Sweet Revenge
Just played my third draft. Last night, I got knocked out first round to the nuts travel preparations deck. But if you recall, I pulled a Snapcaster and sold my rares for enough to draft again. I’m happy to say that I just went 3-0 pretty easily with… the nuts travel preparations deck.
Draft Highlights
Pack one is not super spectacular. Bunch of mediocre cards. I’m determined to play aggro, though, and I’d like to cut green and go for GW. So I first pick Avacyn’s Pilgrim. Then, during the rest of the pack I pick up 2 Travel Preparations, a Gatstaf Shepherd, a Midnight Haunting and a Rebuke. Green and White were clearly both open to my right.
I grabbed a bunch of Werewolves after that, when I could and managed to also get a second Haunting and a third Prep. I did not get any Bonds or Smite, so I ended up taking Prey Upon over another decent creature later on. Pack two, my rare was Elite Inquisitor, which I went for. I passed a Naturalize, which I did not want to do, for a Blazing Torch but managed to pick up a Parasalene later. I also had a second pick Elder of Laurels passed to me at some point.
The Deck
- 2 Avacyn’s Pilgrim
- Gatstaf Shepherd
- Villagers of Estwald
- Woodland Sleuth
- Elite Inquisitor
- Slayer of the Wicked
- 2 Grizzled Outcasts
- Hollowhenge Scavenger
- Elder of Laurels
- Hamlet Captain
- Village Bell Ringer
- Chapel Geist
- Lumberknot
- 2 Midnight Haunting
- 3 Travel Preparations
- Rebuke
- Prey Upon
- Silver-Inlaid Dagger
- Blazing Torch
- 9 Forest
- 7 Plains
Relevant sideboard cards: Ranger’s Guile, 2x Spidery Grasp, Moonmist, Spare from Evil, Moment of Heroism
Matches
Round 1 - BU - on the draw
Just to summarize, I easily 2-0’d this guy with a bunch of werewolves. I also got the sweet 2 for 1 with Midnight Haunting against a Vampire Interloper early on.
Round 2 - WR Aggro - on the play
I actually lose the first game on the play when I’m about to stabilize to a double Rally the Peasants on three fliers for exactsies. Brutal.
Games 2 and 3, I spit out way too much power and Preparations my guys up. He doesn’t really have bounce or apparently much removal and so I’m able to steam roll him again. At one point, I had to leave one guy back to prevent a possible blowout from Rally again, but he either didn’t have the card or the mana and I was able to get there. WR has a lot of trouble with the werewolves and the first strike on Elite Inquisitor was pretty big too.
Round 3 - UG GerryT Worlds Special - on the draw
Fresh off of a deck tech for Limited at Worlds, my third round opponent was playing basically the UGr self-mill Skaab combo surprise with multiple Skaabs, Silent Departures, Stitcher’s, a Civilized Scholar, etc.
Game 1 - I board out Lumberknot and Silver-Inlaid Dagger for a Spidery Grasp (he has 2x Stitched Drake and more) and a Ranger’s Guile for his Silent Departure. I come out of the gates pretty fast and take him down with a few travel prep’d werewolves. He stays alive for a while, but he’s on the back foot for most of the game. I think I got him to lethal range by tossing a Blazing Torch at his face EOT.
Game 2 - He starts much faster and gets me down pretty low with a Darkthicket, but I end up turning it around and getting him to where my next swing is basically guaranteed lethal. Except he loots into a one-of Spider Spawning and wins because I can’t break through 8 tokens or block enough on the counter-swing after peeling a… plains.
Game 3 - I open with Gatstaf Shepherd, Midnight Haunting, double Travel Prep and then some other stuff. He manages to stay in it with some mill, trades and a Gnaw to the Bone. However, when he goes for Silent Departure on my second Haunting token to prevent the lethal swing next turn, I play the Ranger’s Guile that I boarded in. GG.
8 packs to me. Finally a good result for me after two pretty mediocre drafts where I felt like my skill didn’t have much to do with it. Of course, my opponents probably felt that way too.
Final Thoughts
I boarded out the Silver-Inlaid Dagger basically every opportunity I had and brought in some kind of pseudo-removal spell. I should have gone with that to begin with. I had a lot of humans, but I was clearly on an aggressive, swarm strategy that didn’t want to put a lot of mana into equipping stuff very often.
Lumberknot was also boarded out a few times. Mostly when I was on the draw and it would be pretty slow. I never drew it in any of the game 1s I played where it might have actually been pretty good due to a high level of attrition and lots of trading with tokens.
