With the success of winning Tuesday’s AVR draft I decided to head along for the second one tonight where we managed to have the full 8 players this time.

Opening my first pack there were some strong commons and uncommons, but I grabbed the Desolate Lighthouse. I didn’t really want to build a repeat of my previous deck, but I was then passed a Favorable Winds which I promptly snapped up. Once again I continued taking cards from the first pack with no real direction, just grabbing solid cards in each colour.. except Green. Green was obviously very popular elsewhere, which was fine by me since from my experience so far showed it seems to be the weakest colour in the format, or at least the one requiring most consistency by having to string a load of Soulbonders together.

Pack 2 is where my deck started to come together. Black was seemingly very underplayed, which was great since I opened a Harvester of Souls. Marrow Bats seemed to be under-valued as I was able to grab two (I think the Regen cost puts people off, but I’d even be tempted to splash for it in a mainly non-black pool). Pack 3 I rounded out my deck with a bunch of Red Humans and also got passed a Dark Impostor.

I ended up with a solid Black Red deck, a lot of good cards making it hard to cut down to just 23 spells to go with the 17 lands. Red felt almost like a splash, but seeing as the majority of my creatures at the low end of my curve were Red the colour was an important addition.

Round 1 was against a RW human deck, once again put together by the girl who tried to replicate her standard deck in the last draft! Both games were basically as simple as exchanging blows with creatures but my deck just had more in the long game. 2-0.

Round 2 I played a UW deck. I was expecting fliers and it did not disappoint. Game 1 was very close, but I was able to stabilise the board position on just 4 life and through some clever combat decisions I was able to bring my opponent down from 15 to 0 in two turns. In game 2 my deck flooded me and, seeing no removal to answer it, a life-linking angel made it near-impossible for me to win the damage race. Game 3 my life total fell swiftly once again to the pairing of Moorland Inquisitor and Wingcrafter, backed up by Seraph of Dawn and Angel’s Tomb. But this time I had answers and threats of my own, in the form of Thunderous Wrath and Human Frailty, with Harvester of Souls and Dark Impostor on the ground. Unable to prevent me exiling any creature he played from then on, my opponent scooped. 2-1.

In round 3 I faced a GW deck. In game 1 I was rather “lucky”, just able to answer every single thing my opponent did. Mad Prophet was awesome here, mostly attacking for damage but once looting to find a crucial removal spell meaning my army of 2/2′s got there! Game 2 was unfortunately a disappointing end to the night. My opponent found himself mana-screwed meaning an easy win for me. We did play a third game just for fun when I got to experience the true power of his deck, at which point I drew a constant stream of lands meaning I was unable to answer his threats. 2-0.

So another successful Avacyn Restored draft resulting in a near-perfect record for me! I’m still not really sure how I feel about drafting the set though. Admittedly there were some relatively new players in both drafts so this definitely affects how things go, but I feel a lot of cards were being under-valued; given all the X/1 creatures around Guise of Fire and Ghoulflesh were great for me today and I think these should be higher-ranked picks then they might first appear, and on Tuesday I definitely should not have received so many Mist Ravens!

With regards to my playing I feel this was one of my solid events to date. I think I made just the one play mistake all night, and that was in the third fun game of round 3. I feel as though the actual drafting part of sealed is one of my weaknesses within magic and I would definitely like to focus on improving my ability to draft in the future.
But, in both drafts, once I had my pool I felt like I was able to create much better decks than I have in the past. Ever since the Grand Prix I feel my ability to analyse pools, colours and cards has improved dramatically. I have drafted plenty of times in the past, but always in a much more casual way. It’s not like I’ve had an extreme amount of experience recently, but I definitely think now when I am drafting I treat it and think about it much differently than I used to; almost taking it more seriously in a way.
I’ve also noticed myself thinking more during the course of games. A couple of times tonight I noticed myself thinking over potential plays, attacks, blocks and spells (both mine and the opponents!), but it’s like I was doing all this subconsciously rather than having to actively think about thinking about the game. As one example, at one point I attacked with my Stonewright (amongst other guys) into my opponents Kessig Malcontents (along with another tapped human). The fact that my opponent blocked to trade the creatures told me that it was very likely she did not have a second Malcontents in her hand. Sure, this seems like a very minor example, but the fact I have noticed myself noticing things like this recently suggests to me that I’m definitely developing as a competitive player.
Another play I made was drawing Thunderous Wrath on turn 2. Before, I may have just cast this for its Miracle cost and been done with it. But thinking about it, I decided to keep the expensive spell back in my hand for later and instead I was able to advance my board position by dropping the 2-mana creature in my hand.
There is a lot of additional stuff there I know! But it’s just some notes on a few things that I found interesting so I thought I’d mention them

