Xandor's Stuff

First Draft of the Year!

Last week, I made it out to the bar for my first draft of the year! It was real nice getting to see my magic friends/acquaintances and catching up on how their holidays went while slinging some spells. I was a good deal out of practice, so this draft ended up being kinda rusty/scuffed, but I had a fun time anyway! We were in that period between the last set being a bit old hat and the new set coming out, so we were back to flashback drafts. This time, we voted on Final Fantasy, which was fine by me, since I quite like that format.

Draft

I'm writing this report almost a week after doing the draft, so my recollection is a bit hazy on the finer details of the draft, but here's what I remember. Pack 1 started out with an interesting choice between Vayne's Treachery and White Auracite, and I ended up going with the easier to cast option of Treachery. I asked my friend about that pick later and he said he'd have gone with the Auracite, but that it was close, so I don't think it was a huge mistake, haha. I got passed a Memories Returning, so I thought I may end up in Blue, but blue was pretty cut from that point on, so I wasted a few picks exploring that route. I don't remember too much else from Pack 1, other than that I kinda fumbled around a bit trying to find a lane, and eventually ended up solidly White/Black going into Pack 2 off of some removal in those colors and some Magitek Armor I think I also might have rare-drafted a couple 3-5$ rares that didn't end up making the deck, but easily could have if things worked out differently.

Pack 2 started out with an Emet-Selch, which I decided would be fun to try to splash and make work as a side-achievement to play for, since I had some other sources of self-mill. I never got to flip him, but I came close a couple times! (It probably wasn't super worth the splash, but it *was* pretty fun, and my mana ended up pretty ok regardless.) In this pack, I mostly grabbed more decent white cards, and a few solid black support cards, but nothing too fancy or notable.

By Pack 3, I was pretty set on my White/Black plan, but the deck was definitely being pulled in a couple directions. I had a few aggressive 1s and 2, some defensive 1s and 2, and some pretty weak top-end. Pack 3 didn't help too much, but I did get passed a Squall and a The Crystal's Chosen, so that was pretty nice and definitely shored up the deck. Here's where I ended up:

Round 1

For round 1 I got paired up with someone I haven't played much with, but they were very cool and fun to chat with. They were playing a pretty nice Blue/Black deck with a nice curve-out and evasive threats, backed up by an Squall and a Ardyn(!).

Game 1 had me on the back foot for most of the game, since I lost the die roll and they started off with a turn 1 Tonberry that I never was able to effectively deal with. Despite being able to keep up for a while by racing the Tonberry, I never drew enough removal to put a dent in the clock I was facing down, and eventually died to a Rook Turret that I couldn't block. Oh well!

Game 2 went a bit better for me, since I was on the play this time and had a pretty solid early game with my own Tonberry. We kinda just traded attacks for a while until I was able to pull pretty far ahead while reserving a sneaky Fatal Push as backup removal with a spare treasure token lying around. This ended up being worth it, since after I swung out to try to provoke some chump blocks, they didn't block and then dropped Ardyn to try and get me dead on the crack-back. Luckily, they reanimated something I could Push, so that ended up being the window I needed to finish off the game. Woo!

Game 3 was less exciting for me, since I needed to mull to 5 on this one. I kinda just got run over by an aggressive curve-out again with another Rook Turret at the top-end I couldn't ever really deal with. I put up a good fight for going to 5, but in the end, the card differential did me in, and I ran out of gas. We played one more game afterwards which I ended up winning pretty convincingly (Which is often how these things go, I find). My opponent had to take a phone call and learned he needed to drop for the night to handle something at home, so he conceded the match, but I'm still gonna mark this one as a loss for posterity.

Result: 1-2 in my opponent's favour (2-1 in my favour on paper)

Round 2

My second opponent was my friend that pretty much always forces playing White/Green decks, and he was pretty dejected going into the match since he was heavily cut on those colours during the draft and wasn't very happy with his deck. Also, this game was a pair-down on paper, since he lost his last round, but since I lost my previous round as well, I'm not counting it as such, haha.

Game 1, due to said dejection, he blind-kept his opening 7 cards. I learned after the game that it had 0 lands, but playing the game, I would never have guessed, because he barely missed any land drops. Unfortunately, this still didn't work out for him, since he still had no real impactful plays until turn 4, which started out with only a Weapons Vendor. He was never able to really get anything going, and I got to do some fun stuff with an on-curve Squall, so this ended up pretty lopsided in my favour.

Game 2 played out mostly the same, minus the blind-keep. Still, due to a bit of a trainwreck of a draft, and a solid curve-out on my side, I ended up winning this game pretty convincingly. Not much really to report, other than that Squall was pretty fun this game too.

Result: 2-0 in my favour.

Round 3

My last opponent was another "pair-down" against my friend who was playing a pretty sweet multicolour Towns control deck. He had a bunch of interaction and a very scary late-game, so I was definitely the one who was supposed to beat down early.

Game 1 was very grindy, with both of us trading off a good deal of interaction and attack/blockers throughout the game. I almost flipped Emet in this game, but my opponent killed him once I got to about 12ish cards in my graveyard. (I never had good attacks with Emet by that time, so he wasn't too exciting, but hey.) I eventually ran out of steam after my opponent played a big 7/7 into some trample damage, and I was unable to recover. Drat!

Game 2 was a bit nicer to me, since I was on the play and was able to curve-out with a Squall at the top end. I think Squall died pretty quickly, but it was cool to curve out a bit against a slower opponent. I don't recall too much about this game other than that I was able to build up a pretty wide board and eventually go around his singular large blocker by the end of it. I mostly just removed everything he played up till turn 6 or 7, and got there that way.

Game 3 was another grind-fest, and it ended up coming down to a pretty close finish. We were both pretty low on life, but he had flipped his Balamb Garden. I was holding it back with my Coeurl for a while, but he found the answer for it and I then died to the flying battleship pretty promptly after.

Result: 1-2 in my favour

Final Thoughts

I had a pretty good time this draft! My deck ended up being pretty unexciting, and a bit on the lower-power side, but it was nice catching up with friends and chatting over food. I definitely felt a bit rusty, and I'm sure I made a few nasty minor drafting mistakes that cost me some good picks, but otherwise I think I piloted the deck pretty well. I think I was in the right lane, but my card evaluation probably still needs a bit of work. Feels like I ought to be prioritizing removal a bit higher than I already do. Since my first opponent conceded, I technically finished with a 2-1 record, but I'm counting this as a 1-2. It could easily have gone the other way with variance, but that's the facts of it, haha. In my prize pack, I did get a sweet pull with a Final Fantasy version of the good Urza, so I'm looking forward to slotting that into one of my commander decks somewhere. Happy to get back to the weekly routine!

Final Result: 1-2, 4-4 (2-1, 4-3 on paper!)