We held our first ever Guilds of Ravnica booster draft last week on a Thursday night at Nth Dimension: Comics and Games. Honestly, I was not able to read about that draft strategies in the set as I was busy that time in my Graduate school affairs. One important note that I just remembered was from an article in Channel Fireball wherein the writer mentioned about how flexible the set is as compared to the previous ones. For example, having to draft Green gets you to go Golgari or Selesnya in which both are supported in the set. I decided to just stick on my instincts of picking the best card on every pile, even without that much familiarity with each card in a limited scenario.

We gathered around 5:30pm at the shop and waited for the other participants. The actual draft started at around 6:30pm. We sat down on a long table with the positions based on the dice roll results in ascending order. I was also in charge of the time clock for the picks. My first pack pick was a Vivid Revival with my other options in the Commons. I decided to not stick to a particular guild at that early in the draft. I was then passed a Find/Finality and that assured me to go Golgari. The next picks were just so-so but I was going to either Black or Green. I wrapped the first pack with various creatures and two spot removals in those colors. The second pack I have opened was a Blood Operative which is a good Rare to have in the deck. The third pick passed to me was a Venerated Loxodon which I then considered as adding White for splash color.

Wrapping up the rest of the picks was for Golgari colors with more spot removals but my creatures are mostly mediocre with just average three and four-drops. Here below is a preview of the deck I registered.

Here is what I recalled as my matchups for the three rounds.

Rd 1 vs Boros – Won 2-1
Rd 2 vs Sultai – Won 2-1
Rd 3 vs Dimir – Drew 1-1-1

I can say that I got lucky with the Boros matchup as my opponent incorrectly placed the number of lands in his deck into 19, resulting in him to flood in the third game. The matchup with Sultai was also interesting. My third game Charnel Troll went unstoppable after I kept it along six cards with two lands. It went up to 9/9 before gobbling up the remaining six lives of the opponent. Good thing my build was only with six non-creatures spells to I was able to feed it every turn and also got lucky that my opponent had no removal or bounce on it.

Here below is the drafted rare and mythics for the prizes.

My split with Franco resulted in the draft picks between a foil Steam Vents and Assassins Trophy. He picked the land while I went with the Golgari removal. Wrapping up the rest of the draft prizes were Experimental Frenzy and the game hero Charnel Troll.

Overall I think I was able to draft the set well even if I ended up with an average deck. I think Oliver’s draft was better with the core Selesnya and splashed with Red. He is given to be more experienced in playing these type of format.

I guess that is a wrap for this GRN draft report. Until the next post.

Oh and last but not the least, here are the rest of the pics I took during the event.