Last night I got a chance to draft some Lorwyn! I’ve been curious about how this format would play in Draft since the pre-release. My local game store, the Fourth Place did an event, so I figured I’d take the opportunity and head over. (Side note: If you’re ever in the area, you should stop by. It’s a great store.)
I would like to say that since the prerelease, I’d practiced and learned the set. This would unfortunately be a lie, because outside of a few drafts on arena, I have done zero prep. I hadn’t even bothered to look at a pick list.
Instead, I had a simple plan: ignore what everyone else was doing, and force Blue/White Merfolk.
This was it. The extent of what I’d learned from my digital drafts was that Tributary Vaulter and Shore Lurker could take people to pieces, and that Gravelgill Scoundrel made it possible to push through clogged boards.
So yeah, that’s what I did. Spoiler alert: I won the pod.
It is a deeply uninspired list, but still managed to be a solid one. Perhaps the only notable thing about it is the lack of rares, with Deepway Navigator being the only one. It runs 24 non-lands, and has 2 cards mana value above 4. It also runs zero one drops. Pure and simple, it’s very much a “just find a way past them” style list.
The games were a pretty swift set of matchups, going 2-1, 2-0, and 1-1-1, followed a Bo1 playoff I won.
I don’t know that there’s anything I can even learn from this. While there were some close games, and I did take a few losses, it was almost always dependent on my opponent getting out something like Virulent Emissary or Scarblade Scout to have a bit more extra life, and slow down my early turns. The moral of the story seems to be that “fliers are good” and I kinda already knew that.
Overall, I have mixed feelings about Lorwyn as a Sealed/Limited set. Ignoring aesthetics and theming, the mechanics have never really clicked for me. While I was initially worried about the lack of removal during the Sealed Prerelease, draft has made it pretty clear that there actually is plenty of removal. At the same time, the very low number of counterspells remain a bit weird.
In the one to two dozen games I’ve played of Draft Lorwyn Eclipsed, games have never really felt super fun or exciting. They’ve been tense! It’s felt good when I’ve won, or pulled out of sticky situations, but I’ve never had any huge moments of dropping a bomb, or feeling like I’ve figured out something incredible, or spotted clever synergies.
Some of it may just be the colors I’ve drafted, with Merfolk have arguably the least interesting play pattern, in that it’s mostly about tapping creatures through card effects, but there are only 8 convoke cards under rare, and only two are instant speed.
I like winning in Lorwyn. I just wish I liked playing a bit more.
As a final note, I’ve seen some complaints/comments online that the set really pigeonholes you into your archtype, with very little space to branch out. I don’t think I’ve drafted enough of the set to make the same statement confidently, but it does seem accurate to the experience that I’ve had so far.
Also, I promise I’ll go back to writing about games instead of just things I’m doing shortly, but despite losing my job, it’s been a weirdly busy last few weeks.
I went to a Lorwyn Pre-Release on Friday. It went well. I went 3-0 in my pod and got 2nd place overall after a cut to top 4. That said, I also think I got quite lucky.
If you just want to read and see the deck+pool, click here. Otherwise, I’ll be talking about the whole experience.
Pre-Event Prep
I did a little more prep than I usually do for events, but still not a huge amount. First, I did what I consider the bare minimum: reading through every card in the set on Scryfall. However, unlike some sets, I did this with a friend. I’ve always found having a second pair of eyes, and a chance to discuss things helps spot interactions or mechanics I might otherwise miss.
One thing this early review did was to make us think about Curious Colossus, and check how exactly its effect works. And while this was completely irrelevant to me, my buddy ended up opening TWO copies of it, and making it a build-around in his pool—something that might not have happened if we hadn’t known it was a permanent effect.
Next up, we did some test pools on Draft Sim. This is not usually something we do, but we had some time, so we loaded up some sealed pools for Lorwyn Eclipsed, built some decks, and put in the time to play two to three games with each. I’m always a bit leery of trying to take too many lessons from a single pool sim, but I think playing a few gave me a much better sense of the format, and the cards in it.
Removal felt much lighter than many other sets in the past. (Below the rare slot at least!) It was hard to tell if this was just our test pools, or removal was just generally at more of premium.
The lack of removal meant that bombs tended to stick around MUCH longer than they might otherwise, making them all the more valuable. Same thing for fliers.
