Another Friday Night in Two Stompas

I'm started to get used to the culture of Magic players. Friday night is always a party until we drop. The booster pack is our booze and pot and it can literally make us drunk. Last Friday Night Magic was no different. Although the number of player fewer than Release Party and Pre-Release Party, but we can still play three pod of draft.

On the first pod, I was drafting a Green Blue monster deck and failed miserably. I guess that playing monster strategy in FRF is not a pretty rewarding experience as there are not many great monster we can ramp into and then just win the game. Most of the good monster are dragons and they're still vulnerable to cheap removal cards like Sandblast and Whisk Away. The only good and efficient monster that I found so far is Temur Sabretooth who has a built-in protection. So I guess in the near future, I won't draft monster cards unless I can pick those cards.

On the second pod, I was drafting a supposedly black and white wheenie but somehow failed to pick enough small drops. The original idea was to put as many creature as possible to the board and deal a massive amount of damage with Harsh Sustenance (originally, this was Wildan's idea that I used). But without enough small drops, I can't do it fast enough. Nevertheless, I still manage to get a 2-1 result so I found it not that disappointing.

This is actually a pretty crazy card that most people overlooked when they were drafting

The third pod is when things get serious. My first pick is Monastery Monster which is not only a great limited bomb but also a great money card as well. I immediately think to pair it up with blue-removal and counter card to make a U/W control deck. The idea was to sit behind Monastery Mentor and just removing every threat presented in the opponent's board while generating Monk tokens with prowess.

However, Wildan told me that I should have play it aggro instead because there were a lot of Hordeling Outburst, Take Up Arms, and War Flare circulating around, and I think he was right because I lost to his aggro deck in the first matchup. But I manage to win the rest of the matchup and ended up winning the team draft. Most importantly, I manage to beat Ebnu, the person I'm so determined to beat since the first time I met him.

All I can say is, blue and white is probably the best color in the FRF draft because of the access to all great cheap removal like Whisk Away and Sandblast. Those card are just to good and paired up with Jeskai's monk can make your opponent wish they are not playing Magic. The other good color is red because there are just too many good aggresive card that even incentivize you to play mono-red, between Mardu Scout, Goblin Heelcutter, and Wild Slash.

Black could be good if they were paired up with those three colors. Green, I think, is the worst of the colors since they don't have enough big efficient creatures in common to be played. They don't have cards like Temur Charger, Alpine Grizzly, Tusked Colossodon, and Wooly Loxodon to be picked anymore.

In between of the draft, I also signed up on Two Stompas league which is a sealed-format tournament held on a full one month where 16 players fighting against each other and finding out who has the most point. Luckily, I managed to get a copy of Soulfire Grandmaster from the sealed pool. Although that card is mostly useless in a deck that is not build around it, it's still a 2/2 body with lifelink on 2 mana which means it is a decent two-drops.

I still don't know what kind of sealed deck that I want to build since all of the colors is just so tempting. I got two Whisperer of the Wilds with Temur Sabretooth and two uncommon dragons which allowed me to go to monster route. However, I also got three aoe-pump spell in the form of Trumpet Blast, War Flare, and Rush of battle which suggested an aggro route. This is pretty confusing. I guess I'll found out what sealed deck I want to play in this week before the league is officially started.