Pseudo -Newb when your Central Nervous System Drafts without you

Last Return to Ravnica draft I was at was the day after I had finished writing a 45 page philosophy paper that had been turned in literally 20 minutes before it was due at midnight. 

It had a number of fairly stressful things that required heavy focus and although I had been working on it solidly for a week  it was 12 hour day style. I had about 4 hours to edit it before submission. So I was really toasty going into draft.

I have a tendency to want to draft into white, but honestly that hasn't been doing very well for me in RtR, also I knew that any type of complex play wasn't going to work well. I expected to pretty much just be holding down a place so that there were enough people to draft and I had some vague idea that I might want to look at Rakdos (Red/Black) based strategies since I avoid playing them. 

Here are things I know I would have realized if I had been functioning properly:

Obviously other people were all in my colors based on the picks that came around, but since my brain was on vacation somewhere and the rest of the central nervous system was picking the cards I found out that once it had decided that it like the Rix Maddi and the Daggerdrome Imp came back it was going into Red and Black no matter what. 

My central nervous system will also pick late Bellows Lizards over Traitorous Instinct, while I know my brain will always pick the thing that steals other things. But the CNS was right - there were no big killer strategic steals in any of the games I played it would have been an expensive useless card. My strategy was small creatures attacking and buffed with red used as removal to get rid of blockers - it was unexciting in terms of cards but it worked pretty well because even brain fried I not only came in 3rd I beat one of our very serious competitive gamers to do it.

Here's the list:

Main deck (40 cards)

2 Bellows Lizard

1 Nivmagus Elemental

2 Daggerdrome Imp

1 Rix Maadi Guildmage

2 Dead Reveler

1 Guttersnipe

1 Sewer Shambler

1 Viashino Racketeer

1 Dark Revenant

1 Cremate

2 Deviant Glee

3 Electrickery

1 Street Spasm

1 Pursuit of Flight

1 Annihilating Fire

2 Stab Wound

1 Goblin Rally

7 Mountain

7 Swamp

2 Transguild Promenade

Sideboard (16 cards)

1 Catacomb Slug

1 Ogre Jailbreaker

2 Destroy the Evidence

1 Cremate

2 Mind Rot

1 Cancel

1 Tower Drake

1 Street Sweeper

1 Stealer of Secrets

1 Giant Growth

1 Stonefare Crocodile

1 Dispel

1 Pursuit of Flight

1 Racecourse Fury

Created with Decked Builder

http://www.deckedbuilder.com/


Preparation - The way that things seem to be very very common these days - almost none - I wonder if I've become afraid of drafting after Avacyn Restored. Some of it might be my participation in so much sealed competitive at the beginning of the season lessened the need for draft cards and frankly it's been two weeks since this draft and I've been pretty not-well so it's a kind of effort to do more than the crushing travel and entertainment schedule for friends and family. The fact that finals literally end in the middle of the various holidays makes things feel less like celebrations and more like a marathon, adding draft when I hadn't been doing it all season wasn't a priority. 

Results 
2-0
1-2
2-0

So I won 5 games out of 7 much to my surprise.

Takeaways - I was expecting because I had been playing so much with the club or with casual that my play would not be clean or sharp, but I did actually win due to careful play and some variance. The second win with my first opponent was due to his incredibly bad luck - he got color screwed in a multicolor deck but the first game was careful use of timing. He's one of our top players in the state right now and is usually nice (in his own way) to me, so the first game was really more of an indicator that I hadn't had as much skill loss as I was afraid of, and he wasn't sour with me about the mana screw.

I lost the second match to a very tight control build. 

I think I need to follow my gut a bit more. But draft is also expensive 

I also got to usefully cast Goblin Rally which made me very, very happy. 

I did not go to draft last night however, because last night ended up being the first night since that last draft were no one was visiting my house nor was I required to be at anyone else's house.  I'm considering what to do or if I should go to GP Atlantic City. And I need to get on Cockatrice to be able to practice standard. I should probably draft more when Gatecrash comes out.