Red/Blue seemed like a weak pool to build in sealed. (Side note: Having played tonight, I’ve actually revised my opinion on this, mostly because of Tanufel Rimespeaker.)
So, my assumption going into the night was that it would be a bit of a sloggy format populated with some very scary bombs, and less removal than usual.
After opening my packs, my assumption about removal felt fairly accurate. My kit promo was a Blood Crypt, and normally I’d be be excited about a foil shockland, but not when it’s only worth $10 instead of being an extra playable bomb. I had a single boardwipe in white, 2 red bolts, zero blue counterspells and a single bounce, two flier killers in green, and 4-ish pieces of removal in black.
My rares also failed to inspire confidence. I opened zero mythics, and another shockland, meaning two of my rare slots were somewhat dead. Between High Perfect Morcant, Maralen, Fae Ascendant, and Selfless Safewright, I decided to go into black green, splashing blue just to be able to drop Maralen.
Here’s what I ended up making.
Looking back at this, I do find myself questioning my choices, but not a huge amount. My game plan was simple: stall out the game long enough to get either Morcant or Maralen, and use their triggered abilities to take over the game. While it was possibly a good idea to run red instead of one of those two primary colors, I was worried I wouldn’t have the curve to support an effective red/black deck, or enough siege breakers to support red/green. And at the same time, my bombs were all multicolor.
It’s quite possible there is a better deck in this pool, or a few more blue cards I could have tossed in to improve this list. But at the time I felt fairly choked off by already having no fight spells, and figured I’d take my chances. I also thought if I got smoked round 1, and I’d swap in red as a primary color.
As a side note: for my first two games, I had a second Unforgiving Aim, instead of Requiting Hex.
Match Performance
Match 1 was a set of games into someone playing red/black goblin aggro. Game 1 was won by a somewhat unlike hero: my single copy of Rooftop Percher. 5 mana for a 3/3 flier isn’t fantastic, but I was valuing fliers highly, and figured the rider abilities couldn’t hurt. As it turned out, we both ended up filling our boards, and I was the only person with evasion.
My opponent also missed several opportunities to dig for an answer to the Percher with Gristle Glutton, and I suspect if they’d played a bit more aggressively, they would have likely beaten me. As it was, I got lucky.
In fact, that luck continued with game 2! My opponent flooded out, and I just beat them down before they could play anything to stop me. Again. Luck.
Match 2 was the game that made me reconsider my opinions about the elemental archetype. My opponent was running green/blue/red with an elemental focus. I don’t have any particular memories of game 1 outside of having to spend Bogslither’s Embrace on a Tanufel Rimespeaker to stop them from getting massive card advantage, but it was a close run thing.
Game 2 turned when I managed to drop Maralen, and pull enough cards with her from their deck to get commanding board position, and force my way through, mostly off of an Unexpected Assistance.
This brought up match 3. My opponent was a friend of mine who’d also gone 2-0 convincingly, and while I manged to win game 1, I lost game 2. Going into game three, things seemed to be going against me as my buddy managed to put out a massive swarm of smaller bodies and Kithkin tokens, with a Timid Shieldbearer backing them up.
Unfortunately for him, Magic the Gathering is a game where luck can just absolutely screw you. I managed to get out Maralen once again, and Maralen immediately pulled Adept Watershaper off the top of his deck. With that out, I was able to continually push into his board, and eventually force lethal in an all out push by Blight Rotting his pumped Reaping Willow.
With my 3-0 record, I made it to top cut. I won’t go into the details here, but at the store I play at, just playing more matches gives better prizing, so I was cheerful about getting to play at least one more match before getting defeated.
In what was becoming a regular theme of the night, match 4 (a best of 1) ended fairly quickly after my opponent flooded out, and I dropped a series of 2 and 3 drops into a fairly early Selfless Safewright and ended the game before too much happened.
At this point, though, my luck finally ran out. In the best of 1 finals match, I milled Maralen with my own Scarblade Scout, and then got solidly chipped down and out by Rooftop Percher, and Shore Lurker. Honestly, I wasn’t that surprised, as my opponent had built a deck that didn’t rely on its bombs as much as mine did. Looking back at my games, at least 2 or 3 of them turned on critical top decks, and my opponents not drawing into removal.
