I went down to Zombie Planet last night for another Shards draft. Unfortunately this one wasn't very interesting, but there were a few Moments Of Interest, as you'll see. Anyway…
My first pack contained an Empyrial Archangel, so it was pretty obvious I would be going Bant. Others at my table were going Bant, though, so I did have some trouble getting decent stuff. Usually my Bant decks have at least a few Rhox Chargers, for example, but not this time. I did get more rares than usual (many of them passed to me), though, which was kind of interesting. My deck ended up being:
40 Cards
17 Land
5 Forest
4 Island
7 Plains
1 Seaside Citadel
15 Creatures
2 Akrasan Squire
1 Algae Gharial
1 Bant Battlemage
1 Cloudheath Drake
1 Elvish Visionary
1 Empyrial Archangel
1 Jhessian Infiltrator
1 Kathari Screecher
1 Knight of the Skyward Eye
1 Knight of the White Orchid
1 Rhox War Monk
1 Sharding Sphinx
1 Sigiled Paladin
1 Waveskimmer Aven
8 Other Spells
1 Bant Charm
1 Covenant of Minds
1 Gift of the Gargantuan
2 Obelisk of Bant
1 Resounding Silence
2 Sigil Blessing
In-color sideboard cards, some of which I should probably have mainboarded
1 Angelic Benediction
1 Angelsong
1 Cradle of Vitality
1 Dispeller's Capsule
3 Etherium Sculptor (lulz)
1 Hindering Light
1 Minion Reflector
1 Naturalize
1 Outrider of Jhess
1 Relic of Progenitus
1 Soul's Grace
1 Tortoise Formation
Meh. I probably should have kept Angelic Benediction in the deck, but it usually just gets killed, and I figured I'd rather have another creature. I never actually sideboarded anything in throughout the entire tournament, which may have been a mistake, but whatever. I also let myself be forced into Bant early, but saw very little removal that wasn't black, so I only ended up with only two real removal spells, which hurt me a fair bit. Here's how it went down:
First round I fought a dude with a Naya deck, which steamrolled me because his dudes were just so FAT. Mosstodon and Rhox Charger just punched my face open with their tramply goodness. I think I won one game, but I can't remember.
Second round I played a dude running four colors (all but white). He had some bad luck in his draws; the first game he got two Blightnings off early, but I somehow managed to squeeze out a win when he kept drawing land. The second game he got Vein Drinker out, and pinged one of my dudes with it, but I responded with Sigil Blessing. Not to be outdone, he Swerved it onto another dude. The next turn, he pinged again, and I responded with…another Sigil Blessing, which I had just topdecked. He died a little inside. Then I played Empyrial Archangel and he scooped.
Third round I played against another Naya deck. The first round I only got white and blue, and my green cards were all dead in my hand the entire game. I died. The second round, HE only got green and white, and he died. The third round, he only got green and red, and he died. It was basically mana screw wars the whole way through. Hilarious.
The final round I played against an Esper deck splashing green. There were a few moments where it was close, but his Metallurgeon and Excommunicate sealed my fate. I ended the tournament 2-2, with a win-loss record of 5-5. Not bad, for me anyway, and with such an uninteresting deck.
One person at the tournament managed to build a mill deck around Memory Erosion, which actually won a few times. Lulz.
At least I got a bunch of decent cards for my collection. Most of the rares and uncommons I got can be used in my decks. And, I signed up for the Conflux prerelease, Saturday the 31st! I am greatly looking forward to it. (There are two days, but at $30 a pop, I think I'll just do one. But I may also go to the release party the following weekend.) I will certainly have something interesting to talk about then. Until then…I don't have anything inspirational to say. Kbye.
Showing posts with label draft. Show all posts
Showing posts with label draft. Show all posts
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Monday, December 29, 2008
Shards Casual Draft
It's Christmastime, and that means that many of my friends are back in town for a few weeks. One of my friends, Greg, plays Magic, and has some friends who play too. So, we decided to set up a Shards draft. It occurred last night.
There were only four of us: me, Greg, Dave, and Eric. Greg and Dave had done Shards sealed once, and Eric had never seen Shards before, so I had a considerable experience advantage going into the draft, for what it's worth. I opened my packs, as usual, based on the art: first the Steward of Valeron pack, then Godsire, then Sedris, the Traitor King.
