Cadillacs and Dinosaurs

So, last Wednesday at WNM we did triple Scars of Mirrodin draft. We had enough players for two pods, one of 8 and one of 9. I ended up in the pod of 8 and drafted a Green-Red deck full of Spellbombs (Cadillacs) and large Green creatures (Dinosaurs). I'm not a fan of draft reports where they show you each pack and pick in turn, as once you have disagreed on one pick, that can change your future picks, making the comparision shakey. So instead, here is the deck I played:-

Main Deck
3 Molder Beast
2 Alpha Tyrranax
1 Engulfing Slagwurm
1 Embersmith
1 Oxidda Scrapmelter
3 Galvanic Blast
2 Turn to Slag
1 Copper Myr
1 Iron Myr
2 Sylvok Replica
1 Vulshok Replica
1 Panic Spellbomb
4 Horizon Spellbomb
1 Tower of Calamities
8 Forest
8 Mountain 
Sideboard
1 Acid Web Spider 
2 Tel-Jilad Fallen


I gave away the rest of the pool at the end of the tourney, but it had a Furnace Celebration that I considered running, but in the end cut to make space. I was amazed at how many copies of certain cards I was able to pick up, which gave the deck a terrifyng consistancy. It had a slight tendancy to flood, but equally I could always activate the Tower of Calamities or sacrifice a Spellbomb/Replica when I needed to. It also meant I was never sat with uncastable dinosaurs in hand.

Round 1
Mr. X running White/Blue/Black Metalcraft

Game one was pretty much decided turn 6. Turn to Slag a Myr equipped with Bladed Pinions. Attack with Molder Beast (9 power with Trample). He blocked with Wall of Tanglecord, I sacrificed Sylvok Replica to kill it and he took 13 Trample damage. Subsequent Spellbombs and the Trample on the beast rapidly won the game.

Game two was looking kinda in his favour, especially when he dropped Carnifex Demon. My response was to cast and, after the demon's first swing, activate Tower of Calamities. From that point on he couldn't keep any creatures on the table and I was able to win off the back of a dinosaur.

2-0 (1-0-0)

Round 2
Dibbs running Green/Black Infect.

Game one simply went; kill Infect creatures, make dinosaurs, race opponent. Even counting Poison Counters as 2 damage each, my creatures were much bigger than his, allowing me to win.

Game two pretty much went the same way, though I didn't see as many creatures and got him down to one life point before he killed me :(

Game three took far too long, and we stopped at time on the round. We both decided it wasn't worth playing out the 5 turns as the win was too far out of reach for both of us. For me, creature of the match was the Embersmith, as it was able to kill mana Myr and the lesser Infect creatures which slowed down his otherwise agressive deck.

1-1 (1-0-1)

Round 3
Northern Sean running Green/Black Infect

Game one was routine. Turn 4 Molder Beast, turn 5 swing for 13, game over pretty quickly.

Game two was pretty bad. I died with 10 lands in play, and 4 in hand. Land flooding is slightly better than land screwing, but still usually leads to a loss.

Game three I made the risky choice of taking out 2 lands to put in both Tel-Jilad Fallen. While this may have been an overreaction to the land flood, I did it for two reasons. Firstly, I had been drawing an awfully large amount of land, especially with 2 mana Myr and 4 Horizon Spellbombs. Secondly, the elves can block the Artifact Infect creatures indefinately, and -1/-1 counters kill Blight Mambas effectively, leaving me my other removal for other creatures and not having to worry about him having Regeneration mana available. This proved to be wise and I won the game with a combination of dinosaurs every turn for three turns and drawing enough removal.

2-1 (2-0-1)

This gave me 7 points, putting me first in the pod, with Dibbs in second and also put me in second place overall. Trust the winner of the other pod to go 3-0 for the full 9 points :p
All in all it proved to be a solid aggro deck, and something I would try and duplicate in future drafts. Not bad for my second attempt at this draft format :)