Still, 2nd place isn’t too bad.
Overall
Lorwyn is an interesting set. I think at least a few of my opponents deserved to take games off me that they didn’t manage to, but hey, that’s the nature of luck.
Personally, I’m a little underwhelmed by Lorwyn. Games felt very tense, but never felt very exciting, if that makes sense. I don’t have a strong feeling yet about if the set is a “bad” limited set. I suspect it’ll be a much better experience in draft than sealed, where typal can really shine, and removal will be easier to grab.
It was a bit of a bummer to see that all the shock lands I opened weren’t worth very much, and the the lack of foil stamped cards also was a bummer. I don’t know that I’d do more 6-pack sealed of Lorwyn, but I do want to try to draft it at least.
Anyway, that’s all for today. I’ve been going full tilt all weekend since Friday. It is 1:00 AM Sunday. I am going to sleep.
Then I will write about my One Piece pre-release, and Donkey Kong Bananza, and this F1 arcade went to, and Horses.
Ever since my Brother’s War writeup, it’s been a bit of a tradition on the blog to write about the first Magic event I do for each set. As such, it’s time to talk about Innistrad: Remastered.
The first Innistrad was the current set when I actually first started playing Magic. Despite that, I don’t actually have any strong personal feelings for the set, or even the plane. Vampires. Zombies. Blah blah blah. I don’t care.
Still, Innistrad has brought me one of my favorite cards in the game: Emrakul, The Promised End.
Fun Fact: Before even drafting the set I bought a copy of this for $45, because in the eternal words of Penny Arcade, “I am a corporate whore”.
After having brutally learned my lesson at my last draft, a Top 8 in an RCQ, this time I was prepared. I would not just pick rares. I would not just follow my first pick directly into a garbage pool. I would be strong.
Then the universe decided to tempt me by giving me a first pack Vanquish the Horde, followed by being passed a Liesa, Forgotten Archangel.
As the week willed fool that I am, I took the bait.
Or perhaps it wasn’t just bait.
Over the following series of events in the drafts, I was handed a perfectly reasonable set of cards in my color. Multiple Thraben Inspectors. Three copies of Eaten Alive.
It was at this point that I decided to see if I could make white/black work, and the answer turned out to be “Yes, maybe.”
There was only really one tough choice during the draft. Late in pack three, I was handed a pack with a choice between Infernal Grasp, and Restoration Angel.
A difficult choice.
This was tricky. I already had a wide number of removal spells, meaning that Infernal Grasp was maybe less useful. On the other hand, it was hard to view restoration angel as a real bomb. Sure, it’s a 3/4 for 4 flier, that can protect something, but Infernal Grasp was instant speed, unlike all of my other sorcery speed cards.
After much internal debate, I went Infernal Grasp. Would it work out for me? Only time could tell.
Generally speaking, this was an aggro list that tried to chunk its opponent for enough life that it could go wide in the later game. Everything was fairly cheap—and even the Eldrazi could be cheated in around turn four with Emerge.
So how well did that game plan go?
The Games
That’s right. It’s time for the games! Round one was… a bye.
I spent most of wandering the store, losing at Street Fighter, and playing a bit of Bosconian. It passed quickly enough, and it was time for round 2.
Round two was a bit of a slugfest. I was playing into a fairly reasonable green/blue deck. The one downside to my draft was that if the game went long, I was very dependent on getting one of my larger bombs or Blood Artist to actually close out games.
Fortunately, after we went to top-decking, (while I still had favorable board state), I drew into Infernal Grasp. With that, I was able to remove my opponent’s combo of Mist Raven and Deadeye Navigator, and pull out a win. This was repeated in game two, giving me a 2-0 win, and 2-0 record.
And then it was time for Match 3.
Match three was against a person I’m going to refer as “Player X.” They had drafted green/blue with a black splash.
Player X is very good at Magic, and probably a stronger drafter than I am. They’ve also been my opponent in a few other drafts recently. So it was with a sense of trepidation that I went into match 3.
That sense would be justified when game one went to 40 minutes, and turned into a game that I just barely won because…. Player X somewhat milled themself out.
Not exactly a clean victory.
As a result of the length of game one, game two went to time. A time that I used to squeak out a draw. I think it’s worth noting here that had we fully played out game two, Player X would have won, and I suspect they would have won game three. They had a generally stronger deck than I did, and despite my early game pressure, even with my bombs, I simply would not have been able to push through their Spider Spawning.