My first pack's rare was Mycoloth, but the pack also contained Bone Splinters and Oblivion Ring. There was hardly any white in the pack, though, so I decided not to take Oblivion ring, and instead took Bone Splinters. I figured, if I didn't take it, someone else would, and if one of us had Mycoloth and the other had Bone Splinters, I'd rather be the one with the Splinters. A good choice? I don't know. But we'll see.
I gradually edged my way into Grixis, taking lots and lots of removal early on, with hardly any creatures until the end of my second pack. My second pack's rare was Hellkite Overlord, which I obviously had to take, but I didn't want to splash green to play it, so it stayed in my sideboard, safely out of Greg's reach (he was playing Jund, and his first pick was Kresh the Bloodbraided). Greg was seated to my right, Eric playing Bant/Esper to my left, and Dave's Naya across from me. So there wasn't a huge amount of competition for cards.
I got a Cruel Ultimatum passed to me in the third pack. I knew how amazing the Ultimatum was, but they didn't, so they didn't hate-draft it before I could snatch it up in my grimy claws. There were a ton of Grixis uncommons, which was awesome for me. I also got a Covenant of Minds, and…well, here's my decklist:
40 Cards (I counted this time)
17 LANDS
1 Crumbling Necropolis
5 Island
5 Mountain
6 Swamp
15 CREATURES
1 Blood Cultist
2 Fatestitcher
1 Hissing Iguanar
1 Kathari Screecher
1 Kederekt Creeper
1 Rockslide Elemental
1 Scourge Devil
1 Shore Snapper
1 Skeletal Kathari
1 Tidehollow Strix
1 Undead Leotau
1 Viscera Dragger
2 Vithian Stinger
8 OTHER SPELLS
1 Bone Splinters
1 Call to Heel
1 Covenant of Minds
1 Cruel Ultimatum
2 Grixis Charm
1 Infest
1 Obelisk of Grixis
2 SIDEBOARD CARDS I USED
2 Swerve
Awesome. Now on to the games. With only four of us, we just did round robin, with victory going to whoever had the best record. I played Greg first.
Greg had a lot of 1 toughness dudes, which fell swiftly to my Blood Cultist. He didn't draw Kresh, but it would hardly have mattered – a Fatestitcher locked down all his good stuff while I attacked with my fliers and Creeper. Covenant of Minds proved to be awesome, and I used Grixis Charm's red mode (+2/+0 to all my creatures) more than the others. He didn't stand much of a chance.
The second game, I got to play Cruel Ultimatum. The outcome of that game should be obvious. I beat Greg 2-0.
Then I played Dave's aggressive Naya deck. Wild Nacatl beat me down quite a bit before I managed to get rid of it, and he kept playing threats, but eventually I played Cruel Ultimatum and, well, you know the rest.
The second game, I found out who had ended up with the Mycoloth. It was Dave. It was wrecking me until I finally managed to Infest all his Saprolings and then Call to Heel the Mycoloth. But he got more dudes and devoured them again, and I couldn't remove it. I died.
The third game, I drew Cruel Ultimatum again. I beat Dave 2-1.
Then I had to play Eric. Eric isn't a spectacular player, but he's a much better deckbuilder than Greg and Dave. The first game, his big Esper dudes (Cloudheath Drakes and Steelclad Serpents) plus his sneaky Deft Duelists cause me a lot of trouble, especially since he backed them up with a lot of good defense - Hindering Light, Resounding Wave, and Call to Heel. I kept trying to remove his Drakes, only to have him bounce them and play them again. And his Metallurgeon didn't make things any easier. I couldn't stop his swarm of fliers, and I died.
The second game was epic. My removal was a bit more effective, but this time I got some Vithian Stingers and Fatestitchers out. I kept tapping down his big guys and removing whoever I could, and then pinging him for one or two at the end of each of his turns. He couldn't attack into my Kederekt Creeper and Undead Leotau, and I kept removing any flier he'd play, or keeping it tapped with a Fatestitcher. I won that game by pinging him to death. I never attacked with a single creature.
The third game was much the same as the first. I died. Eric defeated me 2-1.
So my record was 5-3. Dave's was also 5-3, Eric's 4-3, and Greg's 1-6 (poor Greg). Dave and I played a tiebreaker game…during which I played Cruel Ultimatum. That card is truly a game-winner.
