For the past few years, Star City Games has held a piece of their Open Series on the release weekend for a new big Magic Set. And like true grinders, my crew and myself have made the trek to Indy to sling some cards. This is generally the best event for players of our skill level to play – when nobody knows what the format will look like. This is a time when a fledgeling format begins to take shape and the tone for the next year is generally set. There was only one thing different about this event, something that set it apart from any other tourney I’ve attended in the past several years of competitive magic. I wasn’t playing.

Leading up to the Event

First, an aside – to this point, I had become so disjointed and tired of the previous standard format, that I had considered using this event as a stopping point for my Magic career. A few job interviews were finally beginning to roll in (and as an unemployed recent college graduate, this is a godsend). I was already mulling Star City’s buylist to see if I could get a decent return on my collection. It didn’t look good for this plan and I quickly abandoned it. Though one could argue for or against liquidating a small collection, just in case, to pay some student loan checks, phone bills, etc., I feel like it was probably correct and better morally to just remain confident in the idea of picking up Freelance and landing a job than relying on cards as anything other than a means to continue playing cards.

So instead of selling out, I decided that I was just going to go to the event and do some trading to grind up to either a standard deck or the first student loan payment. The Thursday before the event, I get a message from my friend Eric Rill, asking if I had extra cards to build a deck. At this point, I definitely didn’t, but I needed a goal for the week. So rather than just saying no, and allowing him to find another deck, I ask him what deck he wants to play and tell him to give me 48 hours. Eric had his heart set on playing Solar Flare at the Standard Open, and I had my heart set on trading for some Snapcasters and Liliana to make his dream come true.

The next day, my friend Dave and I set out to Epic Loot to pick up our box preordered off of some store-credit, and to try and build Eric’s deck and test it out a little at FNM. We cracked open our box to find two Snapcasters, a Garruk, and some land. Everything else was junk, but we were able to trade in a lot of the junk for more than the bulk rate that SCG would give. I managed to turn some Bloodline Keepers and Reaper from the Abyss into Day of Judgment, Phantasmal Image, and all of the commons and uncommons we needed. I also managed to trade our Garruk Relentless for a Snapcaster Mage and trade some extra trade fodder for a Liliana of the Veil before leaving. By the time we got to FNM, all we needed were two Sun Titan some Isolated Chapels and another Liliana. By making good trades, and having a determined mentality (and some extreme persistence in some cases, sorry Epic Loot guy who I wanted Liliana from!), I was able to turn a somewhat disappointing box and some rather underwhelming trade fodder into the entirety of Solar Flare (minus two or three sideboard cards, which we had to trade for frantically before the main event), and some pretty sweet buylist fodder and trade stock. The lesson to be learned is that if you know what cards are worth, and have a working knowledge of what the players at various local game stores are looking for, you can easily trade for what you need and more.

After FNM we went our separate ways, choosing to meet up in the morning rather than playtest (Only one person in our group was actually playing in the standard portion of the event). The following morning, we made the hour-and-a-half trip to Indy. The short hours before an event is the best time to make trades. If you show up to an event just to trade, it is wise to have a variety of commonly played commons and uncommons. You don’t even have to go out seeking trades. All one has to do is wait near the line of people looking to sell to the dealers before the event, and people will emerge from the crowd seeking a random staple common (In my case, someone desperately needed Vulshock Refugees for his entire crew). Many people won’t have these cards and will disregard those in need. In my opinion, this is the biggest mistake someone can make when trying to trade at an event. Players will often give you a huge premium for your convenience. At first, this guy was in a hurry to get them, and didn’t have trade stuff on him. Being a naturally kind of nice guy, I gave him all three of my regular Refugees. He needed three more, but I couldn’t just give away foils or signed cards. I was in line to sell, and had been for a while, but the line wasn’t moving, so I left to find my potential trade partner, and quickly did. I turned my foil Vulshock Refugees and signed copy into a playset of Divine Offering and a Sulfur Springs. A few moments later, someone tracked me down out of the crowd and gave me a Japanese Dismember for my troubles as well. It pays to be willing to help, and to have some cards that people need.

The Event is Underway!

Once the event got up and running, I finally returned to the dealer’s booth to sell a stack of cards specifically set out for their buylist prices. Many people don’t actually do any research before an event to know what they’re going to sell. This may be because people don’t plan on selling cards until they actually need to at the last minute, or it could be because they just don’t care to take that time, but I have found it to be very convenient for both myself, and the person working at the dealer’s table. Having a cool hundred dollars without actually losing many cards of consequence (Only a foil Koth, some Birthing Pods, and some bulk rares/recently rotated mythics and Zendikar basics) felt good and I found my way over to the round one tables to watch my friends play.

Eric L, with whom I traveled to Indy with quickly crushed RDW with his G/W Humans deck. Eric tends to pilot terrible-looking decks to great results, and it seemed like he was destined to do the same. After all, RDW was one of the most represented decks in the format, and many of them didn’t run Slagstorm, the bane of Eric for the passed six months. Eric R, piloting my Solar Flare deck also looked to be building momentum in the mirror match. I went off to track down some trades, and managed to turn playsets of Scalding Tarn and Arid Mesa, along with some lower-end stuff into two Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas and a ton of Scars Block Lands, and some various other good stuff. Most of it felt more like buylist fodder than anything, but I was definitely okay with that – SCG was buying the fetches for only 35% of retail, which is terrible for someone looking to make cash.