As a result of (or perhaps despite) this however, I found myself at 3-0, and as the winner of draft!
Reaping the Spoils
They say you never forget your first love. I don’t know if that’s entirely true.
That said, I have not forgotten my first favorite Magic card, Deadeye Navigator.
I just love Deadeye Navigator. My very first standard deck tried to use it and Acidic Slime to remove my opponent’s mana base. Was it good? No. Do I use Deadeye Navigator often in my decks these days? Still no.
But this was the card that really got me into Magic. It’s the card that showed me how fun the game can be. I no longer have my first Deadeye Navigator. But after last night, that’s no longer a problem because I now have a play set of both it, and Acidic Slime.
I enjoyed drafting Innistrad, but it’s hard to say if that’s just because I won, or because I enjoy the set. As I noted above, this has never really been my set in the first place, so even if I came away with a sense of ambivalence, I think that would have been fine.
But I came away excited, a bit bummed out that I likely wouldn’t have the chance to draft the set further, as it won’t be coming to Magic: Arena. Is is a perfect snapshot of the best the Innistrad blocks have to offer? No. But it’s plenty fun.
Ed Note: This article uses a few specific bits of terminology related playing limited Magic: The Gathering, mostly the acronym B.R.E.A.D. If you’re not familiar with the term/acronym, a brief read of this Stack overflow paragraph defines them well.
I participated in the first Regional Championship Qualifier at The Fourth Place over the weekend. As this is one of the more competitive events I’ve ever done, I thought I’d talk about the experience.
This was a Limited RCQ, starting with 5 rounds of sealed, and then cutting to Top 8 for a draft. The set for both was Foundations. But before I get into the event, let’s talk about prep!
Prep
I…. did not prep much. I prepped more than I have for most other sealed events I’ve done, but much less than I could have. I reviewed a fair number of sealed pools, I looked at some articles, and I did two drafts of the set prior. The first draft was on Arena, and I lost every single match quite badly. The second was a smaller in-person event where I won.
I do think the prep made a difference, but I also think especially in the draft, I could have done much better with my picks. More on that later.
Sealed
For the sealed portion of the event, this was the deck I ended up building.
After opening all my packs I was pretty confident I would end up in green. I had bombs in Scavenging Ooze, Mossborn Hydra, Sylvan Scavenging, and Ghalta, Primal Hunger. I also had removal in Bushwhack and Bite Down, and and a few giant growths.
My secondary color wasn’t as clear.
Looking at the rest of the pool, I scratched off white and blue as secondaries. They didn’t offer the bombs of red or black, and had limited amounts of mediocre removal.
Red had two big bombs in Shivan Dragon and Twinflame Tyrant, but it didn’t have any targeted removal before 5 mana, and even then, it wasn’t instant speed.
Black won out as a secondary color on the strength of its removal (Eaten Alive, and 2x Bake Into A Pie), and the fact that it still provided a very solid bomb in High-Society Hunter. My read at the time was that I had plenty of bombs in green, and more removal would serve me better in the sealed Environment.
Looking back at the pool now, I do think there was a strong argument for green/red, but that wasn’t choice I made at the time.
I made two spicy decisions in the deckbuilding. The first was not splashing for Twinflame Tyrant, despite having a Campus Guide and three Evolving Wilds.
I think this was the right choice. Twinflame is two red pips, and my deck has 8~ (more on this in a moment) double pip cards. It was much more important to fix my base so that I could drop my double pip bombs, than it was to enable a single additional bomb at the cost of less consistency.
The second decision was including Cackling Prowler over Dwynen, Gilt-Leaf Daen. This was a mistake, and it was a mistake that I would proceed to fix the entire night, swapping the two after pretty much every game 1. I thought that the ward 2 on Prowler was more important than reach on Dwynen. I was very wrong. There are a lot of flyers in this set, and something that can deal with the birds was more important than something that took an extra two mana to blow up.
Matches
Generally speaking, this is where I would talk about matches. Unfortunately, after playing 9 hours of magic in a row, I don’t remember my opponents’ decks, and I did not take notes.
So instead, here are a few fun moments!
