MTG Salvation

Here is the deck I propose for team Zendikar Resurgent (G):



Pros:

- Very low curve
- Only two colors
- Reach via skimmers, flayer, chainmages, commando and geopede.

Cons:

- No high end
- Not a lot of evasion
- 10 devoid guys is just a bit lower than I'd like

I could play it on MTGO if need be. No expensive card in that lot.

Here's what I'm think the build would be for Team A, or something within a card of this:



Overall I'm pretty happy with what we ended up with, pretty typical of a good midrange BW build in this format. Good curve, good removal, creatures play well on both offense and defense, allowing us to adapt to the game at hand. Some games we can curve into support and play the aggressor, others we can sit back and block/cohort/removal our way to victory. Between the removal/fliers/cohort we have a pretty strong late game despite having a relatively low/tight curve. We are missing a few ingredients I'd like to see here, especially Envoy/Cleric which would have been good on their own and enabled the Steward we end up not playing here. But those are such high picks now that you can't expect to get them late, or even mid necessarily.

I'm curious to see what other teams were doing because I was really expecting more from pack 3. You'll notice that only 4 cards in the deck are from BFZ, and one of them is an E.Wilds. I was definitely expecting more white given how extremely open it was in the first two packs. Thankfully it was so open that we didn't need much help from the last pack.

Deck edited to include some teammate suggestions, Protector/Caller removed for Steward/Nightwatch.

Oh, interesting, other people started posting stuff.

I will get the spreadsheet up later, then.

There were two very interesting occurrences in this Draft. And at least one team earned an Achievement.

1) The BFZ pack was very heavily Blue. I am still working up the statistics, but it was very noticeable to nearly everyone. There was little White (in the BFZ pack).

2) There were only two drafters in each of White and Blue. Further, the White and Blue teams were directly across from each other in each case. Teams Cosi's Kids (A) and Dies to Doom Blade (E) were the White drafters. Teams Bouncing Beebles (D) and The Ocho (H) were the Blue drafters. This contributed to the feeling that White and Blue were open. Particularly in Blue's case in pack 3, there were a couple of nutty Blue packs, which resulted in some double-takes.

Since two teams have posted their decks, I will award the Achievement now.

Achievement Unlocked!
The 'Double Trouble' Achievement is hereby awarded to Team Bouncing Beebles, for drafting both Eldrazi Titans in a single draft. As an added bonus, they also were able to draft Shrine of the Forsaken Gods.

Good job!

Interesting, I look forward to seeing the build of the Twin Titans deck.

Team 8: The Ocho (H)



Eh, not sure this really came together, although we will finally get to answer the question "how many Jwar Isle Avengers is too many??"
Last cut was 2nd Rush keeping anticipate and 2nd Slip. Not 100% on this. I do think Bushwhacker doesn't cut it in this deck. I'd run the 3/2 menace guy though.

We first picked Immolating Glare and 4th picked Vampire Envoy, but after that it was basically mono-blue. Only tricky picks were when to take wingding lands.

This looks like a 2-2 deck to me. It can win with Pyromancer's Assault (P2P1), if it draws a bunch of cheap spells, or Guardian + a bunch of islands. Possibly can tempo you out if it sticks 2 Avengers. It's probably a Jori-El and a Boulder Salvo from being very good. I *guess* it could win a long game via Prophet... just keep drawing fliers?

weird that G was passing to us... but we have zero boulder salvo and zero touch of the void zero Outnumber and zero stonefury between us!

For team A... you make some interesting choices:
2 Affa Protector + Corpse Churn + Null Caller > Serene Steward, Cliffside Lookout.
I guess you have zero life gain, but I like a bear I think. the Lookout is maybe a little iffy.

zenbitz: To the best of my knowledge, there were zero Boulder Salvo, zero Touch of the Void, one Outnumber and one Stonefury in the draft.

Team E: Dies to Doom Blade



Curve:
1:S
2:CCCCCSSSS
3:CCCSS
4:CCSS
5:CCCC

We almost switched to blue in the 2nd pack. I would not be surprised if our deck would have been better if we had done so. The draft didn't go well: we were aiming for RB devoid aggro, but the cards did come. No /good/ removal went our way, only very sub-par ones. No real beater and key cards. We failed to see much of ingest in the 3rd pack, so strangler will most often just be a vanilla 3/2.

Quote from zenbitz »

weird that G was passing to us... but we have zero boulder salvo and zero touch of the void zero Outnumber and zero stonefury between us!

For team A... you make some interesting choices:
2 Affa Protector + Corpse Churn + Null Caller > Serene Steward, Cliffside Lookout.
I guess you have zero life gain, but I like a bear I think. the Lookout is maybe a little iffy.

