Played in my first AVR draft last night. After all the talk about the set's lack of spot removal, I snatched as many as I could early on. No one else at the table went black as far as I could tell, so I wound up with Death Wind, 2xBone Splinters, 2xBarter in Blood (how does that happen?), as well as the 2 damage to attacker/blocker for W. In the process, I neglected to snag too many studly creatures, so I had to play Commander's Authority, which wound up kicking ass. The card worked exceptionally well the game it found its way onto Goldnight Commander, the tokens made sweet additional payments for Bone Splinters, and even made it so that I could play aggressively while holding Barter in Blood. For the most part, my creatures were pretty average, with the exceptions being Blood Artist and a Gisela that I rare-drafted third pack and wound up running two Mountains to splash for.
Among the highlights were a game where I curved out with Blood Artist followed by the black dude who makes each player lose 3 when he dies, the guy who gives -2/-2 to a guy when he dies, and then the Bloodflow Connoisseur who has sac a creature: put a +1/+1 counter on her. Basically Mortarpoded the guy to death on turn 5. My favorite play, however, was blocking Malignus with Marrow Bats and paying 4 life once in combat to regenerate and a second time during end step to kill the Malignus. Definitely lost that game, but had a really good time doing so. I had the unfortunate and embarrassing distinction of hitting the board with Gisela all three games against this Malignus player only to somehow lose the match (once because he had the soulbond miller and soulbond untapper combo and the other because, as stated above, I should not be trusted with Marrow Bats).
This set is hella fun and I'll be drafting it many, many more times.
As a side note, does it seem like AVR is really light on playable commons and uncommons in standard? Seems like for a large set, the only ones that spring to mind as staples are Pillar of Flame, Cloudshift, and maybe Appetite for Brains. Also, Restoration Angels are an unobtainable commodity at my local store. There were three or four guys who already had their playsets put together, but every single other patron in the store was desperately trying to trade for them. Value has got to be climbing on that card.
