Going into the draft, I really wasn’t sure what I was doing. The sets I’d drafted most recently, Ixalan and Rivals of Ixalan had strong tribal themes; I could take a powerful rare card or a two-color uncommon and just build around it by taking creatures from the right “tribe” (Pirates, Dinosaurs, Merfolk, or Vampires) and spells that worked well with those creatures. Masters 25 wasn’t designed to have strong tribal or mechanical themes, so even though I’d read the card list, I didn’t really know what kinds of decks I’d be able to build. Going with the flow would be the most important skill here.
And then things got weird. By which I mean the draft went better, and less complicatedly, than I could have anticipated. My first pick was Ruric Thar the Unbowed, a red/green rare, and then I just kept seeing red and green cards that I could use. I even picked some really big creatures that had Morph, so I could play them early on if I had nothing better to do. The deck ended up looking like this:
The Forest Is Patient (and so are the mountains)
Creatures
Noncreature spells
3x Kindle
Lands
6x Mountain
11x Forest
This deck and I won six games in a row, beating all three of my opponents in two games each. I'm not sure how; I think this is the first time I've ever gone 3-0 in a draft. And I won under all kinds of circumstances: against aggressive decks and control decks, with too many lands in my opening hand and with too few lands (Arbor Elf plus Forest plus Utopia Sprawl is four green mana by turn 3), and I always had removal when I needed it, and I felt like I always knew when to use it.
The best moment was probably in round 2, when I killed my opponent's Niv-Mizzet the turn after he cast it. His response was along the lines of "That's kinda mean, but also the right choice. I could have beaten you next turn."
I was all set to write this essay about how hard it is to draft unfamiliar sets and how I'm learning to not get frustrated when things go badly. This was a very nice surprise.
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