Spoiler: It went badly.

Welcome back to Daily Arena! Today I’m going to go through my experience with the first Quick Draft (just in time for the second one!)

First, I want to say that I thing being able to draft in Arena is awesome. I only wish I could do it more (and maybe a little better).

Here’s the deck I ended up playing:

HOU Quick Draft W/U Flyers/Cycling

And here’s the video of me playing it (going 1-3):

In Game 1 I was completely destroyed by a turn 4 Pride Sovereign. In Game 2 I was raced to death by a crazy Mono-Red Aggro deck. In Game 3, I eked out a win over B/R, and then got killed again in Game 4.

I have below the details of the first pack worth of drafting: My options, my thoughts, and my picks…I’m kind of hoping that if I made any glaring mistakes, someone can point them out to me. 🙂

Pack One, Pick One

Pack One, Pick One was an easy one for me. Ominous Sphinx was far and away the strongest card in the pack, and I felt it was a good enough pick to justify picking up a double-blue card right out of the gate. Its ability says I probably want to be in a Blue/Black Cycling/Discard deck, but you know…we can’t get married to our first picks, can we?





Pack One, Pick Two

Pick Two seemed to be a choice between Gideon’s Defeat and Sand Strangler. I ended up taking Gideon’s Defeat because it’s cheap removal, but considering how narrow it is, and that it has lower utility in a Best-of-One format, Sand Strangler might have been the better choice.





Pack One, Pick Three

In Pick Three, Manticore Eternal was obviously the strongest card in the pack, but it meant picking a card in a third color when either Ipnu Rivulet or Spellweaver Eternal would be a decent pick in a color I had already taken cards in. Also, there were some White cards in there that might wheel. So, my thinking at this point was that I was probably going to stay in Blue, since Ominous Sphinx was still my best card, but I could either end up Blue/White or Blue/Red…I ended up taking Manticore Elemental, figuring it was still early enough in the draft to just take the strongest card in the pack, and that if Red was open, Blur of Blades would probably wheel.

Pack One, Pick Four

In Pick Four, Desert of the Fervent was easily my top pick, and since Blue/Red was one of my possible color combinations, it is the pick I went with. Dauntless Aven was probably the runner-up. Cunning Survivor was also attractive since I already had one strong creature that cared about Cycling/Discard, but I thought I could wheel it, at least.





Pack One, Pick Five

In Pick Five, Rampaging Hippo looked like the strongest card, but by this point I didn’t think I was going into Green, and Striped Riverwinder seemed like the best choice in the context of my previous choices, especially considering that my best card was still Ominous Sphinx, which Striped Riverwinder synergizes with. So, I took the Striped Riverwinder.





Pack One, Pick Six

In Pick Six, Marauding Boneslasher was the strongest card in the pack, but I had already decided that I was probably either going to be Blue/Red or Blue/White, and Cunning Survivor works well with both Ominous Sphinx and Striped Riverwinder, so I took it.





Pack One, Pick Seven

In Pick Seven, Desert of the Indomitable was probably the top pick, but based on my earlier picks, I took Unsummon. Unsummon usually works pretty well in limited as a tempo play to set the opponent back a turn, and there aren’t a lot of ETB creatures at lower rarities in this format.





Pack One, Pick Eight

Dauntless Aven was the clear choice for pick Eight. Great card, fit one of my possible color pairs, and I had seen enough White in the packs going by that I thought I could pick up more decent White cards. By this time, it was looking like I was falling pretty squarely into a Blue/White deck with evasion and Cycling synergies. One worrying thing is that I hadn’t seen much removal in those colors yet.





Pack One, Pick Nine

Dauntless Aven was the clear choice again for pick Nine. After seeing this wheel, I was feeling a little better about being in Blue/White, as it was looking like I was going to be able to pick up some evasive threats, and could keep an eye out for more Cycle cards. Marauding Boneslasher had also wheeled, possibly indicating that Black was also open.





Pack One, Pick Ten

For Pick Ten, Countervailing Winds was probably tied with a couple of other cards for worst card out of the pack, but I took it based on my colors and the Cycling synergy. The pack had three Black cards that were as good or better, two of which were clearly better. Going over this now, I think this may have been my signal to switch to Black (probably U/B?), but at the time I was drafting it didn’t feel that way.





Pack One, Pick Eleven

For Pick Eleven, the best card was Saving Grace, and I’m back to feeling like my choice of colors was perhaps not a mistake, after all. It’s difficult for me to read the signals from the bots, as it’s hard for me to tease the signal out of the noise of random unbalanced color distribution in the boosters. In this case, I decided to just double-down on the deck I was drafting, for better or for worse.





Pack One, Pick Twelve

Pick Twelve was Cunning Survivor, no surprise there.





Pack One, Pick Thirteen

Pick Thirteen was God-Pharaoh’s Faithful. 😛





Pack One, Pick Forteen

Proven Combatant: At least my final card was on-color!

Anyway, that’s it for Pack 1 and all of the actual draft detail I’m going to include in this post. If you have any advice for me based on this, my deck list, or the gameplay video, don’t hesitate to let me know!

As always, you can hit me up with Questions, Comments and Criticisms here, on Reddit, on Twitter at @DailyArena or on Facebook via the @DailyArenaMTG page.

Peace.

Joseph Eddy is a Father, Husband, Son, Brother, Software Developer, and Gamer. Magic is his favorite hobby, and he’s looking forward to seeing you all on Arena. He streams Magic Arena on a weekly basis (or more), but currently is unable to keep to a set schedule.