Back in a Flash: RTR Draft Report

Hello Internetters,

So my Local Game Store has been having trouble firing Rivals of Ixalan drafts for the past couple of months (despite assertions from the LR crew about the quality of the experience), so we've been doing a lot of random flashback drafts. I'm here today to talk about a pair of them that I recently took part in.

Alas, I missed the triple Theros draft, but maybe I can convince Laura to tell you about her sweet Helspeth deck. The two formats I was most excited to draft when they came up in rotation were triple RTR, and triple KTK. Let's refresh, in case there's anyone out there who wasn't drafting during either of these sets.

Return to Ravnica was the first set in the RTR block. It's a multicoloured set revolving around 5 two-coloured pairs. Oddly, they didn't take either all the enemy or all the allied pairs, but a mixture thereof. The guilds in attendance for RTR were Azorius (W/U), Izzet (U/R), Rakdos (B/R), Golgari (B/G), and Selesnya (G/W). Decks usually ended up two colours with a splash, and it was better to try to stay inside a guild for synergy purposes, but it was totally possible to draft five colour nonsense, as was proven by someone who was in the other pod.

Decks tended to be slower in RTR (unless you were Rakdos), and taking a few turns to really get going was totally fine. To that end, I knew I had room to try something bad. Something I've always wanted to try, even though I knew it wasn't a good strategy. Let's talk about Door Keeper.

I don't want anyone to defend me on this one. Doorkeeper is a bad card. Drafting a Doorkeeper deck is a bad strategy. It's a 2 mana defender, which is fine, but in a format with Stab Wounds at common, defenders are actually a bit of a liability. I knew I was going to have to draft some bounce, which I did.

As a win condition, doorkeeper is unbelievably slow unless you get an unreasonable amount of defenders. Paying 3 mana to have your opponent mill 2 cards is not a great deal. To that end, I knew I'd need a secondary win condition, which in my case, was going to be flyers. I've gotten way ahead of myself. Let's break down the draft.

My first pick was largely unexciting. I took the hover barrier because I thought just maybe I could play doorkeeper, and it's a good card in whatever deck splashes blue. It didn't take long for me to cement myself in blue, and once I got the lobber crew, I knew I'd be Izzet. Izzet's mechanic is actually Overload, but that's not really something you can draft around, and as a result, Izzet decks were pretty much just “Good stuff” decks in RTR. Whether or not I was going to splash white was an open question during at least the first pack, but I came out of it with at least a few playables.

In pack two I had to pick an abrupt decay for my cube (future article incoming), and didn't really give up that much. Then I picked removal, a couple of ways to deal with Stab Wounds or other pesky auras, and just sort of medium good cards. I wasn't optimistic about my Doorkeeper plan, and I was beginning to wonder if someone else was in the defenders deck, but I managed to scrape together a deck in pack three.

Of course in pack three I did have to pick a Shock land (also for my cube), but I don't remember there being anything terribly exciting. From that point, it was a matter of picking anything that said “Defender”, “Flying”, or that fixed my mana.

Even though this was a multicoloured format, the fixing tended to be quite plentiful, so you could easily get away with splashing a third colour, and still only play 16 lands in the main. I have had decks that played 18 land in the format as well, but this was an easy 16 thanks to my guildgates and keyrunes. I wish I'd taken a picture of my manabase, because it's been long enough now that I don't remember the exact breakdown, but I'm fairly sure I only ran a single plains. The games went long enough that I managed to get at least the keyrune, and if I found another source, I could start activating the keyrune and swinging for 2 in the air.

Round 1

I don't remember what my opponent was running, but he had trouble getting past my early large-toughness blockers, and in the first game I managed to mill him out with double doorkeeper activations four turns in a row.

Game two was much more painful. I didn't see a doorkeeper until very late, and he kept gaining life, so my flyers couldn't do their jobs fast enough.

Game three was a back and forth, but I dropped two voidwielders in a row and that gave me enough tempo to kill him with birds before he could come back.

Round 2 saw me up against our very own Captain Laura, who was running some kind of horrible token machine. I don't remember the details, but suffice it to say that I straight up died very quickly.

Oh no, wait. I did use Street Spasm to deal 4 to her entire board after she'd populated twice or thrice. I think I killed about nine creatures. Unfortunately, she's both lucky and good enough to have held back her Horncaller's Chant to play afterward. Between that and Growing Ranks, I had no chance.

Watch out for her if she ever goes pro.

Round 3 was a long and entertaining slog. Both my opponent and I made several errors in not drawing (or in my case, milling) extra cards at end of turn, but the games were fun and back and forth. Eventually he managed to do me in in 3 games, but that's what I expected.

In the end I won fewer games than I lost, but the margin was slimmer than I'd anticipated. I would probably not draft around doorkeeper again, but then again, I might. Sometimes losing with style can be too much fun.

I was going to compare this to the deck I drafted for the KTK flashback, but I think this article has gone on long enough, so it looks like we've all got something to look forward to for next week!

Until then, thanks for reading,

-Step.