“Psy blast you to the head.”
“Ok. I’m at four.”
“Psy blast you again.”

This was just one of the memorable things I heard this past weekend at the Time Spiral Pre-release. Yes, he had TWO Psionic Blasts in his deck.

Another story: I watched a match where one player triumphantly windmill slammed Akroma into play, only to see it turned into an 0/1 sheep via an Ovinomancer that showed up a turn later.

All of this was spawned by the insanity that is Time Spiral booster draft. With TS, we return to the world of two-color drafting. As you sit down to your first draft, it may be difficult to return to sticking with two colors. Today I’m going to take some examples from my pre-release experience and try to take a look at some of the little nuances of the format.

I was at the pre-release in Madison. Unfortunately, I got there fairly late, and was only able to get into two drafts. I actually got seat number 8 of the last draft of the day. Unfortunately, the results weren’t what I hoped for, but I still learned some valuable info.

First, how I did. My first draft of the day started very, very nicely. I flipped through the pack, and Void was staring me in the face. Black/Red was definitely the right combo to be in, as I got handed a Strangling Soot in the next pack. The removal just kept coming, as I scooped up mass amounts of removal throughout the draft. Things got even better when I opened Dauthi Slayer in pack three. Eventually, this was the build I came up with.

Decisions, Decisions…I went with the Skycutter

I pretty much called this removal.dec. I count 8 removal spells, plus Nightshade Assassin killed a guy every game. A few other observations: this deck is a little creature light, but black/red usually is. It also has no way of dealing with artifacts. While in non-Mirrodin drafts this generally isn’t an overly big concern, I got beat down by the green totem. The artifacts in TS are generally pretty decent. 

I got paired up against an archtype that I didn’t think was going to be relevant. Slivers.dec didn’t look like the big threat. It’s fairly tough to draft, and requires commitment early on. But, my opponent managed to pull it off. He was running twelve slivers, against my two. He ran multiples of Sidewinder Sliver, Watcher Sliver, Spinneret Sliver, and Quilled Sliver. Game one saw me land Ghostflame Sliver on turn two, which neutralized his deck fairly well. Void for two picked off a spinneret and a Gemhide Sliver, while Dauthi Slayer and Trespasser il-Vec pinged for the win.

Games two and three can be summed up in two words: Weatherseed Totem. He dropped it turn three both games, and I just had no answer for it. Any removal spell I had simply bounced it, and I saw it replayed on the next turn. This was where the creature-lightness of my deck really hurt me. I never had enough guys to step in front. The totem bashed my face in, and my draft was pretty quickly over.

What to take away from that draft: Firemaw Kavu actually reads “Deal 2 damage to target creature. At the beginning of your next upkeep, this deals 4 damage to target creature.” I think I saw his echo cost paid twice all day. Flamecore Elementals go late, but are actually pretty good. Also, don’t forget about your suspended cards. My Corpulent Corpse wound up with about Suspend 8, just because I forgot to remove the counters. The final thing I learned from this draft…Lightning Axe plus Dark Whithering is really good.

Possibly the coolest part of this format is the purple cards. I’ll get to how insane they are when I talk about my second draft, but first a funny story from the first draft about purple cards. I’d been joking with the people at the draft table about how if someone opened an Akroma they had to windmill slam it down onto the table. Unfortunately, no one opened the angel. But the drafter on my left did open a Mystic Snake. The card was out of the pack for about six seconds before it came crashing down onto the table…the victim of a windmill slam. We had a little reenactment of it after the draft.

So draft one didn’t go to well. As I reported the match result to the judge, he told me that there was only one more draft going on that day. So myself and one of the guys I went with, PJ, signed up. We got seats seven and eight.

This draft didn’t start out with the bang that draft one did. I made what was probably one of the worst first-picks of the day and took a Scarwood Treefolk out of a fairly weak pack. (Moonlace, Claws of Gix, Aspect of Mongoose, a lot of stuff like that.) Pack two came to my salvation by handing me a Phthisis. Assassinate was a fairly easy third pick. My fourth pick was where I made the biggest mistake of the draft. There were no decent black cards, and the choice came down to stay green and take Nantuko Shaman, or jump into blue with Drifter il-Dal. The right pick would have been the Drifter, as I’ll explain later, but I went with the Nantuko. I found out, much to my dismay, that the blue would have been there for the rest of the first pack. But I stayed green/black.

Pack two started out nicely: I opened another Phthisis, got passed a Stonewood Invocation, and then took a foil Funeral Charm. Sure, maybe it isn’t the greatest card in the world, but it was a foil card from Visions, and there wasn’t much else in the pack. The shock of my day was a sixth or seventh pick Clockwork Hydra. This card was apparently extremely underrated coming into the weekend. Take my word on this one: Clockwork Hydra is very good. There are a lot of relevant one toughness creatures in this format. Looter il-Kor, Trespasser il-Vec, Drifter il-Dal, Amrou Scout, Quilled Sliver, and I could go on…all have one toughness. And all of those will see play in this environment.

Pack three was amazingly unexciting. Assassinate and a Gorgon Recluse were the highlights. A late Feebleness was a nice little surprise as well. In the end, I came up with this:

I was fairly happy with the deck. Once again, I’m creature-light, but once again I have insane removal. To the sideboard, I brought in Curse of the Cabal in game two, but I never drew it. I thought it was good, and it might be, but I'm not wholly convinced. I think I made a mistake not bringing in the Shell-Dweller, because I saw later how good the card really was, but hindsight is always 20/20.

