Oh buddy was this a strange Friday!
My usual end of the week consists of lunch and a movie with some of my pals at the shop but thanks to a busier-than-usual week that was already expected to be busy I had to pull some extra shifts at work. This meant that rather than trundling out of the movie theater at 3:30 in the afternoon to head out to the shop I was at work from 6:30 AM til 4:30. Really I should be grateful for this since it surely saved me from having to sit through "I, Frankenstein" or some other equally terrible film.
I fought back and forth with myself over whether I was going to play Standard again or go back to drafting. Ultimately I left it up to fate to decide my format, if Theros was the draft and there weren't a million people I decided to do that but if it was going to be anything else I'd run back Red White Devotion in Standard.
Theros was the format and 11 is less than a million so Draft is what I did!
Let me take a second to explain one of the stranger things our shop does with the Drafts. Normally you'd have a sign-up sheet for Draft and you'd wait til 8 people were on it and BAM, drafting would happen. For one reason or another, our store piles everyone into one draft tournament and then attempts to divvy them up into relatively equal tables to draft. Everyone then plays amongst the entire draft tournament.
Now I know and you know that this isn't ideal by any stretch of the word but it is what it is. I'm not the one running these tournaments and besides, more people in the draft means more prize money in the pool! I saw down at a table 5 to draft with 2 good friends (Sunni and Eric), 1 guy I'd met once before who's name I'm drawing a blank on and 1 new guy Austin. I prepared myself for strange, unreadable signals thanks to the size of the table and tore into my first pack.
Pack 1 - I opened a Fleecemane Lion which I ended up taking. I've got no problem savagely rare-drafting at FNM but thankfully this rare is actually nearly impossible to answer if it goes Monstrous. There was a white Ordeal and a Battlewise Valor but really nothing else that great in the pack.
I picked up a Nessian Asp over Voyages End and Nimbus Nyad second then snagged a Voyaging Satyr third. Green dried up pretty quickly but white kept coming and I ended up getting back the Battlwise Valor AND the Ordeal from the first pack. Red seemed to be pretty open with solid creatures coming late but I kept picking up white cards so I never felt the need to switch.
Pack 2 - I opened Anthousa, SEtessan Hero which I passed fairly happily. I remember very clearly how bad she was in sealed, a much slower format, and was much more excited to snap up a Time to Feed. Green was a little more liquid this pack and added Vulpine Goliath and Centaur Battlemaster to my deck along with a pair of Hopeful Eidolons and an Observant Alseid. Anthousa even came back....twice....and I couldn't pass up the ol' bulk rare the second time.
Pack 3 - I opened a Soldier of the Pantheon which I was happy to snap up and add to the pile. There was a Wingsteed Rider in the pack as well and I'm pretty sure he's actually better overall than the Soldier but the call of the rare won out in the end. Mr. Wingsteed never made it back which was expected.
In the end my deck looked quite powerful spread out in front of me. I had a pretty low curve with Favored Hoplite, Soldier of the Pantheon and Eidolons at 1, 2 Cavalry Pegasus, Voyaging Satyr, Fleecemane and a Philosopher at 2, and Nessian Courser, Opaline Unicorn and some other dorks at 3. I only had 1 4 drop which was Karametra's Accolyte and then my big guys were Centaur Battlemaster, Nessian Asp and 2 Vulpine Goliath. It was funny to think that plan A was to beat them down with little guys while plan B was to ramp into big things.
For spells I had a Time to Feed, a Divine Verdict, a Vanquish the Foul as well as an Ordeal of Heliod and Battlewise Valor.
I ended up spending too much time digging out specific basic lands for my deck and didn't realize until my first game that my Forests looked more like Plains than my Plains did. I definitely kept at least one hand because I thought it had 1 of each color mana when they were all in fact the same. What a punt!
Pairings went up and I found out I was battling...
Round 1 - THE BYE
NOOOOO! Here I was with this sweet GW Beatdown deck and I got the dreaded bye. It stung me extra hard because I knew it would impact you guys, my faithful readers, by depriving you of sweet, sweet content candy!
