Hello all you fellow Limited fans! I'm back today with a new series I've been thinking of writing for a long time - personal coverage of my journey through this season of the Los Angeles' Limited scene's Team Draft League.

For those of you who don't know, Team Draft is one of the best ways to play Magic - it involves drafting as a team of three, alternating sitting between an opposing team of three, and then playing 1v1 matches until a team scores five match wins.

It's an incredibly tough but rewarding way to Draft, as you both pass to and get passed cards from opposing team members. While your team can't share a card pool, you can help each other with advice, mulligan, and deck-building decisions.

Back during the end of the pandemic when stores were still closed, my friend Alex and I opted to create a Team Draft League, modeled after the one in New York City, to get players back into the game. The league has been going strong for the last few years, with yours truly picking up a few champion titles.

Me and my winning teammates during the Duskmourn season

This season we hit a whopping ten teams! I opted to pair up with my current teammates that I played with in the Edge of Eternities season, Shaun and Walski. While we got close to winning that one, we lost by a hair's breadth. We're back this time to claim our spot as champions and learn the ins and outs of Lorwyn Eclipsed Limited.

Prelude - Learning to Draft Golgari Elves

In my last Limited article I wrote about the power of Golgari Elves, a deck I clinched a 3-0 in a MTG Arena Draft and in a paper Draft. The deck just has such great quality commons and uncommons, a synergistic plan, and lots of value through its use of the graveyard as a resource. This was a pretty major shift from my first 1-2 Draft of the format, where I drafted a bad four-color Vivid deck.

In a lot of conversations before our first League match, Shaun and I discussed in depth the nature of the format. Through these talks and learning to play the Elf deck, I learned a few key important things about the format.

1. As a Typal Set You Need an Engine
2. Combat Tricks are Worse than Usual
3. Identifying Your Lane Early is Vital

In Lorwyn Eclipsed there are really only 5-6 viable archetypes: Elves, Goblins, Elementals, Merfolk, Kithkin, and Orzhov Midrange. The set has a ton of support for the first five typal archetypes, but creature types like Faeries and Giants have much less support. That being said, there isn't really a defined deck for Simic, Boros, and Gruul, making me want to steer clear from these decks.

With the format being pretty grindy with all these creatures hanging around, you need "engine" cards to help you go over the top of your opponent. Morcant's Eyes is a perfect example of this. It's a card that already plays well into your Elf archetype since it can fill your graveyard for cards like Morcant's Loyalist. Additionally, it fixes your draw every turn so you can bin extra lands you don't need, helping you hit a critical mass of spells.

The crazy thing is - Morcan'ts Eyes also just has a "win the game" clause stapled onto it with its sacrifice effect! I've won some crazy grindy games being able to make a dozen elves (since this counts Shapeshifters). This card is like a mini-planeswalker in some regard.

Overall, you want to figure out a plan by finding the open lane, grabbing your engine cards, and just drafting the creatures that fit your archetype, alongside some decent removal spells. Combat tricks play much worse in this set because it's so hard to clear the board efficiently, and you end up just not having room for them in your deck with all of your creatures and premium removal. Finding your lane is paramount to succeeding in this format.

Back to the draft - on Wednesday our team faced off against my friend Aurelion. We had lost pretty badly to them during Edge of Eternities in week one, getting destroyed by their Quantum Riddler Azorius deck. I opened a pretty lackluster pack, but opted to pick up a Selfless Safewright, hoping I'd get the chance to be in Elves. The next pack was also a bit lackluster, and with no Elf card in sight I was torn between a Hovel Hurler or a Sting-Slinger. While Hovel Hurler was probably the right pick, since it didn't commit me to a specific archetype, I opted for Sting-Slinger, in case Goblins was an open lane.

My next few picks were weird - I didn't find any clear Goblins or Elves cards, but opted for two Noggle Robbers and a Feed the Flames. With a Shinestriker making an appearance late into the pack, I opted to solidify my lane as Izzet Elementals - a deck I had yet to draft.

In pack two I sniped a Sygg, Wanderwine Wisdom (lucky for me I cut this from the Merfolk player to my right), and also an Eclipsed Flamekin, making me a bit more relieved with my decision to commit to Elementals. Honestly, for the rest of the Draft I didn't pick any other crazy cards, just decent commons and uncommons to round out my deck. However, in pack three I did get pretty lucky.

