MTG Salvation

Let's see if anyone can make something of this pool.

No premium cards except in the gold slots, but there is nothing much to support them.

Well the main issue this pool seems to have is a lack of removal, with Compulsory Rest in white, a few bounce spells in blue, a combat trick in red and another in green, being about it.
With you having Samut, part of me wanted to build something with red/green. Possibly BGr, with the red as the splash as you have the fixing for it. But after looking it over, your best bet is probably to go WU, as it gives you access to a lot of strong flying creatures and access to what limited removal you have.

Here is what I would have built:


This gives you access to a mass of good flying creatures, and you have plenty of cycling cards to hopefully make good use of Drake Haven to get even more value with the added Drakes.

Thanks for the advice. It is a very tricky pool. I'll try out your suggestion and see how I go, I initally built Bant, but is seemed a bit clunkcy at times

(Haven't looked at other posts yet, just trying to build from scratch)

UW cycling/flyers is a clear signal from your rares, your commons, and key archetype-defining cards (Aven Wind Guide, Drake Haven). This may not be a 2 Gods + premium removal pool where you can win on pure card quality, but you have enough control tools that this deck should do OK. Even though you lack hard removal, don't underestimate the power of the tempo tricks backed by flyers. You can win games swinging over and over in the air while opponent keeps trying to replay/untap his big beaters.



Cycling: 9 + 1 discard
Flying: 6 + tokens

Curve:
1 - c
2 - cccsss
3 - ccssse
4 - cccsse
5 - c
6 - ccs

The curve is a bit top-heavy but the high-cost cards all have cycling, which makes a big difference in gameplay.

You can board out Trial of Knowledge for the more interactive Decision Paralysis against fast decks.

You can board into red and black sideboard answers with Canyon Slough, Evolving Wilds, and a singleton Mountain or Swamp (3 sources). Slough fits it at low cost. I would consider it maindeck (especially if playing 18 lands as I originally intended, but I realized I miscounted earlier and have more spells than I thought). Slough cycles and it taps for mana even when you have no black or red cards in the deck, so it's never a dead card. And sometimes it's a cantripping Wind Drake. Either main or SB, it enables you to splash useful answers post-board.

EDIT: How many Gust Walker do you have? I see 1 in the OP but 2 in the above UW deck. Definitely play 2 if you have 2. Bant is a bad idea, especially with a 5-5-4 manabase. It will be inconsistent. Green doesn't offer any big rewards.

Thanks for the tips guys.

And there are two Gust Walker's

Eventually did fairly poorly essentially going 1-2 in each 3 match portion of the league.

When I came up against decks running multiple bombs and some with multiple cartouches and trials, it was no contest really. As I lacked any real finishing power in the deck, removal was particularly good against me, and if I didn't get a good draw or start... it was always uphill.

Never seemed to draw Drake Haven, and I was cycling a lot to find lands or action, and always seemed to draw badly.

For example, one game I had 4 lands, three spells three spells were renewed faith, Gust walker, and Hyroglypic illumination. I thought ok. I keep.
T1 on the play, draw land. Playe land and pass.
T2, draw land, play land and gust walker.
T3, draw land, cycle faith in my opponents draw. which draws me a land
T4, draw land, cast Illumination in my opponents end step...draws two lands.
T5. draw fan bearer...by this point opponent has too much on board and I die next turn.

That was fairly typical of the whole league.

Thought I would try a second pool.

This one seems tricky to build, by no means a bad pool, the power seems spread around all the colours. While blue has the most cards it seems the weakest.

My initial inclination is a BG splashing either R or W.

Any thoughts appreciated.

After doing rather badly with my Initial build of GB splashing white (1-2) record, I changed to deck up to four color. After the change I went 3-0 in the final two rounds of the league.



It one again reaffirmed the power of cartouches and trials and how important evasion is in this format. Flying on a Baleful Ammit or a Decimator Beetle was just dumb.

That manabase looks atrocious. Congrats on the win, it obviously worked for you, but I would not be happy playing an event with that kind of mana. You can just get screwed by variance. If you do decide to play 4 colors again, you probably want Gift of Paradise in your deck. That card is weak a lot of the time (+1 mana at 3 cost), but at least it is powerful color fixing for a 3-4 color deck and the lifegain offsets the tempo loss of tapping out on turn 3. Overall it's much less tempo loss than relying on lands like Painted Bluffs, which fix your mana but always set you 1 turn behind on curve.

From the initial pool, I think BGw was a mistake. You're underrating how good those blue cards are (including the Trial and Cartouches you decided to splash later). This format is full of board stalls and big flyers win games. Looks like flying is what got you the win in the end.