FNM Paper Draft Report - May 15, 2015

Something I've been hoping for for a while now finally happened, and I think it's all the better for having happened later in the drafting process. I opened a Sarkan Unbroken. I've wanted to draft around him in Dragons since I saw him, but I think if I'd had him pack one, he would have likely skewed my draft in an unfavourable direction. As it stands, I was already solidly U/G when I opened him, and picking up a couple of pieces of fixing was easy.

The main deck was actually built around an entirely different rare, obscuring aether. It came to me midway through the first pack when I'd already chosen several blue morphs, and I decided to go all in.

There are a good many playable morphs in green, and adding the chance of having a blue one, my opponent never knew what I was going to flip up. On top of that, I always seemed to have something to do with my mana. I even got to use Obscuring Aether as a surprise blocker in one game, because my opponent forgot about it.

The draft was kind to me in other ways. Sometimes you're right in

the right colours that noone else at the table is drafting. In this case, no one was in blue/green. I got passed Yasova Dragonclaw, and Shorecrasher Elemental, both of which made fine additions to the deck. I've played with Yasova before, and the fact that you can repeatably steal one of their better creatures is a great boon.

I'd never played with Shorecrasher Elemental before, but  I was pretty sure it would be a bomb. It's not quite an Aetherling, but it does a good impression of one, and it worked super well in my morph deck.

The real star of my deck was a bit unexpected. I had two Salt Road Ambushers, and they worked with the Obscuring Aether quite well. The fact that I got to put my morphs down a turn early, and then when I started flipping them up, they got two extra counters, meant I was well ahead of the other guy. 

One more auto-include was the Battlefront Krushok. With megamorph putting counters on all my creatures, the krushok made it impossible for my opponent to double block. Throw in a pair of Whisperer of the Wilds, and I ended up dropping a whisperer on turn two, two morphs on turn three, flipping up Ambushers by turn four, and turn five either dropping a Krushok or flipping up another morph, I had made an overwhelming board state before my opponent could do much to stop me.

Now, a word on Sarkhan Unbroken. He's a fine planeswalker, even without his ultimate ability. Most of the time I cast him, he ended up reading "Put a dragon into play, then next turn put another dragon into play", which is fine for five mana. The real advantage of any planeswalker is making your opponent nervous. Twice I got to create a dragon and then just let Sarkhan die, which was the equivalent of gaining three to seven life. It was good, but I wouldn't have tried too hard to include him if the deck hadn't supported him so well already.

Here's a look at the whole deck.

In the end I went 3-1, which was perfectly acceptable considering I lost in the finals to a red/black deck, and even that was in three games. Another fun week of drafting behind me, I can't wait to see what next week brings.

Thanks for reading,

-Step.