So, FNM... travelling from Barnsley to Sheffield can be quite a pain, and more than once i've done so to find out that nobody else bothered. This is usually on draft night, due to people's dislike for the prize support (i.e. there basically is none). But this week, ahead of the release, i decided to pop down and play some standard since iw as in Sheffield anyway.
Then half the people left, not wanting to play... seemed like a familiar tale. And then Rich suggested we just do a draft! Sweet! I was just about still in 'gimme new stuff' mode, so playing triple NPH was appealing enough for me to stick around.
I drafted one of my favourite archetypes in any format: shit tons of removal. As usual, it worked pretty well, as my shiny new Squadron Hawks can attest to (ooooh shiny!). The format itself is sorely lacking, but it was kinda fun the first time. The infect pinger continues to impress me, but i guess that's no surprise to anyone. Dismember is probably my favourite card of the entire set and i learned just how often it's worth paying 4 life for (tip: almost always). It saved me from a Moltensteel Dragon twice as well as numerous other critters.
Quick plug for Limited Resources: i really think my deckbuilding in limited has improved massively, despite not getting to draft nearly as often as i'd like. I can only assume the gaps are filled in by listening to that show but i haven't gone worse than 2-1 in a live draft for about 2 months. I also started drafting online a bit around Christmas, so the practice definitely helped, but monetary constraints mean I can only do that a couple of times a week at most.
So yeah, i won FNM and was feeling pretty good about the proper release day. Unforunately, timing meant i could only afford to draft once, but, frankly, the prospect of another 3xNPH draft wasn't all that appealing anyway. Especially after losing to a 5x Glistener Elf and Batterskull deck (i'm looking at you, Rich!).
I drafted a U/B control-ish deck with, again, tons of removal. I splashed a single plains for Souleater, which is absolutely worth it, i feel. The only thing remotely resembling a bomb in my deck was Phyrexian Ingester. I only drew it like three times, though, so it was mostly irrelevant. For what it’s worth, I thought it was okay but not exciting, and I’d pass it for Dismember any day.
Match one i'm paired against a guy i've never played before. He seemed to know what he was talking about when helping someone who I assume is his girlfriend and he played pretty solidly. Fortunately i just had the removal for almost every threat he played. Porcelain Legionnaire is awesome, but Grim Affliction isn't impressed. I don't remember much else about our match except to say that I won 2-0.
Match two was against Russell. I don’t really like playing against him because he’s the guy who always had the bad beat story, even if he’s won. “Oh if I could survive two more turns… (insert unrealistic scenario).” Just build a better deck that doesn’t need those two turns?
Anyway, he was playing some kind of bizarre black/white control deck with Norn’s Annex. Yeah, that card is not good in control decks at all. Granted, he had two Shrine of Burning Rage, which killed me from 17 life in game two, but obviously I just paid the life (or the white mana when I was lucky enough to draw a plains in game one) whenever I had a guy who could race it. His deck seemed to have practically zero creatures, so the race was always in my favour, especially given my removal suite. After losing to the Shrines, I was struggling to hold my tilt, and when he went turn 2 Shrine, turn 3 Shrine for the second game in a row, I think I probably sighed… who wouldn’t, though?
Fortunately, I just had too many guys for him to deal with. He got the Shrines up to something like seven and eight counters, but I made him pop them on a golem token and something else. I pretty much crushed him from there, ending the game on 18 life. Vault Skirge was kinda funny sideboard tech, by the way.
Game three I was dreading before it started. Rich had a foil Batterskull (from the same pack as a non-foil copy… yup, really), which was depressing enough. He also had five (there could’ve been more, but I saw five) Glistner Elf. In game three he cast all five of them before I’d manage to untap with a single creature. I was on nine poison counters for about six turns before he finally finished me off. Considering that I never drew my Souleater in all three games and had literally zero artefact removal, I was pretty happy to just lose 2-1.
All-in-all I felt myself longing to play the proper draft format. Enslave was excellent, but I found myself longing for some decent artifact hate. I would’ve gladly splashed for a Revoke Existence to go with the Souleater. I was glad I never played against that stupid Infect overrun though. I’ve still yet to play with or against it and I’m not looking forward to the latter.
No comments:
Post a Comment