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Drafting With Nick – Shards of Alara #24

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Monday, December 1st – 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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P1P2 – Man that Gargoyle looks awful tempting.
P1P3 – Obelisk is probably an option here.
P1P4 – Dragger is probably right here but I decided I wanted to go all in on artifacts.
P1P9 – Another close pick but I decided Relic probably wins more games.

Wow did I get the hookup in pack two or what?

P3P1 – This one was really close and I wanted to take Bone Splinters.
P3P6 – Another really close one I decided to go with the more consistently castable card since I was basically straight three colors at this point.

2 Tidehollow Strix
1 Relic of Progenitus
1 Vein Drinker
1 Fatestitcher
1 Tidehollow Sculler
1 Sharding Sphinx
2 Tower Gargoyle
3 Glaze Fiend
1 Windwright Mage
1 Courier’s Capsule
1 Tar Fiend
1 Sanctum Gargoyle
2 Cloudheath Drake
1 Kiss of the Amesha
1 Tezzeret the Seeker
1 Oblivion Ring
2 Obelisk of Esper
1 Bant Panorama
1 Crumbling Necropolis
5 Plains
5 Island
5 Swamp

Sideboard
1 Resounding Scream
1 Protomatter Powder
1 Blister Beetle
1 Obelisk of Jund
1 Dispeller’s Capsule
1 Vectis Silencers
2 Metallurgeon
1 Call to Heel
1 Soul’s Might
1 Forest
1 Obelisk of Bant
1 Island
1 Steelclad Serpent
1 Spell Snip
1 Angel’s Herald
1 Etherium Astrolabe
1 Swamp
1 Etherium Sculptor
1 Shore Snapper

I was essentially handed the nuts in this draft and this was by far the best deck I’ve had for a long time. This deck was also very hard to build as can be seen by all of the playables that would normally make the cut in any artifact build.

Round 1 was against a four color build. Game 1 I mulled to 5 and had a pretty good hand. I Scullered his Yoked Plowbeast on turn 2 as his draw was really slow and I didn’t want him to Cycle out of it. Then I played two Tower Gargoyles and before I knew it we were off to game 2. Game 2 was very close and involved me Tar Fiending for two when he had three cards in hand. He pitched two good ones and then untapped and cast Flameblast Dragon to which I had no answer despite having fliers in play. Game 3 I had a very good draw and killed him on turn 6 with fliers and Glaze Fiend.

Round 2 was against Jund. Both games were total blowouts involving Tower Gargoyles and Tezzeret the Seeker. I’d give more details but honestly neither game was close.

I decided to split the finals since it was against a friend and it was already 6am.

Until next time…

Nick