Shards draft!

The shop that I've started going to didn't have a Shards of Alara release party, but instead, they turned last night's Friday Night Magic into a Shards of Alara booster draft, complete with promo Ajani Vengeants. (They actually do a booster draft every other FNM, which is great because I love Limited.) Anyway, I went to that draft last night, and HERE ARE MY TALES.

There were 25 players, seated at tables of 6, 6, 6, and 7. I was at one of the 6-player tables, and I was of course super excited. My excitement was immediately justified when my first pack contained an Emyprial Archangel. Bant is my favorite shard anyway, and I already have a decent amount of Bant cards (though not quite a deck's worth), so I was glad to grab the shiny Angel and immediately commit myself to Bant. Neither of the players next to me were playing Bant, so I kept getting passed a lot of Bant cards, which was awesome.

Another pack had Clarion Ultimatum, which is nigh useless in Limited, but I grabbed it for use in a deck later. I also picked up another Angel's Herald, which, it turned out, was also not especially useful. My second pack contained a foil Spearbreaker Behemoth and a Ranger of Eos. The Behemoth was just too awesome not to take, but the Ranger came back around to me, so I grabbed him too. (He too later proved useless, though.) I picked the Behemoth thinking "OH MAN I CAN MAKE MY EMPYRIAL ARCHANGEL INDESTRUCTIBLE AND PREVENT ALL DAMAGE TO ME EACH TURN FOR A MERE ONE MANA." But then when I went to actually do it in game, I noticed that the Angel had shroud. And I wept bitter tears.

There weren't any other really outstanding picks, but I grabbed a Minion Reflector for later use. Or rather, because it looked cool. I also got a bunch of repeats of cards I had from the Sealed tournament, which allowed me to make a shiny Bant deck afterward. Anyway, I of course mixed all my cards together again before recording any of them, and changed it between games, but here's the closest estimate of what my final deck looked like (and I actually managed to keep it to 40 cards after other players gave me stern looks when I told them my deck was 46):

16 LAND:
1 Bant Panorama
1 Esper Panorama
5 Forest
5 Island
7 Plains

14 CREATURES:
1 Akrasan Squire
1 Algae Gharial
1 Cylian Elf
1 Elvish Visionary
1 Empyrial Archangel
1 Jhessian Infiltrator
1 Qasali Ambusher
1 Rhox War Monk
1 Rockcaster Platoon
1 Sighted-Caste Sorcerer
1 Spearbreaker Behemoth
1 Sunseed Nurturer
2 Waveskimmer Aven

10 OTHER SPELLS:
1 Angelic Benediction
2 Courier's Capsule
1 Gift of the Gargantuan
1 Hindering Light
1 Obelisk of Bant
1 Relic of Progenitus
1 Resounding Silence
1 Sigil Blessing
1 Soul's Grace

So that's what I had as of the third round. Now to recount the actual games...

My first opponent was also playing Bant, but he had a Battlegrace Angel as well as a Stoic Angel, which was very painful. Our first game went back and forth with life gain and Exalted, but I finally managed to turn the tides by using a Resounding Silence on his freaking Battlegrace Angel, and somehow I got enough damage through to win the first game. The second game was a different story, as he got the Battlegrace Angel out again but I couldn't stop it. The game dragged on even longer, and we even went into overtime with each of us having only 3 cards left in our decks. He won just in time, since his Knight-Captain of Eos was able to prevent too much of my damage, and so we drew 1-1 in the first round without even getting to game 3.

I then fiddled with my deck a little and faced a Grixis player. I hadn't faced a dedicated Grixis deck before, but he wore me down in small increments with Onyx Goblet and two Kederekt Creepers, spelling my doom. I lost 1-2.

Then I consulted another player, who made some recommendations for my deck, and I got it configured as you see above. My third opponent was playing what seemed like an Esper control deck, but he hardly played anything, so I never really found out what it was supposed to do. I won 2-0.

My final opponent was playing only two colors (white-blue), but had trouble getting his blue out. He had a TON of life gain (two Crystal Goblets as well as an Invincible Hymn), but he didn't have enough defense, and I had even MORE life gain with my Rhox War Monk attacking with Exalted. It took a while, but I won 2-0.

I don't know how I would have done if I had made the deck properly from the outset, but I was pretty happy with how I did. 6 wins and 3 losses is solid, even though I had no chance of winning a prize after the second round, but I definitely enjoyed myself. And now I have an Exalted deck! I may post the full decklist at some point, but it's not really necessary: it's just every Exalted card I have, plus a few others thrown in (Rhox War Monk!). I don't use Empyrial Archangel because, as awesome as it is, it's really not that useful to an Exalted deck, and its extremely high mana cost makes it much less playable in Constructed.

But I DID make a red-green Naya deck using some of the cards I got, plus a bunch of Shadowmoor cards, and even a few from Tenth Edition:

25 LAND:
14 Forest
11 Mountain

26 CREATURES:
1 Algae Gharial
1 Belligerent Hatchling
1 Briarhorn
1 Cragganwick Cremator
2 Devoted Druid
2 Elvish Visionary
1 Exuberant Firestoker
1 Farhaven Elf
1 Foxfire Oak
2 Incurable Ogre
2 Jungle Weaver
2 Loamdragger Giant
2 Morselhoarder
1 Oakgnarl Warrior
2 Roughshod Mentor
1 Scuzzback Marauders
1 Spearbreaker Behemoth
1 Stampeding Wildebeests
1 Tattermunge Witch

9 OTHER SPELLS:
1 Branching Bolt
1 Double Cleave
1 Gift of the Gargantuan
2 Mighty Emergence
2 Naturalize
1 Soul's Fire
1 Where Ancients Tread

I opted not to use white because I really don't have many good white cards that would fit in here, besides Rakeclaw Gargantuan. I left out Sarkhan Vol because he just doesn't do anything especially useful for Naya. Most of my creatures are going to be more concerned with attacking than blocking, often leaving him undefended, and his abilities just aren't that helpful to the deck. That said, let's look at some of the awesome parts.

Stampeding Wildebeests is really good. I didn't realize how awesome he was, but he has really great interactions with many of the other cards in this deck. He allows me to reuse my Elvish Visionaries and Farhaven Elf, and if I have Where Ancients Tread, I can return the Wildebeest himself and replay him for 5 more damage each turn. Many of the creatures here don't start out with 5 toughness, so they don't trigger the comes-into-play enchantments, but they still quickly get up to 5, which supports Exuberant Firestoker and allows them to be targeted by Spearbreaker Behemoth. It's slow to get going, but if it lasts long enough, it will finish the job quickly. I also like how it uses cards from a variety of sets despite being based on a Shards of Alara theme.

So there you have it. My first Shards of Alara draft, and a few decks that resulted from it. I hope to draft Shards again at some point, but I don't yet know when that might be. Comments and suggestions on my red-green deck are welcome :)

One final story: after one of the rounds where I finished early, I wandered around looking at other people's games. I found two guys locked in the most epic battle of all time. One had a Windwright Mage with 60 +1/+1 counters on it, made possible by a Cradle of Vitality. He also had a Metallurgeon and a Tidehollow Strix, making any attack against him very uninviting. He had 88 life. His opponent had a Feral Hydra with 19 +1/+1 counters on it. He was at 52 life. There were a bunch of other creatures out, but they didn't do much. The guy with the artifacts eventually won, but it was a very amusing battle. Seeing a 62/62 creature with flying and lifelink in Limited is just ridiculous. RIDICULOUSLY AWESOME.