Gatecrash Drafts, 3/15/13, 3/16/13

Hello everyone!

So in the span of 24 hours, I doubpled the number of Gatecrash drafts I've gotten in. Here's how it went:

Creature -- Bird Mutant

First draft was FNM at Misty Mountain Games. I opened a somewhat lackluster Pack One, and I think I first-picked Cloudfin Raptor. (Aside: Anybody else notice the disproportionately large number of GTC packs that have CFR as the first card in the pack? Weird.) I ended up taking some more Simic, and getting a couple of late-ish good Simic cards put my pretty solidly in the guild of Evolve. I ended up with a pretty good, fairly aggressive deck with two Raptors, an X-1, a Fish Crab, doubple Guildmages, Lizard Drake, Elusive Krasis (whatever it's called). (Another Aside: I love referring to the Simic creatures by their subtypes.) It was basically a bunch of doodz that just crash and smash. Raptor is of course really good, but the Elusive Krasis surpassed my expectations. It blocks early, then grows and gets in for unblockable damage every turn. Great card.

My first two matches weren't that close. Most of the time, if my opponent got off to a rough start, I just ran over him. One opponent had Aurelia in his deck, and we found ourselves racing, and I would have been just dead if he drew her. But he didn't, and I won. The only match that was close was the last one. He had a pretty good GRUUL SMASH deck that had the nuts in game one, but he stumbled just enough in the other two, where early and steady pressure got there.

SMASHHHHHHH

Second draft was the afterdraft at a friend's house. I first-picked Domri Rade and pretty much forced Gruul. Well, turns out, kinda like Rakdos in 3xRTR draft, even a bad Gruul deck is better than most other decks in the format. Again, the first two matches were not close. My opponents stumbled early and I GRUUL SMASHED my way to victory. The last match was a little closer, and similar to the first draft, we went to three games. I made a few minor misplays, such as finally getting to cast Domri Rade with an Ember Beast on board, but forgetting to leave a blocker back to protect him. But I had enough cheap dudes backed up by Massive Raid and Mugging to get there. So finally, I got to keep the sweet planeswalker that I opened. :) Good times.

"I advise you to move into Simic."

Saturday I went to Mox Mania, and I had it in the back of my head to try drafting the only guild I hadn't drafted yet: Orzhov. Well, guess who was looking at me P1P1? The Ghost Council himself. Of course I snap-first-picked him, and forced Orzhov. Well, unlike Gruul and Rakdos, a bad Orzhov deck isn't still a good deck. You gotta have a plan against GRUUL SMASH and Boros. My plan was to hope they don't draw creatures (and I found out later, spoiler alert, Madcap Skills).

Well, Orzhov dried up, but I stubbornly stuck with the Catholic Mob while passing way too much good Simic. I ended up splashing some blue for some playable cards that turned out to be very key in winning games: Hands of Binding, and Call of the Nightwing. The deck was actually very fun to play .. when it didn't get GRUUL SMASH'd. And I did pick up enough Extort to be able to hang pretty well with the less aggressive creature decks. I should have noticed that there weren't any Kingpin Pets going around, though.

Okay, so my first opponent admitted that he had a total of 8 creatures in his deck, so I was able to durdle very well and just grind him out with Extort and whatever other little dorks I picked up. Second match was the good one, against the guy who ended up picking up all the good Simic stuff. It was very close, back & forth. I was able to set up boards where he couldn't really attack profitably, and I was able to plink him for 1-2 every turn via Extort or some other random evasive guy. Then, on my last turn, the board was like this:

Me: 3 life, Basilica Screecher with the lose-3-life Cipher spell encoded on it, and not much else. Him: 4 life, bunch of doodz, one of which enchanted with One Thousand Lashes. I had an extort card in hand. I didn't think I had it, so I swung with the bat, hoping he wouldn't block with his Sprite. Then I saw the play: Play the other Extort guy, extort him to 3. Play another cheap spell, Extort him to 1, pass turn. Crap.

Spoiler Alert: This card is lame.

Last match wasn't that excited. He played Madcap Skills on his 2-drop and I just died. Lame.

Oh yeah, I never saw Obzedat once all day. LAME.

Well, I had a good run Friday night, but my greed got the best of me on Saturday. I did end up with a sweet Obzedat, though. And a Blind Obedience. And I did have lots of fun. So that was good. *nods*

Cool. Well, thanks for reading!