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Drafting With Nick – Shards of Alara #23

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Thursday, November 27th – Nick continues his Drafting With series, bringing us a triple Shards of Alara draft from the 8-4 queue on Magic Online. Along with Rich, he shares his pick process and draft thoughts with each one, and supplies more detailed analysis in the forums.

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P1P5 – I’m not a fan of Call to Heel so much in Grixis so I took Thoctar to keep the Jund plan as an option.

P2P2 – I was again super tempted to take Necrogenesis here but felt I had to take Charger.
P2P4 – With two Bone Splinters and Mycoloth I want all the Unearth guys I can get even though Marauder is certainly the pick here in most Jund decks.
P2P9 – Obviously I want Necropolis here but Connoisseur is just too good in this deck.

P3P2 – As much as I wanted to take Ascetic here Infest has to be right because my deck is on the slow side.
P3P6 – Need the fixing here.

1 Viscera Dragger
1 Jund Charm
1 Carrion Thrash
1 Death Baron
1 Undead Leotau
2 Corpse Connoisseur
1 Branching Bolt
1 Obelisk of Naya
1 Blightning
1 Skeletal Kathari
1 Mycoloth
2 Dregscape Zombie
2 Bone Splinters
1 Bloodpyre Elemental
1 Resounding Thunder
1 Infest
1 Naturalize
1 Court Archers
1 Volcanic Submersion
1 Rhox Charger
1 Crumbling Necropolis
1 Jund Panorama
1 Savage Lands
7 Swamp
2 Mountain
5 Forest

Sideboard
1 Obelisk of Grixis
1 Mountain
1 Grixis Charm
1 Savage Hunger
1 Puppet Conjurer
1 Hindering Light
1 Deathgreeter
1 Cylian Elf
1 Forest
1 Dreg Reaver
1 Cavern Thoctar
1 Resounding Scream
1 Deft Duelist
1 Island
1 Onyx Goblet
2 Tortoise Formation
1 Esper Panorama
1 Goblin Deathraiders

I ran the Naya Obelisk to help get double Green for Mycoloth on turn 4/5 if I had it and would rather have Black mana early anyway instead of running a Forest and Grixis Obelisk.

Round 1 was against GRW token based. Game 1 he played Dragon Fodder and Jund Battlemage along with Algae Gharial which stalled the game out for a while. I played a bunch of Unearth guys and basically did nothing until I drew a second Green source to cast a 12/12 Mycoloth with two Bone Splinters in hand. My opponent conceded shortly thereafter. Game 2 we both played some guys and he went for Soul’s Might on Iguanar and again conceded when I had the Bolt in response.

Round 2 was one of the most annoying matches of Magic I’ve ever lost. Game 1 I continued my trend of mulliganing to five but at least my hand was Swamp Swamp Forest Viscera Dragger Rhox Charger. I played a land and passed on turn 1 and my opponent somehow clicked through his turn and discarded a land instead of putting it into play. One would think that I would easily win from such a circumstance right? Wrong. I cycled Dragger on turn 2 to get some pressure since I already had Charger slotted for turn 4 arrival. Instead of drawing pressure I literally drew a land every turn for the rest of the game and died to fliers. I believe this would’ve been a blowout if I drew even a single Corpse Connoisseur but obviously that was too much to ask. Game 2 I again mulled and kept a decent hand. I wrecked my opponent with Infest when he failed to keep up Black mana to use his Esper Battlemage to kill my 3/3. Again I drew land after land though and he eventually killed me with a rag-tag band of fliers trash talking the whole way through. The annoying thing about this match was that he spent the entire two minutes during sideboarding trash talking when he failed to play a land on turn 1 and still somehow won the game. Oh well I felt like I drafted really well here and this deck was excellent but again plagued by mulligans and mana issues.

Until tomorrow…

Nick