It's like the best draft deck ever!

I returned to Eric R’s table to see him staring down Rune-scarred Demon and Sun Titan, in what appeared to be the exact same game as before. The momentum had shifted so much that Eric appeared to be out of the game entirely. This appeared to be the story of the day, and appears to be the story of this standard format. More aggressive decks are going to have to have a lot more reach than they have in previous formats, because control strategies are so much stronger in the late game. Even in the control mirror, the player who starts strongest needs to be able to finish or he or she will find himself in the soon-to-be familiar spot Eric was in. Eric L would find himself in a very similar spot in the next round, getting totally rolled by a U/B control deck starting a Trinket Mage plus Elixir of Immortality package, and Rill lost to a deck before I could even get there to see what was going on. Rather than stick around to watch my friends lose, I felt like it was a good time to jump into a scrub-out draft.

Scrubbing out of the Scrub Drafts

I learned three things from the two drafts I took part in. They are:

• Having the best deck and being the best player means nothing – I drafted a pretty insane looking deck with solid fliers, lots of removal, and a sweet bomb in Bloodline Keeper, but in the end, or, well, the beginning, I fell to a four color mill deck to a guy who picked a Snapcaster Mage and forced blue despite only having Dissipate, the five-mana Boomerang counterspell, and the mill three card with flashback. He was Black for the destroy target land sorcery, and red for a pair of Charmbreaker Devils, which proved to be too much for my deck. He simply was able to mill six of my seven answers to his cards on his first two mills and keep me off of land while continuously renewing his spells off of the devils. I honestly believe that I was just unlucky, but I’m not going to take anything away from the guy. His four color bad-stuff deck had the best anchor it could possibly have in the Devils, and he beat me.
• Triple INN is not nearly as bomb-reliant as SoM Block was – and I love it. The bomb rares are few-and-far-between, and I feel as though Wizards did a fantastic job of making them bomby without making them so powerful that they become crutches for weaker decks to win with. It is incredibly rewarding to overcome a powerful bomb mythic like Skaab Ruinator simply because your deck is better-crafted than your opponent’s. This is the sort of thing that rewards players for making good choices and using their skills to the fullest.
• Having a strong curve trumps having a strong deck – I learned this the hard way. My second draft deck was insane. I had multiple Flametongue Kavu (Slayer of the Wicked), plenty of spot-removal, and a decent curve to get me to my late game, in Bloodgift Demon. Unfortunately, my round two opponent was on a next-level line of thought. She seemed preoccupied with knitting a glove, and I thought I was in for an easy one. I crushed her game one, and she snuck game two out with a well-timed Prey Upon and some good werewolves. But game three was one of the most spectacular instances of curving out perfectly I’ve ever seen. She mullioned to five and I felt pretty confident on the draw. She went on to lead with a Avacyn’s Pilgrim into a Darkthicket Wolf into a 5/5 Festerhide Boar, and proceeded to top it off with a Kessig Cagebreakers. By the time I died, I had managed to play five lands and cast Victim of Night on a Kindercatch. It was pretty brutal, but it showed the importance of a strong curve, a concept that she clearly understood well. She went on to smash Jacob van Lunen’s friend in the finals to claim her free draft.

Having this knowledge now, I now that the format is actually very similar to the current standard environment in that there are the slower controlling decks and there are the quicker aggro decks, without a ton of successful decks that fall in-between those two categories. I also have confirmed in my mind that every color is playable and equally able to be successful – something that is simply untrue of a lot of draft formats. Despite the power of the Werewolves, I had concerns that they would be too slow or too weak to contend with the stronger blue/black strategies, and this simply turned out to be untrue. My opinion may shift as the format matures, but I’m excited to see what comes of it.

So Everyone Scrubbed Out

But not exactly. Our friend Troy managed to 3-1 the Legacy challenge, and I managed to come home with both a tier-1 standard deck, and $200 that I didn’t have before, despite not really losing a lot of steam from my trade binder. The next day, Eric R. would find himself in contention for the top 8 of the Legacy Open. @SCGLive tweeted “(Gavin) Archetypes in Legacy t8 contention: 2 Reanimator, 2 Fish, 1 ANT, 1 TES, 1 No Bant, 1 SnapBUG, 1 Enchantress, 1 unknown. #SCGINDY”. That one “unknown” deck was Eric’s mono-blue control deck that many people just weren’t prepared for. His final round is covered as the final featured article for the Legacy Open on SCG’s coverage, if you want to read about it. For those not interested in that much research, he played against ANT and had some bad beats, losing and just missing top 16. Despite everyone doing poorly in the standard portion and our crew not exactly making their mark on any particular format, it was a very good time and some lessons were learned in the process. We will all be attending Ohio States this weekend (October 15th) and the PTQ the following Sunday, so look for us there, slinging some cards and making some trades. The first five people to come up to me and mention DraftMagic.com will each get a sweet custom-made Soldier or Wolf Token (as seen in the game-state above).

As always, thanks for reading.

-Geo Thornton