Khans Release FNM Report

Hey Fellow Drafters!

It's release day, and I'm just back from my first ever Khans of Tarkir Draft. I can report that this set is as fun to draft as it is to play, and even though I decided to go a different way, the clans are easy to work with.

I had expected that with everybody in at least three colours, signalling was going to be a nightmare, but based on my sample, it didn't look that different. As a matter of fact, there was so much fixing floating around, that switching colours halfway through the draft was easy.

Let's talk a little about strategy. My plan when drafting this set is to choose a clan early, and then draft two colours from that set heavily. That way you'll hopefully end up with a good two colour deck with a splash, and the fixing is there to support it.



I decided early in pack one to go Mardu (that's white, black, red), and drafted black and white heavily. Unfortunately, someone to my left was drafting Abzan (white, black, green), so black and white dried up in pack two, but near the end of pack one it became evident to me that blue was way open. The result, after three packs, was an Esper (remember the Shards of Alara?) deck with a red splash.

In several games this deck did a good imitation of blue fliers, while in others it looked like the black white aggro rush. Weave Fate and Dig Through Time are nice late game pulls to refill your hand, and as I was running eighteen land, I generally got to cast another spell at the same time.

 I also had some good sideboard options. I had three counters, in case I came up against a slow deck full of big things. I had a board wipe, though with the number of creatures in my deck, it wasn't really an option, and I had an erase, which actually came in handy against my opponent who had two Singing Bell Strikes.

Where the deck fell apart, was in the long game against bigger things. I had very little (read: no) removal, and if I couldn't get in in the air, I was quickly looking at a stalled board.

My final record for the evening was 1-2, and each round went to three games which tells me that I was probably on par with the other drafters.

We'll have our first Khans draft for our channel up next Friday, but if you can't wait, I suggest you head to your local card shop and see if there's a pod that needs an eight!


Thanks for reading, and we'll see you this Friday,


-Step.