My reasonable BW Vampires deck at the first draft of the year (2017-01-05) apparently abandoned me: three 0-2 losses in a row (against UG Merfolk, the BW Vampires mirror, and BU Pirates). Happy New Year ...
My last 'pure' Ixalan booster draft event on 2017-01-12 went better than the previous time. I again played BW, but this time with a ton of removal. Results: 2-0 win against a BG returning player (after 2 years), 1-2 loss against UG Merfolk, and 2-1 win against a UR beginner. Perhaps not the mots interesting encounters, but at least we're now done with this horrible single set Ixalan format.
The Rivals of Ixalan spoilers and my favorite (this time approximately 6.5 hours) very high quality Limited Set Review: Commons and Uncommons, color by color Limited Set Review, and Limited Archetypes Guide looked reasonably promising, so I did have quite a bit of fun during both 2018-01-13 prerelease events. I lost a lot, but that's not the point. The friendly atmosphere at Demo-Spel, the new cards excitedness, and the always challenging sealed card pool deck building optimization process make the experience more than worthwile.
My first pool lacked a bit of punch, unfortunately clearly indicating a GW semi-Dinosaurs build (whereby my strongest 3 Red cards were not exactly splashable, due to their double mana symbols). I happened to lose all 3 of my matches (partly due to quite a bit of 1-land Mulligans): 0-1 loss against BUr (where my presumed mid-game Cobbled Wings re-equip forgetfulness might have provided the deciding extra point of damage in a later close racing situation), 0-2 loss against RW Dinosaurs, and 0-2 loss against the GW Dinosaurs mirror. In the first match, I witnessed the power of Tetzimoc, Primal Death, which I would happily demonstrate myself during the 2nd event ...
I had a hard time during my 2nd card pool deck construction, because my eventual BRw build didn't contain many 2-drops. However, I played a record 10 hard removal spells + some serious bombs, which would more or less guarantee me the win if I could somehow get to a decent mid-game. I could almost freely splash my strong White removal + Vona, Butcher of Magan, by means of a Forsaken Sanctuary, Stone Quarry, Traveler's Amulet, and a single Plains. Of course, Magic wouldn't be Magic if the mana screw/flood gods wouldn't show their face. This led to an unfortunate 0-2 loss against UW Flyers, but I convincingly won both next rounds (2-0) in a controllish way, against GRW Dinosaurs and BUG Control, respectively. All in all: a pleasant format, which seems to hold a decent promise towards the upcoming draft season !
My Rivals of Ixalan release draft on 2018-01-19 was reasonably OK, despite not being extremely interesting. I drafted a fast low-curve RW deck with tons of removal, resulting in a 2-1 win against BW Vampires, a 0-2 loss against Uw Flyers, and a 2-0 win against a BR beginner. Unfortunately, I didn't open any value cards, so hopefully next time. As a brief remark, I have the impression that 1-toughness aggressive creatures are not so good in this new format, but let's also reassess next time ...
On 2018-01-26, I drafted another reasonable low-curve deck, this time BW (albeit not Vampires). Unfortunately, my 1st round against a BR deck ended in a 1-1 draw (with Zetalpa, Primal Dawn already in my hand way before time was called, but remaining stuck on 7 lands). I lost the 2nd round 0-2 against a very synergistic BW Vampires deck, and won 2-0 against a beginner's GW Dinosaurs deck in round 3. I must say, drafting this format is a lot more fun than its predecessor, but I do find it quite difficult (because many options mostly seem to be open). Coming up next this weekend: the crazy Super Sealed Deck winner-take-all tourney, each using a full 36 boosters box as his/her card pool ...
