Chris talked me into letting him back into the copilot seat after our less-than-impressive previous outing. First order of business: a new name to signify the fresh karmic start. Benalish Daddies. Sheer genius, should’ve thought of that decades ago frankly.

Draft

http://magicprotools.com/draft/show?id=rTPY2tepuDQAiKRr4nfojmMnzOk

Honestly, the draft was very straightforward. A pick-four Slippery Scoundrel, pick-five Forerunner of the Heralds were pretty clear signals that UG were our colors, and a pick-ten Sivergill Adept meant we were the only merfolk at the table. A high variance strategy but when it’s your seat, it’s your seat.

In pack two, we get a little lucky and get some good tribal payouts. Deeproot Elite is a pretty real card that pays out having a bunch of scheming 1-2 drops running around. Obviously getting two in one pack is… quite lucky indeed.

Pack three brought us le piece de la resistance: Deeproot Waters. Yes that borderline unplayable uncommon does indeed have a home and this is it! Not the spoil too soon, but double-triggers off the Deeproot Elite that has a beautiful home on a hexproof body is incredible. Note how we confidentially, perhaps too confidentially, let it wheel to grab it at P3p11.

Deck

14 merfolk and a boatload of cantrips (Aggressive Urge, Silvergill Adept, Crashing Tide, Riverwise Augur, etc.). The only question that I still have is whether or not this is a 15 land deck, or 16. Chris talked some prudence into me and we went with 16, maybe going to 15 land when on the play (which we never did). But man, only two four-drops?

Gameplay

First, let me apologize for the constant giggling from me and Chris. I don’t think I’ve ever, ever played a draft deck that felt this broken. We had some bad luck (several mull to 5s!) but also some great luck with perfect curves of Deeproot Elite into Deeproot Waters into a turn-5 8/8 hexproof token! There was an 12/11 Forerunner! Three +1/+1 counters off a single Jade Bearer! The board state would get so completely out of hand so quickly, I was grateful that MTGO would stack my triggers for me as I would have forgotten… a lot of them. We definitely made a few mistakes: I mashed F6 through a key turn and I shouldn’t have let Chris talk me into NOT using a combat trick that could have resulted in a four-for-one. But this deck was a 3-0/6-0 buzzsaw for sure.

The biggest lesson that I learned is that you should always mulligan more aggressively the more aggro your deck is. That we still had fierce 5-card hand starts is a good lesson. I’m such a controlling player by nature, I find it really hard to give up the card advantage of a mulligan. But aggro decks often “lose” with cards still in hand. By “lose” I mean they’ve let the opponent stabilize and all they can hope to draw is another 2-drop or maybe a combat trick. The game is still going to go on for another four, five turns–heck their life total might still be at 20–but aggro deck’s win expectancy has plummeted to single digits. If that’s how your deck runs, then the downside of being down a card is greatly mitigated and you should go hunting for your dream opening.

Now a screenshot of something I’ve ever seen before. Wooooooo!