Ixalan Binge Drafting

I had a nice window of opportunity when my wife ran off with our child to get some grandma time in New Jersey. I sat by the window, mournfully looking at the rain beating down while a piano plays in a minor key.

No, I tell a lie. I binged drafted all week. Woooo!

Sometimes you get disconnected

Pack 1 Pick 5

Yeah, I ate my first disconnect on MTGO. That is very... very frustrating. I still cobbled together a deck that was totally lacking in payoffs though had a decent something.

No, I tell a another lie. It went 0-3 and deserved it.

Sometimes you get the wrong signal

http://draftsignals.com/draft/-KvxOfW9nenJ2NHmQeen

Really interesting Pack 2 Pick 1 option! It feels like the first pack had very clear black with some interesting whispers of both white and blue. I had a blue bomb (River's Rebuke is the truth) but very little until a late opt. Thus equipped, I'm ready to choose whatever pack 2 gives me.

 

Great, a choice between a strong blue and a strong white card. THIS ISN'T HELPING. I make the wrong call and get lured by my white. And this isn't just the wrong call because a second air elemental gets passed to me third, I think it's wrong in the abstract. My new rule of thumb for Ixy is that if you're not a clear tribe then you're a control deck. A 4/4 flier is great in that and a scattering of 1/1 tokens without the vampire payoffs is not. I'm learning!

Sometimes you get set up to fail

So a P1p1 Carnage Tyrant is nice, that sort of pays for the draft itself. I ease into merfolk, which was alllllright but I never got the key cards like River Herald's Boon. In hindsight, my seat should have been Green/White (as evidenced by the super late Belligerent Brontodon wheeling around) but I have no idea how to get in there. I think Chris, to my right, took some early white but then moved out.

So I have a merfolk deck that doesn't have the payoffs and go 0-3. I honestly don't know how I could have drafted differently.

Sometimes you totally ignore a signal

Look at this absolute pile of cards.

It's so hideous it's almost endearing isn't it! What happened is that I did not rigorously examine my assumptions. I opened a great rare in Bishop of Rebirth. Note that it is NOT a vampire tribal card, it works with any deck with 3-drops. But I felt like I wanted vampires and got a pick-4 decentish vampire so I committed! I committed too soon! Here's the draft upstream.

Daniel:
Drew:
Phil:
Jed: 

Isn't that horrific? I actually could not have picked worse colors if I tried. It was fairly obvious by pick 7 that I was in the wrong pairing yet I still felt oddly compelled to hold the course. The real irony is that I ended up with 2-1, mostly through lucky matchups and lucky topdecking. That does not mean this was a good deck or that I'm good at magic. But you knew that already!