The 2018-01-28 full booster box (= 36 booster packs) tourney was a bit less crazy than last last time. At least now we got 1.5 hours for deck building, instead of a meagre 0.75 hours last time. My 6 Kitesail Corsair (plus a Warkite Marauder, 5 Swaggering Corsair, a couple of Deadeye Rig-Hauler, 4 Mutiny, and a couple of Buccaneer's Bravado) put me in a URb Pirates deck (splashing for 2 Dire Fleet Neckbreaker, by means of a couple of Evolving Wilds). Despite not liking tribal decks very much, I didn't mind this one. Result: I twice convincingly won 2-0 against UG Merfolk, irrespective of their +1/+1 counter shenanigans. Very unfortunately (because this 6 players event was 'winner-takes-all', i.e. a full booster box as prize money), I lost 1-2 against GR Dinosaurs: first a game win, then a game loss (against suddenly UG Merfolk), and then a game loss against GR Dinosaurs again (despite quickly beating down with 3 Kitesail Corsair, but getting destroyed by a Forerunner of the Empire). Anyway, this time I could actually fully concentrate on deck building + play, so I had a lot of fun !
I actually wanted to recreate the UR Pirates experience at the 2018-02-02 draft, which went reasonably well ... I won 2-1 against UG Merfolk and 2-0 against BUR Control, but the last round BW Vampires deck was just too overwhelming, i.e. 0-2 loss. I also value-drafted the most expensive card of the new set (pack 2 pick 1), which allowed some strong trading towards my singles collection.
2018-02-09: Pirates again ... This time, I drafted a reasonable BR Pirates deck, albeit a bit short on 2-drops, and with a 6 CMC top. During the draft, Black was continually open, and Vampires appeared really open as well, but I didn't make the switch (despite my lefthand neighbour ending up in UR Pirates, thereby cutting me off in pack 2, and actually beating me in round 2). Results: 2-1 win against UW Flyers, aforementioned 0-2 loss against UR Pirates, and an easy 2-0 win against a too crazy 5-color deck. I'm currently staying away from the generally accepted weakest color Green, but who knows what'll happen in the upcoming drafts ... BTW, I'm continually in the Draft League top 8, so I'm getting the best available competition to keep learning (even on Friday nights when my mental battery runs excruciatingly low). Also, trading for my singles collection is going really well, as opposed to previous blocks, so I consider myself a happy camper !
Strangely, I won the 2018-02-16 event with only a 2-1-0 score, i.e. a couple of players tying with only 2 wins in a 6 players draft pod, whereby 2 players prematurely exited the tournament. I played a moderate but low curve RW aggro deck, which apparently led to the following result: a 2-1 win against RG Dinosaurs (my opponent getting mana screwed twice), a 1-2 loss against UW Control (losing the deciding game by the opponent's very last library card, which happened to be an unfortunate bounce spell, which he knew upfront, helping just the remaining needed amount of (evasive) damage to come through), and a 2-1 win against BW Vampires. Rivals of Ixalan happens to be quite an interesting Limited format. Especially the rich drafting portion every time inevitably leads to challenging decisions !
For some unknown reason, any occasional draft experimentation of mine mostly seems to go wrong. This was also the case during the 2018-02-23 event, where payoffs for my 3 Sailor of Means (playing BUw) were clearly missing. This resulted in a 1-2 loss against RW Dinosaurs and a 0-2 loss against GRW Dinosaurs (and a last round 'bye'). Oh well, Magic life goes on ...
I drafted a relatively high curve GRw Dinosaurs deck on 2018-03-02, unfortunately having seen multiple excellent Black cards pass by after I was already relatively solid in the aforementioned colors. Results: 2-0 win against GW Dinosaurs, 2-1 win against UW Flyers, and 0-2 loss against BRw Pirates. Green wasn't so bad after all ...
My risky pack 1 pick 1 Merfolk Mistbinder at the 2018-03-09 FNM draft event actually put me in UGw. I won 2-0 against BW Vampires, I lost 1-2 against BG during called time (which I might have kept to a 1-1 draw, had I not tried to win, since both our life totals were very low), and I lost 0-2 against BW Pirates/Lifegain, wrongly playing lands out of my hand so that my later looter got stuck, plus I also noticed a couple of other rather small playing errors in retrospect. The good thing is: I'm still learning ... !
