Is It Drafty In Here?

My Return to Ravnica draft is done. This is the second draft I've ever done, so it was a bit intimidating going in, but my experience was much different than my first time.

For those who aren't familiar with a draft, I'll break it down for you. In a typical draft, eight people will sit down with three packs of cards. They open their first packs at the same time and choose one card from that pack. Then everyone passes to the left, and take another card out of the pack they just received. This continues until every 15 card pack has been emptied. The process then starts again going to the right, and a final time go back to the left.

Once all cards have been drafted, you sit down and build a 40 card deck out of them, which includes the 17-18 lands you need to play the cards in your hand. Once that's done, the night continues in typical tournament fashion.

I still remember my first draft. It was sometime in late 2006; Time Spiral was getting ready to hit the shelves, and there was a huge pre-release event going on at a hotel downtown. When I got there, I was on sensory overload. It seemed like there were vendors and sign-up tables everywhere, and the number of players sitting at the rows of tables reminded me of a packed school lunch room.

I wandered aimlessly for a bit until I came upon a table where people were talking about drafting. I asked a worker about it, and he basically told me what I told you. I had little idea what I would be doing, which would be worsened by the fact that you aren't allowed to talk while drafting, but I slapped down my money and signed up for the event.

Short story made shorter, it went very badly. I had no idea what good cards were, so I just grabbed a variety of mana costs in green, black and red and crossed my fingers. The hardest thing about drafting is getting a good mana base. Lands produce mana, and you need specific-colored lands for each mana color (red, green, blue, black, white). I shrugged my shoulders and grabbed five of each of my lands and called it a deck. My first match had a very nice guy who kept reminding my to slow down and take my time. I think he knew he had me beat, so he let me take back horrible plays and tossed out a pointer here and there. My second game went very quickly, with the dialogue consisting of "hey," "your turn" and "good game."

This time, however, I was ready. I was in a relaxed environment with a knowledge of the cards I'd be encountering. We only had 5 players, so we did 5 packs each, which actually gave better odds of getting good cards.

As cards were passed, I was struggling against my nature. I was hoping for a green-white Selesnya deck, but at least 3 others were going for white so I was struggling to get anything good. The best drafting strategy is to get good cards on the first pack, and from those cards decide what colors you want to play. "Forcing" a deck means entering the draft with a specific set of colors in mind; it's dangerous to do because you end up settling for sub-par cards, but I really wanted to get my way!

On pack two, however, my mind was made up for me when I saw this:



In my group, there's a joke I don't understand where someone will yell "game changer!" when something big happens. In my head, I was shouting it until I was hoarse.

Allow me to explain. On turn two, you play this card and it becomes a 1/1 creature since it's the only Creature - Rat on the field. As my friends discovered, that's not terribly intimidating until the rat starts breeding.

On turn 3 you activate its ability, creating a copy that has the same ability. Now you have two 2/2 rats on the field. Still not intimidating, but people start catching on.

On turn 4, you have three 3/3s, next turn you have four 4/4s, so on and so forth. The problem with this is that if you don't have a way to kill all of them, they keep coming. Killing the original rat doesn't matter, because his buddies all have the same ability. And in a draft, massive creature removal is hard to come by.

Game changer.

So in the end, I had a black/red deck, with a splash of green for my Sluiceway Scorpion and Deathrite Shaman (which was a baby game changer).

Round 1 - Fritz
Before the game started, I was a bit crestfallen when I heard my first opponent was to be Fritz. He's a great guy, but there's been one universal truth to him every since I joined the group: Fritz is my perfect archenemy.

If you look at the greatest archenemies in fiction, they share something in common. They match the protagonist's strengths while playing on their weaknesses.

-The Joker and Batman: Both are highly intelligent, and one is always capable of being a step ahead of the other. However, the Joker also knows how to exploit Batman's weaknesses, and that's what makes him a challenge. In a way, they are too similar, and that's what makes the Joker so dangerous.

-Holmes and Moriarty: Intellectual equals on every level. Every situation is a drawn out game of chess, with the final move being the deciding factor.

Basically, Fritz is my Moriarty. We are similar in so many ways, and that lets him push me like no one else because he challenges my strengths and weaknesses at the same time. Sometimes it's great because I have to work for every win, but other times I just want to be left alone and either dominate my opponent or be steamrolled by them. This point will be heavily displayed when I start filming Warhammer and Warmachine battle reports.

So when we sat down from one another, I shouldn't have been surprised that we approached out decks with the same goal. He built a fast aggro deck that let him take out my creatures if they got in his way. I built a mid-range aggro deck that focused on controlling the early turns so I could start dropping big dudes on turn 4 (or, you know, Pack Rat).

Unfortunately, Fritz didn't get a chance to challenge me. I was too timid at the start of our two games and kept hands with 2 mana sources. An ideal hand has 3 or 4 so that you don't have a lot of high-cost cards with no way to pay for them. So our game was over with a demoralizing defeat.

I was pretty frustrated, because my deck should have done so much better than it did. I had spent so much time preparing for this event, and it looked like it was going to be over because I simply failed at building a deck. While waiting for my next (and possibly final) match, I spent some time shuffling my deck and drawing starting hands. What I realized was that my deck could survive some early damage as long as I had the mana to cast my spells later. That meant having 3 or 4 lands in my starting hand.

With a newfound resolve to "do it right," I moved to my next game with a score of 0-1.

