Nird Drafting: Aggro Keeps Them Honest 12-8-16

A little weekday shenanigans with some Gamma Ray expats at Nird Supercool Web design. Unfortunately, Patrick apparently had some difficulty counting to eight, as nine enthusiastic drafters showed up. Best solution was that we had a Chris/Jed braintrust (CJed; as the portmanteau 'Ched' would be too close to Chad, already taken at the table).

Actually turned out to be a shockingly fun way to draft, constantly discussing and analyzing picks.

Pack 1

  

Very interesting slate of first picks! Pretty good removal, though not great with the density of flicker and main-decking of Fragmentize/Appetite for Unnatural. Whirler Virtuoso is a powerhouse in the right deck but it's not just a gold card, it's a gold card that requires green. Finally the Syndicate Trafficker is a moderately powerful 2 drop. I talk Chris into going with the two drop and we're off.

The rest of the pack is kind of a mess. We score a pick 3 Midnight Oil, which makes it sound like black is open. But then we randomly come across a Kujar Seedsculptor at p4 and p5 Attune with Aether, both premium green commons. Then red flows a little. Very weird.

The good news is that we end pack 1 with 5-7 two-drops (depending on color combinations, can't exactly splash a two drop). So the aggro train is on the tracks!

Pack2

I'm not proud, but I caved and we rare-drafted a Torrential Gearhulk. Can't remember what we passed up for it. But we rapidly feel better when we get passed two Renegade freighters, filling out our curve nightly. We keep bouncing around some combination of R/G/B (Hunt the Weak! Doorbuster! Rip Tiger!)  with, uh, no fixing to speak of. That's probably something we should address soon. Card quality feels high, deck cohesion feels low.

Somehow reversed, P2P1 is lower left this time

Pack3

We get bailed out big time in pack 3. Some decent playables (Snare Thopter and Chief of the Foundry will do solid work) but we also get clutch fixing with another Attune and Wild Wanderer. The game plan is on.

Also backwards. My bad.

The Deck
(playlist here)

Deck construction was pretty entertaining as I try to talk Chris into trying 15 lands only to hilariously mull several times with practice hands. Small n! Small n! After our first match we agreed to swap out a swamp for a Narnam Cobra and it ended up playing very smoothly. The fact is playing Dhund Operative to a Renegade Freighter to a Chief of the Foundry and smashing in with 9 points of damage on turn 4 is going to win a LOT of magic games in a hurry. We generally curved out nicely and put relentless pressure on our opponents. The deck definitely had some clunky moments: my favorite was when we were milking a Midnight Oil on a stalled board state with a red card trapped in our hand and no mountain. Final draw before we have to discard our hand: another two red cards. It was pretty spectacular.

In short, I think Paolo was quite correct: Kaladesh can be quite aggressive. The vehicles and lack of mana-sinks rewards early aggressive play. Sure it's hilarious to try to dink around with Whirler Virtuoso but that provides no defense to a 2-3-4 curve out.

MVP


Yeah, it just wins games especially when you have a two-drop ready to hop in.

MIA

Pretty sure we never saw you. COULD HAVE USED THE MOUNTAIN JERK.

Record 3-0.