One opponent got out Extravagant Replication. This didn’t worry me, until suddenly they had four copies of Spitfire Lagac.
In another game, I was forced to burn 3 cards in Ambush Wolf, Giant Growth, and Bushwhack and seven life just to deal with Sire of Seven Deaths. I still lost somehow. Maybe it was the 3 for 1 and 14 life differential. Who can say.
Finally, in my last set of games, despite mostly being deadweight every other match, Revenge of the Rats finally did some work, giving me enough fodder to sac into Vampire Gourmand to push through, and get enough cards to recover from an incredibly bad situations.
Ultimately, I finished with a record of 3 – 1 -2, which was enough to put me into the top 8.
Deck
1 Authority of the Consuls
1 Bake into a Pie
1 Day of Judgment
1 Exsanguinate
1 Felidar Savior
1 Healer's Hawk
1 Infestation Sage
1 Macabre Waltz
3 Make Your Move
2 Marauding Blight-Priest
2 Midnight Snack
9 Plains
1 Sanguine Syphoner
1 Skyknight Squire
1 Stromkirk Bloodthief
8 Swamp
1 Vampire Soulcaller
3 Vanguard Seraph
1 Youthful Valkyrie
Sideboard
2 Aegis Turtle
1 Archmage of Runes
1 Ashroot Animist
1 Bigfin Bouncer
1 Cackling Prowler
1 Consuming Aberration
1 Fleeting Distraction
1 Good-Fortune Unicorn
1 Grappling Kraken
1 Lightshell Duo
1 Mossborn Hydra
2 Run Away Together
1 Slumbering Cerberus
1 Sure Strike
If you are looking at this list with some level of confusion and profanity, I promise you. There is an explanation for why there is so much blue, when I am not even in the color. It is not a good explanation, because it was not made via good decisions. But there is an explanation, and it’s Consuming Aberration.
I have a bad habit, one that I may now be cured of purely as a result of how horrible this draft went. If the rare in the first pack looks like a bomb, I will take it. And then I will continue to try to pick into those colors, even if I really, really shouldn’t.
As a result, there are a lot of blue cards in this pool, instead of anything remotely useful or good.
There is a second card in this pack that tells a story, and it’s this.
This was not a first pick. It was a much later pick. And should probably have been a sign to me that not a single person at the table was going green/red. Did I listen to this sign? Did I pick the two Mossborn Hydras that were passed me to me, and the other strong red cards?
No. Of course I didn’t.
Instead, after, picking up a Day of Judgment and an Authority of Consuls, and proceeded to try to force Black/White as hard as possible in packs 2-3 to salvage the situation.
Top 8 Matches
I don’t know if the universe took pity on me, or if everyone at the table was having a rough time, but I did in fact manage to squeak through round one before being eliminated handily in round 2.
For round 1, I had an incredible stroke of luck, getting Authority of Consuls early into a blue/white go-wide deck in both games. This was an incredible bit of bad fortune for them, as it pretty much single-handedly turned off their deck’s ability to flash in Resolute Reinforcements to stall me. It also allowed me to get extra turns of ping in, as even when they got their larger flyers, they came in tapped.
Round 2, however, was the buck finally stopped. My opponent was playing midrange Grixis, with a fair amount of threshold dependent cards, and I just got stomped. While the games were slogs, they managed to both get board presence with a bunch of fairly useful cards, and even Day of Judgement couldn’t save me from Sphinx of Forgotten Lore, and Kioara, the Rising Tide, resulting in me going down in two consecutive losses.
While I didn’t stick around to watch finals, it did look like both players were playing three color decks, something I thought was interesting.
Tone and Overall Thoughts
My goal for the event was to get into the Top 8. This might sound intimidating, until you realize it was capped at 20 entries, meaning it was really more of a “Finish in the top 40%”.
I made a lot of mistakes. By my count, I’d put it at something like 4-5 misplays, and that’s not even counting missed triggers. Arena has made me very good at spotting play options, and outs. But it’s made me very bad at keeping track of my own triggers, and asking to hold priority at turn end.
My prep did help. I don’t know how much, but it did make a difference in some of the deck building, and knowing that certain cards I would have otherwise written off were actually bombs.
My draft was terrible. I had exactly 23 cards in my colors, and no fixing.
