A Monday Night Limited Report

By Jon Mason

TimeSpiral Draft Pool

It’s been a while since anyone played Lord of the Rings CCG, and I couldn’t resist entering the Return of the King block sealed event last Saturday at Bishop’s. With a mix of old and new faces, 14 players entered which is not bad for a dead game. I pulled rare Witch King, Eowyn, Merry and Anduril and built a Gondor/Rohan fellowship with Sauron shadow. The games were fast and fun with many play errors and rules mistakes, and I ended up tying on top points, finishing 3rd after SoS and the satisfaction of having defeated the winner, Nigel. Props to Neil Palfreman for organising, and the many out of town guys for travelling down.

Anyhoo, you lot want to read about MtG. We often hear from strong draft players, so I thought to contrast that with how a less successful player approaches the task. I have a reasonable track record at constructed. With drafts my best result to date was third in an 8-man pod, but I think I am on an upward curve. This was the FNM Timespiral draft on 13th October 2006 at Bishop, just one week after the release and before much was known about card evaluation, so a first pick Akroma tempted me out of my constructed mountain stronghold and into the strange world of draft WU(r).

I present my card pool:

Akroma, Angel of Wrath Cavalry Master Foriysian Interceptor Jedit’s Dragoons Plated Pegasus x3 Watcher Sliver Zealot Il-Vec Zhalfirin Commander	Bewilder Cancel Coral Trickster Crookclaw Transmuter x2 Dream Stalker Drifter Il-Dal Errant Ephemeron Eternity Snare Fathom Seer Fledgling Mawcor Sage of Epityr Viscerid Deepwalker
Cyclopean Giant Drudge Reavers Sangrophage Traitor’s Clutch	Two-Headed Sliver Coal Stoker Conflagrate Grapeshot Volcanic Awakening
Aether Web Primal Forcemage Tromp the Domains	Ghostflame Sliver Harmonic Sliver Opaline Sliver
Assembly Worker Chromatic Star Prismatic Lens	Calciform Pools x2 Molten Slagheap Swamp (foil)

My first observation is the panoply of loaded keywords (suspend, flash, morph, storm, flanking, shadow). How will all these interact? Normally I am short of creatures in drafts; I’m unsure how I pulled so many here. It’s good because I like to beatdown, even in blue. Obviously I’m building WUx, so I just need to uncover my best splash.

All the white cards are creatures. Cavalry Master gets cut on principle for having WW cost. Pegasi are so-so, help prolong the game, but maybe this was a spot of uncommon drafting. Four-eyes appropriately performs two nice tricks. The Zealot has evasion and the Commander gives me something to do with excess mana.

The blue spells do not thrill me. Bewilder and Cancel are blah, and the Snare is a bit too slow. The creatures are nice though. The Coral Trickster’s tap effect comes at a sensible cost. The Crookclaw Transmuter would be okay at cost even without the triggered ability. Drifter is more early evasion. Ephemeron is clearly a bomb, and Viscerid Deepwalker could be almost as good. Shame I didn’t get any Clockspinning. Fathom Seer seems nicely costed and helps the curve. Mawcor – mmm pingers. Sage of Epityr fixes my draws. I’m delighted to see that many of my blue common picks are now in Dr Chunk’s top 5.

Green is shallow. Enchantments are generally a liability in draft and Tromp is expensive although the Elf might be useful.

Black has some nice creatures. The giant is efficiently costed and would assist swampwalk if I had it. The skeleton might help stall a while. I don’t like the casting cost or lifeloss from the Zombie and the Clutch is expensive and won’t work on my best creature.

The red. Coal Stoker is a nice fatty, and Conflagrate and Grapeshot could be the sinks it requires. Volcanic Awakening does not really thrill me at any cost especially double red.

Most of the slivers are late picks. I don’t feel like stretching my colours, and have enough creatures in white and blue, but several are good sideboard cards.

And this was the deck that John built…
Creatures (17)
Akroma
Coral Trickster
Crookclaw Transmuter
Dream Stalker
Drifter Il-Dal
Errant Ephemeron
Fathom Seer
Fledgling Mawcor
Foriysian Interceptor
Jedits Dragoons
Opaline Sliver
Plated Pegasus x2
Sage of Epityr
Viscerid Deepwalker
Zealot Il-Vec
Zhalfirin Commander

Spells (3)
Eternity Snare
Grapeshot
Conflagrate

Artifact (2)
Chromatic Star
Prismatic Lens

Land (18)
Calciform Pools x2
Molten Slagheap
Island x7
Mountain x2
Plains x6

What was I thinking here? Own the board with early drops and mid-game suspender guys. The whacking 18 land with 2 accelerators will allow me to ramp up to the unstoppable Akroma FTW. Burn is supposed to reach for the final points of damage. The mana curve is okay, say, 2,4,5,3,3 (counting Ephemeron as 2).

During the games I found out a few things. Akroma is not invulnerable, and everyone else gets 6 chances at a bomb in Timespiral. My burn turned out to be hand clog and given I was never short of mana I think I missed a better build with Cavalry Master and without the red splash. Sudden Death is silly good.

In the matches I didn’t take full notes, so I’m extrapolating from the life totals and scores.

Match 1 against a lad named Alex Jenks went 2-1, so he must have put up more of a fight than I was expecting given his lack of tournament experience. I’m glad to see that I wrote Akroma FTW!

Match 2 was against Xiaocong Wen. These were the shortest 2 games on my sheet, and it looks like I raced to 2-0.

Naturally the final match will feature someone good, and Callum is indeed wily and experienced. I did drop Akroma during one longish game, but he had removal (it might have been flashbacked Gaze of Justice) with efficient fatties like Avatar of Woe. Game 1 he went 20-17-16-15-13-10-9-8-6-5 while I went 20-16-10-0! The second game was much the same. 0-2.

So that was second place, one higher than my previous best. I even enjoyed the process, so mid-leaguers take heart; maybe draft is a discipline worth practicing when at first you don’t succeed.

GOTO FORUM