1-1-1 (Aetherdrift pre-release)

As always, thanks to Red Castle Games for putting on a great event!

This was a 2-Headed Giant event, and my partner, Rebecca, built a U/W Vehicles deck while I had a R/G Exhaust-ish deck going. 

Our packs were a little unusual: We both felt like we got a lot more duplicates than we have in previous pre-releases. For example: I had four copies of Stampeding Scurryfoot and three Pedal to the Metal. Rebecca had at least two copies Collision Course and Midnight Mangler. 

It just felt like our options were more limited than usual, due to an abundance of duplicates. Still: I think she had a solid deck built and I had one that I thought went well on curve, with a lot of things to do on turns 1-3. However, the challenges to building decks in this format were unique and I think had us stumbling just a little. 

Round 1 vs Remi and Jeremy

Jeremy had a G/R Exhaust deck with Afterburner Expert and this was just backbreaking. Remi's UW deck was a good support build. helping keep tempo in their favor but we had to kill the Expert 4 times, because it just kept coming back. 

I probably made a mistake by letting my Chandra go too soon. Our opponents hyperfixated on it committed all their resources towards destroying, so I thought; Hey fine we'll get something to do to hit them on the crackback. But we just drew dead: Rebecca helped keep the game going by cycling a Valor's Flagship for four but it didn't yield much,and 1/1 bodies are not going to cut it. I had two Mountains in hand and Rebecca an island with a random white card (I think) when the big play came.

And the big play was when they hit max speed & got a Samut out via the Redshift. They took the game with just under two minutes left in the round.

Before Round 2, I added a second Crash & Burn. I had been reluctant to run a 4 mana removal spell but it's pretty solid in this format. 

Round 2, Vs Gabe & Lucy:

Our lands were not showing up; I was stuck at three mana, Rebecca at four, for most of the game. We managed to stall the game out vs their GB/UW decks-our opponents were able to mount pretty solid offenses but they weren't quite robust enough to get the win. We managed to stave off a Debris Beetle twice, and I made a pretty smart play when I forced Gabe to save his Engine Rat from removal, which meant he couldn't activate its ability to drain us for four life. Rebecca kept us in the game with a Voyage Home. 

After we went to time, Lucy drew her sixth land and was able to activate her Gearseeker Serpent and they went in for a massive attack that took us down to one life-but it was their last turn. We couldn't defeat them but they ran out of time to beat us. 

Whew!

Round 3 vs Eddie & Cody

Our opponents were stymied most of their game: Eddie (G/B) didn’t seem to have much to do—they frequently were drawing lands and Cody had a slight misunderstanding of how Marauding Mako interacted with Riverchurn Monument. When he understood that milling cards didn't trigger the Mako, I think it threw him for a bit. 

We kept a steady supply of pressure via an Elephant generated by the Scurryfoot and Glitch Ghost Survivor.  Rebecca kept the tempo in our favor with a steady supply of cards via Vnwxt, Verbose Host which kept her hand full & let her respond to their plays with Bounce Off and Spectral Interference. I drew timely Crash & Burns to take out the big creatures they could get out and we pulled the game off at the last minute. 

After all that, I talked to Rebecca about the event and here's where we came down on things.

Aetherdrift looked better in person than it did online. And as an insular experience, it was fine. While presenting some challenges to deckbuilding-how many vehicles can you have in a deck and still have a viable game, for example-those challenges didn't feel particularly compelling. 

It seems to play well with itself, she remarked, but she did not want to deal with the interactions it would have with the larger Magic universe. The bookkeeping alone was a problem for her, and we were both surprised that the pre-release boxes didn't have Exhaust tokens of some sort. They did have Speed cards to help with that mechanic, and those were very beneficial, so ignoring Exhaust feels like an oversight.

In the end: Did we love it? No. But we liked it more than we thought we would! Getting to Max Speed was more engaging than we thought it would be and actually made an impact on games. We even thought that more ways to interact with your opponent's speed might've been worth putting in the set-though that would mean that there would be more cards don't care about being at Max Speed which...they didn't do. We felt that RNG and inexperience had more to do with how the games went than just getting blown out--excepting Afterburner Expert. That card was annoying as fuck.

That said: our opinions of Aetherdrift are lukewarm. I found games to be a bit sluggish-all of our games went to time, but not in ways that I thought were compelling. Board states just locked up, and I didn't think we got to make many strategic decisions, rather ones that were pressured by how much time was on the clock

We didn't have a bad time but it didn't feel as much fun as the experiences we've had with Bloomborrow or Duskmourn.