Oct 16, 2025

EoE Draft Report (UB Control)

Bar Draftin'

Last night I hit up my usual weekly bar draft night. I like going out to those since I'm pretty into Magic drafting in general, and it's a good way to get out of the house and socialize a bit. Drafting at the bar is extra fun, since there's decent bar food and cool people to chat with between games. The stakes aren't very high either. 2-1 gets a prize pack, and 3-0 gets 2. But, it's cheap!

So, anyway, right now we're in a bit of a weird spot where the latest set (Spider-man?) is kind of a flop, so we're just running some flashback drafts of sets people actually like. Last night's draft was Edge of Eternities, a pretty sweet Sci-Fi/space setting which has some pretty fun gameplay. Most colour pairs are playable, you can kinda do the green-based multicolour soup thing if you squint, and spacecraft make for some interesting gameplay decisions.

Draft

We had some pretty good turnout, so we split up into 2 pods of 6. Not ideal, but certainly playable. You see a good deal fewer cards, so the experience is a bit closer to sealed, but if you can find the open lane, you're more or less golden since you see a lot of cards wheel.

I struggled to find the open lane throughout most of pack 1 unfortunately. P1p1 was a pretty weak pack, so I took a Blue/Red gold rare - Pinnacle Emissary. P1p2 was similarly weak, but had a gold rare in a totally different colour pair - Green White. I was kinda hoping one of the two colour pairs would be open, but it turned out that on my right, my buddy ended up in Red/Green thanks to getting passed some strong Kavu creatures, so the signals were what we could affectionately call "mega-whack". Both Red and Green dried up quickly, but I was lucky to see a single strong Black removal spell, so I speculated a bit on that, and finished up pack 1 without any strong viable direction. Bit of a trainwreck really.

Pack 2 turned it around though! I don't recall P2p1, but P2p2 was Elegy Acolyte, a particularly busted Black rare. I pivoted hard into Black, and got pretty hooked up throughout pack 2, with multiple strong creatures and removal. Blue was flowing nicely as well, and I was able to grab a bunch of Cryogen Relics (a strong glue card for the Blue/Black archetype), so I was pretty sure I had finally found the open colour pair. Midway through pack 2 is not a super fun time to be able to do that, but better than the alternative. I went into pack 3 really hoping I read the seat correctly, because otherwise, I'd be real short on playables.

Pack 3 was pretty great overall as it turned out. More good removal and several solid creatures came my way. I ended up with about 25ish playable cards in my colour pair, and I was happy with most of them. The deck was actually looking kinda sweet! While sleeving it up, I realized I hadn't de-sleeved from my previous draft, which was coincedentally a Blue/Black EoE deck that I thought looked a lot better than my current one. Daniel vs. the cooler Daniel kinda situation. Ah well. Here's the list I ended up with:

Round 1

We ended up doing pairing cross-pod, which isn't super excellent, since you might end up in a situation where the packs were just a lot stronger in the other pod, but hey, at least it isn't online league play where you're pretty much always playing against busted decks. Regardless, round one was pretty fun! My opponent was from the other pod, with a pretty nice Black/Red deck with a lil White mixed in there too. Mostly kinda midrangey stompy kinda stuff.

The first game was pretty straightforward. I won the die roll, and kinda just curved out my 2 3 and 4 drops while they stumbled a bit. The 4 drop was Elegy Acolyte, which managed to survive for the whole game, and I kinda just ran away with it. There were a couple moments I was kinda worried about board wipes or sneaky combat tricks, but they never really materialized for my opponent.