On 2018-03-16, my pack 1 pick 1 Hadana's Climb / Winged Temple of Orazca put me in UG from the start. Blue/Treasures (+ a couple of Evolving Wilds and a couple of Swamp) allowed me to successfully splash for the otherwise unsplashable Twilight Prophet. Heck, I even included a speculative Lightning Strike. Result: 2-0 win against BW Vampires, 1-2 loss against UGw Merfolk, and 2-1 win against BR Pirates. This was a nice draft to prematurely end my Rivals of Ixalan participation, because I managed trading for the only remaining missing card in my singles collection (after which I inevitably stop building up further trade, at the expense of endangering my Draft League position, which currently is 6th place (on 59); with only 2 weeks to go towards quarterly prize support, I'll hopefully not tumble out of the top 8 ...). This all means I'll resume playing in about a month from now, at the Dominaria prerelease (which also signifies the start of single sets instead of major/minor set blocks). Until then ...
I played 2 Dominaria Sealed Deck prerelease events on 2018-04-21 (at Demo-Spel Leuven, of course), and I had a lot more fun than I anticipated. The new 2-drop creatures don't impress me much, but the rest of the format more than makes up for this. Also, I was reasonably concentrated, and didn't make any obvious playing errors, resulting in zero match losses during both events (although never obtaining 3 wins). As it happened, half my opponents played BG Saprolings, and I barely saw any Red and/or Blue, not even in my own builds, for that matter, where I mostly relied on White, which apparently has been happening in 70% of my prerelease matches to date, historically closely followed by Red (66%) and Green (55%).
I played a lower-than-predicted-by-the-format curve GW deck, strenghtened by 2 Black removal spells. I luckily had 5 minutes left for my 1st round 2nd game against BG to equalize to a 1-1 draw during the very last turn during called time. I won both next rounds (2-1 against BW and BG, respectively), due to my opponents having the usual 'Magic troubles' (i.e. mana flood, mana screw, or not drawing enough creatures) after debatable (non-)mulligan decisions. Well, apart from the 'good curve, less issues' principle (which also allows for quick/explosive wins under time pressure), e.g. 'flashing in' Spore Swarm to defensively boost a Shanna, Sisay's Legacy (yes, right before blockers) was a particularly nice shenanigan to pull off ...
It became very obvious to me that I had to distill some BW concoction out of my 2nd card pool, mainly because of no less than 5(!) bombs: 2 Aryel, Knight of Windgrace, a Josu Vess, Lich Knight, a Evra, Halcyon Witness, and a Urza's Ruinous Blast, plus very decent 3-drops (and 4-drops): 2 D'Avenant Trapper, 2 Drudge Sentinel, 2 Pegasus Courser, 2 Stronghold Confessor, and even an additional couple of flying and lifelink creatures. The only downside was the small amount of spot removal (although very effective), which got me completely stuck against an excellent Mammoth Spider out of my 3rd round opponent's slow but overwhelming Saproling deck (which actually also occured a couple of times during the 1st event), and playing only 3 2-drop creatures. Result: 2-0 wins against a BR and GW deck, respectively (both relying too much on ramping their relatively bad curve decks), and then a 1-1 draw against the aforementioned strong BGu Saproling deck (yes, the Tatyova, Benthic Druid splash), where I luckily won a fast 2nd game during the last 5 minutes to equalize ... All in all, this prerelease provided a really good experience. Non-prerelease players just don't (ever) know what they're missing ! Let's hope the upcoming Booster Draft events will do justice to Magic's 25 years existence equally well ... !!
The 2018-04-27 Dominaria release draft proved to be difficult ... I drafted a bad curve (too many 4-drops) BR deck, but included about 8 hard removal spells (including my White splash). This resulted in a 0-2 loss against 5-color GWbur, a 0-2 loss against BUg, and a 2-0 bye (due to a drop). Oh well.