In retrospect, I should have kept Shore Snapper in my sideboard in favor of Swerve, because I had to keep switching the Snapper out whenever I played an opponent with no Islands (which was 2/3 of them). I never actually got to play Swerve, but it certainly would have been useful if I had had it in some of my game 1's. In the second game against Eric, I actually sideboarded Infest out, because his dudes were all bigger than mine, so it would rarely have been useful. Still, I was pretty happy with how my deck ended up. Fatestitcher is an insanely powerful card in limited, and I had two of them. Those guys and Cruel Ultimatum are probably what won me most of my games.
So anyway, I won (woohoo!), and the prizes at our little draft were to divvy up the rares. We all took the rares out of our decks and placed them on the table to pick which ones we wanted. The rares were:
Brilliant Ultimatum
Covenant of Minds
Cruel Ultimatum
Gather Specimens
Hellkite Overlord
Keeper of Progenitus
Knight-Captain of Eos
Kresh the Bloodbraided
Manaplasm
Minion Reflector
Mycoloth
Sharding Sphinx
I got to pick two first, so I took Cruel Ultimatum and Sharding Sphinx. I don't remember the exact order and picks of everyone, but I ended up with Mycoloth and Knight-Captain of Eos. Not bad. My Esper deck could use a second Sphinx, and I may now have enough cards to build a decent Grixis deck, or at least augment my new Jund deck.
We then played Greg's Battlestar Galactica board game, which was pretty funny. Greg kept throwing people in the Brig. The phrase "throw ___ in the BRIG!" was shouted many, many times. But the Cylons won, because Greg threw me in the Brig, but I wasn't actually a Cylon, so I was powerless to stop treacherous Cylon Dave from depleting all of our fuel. Jerk.
Greg and co. will be around for a while, and they enjoy drafts, so hopefully I'll get to draft some more in the coming weeks. Casual drafts are nice; no one yells at you if you say what card you picked, or if you look at your drafted cards during a round. No one shuffles your deck 2420934 times and counts your deck to see if it has 40 cards. And best of all, no one hate-drafts Cruel Ultimatum! :D
There were only four of us: me, Greg, Dave, and Eric. Greg and Dave had done Shards sealed once, and Eric had never seen Shards before, so I had a considerable experience advantage going into the draft, for what it's worth. I opened my packs, as usual, based on the art: first the Steward of Valeron pack, then Godsire, then Sedris, the Traitor King.
My first pack's rare was Mycoloth, but the pack also contained Bone Splinters and Oblivion Ring. There was hardly any white in the pack, though, so I decided not to take Oblivion ring, and instead took Bone Splinters. I figured, if I didn't take it, someone else would, and if one of us had Mycoloth and the other had Bone Splinters, I'd rather be the one with the Splinters. A good choice? I don't know. But we'll see.
I gradually edged my way into Grixis, taking lots and lots of removal early on, with hardly any creatures until the end of my second pack. My second pack's rare was Hellkite Overlord, which I obviously had to take, but I didn't want to splash green to play it, so it stayed in my sideboard, safely out of Greg's reach (he was playing Jund, and his first pick was Kresh the Bloodbraided). Greg was seated to my right, Eric playing Bant/Esper to my left, and Dave's Naya across from me. So there wasn't a huge amount of competition for cards.
I got a Cruel Ultimatum passed to me in the third pack. I knew how amazing the Ultimatum was, but they didn't, so they didn't hate-draft it before I could snatch it up in my grimy claws. There were a ton of Grixis uncommons, which was awesome for me. I also got a Covenant of Minds, and…well, here's my decklist:
40 Cards (I counted this time)
17 LANDS
1 Crumbling Necropolis
5 Island
5 Mountain
6 Swamp
15 CREATURES
1 Blood Cultist
2 Fatestitcher
1 Hissing Iguanar
1 Kathari Screecher
1 Kederekt Creeper
1 Rockslide Elemental
1 Scourge Devil
1 Shore Snapper
1 Skeletal Kathari
1 Tidehollow Strix
1 Undead Leotau
1 Viscera Dragger
2 Vithian Stinger
8 OTHER SPELLS
1 Bone Splinters
1 Call to Heel
1 Covenant of Minds
1 Cruel Ultimatum
2 Grixis Charm
1 Infest
1 Obelisk of Grixis
2 SIDEBOARD CARDS I USED
2 Swerve
Awesome. Now on to the games. With only four of us, we just did round robin, with victory going to whoever had the best record. I played Greg first.
