Welcome back to another week of my journey through Team Draft League LA's Lorwyn Eclipsed season. Coming off our first round win, we actually had a bit of a break until our next match. The season features a bye week match for each team, so with our short break I took it upon myself to keep drafting the format. I ended up clinching another 3-0 at our local store's Monday night Draft with - you guessed it, Elves.

This is probably where the format starts to get a bit stale for my taste. While Lorwyn Eclipsed is a much more balanced format than a set like Avatar: the Last Airbender (at least in terms of bombs), I find myself getting trapped into the same archetypes: Elves and some sort of Izzet-based Elementals/Vivid. I faced off against Goblins, Izzet Elementals, and a Boros Aggro deck, but none could compete with the sheer card quality of my Elves.

Honestly, this format is kind of unbalanced in the sense that if you're the only person in your designated archetype, like Merfolk, Goblins, etc, then you're way ahead of the game. However, these decks get much weaker when two players vie for the same archetype.

I do think Elves and Elementals probably have the largest card pools, as Elementals decks can be strictly Elementals or more of a multicolored Vivid deck that doesn't care so much about the Elemental sub-theme. Similar with Elves, there are just so many good Elves at common and uncommon in addition to Black being a deep color, that two players can easily be in the archetype.

Goblins and Merfolk on the other hand feel like they need more of the key pieces to be good decks, and Goblins even more so. In Goblins, you really need repeatable ways to nudge your opponent's life total down to zero, like Boggart Mischief and Boggart Cursecrafter. Merfolk needs the tap engines and payoffs, like Pestered Wellguard and Wanderbrine Trapper, but it can also just get away with having good White beaters and removal.

Back to our topic at hand, this week we were up against the Mana C's, a longtime League team made up of kids (anyone under the age of 25 is a kid to me, ok?) Julian, Logan, and Toddeh. Luckily the match was just a 20-minute walk from my apartment to their house, and upon arrival I was greeted by one very good boy.

One thing that I love about Team Draft League is just getting to hang out and casually draft with so many players across LA, some that I honestly only really get to see during League matches. I've taken a step back from Magic as a whole recently, and since I'm qualified for the next Regional Championship cycle I don't spend as much time playing Magic on the weekends as I usually do - this is where Draft has satisfied my itch.

Speaking of Drafts, I was met with an interesting decision in my pack one pick one.

While the pick here is probably Sear, I had never actually played with Jean-Emmanuel Depraz before, so with it also being a $10+ card, I sealed my destiny in the hands of the world champ. I was sad to pass the Morcant's Eyes, but I was holding out for the possibility that I could be the Elves drafter at the table.

Even if I didn't, I was fine to play Formidable Speaker in a sort of Temur Elementals deck, and with my next two picks being a Shinestriker and an Eclipsed Flamekin, I chose to stick hard to Elementals, passing by a few random Goblin and Kithkin cards along the way.

In pack two I opened Sanar, Innovative First-Year which fits pretty nicely into the Elementals Vivid archetype that I was already assembling, so I snapped him up quick. However, I didn't seem to find many Izzet cards in pack two, meaning that someone to my left, whether it was my teammate or opponent, was taking removal I desperately needed - cards like Sear, Tweeze, Cinder Strike, and Feed the Flames.

I ended up passing on two copies of Protective Response, which was probably the biggest mistake of my Draft (we'll get to that later...). However, I did grab a copy of Spiral into Solitude.

One thing to keep in mind while drafting Izzet Elementals/Vivid, is that you want your deck to be designed to splash any good cards in any color that come your way. Izzet inherently has good ways to mana fix, with Noggle Robber, Flamekin Gildweaver, and two basic land cyclers, so splashing is relatively easy.

I originally picked up the Spiral into Solitude as a hate pick against my opponent to my right, but it ended up being the best removal spell in my deck since I was being cut from Red removal.

In pack three I opened yet another money card, Wistfulness, and while it's a decent card in this format, I was interested to see if I could effectively use its Disenchant effect, even with very few Green sources in my final build. I didn't get anything crazy passed my way, but I ended up rounding out my deck with cards like Tanufel Rimespeaker, Kulrath Zealot, and Sizzling Changeling. Here's what I ended up with.

