Magic at Critical Hit, Tuesday May 16

Tuesday night on the way home from practice I stopped into Critical Hit for some reason that I can't remember right now. The weekly M:tG booster draft was starting, and they needed one more player to make it even. I haven't drafted in a while, or played much Magic at all, for that matter, but decided to jump in to save Jerod a headache.

I like the new sets. Lots of interesting cards and cool color combinations. I think drafting it is pretty tough, though, especially without having seen the sets, as it's hard to read signals or evaluate card value. I first picked black, for a creature with come into play removal (reduction). I picked two red cards, as there was no black, then the red dried up, black came back a little, and I took black/red, passing good white cards repeatedly. Finally, there was no b or r in my packs, and only white. I started taking white and really regretted passing three of the good white cards I let go while taking sub-optimal black and red. In the second pack, I got passed a raft of black, along with a little white and I even took some random late red. Third pack went about the same, picking up a lot of white, some black, and a red card or two.

Deckbuilding was moderately easy. I had a big problem of not really having any large creatures. This is where the cards I passed early would have come in handy, 3/3 flyers with convoke would have given me a win condition. As it was, all I could really hope to do was rush them a little early, and then keep sneaking in damage with my three and a half tappers.

Round 1: I played Walter, who I don't know too well. He had blue/green/black/red. He used a land-destruction land as a mana-fixer, which I hadn't thought about during the draft. That was certainly useful to see. I won the first game, rushing through damage, getting him real low with a damage redirection spell (which I discovered couldn't target creatures), and finished him off. The second and third games were similar: I came out with small creatures, did five or so points of damage, he stabilized the board, killed my tappers, and finished me off with giant creatures and graft.

Round 2: I played young Tom H., who was running blue/green/white. These games weren't too good. Game one, I couldn't get any black mana and was stuck with 4-5 black cards in my hand most of the game. game two I had the same problem, but with white.

I made several mistakes over the course of the night, fromt the draft to playing, and it really showed me how much of my Magic playing ability I've lost. It was really educational, though, and should be a big help if I draft again soon, which I'm actually hoping to do, online if nothing else.

GG, GL