Final draft of the season, 9-2-17

Given the new birth of my child, I feel confident that this is my final draft of Hour of Devastation. Overall a really great set, thoroughly enjoyed it. Let's see if I can go out with a bang!

Cheer me on Helen!

http://draftsignals.com/draft/-Kt4usbMtebIY1v26KLl

Pack 1

Pick 1

   
Not a bad first pack, but no clear bomb. Ambuscade is obviously great, but I have found green hilariously overdrafted. I take the Grind // Dust as I think it has pretty good upside and the floor is merely a 6-mana two for one, which isn't that bad. I don't love taking 'gold' cards first but the options weren't so inspiring to talk me out of it.

Pick 4

Pick 2 was an uncontested Desert's Hold and Pick 3 was a pretty easy Lethal Sting. In hindsight, the fact that there isn't a single white card in the pack isn't a good sign but at the time didn't look alarming.


  

Oy, what a pile of not-great cards. I take the Defeat though a case can be made for the desert.

Pick 6

   

Uggggh, what a late Bloodwater Entity! This makes me think that blue/red was wide open but this feels dangerously late to completely switch out of two colors into two different colors. If I was, say red/white, then I think I would have done so.

I grit my teeth and grind through the draft sticking to black/white zombies/exert/-1 counters. I think there was pretty clearly another BW zombies drafter at the table given the near total lack of bread and butter

Round 1

Round 2

Round 3

I finish 1-2, which is about where I think this deck belonged. The sweet UW fliers deck in round 2 was--in fact--quite sweet. I had no very reliable way to go around or through the 0/4 walls that he would throw up. The ramp deck in round 3 was more of an even fight, I think I actually had a pretty bad misplay where I killed his 4/4 flier instead of his 4/4 vigilance. So I definitely threw some value away.

Hour of Devastation was a great format. There were plausible archetypes all over the place, from 4-color ramp to agro to a variety of synergy nonsense (UB cycling, UR spells, BW zombies etc.) The format was definitely defined by four toughness creatures

 

Any aggressive plan had to come up with a system to punch through these jerks. Note how they also double as win-conditions. I think these were the defining creatures of the format and everything else had to react to the decks they enabled.