Another Shards Draft

WELL! I managed to go to another Shards of Alara draft! Hurray for me. Here are my tales.

There were 25 people, and we were going to be drafting at tables of 6/6/6/7, but some people wanted larger tables, so it ended up being 8/8/9, and I was at one of the 8. I'm not superstitious, but I like to pretend that I am, so I decide the order in which to open my packs based on the art. My three boosters had art of Hellkite Overlord, Godsire, and Sphinx Sovereign, which is the order I decided to open them. My decision turned out to be awesome.

My first pack contained nothing of real interest. I think I took Oblivion Ring. The second pack was also lame and I took Bull Cerodon. After a few more unexciting picks, I noticed that I kept getting passed a lot of Esper cards. So I thought, LET'S TRY IT. And I began to draft Esper.

I took pretty elementary staple Esper cards like Glaze Fiend and Sanctum Gargoyle, not getting many bombs. I did take Brilliant Ultimatum – two of them – but decided later not to play them. But in the second pack, I got passed a Battlegrace Angel on my second pick, so I snatched that up faster than a hobo grabs a bread crust off the sidewalk. I continued taking pretty-okay Esper cards until third pack, where I opened the booster with the art of Sphinx Sovereign discover…SPHINX SOVEREIGN. After barely avoiding crapping myself, I took it and continued getting more generic Esper stuff, and a few Bant cards such as Akrasan Squire and Call to Heel. I focused mostly on artifact-related stuff to make my deck as resilient and aggressive as possible.

After a bit of fiddling, I came up with a deck of which I am actually pretty proud.

17 Land:
1 Esper Panorama
5 Island
6 Plains
5 Swamp

16 Creatures:
1 Akrasan Squire
1 Battlegrace Angel
1 Blister Beetle
1 Filigree Sages
3 Glaze Fiend
2 Sanctum Gargoyle (one was foil)
1 Sphinx Sovereign
1 Sphinx's Herald
1 Steelclad Serpent
1 Tidehollow Sculler
1 Tidehollow Strix
1 Vectis Silencers
1 Windwright Mage

7 Other Spells:
1 Call to Heel
1 Courier's Capsule
1 Dispeller's Capsule
1 Executioner's Capsule
1 Hindering Light
1 Obelisk of Esper
1 Oblivion Ring

And now, the games. It was a five-round tournament, so one loss would mean that I would still have a chance at winning a prize, but I'm not the type who does things like winning or anything. Winning, pfft. Anyway. My first opponent had a powerful Jund deck splashing blue that would have totally crushed me if not for him getting horribly mana screwed the first game (he didn't get any black for a long time, and when he finally did, it was in the form of Obelisk of Grixis which I summarily owned with Dispeller's Capsule). I also kept topdecking exactly what I needed in every situation, which proved very irritating to him. The next game he got horribly mana flooded, drawing 14 land out of 20 cards. I've never seen anyone get so frustrated at mana problems, and insist so many times that it wasn't my fault. But he later made up his lost ground.

So I got off to a great start. My second match was against another Jund deck, but this one had no such mana problems. The first game, Vein Drinker killed my entire deck, and the second time, I got overwhelmed by massive number of tokens from Sprouting Thrinax and Jund Battlemage. I was now 1-1, out of the running for good prizes but still in the running for fifth place.

Then I faced a guy playing Bant. He clobbered me first game with a ton of exalted dudes that I couldn't get rid of. But the second game, I edged out a win with judicious use of being awesome, and the third game he got mana screwed. So now I was 2-1, though my wins could both be partly attributed to luck.

Then I faced an Esper deck, leaning heavily into Bant. That is, it was white-blue-black, but focused more on exalted than on artifacts. His mass of Akrasan Squires made me reluctant to waste my removal spells, and Deft Duelist didn't even give me the option. I got destroyed 0-2.

In the final round, I faced a Grixis deck played by a guy who does not embody Grixis at all because he was super nice. He realized I was kind of new, and when I played my Sculler, he gave me some advice as to which cards to remove (advice which was clearly not meant to sucker me). However, I once again got owned by superior removal. So I ended 2-3, with most of my wins being luck-based. A decent record, but not great, since I won 4 games but lost 7.

Whenever I got the Sphinx or the Angel out, I would usually have one turn of being able to use it before it got taken out by a Bone Splinters (in the former case) or Grixis Charm (in the latter). I definitely made some mistakes, a few of which probably lose me some games, but I had difficult choices to make, and of course I kind of suck. It was only my second Shards draft, after all. But I had fun, and it was neat to try a different shard, especially one I had railed against previously. But Esper used for aggro rather than control is plenty fun, and the few control spells I had were mostly defensive and relatively not obnoxious. One guy had FOUR Blightnings in his deck…I am glad I did not have to play him.

Some fun moments: Attacking with a Windwright Mage with Battlegrace Angel in play, giving him DOUBLE LIFELINK. (I have decided that lifelink is my favorite ability ever.) Trying to execute an elaborate method of getting my poorly played Oblivion Ring back by using Dispeller's Capsule and Sanctum Gargoyle, only to realize that I had already played Sanctum Gargoyle, and Oblivion Ring was of course not an artifact anyway. Using Hindering Light and Call to Heel to protect my dudes and draw more cards. Successfully using Sphinx's Herald to summon the Sovereign, only to lose it to a one-mana Bone Splinters. Trying to play a four-person multiplayer game in between rounds, three of us using Standard decks and one using an Elder Dragon Highlander deck because he didn't have anything else with him. (We got three turns in before the next round began.) Playing a Standard game between rounds against the nice Grixis guy who owns like twelve jillion cards and was playing Esper control, only to overpower him with my crappy red-green giant common dudes when he tapped out to play Scourglass, playing Soul's Fire on my Morselhoarder targeting his face as my coup de grace.

So that's the story of my second draft. I got only two real bombs, but I might be able to build an Esper deck now, and the Angel will definitely go into my exalted deck. As usual, I don't know how often I'll get to draft, but when I do, I'll be sure to post about it!