Draft Report: 2/4/2017

Drafting at the Gamma Ray. Looking to recover from an (unblogged) disaster last weekend where I ended up in the *exact* same color pairing as my right-hand seatmate. In a six-person pod. Super embarrassing.

I open absolute junk in P1P1 and veer around a little. I slowly hone in to blue/black, with a pick 4 Cruel Finality and pick 5 shielded aether thief guiding me a little. A late Fen Hauler (the huge improvise black fatty) was nice, as were some playable artifacts.

Pack 2 is a little kinder to me with some good improvise, a Merchant's Dockhand for fantastic long-game value, and a gift of a pick 5 tezzert's ambition. Definitely found the right seat, I feel good about that.

Pack 3 follows that trend!

I fill in my gaps nicely with some defensive two drops, Gearseeker Serpent, and a handful of tricks.


The deck looks to curve out quite nicely indeed

Four one-drop artifacts to help power out my improvise/affinity creatures. I like my defensive slate. Honestly, the only glaring weakness is removal. Unfortunately for a slow, grindy control deck, that is *quite* a problem.

Drafting I definitely found my slot, with a WR then BG feeding me cards to my right. So I definitely found my slot. I just think that the cards weren't *quite* there for me. Unlucky not to get a single Daring Demolition (it's a common people!) but being flanked by black drafters on both sides, well, c'est la vie.

The unfortunate part is that I went 1-2. I raced out to the first game with a stompy 5/5 off Tezzie's Ambition aka Ensoul Artifact. The second I got whittled down to 2 before my beefy creatures stabilized me and I crawled back. Unfortunately it went south after that. Drew's UR energy control was slow but had lots of card advantage and I was never going to be fast enough to punish him for that. Then Chris's BG "Hey, check out this foil Verdurous Gearhulk. Twice!" was going to beat me.

Also, while I had some card advantage (scrying off the watchful automaton, implement of examination) it would have been great to have had one of the five-mana draw threes (Reverse Engineer or Tezzeret's Ambition) Card advantage is pretty key. I played Drew (the only other blue drafter at the table) and he had a sweet U/R energy control deck. He also stole two of my Gearseeker Serpents, the bastard.

MVP

Do not sleep on this little guy. Have enough 1 & 2 artifacts and it's a beater at any point in the game.

Co-MVP

There is just an absurd number of artificers in Aether Revolt, and getting to equip these for free is no joke. The 4/4 hexproof, improvise guy is also an artificer and him stomping around at 5/6 is definitely a good time. For me at least.