Greg had a lot of 1 toughness dudes, which fell swiftly to my Blood Cultist. He didn't draw Kresh, but it would hardly have mattered – a Fatestitcher locked down all his good stuff while I attacked with my fliers and Creeper. Covenant of Minds proved to be awesome, and I used Grixis Charm's red mode (+2/+0 to all my creatures) more than the others. He didn't stand much of a chance.
The second game, I got to play Cruel Ultimatum. The outcome of that game should be obvious. I beat Greg 2-0.
Then I played Dave's aggressive Naya deck. Wild Nacatl beat me down quite a bit before I managed to get rid of it, and he kept playing threats, but eventually I played Cruel Ultimatum and, well, you know the rest.
The second game, I found out who had ended up with the Mycoloth. It was Dave. It was wrecking me until I finally managed to Infest all his Saprolings and then Call to Heel the Mycoloth. But he got more dudes and devoured them again, and I couldn't remove it. I died.
The third game, I drew Cruel Ultimatum again. I beat Dave 2-1.
Then I had to play Eric. Eric isn't a spectacular player, but he's a much better deckbuilder than Greg and Dave. The first game, his big Esper dudes (Cloudheath Drakes and Steelclad Serpents) plus his sneaky Deft Duelists cause me a lot of trouble, especially since he backed them up with a lot of good defense - Hindering Light, Resounding Wave, and Call to Heel. I kept trying to remove his Drakes, only to have him bounce them and play them again. And his Metallurgeon didn't make things any easier. I couldn't stop his swarm of fliers, and I died.
The second game was epic. My removal was a bit more effective, but this time I got some Vithian Stingers and Fatestitchers out. I kept tapping down his big guys and removing whoever I could, and then pinging him for one or two at the end of each of his turns. He couldn't attack into my Kederekt Creeper and Undead Leotau, and I kept removing any flier he'd play, or keeping it tapped with a Fatestitcher. I won that game by pinging him to death. I never attacked with a single creature.
The third game was much the same as the first. I died. Eric defeated me 2-1.
So my record was 5-3. Dave's was also 5-3, Eric's 4-3, and Greg's 1-6 (poor Greg). Dave and I played a tiebreaker game…during which I played Cruel Ultimatum. That card is truly a game-winner.
In retrospect, I should have kept Shore Snapper in my sideboard in favor of Swerve, because I had to keep switching the Snapper out whenever I played an opponent with no Islands (which was 2/3 of them). I never actually got to play Swerve, but it certainly would have been useful if I had had it in some of my game 1's. In the second game against Eric, I actually sideboarded Infest out, because his dudes were all bigger than mine, so it would rarely have been useful. Still, I was pretty happy with how my deck ended up. Fatestitcher is an insanely powerful card in limited, and I had two of them. Those guys and Cruel Ultimatum are probably what won me most of my games.
So anyway, I won (woohoo!), and the prizes at our little draft were to divvy up the rares. We all took the rares out of our decks and placed them on the table to pick which ones we wanted. The rares were:
Brilliant Ultimatum
Covenant of Minds
Cruel Ultimatum
Gather Specimens
Hellkite Overlord
Keeper of Progenitus
Knight-Captain of Eos
Kresh the Bloodbraided
Manaplasm
Minion Reflector
Mycoloth
Sharding Sphinx
I got to pick two first, so I took Cruel Ultimatum and Sharding Sphinx. I don't remember the exact order and picks of everyone, but I ended up with Mycoloth and Knight-Captain of Eos. Not bad. My Esper deck could use a second Sphinx, and I may now have enough cards to build a decent Grixis deck, or at least augment my new Jund deck.
We then played Greg's Battlestar Galactica board game, which was pretty funny. Greg kept throwing people in the Brig. The phrase "throw ___ in the BRIG!" was shouted many, many times. But the Cylons won, because Greg threw me in the Brig, but I wasn't actually a Cylon, so I was powerless to stop treacherous Cylon Dave from depleting all of our fuel. Jerk.
