Planar Chaos release draft - February 2, 2007 - Rainy Day Games

Here's the triple Planar Chaos draft deck I wound up with:

Creatures
---------
3 Aven Riftwatcher
3 Blightspeaker (definitely the MVP of the deck)
1 Cautery Sliver
1 Dunerider Outlaw
1 Firefright Mage (I put him in to Madness out the Wurm but this was a wasted slot. Should have been something else, perhaps a Midnight Charrm or another random 1 drop. Maybe Ridged Kusite.)
1 Necrotic Sliver
1 Oros, the Avenger
2 Prodigal Pyromancer
1 Rathi Trapper
1 Reckless Wurm
1 Simian Spirit Guide (actually more useful than I thought)
3 Sulfur Elemental
1 Whitemane Lion (Lion + Riftwatcher = win in many cases)

Spells
-----
1 Damnation
1 Dead // Gone
1 Sunlance

Land
----
7 Mountain
4 Plains
6 Swamp

Sideboard (used)
----------------
1 Midnight Charm

I still haven't read the full Planar Chaos spoiler so I went into this draft a little blind. I wasn't sure how to value some of the cards. My first pick was actually Reckless Wurm, largely because the rare was awful and I knew there were a lot of discard effects. I took white creatures with most of the rest of pack one along with a couple of green fatties. I was all over the place.

I opened the second pack and revealed Damnation, which naturally I kept. After that I kept getting passed Blightspeaker so I started taking those and gradually shifted to mainly black and red with a splash of white. My third pack rare was Oros which landed me solid into three color territory. There is precious little mana fixing in Planar Chaos so I was reluctant to go three colors but with the good gold Slivers and the dragon I figured it was worth the risk.

Round 1 - Jeremy "Slick" Bilisari - BW

Jeremy and I had a very similar deck. He had one Blightspeaker and two or three Aven Riftwatchers. Unfortunately for him I also had the Pyromancers and more rebels --- eight total in the deck. Game one took about 30 minutes but I finally prevailed with my end of turn Timmy effects. Game two was close but my annoying Timmy's prevailed.

This game showed me how amazing Blightspeaker is, especially against a deck light on removal. If you get Blightspeaker out turn two and hit all four of your first four land drops, it's very hard to beat. I think BW rebels is definitely a solid draft strategy, especially in triple Planar Chaos but also in Time Spiral/Planar Chaos mixed drafts.

Games: 2-0
Matches: 1-0

Round 2 - Chris Heino - GWr

Green/white is a tough color to pull off because of the lack of removal but Chris made up for it with a ton of Saproling generators and recurring tricks like Whitemane Lion to bounce Aven Riftwatchers or Deadwood Treefolk (which brings a creature back from the graveyard). Game one, again, took over thirty minutes until he finally found Rough, which killed most of my little Timmy ground troops. After that he quickly swooped in and killed me off. Before the Rough I had spent most of the game above 25 life thanks to the Riftwatchers. I would have killed him pretty quickly except for the Mycologist, the timeshifted Elvish Farmer, which kept gaining him two or more life on demand.

They announced the ten minute warning as we shuffled up for game two. I got two Riftwatchers going quickly and killed him in five minutes or less. Game three started a bit slower but the Blightspeaker did his thing and summoned some reinforcements. We went to turns but two Pyromancers did the final four damage in time.

Games: 4-1
Matches: 2-0

Round 3 - Peter Zaworski - UR

Peter is a very good drafter and usually does well at Rainy Day events. Game one I he played three Shaper Parasites and killed off several of my guys but the Blightkeeper kept finding more. The Riftwatchers eventually did him in with me still at 18.

Game two I made several dumb play mistakes, especially after he had Frozen Æther in play (the new Kismet). I kept forgetting to put things into play tapped. For some reason I just couldn't remember to do it. On one turn that caused me to have three land untapped after casting a creature instead of four and that allowed Peter to kill the Blightspeaker when he couldn't call for backup. The mistakes and the tempo loss to the Kismet cost me the game.

Game three I played Blightspeaker turn two and he did his thing. I never found a Plains but Blightspeaker put the Riftwatchers directly into play and proved too much.

Games: 6-2
Matches: 3-0

Round 4 - David Stroud - UR

David and I drew but we played it out for fun. In both games I got a turn two Blightspeaker and went to town. I even got Oros into play both games. The deck just went off. Guess I shouldn't have drawn after all.

Games: 8-2
Matches: 4-0 (but 3-0-1 with the ID)