I love Shadows Over Innistrad limited! My weekend of games at Grand Prix Albuquerque were a true joy. It’s too bad we don’t get any more grand prix before Eldritch Moon. Shadows draft seems poised to be an all-time great format. But let’s talk about the tournament and what I learned!
I finished 11-4 in 52nd place, going 7-2 in sealed on day one and 2-1 in each of my day two drafts. While the performance matches my other best grand prix finishes, this was probably my best actual performance at a grand prix. Some small improvements in my play and better swings of variance are all that separate me from a top eight. I’m not sure I could say that before now.
Rather than going deep on the details of my decks or games, I’m going to show you my decks, share some strange stories, and give some lessons from what I learned. First up, my sealed deck:
Blue's Clues
Yes, Jace is good. Tamiyo’s Journal plus Jace provides the ultimate flavor win for a deck aspiring to get a clue. The deck is pretty slow, except when it flips a werewolf early and smashes face. If the game goes long, you get a ton of card advantage. Lots of flash threats help manipulate werewolves and outplay opponents.
The only real problem with the deck was that, despite drawing a ton of cards to get ahead, its threats are decidedly midrange. It has to get in with fliers and wolves and hope that drawing extra cards and using Jace’s -2 bounce ability will end the game. On top of that, it has no enchantment or artifact removal beyond the already-taxed-as-hard-removal Angelic Purge, no life gain beyond Jace soaking up damage, no counterspells, and no graveyard recursion.
The deck had flaws, but it was powerful enough. I hoped to go 8-1, and only a painful loss in turns in round nine kept me from that record. Here some of the weird parts of the day:
- When I checked my pool during sleep-in build, I counted only 83 cards in the pool. They matched the 83 registered on the sheet. One was missing. The judge and I eventually determined an uncommon was missing, and they gave me a random uncommon to fill out the pool. The card? Erdwal Illuminator, which was perfect. Mise.
- I lost round six to Charles League, a great player with a brilliantly-constructed deck. Late in game one, I had to Sleep Paralysis his Sigarda, Heron’s Grace. He untapped, cast Root Out, and won soon after. Game two was not as close. After the match, I admired his decision to put the Naturalize effect in his main deck. There are so many great enchantments in the format, both removal and engine cards, and some strong equipment, like True-Faith Censer and Neglected Heirloom. Root Out will have a lot of targets.
- In game three of round seven, we were at the crucial turn. Each of us were at low life and had a lethal attack force. The next player to shift the balance would win. I had Confront the Unknown in hand to win on my next turn if any attacker got through. My opponent tanked on his play, and then flipped to the back of his life pad to read some notes. A judge was watching and asked what he was reading. My opponent had written the contents of his deck in the back of his pad and was using outside information during the game. The head judge was summoned and my opponent got a match loss. I think I would have won anyway, but it was a weird relief to be able to pick up my cards with the win.
I sat down in pod nine for the first day two draft. We did the show-your-DFC dance (which apparently won’t be happening at the Pro Tour). The player three to my right revealed Archangel Avacyn. The player to his left revealed Hanweir Militia Captain. Gonna be hard for me to get good white cards, I thought. My DFC was Skin Invasion, and the players on either side of me had Breakneck Rider. When I scanned through my first pack, the best cards were Odric, Lunarch Marshal, Skin Invasion, and Just the Wind. I like Odric, but I couldn’t be sure that both players to my right would eschew white because of Avacyn, and pass the Militia Captain to me. Seeing all these powerful DFCs made the choice tricky.
I took Just the Wind, a card I love and think is the best blue common. I expected blue to be underdrafted because its strategies aren’t as obvious as the other colors. The Militia Captain did come to me, and I passed it along, sticking with my plan. I ended up drafting a solid but not amazing blue-black deck.