Greg and co. will be around for a while, and they enjoy drafts, so hopefully I'll get to draft some more in the coming weeks. Casual drafts are nice; no one yells at you if you say what card you picked, or if you look at your drafted cards during a round. No one shuffles your deck 2420934 times and counts your deck to see if it has 40 cards. And best of all, no one hate-drafts Cruel Ultimatum! :D
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Shards Draft 3
I haven't had a chance to draft in a while. Zombie Planet's Friday Night Magic drafts are only every other week, and two Fridays ago I was busy, and four Fridays ago was Halloween, so I hadn't had a chance to go for six whole weeks…UNTIL LAST NIGHT. Normally I teach until 5, so I wouldn't be able to make it down there in time to play, but it was Thanksgiving weekend, so there was no teaching. And OFF I WENT!
I got there early and there were only three people there, but eventually we got 15…quite a small number for a tournament, but doable. I was at the 7-player table, and as I opened up my first pack, I discovered…
Utter crap. The rare was Archdemon of Unx or Cradle of Vitality or Gather Specimens or Immortal Coil or Ooze Garden or something that I didn't really want, so I ended up taking an Arcane Sanctum. (Those rares I named are all ones I saw and passed at some point…I just don't remember in which order. I ended up grabbing Gather Specimens on its second time around, though.)
I kept getting passed junk, so I figured I'd start trying to work my way into Esper. I basically grabbed every artifact I could find, or good removal if it was available. My second pack was similarly unimpressive but I kept getting passed Esper dudes so I kept taking them. However, on my second pick, someone passed me a Quietus Spike (he must have seen a card he liked even better), so I snatched that up. I was lucky enough to get two Metallurgeons, the best card ever.
As I mentioned in a previous article, I like to arrange my packs in a certain order. My first pack had an illustration of Steward of Valeron, and lo and behold, there was one of them in the pack. But the token was a Homunculus…an excellent omen. My second pack depicted Broodmate Dragon, but I was not so lucky. I like to keep the pack with the biggest dude for last, and when I opened my Godsire pack I saw…Sharding Sphinx, the best card ever! My silly little superstition seems to pay off…that's at least the second time I've been heavily invested in a shard for the first two packs, only to open a relevant bomb in the third.
The Homunculus omen proved worthy, as I eventually got a Puppet Conjurer, the best card ever. At one point I hate-drafted a Naturalize, but almost all of my cards ended up being relevant and playable.
I ended up with:
39 Cards
15 LAND:
1 Arcane Sanctum
6 Island
4 Plains
4 Swamp
14 CREATURES:
1 Esper Battlemage
1 Etherium Sculptor
1 Glaze Fiend
2 Metallurgeon
1 Puppet Conjurer
1 Sanctum Gargoyle
1 Sharding Sphinx
3 Tidehollow Strix
1 Tower Gargoyle
1 Vectis Silencers
1 Windwright Mage
10 OTHER SPELLS:
1 Cancel
1 Courier's Capsule
1 Dispeller's Capsule
1 Etherium Astrolabe
1 Hindering Light
2 Obelisk of Esper
1 Oblivion Ring
1 Resounding Wave
1 Quietus Spike
"Wait," you are probably saying, "39 cards?" My reply: "WHAT OH SHIT!" When I was doing my land calculations, I knew I wanted 16 lands. I had Arcane Sanctum already, so I mentally started off with 5 Island, 5 Plains, 5 Swamp. Since I had more blue, I shifted it to 6 Island, 4 Plains, 4 Swamp…not realizing that it should have been 7 Island. A ridiculous and embarrassing calculation error.
However, I didn't notice this mistake until the fourth round. So I had been playing with an illegal deck for three rounds with no one noticing…and doing pretty well with it! The shame is unbearable. After writing this article I may be forced to commit seppuku.
But here's what happened. My first opponent was a guy who usually owns at Magic, but he had some mana troubles. He was playing Naya colors, and didn't get green for a long time. My legion of tiny dudes overwhelmed him. Twice. Illegally. :(
My second opponent was another veteran, also running Naya colors. However, he had grabbed THREE Hissing Iguanars and a Goblin Assault, a deadly combo. The first game he dropped one of his Iguanars, and I played Esper Battlemage, which would have destroyed his entire deck had he not burned it out with Naya Charm. So I lost. Then in game two, it was much closer. At one point, I had a ton of dudes, and was about to attack, but he played…Naya Charm to tap all my dudes. HOWEVER, I had been cleverly keeping my mana open, and I Canceled it. I dealt him a sound blow to the facebone. The next turn, I prepared to attack again, and he cast…Naya Charm. He tapped all my dudes, then attacked on his turn to finish me off. Bluh. He went on to win first place.
