Drafted Magic 2019 for a game

Well, it has been two years since I played Magic the Gathering (7 september 2016), but this wednesday I passed by Outpost and did a draft once again, the set being the Core set 2019.

You see, Noshi had a dinner with some collegues around the corner, so instead of just grabbing a drink by myself, it was an opportune moment to see some old mates again.

I sat down with 10 other players and zero ambitions to open our packs and start the game of give along, and as I didn't have any knowledge I decided on two things:

1. pick the rares, as they'll end up on Cardmarket anyways, having no ambition to start playing weekly again and build a deck.
2. build something simple without to many special combo's, as it had been a looooong time.

Opening my first pack, the rare was a green beast that has a passive ability, the Runic Armasaur, so no thinking required on that part as such.  From that first booster, I decided to pick every green card that came around, and see what the second colour would be should another rare come by.

My second booster had actually two rares, and both where white.  Apart from the foil Suncleanser, it also had a Mentor of the Meek, but I went for the first one.  I kept picking mostly greens though and the occassional white from now on, but then a Gigantosaurus passed by and I just grabbed it.  A big 10/10 monster with no issues and a rather okay mana cost if I could stay mono-colour is fine in my book.

Booster three contained actually another white rare, with Leena, and a Leonid Warleader had come by by then as well.  But I dropped the white plan, as I had barely any creatures coming by and kept going all green, ending up with this deck in the end.  The only dilemma I had for myself when I build it was to either include the second deaththouch or the Boars... in hindsigt, I just should have taken the boars in the place of the millstone who only showed up twice in my games.

And then we where off.  The first game was against Willem, and strangely enough I quickly snatched the first round.  But with the aid of his Transmog Wand; which just shut down my big beasts, his blue and black deck took my zoo down and a 1-2 loss was the result.  At least we fought valiantly, and the big saurus actually won me that first round.

I was then paired against Sammy, playing a green deck combined with blue, and he had pulled open a Tezzeret... hmmm, a Planeswalker in a draft always is iffy.  I managed to take round one again, but he succeeded in grabbing round two.  In the final round, it was getting close, but I had kept back my  prevent all combat damage for the final stage, causing his all out attack to stall and grab the win in my next attack.  That made for a 2-1 victory.

The final game was against Laurens and a black white deck.  I went quickly out of the floodgate and snatched the round one win again.  Round two took a lot longer as he had his Phylactery Lich down, and with his defender artifact attacking and flying, I needed to keep back both the gigantosaur to hold of the liche and the spider to block the flyer, doing only minor damage.  But then I pulled my rabbit Bite, did 10 damage on the defender causing the liche to dissappear as well, and went in for 17 damage in one strike, nailing a 2-0.

So that meant that my mono green deck went an unforseen 2-1 over the whole evening, and netting me 7 planeswalker points from the event to add to my "lifetime total".  The irony in a way was that the draft unplayable Gigantosaur with it's 5 green mana cost, actually won me every game I did win, due to the fact I was in monogreen with 16 forests.

But the most important thing was that I had a nice and fun evening, and ending 5th out of 11 players isn't bad for a very rusty casual returnee...