Still pretty drained from the flight back and baby waking up at godforsaken hours. So I *could* pack away the travel things, start a load of laundry before Momma Raptor returns, work to make the world a better place etc. Or–OR–I could fire up a draft.
Draft
Ooof, this one was tough right from the get-go. Let’s trace the path.
Pack 1 Pick 1
This is a tough call. I went with Llanowar Elves on the theory that every green deck will run it and ramp is very powerful. Sylvan Awakening looks fun and can definitely snatch a win out of nowhere but overall meh. Time of Ice is really solid, great against the tokens and just pushing back. But I think the Llanowar utility is higher?
Snagged a Valduk then a pick 3 Llanowar which got me really excited for green. But then the green dried up pretty badly and I got a second Valduk. So I decided to go all-in on Mr. V. I ended in a weird Jund-y shell with every color feeling dry.
Pack 2 Pick 1
Nothing like a foil to make decisions hard! Both of these are really, really good cards. Rite murdered me a lot in my previous round and the Allosaurus is a great two-way player. This was the big fork in my draft… and I went with black. Interestingly, it looks like they were both the wrong choice!
Available Green: Baloth Gorger, Mammoth Spider, Ancient Animus
Black: Knight of Malice, Drudge Skeleton, Demonic Vigor.
Grosssssss.
I ended up in BR aggro. I don’t… I don’t think this is where you want to be in this set given the near-total lack of tools for aggro in black. Looking back on my draft, I *think* that was supposed to be my “seat”. Someone was in a black control shell upstream of me, hence why I didn’t see any of the good black removal spells. So I tried to cobble together some synergies with the double Valduk. But triple Cabal Evangel is *not* where you want to be in this set.
Learnings
This went 0-3 and went 0-3 in a real hurry. There was some bad luck: I never saw my good spells like Dread Shade or Rite of Belzenlok. There were some self-inflicted wounds: Soul Salvage is a card that a control deck wants to use to gain card advantage. I made a terrible mull decision that I made from frustration. Stop doing that!
My verdict on Valduk: treat it as a RW gold card that’s a build-around “B”. Throwing a Jousting Lance and having a free 3 power hit the battlefield is very real upside. One game I managed to double-enchant/equip Valduk and it was a beating. Of course you are practically begging to be 2-for-1 with any removal, but that’s basically the risk you’re running.
Benalish Dad 