On Sunday we had our Opus 2 Prerelease event at Comic Culture & The Games Store (Lincoln, UK). The format was Draft, and we had six players in attendance.

For those that don’t know what Draft is, you get a set amount of booster packs (in this case we had four each). You open a booster pack, choose one card to keep, then pass the rest of the pack to the player next to you (which direction you pass the cards changes with each booster pack). You continue to do this until the entire pack has been drafted, then you proceed to the next booster pack and continue until all packs have been drafted.

As we were drafting with four booster packs, that meant we would have a total of fourty-eight cards (as you get twelve cards per booster pack). For Draft format, your deck only needs to be forty cards rather than the usual fifty (and you only need to do six damage to win). This still meant that we’d have to use at least 40/48 of the cards we drafted.

What this means is that if you are trying to go with two elements, you’ll probably have a few cards that you cannot ever actually play. Your other option is to try and draft three elements, which makes things a bit trickier, but isn’t impossible. Anyway, here’s the deck I drafted.

As you can see, I went for only two elements (fire and earth). Thirty-eight cards in my deck belonged to those elements; the other two cards were Hurdy and Gurdy, and those were included because the names made me laugh. I ended up using them to help play cards like Vanille, or to pay the ‘upkeep’ cost of Vincent.

I had twenty-one forwards in total. There were a few cards that really shone. Imitation Liegeman, who thanks to the decent number of Manikins I had, was often able to enter play and deal 5000 damage to an opposing forward. Along with being a 6000 power character for three CP, it’s very efficient.

I was lucky enough to draft three copies of Ninja (costs two CP, 4000 power, First Strike, when it is blocked deal the blocking forward 2000 damage). This fella is amazing for putting pressure on your opponent, as it can kill forwards up to 6000 power without being killed in return. In some games I got multiples of them out, then party attacked. Really helps break stalemates!

Zell (costs three CP, 6000 power, when Zell attacks choose a forward of cost three or less that your opponent controls and it cannot block this turn) is another amazing card in this format, and will probably have an impact on the constructed meta going forwards.

Other decent picks were Vanille, Vincent, and Dark Knight. A lot of times I played Vanille first and used her ability to drop Vincent or Dark Knight into play. This is quite a tempo swing, and definitely closed out a few games for me.

I had thirteen useable backups and four summons (Hurdy and Gurdy are backups, but due to the elements in my deck were functionally useless for me).

One of my backups, Tellah (costs four CP, dull and put in break zone to deal a forward 9000 damage), was actually my first pick from my first booster. Having played draft in other games, most notably Magic the Gathering, I knew that a removal card like this would be extremely useful. I wasn’t wrong, as Tellah was able to get rid of any trump cards/bombs that my opponents used.

Irvine (costs three CP, when Irvine enters the field choose a forward and deal it 6000 damage) was another great pick. Cheap removal that then provides CP in future turns. Easy decision to add to my draft pool.

Phantasmal Harlequin, which I managed to draft two of, was a looming threat for my opponents. Due to having four forwards that were Manikins, it was actually very useful.

Machinist (costs two CP, earth, pay 4 CP and break it to choose a dull forward of four cost or less and break it) was another good removal card. A bit slow and expensive, but still handy to have.

The only other backup that wasn’t just there to provide CP was Monk. As with Phantasmal Harlequin, this was more of a looming threat than anything, but it definitely gave my opponents something to consider. It also boosted Yang (which I had one copy of), so that’s something.

I only had four summons. Ifrit (costs two CP, ex burst, choose a forward and deal it 6000 damage) was amazing, and I was fortunate enough to have two copies.

Belias, the Gigas (costs two CP, ex burst, choose a forward and it gets +1000 power, haste, and first strike until the end of turn, draw a card) was a neat little combat trick, and helped me break a few forwards.

The other summon I had was Carbuncle (costs three CP, choose one summon targeting a character you control, cancel its effect), and I didn’t use it at all for its effect. However, in constucted I think this may be a useful card.

So that was my draft deck, along with some notes on why I went for certain cards and how they performed, but how did the tournament go? Since there were six of us, we decided to do a round robin (play everyone once). Matches were best-of-one as per the official tournament rules. Here’s the results:

Rank Player Wins 1st Tim 5 2nd Liam 3 3rd Lyndon 3 4th Alec 2 5th Aaron 1 6th John 1

I went 5-0! Needless to say, I was quite pleased with that.

Drafting Opus 2 was a lot of fun, but after talking with the other players once the event was over, we all felt that it would have been better with five booster packs instead of four, due to how elements work (alternatively, this desire for an extra pack may just have been eagerness for the new set!). It’s definitely something to try out at future events anyway.

Hope you enjoyed the report, any questions please ask.

Cheers!