I wandered around the shop, did some trading and scoured the toy section of the store for hidden treasure. Byes are always dangerous at our store because they have SO MANY sweet action figures, statues and generally nerdy wonderment for sale that it can be very hard not to end up bringing something home.
Luckily for me (and my shelf space) I resisted the call, but who knows what will happen next time?
Round 2 - Eric R. w/ UG Flying Things
Eric was sitting to my left and was the happy recipient of all of the bounce spells and sweet Flying creatures I passed. He drafts a lot more than I do at the shop and he and his brother Matt are basically always at the top of the standings at the end of the drafts. Both of them are great guys and it's always a lot of fun to do battle with 'em.
Game 1 - Eric and I traded hits for a while, me swinging with Soldy P. while Eric had a Vaporkin. I pulled ahead quite a bit with bestowed Hopeful Eidolon and then was lucky enough to have Diving Verdict when Eric attempted to block with Breaching Hippocamp. Benthic Giant outclassed my Soldier but Centaur Battlemaster with a second Eidolon was enough to finish the game. Eric didn't play a second color this game so obviously his draws weren't great.
Game 2 - I came out of the gates pretty quickly with a pair of Cavalry Pegasuseses that were bricked by Eric's Horizon Chimaera. We stared at each other for a little while, I was scared to cast my Nessian Asp into a counterspell and Eric was content to sit and gain life with his Bird/Dragon/Thing. Eventually I cast Centaur Battlemaster, fully expecting it to get Dissolved or some such thing but no! It resolved! Time to Feed dealt with the Chimaera and suddenly I was on the offensive. Eric had a Voyage's End on the next turn when I bestowed Alseid on the Centaur which bought him a bit of time but in the end I crashed in for victory.
Round 3 - Austin w/ BG Agent of Fates
Austin was a new guy to me, he said he had planned to play Standard but decided last minute to draft because he was still missing some cards for his deck. It was obvious he was just excited to be playing Magic, he was friendly 100% of the time.
Game 1 - I kept a somewhat slow hand that was helped immensely when I drew a Voyager Satyr just in time to cast it on turn 2. Austin played an Agent of Fates on turn 3 which terrified me and my hand of large dudes, thankfully he didn't have a lot of ways to target it this game and I ran him over somewhat quickly with Nessian Asp > Vulpine Goliath > Vulpine Goliath. Much like Eric, Austin did not reveal his second color during our first game which may have been one of the reasons I won so easily.
Game 2 - This was the game where I kept a hand with 3 Forests thinking they were Plains. I was on the draw though and ripped a Plains just in time to cast a turn 4 Fleecemane Lion. Austin and I stared at each for several turns as the ground got more and more gummed up, he had Baleful Eidolon, Sedge Scorpion and Agent of Fates while I hat Nessian Courser, Soldier of the Pantheon and Fleecemane. Neither one of us really wanted to swing, him because I was never blocking his 1/1 Deathtouchers and me because he was 100% blocking with said Deathtouchers. I was finally able to break the stalemate by bestowing first Hopeful Eidolon then Observant Alseid onto my Monstrous Fleecemane. Austin showed me a few of his tricks by casting Feral Invocation on his Agent of Fates but ultimately he had no way to deal with my indestructible kitty and I was triumphant.
After reporting the score I found out that there had been some number of draws in the tournament and I was left as the only undefeated player. I was happy to be Da Winnah but a little sad that the tournament was over so fast. Of course, it was always going to seem short with me getting a bye! The TO handed out the sweet Warleader's Helix promos, doled out some store credit and wrapped things up for FNM for the week.
I hope you enjoyed the write up of the draft, if there's anything you'd like to know in the future let me know and I'll be sure to add it in. I fully intended to take pictures this time but completely spaced in the moment. I'll do better next time, I promise!
I'll be back with WNM this week, then FNM and then the grand Tournabenefit that I've been pimping for the last few weeks. I won't be playing in the Tournabenefit but I still plan to do some kind of post about it. Ideas on how you'd like to see that handled are certainly welcome!
Thanks for reading!
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