1. What event did you attend, and where was it held?
I joined the APAC League Modern Horizons 3 Draft at TopDeck Games. I actually hadn’t planned on joining the event, but they were short a player and I was in the shop. I figured, “Why not?”. The overall atmosphere early in the event was super chill but I could tell people were doing their reading for how the draft should go. I on the other hand, have not read a single thing about the draft environment of the set, so I hurriedly got onto draftsim.com, looked up a draft guide and hunkered down. I barely had enough time to familiarize the pick order and just managed to look at possible archetypes that I could go for. Before I knew it, the event started and we were seated around the draft table. All I could think of was, “God I hope I can money draft this, please let me money draft this.”. I had zero confidence in myself at this point.
2. How did you prepare for the tournament?
I had no prep time whatsoever. I hadn’t even touched MH3 online with MTGA, because I was too poor (at least on the account). I ended up missing expensive cards, as I heard the other people drafting pop off about the alt art fetch lands or Eldrazi cards they opened. Trust me, I was jealous. I just kept my head low and tried my old reliable strategy in draft, draft the top three colors and work from there. Midway through the draft, about pack 2 pick 3, I found Scurry of Gremlins, and boy did that make my neurons activate. I ended up with a Boros Energy deck with some decent structure and removals.
3. During the Tournament
I had a few copies of Conduit Goblin that helped me build up some energy counters early, and a combo I thought was unheard of at the time but was actually pretty common and strong in draft. Unstable Amulet + Amped Raptor really got me to go through my deck quickly and gave me a ton of card advantage. Scurry of Gremlins really allowed me to break through enemies’ defences once I built up a wide enough board. This allowed my deck to be very coherent and allowed me to fight my way to the top and win the tournament.
The most memorable part of that tournament however, was the second round. I was playing against Erik Pacturan, a close friend of mine who I hold a lot of respect for and who is relentless once things get competitive. Once he played his first spell, a Conduit Goblin, I knew I was in for a long match. I had no clue he drafted Boros Energy as well, even though we sat next to each other on the draft table. He even got Guide of Souls, a strict upgrade from my deck. I was outdrafted. However, even with two hyperaggressive decks, our match went to final turns by game 3. We were neck and neck, single digit life totals, topdecking for answers, and desperately digging for answers. It was all up to my deck and my luck for the win. We were at a stalemate, turn after turn after turn. I play a threat, he has a removal. I drop a threat, topdeck a way to get rid of it. It was exhausting. Then I finally topdecked the card that started it all, Scurry of Gremlins. I managed to use every single energy counter I saved to pump my creatures twice for exact lethal. Erik congratulated me, and I finally managed to catch my breath.
The rest of the tournament was pretty uneventful, I won my rounds 1 and 3 pretty quickly. I actually had no idea it was an APAC League event, so I was caught off guard when I heard I got an APAC invite for winning. I was more excited for the packs to be completely honest.
4. Reflection and Community Interaction
It’s been a while since that draft, and it made me fall in love with draft even more. It even pushed me to grind on MTGA more often just to enjoy a nice draft every now and then (except for MKM draft, it’s not fun it sucks and it causes me great sadness). I definitely am a lot more open to joining more events in the Limited format, and learning those strategies for new sets has really become a favorite pastime of mine. I do still have a bad habit of sticking to the top 3 colors of the set, and maybe choosing a signpost gold card to always lean in to and end up going 2-3 on MTGA. And yes, it does cause me great pain, but I’ll still rage-queue to draft again until I win or run out of gems. The point is, I love draft, and winning the APAC MH3 Draft I think solidified that.
(Don’t ask me for tips though, half the time I still don’t know what I’m doing.)
