Team Draft 2: Wales vs. Denmark

The Welsh team had just come off a close match versus the English National Team, pulling off a win in a down-to-the-wire third match. Team Wales is Philip Brett, Wai-Sing Chung, and Richard Edbury, while Team Denmark is composed of Niels Sander Jensen, Jan Sorensen, and Thomas Quist. The draft portion started off looking like it should be a fairly even match, with both teams having about the same level of preparation for the event. The Welsh team decided to pick first rather than second, and the draft started off with a few weak packs, with the first two picks overall being a pair of 1/1 creatures, a Tidal Visionary and Quirion Elves. As quickly as pack two, Wales reaped rewards for putting the five-color mage in the C seat, as Richard opened an Agonizing Demise and had no difficulty whatsoever drafting it.

Wales followed a 'conventional' draft strategy for this draft, with a blue-white deck in the middle, a five-color deck in the C seat, and a black-red deck in the A seat. Denmark pulled a similar strategy, putting a blue-white-black deck in the middle seat, and a red-black deck in the A seat, but for seat C they seemed to settle for red-green with potential later splashes instead of a more dedicated five-color strategy, picking the quality early Green creatures quite highly in hopes of pressing the five-color deck before it is able to set up.

A chart of the draft, minus the non-relevant later picks that would not be making it into any of the decks, looked like this:

Team Denmark drafts There were quite a few exciting moments in the draft, especially when Edbury received the Collective Restraint back from the Denmark team for his five-color-green deck. One particularly ridiculous pack of Apocalypse was opened, with the opposing team having to counterdraft both Jilt and Pernicious Deed before giving the Welsh a shot at it, and they still got a Goblin Legionnaires, AEther Mutation, and Penumbra Bobcat before the pack ran out of incredible cards. The draft went fairly well for Wales, with them getting the decks they wanted and a nice powerful set of cards, but their matchups could go either way:

The five-color-bomb deck was paired versus a very fast and aggressive red-green deck, the two blue-white decks a fairly even match, with one having the Silver Drakes and the other Jilt, plus options on Ertai the Corrupted... and the red-black matchups able to go either way depending on the strength of the Flagbearers and Acolytes in the Wales deck, and the very shaky mana base required to fit those in there.

After the match, I had a talk with Richard Edbury, who was directing the draft for the Welsh team. Richard was leading the team for the simple reason that his teammates had no experience in Team Rochester Draft, and while he was afraid of stumbling around a bit because of the level of complexity of Invasion-Planeshift-Apocalypse draft, he seemed to do fine leading the team, though he admitted a bit of a problem with not being able to pay attention to what the opponent had drafted for their deck and altering his plans accordingly. Of course, being full members of the national team by right of combat, both Philip Brett and Wai-Sing "Jimmy" Chung had the power of veto over specific card choices, though Richard hoped they could trust him enough to not use it unless they feel he is making a terrible mistake.

Wales ended up losing to the Danish team, with Richard losing his match because he failed to realize just how fast his opponent's deck was, and because he let a few too many good green creatures make their way into his opponent's deck instead of his own. Wai-Sing Chung beat Jan Sorensen squarely, due to his more powerful cards, but Philip Brett lost to Niels Sander Jensen because of his mana problems, and a few too many power cards passed Niels's way, such as the Soul Burn that caused Philip quite a bit of difficulty.