander Masters: 

• Mono-colored (and colorless) legendary creatures are considered to have the Partner ability, even if it's not printed on the card, and
• Mono-colored (and colorless) legendary creatures are considered to have the Choose a Background ability, even if it's not printed on the card.
  

(If "monosexual" wasn't already a thing, I would nominate using that word for this rule.  Y'know, because they have partner, so they're attractive to other legends.... I think I'm funny.)  This facilitates more combinations of legends (and backgrounds) to make things more creative and unique.

We randomized seating and gathered around two tables.  Each player would be playing with the two people three seats to their left and right.  

"Isn't this picture kind of obvious?"  Yes, to whoever said that last night, but it's still awesome.

The drafting itself was pretty wild.  In a Commander Draft, instead of picking one card each turn, you pick two.  That means that in these packs of 20, the only packs you see a second time are the ones you open, and you just get the two cards remaining.  I had to remind myself multiple times: "Oh, I won't see these again."  

I'm not convinced that picking two cards is actually a good plan, because we had multiple instances of packs going around with the incorrect number of cards.  I don't know how it happened, but it happened a lot.  Even Zone Drafting didn't save us.  I think that one pick per person would help this happen, and I don't think it would slow things down too bad.

In deck construction, you still have to adhere to the color-identity rule, so there are some goal picks as far as legends are concerned.  In descending-excellence order:

• Dream: open a WUBRG legend in Commander Masters, of which there are a few. (This is a good argument for reversing the order of
  
• Awesome: grab a two-color legend that has partner.  That way you can match it with a legend of whatever third color you want.
• Pretty Good: pull a three-color legend. 
  

I tried to draft as colorless as possible in order to keep my legend-choices open.  Despite the fact that two other players voiced having the same strategy partway through, it still paid off.  I wasn't able to get either of the first two scenarios, but I did draft Amareth early in the first pack.  Then, amazingly, I got Sek'Kuar halfway through the third pack.  Since they overlap in green, I focused the end on drafting that so I could figure out what to do in the end.  Here are all my picks:

A lot of good stuff came around.  These packs are deep.

I counted up my cards and realized that if I went with Amareth I actually had fewer playable cards; just enough to make a deck.  I didn't want to think about cuts, so I took the coward's way out and just went with that.  Here's the deck:

If I had taken one moment and recognized that I didn't have enough total devotion to white to make Heliod a creature, I might have changed my mind.

Our game went long, so we only played the one.  I sat down against Akiri, Fearless Voyager to my left and Malcolm + Ardenn to my right.  My opening hand had some ramp as well as You Look Upon the Tarrasque, Jahiera's Respite, and Torrential Gearhulk.  Those three cards would sit in my hand for a long time.  When I hit five mana, I purposefully left myself vulnerable multiple turns, trying to tempt someone into letting me profit off of Jahiera's Respite.  My opponents got The Initiative and started trading it back and forth, venturing through the Wilderness Dungeon.  

I played Amareth, who got slapped with Martial Impetus.  I unwillingly swung it into the Akiri player multiple turns, and the Azorius player started to rise in power, playing a bunch of efficient creatures.  I continued to get attacked, but only by one creature at a time, never enough to warrant the Respite.  Then, finally, after Amareth had racked up 14 commander damage against Akiri, Malcolm, Ardenn, and two tokens attacked me:

Four is worth it!

That was enough to get me branded as a probable-Archenemy.  There was some talk about how I probably had more fog-effects, but then the Akiri player dropped a Kirtar's Wrath to reset the board.  With all their treasures, it didn't take long for the Azorius player to regenerate their board presence.  On my turn, I left six up and didn't keep any blockers back.  Guess what happened on the next Malcolm-Ardenn turn?

Six is definitely worth it! 

Now I was definitely in the archenemy seat.  With all my mana and Amareth's ability, I got a lot of stuff down.  Since my dragon was no longer goaded, I swung into the Malcolm-Ardenn player and claimed both the Initiative and the Monarch.  Finally, I went into the Wilderness, though I didn't exactly need the land.  

 

I swung in for damage and played a bunch of creatures with my gobs of land.  Unfortunately, Fiendlash came down on Akiri, who had been gaining +1/+1 counters from Drillworks Mole.  With a power of 9, my opponents happily colluded to get Akiri into combat.  I was able to prevent a multi-turn combo by killing Akiri with Band Together.  Before combat damage could be dealt.  Of course, that would trigger the Fiendlash, but I was able to also give my creatures lifelink with Heliod, keeping myself above zero.

I kept myself alive with You Look Upon the Tarrasque, then swung in on my turn to kill the Akiri player and deal as much as I could to the Malcolm-Ardenn opponent.  I gained 20 off of Heliod-granted lifelinkers and took a lead of 21 to 8.  (Combo alert: Trailblazer's Torch + Heliod is good!  Your opponents will not want to block whoever holds the torch.)  If I could survive the next attack, I could win on my turn.  I had Shimmer Myr on the board, a few blockers, a hand of cards, and lots of mana.       

I was still surprised by the total power of the attackers, but when they came in, I flashed out some artifact blockers and managed to block what was necessary (and use lifelink) to stay above zero.  I had 2 life.  I was going to win!

Oh wait.  My opponent dealt me combat damage.  And I have The Initiative.  That means they get The Initiative.  Where are they moving to in the Wilderness dungeon?

Uh-oh.

The first card flipped was a land.

I wasn't so lucky with the others.

And thus ended one of the absolute best EDH games I've ever played.  And it was in limited.  The other two games had ended long before, but multiple people in them told me this was one of the most fun drafts they had ever done.  I wish I could have squeezed another game in, but it was definitely time to close up.

I hope you enjoyed reading this, and I hope you get a chance to try a commander draft of any kind if you haven't already.  Happy Magicking!