As I walked over to the deck construction area with Gabe Walls, he asked me if I knew the secret of drafting the Green Lantern set. Having just watched Gabe’s draft, where I took notes like a diligent pupil studying a master, I felt that I might now have some idea. At the end of my little Gabe Walls master class, however, I was suddenly very jealous of all of those “in the know” at this PC.
An Indianapolis native and professional gamer, Gabe has had considerable success in various games. He reached a Top 8 berth last year in his “home” PC, and he has won a $10K since then. In this year’s World Series of Poker main event, he won himself enough money that he could be described as a professional poker player, but that would be a disservice to his achievements in all of the other games he plays. A lover of competition, it would be closer to the mark to call him a professional winner.
He summed up his strategy for Green Lantern draft as drafting a GLEE deck similar to the sort that was dominating the Constructed portion of the Pro Circuit. The two hallmark cards of this strategy are Arisia and G’Nort. Given that the aggressive GLEE deck usually has only a single 5-drop and nothing greater, these powerful 1-drops provide the edge that is needed to push swarming, aggressive characters over the top.
When Gabe sat down at his table to draft, there was a little bit of a surprise in that Florent Jeudon was nowhere to be seen, so there would be a seven-person draft for table three. A slightly smaller draft table tends not to be much of an issue, but if you are going for an unusual strategy and hoping to capitalize on particular rares or uncommons, it can be a little unfortunate. Luckily for Walls, this wasn’t the case, and he happily remarked that in each pack, he’ll always have his ten playables, making deck construction pretty straightforward.
Gabe’s first pick was Goldface, followed by Olapet. Olapet is secretly a 3-drop in the deck, as one of the plant’s most important roles is to boost to fetch Arisia or G’Nort for maximum carnage. After a Sweeping Up third pick, Gabe started scooping up Shock Troops in pairs, and he made a pocket pair of Olapets with his sixth pick. The next guy for Walls’s team was The Shark, who is always a winner in this deck regardless of which turn he comes out on. The rest of the pack was rounded out with a copy of Yellow Impurity and a couple of defensively drafted Mouse Traps, which is about the best answer available to this most aggressive of draft strategies.
Pack two started out with Myrwhydden, who is an absolute beast if he follows Goldface on turn 4. The chances of that happening rose slightly when another copy of Goldface came around as a second pick. The whole of pack two was about drafting little guys to fill out the blob that is this deck’s curve. Hector Hammond and Tomar Tu were quickly followed by The Shark, Harlequin, and Major Disaster. With a copy of The Ring Has Chosen hitting his pile, all Gabe needed was one of those Green Lantern 1-drops to fetch with it, and he would be one happy gamer.
Myrwhydden number two came along in pack three, followed by Arisia, who was happily put into Walls’s pile without a moment’s hesitation. He filled out his deck with two team-ups and another few little guys, but it was all pretty much done. The icing on the cake came as a thirteenth pick, when Central Power Battery arrived to add just that little bit of extra consistency to Walls’s monster deck.
He described the deck as, “one G’Nort away from the stone cold nuts.” With trip Sharks and a pair of Goldfaces, Gabe’s full house looks good to go all the way.