Let’s talk Khans! Ran down to Gamma Ray Games and the draft was full. But fortunately enough laggards showed up where we went into two draft pods of 6. Juuust in case it wasn’t bonkers enough. I was in the pod that had the newbies. How newbie? Well let me put it this way: one of my draftmates claimed to have "hatedrafted" the following:

Ooooooookay. So this wasn't the strongest competition in the world. Thus blessed with the greatest of advantages (weak opposition) and armed with ~5 hours of Limited Resources but little else, off I go!

 

First Pack

 

(sorry about the crap focus, not sure what happened here) Murderous Cut? No question. That is some premium removal my friends. A second removal falls to me and now I’m focusing on white/black pretty hard (probably too soon. I *always* do that). A passed Treasure Cruise interests me in blue a little but I don’t see a lot of followup. Both black and red look pretty open at this point.

Second Pack

The Scavanger is impossible for me to resist, though I did pass on a rare filter land to take it (b/u) I take some mana fixing but I’m getting alarmed by the amount of green making its way around. Over and over. This was where I should have switched to green. It was really egregious how open it was. My back-half of this draft is almost useless and there was good stuff there.

 

Third Pack

 

Pretty pleased to see Rush of Battle but once again my Mardu colors dry up early. Weaksauce options finish out the pack.

So, for the umpteenth time in a row, I overcommitted to a plan and stuck with it. Final Deck was super vanilla: 17 creatures, 6 spells, 17 land. Also not so great was that I thought I was in black/white, but I was really in black/red with a white splash. Whoops.

Creatures: (1) Firehoof Cavalry, (2) Leaping Master x3, Mardu Skullhunter x2, Valley Dasher, Chief of the Scale, Horde Ambusher, Gurmag Swiftwing, (3) Mardu Hordechief (4) Summit Prowler, Bellowing Saddlemate, (5) Krumar Bond Kin, Canyon Lurkers, (6) Sultai Scavanger

Spells: Rush of Battle, Utter End, Dead Drop, Murderous Cut, Throttle, Mardu Charm

Land: 6 Mountain, 4 swamp, 3 Plains, 2 Bloodfell Caves (R/B), 1 Wind-Scarred Crag (R/W), 1 Scoured Barrens (W/B)

This deck reeked of 2-1 to me. I knew it was going to function (reasonable mana curve, solid mana fixing) and I wouldn’t have cards stranded in my hand. But the board power seems lacking. A few too many 2 drops, not enough scary morphs (only two), and great removal but no good overruns besides a single Rush of Battle. It’ll crush fools who draft poorly but probably lose to whoever drafted all those good green cards that I repeatedly passed on.

Round 1

First match was a mirror match against a fellow Mardu deck. The oddly part is that he was on my left so we spent a lot of time fighting. Very similar cards but I hit my curve and he doesn’t and I win very handily. The second game he stalled at four mana and I stuck my 5/3 morph and that also ended in a hurry.

Round 2

Second game was my right hand draft mate. And he was ALSO in Mardu! Jesus Christ people, get your act together. He landed his 3/3 Flier, then I did, but my removal trumped his non-removal and that was game. The second game was a lot dicier. I kept a 5 lander with only a single morph and a two drop (lacking the right mana) for defense. I am under a ton of pressure and no defenses and I keep flooding mana. I’m whittled down to 7 but eventually stabilize with my 1/2 first striking bat of all things to stop those dumb 1/1 deathtouching. I stick a pair of morphs and then force a double sacrifice with Dead Drop. Now with the time for my 5/2 and 5/3 vanilla morphed creatures I swing him down to 3, then win.
 vs

Ha!

Round 3

Alright, I’m 2-0! Can I break the prophecy? I draw a perfect PERFECT curve out: Leaping Master, Hordechief x2 etc. Suddenly I have 6 creatures on the board facing three walls. Kaboom!

He was able to look at my hand with Dragon Eye Savants, so it wasn’t a blowout, butI gained 18 life and put him down to 4. His creatures were too little, too late and I won at 38 life. Game two? Well the opposite. He missed his land drops on turn three and four and with me swinging reliably for 4-5 damage a turn it was over swiftly.

So three 2-0 wins. I can safely say that this deck way overperformed. I think the final deck especially would have rocked me over the long run. Enough early defenses to slow me down and eventully keep me out of answers. But hey, win the games you should win!

MVPs

Since the game recaps are pretty dull, here are my MVPs

Not a surprise but this guy did an astounding amount of work for me. 2/3 is a great power level in this set to fearlessly attack into morphs and tokens are just dandy too.

Rapidly became my favorite two-drop. I needed just a few more one drops to reliably drop him on curve but playing him on turn 3 rarely felt terrible. Also some free card advantage!

 

Both vanilla morphs punched well above their weight. Maybe that's just normal morphs but it felt great in my deck.

 

Also utterly fantastic. Crippling a key blocker to allow another big swing of my frisky 2/2s without using any mana at all. Yes please!

 

Lessons

1) Try to draft around an opposite pairing and then work to fill in the side color to "fit" a clan. For example, if I stayed heavy in black/red, only Mardu (with white) would fit a three color wedge. Whereas if I'm in black/white both Mardu and Azban (w/ green) would fit.

2) Corollary: the opposite color dual lands are more valuable than friendly dual lands for the same reason.

3) Don't panic about the low end of the curve if you have sufficient morphs. Morphs really define the set: expect a steady stream of 2/2s in all games.

4) There's less removal but the removal that exists is pretty damn good.