Feb 15 2010

GP Oakland

dastels @ 10:29 pm

This weekend was Grand Prix Oakland. A GP a quick train ride away. So it was an easy choice to drop by for a while on Saturday.

welcome

I spent most of my time there today catching up with some old friends and picking up some cards I had been looking for.

I did take the time to get a draft in. My first pack had Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle. It seemed good… heavy red is always fun. Splashing black is seldom a bad idea. Well, not too much black goodness was forthcoming but there were some decent blue cards, so i figured red with a blue splash. Pack 2 gave me Hellkite Charger… tasty! With the red I picked from the Zendikar packs, I was solidly in red by the time we got to the pack of Worldwake. The red just kept on coming: 3 Skitter of Lizards, 2 Claws of Valakut, and so on. I ended up with enough good playables (IMO) to build a mono red deck. That played well with Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle, Claws of Valakut, and Spire Barrage. Here’s the list I settled on:

Round one was a fairly solid win for me against a RB deck. In game one I was down to 2 life before my Hellkite Charger came online and commenced the burnanating. Game 2 saw my life total being chipped away 20-18-17-10, at which point my deck took off and dropped him from 20 to 8 in one turn. My opponent quickly did the math, and.. GG.

Round two was against a U deck: Fire against water. He took the first game, while handily took the second. Game three saw me unable to do much other than get hit by his fliers, until he finally did the leathal damage.

One memorable play was dealing the final point of damage by playing a kicked Deathforge Shaman.

11 Creatures is a bit light, and I could have played a Tuktuk Grunts in place of the Zektar Shrine Expedition, although being the only ally I had it was on the pricy side.

In any event, the draft was fun and I was pleased with how well I did given that it was my first Zendikar block draft and my first time seeing Worldwake cards (I couldn’t make it to the prerelease this time, haven’t gotten product yet, and didn’t even look at the spoilers).

Oct 01 2008

Drafting Shards for the first time

dastels @ 12:43 am

The group I draft with at work got together for our usual Monday night draft this week. Pooling what we had gotten over the weekend we were able to do a Shards of Alara draft. It was interesting.

After a couple of 1-2 matches, I pulled two underperformers and added a couple more lands. My third match also went 1-2, but the losses were a lot closer. I got good hands the last game and the deck performed quite well. Flameblast Dragon was the clincher when I had consistent mana to drop him on the earliest turn possible.