Tomorrow’s FNM is Innistrad Block Constructed. I’m expecting it to basically be a format packed with creatures; so naturally I’m going to be trying something a little different No idea how it might turn out, but if I can win so much as a single game then I’ll come away happy!

Thanks for reading, @EdGuise88.

With my only experience of Avacyn Restored in sealed so far being at the
Pre-Release, I turned up for my first experience of drafting the set with no real knowledge of the format.

Due to a couple of unreliable people we only had 7 for the draft, including the store owner who joined in the drafting but sat out of the games to avoid anyone else getting byes.

The first pack I opened was pretty awesome, I wanted to take about 5 cards. A lot of strong commons including Cloudshift and Pillar of Flame as well as three solid uncommon cards, one of which was Tandem Lookout. In the end I opted for the bomb rare and took Soul of the Harvest. In the rest of my first round picks I picked up a number of other solid spells across four colours, including a Tandem Lookout and Appetite for Brains.

Pack 2 was significantly weaker, everyone seemed to agree on this. I flushed out my pool with a few Red spells which I was planning to splash at the time, but mainly focused on black. Awesomely, my very last card from pack 2 was Gryff Vanguard. God knows how that managed to go round so many times. Good job it did though…

Pack3 I opened Temporal Mastery; and from there the Blue cards just kept on coming! I was passed no less than three Mist Ravens, as well as grabbing a Vanishment (partly because I like the look of Miracle cards). I also found myself hate-drafting Thunderous Wrath. That was one card I did not want to have to face (also it looks cool with the Miracle frame )

In the end I chose to back up my solid Blue pool with a Black splash rather than Red, the Black removal options I had were more in number and more versatile. Blue brought a lot of flyers and bounce effects. Cutting down to 40 was difficult, I didn’t want to have less than 17 lands as my mana curve had a strong peak at 4.

And so onto the games. Note that once again I elected to draw in every single game, and once again I think this was the right call.

Round 1 I faced a relatively new player. She had only been playing for around a month and it was her first ever draft experience. Her RB deck came out quite aggressively in game 1 as I found myself stalled on 3 lands for some time (after mulligans down to 5 cards to find land in the first place). Fortunately I managed to deter her attackers with a Fettergeist just long enough for me to find more mana. Then from nowhere she found an Archwing Dragon! I got hit with it twice and would have lost the damage race were it not for a well-timed Vanishment.
In game 2 it was my opponent who this time found herself mana screwed, which I felt bad about. My Appetite for Brains ripped the Archwing Dragon from her hand on turn 1 and my flyers did the rest. Its never good to win a game because your opponent is mana screwed and against a new player it feels even worse. Still, after I took the round 2-0 I suggested that we have a look at her pool so I could offer some advice. She actually had a couple of really solid removal spells that she wasn’t playing, such as Bone Splinters and Thunderbolt so those came in. I also offered some playing advice (such as how to best use activated abilities). I just hope I wasn’t giving her too much info all at once!

Round 2 went swiftly. Game 1 my flyers cleared up. In game 2 my opponent bonded a pair of Trusted Forcemage to each other, making them into deadly 5/5′s with a Blessing of Nature! My bounce effects kept them at bay for a while but eventually I just found myself chump blocking each turn as I dug for an answer, only to find land. In game 3 things went drastically the other way again, both my Favorable Winds turned even my Wingcrafter into a serious threat. 2-1 to me.

