A cartoon depiction of the author, wearing a hoodie and smiling motd.co

Friday Night Magic: My First 4-0

I went to my fifth or sixth Friday Night Magic booster draft at my local shop tonight and won with a perfect match record, 4 matches won! I only lost one game the whole night in my REALLY close second round (all three games went very long and both of us were at risk of dying).

I owe some significant portion of my win to the fact that the first card I got tonight was Olivia Voldaren, which is probably the best card you can have at a booster draft event right now:

I only actually played her in 3 of the 9 games that I played, though, so I must have been doing something right otherwise. (Here’s the full decklist.) I owe a lot of the skill that I’ve picked up and the fact that I’ve become a (slightly) more careful player (but still have a long way to go— I tend to act without thinking at the worst possible times at least once during the course of a night of playing). I wouldn’t have known what to stop and think about without the skills that I’ve learned from Marshall and Jon of the Limited Resources Podcast; both for their podcast and for the weekly videos that Marshall posts on MTGO Academy. So thanks guys for giving me the tools I needed to do this well!

I went 3-1 at the last draft I attended at this shop, which meant I won the ability to play for free tonight, and going 4-0 tonight means that I can play for free two more times (I have 10 booster packs’ worth of credit at that shop and it costs 5 packs’ worth of credit to enter). So essentially I’ve paid $15 and will have played at least 4 times off of that; my goal is to keep winning long enough to keep getting free packs and get to go play on Friday nights for free as long as possible. It’s an easy hobby to justify when you “go infinite” and just show up to play for free most of the time.