Because of Super Sealed (i.e. full booster display as card pool) discontinuation (and because of my limited Limited events participation to try and complete my singles collection each quarter), I decided to compete in the 2018-04-28 Sealed Deck tourney. Unfortunately, my card pool seemed to be the most horrible ever: many Green spells, but nearly all removal in Red with just a couple of accompanying creatures. This forced me to play White as well, for some extra removal and low-enough curve creatures representation. Eventually, I played a GRW deck (R and W being 6-card side colors each), with a very crappy mana base: 8/5/4 basic lands. This all resulted in twice a 2-0 win against beginners (playing BGu in round 1 and BW in round 4, respectively), plus twice 0-2 losses against BW and BGW, respectively. Apart from these uninteresting facts, it seems that Black is the most popular Dominaria color, closely followed by both White and Green.
I drafted a very reasonable, but not exceptional, BW(sideboard R splash) deck on 2018-04-29, albeit somewhat short on removal. Apparently, my right neighbour had drafted BRW as well (pehaps after a switch). To my surprise, my left neighbour = brother Kris, whom I defeated 2-0 in round 1, also played the BWr mirror (and therefore had the inferior deck). I then lost 0-2 (very quickly, i.e. at turn 5 and turn 7, if I remember correctly) against an extremely explosive GR deck. During the last round, trailing 0-1 against a strong BG Saproling deck, I made a horrible mistake at some point during the 2nd game in not attacking with 5 creatures against my opponent's single creature when he was on a low life total (thereby giving up one of my creatures, just to provide the devasting final blow the turn thereafter). After this misplay, my opponent quickly stabilized the battlefield (and actually overtook). He couldn't finish me off during called time, though, so the 0-1 score remained.
At last, I was able to draft a 'real' BG Saprolings (including 2 Verdant Force) during the 2nd 2018-04-29 draft (my pack 1 pick 1 being a risky Slimefoot, the Stowaway, which I unfortunately hadn't hate-drafted during the earlier same day draft event). I immediately lost 0-2 against an excruciating mono Red deck (yes, losing twice from an early Champion of the Flame + Frenzied Rage combination). The 2nd round, I won 2-0 against BUR (actually getting lucky during the first game when my opponent decided to take a chance to kill himself via Demonlord Belzenlok, indeed hitting 3 high mana cost cards in a row at a meagre 3 life total. Finally, the 3rd round, I won 2-1 against a slightly weaker GW deck. All in all, I learned from the prerelease and release weekends that the Dominaria (rather 'prince' than 'pauper') format is not so easy to draft, having observed quite some booster pack strength variability and non-trivial opportunities for beneficial splashing.
I drafted a nice BW deck on 2018-05-04 (although not specifically Knights), but it was a bit short on removal. As somewhat expected, I won 2-0 against BG and BUw decks, respectively, but then lost 1-2 against an above average GR Saprolings ramp deck (= my right neighbour, so I simply drafted both most open Black and White colors, resisting the temptation to get into Green). As a side note, I'm getting worried that (with 10 drafts to go until Dominaria 'ends', and barely having opened any value until now) I might be unable to complete my singles collection. Therefore, let's perhaps try to find some more Sealed Deck opportunities, preferably avoiding Competitive events (which have become less fun to me than Regular events, because I don't particularly like the very limited deck building/registration time plus all the hassles at every minor infraction). Hmm, we'll see ...
I drafted a relatively linear (rareless, only 2 hard removal) GWb deck on 2018-05-09, based on some rather smallish Saproling synergies, supported by Song of Freyalise and just 1 Charge, awkwardly splashing for Slimefoot, the Stowaway. This apparently was good enough to win 2-1 against UWb, also to win 2-0 against GR, but losing 0-2 against URb (whereby I couldn't get my opponent lower than 1 life during the 1st game). Not much more to say about this, I'm afraid ...
On 2018-05-11, my reasonable (despite low on removal) RW deck (White being the main color, after my pack 1 pick 1 History of Benalia) performed slightly worse than expected. I lost 1-2 against UW Flyers, then I lost 0-2 against mono Green ramp (getting stuck on 3 lands twice), and finally I won 2-0 against GRu. Luckily, the Super Sealed Deck tourney (i.e. full box card pool) was reinstated, so that I should be fine towards completing my singles collection (or accumulating extra trade, for that matter). Let's see tomorrow ...
