Played a draft at the LGS for FNM, Outlaws at Thunder Junction.
My deck was Bant, kinda control-y but not really able to stabilize via vigorous application of the Azorius flash archetype. It was not a winning night for me! But it had its own points of interest.
There was a VERY new player in the pod, an autist given to one-hand-clapping as a stim method. His deck was in one of the strongest color combinations but clearly pretty bad; 90% sure he went winless. It was hard to get a good read of how that happened as a matter of deck composition because he played too slowly for an opponent to doctor up his 40 cards. Apparently his first opponent missed some big play errors while trying to walk him through the game.
Fitting his newness to the game, guy couldn't shuffle to save his life, which was definitely made modestly worse for playing without sleeves or playmat. The stimming through me for a loop. It was like he had the opposite of a poker face as I put together that he self-soothed and rejoiced with variations on the one hand clapping. If I had played a Dimir or Grixis deck [in Cruel Ultimatum we trust], I surely could have sadistically wrung more tells out of him, but my pool didn't break that way. But as it went, I don't recall him playing any removal. I can only really compare it to some chess games I've played as an instructor, where I could develop my board at my leisure and not sweat the possibility of guarding against a check for 5 turns in a row. I could let the tracking of cards in hand, open mana, or graveyard contents just fade into fog. There was only my life total, his, and the doubled housekeeping on my end of flipping through my Sling of Limited for tokens, dice, and counters every 20 seconds. The things I do for validation! [in being Mr Prepared for mtg]
Now for my part, I recognize that I can maintain a flat affect for quite a while in work or play, but there was also a distant echo of a particular tumblr sentiment on intra-autist relations. That you have either very strong fellow-feeling and friendship or you dream of shoving each other into lockers [or desperately avoiding each other]. I was in the latter camp with this guy, but compassion and overwhelming MtGical talent won out. I silently warred between wanting him to have fun and my prevailing sense of fair play which wanted him shooed away from my draft tables in the future.
Fridge logic: it's definitely no surprise that his deck was so terrible beyond the fact of his newness to the game! In a pod of 6 players, 3 people were taking green and white [clapper, myself, and my round 3 opponent] and a 4th was taking green for his golgari deck. Learn to pivot kids!
