Dec 13, 2025
TLA Draft Report (RGu Lessons)
Dec 13, 2025
TLA Draft Report (RGu Lessons)
Firebending to a medium finish.
Firebending to a medium finish.
Once again, I had a pretty nice time at last week's bar draft. One of the past regulars that hadn't shown up in about half a year returned, and it was nice to chat with him again and catch up! It was a pretty cold night, and we had a lot of people, so we went upstairs to the event space with some extra space heaters. It was nice and toasty in there for the draft. We (as a group) ended up chatting a bunch about local cocktail bars and holiday plays coming up. We had a pretty solid turnout with 13 people attending that night. Was a pretty nice time overall I'd say.
Pack 1 was pretty fun to navigate. I opened a pretty weak pack, with a Secret of Bloodbending as the rare, so I opted to take this pretty much uncastable mythic on the off chance I was heavy blue this draft, since it's a splashy effect and I thought it'd be fun to cast once or maybe twice. It didn't end up making the deck, but it definitely informed a lot of my picks in pack 1, as I tried to stay blue, but got offered a lot of solid red and green lessons (A couple Iroh's Demonstrations and an Earthbending Lesson). I also ended up with a very late Bitter Work, so I I kinda ended up base green by the end of pack 1, but unsure where I'd land in the Temur space.
Pack 2 didn't really help me choose a lane very easily, since I opened another not very exciting pack with Firebender Ascension as the rare, which I ended up taking since the rest of the pack was mostly good white and black cards. I picked up a few Cadets during this pack, and also the Lion Turtle in alt art, so I still didn't really know where I'd end up color-wise, but it was looking like I'd end up red/green by the end of the pack.
Pack 3 was pretty unremarkable, or at least it must have been, since I don't remember much exciting happening now (about 3 days later). I believe I picked up a Guru Pathik and some more solid interaction/filltery creatures. In the end, I was pretty solidly red/green with a bit of a clunky firebending/lessons plan. Pretty servicable, but nothing spectacular. Here's where I ended up:
For round 1 I got paired up with my friend who hadn't been to the draft in about 6 months, so we had a good time chatting and catching up some more while playing out the match. It ended up being a pretty close one. He ended up on a pretty nice white/blue/red deck with a lot of removal and the potential for some fast curve-outs.
Game 1 we both ended up mulling down to 6, and I got off to a pretty nice start regardless. I did some curving out with the cadets and some removal, but we did get into a bit of a board stall where we kinda just traded removal back and forth. In the end, I was able to run him out of resources thanks to the Bitter Work, and eventually take the game after some nice back-and-forth.
Game 2 ended up pretty rough for me, since I needed to mull down to 5 thanks to a 1-lander into a hand with no plan. As a result, this game didn't last too long, despite me putting up a good fight. I was able to deal with a few early threats, but quickly just ran out of cardboard to cast while I got ran over by a bunch of fliers.
Game 3 was pretty interesting actually. I was on the play and started with the Cadets. Thanks to some lucky draws, I was able to keep my opponent on the back foot by removing or combat-tricking pretty much every turn until turn 4 or 5, with a Jeong-Jeong somewhere in the middle there. after which I deployed a bunch of big creatures. My opponent was able to keep up though, removing Jeong-Jeong and deploying some card draw to dig out of the hole I got him into. In the end, I was able to take the game thanks to some extra card advantage from Bitter Work and a Flopsie to seal it with a commanding board presence. It turned out that my opponent was pretty much always half a turn behind on some pretty efficient answers for my stuff, so going for a tempo plan worked out pretty well here!
Result: 2-1 in my favour
My second opponent was my buddy that prefers greedy value pile style decks and they really had a doozy this time. He had assembled a pile of busted bomb rares, a few shrines, and more than enough fixing to make it all work. This was a pretty awful matchup for me, since most of my answers were good for single smaller creatures, and most of the bombs he had were almost all good enough to win on their own.
Game 1 was not particularly close, since I needed to mull to 6 and kept a pretty slow hand. I did my best to be the beatdown, but by the lategame, I couldn't keep up with needing to beat rare 2-color Toph, rare 2-color Aang, The Fire Nation Drill, and a board full of 1/1-producing shrines. Oh, also a Badgermole Cub was in there too. He was in the other pod of drafters, and we were playing cross pod, so I somewhat blame the other drafters in that pod for passing some of that crazy stuff. Oh well!
Game 2 played out pretty similarly, but I had a bit of a faster start at least. I started with Cadets into another 2/2. but had to 2-for-1 myself to remove his 2/3 mana dork pretty early on which really blunted my aggression. By the time I was getting the wheels back on to ramp up the pressure, I was facing down bomb after bomb and just couldn't keep up. What did me in this time was an army of Phoenix Fleet Airships, despite handling most of the other bombs. Such is magic sometimes!
Result: 0-2 in my opponent's favour.
My last opponent ended up being a pair-down against an 0-2 opponent that was a bit newer at drafting, coming from a commander background. His deck wasn't super focused, playing a few cards I wouldn't be very excited to play, but we still had fun in our games.
Game 1 was pretty straightforward on my end. I somewhat curved out with a Cadets backed up by removal, and my opponent kept a slower hand that started with Obsessive Pursuit on 2 with no creature backup. I mostly just removed his creatures and beat down until we got to a semi board-stall with him at about 3 life thanks to all of the Pursuit triggers. I don't remember exactly how it got to this point, but I was able to sneak in an attack that got him to 1, and let the Pursuit finish him off, which was pretty fun.
Game 2 was similarly straightforward on my end as well. I mostly just removed his blockers (which were mostly Pirate Peddlers) and got in with a series of bigger and bigger creatures that he couldn't keep up with. Nothing too notable. We did end up playing a rubber match after I gave him some deckbuilding advice and helped him make a few card swaps from his pool. I intentionally kept a pretty weak hand, and ended up paying the price for it, but I'm glad my opponent got to have a little fun.
Result: 2-0 in my favour
I had a fun time! Good games and catching up with friends, as well as some nice bar food. I ended up having a pretty tasty bar burrito and a whisky ginger, so I was pretty happy on the grub side of things. Avatar feels like a pretty princely format I think. If you can assemble a pile of busted rares and the right fixing, you're gonna be at a huge advantage over a bunch of mostly solid un/commons. Still having a pretty good time with the format, but I don't know how many more drafts of it I'll end up doing in paper. I'm headed out of town to visit family for the holidays next week, so I probably won't be drafting in paper till next year. By that point, I guess it's possible we might switch to some flashback drafts? Hard to say at this point, but if this is the last Avatar draft I do for a bit, I'd say I definitely enjoyed my time with the format. I wouldn't call it a GOATed all-timer, but it had some fun gameplay with solid flavour. I'd be happy to draft it again if someone was offering it up, but might choose other formats if I had a wide selection. For me, I'd give Avatar like, a B- as a draft set? That feels fair.
Final Result: 2-1, 4-3 (fine by me!)