“Don’t cover me,” said Vidi, “I’m awful at drafting.”
Vidi Wijaya is quite the joker. Gunning for his fourth Pro Circuit Top 8, and positioned in 3rd after a 9-1 record on Day 1, Vidi is in prime position to battle for a big trophy and a stash of cash. Sure, with his Constructed performance, he doesn’t need to work quite as hard at Draft as some of his compatriots, but that is definitely not going to stop Vidi from doing everything he can to crush the competition at every turn.
His pod (#1) was not the most straightforward of places to put together a 3-0—it includes such threats as Gabe Walls, Tim Batow, and teammate Kim Caton—but Vidi maintained his calm demeanor.
He opened his first pack and gave a little shrug. It was not the hottest. Stonewall, Polaris, and Chrome are fair enough in a Brotherhood reservist deck, but many players feel that the reservist deck just doesn’t have enough raw power and are steering clear of the Brotherhood. He took a Sentinel Mark VI, not committing to anything, and shipped the pack on without feeling too sad to see it go.
For pack two, he actually saw a couple of pumps in the form of Kidney Punch and Homo Superior, but he ultimately was more intrigued by Tommy, the 1-drop that peeked back at him. This weekend, many players have been talking about the potential nuttiness that is a really good Morlock Physical deck, and clearly Vidi fancied a piece of that action. He followed up with Postman and Xorn, then decided for pick five that a Shadowcat, Katya was better than a second recovery robot.
As he worked his way through pack one, there was a vaguely concerning trend. Firstly, there were a lot of good Brotherhood cards coming through. Vidi carefully scanned the pack for his 9th pick (the pack he had opened initially) and saw that both Stonewall and Polaris were still there. If somebody was drafting Brotherhood, what did he or she take? Chrome seemed the most likely option, but all in all, things looked a little off. There had been a lot of Lying in Waits whizzing around the table in pack one, and while they are less powerful when you know that they are there, there was still plenty of potential for a paucity of safe attacks on the Brotherhood deck that ended up with them.
The other issue was that in the entirety of the first pack, the only plot twist that had made it into Vidi’s pile was a single Brave New World. This wasn’t really a function of Vidi not valuing the good blues; it was simply a question of them never having arrived with him. Something would have to change in the second pack.
Something did indeed change up, with a Turnabout being a happy first pick for Wijaya. There was a Caliban in there that would probably have made the cut, but really stretching for tricks, Vidi was quite happy to decisively add the versatile X-Men pump to his pile. After picking an Annalee second, Vidi shook his head to clear it and had a little think when he saw Artie and Retribution vying for his third pick. At this point, Vidi only had Tommy as a 1-drop, and Tommy is not nearly as much fun when paid for with resource points. The dream is, of course, to get the “double 1-drop on turn 1” plan going, and Artie is a pretty decent way of doing that, along with being a great way of enabling the best Morlock evasion plot twists. It was with a sigh that Vidi took the Retribution he so clearly needed—he would have to find his 1-drops elsewhere. Luckily for him, Artie #2 came in the very next pack, staying there only very briefly before being asked to join Vidi’s team.
A fifth pick Turnabout was enough to cause a raised eyebrow and a smile from Wijaya, and when it was followed up by a pack containing Harry’s Hideaway, Beast, Feline Geneticist, and another Xorn, things really seemed to be looking up. Vidi gave the Ape in the pack a second glance—mentally noting that it might be something to watch out for in the draft (just another reason to end games on turn 6)—then took the Hideaway, which would enable a treat for the Xorn he already had.
Pick eight saw a third Turnabout, which got slammed into Vidi’s pile immediately. He warily eyed up the rest of the drafters at the table and looked through the rest of the pack to work out what was going on at his table, wondering if he had somehow lucked into X-Men on his own. When he got an Angel of Mercy for the following pick, it seemed likely that he was in on the right team with at least one of his team choices. With a couple of team-ups at this point, Vidi was in a fairly happy spot going into pack three, looking to shore up his character base a little (especially at the lower drops), but having the time to do so.
A first pick Blackbird Blue was something of a gift for Wijaya at this point, and it gave his deck a good shot at being able to blow out with smaller heroes in the air. Electric Eve and Plague followed, along with a Sewer System and Masque. The Sewer System was taken above a Sage, Tessa, who was surprisingly still knocking about four picks into the draft. Vidi did have a lot of Mental characters, so the powerful 2-drop would likely have found a place. With two copies of Annalee at the time, though, Sewer System seemed like a fine inclusion.
As the draft finished, Vidi looked through his picks and was generally pretty happy. The biggest problem he would face is that his character base was a lot lower on X-Men characters than was ideal, down to just four by the time he had built (cutting out 6-drops and 7-drops in favor of being aggressive). He did have an X-Men United, Brave New World, and Mutopia, but couldn’t run his X-Treme Maneuver and would likely have to mulligan aggressively for X-Men characters in order to get the best bang for his buck.
Vidi felt confident that—assuming he didn’t lose out going all-in with his X-Men gambit—he could get at least a 2-1 with his deck. When his first round opponent got a game loss for registering a 29-card deck, Vidi just gave a little chuckle. Sometimes it takes a little luck to win a Pro Circuit. Vidi’s luck does not appear to have run out yet.