My third opponent was a dude who everyone seemed to hate, and I soon found out why. He was friendly at first, but whenever I played a spell, he would reel in his chair as though I had just played Black Lotus. It got a little out of hand, though…it made sense for Quietus Spike, but then I'd play some little dude that doesn't even do anything and he'd fall out of his chair and rip his hair out. I was afraid to even play a land for fear of him shooting himself right then and there.
But anyway, his real distastefulness was revealed more gradually. At one point, he had a Rockslide Elemental with one counter, and I had a Puppet Conjurer and Glaze Fiend. He attacked, and I made a Homunculus, pumping my Fiend, then blocked with the now 2/3 Fiend. Then he said something like "but damage is already on stack," and I was like "what," and we had a brief exchange by which it was clear he had not realized I could do that and was trying to weasel out of it. However, I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt and let him take back his attack. Another time, I attacked with a Tidehollow Strix equipped with Quietus Spike when he was at 15 life, and I'd say "ok that's 2, plus 7 more" and he put his life counter at 7, and I had to say "no it's 6." This happened several times. Either he was pretty dumb or pretty weaselly. I am convinced it is the latter. During the third game, a guy came over and watched, so I at least had someone else to keep him in line. He tried to play Resounding Roar on his Algae Gharial, but the dude watching pointed out that the Gharial has shroud, so I was grateful (since I hadn't noticed and would have let him do it). Anyway, I eventually beat him 2-1, which was satisfying since he was a douche. Too bad my deck was illegal.
During those games, though, I got to use some of the awesome interactions in my deck. Etherium Astrolabe + Puppet Conjurer/Sharding Sphinx = great source of cards. And of course, Metallurgeon worked very well with Tidehollow Strix, the best card ever.
So I was 2-1 so far, and the fourth and final round rolled around. My opponent this time had some sort of compulsive shuffling disorder where he would shuffle his own deck 1000 times in 6 different ways. Then when I presented my deck for him to cut, he shuffled MY deck 1000 times in 6 different ways. He remarked that it felt a bit light, and he counted it, revealing, to my VAST EMBARRASSMENT, that my deck was illegal! The judge ruled it as a game loss for me, and I realized what I had done and stuck in the final Swamp. He won the next game with his Bant dudes (we both had a lot of dudes but his were slightly bigger and more evasive). We played again for kicks, and I won, so I wonder what would have happened if he had not noticed. Or if I had been playing 40 from the start. Ah well.
Anyway, I ended up coming in 7th out of 15, which is not bad for a loathsome cheater. I used to always count my deck before playing to make sure it had the right number of cards, but then I got overconfident in my mathematical abilities and stopped doing that. From now on I will be sure to return to that habit :)
During one of the rounds, after I had finished my matches, I watched some other matches, and I saw one guy with a Puppet Conjurer. So after the tournament, I asked him if he would trade it, and he gave it to me for free. O FRABJOUS DAY! Unspeakable bliss.
When I got home, I used my new Esper fellows to augment my existing Esper deck, focusing on speed and numbers. I took out the clunky Sphinx Sovereign in favor of Sharding Sphinx, and basically packed the deck with awesome creatures. It's weak against mass removal (in testing, an Infest wiped out the entire board), but it is fast, and furious, and sharp as a tack. Metallurgeon + Tidehollow Strix, as I have mentioned previously, is a rock solid defense. Or, etherium solid. Actually etherium isn't very solid. OK WHATEVER.
So although I was embarrassed at my mistake, and at throwing off the results for players who care about stuff like that, I still had fun, and got some neat cards. That's all you can ask for, really. (Well, you can ask for victory, but I won't push my luck.) Two players were randomly selected at the end for a PROMO CARD from the PROMO CARD ENVELOPE, and I was one of them. There were Woolly Thoctars and Isochron Scepters and some other stuff. I was strongly advised to take a Thoctar (the other guy did) so I just went with that. The Scepter is a great card, and worth more, but it's also from Mirrodin, and cards from Mirrodin burn my skin when I touch them. It's like they're coated in some sort of evil artifact acid. So I'm happy with my Thoctar.