I drafted a very healthy GWb deck on 2018-05-18, splashing for Slimefoot, the Stowaway, just being low on removal (which unfortunately appears to have become a common theme the last couple of weeks). Results: 2-0 win against BU, 2-0 win against BW, and 0-2 loss against an extremely strong GR deck (this last opponent having been located across at the draft table). After some fine trading (having finished the Super Dealed deck tourney in 3rd place out of 10 contestants with a 3-1-0 score the previous weekend, yes, all my opponents playing either mono Green or some Green/Black version and me playing Green/White), I almost completed my singles collection, except for both most expensive cards: Karn, Scion of Urza and Teferi, Hero of Dominaria. Therefore, I have decided to toss my Modern Masters 2015 Tarmogoyf (no, not the foil one) into my existing modest last sets trade capacity. If that would conclude my sought-after deal, then I would stop drafting Dominaria (resuming my Magic activities at the July 7 'Core Set 2019' prerelease, in addition to my nowadays monthly long afternoon of 4 times any block/set one-on-one Sealed Deck at my brother's place, obviously against my brother, using up my brother's vast array of unopened boxes/boosters).
Without my remaining Dominaria trade deal in sight, yet, another draft went by on 2018-05-25. After the first 2 troubled booster packs, I got more luck in the 3rd one. I ended up with an uninspiring GR deck instead of being utterly unplayable: some Saprolings, some ramp, some midrange, some (too expensive) removal, some sideboard, no bombs ... well, you get the idea. Result: 0-2 loss against BW Historic, 2-0 win against UW Flyers, and 0-2 loss against UW Wizards.
My 2018-06-01 draft went slightly wrong, getting only a single 2-drop creature plus clumsy removal within my eventual RW deck. In addition, I lost 1-2 against BGRW (partly due to a stupid mistake, giving away the very 1st game), I lost 1-2 against BW (missing an important 'historic' trigger, again during the 1st game), and finally I won 2-1 against a BGW beginner (actually getting mana screwed in the 1st game). Up till now, my Dominaria drafts always resulted in 2-1-0 or 1-2-0, however always getting the latter score when playing Red. Superstition might suggest to perhaps simply keep my hands off that color, but we'll see about that ...
I drafted a very nice BW deck on 2018-06-08, but unfortunately I ran into an even stronger deck during the last round. Results: 2-0 win against BG, 2-0 win against the BW mirror, and 0-2 loss against UW Flyers. As a side remark: I still haven't drafted Blue ...
2018-06-15: a difficult 6-player pod draft ... Unfortunately, Red was open, and I kept switching back and forth between Black and White as secondary color options. Without reasonable splash possibility (perhaps I should have valued an early Skittering Surveyor higher than a Serra Angel), I ended up with an inferior (flat curve) BR deck. My prophetic results: 0-1 loss against BW, 2-1 win against UR, and 1-2 loss against URw (multiple times also due to my lack of mana flood insurance).
My uninspiring 2018-06-27 BW deck resulted in an even less inspiring result: a 1st round bye, a 0-2 loss against the BW mirror (in fact, my lefthand neighbour had a considerably stronger deck than me), and a 1-2 loss against GW. I later learned that my righthand neighbour also drafted Black, which partly explains the trainwreck. Oh, well ...
I was quite happy with my 2018-06-29 good-curve BWr draft deck, but the Red color curse kept haunting me, again resulting in an overall 1-2-0 loss ... I lost the 1st round 0-1 against a slow but unstoppable BW Helm of the Host deck , I won the 2nd round 2-0 against an inferior BU deck, and I lost the 3rd round 0-2 against a BGuw Saproling deck (actually splashing for Teferi, Hero of Dominaria). This was my last Dominaria draft, unfortunately never having turned up in Blue ...