Generally speaking, this was a pretty chill and polite event, and I hope even the more competitive events at The Fourth Place stay this way. There was no shouting, and no real issues/conflicts, with players generally being polite but firm on various rulings.
This was a good event, and I wish I was more excited about the top 4 finish, but as I’m me, anything other than complete victory will always feel like a bit of a wash. I do think I’d try another Sealed RCQ though, as long as the set was good.
PS. The counts on this sealed pool look wonky at first, but this pool does not include 6 lands I opened, and the also the system doesn’t seem to like to count lands. But was 84 cards, as I’ve spent all morning double checking to make sure I got it right. It’s a similar case for the draft pool, as I didn’t include the lands.
Duskmourn is here! I was trying to think of something witty to say about the set, but I don’t really have any insights on its implementation of modern horror.
I was going to borrow some copy from the Wizards site, but the site was mostly about how I would have a “more thrilling experience” by pre-ordering boxes of collector boosters, something I decided to skip.
I’m sure it would be a thrilling and horrible experience to look at my bank account afterward, but that’s not the sort of horror I’m looking for.
Instead, let’s talk about some Sealed! Here’s what I ended up building.
View the list on Aetherhub. As a brief note, I’ve included only rares and cards in my colors in the sideboard, but there were in fact more cards than this.
While the rest of the pool was decent, it didn’t offer much in the way of a definitive direction. My two pretty mythic creatures (Niko, Light of Hope and The Wandering Rescuer) did give me direction, though!
As a result, I ended up with a pretty straight forward Blue/White aggro list.
Compared to my last pool, this one was far stronger and offered a definite direction to play.
So how did it actually do?
Better than last time! Still not great. But better!
Match 1 was a set of games against Red/Blue control that I was able just roll over in two quick games. Possessed Goat put in a lot of work, and they were never able to drop a big enough creature to slow my roll of tiny dudes and pump effects.
Match 2 was another 2-0, but a much harder fought one. They were running a Red/Green/Blue delirium deck. Game 1 was a bit of a brawl, but Niko and The Rescuer managed to turn things for me. Game 2 was closer, with them dropping a few Patchwork Beasties, but not managing to get the delirium up quite in time. This allowed me to finally sneak a board in, and pump the goat again for lethal.
And then we get to Match 3.
It might as well be a running bit at this point.
For the first time in the night I experienced actual horror: my round 3 opponent was going to be my friend. Again. He was running blue/black control with splashed red for a few extra creatures.
And just like last time, it did not go well for me. While I managed to take game 1 off of Niko and The Rescuer showing up, game 2 he managed to drop his Unholy Annex/Ritual Chamber for a 6/6 flying demon, after removing some of my early threats. A lack of hard removal combined with being pinged for two each turn while he healed up two meant that I did not last long.
It was finally time for game three.
It was not technically a stomp. I had him down to 4 life. But then Unholy Annex/Ritual Chamber came out again, and even though I removed the 6/6 demon, he just sacked the Annex with Boilerbilges Ripper. He then proceeded to drop Grievous Wound, and turn my “potential possible comeback” life total of 20 into 7 in one turn.
Is there a moral to this story? Yes. Next time he commits to a three color control list, I’m not going to suggest he cuts aggro-fliers and adds the midsize bodies.
Is there a better moral? Well, honestly, I think I probably should have side-boarded in a few more of my slightly cheaper cards after game 2 for game 3.
But overall, how did it go?
Some final thoughts
I was generally excited for Bloomburrow, and I’m looking forward to playing Duskmourn. I’m not a huge fan of the theme, and there aren’t really any cards I want in the set, but it set itself apart mechanically. Rooms feel fantastic, which makes it a shame that we likely won’t see them again for a while after this. Manifest Dread can also be quite exciting.
As a set, I don’t really have any big thoughts or worries, frankly. Historic Brawl is my primary format. I’m sure we’ll have things that shake it up, but it doesn’t look like there’s a Nadu 2.0 just yet.
Some Friends’ Decks
As is tradition, here are the decks of my friends at the event, and their records.
This belonged to the friend who kicked my butt. Someday we won’t get paired in round 3, and I won’t get salty, but that was not today. They cruised to a 3-0 overall, only dropping 1 game.
Finally, we’ve got my other friend. They ended up going 1-1-1 off their midrange Red/Green list.
