Category: magic the gathering

Last night I got a chance to draft some Lorwyn! I’ve been curious about how this format would play in draft ever 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 pre-release, 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 solid. 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 with 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 and 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 pre-release, 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, it has 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. Merfolk arguably have the least interesting play pattern—mostly just 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 archetype, 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.

Here were my key takeaways:

1. The lack of any two-color lands felt quite weird after Avatar and Final Fantasy, though to be fair, Edge also only had one fixer below rare (Command Bridge). In any case, running 3 colors “felt” more risky to me.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.

Deckbuilding and Pool

(To see the full pool, click this link)

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.

But for now, sleep.

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.

How much do I like this card? Well, enough that I made a whole ass video that is pretty much just me simping for Emrakul.

Now, where were we?

Oh. Right. Drafting this new set.

The Draft

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.

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.

Here’s my deck and the rest of the pool.

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.