Draft

In a possibly ominous sign of things to come, lil Chandra did not nap according to daycare. She “rolled around on her mat and then stared at me, silently” is the full report. I know that youth is wasted on the young, but what would you give for a mandatory 2 hour nap every afternoon? That would be the greatest.

Draft Log

Early Picks

P1p6: Witch’s Cottage vs. Silverflame Squire. I should have taken the land here
P1p8: Flutterfox vs. Cauldron’s Gift. The gift isn’t that good, and this was my chance to get into BW.
P1p10: again with the Fluttering Foxes.

Finished pack 1 firmly in black, feeling a little bad with playable black knights going around. I could go into anything. Unfortunately, I never really leave black.

Self-Assessment

Well that was weird. Great black removal but black didn’t feel… open? Someone was in food upstream of me. Should have been BW

Deck

We are slow! I’m not wild about the lack of card draw, but two reaves and two scalding cauldrons might be enough to put me on the draw. Or at least be not unhappy on the draw unless I’m facing an aggro deck.

Results

• Round 1 vs. GW: Mulled to 6 and oppo opened with a Once upon a Time for immediate card advantage. Weird deck with some mill, some Gingerbrute and a Bant-y mana base. Oppo then saved up all their adventures to draw 4 cards in one turn off an Innkeeper that they top-decked. Oof. The board hilariously grew out of control but without any really good attacks, Syr Konrad just milled them out pretty safely. Game 2 they got out their Innkeeper pretty early, wiped my Cauldron, and I felt bad. Fortunately Memory Theft got them on a 2:1. I started flooding and can’t recover. In game 3 I forgot that Flaxen Intruder could wipe out my Stonecoil Serpent, which was a critical oversight (especially since I could have easily killed it with the Sundering Stroke) Eventually I get overwhelmed by the innkeeper’s card advantage.

• Round 2 vs. BG: I won’t lie: Lucky Clover into Fertile Footsteps (go get a land) for double land ramp felt really bad. I don’t really have much in the way of answers for 7/7 giants. The second one oppo got off to a slow start and I had an ‘aggro’ start with removal to back it up. Game 3 I picked off a Savvy Hunter with Specter’s Shriek and Syr Konrad joined the party. Oppo stabilized with a Lovestruck Beast, but Konrad dealt four damage on his way out the door and that was that.
• Round 3 vs. BR: Iffy keep, with no early action. Facing a fast start, I could quite get there.

Learnings

You just can’t get away with “stuff” in this format. I had some knights, some sacrifice, some removal, but no overall plan. Ignoring the white signals weakened the deck.

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