More than Just the Wind
I lost the first round to a strong aggressive red-black deck. I didn’t draw especially well, and it was over quickly. I rallied back to win the next two, over green-white and a less impressive red-black deck. Some takeaways:
- Just the Wind is amazing. Go figure—Silent Departure was amazing the first trip to Innistrad, and similar cards like Voyage’s End have been all stars in other recent formats. If you can use it with a madness outlet like Macabre Waltz or Call the Bloodline, the card is absurd. And in a world with flipping werewolves and such, bounce does a lot of work even if you aren’t aggressive.
- Voldaren Duelist is a defining card of the format. Through it, along with hasty friends like Ember-Eye Wolf and Malevolent Whispers, red decks have incredible explosive power. This causes opponents to have to sit back to protect themselves, which gives the red deck more time to maneuver. Because of this, cards that let you attack into red while protecting from duelist attacks are crucial. One of the best is Essence Flux. Attack with Silent Observer, the flicker it back into a 2/6 to block the Duelist or some other threat. Jace’s Scrutiny can help too, and I recommend siding it in against red decks.
- Skulk is great at pecking away against decks with bigger creatures. Farbog Revenant and Rancid Rats are premium common creatures.
- In round ten, I won a long first agame against GW after overcoming Pious Evangel. Game two I led out with Niblis of Dusk into Silent Observer. On turn five, I passed with one blue mana available. My opponent did not have a fifth land. He cast Angelic Purge targeting my Silent Observer, and sacrificed his fouth land, I cast Essence Flux in response for the sick three-for-one. Then next turn he cast Rabid Bite on his 5/6 One of the Pack targeting something of mine. I bounced the werewolf with Just the Wind. My opponent shook his head in frustration and scooped.
I was elimated from top eight contention, but I was pleased to get a 2-1 with this deck. It was good and flexible, but not amazing. I needed two or three wins in the second draft to for a strong finish. My second draft, in pod ten, provided a glut of powerful blue cards, and I drafted a much sweeter zombies deck. And in pack three I opened a foil Westvale Abbey, which was pretty good.
Zombie Apocalypse
Blue was so open that I had to ship three Just the Wind, for Reckless Scholar, Drunau Corpse Trawler, and Westvale Abbey. If I’d known I’d get a second Reckless Scholar later in the draft, I would have taken Just the Wind. The card would have been amazing for me. As it was, I had to use filtering and graveyard shenanigans to maximize my card selection. Recurring Rancid Rats with Macabre Waltz and going off with Diregraf Colossus proved plenty powerful. More lessons:
- I had to ship so many good blue cards, along with the good red cards I was shipping on purpose, that Andrew Sullano, to my left, got totally hooked up on a sweet blue-red aggro deck. I had the bad luck of being paired against him in round 13. He was a great opponent and we had a fun match, but I wasn’t excited to play the other sweet blue deck. It was a bad matchup for me, and I lost pretty decisively.
- I won the next round in two crazy games against a white-black token combo deck. Call the Bloodline, Sanitarium Skeleton, Indulgent Aristocrat, Behind the Scenes, and Reaper of Flight Moonsilver for good measure. In both games, I flipped and attacked with Westvale Abbey about twelve times. He had tons of lifelink tokens to fight back, and occasional spirit tokens to chump block. In each game I had to make meaningful plays while attacking repeatedly with Ormendahl to win the game. It was surprisingly interactive and fun, which bodes well for the format.
- I finished the weekend with a resounding win over Harry Corvese’s green-white humans deck. I played a ton of Rancid Rats and made lots of zombie tokens. It was glorious.
- I should have played Deny Existence and Explosive Apparatus in my deck, over Epiphany at the Drownyard and Morkrut Necropod. Both cards are solid but were redundant in my deck. With all my card filtering, I needed some situational cards that could deal with opposing threats. I don’t have any real removal, and those cards were great when I sideboarded them in.
Overall, I am quite proud of my work on the weekend. Shadows Over Innistrad is a very deep, balanced, and subtly powerful format. You don’t just build a 9-0 sealed deck, or a 3-0 draft deck. You build a good one, and you earn your wins. I can’t wait to dig into it. If only I had another grand prix to look forward to.
Carrie O’Hara is Editor-in-Chief of Hipsters of the Coast.