Tourny Report from Boldo

I think the Mercadean Masques, Nemesis, and Prophecy draft format is the best format yet. If only it included Visions then the set would be complete. I of course am just your regular duffer at this Magic thing but I am right here. With Ice Age the format was too boring with too few cards breaking the stalemate, Tempest was very fast with only a few good colors and no variation, Saga had too few creatures and too many just broken cards, Mirage was very good but the colors were a bit unbalanced. Masques is perfect.

This week I played a draft tournament with nine other players including many good locals like Mike Ruff, Steve McCarthy, Cameron Miller, Neal Calcote, and Ray Placious. In my last three drafts I have done fairly well with different decks. I have played a Black Mercenary deck with lots of Spiteful Bullies, a blue White little creature control deck with coastal Piracy and Rising Water, and a land kill deck. This week I started out with a Crackdown and proceeded to draft a White, Blue, Red deck full of pumpable creatures and small creature removal. Then I had a few noble purpose, Rhystic deluge, and a flowstone armor. It was a great fun deck to play and completely different than my other decks. At this same draft there was also a blue control deck, a person with 8 Land kill cards, 2 small creature speed decks, a flying deck in white and blue, and a Jeweled Spirit (which is the most broken card in the set).

In match one I play my personal nemesis Jeff Aaronson. He builds these cool interesting decks of cards no one else wants and they just work well together. His set of mercenaries, black removal, and rebels was very tough. Soul strings, and Henge of Ramos let him play more 2 casting cost spells than most wanted. Unlike usual I managed to pull out a victory and Jeff went on to play three finalists only to not make the finals.

In match two I play Cameron Miller who has a Red Blue control deck with lots of evasion but no enchantment removal. Crackdown just wrecked him game one as his big fliers get to attack only once and then Fault Riders were just too big. In game too I forget to pay 2 to make the Ribbon snakes unable to block my flies so I wait and get beat down. Game 3 is all Rhystic Deluge and Island top decking. As I shut down the his fliers and beat him with my Cave Sense Fault rider and Outrigger.

In match three I play Greg La Forest who built a real nice deck around the Jeweled Spirit, Kor Haven and every green or white searcher he could find. What his deck lacked was the Law and Light bringers and though undefeated at this moment his lack of removal was going to hurt him. He could get a nice group of weenies and then thin his deck to the spirit but if the spirit was not enough he was done. I had a few fliers of my own and was able to get noble purpose down to block the spirit so I could force him to sack land. Then I just got a swarm or creatures and a Rhystic deluge to win. In the other game he pushed me with a bunch of weenies before I found a fault rider and a turned the game around.

As usual this draft produced a few different but interesting deck types. The best part about this format is that from the start you can start building a deck and then wait for it to come together. With Rebels, mercenaries, green beef, blue flies, and red pumpers there are a lot of options from land kill to life gain which can work. every color has a type of removal and every color has a problem but that makes this set so fun. It was possible to take 3 Kris mages, 2 Arc Mages, a Warmonger, and 2 shock troops as I saw all of these but passed some even though I was playing red. There were also at least 2 nesting wurms going around and a few silverglade elementals so there were a lot of choices for this draft and that is what makes this the best set ever.