Xandor's Stuff

Let's see how much I remember from a week ago

About a week ago I went to my usual weekly draft night, and I had a pretty good time! We did another Avatar draft, which was fine by me, since I hadn't really drafted much of the set beyond the previous week's draft. I'm writing this after a bunch of the details have faded from my brain, so we'll see how much I can remember! We had a really large turnout of 14 players, so we drafted in 2 pods of 7 with cross-pod play for the night. We needed to steal the event space upstairs at the bar since we had so many people, so that was pretty fun.

Draft

Pack 1 was pretty straightforward overall, but Pick 1 was kinda interesting. It had a bunch of solid removal, a Day of Black Sun, and a Fire Nation Drill. I opted to go for the drill, since I think I prefer an easy 2-for-1 over a board wipe in a vacuum. I got passed the 3-color rare Azula, and settled into a Blue/Black deck focused on drawing a ton of cards and a bunch of Avatar villains. I was hoping I'd be able to grab a bit of fixing for red next pack to play that Azula too.

Pack 2 was pretty much blinders-on drafting for my colour pair. I ended up passing a foil Legend of Yangchen Pick 1 from this pack (one of the best limited cards in the set I now believe) since I was heavily on a blue/black plan without fixing for a double-white cost card and a 3-color Azula. Also, the other rare Azula was in the same pack which I ended up grabbing instead. My lane seemed fairly correct to me throughout this pack as a lot of good interaction flowed my way this pack, as well as a little bit of fixing so I could play the 1st Azula on the splash.

Pack 3 wasn't super notable, mostly drafting on-color goodstuff. I had a bunch of cuts to make after the pack for deckbuilding, but this is what I ended up with:

Round 1

For round 1 I got paired up against one of my friends I hadn't seen at a draft in quite a while, so it was nice to catch up over our games. He was on an interaction-heavy white/black deck featuring 2(!) Legend of Yangchen.

Game 1 we spent a lot of the game 1-for-1-ing each other while I tried to stabilize against some solid pressure. I did eventually get there, and slowly ground out the game. He did land the Legend against me, but decided for us both to draw 3 for chapter 2, which got me back in the game. I think you probably never really want to draw your opponent 3 cards for free in limited, but I wasn't complaining! I just killed off the Yangchen on the back, and outvalued my way to victory.

Game 2 was pretty similar. Same kinda gameplay, but my opponent didn't draw all that many creatures, so I kinda just ran him over, despite a desperation Legend draw-3 on chapter 2 again. His mana didn't line up very well either, with him needing to Gather the White Lotus for 2 whole Ally tokens in the late game. We did play a rubber match afterwards with a few deck changes following our games, and the deck changes seemed to help, since he did end up beating me in the for fun game. (I did have to contend with 2 Legends though, that probably helped too...)

Result: 2-0 in my favour

Round 2

My second opponent was playing a Black/Green deck focused on earthbending and +1/+1 counters. It seemed pretty fun to play! I don't remember a whole lot of the details of our match since it ended up being pretty quick, but here's how it played out:

Game 1 was pretty easy from my perspective. I drew a nice curve-out hand with a Joo-Dee I could use to sculpt my draws pretty well, and my opponent had a bit of a slow start. I was able to remove all of his relevant threats the turn he played them, and it wasn't particularly close.

Game 2 was similar to Game 1, but my opponent also had some mana struggles and a mulligan to 6. Not much to say about this one, other than that it ended quickly in my favour. Hey, no complaints from me other than maybe wanting a bit of a longer match. At least it gave me time to go grab some food between rounds and wolf down a chicken burger for dinner!

Result: 2-0 in my favour

Round 3

My last opponent ended up being my buddy that likes late game value decks, but today he was on a straightforward Red/Green stompy deck. Sometimes that's what your seat at the draft tells you to do!

Game 1 was a really close game! He got off to a quick start with an Badgermole Cub and a solid follow-up curve-out. I barely managed to stabilize around 3 life with a big board and a Yue to chip in for flying damage against his similarly stompy big board. I only managed to do this with the Fire Nation Drill, and then an attack with the 3-color Azula into a doubled Lost Days. (This was sweet!) I got him to 1 life eventually, but he managed to draw a Jet's Conditioning to steal Yue and kill me at the last minute! There were a lot of interesting combat choices to make throughout the game to get to that stabilization state, so losing to a threaten effect was pretty disappointing but awesome at the same time. I always prefer losing games like that to non-games where someone's deck just fails to cooperate and they have mana troubles.

Unfortunately, that's how Game 2 went for me, haha. I mulled to 6 and kept a 3-lander with a bunch of good 4 and 5-drops and a little bit of early game, so it was a pretty solid keep for going to 6. That said, I failed to draw lands 4 and 5 on time, and my friend just outpaced me with big creatures faster than I could remove them thanks to my mana trouble and I got run over pretty quick. Oh well!

Result: 0-2 in my opponent's favour

Final Thoughts

I quite liked my deck this time. I enjoy the gameplay pattern of setting up a board, surviving some early aggression, and then turning it around with a big stabilization play and running my opponent over with value. My deck was pretty good at this, and I think if variance shook out a bit more in my favour in the last match, I had a good shot at the trophy 3-0 that night. Alas, it was not to be. (I'm glad I got to do the 3-color Azula thing a bit too. That was pretty fun.) The games were mostly all pretty fun, and I ended up buying some gems on Arena to jam some more Avatar drafts over the weekend which I had a lot of fun with. A lot of my decks over the weekend that did well looked pretty close to this one, so I might find myself falling into a Blue/Black deck pretty often in Avatar in the future.

Final Result: 2-1, 4-2 (not bad!)