The LiquidLegends Lounge - Page 1610

First draft: went WRG, maily green with some splashies (like 2 wooly thoctars, aka the best card ever)
Had basilisk collar (technically a great card but I was always too busy just killing them), ooze, swagtusk (firstpick), advent of the wurm and primal command, so I went 3-0 ez. Price packs had a marsh flats and a griseldaddy.

Second draft: esper (or as i like to call it ass bear), went half unburial rites nonsense, half blink nonsense, and half mystical teachings instant packages and ground everyone down ez. 3-0, plenty of bounce to stall, and an unbeatable lategame. entreat was my only rare/mythic and I never even cast it, no need. Prize packs had an abrupt decay.

Shitty pulls, but draft was ezpz.
Nobody picked manafixing highly enough so both drafts i was the literal only person with enough signets and gates to actually cast my stuff, had more consistent mana with 3c than others had with 2.

Rares were Blood Moon, Boros Reckoner and Verdant Catacombs. Foils Evil Twin, Goblin Electromancer and Seaside Citadel.

I went into the draft hoping to build something UW-based because value is sweet, but someone upstream was cutting W super hard, so I moved toward UB. First picks were Lingering Souls, Selesnya Signet, Simic Guildgate so missing W was pretty bad for me.
I added R in pack 2 because it was becoming obviously open (still no W at all), also picking creatures I was missing at that point. Plenty of fixing but all in G and aside from Urban Evolution I saw nothing I could have wanted to splash (I didn't have the cards to make use of the BG sacrifice/token-based cards that wheeled twice).
Pack 3 G turns out to still be somewhat open, but the G fixing is in the same packs (and is the only fixing too) so I couldn't pick the two Sprouting Thrinax, even after they wheeled. Such a waste.
+ Show Spoiler [final deck] +
Pretty much a pile of cards without any real synergy. I passed some Unearth creatures like Corpse Connoisseur early because I didn't expect to use them much in an UB base, I also passed Grisly Spectacle (and again when they wheeled) because I expected wide small tokens more than big creatures (also I passed 2 Cower in Fear in a row despite that 'cause I hoped they'd wheel, they didn't).
On the other hand I didn't pick that many instants pack 1, so I cut a Mystical Teachings which had ~3-4 targets in my deck... so no instants/removal control for UB, basically no unearth for BR... nice fixing but no synergy, baaad.

Decks in order were Grixis (me), Jund, Bant, Bant, Naya. I clearly should have dropped U and went to Jund during pack 2, if only because of all the fixing offered and Jund clearly open since the BG cards weren't being picked up.
But me being bad isn't new.

Round 1 I get a bye. Welp. I get to watch the new guy lose only because he's missing recursion interactions (Stoic Angel + Gideon's Lawkeeper is preventing him from finishing the job with his Flickerwisp + Madcap Skills, but he could have used a sac outlet and the W res instant to recur a Kor Hookmaster at opponent's EoT and prevent his Flickerwisp from getting tapped).

Round 2 vs Bant, games 1 and 3 are decided by mana (as in 3 1-landers in a row as I mull to 5 game one, and game 3 mulligan then slight flooding and never finding my colours despite that). Game 3 my opponent played 3 Centaurs and blinked them a couple times, beatdowns + lifegain doing work.
Game 2 we both flooded ridiculously hard (both ended with 11+ lands for 7-8 spells) but still got to play some once we started drawing spells. He used the G/W populate anti-artifact card on a golem token I was about to kill, for pseudo-value because he didn't expect me to have enchants... so I obliged and played Gift of Orzhova on the Jailkeeper next turn and started bashing with a 5/5 lifelink flyer. Beats overloaded Cyclonic Rift!
Also drove the point home with a Soul Ransom (and a sac outlet out) on his Wayfaring Temple when it got played (didn't want to use it on his 3/3 tokens).
We flooded so hard I got the mana for Ultimatum but it wasn't in my deck at that point, we joked a bit about it.

Round 3 vs Naya.
Turns out Unflinching Courage on one of W's first strike commons is pretty harmful, uh.
My opponent refused to attack with it into open mana after I revealed Aethertow (missed the "attacking" clause, welp) but tapper+hasty fliers+monster is scary and I don't have enough instants to hold it forever, I drop at 3 life. I have Ultimatum in hand and he's got 1 card, 3 creatures after the previous blocks... but instead of a 3rd B source I topdeck Soul Ransom. Good enough! He taps it a couple turns till he can discard to make me sac his creature, then facing lethal topdecks a threaten effect for my Falkenrath Noble... which I can thanksfully sac to another outlet.
Game 2 he keeps a 1-lander and loses for it (we'll learn he only played 13 lands... on the other hand his curve barely went above 3 so 16 woulda been fine).
We played a couple other games and t2 2/1 first strike, t3 courage, t4 courage kinda wins games on its own and only needs 3 lands!

Games were fun, but I'll get utterly destroyed next thursday if I draft like this again.
Really should have recognised that Jund was open, and made use of the fixing (Selesnya and Gruul signets, I also saw trilands but the Bant and Naya ones when you're in Grixis at that point don't look worth it).

Format isn't too fast but with curves like my 3rd opponent or a Jund token deck you can definitely have pretty explosive starts, so 5 guildgates is a bit much, uh.