Yeah, I'm not completely sold on the Null Caller, it was that vs Cliffside for the final slot in my estimation and the Cliffside might be the better choice simply because it is cheaper and an ally. Maybe you are right and the Steward bear is the best choice though, IDK. In a normal draft maybe we get lucky and it eats good removal simply because the opponent is afraid of what it could do, not knowing how relatively weak it is in our deck.

I stand by the Protectors/Churn though, as I think they do more for this deck's core game plan than anything else available. I would consider siding them out, but main I like them.

Well I might as well throw out our terrifying titan twosome of a deck. Theres a little bit of dissension in the group about exactly how the build should go but it would look roughly like this:

For Team D: Bouncing Beebles



Deck was a little wacky but I would love to actually try it out.

Team C:


I think we made a few mispicks during the draft early on, we could have had a much stronger devoid theme than we ended up with, and our deck would be a lot more focused. But the core strengths of good curve and a reasonable amount of removal are there, and I fully expect to win games where we get down Embodiment of Insight for very long, given all of our landfall enablers.

Team B's BG deck. Rewarded with Brood Butcher and Catacomb Sifter in Pack 3, but on the whole the deck is only okay.

So far I'm liking TheArchitect's deck the most, nice curve backed up by good removal/support. The only issue I see with it is that it looks creature-lite, I'm usually wanting more like 17-18 dudes in a build with that much support. Not sure how good the Claws actually are, I've seen them win games or just be complete non-factors, but in this instance I'd probably be looking to cut 1 Claws and 1 Searing Light for two more bodies if they are available in the SB.

Team D - The twin Titans are sweet...but probably not quite good enough ramp/control to actually get there. Looks like a deck that is torn between a more aggressive UB tempo build and a control/ramp deck. In this version the Mist Intruder seems very out of place, as it is really bad sans a Ruination Guide. I'd replace it with Warping Wail, which usually acts as removal but can also give you that 10th mana in a pinch.

Team C - Solid goodstuff deck, probably just hoping to grind people out with card quality advantage, but I could see it having trouble finishing games where the board gets stalled and the opponent has bigger bombs and/or sufficient evasion.

Markino - Interesting, haven't seen many GB aggro decks in the format and this looks solid. When this deck curves out 2-3-support (especially Judgement) I could see it being good enough...but when it doesn't draw Judgement I think it probably struggles to close games given the lack of late game power and evasion. Probably why we see more GW or RW aggro, as those decks tend to have more reach in terms of getting the last 5-10 points through once the game gets bogged down.

Two people have posted very different decks for team G. Was there a typo somewhere, and one of them was supposed to be for F? Also, which spot was TheArchitect's deck in?

Here's the spreadsheet. Working up numbers to give insight tomorrow. OGW#2 starts on Monday.

I think twin titans deck wants to play crabs.

Quote from Puddle Jumper »

Also, which spot was TheArchitect's deck in?

We're Team E.

Magpies: That's not really fair to BFZ. There were only 14 White cards in the BFZ packs, when the normal amount is around 18. So just variance in the amount of White shown in the packs had a pretty big impact.

Haven't counted up Blue yet, but it probably made up the difference.

Well, at this point I think you're being completely unreasonable, if you're going to keep complaining when you were informed of an uncommonly large statistical variation.

It reminds me of complaining about the MTGO shuffler.

Quote from ThrivingMagpies »

lol..I am from team E, at least somebody else here think we should throw in more creatures into a support theme deck..

We do have 2 more playable creatures in the board, but they are Cliffside Lookout or Tajuru Stalwart, so even I am advocating playing 1 more creatures over searing light or shoulder to shoulder, I am not 100% it is correct..

Think we have a pretty good deck when it gots going, although could be inconsistent because of relatively low creatures count for a support theme deck..

BFZ is hugely disppointing..Our posted configuration has only 5 BFZ cards...White just doesn't show up even with 2 white drafters in the table..

I'd make room for both, although I'd cut Light/Claws, not the Shoulder. Not gonna get regular maximal value out of all the support 2 stuff with a 14 creature build.

Quote from Puddle Jumper »

Two people have posted very different decks for team G. Was there a typo somewhere, and one of them was supposed to be for F? Also, which spot was TheArchitect's deck in?

Sorry, I was in Team B. Edited my post above.

Magpies: Oh, I agree it's disappointing. Nothing sucks more than reading signals correctly and then not getting rewarded for it.

Unlike the Blue drafters.

Quote from ThrivingMagpies »

I'd make room for both, although I'd cut Light/Claws, not the Shoulder. Not gonna get regular maximal value out of all the support 2 stuff with a 14 creature build.

I agree with you. But my teammates seem to be much higher than Claws then me. In fact I strongly advocate to pick the Kor Sky Cliimber instead of the 2nd Claws. I guessed Claws is such a high variance cards that different people can have very different opinion. We do have the Kor Entangler to go nuts with it..so hard to say..

I'm not particularly high on Claws, for what it's worth.