Until next time…whenever that may be! (Perhaps the day after Christmas! We'll see.)
I got there early and there were only three people there, but eventually we got 15…quite a small number for a tournament, but doable. I was at the 7-player table, and as I opened up my first pack, I discovered…
Utter crap. The rare was Archdemon of Unx or Cradle of Vitality or Gather Specimens or Immortal Coil or Ooze Garden or something that I didn't really want, so I ended up taking an Arcane Sanctum. (Those rares I named are all ones I saw and passed at some point…I just don't remember in which order. I ended up grabbing Gather Specimens on its second time around, though.)
I kept getting passed junk, so I figured I'd start trying to work my way into Esper. I basically grabbed every artifact I could find, or good removal if it was available. My second pack was similarly unimpressive but I kept getting passed Esper dudes so I kept taking them. However, on my second pick, someone passed me a Quietus Spike (he must have seen a card he liked even better), so I snatched that up. I was lucky enough to get two Metallurgeons, the best card ever.
As I mentioned in a previous article, I like to arrange my packs in a certain order. My first pack had an illustration of Steward of Valeron, and lo and behold, there was one of them in the pack. But the token was a Homunculus…an excellent omen. My second pack depicted Broodmate Dragon, but I was not so lucky. I like to keep the pack with the biggest dude for last, and when I opened my Godsire pack I saw…Sharding Sphinx, the best card ever! My silly little superstition seems to pay off…that's at least the second time I've been heavily invested in a shard for the first two packs, only to open a relevant bomb in the third.
The Homunculus omen proved worthy, as I eventually got a Puppet Conjurer, the best card ever. At one point I hate-drafted a Naturalize, but almost all of my cards ended up being relevant and playable.
I ended up with:
39 Cards
15 LAND:
1 Arcane Sanctum
6 Island
4 Plains
4 Swamp
14 CREATURES:
1 Esper Battlemage
1 Etherium Sculptor
1 Glaze Fiend
2 Metallurgeon
1 Puppet Conjurer
1 Sanctum Gargoyle
1 Sharding Sphinx
3 Tidehollow Strix
1 Tower Gargoyle
1 Vectis Silencers
1 Windwright Mage
10 OTHER SPELLS:
1 Cancel
1 Courier's Capsule
1 Dispeller's Capsule
1 Etherium Astrolabe
1 Hindering Light
2 Obelisk of Esper
1 Oblivion Ring
1 Resounding Wave
1 Quietus Spike
"Wait," you are probably saying, "39 cards?" My reply: "WHAT OH SHIT!" When I was doing my land calculations, I knew I wanted 16 lands. I had Arcane Sanctum already, so I mentally started off with 5 Island, 5 Plains, 5 Swamp. Since I had more blue, I shifted it to 6 Island, 4 Plains, 4 Swamp…not realizing that it should have been 7 Island. A ridiculous and embarrassing calculation error.
However, I didn't notice this mistake until the fourth round. So I had been playing with an illegal deck for three rounds with no one noticing…and doing pretty well with it! The shame is unbearable. After writing this article I may be forced to commit seppuku.
But here's what happened. My first opponent was a guy who usually owns at Magic, but he had some mana troubles. He was playing Naya colors, and didn't get green for a long time. My legion of tiny dudes overwhelmed him. Twice. Illegally. :(
My second opponent was another veteran, also running Naya colors. However, he had grabbed THREE Hissing Iguanars and a Goblin Assault, a deadly combo. The first game he dropped one of his Iguanars, and I played Esper Battlemage, which would have destroyed his entire deck had he not burned it out with Naya Charm. So I lost. Then in game two, it was much closer. At one point, I had a ton of dudes, and was about to attack, but he played…Naya Charm to tap all my dudes. HOWEVER, I had been cleverly keeping my mana open, and I Canceled it. I dealt him a sound blow to the facebone. The next turn, I prepared to attack again, and he cast…Naya Charm. He tapped all my dudes, then attacked on his turn to finish me off. Bluh. He went on to win first place.
