Why Winston Draft

I’m sure for most Vintage players, all the real action will be coming up this weekend. The first two-day Star City event in almost a year is coming up in Chicago, and everyone will be watching closely. Not only is this expected to be a big draw for players all around the North-Central US, but also this is one of the last major events before the December 1 restriction (or unrestriction!) announcement, and it will be the first major event using Lorwyn cards.

Basically, it’s a big deal. Though it’s coming down to the wire if you want to go and haven’t made plans, I encourage you to at least take a look at the results when it’s all over. Lots could happen.

Of course, if you won’t be weekending in the Windy City, you should visit beautiful Sandusky, Ohio instead! The Gamers Lounge is hosting a special Vintage event as an introduction to the format. Players who attend will be able to enjoy a little freedom, since some of the area’s big names will, of course, be in Chicago. Players will also have the special opportunity to earn some proxies (usable in the tournament; it’s full-proxy, after all) made by yours truly.


Plus, Gamers Lounge events are always a huge blast. There’s lots of room for players, lots of singles for last-minute purchases and trade, and the opponents aren’t jerks! Check it out!

November 10, 2007
Registration - 12 noon
Tournament - 1 pm
Cost - $15
Prize - Full cash payout of entry fees awarded to top four
1st: 50%
2nd: 30%
3rd: 10%
4th: 10%

The Gamers Lounge
127 E. Market St.
Downtown Sandusky, OH
419-621-0282
www.theherozone.com

All tournaments are full-proxy, and everyone who enters will get a free premium card just for signing up!

So yeah, there’s a lot going on this weekend, whether you’re heading out of town or staying in.

I went out of town last weekend, to Washington, DC to see my girlfriend, Elizabeth. We had our regular bit of fun, touring, hiking, and generally hanging out, but she also agreed (surprisingly readily, I might add) to try out a Magic format new to me: Winston Draft, one of the featured formats at this year’s Invitational.

My girlfriend likes limited formats, I think, because things feel a bit more even. There aren’t especially good matchups or bad matchups from the outset, even though there are good strategies and worse. Plus, the decks play out a little more simply—synergy is mostly inherent and there’s not really a bad time to play a creature and attempt to beat face. The games are fast, creature-based, and filled with action.

In the past, we’ve used the packs we’ve won as Two-Headed Giant partners at prereleases and used them as sealed-deck components. This time, I actually had to buy some packs of Lorwyn, which was fine with me since I didn’t make it to the prerelease and didn’t have any packs of my own.

Winston Draft works like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_H4WDrhD5Y

If for some reason you don’t have audio or visual on your computer—do they still make monochrome monitors?—the basics are that two players shuffle their packs together (a total of 90 cards) then make three piles of one card each. Whoever drafts first looks at the first pile. If she wants that, she takes it, and puts a new card on each of the piles. If she doesn’t, she moves on to the second, then the third. If none of the piles is any good, the drafter takes the top card of the remaining cards. Then the second player repeats the process.

It’s a much easier process to understand if you watch. So upgrade your computer and watch the dang video.

Anyway, Elizabeth and I ended up going through the draft process twice with the same 90 cards Oddly enough, it turned out about the same each time; we just switched colors. We actually looked through the cards before going into the draft, just so Elizabeth could get more familiar with some of the cards and strategies available. Plus, I had to explain that whole planeswalker thing.

(As a side note, does anyone think some of the planeswalkers will have some place in Vintage. Jace Beleren is fairly cheap and a great source of long-term card advantage, for example. Especially if you can somehow mitigate his drawback ability, say, with Standstill? And all of the other ones can wreck house if they stay out long enough. If only their costs weren’t so prohibitive.)

I still have the decks together from the second time through, but I think I can remember enough of my own deck to piece the rest of the first draft together. However, since I’m no draft expert and (as far as I know, anyway) neither is my girlfriend, that won’t really be worthwhile to anybody. Also, I really don’t want to type out all 90 cards right now. Mostly I just wanted to try out this Winston Draft thing.

After seeing the cards (which I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t normally do), the one major bomb we had was planeswalker Ajani Goldmane. After that, it was mostly just solid cards, especially since two of our rares were tribal duals. We also had Hamletback Goliath and Wanderwine Prophets, but neither of those seemed like super goals for drafting. I wanted to win before Goliath would come down, and the Prophets seemed clunky.

I don’t know, I guess that like usual, I just wanted to draft Fish.

The first round of drafting saw me starting taking all the white cards I could find, but I quickly realized Elizabeth was doing the same. She had the same sense of Ajani that I had and got to him first. Oh well.

There were two Battlewand Oaks and two Elvish Handservants that I had my eye on, though, and I got those along with a handful of giants, elves, and shapeshifters. One of my favorite cards in Lorwyn (draft and otherwise) is Changeling Berserker, and one of those made my deck, along with one of two Nameless Inversions.

Elizabeth, as might be inferred from me drafting green, red, and black, drafted blue and white. Unfortunately, I had unintentionally snatched two of the better blue cards—both Faerie Trickeries. For a while I thought I might go blue; turned out no.

It turned out pretty well. We played three games, and I won two of them by just playing more creatures than she could. The third game, my girlfriend’s mana worked out perfectly and I drew trees. Turns out we had both kept hands of five lands and two spells, and hers cards had worked themselves out faster.

The Handservants and Battlewand Oaks made their way to me again in the second draft, alongside one of the Nameless Inversions again. This time, though, I upped the quality of white cards, including Ajani Goldmane. Like last time, Elizabeth played the colors I didn’t—this time blue and red.

It’s a fun format, and was great for two people. Plus, there’s some interesting new strategic considerations as well.

Cards that would normally be merely solid are terrific. Take Hillcomber Giant, for example. Normally a four-drop 3/3 is solid but not amazing. That it has mountainwalk is irrelevant four times out of five. When you see that there are no red cards in any of the piles and are sure that your opponent is drafting red, however, Hillcomber Giant becomes a top pick. In each of the drafts we did, the deck with red ended up opposing the deck with white, and we had some epic struggles over those Giants.

Of course, trying to figure out what you and your opponent will be playing can be quite a chore in the first round. When there was no clear good card in the initial piles in the second draft, for example, Elizabeth and I both ended up taking the random top card of the stack. In fact, our first four or five rounds in the second draft were terribly unexciting. One of the piles got to six cards before I took it, and I was only picking up two mediocre cards.

Winston Draft is tricky and fun. I’d really like to try it again at some point, because I’m sure I didn’t get to experience everything. I tend to draft more on intuit than actual strategy, so if I see a janky card that I think has a chance to be good, I’m liable to take it and try it for no other reasons. Sometimes that ends up lucky; other times it means I have lots of dead cards. Usually what happens is that I end up missing things.

If you’ve got six packs (or just 90 cards in the usual 1-3-12 configuration), you should try a two-player Winston Draft. Justin even pointed out to me (after Eddie P. Brain drunkenly expounded it to him) that two players could reasonably Winston Cube Draft. Sounds like fun to me!

Still, the best part for me was being able to play Magic with my girlfriend. Clearly, she's a very special woman. For those of you who haven't had this experience (or who have had actual negative experiences), I'm fairly certain I win this round.

See you this weekend in Chicago!