Alara Reborn was released on April 30th and I seriously got stomped in the draft quickly.

How you ask,…

my plan, … 

Draft mono red! … ,

just kidding (Alara reborn is the first ever all gold set.)

When I first heard that the Alara Reborn set would be entirely multicolored or gold cards, I wandered what interesting things would be affected in draft. I figured with no one drops, their had to be some awesome two drops, ala Watchwolf and sure enough, how about those Blades. There are a total of 5 blades (1 for each Shard) and each are two casting cost hybrids. Each Shard Blade begins as a 2/1 and gets +1 +1  plus an additional colored ability (i.e. flying for blue, haste for red, etc) as long as you control another multi-colored card, (which is pretty easy to do since all Alara Reborn cards are mult-colored) . Here’s the Bant SureBlade:

All the Blades are commons and must grabs in a Alara Reborn Draft. These two-drops are pretty good all alone, but how about adding an equipment to make them bigger, gain life and trample. I present the Behemoth Sledge:

So here’s the scenerio, turn 4, You swing with a 5/4 lifelink, trampling, first striker. Pretty powerful, huh.

But lookout your opponent will probably be swinging back just as hard.

Alara Reborn is a quick pounding set. To do well in a draft, you will need to swing early and hard and then be able to block the swingback. Nothing blocks better than a wall, especially a beefy, flying, non-targetable wall, and Alara reborn has just that, Wall of Denial

 Of course you can’t win if you can’t play your cards do to a mana-screw, so you’re gonna need some mana fixing.  Alara reborn has few cards to help fix your mana, but landcycling and the new borderpost can help:

 Three things to help you succeed in Alara Reborn Drafts:

• Swing Fast and Hard
• Protect yourself
• Manafixing

 Almost totally forgot, Cascade, the new mechanic for Alara Reborn:

Cascade - When you play this spell, remove cards from the top of your library from the game until you remove a nonland card that costs less. You may play it without paying its mana cost. Put the removed cards on the bottom in a random order.

Cascade can help you get spells into play, irregardless of colors needed to actually cast the spell. Cascading into a Cascade can be totally awesome. Your cards go to the bottom of your library, (randomly) so their is really no downside unless you have to watch that one land you are desperately needing get moved to the bottom of your library.

Magic the Gathering (MTG) Player Rewards (MPR) allows players to earn points for special textless cards. Nothing better than getting home from work than finding magic cards in the mail, well free magic cards in the mail, well, free rare alternate art textless magic cards in the mail, can’t beat it, especially when one (or two) is a also premium (foil). The current textless cards being sent out include a Textless Nameless Inversion and Textless Remove Soul.

Player rewards cards are sent out about three times per year.  See all the Magic the Gathering Player Reward Cards in the Magic Card Image Gallery. 

Each mailing will feature two new textless cards. You get 1 for every 5 tournaments (DCI Sanctioned Tournaments) entered, make that two, one new card and one previously released. In addition each year, there is one premium foil textless card released, this year is a shiny Textless Cryptic Command Foil.

Textless Cryptic Command

You can get the premium player reward card by playing in twenty or more DCI sanctioned Tournaments. You can get one for every twenty qualifiyng events. Again, these are shipped right to your door and free of charge.

With the latest mailing, Wizards thru in a twist, they gave out a Hypnotic Specter Promo if you played in at least two Friday Night Magic Tournaments in December or January, which I did not receive.

Now years back, before player rewards program was doing textless spells, they were still giving away foil DCI rares for every twenty events recorded (and tokens for every 5) The Hypnotic Spector was the last premium card before the switchover to textless cards, which I do have.

Is this the same as what was sent out as the Friday Night Magic Bonus which was recently sent out?

Go With Artifacts for the Win

Today, I went to the local shop to to particpate in the Conflux draft. Even though I have already had the pleasure of drafting Conflux a few times, it had never been straight Conflux, but a Shards  / Conflux mix, until today. Having pretty much missed the whole Shards set (until now), I asked the regulars what was has been winning straight Conflux drafts. The opinions were pretty much the same … Decks playing all 5 colors and utilizing Domain were winning consistantly, Mana fixers were a must, and the  common, Path to Exile, yes a common was being chosen very highly amonst all players, even above the rare in most cases. Turns out though, Path to Exile is an uncommon and not a common

and that wasn’t the only thing they were wrong about. Although, using all 5 colors with good mana fixers and using the Domain mechanic is a very viable strategy, I seemed to find another strategy that seemed to work very well, I took first place. I also used the same strategy in two prior drafts at the pre-release and also took first in both of those. The secret …  Go for low casting artifacts! and pack in anything with “Exalted” for that extra kick.

It seems that the colors of white, black, and blue are ideal  for many low casting artifacts and they each seem to build off each other.

A few artifact combos that  weren’t  totally obvious at first resulted in game changers for me, and ultimately the difference between winning and losing.

Esperzoa

Esperzoa works great with any 1 or 2 casting cost artifact (or better yet, zero casting cost equipment). Add in any creaure with exalted and you could be swinging for 5 or more in the air (flying) by turn 4 or possiblly sooner.  If your oppenent doesn’t stabilize quickly it’s just a few turns to victory.

Artifact commons should be there for the drafting as there are quite a few to choose from.

Another great card, which works great with the many artifacts within Conflux is Sphinx Summoner. Sphinx summoner is rare but won me the game on several occasions. Sphinx Summoner allows you to search your library for an artifact creature card when it comes into play. Use it with the above Esperzoa and keep fetchin’ whatever artifact creatures you have.

Sphinx Summoner