My third opponent was a dude who everyone seemed to hate, and I soon found out why. He was friendly at first, but whenever I played a spell, he would reel in his chair as though I had just played Black Lotus. It got a little out of hand, though…it made sense for Quietus Spike, but then I'd play some little dude that doesn't even do anything and he'd fall out of his chair and rip his hair out. I was afraid to even play a land for fear of him shooting himself right then and there.
But anyway, his real distastefulness was revealed more gradually. At one point, he had a Rockslide Elemental with one counter, and I had a Puppet Conjurer and Glaze Fiend. He attacked, and I made a Homunculus, pumping my Fiend, then blocked with the now 2/3 Fiend. Then he said something like "but damage is already on stack," and I was like "what," and we had a brief exchange by which it was clear he had not realized I could do that and was trying to weasel out of it. However, I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt and let him take back his attack. Another time, I attacked with a Tidehollow Strix equipped with Quietus Spike when he was at 15 life, and I'd say "ok that's 2, plus 7 more" and he put his life counter at 7, and I had to say "no it's 6." This happened several times. Either he was pretty dumb or pretty weaselly. I am convinced it is the latter. During the third game, a guy came over and watched, so I at least had someone else to keep him in line. He tried to play Resounding Roar on his Algae Gharial, but the dude watching pointed out that the Gharial has shroud, so I was grateful (since I hadn't noticed and would have let him do it). Anyway, I eventually beat him 2-1, which was satisfying since he was a douche. Too bad my deck was illegal.
During those games, though, I got to use some of the awesome interactions in my deck. Etherium Astrolabe + Puppet Conjurer/Sharding Sphinx = great source of cards. And of course, Metallurgeon worked very well with Tidehollow Strix, the best card ever.
So I was 2-1 so far, and the fourth and final round rolled around. My opponent this time had some sort of compulsive shuffling disorder where he would shuffle his own deck 1000 times in 6 different ways. Then when I presented my deck for him to cut, he shuffled MY deck 1000 times in 6 different ways. He remarked that it felt a bit light, and he counted it, revealing, to my VAST EMBARRASSMENT, that my deck was illegal! The judge ruled it as a game loss for me, and I realized what I had done and stuck in the final Swamp. He won the next game with his Bant dudes (we both had a lot of dudes but his were slightly bigger and more evasive). We played again for kicks, and I won, so I wonder what would have happened if he had not noticed. Or if I had been playing 40 from the start. Ah well.
Anyway, I ended up coming in 7th out of 15, which is not bad for a loathsome cheater. I used to always count my deck before playing to make sure it had the right number of cards, but then I got overconfident in my mathematical abilities and stopped doing that. From now on I will be sure to return to that habit :)
During one of the rounds, after I had finished my matches, I watched some other matches, and I saw one guy with a Puppet Conjurer. So after the tournament, I asked him if he would trade it, and he gave it to me for free. O FRABJOUS DAY! Unspeakable bliss.
When I got home, I used my new Esper fellows to augment my existing Esper deck, focusing on speed and numbers. I took out the clunky Sphinx Sovereign in favor of Sharding Sphinx, and basically packed the deck with awesome creatures. It's weak against mass removal (in testing, an Infest wiped out the entire board), but it is fast, and furious, and sharp as a tack. Metallurgeon + Tidehollow Strix, as I have mentioned previously, is a rock solid defense. Or, etherium solid. Actually etherium isn't very solid. OK WHATEVER.
So although I was embarrassed at my mistake, and at throwing off the results for players who care about stuff like that, I still had fun, and got some neat cards. That's all you can ask for, really. (Well, you can ask for victory, but I won't push my luck.) Two players were randomly selected at the end for a PROMO CARD from the PROMO CARD ENVELOPE, and I was one of them. There were Woolly Thoctars and Isochron Scepters and some other stuff. I was strongly advised to take a Thoctar (the other guy did) so I just went with that. The Scepter is a great card, and worth more, but it's also from Mirrodin, and cards from Mirrodin burn my skin when I touch them. It's like they're coated in some sort of evil artifact acid. So I'm happy with my Thoctar.
Until next time…whenever that may be! (Perhaps the day after Christmas! We'll see.)
Saturday, October 18, 2008
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!
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!
Saturday, October 4, 2008
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.
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.
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