Game(s) Played:
SWAGamers MTG Draft Championship #5 2019
Player(s):
Another year has passed and it is time for the regular boardgamers to dig out their inner Planeswalker to dethrone the defending champion, Sean Lee, and challenge for the 5th annual SWAGamers MTG Draft Championship #5 2019!
Welcome to our 5th annual SWAGamers MTG Championships!
We have something special this year! Happily, Gideon allowed us to use his booster box of the latest War of the Spark set for our MTG Championships this year. With 7 Players in the pod, we decided to go with a draft followed by a 3 round Swiss. Here we go!
It has been a long, long time since some of us last opened a booster pack
The Draft:
Tensions are high as everyone aims to dethrone reigning champion, Sean (leftmost) and secure the cup (middle)
As you can see from my neat piles on the table (very tournament-not-legal), I was consciously ensuring that I drafted in a mana curve and paying attention to BREAD (Bombs, Removal, Evasion, Aggro & Dirt).
Free land for everyone!
My comfortable colours are actually Red and Green so I usually force one of these colours when I draft. Imagine my surprise that when sticking strictly to the BREAD hierarchy, I end up in White, Blue & Black, with a significant portion of my creatures coming from White & Blue, colours notable for expensive, less beefy creatures.
Some of the more interesting cards I drafted
Green felt very open when pack #2 rolled around, but I was already committed to White & Blue, eventually switching over to White & Black halfway through. I should've gone Green however as the Green cards ended up being really good because of Proliferate.
My first picks from all three packs
Deck Building:
From memory, my draft pool at the end of the draft, excluding other colours
So this is what I ended up with. The problem presented to me was that most of my creatures in the 3-4 CMC were in White & Black but Blue represented a majority portion of my pool. I also took too many of the new Planeswalkers, not realizing at the time that none of them could pump back loyalty counters for themselves. In the end, I went Orzhov (Black & White), splashing Blue for Card Draw. There is no real win condition / combo for this deck, it looked more like an attrition deck using flyers to chip away at the opponent with Time Warp and Ravnica at War to reset the board in case things go overwhelmingly against my favour.
The Tournament Begins
As usual, I'm only going to go through my own match-ups as I wasn't really there to observe and provide commentary on the other matches.Round 1: Kun vs Justin
This is Kun's first outing, his TCG experience coming from a lot of Hearthstone
Kun was in Rakdos colours (Black & Red), a combination I don't recall ever playing against so it was a novelty experience for me. My deck did everything I expected it to, my fliers chipping at his life total as he curved out around the 5th/6th turn and was only playing lands. He did take one match as I couldn't find any answers to his Raging Kronch & Turret Ogre. Yes, my deck is so bad it can't deal with medium-sized fatties.
Red Fatty Combo
Round 2: Sean vs Justin
Here's a picture of Moses vs Jason, the most even match-up of the day
I had time to take a picture of another match mainly because Sean handed my "L"s to me tout-suite. Sean was in Boros (Red & White), an unusual choice for him as well because he first picked Feather, the Redeemed (a Boros rare Angel) and forced his colours thereafter. There was just no stopping Sean's onslaught, even after using Ravnica at War (which decimated him) and even Time Warp, it was still not enough to stop him from just rolling over me.
Some of the pieces Sean had
Round 3: Edward vs Justin
My game with Edward went the distance, mainly because of one card and one card only… Vivien's Arkbow. Man was this card super irritating! For the price of one measly card, Edward kept digging for threats and putting them on the battlefield. It was just removing one thing after another until I had no removal left and I only have just the one artifact removal card and it did not appear in either of our matches whilst Edward's luck was just the opposite.
What a bomb
We didn't have time to do a Top 4 so we just used Gideon & Sean's match-up as the final match since they were clearly Top 2 at this point. Unfortunately I was too busy locked up with Edward to spectate their match so a picture will have to do.
Things were heating up over here
Things went back and forth, I didn't play against Gideon today but I understand he was playing with the Amass mechanic whilst Sean was playing the Proliferate mechanic, how apt for a finals match-up. And so our defending champion has fallen, long live the new champion – Gideon!!!
Gideon takes home a Homarid Warrior and leaves his everlasting imprint on the Championship Cup!
And here are the final standings for our SWAGamers MTG Draft Championship #5 2019:
Before we go, here are the player profiles for this year:
We would like to thank Gideon for generously allowing us to crack his War of the Spark box, and also thank you to everyone who participated this year. See you at the next Championships!
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