I opened a Curious Colossus, a card we had already talked about being incredibly busted and a way to win the game. While the rares in this set are definitely not as crazy as some of the past few expansions, this was one that I knew would end games. Even as a base Izzet deck, Shaun had already taught me how Elementals can pretty much splash whatever it wants since the deck has lots of incidental treasure token-makers and land cyclers.

With two Noggle Robbers, two creatures with Basic Landcycling, a Changeling Wayfinder, and a Firdoch Core, I had plenty of ways to splash this card in my Izzet deck - even in a six-person pod!

Here's the deck I ended up playing:

Round One

In the first round I faced off against Elves, and with my opponent having a Morcant's Eyes in play, I was worried about my chances - especially because I didn't pick up any enchantment removal. I had to use my Stratosoarer early in the game to hit my land drops, meaning I didn't have another flyer to push through damage as my opponent and I reached a board stall.

While I was worried about losing to Morcant's Eyes, I inevitably was able to push through by casting Curious Colossus, and chipping away for damage against my opponent's board. While my opponent was able to crack Morcant's Eyes for a decent amount of Elves, I timed my Run Away Together right to pick up my Colossus and recast it, turning all of the new 2/2s into 1/1s.

Ultimately I was able to punch through enough damage with Shinestriker and Sting-Slinger, and Tweeze clinched the last three points of damage (thanks to my teammate for pointing out this can go face!!).

With my opponent having a much more land-heavy draw in Game 2, I was able to secure the match. Looking over at my teammates' matches I watched Shaun (Azorius Merfolk) take down a Naya deck from Aurelion. Walski had drafted an interesting take on Dimir, and while he wasn't in a popular archetype, he did have three Bogslither's Embrace to keep his opponent from pressuring too hard. Both my teammates won their matches.

Looking at the table, I was pretty happy where we had all ended up. I was the only Elementals player, and while their team had the busted Elf deck, our team definitely had the better Merfolk deck, as Shaun was passing directly to their Merfolk player. Walski's deck was maybe not on theme, and could have also been Elves, but the Naya deck seemed unfocused, so I felt good about our chances of victory.

Round Two

While Shaun was able to close out three games in a grindy match against Elves, I was able to 2-0 my Merfolk opponent, winning mainly off the back of Curious Colossus, and having enough removal to break up his combos. Merfolk is a deck that aims to out-tempo and assemble a critical mass of creatures that you can start tapping and untapping, so a few removal spells goes a long way to break up these value engines.

Because counterspells are so lackluster in this set, I had to navigate my games in a way where I was focused on staying alive while having my opponent play into my Curious Colossus.

Looking back on the match, I want to highlight why I think we had such an overwhelming advantage. Obviously, opening up Curious Colossus is a way to win games of Magic: The Gathering. However, I was extremely rewarded for doing so based on the fact I not only drafted the typal deck for my seat, but that I was able to splash my rare by how I drafted.

Elementals is the best deck to be in for splashing in general, since it's the best deck that carries Noggle Robber while also having access to two basic landcyclers. This means if you open a bomb rare, no matter the color, you can splash it even if it has two pips of a different color in its mana cost.

Shaun having the better Merfolk deck, as he was upstream of the other Merfolk player in the Draft, and Walski taking a critical amount of good Black cards and removal gave us an edge in the other matches. Shaun also splashed Black for Unbury and Blighted Blackthorn, giving him reach in case his plan was disrupted by removal.

I wonder if Aurelion (to my left) should've been in just straight Selesnya Kithkin, or if the other Merfolk player was supposed to take the Elemental cards that were passed to me. It also helped that Shaun and I were able to beat the Elves deck, which was probably the best deck at the table.

After our victory, the three of us headed over to Canter's Deli on Fairfax to celebrate our wins with some pastrami and steak fries. While I unfortunately didn't snap a pic of my delicious pastrami on rye, you can at least get a look at one of LA's oldest delis in this Hellman's Super Bowl ad...

While we won this week, there are still five weeks to go in the season. My goal is to keep the ball rolling and draft my best. Until the next episode...

-Roman Fusco