Round 3 was against a RW human deck. I knew this before beginning since my opponent said that she had tried to draft something similar to her standard deck. Game 1 once again saw me Mulligan to 5, good job I was on the draw! My opponents deck came out rather aggressively, a Lightning Mauler and three Cathedral Sanctifiers. The life-gain I wasn’t worried about. Playing UB Control recently has taught me a lot about your life total being just another resource, and I could deal with that in time. What worried me is that, as I had to mulligan to 5 once again just to find land, I lacked a play until turn 4! I found myself on 6 life rather swiftly but from there I managed to just about stabilise whilst my opponent mana-flooded. Favourable Winds helped my flyers be a match for an opposing Goldnight Redeemer. One thing I must remember is to always check for Soulbonding! Banishing Stroke on one of my creatures (which could have gained Hexproof were I paying attention) almost cost me the game. But my opponent fell just short of lethal damage and I won on the swing-back.
Game 2 was much more relaxed from my point of view. Except for the fact I drew Temporal Mastery on turn 2! My Appetite for Brains once again hit the best target, this time exiling that damn Goldnight Redeemer. I took the round 2-0.

And so going 3-0 overall, I won the draft! I felt happy with my performance, a couple of play errors as usual that I’d like to tighten up on, but the only way to do this is to play more so I’m working on that! Also as a humorous aside I really dislike Temporal Mastery now. 3 times in my opening hand, once drawn as the second card in the turn, and once drawn as the first card but with just one land in play! Very frustrating, heh. Unfortunately there was no prize for winning

With regards to Avacyn Restored itself I feel it was, as expected, a set better when drafted as opposed to playing with sealed pools. I think I drafted fairly loosely right up until pack 3, where the strong blue cards I received were enough to fill out my deck and make it a solid. Were I to draft again I think I’d aim for a similar deck where possible. There seemed to be a lot of competition for Red but very little for Blue. Green can be awesome if you hit the right Soulbond cards but otherwise I think Green is the weakest colour in sealed. With luck I’ll be drafting again on Thursday! Lets hope it goes just as well

Ed

After a weekend of intense magic at the Grand Prix last week I was really looking forward to the Avacyn Restored Pre-Release. And as if that wasn’t enough magic for one day, to top it off a friend had acquired a box of Morningtide so a few of us drafted that in the morning before going to try out the new set. As an aside, it turns out Morningtide is a set I have very little knowledge of, and the draft didn’t go so well for me. I seemed to have games where I either saw all my mana and none of my bombs, or visa-versa. Never mind, the main event was kicking off at 4pm!

Still, at least in the draft I actually had bombs. Opening my sealed pool things did not look good. None of my rares were playable. I did have an Archwing Dragon and Hound of Griselbrand but nothing else in Red to back them up and splashing for double red costs elsewhere would have been difficult. To top it off I had a total of 2 removal spells, a Pillar of Flame and a Death Wind, meaning that with no bombs in the colour, Black was even less playable than Red.

Despite this, I tried to treat my poor pool as a positive thing. It meant I had to think so much more about my deck. Having learned from my GP experience I spent longer than ever before though studying the cards each colour, sorting them by playability and thinking about colour combinations. I feel like I have developed a lot as a competitive player recently and here I feel like my sealed pool analysis was at its all-time peak.

Eventually I settled on Green and Blue. White looked attractive at first but upon closer inspection it didn’t do much except gaining loads of life and then going nowhere with it. Even in GU I had barely enough playable cards, so for once cutting down to a 40 card deck was easy. I considered splashing for a third colour, but my two removal spells were in different colours and White had nothing to contribute. So I decided to go for consistency with a consistently average deck In all fairness, my deck did have a couple of strengths. A pair of Latch Seekers would hopefully be aggressive enough to win me games, and Angelic Armaments could help my other creatures get there. After the first couple of rounds I did eventually decide to add a Swamp which I could hopefully find with my Borderland Ranger in order to be able to add Death Wind into my deck.

Round 1 was okay, I won 2-0 but my deck did nothing special. It was my opponent’s first ever pre-release so after the round I made sure to give her some deck advice and also play advice. She was running a RW deck which had potential, but it seemed from our games that she wasn’t piloting it aggressively enough so I encouraged her to attack more in future.

