I realize I haven’t posted in a couple weeks, though I’ll call the podcast as a cover. The lack of anything notable, though, is a good sign that things are going swimmingly, though.
The Zendikar draft last week went well, thanks to intervention from a student who happened to have packs when ours didn’t ship in time. About half of the people there were pretty experienced players, and a couple had even taken a look at Zendikar limited. The winning deck ended up being a B/R aggro deck topped out with a Sorin Markov. I think everyone put together reasonably good decks. The only surprising move in the draft was that fetchlands were going 6th-7th pick. Apparently no one told them that they were worth more than they paid to get into the draft. Whoops.
In-class constructed is going well as well. The decks have definitely gotten a lot better. Green is pretty popular for the beatdown, and there are a few white weenie decks. I’ve seen a couple U skies decks being played, with just enough counters to go around, and a lot of mid-range fliers for beats. Red is surprisingly unpopular; I think I saw 1 red deck and 1 G/R deck, neither of which were doing too well. The lack of good burn is a problem, though I slapped together a RDW that used seismic strike for some good work (drooling ogre is great out of block, by the way). One of the most surprising developments is people playing MBC. I’ve seen at least 3, and they’re good. Looming Shade has been a big winner, and Festering Wound has been annoying, but the real winner has been Nightshade Seer. That definitely went under our radar, and its reusable, high effectiveness removal can completely destroy decks.
On the personal front, we did end up getting our booster case. 2 boxes go to the class, 2 for Tom, 1 for me, and 1 for our group of friends. It feels like a waste, but we ended up just cracking them instead of drafting. Although we spend just as much time playing super smash bros, it was hard to justify sitting everyone down for a couple hours to do that, and we wanted to get them open to be able to cash in on money cards early. No priceless treasures, though we got a bunch of fetchlands to sell. Tom got a foil Ob Nixilis, and I got a foil misty rainforest, so not all was lost. I think the set is good, though maybe a little overhyped. The good cards are certainly good, though. Already, we’ve got a bunch of new decks built out of it, including an allies deck, a landfall deck, a vampire deck, and more that I can’t think of. Of course, most of it ended up being split among other decks since we’re primarily casual, but they’re fun additions. I myself took the vampire aggro deck and put together a blood tribute/sanguine bond combo deck that’s a ton more fun to play.
There might be more to speak of in the very near future. We just got a pretty big influx of cards that’ll be explained shortly (probably next podcast), and there’s another draft tomorrow, so news is forthcoming.