Even though we didn't have enough people for a full 8-man, playing with 7 is still a strong enough number to get diverse and well-distributed decks. Most of the players were still beginners when it comes to drafting, and a couple of them hadn't played Magic for well over a decade I think. Yet I think it was a fun experience for everyone involved. The boosters we used for the draft were:
• Nemesis
• Return to Ravnica
• Gatecrash
• Theros
• Born of the Gods
• Conspiracy
• Khans of Tarkir
• Fate Reforged (3)
• Origins (3)
• Battle for Zendikar (2)
• Oath of the Gatewatch
• Shadows over Innistrad
• Eldritch Moon
• Aether Revolt
• Amonkhet (2)
I ended up picking a semirandomized set of boosters in order to avoid some more complex sets. For the most part I don't think players were confused with cards they had never seen before. Magic is an intuitive game too, so games flowed pretty nicely. Core sets usually help glue decks together because they usually lack parasitic mechanics, and Fate Reforged helped a bit with fixing, which is always good. One of the few problems we ran into was how colorless mana worked after BFZ and how it's not always easy to distinguish colorless from generic, but that didn't come up too often to worry anyway. I think everyone agreed the worst booster was Nemesis, and it makes sense because of the power difference between old and new creatures, but I think almost everyone ran at least one card from that booster. And besides, there's always some weird hidden gems that do useful stuff in the old boosters. One interesting quirk is that Nemesis plays nicely with Shadows/Eldritch Moon because of the discard mechanics, so while no one actually took advantage of that, it was nice seeing the possibility of doing so.
Conspiracy was a nice addition, but the one card referencing voting felt a bit lost. The multiplayer focus of the set means there's always gonna be a couple of cards that don't do much during a draft, but the cards that alter the draft itself are always a hit.
The two RTR block boosters were also pretty useful: Some fixing, some good control cards and some decent aggro. The rest of the boosters all had something to offer, and considering many of them overlapped during their time in Standard, the decks seemed to make some more sense than a fully randomized chaos draft.
UW Fliers (mine)
3-0
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/visual/666454
I went 3-0 with this deck. It felt fairly effective and I only dropped one game. The removal I had was not really great, but it did do enough for me to help me stabilize at hard times. Trickster Mage was as good as I expected: I only used it once, but when I did it was very useful. My MVP was Knightly Valor and it makes sense. 5 mana for pumping your flier and getting another dude on the ground is exactly what you want. It was insanely good with Stalwart Aven, even better than it was for Origins draft.
Seba S.'s GW Midrange
2-1
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/visual/666470
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/visual/666504
While I didn't have a chance to play against this deck, I did see it use Temur Battle Rage effectively. It had some decent removal, but running such a low amount of creatures doesn't always help. Still, I did see Goblin Heelcutter do a lot of work, as expected, and the deck was able to win rather fast with a good hand.
Caraelfo's UGR deck
1-2
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/visual/666525
Lute has really improved his deckbuilding skills since the last time we played. We've only cubed together, so this was his first time facing a booster draft with real boosters, and he did ok. Sadly, since we started drafting so late he had to leave before we started the last round, because by the looks of his deck he could've gone 2-1 easily anyway. I saw Goblin Dark-Dwellers do some nice tricks, but I don't think he ever got to cast Ghastly Conscription. Tragic Slip is great removal, but it's hard to judge when exactly you want to cast it because of the conditional clause. Still, his deck was fairly strong, with good removal and fast creatures.
Diego's UG deck
1-1 drop
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/visual/666587
Diego's deck was funny in that he ran Biovisionary for the sake of it. His deck looked rather consistent, but he hadn't played Magic since high school probably, so maybe that made things a bit harder for him. I did see Woodland Bellower do some funny things, and it's such an overpowering card that it's just hard to deal with it once it's hit the battleground Not a bad deck at all really. Again, since we started so late, Diego had to bail, so we didn't know what his third game would've been like.
Rodrigo's UB deck
0-2 drop
• Nemesis
• Return to Ravnica
• Gatecrash
• Theros
• Born of the Gods
• Conspiracy
• Khans of Tarkir
• Fate Reforged (3)
• Origins (3)
• Battle for Zendikar (2)
• Oath of the Gatewatch
• Shadows over Innistrad
• Eldritch Moon
• Aether Revolt
• Amonkhet (2)
I ended up picking a semirandomized set of boosters in order to avoid some more complex sets. For the most part I don't think players were confused with cards they had never seen before. Magic is an intuitive game too, so games flowed pretty nicely. Core sets usually help glue decks together because they usually lack parasitic mechanics, and Fate Reforged helped a bit with fixing, which is always good. One of the few problems we ran into was how colorless mana worked after BFZ and how it's not always easy to distinguish colorless from generic, but that didn't come up too often to worry anyway. I think everyone agreed the worst booster was Nemesis, and it makes sense because of the power difference between old and new creatures, but I think almost everyone ran at least one card from that booster. And besides, there's always some weird hidden gems that do useful stuff in the old boosters. One interesting quirk is that Nemesis plays nicely with Shadows/Eldritch Moon because of the discard mechanics, so while no one actually took advantage of that, it was nice seeing the possibility of doing so.