As for my teammates, Shaun ended up in Goblins with not just four, but five copies of Barbed Bloodletter (this would prove effective versus our opponents who ended up being Goblins, Kithkin, Kithkin), while Walski also landed on Elementals.

Walski had been the one taking up my Red removal, but I was happy at least that we were not only both in Izzet, but that no one in the Draft ended up in Elves. With Elves being one of the stronger archetypes of the format we ended up pretty few impactful Elves cards in the Draft. We also had no Forests or Plains on our side of the table, meaning we were probably up against some more aggressive strategies.

From the Draft we knew our opponents had at least one copy of Brigid, Clachan's Heart // Brigid, Doun's Mind. Round one I faced off against the pure Selesnya Kithkin deck, that had not only a Brigid, but two copies of Timid Shieldbearer. I was able to out-value them in Game 1 with my Formidable Speaker + Sanar, Innovative First-Year value engine.

In Game 2 I was swiftly run over on the draw by a Kithkin army. In Game 3 we played a long grindy game, but due to mana screw I had to use my basic landcyclers, Stratosoarer and Kulrath Zealot aggressively to ensure land drops. However, by doing this I actually diluted my deck of threats, and once my opponent was able to deal with my creatures, my deck did a whole bunch of nothing.

Timid Shieldbearer ended up being the bane of my existence in this match, and without proper removal to deal with this card (even by using my Spiral into Solitude on on) I was at the mercy of my opponent's Brigid to make a huge board of attackers.

I couldn't go wide enough nor kill my opponent fast enough, so I ended up losing. In retrospect, I should have taken more removal in the Draft to match pace with my opponent's threats, and probably have played the Brambleback Brute that was in my sideboard as a way to break some of the board stalls in our match.

In round two I faced off against Logan, the other Kithkin deck - however his build was very different. Logan had a lower density of small threats, unlike Toddeh's deck in round one. While he had aggressive two-drops, his deck also had cards like Changeling Wayfinder, Shimmerwilds Growth, Stratosoarer, and Kithkeeper.

Honestly, this is where I think your drafting can lead you astray in this format. While Logan's deck was filled with generically "good" cards, this format pushes you to be on a theme - and stick to it. Rather than being a sort of multicolored Bant deck, I think Logan should've opted to be just straight Kithkin or Merfolk.

I was happy to play a longer, grindy game of Magic, and I ended up just out-valuing my opponent in this match.

At the start of round three our teams were tied 3-3, meaning the next two matches won by a team would decide the night. I faced off against Julian's Goblins, a deck that had some pretty good pieces in it like Shadow Urchin, Boggart Cursecrafter, and special guest Goblin Chieftain.

While an early Boggart Cursecrafter was able to chip away at my life total, I was able to turn the corner and stabilize. However, while making an aggressive line to try to win the game in two turns, I unfortunately put myself dead on board to my opponent drawing a Goblin and killing me with his Reckless Ransacking.

I thought I was safe given the board state, but it's important to note that Goblin Chieftain gives other Goblins haste, so perhaps I could have made a much less risky attack and used an extra turn to ensure I didn't die to a topdeck.

However, with my Game 1 of this round being so long, Shaun and Walski had already clinched their wins, Walski in particular flying over the Selesnya Kithkin deck with Pestermite and Glamer Gifter in style for the win. With my match starting with me down a game, it was nice to get bailed out and not worry about it.

One of the great things about Team Draft is that even if you go 0-3 your teammates can still carry you to a victory, so long as you do the same when they have the same unfortunate luck. I feel like in general I want to be aiming for a 3-0, so that when I at least fall to a 2-1 record, I can count on my teammates to put up similar results - although no sweat if any of us goes 0-3, that's just Magic.

Starting this season 2-0 with only four weeks to go is definitely the start we wanted to this season. With four matches left we probably need to win at least two to become one of the top two teams in our division, so as to be in the top four when the elimination rounds start.

Here's to next week, maybe I'll get a chance to play a non-Elementals deck?

-Roman Fusco