Friday night we had the Lumbersmiths group together at Jay's house in Allen. Dave actually got a hall pass to come join us, which was a welcome surprise. I was hoping we'd get to play some of our newly-acquired Euro games (there are a lot of them), but someone suggested another Magic Ravnica draft night, so we broke out the second half of Joe's Ravnica boosters and had another booster draft. This time, we had 5 players and played a "star" game. With 5 people around the table, the people to your left and right are your allies. The two sitting across from you are your enemies, and each one of your allies shares 1 common enemy with you. The winner is the first player who has both of his enemies knocked out of the game.
Magic: The Gathering (Ravnica booster draft)
We started the draft with 3 packs each. I had Jay to my left and Brandon to my right. My first pick was a black creature removal card, and my second pick was a black / green combo card. I thought I had my color choices set in the first two picks, but the good black cards dried up very quickly, leaving me with a couple of white options, so I drafted those. By the end of the pack I was strong in green, with some decent cards in white and black. Having played blue / black for our last draft night, I thought I would try white this time, so I started drafting white / green in the second pack. I quickly noticed the white and green cards disappearing, leading me to believe Jay was sharing at least one, maybe both my colors. It turns out I was right. We did the same thing last time, drafting the exact same color combinations. By the end of the third pack, all I was getting passed were blue and red. It was awful.
I wound up with a 40 card deck that used all but 3 of my white & green cards. I had a decent mix of cards, but was very light on flying. I wound up with a few winners in my deck, listed here:
Privileged Position - White / Green Enchantment. Other permanents you control can’t be the targets of spells or abilities your opponents control.
This allowed me to sit on a comfortable set of creatures for a while, since there was very little in the way of enchantment removal.
This was a very nice creature. My biggest by far, and worked well with...
Ursapine - Green Creature. 3/3. Spend 1 green mana (no tap): Target creature gets +1/+1 until end of turn.
The Ursapine allowed me to attack with my Guardian of Vitu-Ghazi (which doesn't tap), and then spend all my green mana to pump him up. I also had an enchantment (Fists of Ironwood) that gave the Guardian the trample ability. It was nice to have a pumpable, trampling, non-tapping attacker.
Crown of Convergence - Artifact. Play with the top card of your library revealed. As long as the top card of your library is a creature card, creatures you control that share a color with that card get +1/+1. GW: Put the top card of your library on the bottom of your library.
This was a nice artifact. Not only did it allow me to gain a +1/+1 occasional bonus to my creatures, but it also allowed me to cycle a card from the top of my library to the bottom if I didn't like it. Late in the game when a land would show up, I needed only to pay GW to see another card. I was hoping to use this card in combat to gain a surprise +1/+1 in the middle of combat, but the opportunity never arose.
Even though Jay and I duplicated colors (again), we both did pretty well. Jay took the first game. He also took the second game, though I was 1 turn away from taking out Dave, which would have ensured me a tie. He finished Joe off one turn before and took the victory for himself. In the final game, Jay had a bad mana draw, and Joe and I (with Jay as a common enemy) took him out quickly. I was able to dispatch Brandon in the final game to secure a solitary victory. Not bad for the two guys drafting green / white.
Brandon had drafted a bit of white & green, so he had some trouble. Dave was the only one to draft a lot of blue, but was never able to mount enough of a creature attack. Joe had a killer deck with the good red cards, but suffered from some un-luck. He did have a great combo with a card that had double-strike (the creature essentially deals damage twice), coupled with a piece of equipment that gave a +4 power, letting that creature deal 10 points of damage a turn! Unfortunately, Brandon zapped the creature right away, which made Joe more than a little pissed. It was a fun night.
Booster draft continues to be my favorite way to play Magic. Half the fun is in the drafting, and it's nice to play with somewhat under-powered decks, rather than finely-tuned elegant decks. Unfortunately, the multi-color cards in Ravnica tend to force a player into playing one of a handful of color combos. blue/black, green/black, green/white or red/white. This means there is a higher percentage chance of someone else drafting the exact same cards as you, which makes the last few cards in a pack almost worthless. But the cards in this set are interesting and balanced. It was another fun night playing Magic.
After three games of Magic, Dave had to take off. I talked the other guys into trying out our first game of Tichu, which everyone really enjoyed. I have some thoughts on the game, but I'll save them for a later post. I apologize for the lack of pictures lately. My camera hasn't made it to the last 2 gaming sessions, but will be with me this weekend when we (hopefully!) start in on our large stack of unplayed Eurogames.