Game 2 was pretty crazy. I kept a relatively anemic hand, and my opponent did the curving out for the majority of the early game. I was mostly able to keep up and trade off till they played Syr Vondam (the uncommon version). This made blocking a bit of a nightmare, but I was able to Cryoshatter it before it got too out of hand. Unfortunately for me, I was still under pretty heavy pressure, and ended up trading off my whole board for their whole board after a big alpha swing, and resigned myself to hoping to win a topdeck war. I drew into my Secluded Starforge, and managed to use it to chump block my way to a bit of relative stability with a "free" robot every turn, despite going down to like 5 life. It was pretty touch and go, since I drew a lot of lands following that. They drew into Weftstalker Ardent, so my time was now pretty limited if they started drawing non-lands. Luckily, they bricked for quite a few turns, and I was able to get a little robot army up and going with a few fliers to peck in for damage. By the end, I was down to 2 life to their 4, and they drew into Susurian Voidborn, and I was dead on board to them just attacking with the Shattered Vondam for one final death trigger to put me away. But, they missed that line and just attacked with 2 big creatures I could chump, and I was able to get them dead the following turn in the air. Sometimes, your opponent just doesn't see the line. Lucky!

Result: 2-0 in my favour

Round 2

My second opponent of the night was also from the other pod, playing a Blue/Red/Green ramp deck loaded with scary huge monsters. The first game ended up kinda interesting. I lost the die roll, but their hand was kinda slow, and I was able to set up a little curve out with a Steelswarm Operator into a Virulent Silencer. This was pretty cute, since now I had a line on maybe poisoning out my opponent, which is pretty rare in modern limited. Alas, it wasn't to be, as they were able to keep bouncing the Silencer or killing my other larger creatures, and I was only able to get them to 6 out of 10 poison counters. They spent a lot of resources to do that though, and my generally huge amount of card advantange and interaction put them into topdeck mode against a modest little army of fliers and dorks. They were unable to dig themselves out of the hole or draw into anything relevant, so I ended up winning that game fairly convincingly. Shame I couldn't get the poison win, but hey.

Game 2 ended up being kind of a non-game unfortunately. My opponent mulled down to four cards, and I had some early pressure. They never were able to get anything going, and I had a bunch of removal waiting for them, just in case. A pretty lopsided blowout in my favour there. Oh well, that's magic!

Result: 2-0 in my favour

Round 3

Finally, my last opponent was from my pod, and ended up being my buddy from earlier with the Red/Green aggro/Kavu typal deck. We had some good laughs about the signals during the draft and got to playing.

Game 1 ended up being pretty straightforward. We both had some solid early game stuff going on, but I was able to resolve Elegy Acolyte on curve, and it managed to survive the whole game. That guy drew me like 5 extra cards, got me like 10 life off of lifelink, and made a bunch of robots. Card's a house. With all of those free resources from my unchecked rare, I kinda ran away with the game, despite a desperate last-minute board wipe from my opponent.

Game 2 was a bit dicey, since they got a pretty fast start with a Gene Pollinator into a warped Drix Fatemaker while I was on the draw. This was a lot of pressure, and I kinda just hoped to survive to my on-curve Elegy Acolyte. Lucky for me, they kinda got stuck on 3 lands, so they weren't able to really put me away, and the Elegy Acolyte manage to survive a couple turns, which was long enough to stabilize. After doing some trading off, and some savvy life management, I was able to turn the corner and run them out of cards while keeping my board relatively healthy. I kinda ran away with the game from that point, but I did dip down to the low single digits with my life total, so that was kinda scary.

Result: 2-0 in my favour

Final Thoughts

It's always nice to 3-0 a draft. Winning is fun! Especially after a rocky draft portion where you're unsure if you'd even have enough playables. Even nicer to not drop a single game. Part of that here was pretty obviously variance in my favour, with multiple opponents getting stuck on lands, or making fairly major misplays. There were a couple spots that looking back on it, I'd have played slightly differently, but I was also a couple drinks deep by that point, so I can always blame the ciders. Mostly, I feel like I got carried by my Acolyte! I got a Quantum Riddler from one of my prize packs, which is sweet. It's currently worth like $32 USD at time of writing. That'd matter if I ever sold my cards off, haha. Mostly, it'll be cool to pop into one of my bajillion commander decks. I always enjoy the weekly bar drafts, regardless of results, since the atmosphere is great and the people that show up are all pretty cool overall. Looking forward to the next one!

Final Result: 3-0, 6-0 🏆