Rise of the Eldrazi Draft Results

Notice: Before I talk about the draft, please note that the events scheduled for the next two weeks will happen, but may not happen in the originally scheduled order. It is possible that the Extended event and Mini-Masters event will trade weekends, as I may be out of town next weekend (but Brent is in charge of the Mini-Masters event, so we can still have that while I'm gone). I will try to let you guys know in the next couple days. Sorry for any inconvenience.

Our first September Magic event saw 14 players take a perilous trek into the land of the fatties. After one of the most interesting and diverse drafts I can remember, another mono-colored deck rolled to victory, piloted by the winner of the Rise of the Eldrazi draft we did at the end of the spring semester:

9/4/10 Top Finishers: ROE Draft #1

1. 4-0 Mono Green Eldrazi Beats by Skye Kutner

2. 3-1 GWu Umbras by Dominic Casali

3. 3-1 UR Control by Emile Paul

4. 3-1 BR Control by Scott Record

5. 3-1 BW Levelers by Michael Smith

A wide variety of decks emerged following the draft, and after the first round, it was evident that there was a wide variety of contenders. Two decks that drew attention early were Scott's "kill dem all!" black/red control deck, featuring not one, but two Guul Draz Assassins! Also earning some jealous stares was Haren's "look at me, I made teh moneys" double-mythic deck, featuring both All is Dust and Kozilek, Butcher of Truth. Both were narrowly felled, however, in the second round by my self-proclaimed tri-color "triple Aura Gnarlid awesome-sauce" and Matt's white/black "why are the nomads assembling?" deck, respectively (if you think about it, the nomads really have no reason to assemble. The Eldrazi will smash them regardless of whether they are hanging out in the same place or scattered in the fields. Maybe they just wanted to play a game of poker or something before they got annihilated. Whatever.).

On the other side of the bracket, Hunter was sporting a powerful control deck for the second straight week, taking down Michael's black/white levelers deck and then Brent's Tuktuk sac deck, but his run came to an end from Skye's mono-green "OMG Haze Frog!" deck. After an Aura Gnarlid pumped by a splashed Drake Umbra got me through Matt's defenses just in the nick of time, I was staring down the mono-green deck in the finals. I was going to feature the finals again, but first off, I was in it, and secondly, it wasn't that exciting anyway, as I got curb-stomped by fatties in game 1 and lost to a Haze Frog and a 6/7 Eldrazi Spawn in game 2, as Skye cemented himself as the undisputed FITSSFF Rise of the Eldrazi limited champion, winning all his matches in this event 2-0 and going a total of 7-0 in matches over the two events we've done. Emile and Scott recovered from second round losses to take 3rd and 4th, and Michael wielded his Gideon Jura to bounce back from a first round loss to take 5th place.

After our match, Skye graciously penned his decklist out for me to share with everybody. This is just a great deck, and shows yet again how powerful mono-colored decks can be if you ever have the opportunity to draft them. Here's the winning list:

Mono Green Eldrazi Beats ( a.k.a. "OMG Haze Frog") by Skye Kutner:

Creatures (17)

2x Beastbreaker of Bala Ged

3x Nest Invader

2x Overgrown Battlement

1x Daggerback Basilisk

2x Kozilek's Predator

1x Ondu Giant

1x Broodwarden

1x Haze Frog

2x Stomper Cub

1x Hand of Emrakul

1x Artisan of Kozilek

Other Spells (7)

2x Ancient Stirrings

1x Might of the Masses

1x Ogre's Cleaver

1x Boar Umbra

1x Growth Spasm

1x Skittering Invasion

Lands (17)

17x Forest

This deck is powerful for a number of reasons. First off, between Overgrown Battlements and Nest Invaders it has 5 ways to ramp into 4-mana plays on turn 3. After that, it does a great job of making lots of spawn tokens, which allow you to easily cast an Eldrazi or bring the spawn beatdown with Broodwarden. Skye mentioned to me that two cards he was particularly impressed with were Haze Frog and Artisan of Kozilek, both of which did heavy damage against me. This deck was streamlined so well (note the many cards with 2 and 3 copies) that despite having no relevant sideboard cards or hate draft, he was still able to win every match 2-0.

Here are the updated League Standings after this event. As always, if you want to see my spreadsheet that I used to calculate your league points, send me an email. It looks like we have a couple frontrunners that have opened up some separation at the top of the standings, but everything beyond that is pretty much wide open. As Skye's position shows, it just takes one big event to jump into the front group:

0*. 21 - Dominic Casali (5 events)

1. 20 - Michael Smith (4)

2. 17 - Emile Paul (3)

3. 14 - Joe Hammond (4)

4. 10 - Dan Hooghkirk (2)

4. 10 - Scott Record (2)

6. 9 - Hunter Garrett (3)

6. 9 - Brent Kollinger (4)

8. 8 - Bryant Benson (4)

8. 8 - John Kreinbring (4)

8. 8 - Skye Kutner (1)

11. 4 - Liz DiGangi (3)

11. 4 - Will Sturges (1)

11. 4 - Matt Wills (3)

14. 3 - Michael Carney (2)

14. 3 - Alycia Johnson (2)

14. 3 - Haren Lalchand (3)

17. 2 - Shawn Brabant (2)

17. 2 - Nick Catalfano (1)

17. 2 - John Chandler (1)

17. 2 - Michelle Karl (2)

17. 2 - Stephen Kwokchoon (2)

17. 2 - Nikita Nikolayev (2)

17. 2 - Glen Parker (2)

24. 1 - David Chesnutt (1)

24. 1 - Helen Croce (1)

24. 1 - Kevin Crowley (1)

24. 1 - Kareem Elashmawy (1)

24. 1 - Greg Lovell (1)

24. 1 - Krystal Lutz (1)

24. 1 - Mike Mooty (1)

24. 1 - Jennifer Mori (1)

24. 1 - Ethan Pepmiller (1)

24. 1 - Noah Senzel (1)

*To everyone's surprise, I'm still not eligible for the top-8 invitational at the invitational. If you don't know that yet, please check the Web site more than once a month. kthxbai. :P

Thanks again to everyone who came to the ROE draft, and I hope to see lots of you at the coming events. I'll try to have any corrections to the schedule up by Monday.

- Dom