Round 2 - ChrisChris had been out of the game even longer than I. He played Magic during one of the earliest sets, and despite being only a few years older than me, I think of him as the Father Time of our Magic group.

I knew he was running a deck that focused on gaining life and inevitably running out the clock with a higher life total than his opponent. My deck would likely have a couple heavy-hitters trying to reverse that strategy, but I was worried that I wouldn't be able to outrace him.

I don't remember the play-by-play, but I know I got to see Pack Rat shine. Without a consisted way to stem the tide of my Rat's rabbit-like replication, that one card was all I had to play. Overpowered? Without a doubt.

1-1

Round 3- Fritz Returns
And it was back to Fritz. I'd seen my deck function flawlessly, so I felt a little better going in to this round. Our first game was insanely close, and we both smiled at the end of it. I lost, but it was the kind of loss I often get from him - I could have won, but I made a small error here, or he out-maneuvered me there.

Game 2 and 3 blur together. In one of them, Fritz's deck failed him pretty hard at the start. And in a deck that basically jumps at your face from the start, it was rough. In another one, it was the same as game 1 with a different outcome. I bobbed and weaved, I played smart, and I earned a victory in a very close game.

I felt good. Even if I lost my next game, I'd defeated my greatest nemesis fair and square (with some help from Pack Rat), and it felt great.

2-1

Round 4 - Zach
Zach is the new guy in the group. He's worked for EA and was a tournament organizer for Halo. Enough said.

Zach was rocking a blue-white control deck. It was ballsy, because control decks require every piece to work fluidly to control what your opponent is allowed to do. Along with some life-gaining abilities, his deck was doing rather well, and I was nervous.

Sadly for Zach, his deck hated him. I knew what his deck was capable of, but it just wouldn't give him the cards he needed. He got some good control going by making me pay mana just to attack, which meant less mana for the cards in my hand. But when he needed spells, his deck kept giving him mana. It was a bummer for him, but we still had a fun game.

3-1

Final Round - Thomas
Thomas is an enigma. He is the most easy-going guy to play against, and I'm pretty sure I rarely beat him. Games with him are just so relaxed that it takes several days before I realize I've lost, so it's hard to tell. However, Thomas plays to win, so I had to match him.

For our first game, I seemed to get my power cards out one turn before him. Easy-going as ever, he scooped up his cards and we were off to game 2.

Game 2 was one of the greatest games I've ever played. I got my Pack Rat breeder going, and I was sure it was over. However, Thomas surgically removed my threats one by one until we were down to his final turn. My three rats and a few other creatures outnumbered his, and they were swinging for lethal damage next turn. But I only had 2 life left and I knew his deck had too many tricks for me to feel comfortable about my lead. He drew the card for his turn and smiled. I knew he didn't have any direct-damage spells, so I leaned forward in anticipation.

Three rats at 3/3, and one got hit with this:

My 3/3 rat got hit with -2/-2, making him a 1/1. That meant he would live until my next turn. So as Thomas passed the turn, I hemorrhaged for 2 damage and lost an epic battle.

But it wasn't over yet! This was the deciding game. We both knew each other's tricks, so it was nothing more than a battle of wits mixed with a bit of luck.

We drew our starting hand of 7 cards. Thomas struggled aloud while I debated my hand internally. Two lands... the same hand that made me lose to Fritz during out first games. I needed to be aggressive, but if I drew a new hand I only got 6 cards. If that was bad, I'd have to go down to 5 cards. Against Thomas, I needed every threat I could muster.

We both decided to mulligan, and kept our new starting hands of 6 cards. We battled it out back and forth, but I was able to get ahead in the creature race and sealed the deal.

4-1.

Being 1 game away from losing the entire tournament kept me on my toes, that's for sure. But one thing truly worked to my advantage: I was dedicated to winning this tournament.

During the weeks leading up to our draft, I absorbed every piece of info I could that would help me improve my drafting abilities. Every minute I painted I was listening to podcasts dedicated to drafting (thanks Limited Resources!). Several times a day, I'd take a few minutes and use a draft simulator to do a mock draft against AI opponents. While I never played the decks, it was crucial in helping me understand the importance of not forcing a deck, as well as how you shouldn't count on rare cards to make a good deck for you (despite the opinion of the entire group, who swore I had every rare card that was opened).

I spent hours preparing to win. However, this wasn't winning for the sake of winning. At the end of the tournament we laid out all the rares we got in the packs, and everyone would take turns taking cards they wanted. One thing I've always wanted for my decks were dual lands - these are essentially 2 colors in 1 land. These are worth a lot to me because they're universal. Any green-white deck I build in the future will benefit from a green-white dual land. So I wanted to get first place simply because I wanted to have first pick of the dual lands.

It was great to see my hours of hard work and study pay off. It was different from the days I've poured in to painting because it's difficult to quantify my success. If I got 1st, I'd know it was worth it. If I didn't, then did it matter? That's probably a narrow way to view it, but if I don't succeed then have I not failed?

But honestly, winning didn't mean that much to me (which isn't uncommon). I took home three dual lands and my Pack Rat superstar, but I had a great time getting them. I had some great games with friends, and I finally got to play against Zach, Perhaps greatest of all, however, is the billboard-worthy photoshop image Zach made me.



I don't know about you, but looking it at reminds me of eating chocolate for the first time.

See you tomorrow (with a Kraken update)!