Round 2 was.. tedious at best. My opponent was playing Esper, seemingly without any mana fixing! His deck of bounce, removal and angels beat the crap into anything I attempted. 0-2.

Round 3 I don’t have much memory of other than a few key moments. I won game 1 quickly as my opponent got mana screwed and I paired up my Tandem Lookout with a Latch Seeker to quickly draw a LOT of cards. I can’t remember if my opponent won the second game or not, but either way the last featured the only Miracles I saw all evening. My opponent played 3 Miracle cards in 2 turns (two for the miracle cost and one just normally from hand) to completely blow out my over-extended board. All my opponent managed to achieve with this though was to temporarily equalise the board state. I recovered quickly and ended the game soon after. 2-1 (or 2-0?).

Round 4 I faced a very aggressive GW deck. At least in games 1 (which I won) and 2. In game 3, a whole load of big guys seemingly came out of nowhere! My deck had no way to compete with Vorstclaw and/or Sigarda, Host of Herons. I lost 1-2.

After all this, round 5 cam eout of nowhere to surprise me and provide some FANTASTIC games! Which was great, since we were both 2-2 and playing to finish in the top half.
I won game 1 solidly enough, but this was finally a match-up where my Soulbond interactions (Trusted Forcemage, mainly) actually had any real relevance. Game 2 was incredibly close. Near the end my opponent chipped away at me with Scalding Devil. I managed to land my Howlgeist and start attacking, and even managed to delay my death for a few turns gaining a little bit of life from Sheltering Word whilst I tried to dig for an answer. But nothing came to my aid. Still, even my opponent complimented me on my solid play throughout that game as I had been on the back foot for the whole time and yet managed to come very close to winning. Game 3 I remember few specifics of but from what I can recall both my Latch Seekers and an Angelic Armaments-equipped Borderland Ranger made an aggressive force that my opponent struggled to compete with. 2-1.

In the end I found myself really pleased with how I did. I went 3-2 overall and I feel as though I played solidly all night. Of course I made a couple of play mistakes (but was aware of these at the time and recovered well from them). I recieved 2 booster packs for my troubles, one of which contained a Griselbrand! I wanted one of him for an EDH deck so I was very happy with that meant that night was not a complete disaster.

On top of this of course there was the Helvault! which got opened just after the start of round 3. Everyone received a dice and 3 of the Angel/Demon tokens. The large Legendary cards were randomly distributed, although being generally useless I wasn’t too fussed about these. I received Sigarda, Host of Herons to begin with, and then with some spares at the end of the event I also got a Gisela, Blade of Goldnight. I managed to trade Sigarda for an oversized Griselbrand just before I opened the actual card from my prize pack, so despite not caring for the large cards having both actually made me feel rather happy

So in hindsight, how do I feel about Avacyn Restored? Well, for sealed play at least it’s not great. Soulbond is nice, but from what I saw in general it seems to have a negligible impact on board states. Also Miracles barely made an appearance, and I heard very little about people seeing/casting them in other games too. I know that “flicker” was a sub-theme mechanic in the set and whilst it has been well executed, I feel this is at the cost of a number of solid removal spells.
Furthermore, a number of people I spoke to had the difficult choice, like me, between a consistent 2-colour deck with barely enough playable cards, or running a risky 3-colour deck to have a solid number of good spells but lacking the ability to fix their mana. Many settled on the 2 colour option.
I feel this set is probably much better to play with when drafted, where you might be able to assemble decks with more solid spells throughout and better synergy between cards. Or perhaps the standard of what can be considered “playable” in this set is just much lower than in other recent sets.

I guess I’ll find out soon enough, a friend is planning to draft Avacyn Restored this coming weekend! So I’ll see how I get on there. I am still yet to find any new toys (cards) that have captured my imagination enough to lead to me brewing myself a new standard deck for FNM, but I’m keeping my eyes open and my hopes up!

If you went to a Pre-Release do let me know how you below, and even if not I’d love to hear your thoughts on any specific cards that stand out and the set as a whole.

Thanks for reading,

Ed.