How did it do? Well, once again I made an early exit. But I have a better excuse this time. Warning: if you don’t like sob stories, skip the next paragraph. The deck I played against was the most bomb-tastic deck I have ever seen. The guy’s name was Jharick, and he opened the most busted cards ever. Pack 1: Nicol Bolas. What does he get passed? Sol'kanar the Swamp King. To top that all off, he runs Faceless Butcher, FOUR Coral Trickster, THREE Fledgling Mawcor, and a red legendary girl you may have heard of, Jaya Ballard, Task Mage. “Incinerate you” was one of his favorite quotes on the day. Non-creatures he ran included Serrated Arrows. He also had the red totem for good measure.

Game one didn’t last long. He landed a Swamp King on turn five. Since I was playing black, he was smashing my face for five a turn and gaining one life on just about every one of my turns. Feeblement helped a little, but not enough.

Game two was a little better; not much, but a little. He didn’t get out quite as fast. A hardcast Phthisis tried to take out his Ghostflame Sliver, but Serrated Arrows on his own guy made sure he didn’t lose four. I shadowed a Trespasser and pumped it with Stonewood Invocation, but that was about as much offense as I could muster. Faceless Butcher stole my shadow, and then Jaya showed up. I was just a few turns from scooping. He reanimated a Bolas via Dread Return, and I extended the hand.

As insane as that deck was, it fell in the next round. Why? Well, there was one aspect of this format that I think a lot of people overlooked: Shadow. Shadow is very, very good in this format. My trespassers did most of the damage I dealt over the course of the day. But the color that does shadow really well is blue. Looter il-Kor and Drifter il-Dal were all-stars in PJ’s deck. If you don’t remember, PJ was the guy that got seat seven in the draft. After I lost to Jharick, it was PJ’s turn. As insane as Jharick’s deck was, it had absolutely no answer to shadow. Here’s PJ’s deck:

The deck, sorted by mana curve:

There were two things that I found extremely interesting with this deck. Number 1: 19 lands. When I asked him about it, he said, “When I was just messing around goldfishing it, I kept getting mana screwed. 19 was the only thing that worked.” The other thing I noticed was the number of cards: 41. I personally would have dropped the Greenskeeper, especially with 19 lands already, but he finished second and I lost in the first round, so I can’t really say much to it.

This deck showed just how good Penumbra Spider, Looter il-Kor, and Drifter il-Dal really are. He won his first match at 20 and 18. Drifter on turn one was simply lights out. Looter provided insane card advantage, and gave him a way to get rid of any excess lands that showed up. He was running 19 after all. The Thallid provided him with both a nice wall to stall, and a bunch of little guys to set up as chumps.

He got off to a great start against Jharick in game one. Looter on turn two, followed by a Drifter on turn three, to only a morphed guy on the other side. PJ swung for three and found a Forest on the top thanks to the looter. The morph served for two, but land number four didn’t show, so Jharick had to pass. Aether web on the looter made it four unblockable damage a turn, and also found a Temporal Eddy off the top. Jharick mustered Faceless Butcher to steal the looter, and then a totem and a Ghostflame Sliver on the next turn before passing. PJ made a Penumbra Spider, but it was trumped by Jaya. Temporal Eddy got rid of Jaya for a turn, but that extra turn only bought him a Sage of Epityr, showing a Sprout and three lands. The spider ran into a Wipe Away, and Jharick tried to get back into it with Browbeat. PJ let him draw. It wouldn’t matter, as PJ would send the team, Walk the Aeons, do it again, ballgame.

Game two was much of the same. Unfortunately something got a little messed up at our draft table and I was helping the judge sort it out, so I didn’t get to get a game report on this one. The key play was a Truth or Tale that revealed both Jaya and Nicol Bolas. His piles were Jaya in one and Nicol Bolas plus three dorks in the other pile. PJ gave him the dragon. But by the time it hit the table, he was irrelevant.

The finals of the pod showed off another great card in this format: Fortify. Most of the time it is used offensively, but there are a few occasions where the +0/+2 is very useful. But a lot of the time it just pumps those unblocked guys for the win. PJ lost this one pretty much do to Aetherflame Wall. It was the answer to all of the shadow guys. That, an army of goblins via Mogg War Marshal and a windmilled Fortify, ended both games. The windmilling of the fortify (this one wasn’t a reenactment):

PJ is on the left. If you are looking for me in the photo, I’m the pair of blue jeans under PJ’s left arm.

So I didn’t have the greatest day, but one member of my team placed, so it wasn’t a total loss. I did come out of there with a lot of knowledge too. So early on, some things to know about the format.

• Shadow is good. But you must be careful with it. Remember that most of those guys won’t be able to block.
• The removal in the set is very deep. Be sure that you don’t drown in removal spells like I did.
• Three color decks are viable. The fixing isn’t great, because there are no signets, but the fixing is there if you need it. Terramorphic Expanse is an excellent card. You’ve also got Prismatic Lens and Paradise Plume, or evenGemhide Sliver if all else fails.
• The artifacts in this set are good. Keep that in mind when you see a late Krosan Grip.

That will do it for my pre-release stories and initial look at this set in limited. This set has the potential to rival Ravnica for drafting fun. Will it? I don’t know, but I do know that I look forward to drafting more of it in the future.

Until next time, have fun drafting the set, and I hope that you open a Psy Blast.

~Nate Lisko (lionden_56)~

You can discuss this article in the MDV forums here.

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