This past weekend there was a Veil Breach at Magelings in Columbia, Missouri. At this event members of the Kaijudo team at Wizards of the Coast came and brought 24 packs of Quest for the Gauntlet with them, a set that is not released until May 30^th. From all the people that came out they selected 8 people to be the first to draft with this set. I was one of the lucky people chosen to participate in the draft. What drafting is, for those who don’t know, is where each player gets 3 packs. You open 1 pack, pick a card to keep and pass the rest to the person next to you until all the cards in the pack have been picked. You do the same process with all 3 packs. Once that is done you build a deck with a minimum of 30 cards from all the cards you drafted. For a more in depth explanation on drafting, you can check out this article Ryan Miller did. http://www.kaijudo.com/blog/news/kaijudos-booster-draft-experience

Drafting Strategy

            When we sat down to start drafting I did not have much of a strategy going in because I had no idea what to expect. At the time there were only about 35 cards in the 170 card set that we knew about. Almost every card would be completely new to everyone. All I could do was read each card and try to pick powerful cards and ones that worked well together. You can say I was very fortunate that out of my first pack my rare was Torhelm, Stomper Elite. This is one of the best Fire rush evolutions I have ever seen and I knew my whole drafting strategy would revolve around him as much as possible, meaning I was aiming for low costing Fire creatures. As the packs were being drafted to me I just took the best Fire card from among them and put into my deck. I was very thankful that hardly anyone else was picking the Fire cards because I noticed a lot of the same cards were still there once it came back around to me. When I opened the 2^nd pack, I pulled a Very Rare, The Arbiter, which was a Light creature that cost 7 for 2500 Shield Blast creature that tapped up to 2 enemy creatures when it entered the battle zone. Sadly there was a Megacannon Renegade in the same pack. Megacannon Renegade is a Evolution creature you can put on any of your Fire creatures. It costs 3 and has 4000 power. It has an Unleash ability that gives it +3000 power and makes it a Double Breaker. I had not picked up one Light card before that so I made the choice of choosing Megacannon Renegade over The Arbiter because I knew it would help me out more when playing against people more.

There were some other creatures I was able to draft that were great cards for my Fire based deck. One was Sergeant Maddox. He gives all other fire creatures +1000 power and since I only used Fire creatures, it boosted all of them up. It was very helpful using him with Torhelm Stomper Eilite because that made him have 6000 power and I could attack untapped creatures with him on the turn I summoned him. The next card is Blastforge Sweeper. When he enters the battle zone I can discard a card in order to draw two cards. This was awesome in my deck because I was normally down to 1 card by turn 4 and I could use him to refuel my hand back up. He also helped me draw my evolution creatures quickly.  Rally Bot also helped give me that extra push I needed to rush down my opponent. He is a 3 for 3000 creature that gets Fast Attack while I have an Evolution creature in the battle zone. Shield Blast creatures are abundant in Quest for the Gauntlet and they can be game changing, especially if you are using a rush deck. I drafted two Scrapheap Hunter, a 3 cost for 1000 power that banishes an enemy creature with 1000 power or less when it enters the battle zone and two Technoraptor, which is simply a 4 cost 2000 creature.

After the drafting was all done we had to build a minimum of 30 card deck from the 42 cards everyone picked. I had a total of 27 Fire cards and had room for 3 more cards. I wanted to fill that spot with Shield Blasts and for them to be from the same civilization. During draft sometimes I would get passed a pack with no Fire in it so I would gravitate towards Nature because those 2 civs work well together and wanted a back-up plan in case the mono Fire did not work. From the extra 12 cards I had Root Trap, Sprout, and Vine Bind. I put those three in my deck and it worked great, I even was able to cast them a few times. Here is what the deck looked like after all the drafting was done and deck choices were made.

[ccDeck=”Main Deck”]1 Torhelm. Stomper Elite:1 Ember Adept:2 Wreck Mech:1 Sprout:1 Relentless Vanguard:2 Kenina the Igniter:3 Megacannon Renegade:2 Rally Bot:2 Railgun Raptor:1 Laserize:2 Scrapheap Hunter:1 Thundering Clap:1 Sergeant Maddox:1 Vine Bind:1 Drakon Mercenary:1 Shock Troop:2 Technoraptor:1 Slagcannon Grunt:1 Blastforge Sweeper:1Volcano Trooper:1 Rocket Hawk:1 Root Trap[/ccDeck]

This deck performed just like any other rush deck would. It curved out at 5 mana and attaked fast and hard. Most games I was able to play Megacannon Renegade on turn 3 and win from there. This deck has a lot of synergy and is a great choice to think about when you are drafting. You have to pay attention because if someone else is trying to do the same thing it might throw your card choices off. This whole experience was so much fun. Drafting is definitely one of the best ways to play Kaijudo, not only do you get 3 packs but you can build an awesome deck with it. I am going to be doing this at least once a week with my friends. Quest for the Gauntlet comes out May 30^th so be sure to attend a Set Premiere for your first chance to play with these cards and get an exclusive deck box and 5 promo cards! The next stop for the Circuit Series is Washington, D.C. on May 31st - June 1st! Click the picture below for the details!

Bobby

Discussion

comments