I hated (and really Hate is not a strong enough word) Born of the Gods draft. Like to the point where after about 5 drafts I’d given up on it. I had a couple of 0-3s and I wasn’t really looking to dig out of that hole. It was completely against my playstyle and I wasn’t and still am not super fond of playing WOTC’s “Use bad cards” game. Hooray enchantments are good. look at the masses just clamoring for that to be a thing. Anyhow, that’s the thing about limited Magic. You’re kinda stuck with what you get… in a lot of ways.
So when Journey to Nyx came out I wasn’t exactly thrilled to start drafting again. This whole block feels like Kamigawa all over again. But I sat down for Team Drafts cuz really what else am I gonna do on a Wednesday at 3pm? My first draft seemed like a disaster. I took Knowledge and Power and as many Scry cards as I could. Sigiled Starfish, Sudden Storm, Magma Jet, Sigiled Skink, and Voyage’s End. I topped off with some Floodtide Serpents and Horizon Scholars and I picked up a lot of Cloaked Sirens and Chorus of the Tides. If my deck wasn’t good it was at least consistent.
It turns out it was good and consistent. Sigiled Starfish was a key player in the deck. there was so much groaning when I got it out that I would have a hard time drafting a second over the next 4-5 drafts. That guy is my favorite little dude!. An 0/3 is a fine blocker but getting that scry every turn is really game changing. I was able to control my draws to a point where my opponents were running out of gas and I was in the driver’s seat! This didn’t feel like Born of the Gods at all! Control is back!
Another great piece of the U/R puzzle is Stormchaser Chimera. This guy is fine as a 2/3 Flyer for 4 but if you can flip something sweet he gets huge, and he get huge fast. God forbid its late game and you can do it twice!. I won a game with him attacking as a 12/3 showing Starfall (another sweet removal card in Journey) it was all I needed to drive the game home. This guy is a U/R player’s dream in the late game. Other great roleplayers now, Flamespeaker Adept. A 4/3 first strike guy is fine but when you can scry so many times a turn 6/3 or even 8/3 is out of control!
The big take away in JtN is that the format has slowed down enough to play games other than “Voltron this guy” and “here’s a swarm of dudes if you block one I’ll use a combat trick to kill you blocker”. These were not fun games if you want to build interactive formats. I guess it was all to lead us to this. It’s been 8 months of having to play in a super aggressive and very boring draft format, its great to have a change before we move over to M15 limited.
Zac Clark, Durdle Magus