Last Friday Pauperwave organised their usual Christmas Chaos Draft and me and my brother joined it as a team to spend a nice evening playing some Magic.
Each player got three boosters from all different sets to draft from. This was a team event but the teams were not playing together: they only had the possibility to use the pool from both the players to build the deck and their points will be summed in the rankings.
My draft pod gave me the feeling of having worse boosters than the other pods (we were 40 players and so we had 5 different pods) and so I wasn’t able to draft cards that were too great. We decided to have my brother (that was in a different pod with better boosters) have the best deck possible by creating for him an Azorius Control deck, while I built a Selesnya (pseudo) Landfall with the remaining cards.
You can click here to see my deck.
We started playing after the announcement that we will be going to play four different rounds.
Match 1 vs Dimir
Game 1
I have a fast start with my creatures while he is quickly left behind without doing much for many turns. This gives me the upper hand and lets me close the game with my flyers when he starts to bring down some creatures.
Game 2
This was another really fast game as he wasn’t able to find black mana and so I quickly won on the sixth turn of the game by simply hitting with my creatures.
1 win – 0 losses
Match 2 vs Boros Heroic
Game 1
My opponent was able to draft a really powerful deck that really resembled a functioning Heroic deck with cards like Seeker of the Way and Tenth District Legionnaire.
I try to set up a Poison race with Fynn but I’m only able to bring him up to 8 counters before he is able to win the game.
Game 2
He has a slower start but also my race isn’t as menacing.and he seals the game when he drops a Mirror Entity. I’m not able to find the removal I need from my deck and he easily wins the game.
1 win – 1 loss
Match 3 vs Orzhov Unearth
Game 1
I start with a Thoughtseize that slows me down by removing one of my early drops that will help me to manipulate the top of my deck. This slows me down enough and let him fill his board, going wide and hitting me various times, winning.
Game 2
I have a nice start by playing Imperiosaur on curve with Linebreaker Baloth. He is playing a lot of small creatures that aren’t able to block the Baloth and so I’m able to use his Enlist’s ability to hit for 9 each time thanks to the Dinosaur. He doesn’t find removals to stop me and I win the game.
Game 3
I mulligan down to five and luckily he doesn’t have Thoughtseize to stop me on the first turn. Still this isn’t enough and with so few cards I’m not able to build a powerful board quick enough and he wins the game before I’m able to put up any kind of resistance.
1 win – 2 losses
Match 4 vs Simic Ramp
Game 1
My opponent spends his first turns ramping and so I’m able to set up a board with Canyon Jerboa, dropping lands to pump up my board and dealing enough damage in the early turns. He is able to play a big creature but thanks to the number of mines, I’m able to hit lethally by going wide.
Game 2
I have a slower start while he is able to play a Kazandu Stomper and makes it unblockable. This really puts me on a quick race that I’m not able to stop due to almost not having removals in my deck. I lost the game.
Game 3
Again I’m able to start with the Jerboa and this gives me enough power to hit him really hard before he is able to play his creatures, also because he has a quite slow start that leaves him open for quite some turns. When he finally plays creatures to stop me, I remove one with Buy Your Silence and I hit for the win with my swarm of little one powered up by the Jerboa.
2 wins – 2 losses
With these results and my brothers also going 2-2 we placed 9th of the twenty teams.
Chaos Draft is surely a fun experience and the general atmosphere was also quite nice (apart from a few players that didn’t understand at all the type of event and surely were misbehaving). I hope we will have other events like this in the future!
Raven の Nest 