Conspiracy was a nice addition, but the one card referencing voting felt a bit lost. The multiplayer focus of the set means there's always gonna be a couple of cards that don't do much during a draft, but the cards that alter the draft itself are always a hit.
The two RTR block boosters were also pretty useful: Some fixing, some good control cards and some decent aggro. The rest of the boosters all had something to offer, and considering many of them overlapped during their time in Standard, the decks seemed to make some more sense than a fully randomized chaos draft.
Decks:
UW Fliers (mine)
3-0
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/visual/666454
I went 3-0 with this deck. It felt fairly effective and I only dropped one game. The removal I had was not really great, but it did do enough for me to help me stabilize at hard times. Trickster Mage was as good as I expected: I only used it once, but when I did it was very useful. My MVP was Knightly Valor and it makes sense. 5 mana for pumping your flier and getting another dude on the ground is exactly what you want. It was insanely good with Stalwart Aven, even better than it was for Origins draft.
Seba S.'s GW Midrange
2-1
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/visual/666470
Seba S. is a *really* good player. Even though he's not active anymore (though back in the day he was the national champion!) he understands Magic at a very deep level and has impressive evaluation skills, so it's always a challenge to play against him. Oak Street Innkeeper was really useful against me, as I only had Excoriate in my hand while he was hitting me with Heron's Grace Champion. I was lucky not to see Windstorm, because that would've destroyed my late game. My game against Seba was very interesting, but I ended up winning because he couldn't answer to my flying dudes. Woodvine Elemental was a nice addition and I saw it doing some good work earlier.
Mati's BR Aggro
2-1
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/visual/666504
While I didn't have a chance to play against this deck, I did see it use Temur Battle Rage effectively. It had some decent removal, but running such a low amount of creatures doesn't always help. Still, I did see Goblin Heelcutter do a lot of work, as expected, and the deck was able to win rather fast with a good hand.
Caraelfo's UGR deck
1-2
Now this was a rather original deck. Running 3 colors in a format like this is always scary, and sometimes bad draws punish you harder because you can't find your colors, but it's always fun to see those decks anyway. My games against it were pretty close, to be honest. During the first game he got me down to 1 life while he still was on 20 I think, but I managed to stabilize and come back from that. Still, Undercity Troll is not a card to underestimate. It's fast and reliable, and it can do a lot of damage when there's not a lot of low drops like it happened here. As a sidenote, there were no Nemesis cards in this deck.
Lute's BR Aggro
1-1 drop
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/visual/666525
Lute has really improved his deckbuilding skills since the last time we played. We've only cubed together, so this was his first time facing a booster draft with real boosters, and he did ok. Sadly, since we started drafting so late he had to leave before we started the last round, because by the looks of his deck he could've gone 2-1 easily anyway. I saw Goblin Dark-Dwellers do some nice tricks, but I don't think he ever got to cast Ghastly Conscription. Tragic Slip is great removal, but it's hard to judge when exactly you want to cast it because of the conditional clause. Still, his deck was fairly strong, with good removal and fast creatures.
Diego's UG deck
1-1 drop
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/visual/666587
Diego's deck was funny in that he ran Biovisionary for the sake of it. His deck looked rather consistent, but he hadn't played Magic since high school probably, so maybe that made things a bit harder for him. I did see Woodland Bellower do some funny things, and it's such an overpowering card that it's just hard to deal with it once it's hit the battleground Not a bad deck at all really. Again, since we started so late, Diego had to bail, so we didn't know what his third game would've been like.
Rodrigo's UB deck
0-2 drop
Rodrigo hadn't played Magic since a Kamigawa prerelease it seems, but he picked up the pace quickly because he played Hearthstone for a while too (which also caused some confusion too because of how damage is handled in that game vs. how it's done in Magic). I faced him in the first round and had to use a Dusk // Dawn on his Gurmag Angler because of how scary it is. He had some bad draws that game and didn't find swamps until it was too late for the most part. From what he told me one of his main problems was that he started drafting white and then had to switch because he wasn't getting enough action, so he was left with a bunch of pointless sideboard cards he couldn't use.
I think everyone had lots of fun! I intentionally didn't choose any packs that were not in Spanish or English to avoid any confusion, and that really did help, because checking your phone for info on some random 1/1 black wall is not always fun. The pulls were really mediocre and the decks, low-powered, but that's what loose packs are for.
Pulls
• Biovisionary (foil)
• Heron's Grace Champion (foil)
Absolutely no value cards, but hey, it's chaos drafting.
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