Listen, sometimes I’d just rather mash the draft more button than tell you guys about, okay? The Baby Dragon is shifting gears from four-wheel drive to two wheel and is growing increasingly possessive of her toy trucks. The preemptive screech when a classmate comes over to play is effective. And worrisome. So let’s crash in with what I’ve been up to! I’ve been streaming a little less, as I’ve found that trying to talk and play Magic resulted in me doing both poorly. When combined with the Raptor Momma trying to get her C.V. in order to apply for a promotion, the upside of me shouting, “WHERE’S MY LAND DROPS?!” has been limited. On the plus side, I’ve drafted over a dozen times already! I’m recording results on a new tab, the Draft Record. Here you can see my deck layout and my draft. There has been some really fun ones, and some brutal regression to the mean.

My first 7 drafts of Guilds went well, each time hitting 2-1,w ithout even sniffing the finals. There’s been some very interesting moments where I felt like it could have gone either way, but the question of whether or not I’m playing “high-floor/low-ceiling” is one that will have to wait. It’s interesting playing a set with only 5 archetypes. It makes the non-guild pairings just about completely untenable.

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I spent a week in Chicago. That’s one week without a one-year old. The downside was that for four of those days, I literally never left O’Hare airport (staying on the Hilton there) for business meetings that were long but tolerable. Then I spent three days running around with old friends. Again, without a Baby Raptor. Plane flights are for books again! And video games! And movies! (even if Deadpool 2 was inexplicably dubbed to PG-13. We’re on headphones people.) I’ve dribbled out of Core 19 and Kyle hooked me on a new game: Bad North. Let’s discuss.

Bad North is a mashup of tower defense and RTS. As you can see above, waves of zombie-Vikings assault your island. You move around your units to defend them, hopefully utilizing the random-ish terrain to your advantage. In-between assaults, you upgrade your troops. It’s a perfect Switch game as it naturally fits into 5 minute bits. It’s very terse on instructions and game mechanics, so exploring how it works has been a lot of fun for me. It has thar Dark Souls-y feel of being merciless and letting you discover the nuances of the mechanics. The rest of this post will detail my strategic tips, so if you want to avoid “spoilers” just go buy the game and jump in.

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Well our time with M19 has come to an end. I did about a dozen drafts, which is a pretty high count for me. I know the core sets feel generic for people, but  find it a really good way to level up without being overwhelmed by complicated card interactions. Plus two trophies!

Bread & butter can win

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Against my better judgment, I caved to peer pressure and went for the full, four-rounds of magic at Phoenix games instead of my usual ramen/coffee/Gamma Ray day on the town. The case against four-rounds is when you’re sitting at 1-2 (raises hand) you don’t really need a fourth round to drive home that your deck sucks. I get it. I was there for those previous three games too! However, Sam’s plea of “But MOAR MAGIC” carried the day.

Plus it turns out that they have coffee in that part of Cap Hill too. Bonuses all around.

I cracked my packs and then frantically searched for additional packs to open because I had very, very few creatures to speak of. Alarmingly few, even counting the sorceries that churn out Saprolings for you.

This is pretty much the most generic GB deck I think it’s possible to build. I had the removal.

Aaaaaand that was pretty much it! I ran 18 lands because I didn’t have a 23rd playable. And calling some of the spells I put in there “playable” was definitely reaching. But I could cast a few creatures, remove a few of theirs, and then sit at a board stall. And by god that’s what I did. Occasionally they had rude interruptions like “playing a creature with flying” that felt a little unsporting. So this deck limped to 2-2 (after falling to 1-2 first. Called it!) with minimal learnings. Some fun moments include:

Achievement unlocked! Drew made some good points how totally nonsensical the kicker cost is. 10 mana! But why not just say “win the game” instead of this annoying-to-manage formality of eight 2/2 zombies with menace? It just doesn’t seem very interesting. Contrast that to the ubiquitous green Saproling-maker.

This is actually offers an interesting decision between the two modes: two 1/1s for two mana or four 1/1s for six? If you topdeck it on turn four, what do you do? Also, this card is very good, so good that I think any green deck will be happy to run this. I wonder if this means that there won’t be enough fuel for Saproling build-arounds.

I would be remiss if i didn’t mention the sweet rares I opened in colors that I couldn’t even come close to supporting.

Some pretty sweet cards! Too bad that my white was comically thin and my blue not much better. Oh and not a single piece of fixing to be seen. The fun part was that I built my sealed pool without looking at my rares. Then once I have that assembled I flip them over one at a time (usually to the great entertainment of the rest of the table) and curse my mixed fortune. Sweet rares that may make my Brawl deck (more on that to come) isn’t too sad of a story. But still. That 23rd playable would have been nice.