What happens if I cast this at the end of my opponent's turn?
I'm a little confused because as an instant it seems like I should want to cast it at instant speed - specifically end of opponent's turn to create 2 turns back to back with all my mana open.
However it says "after this one" which suggests I might be taking my "extra" turn first, and sundial tricks aside, losing or winning the game before getting my normal turn making the whole spell pointless.
Intuitively I would guess the extra turn is "banked" until after my normal turn, but in a multiplayer game I believe I could cast it during player B's turn to slip in my (player A) turn before player C...
So instead of A B C A B C
I make it go A B A (final fortune) C... not A B C A A (ff)
After goldfishing a bit a few things became clearer:
Lotleth troll + ooze is the backbone of the deck. If you peak with thoughtseize and see no answers to troll, you can dump 2-3 guys to create a monster on t3 that creates serious pressure. Ooze can either increase pressure or provide redundancy if they handle the troll by coming down just as big as the troll was after a turn or two.
Corpsejack works with ooze and troll - The aforementioned synergy gets huge with a corpsejack out - esp nice with troll where you can pitch immediately for the bonus.
Dreg mangler and deadbridge provide redundancy - Sometimes things don't go perfectly. Having these mana sinks in the gy gives you late game reach and can turn even an E1 into a nightmare for the opponent later on.
Desecration demon is random. I dropped it for the goliath. Demon is certainly a good card, but its not really synergizing with anything here and I don't think we want a glut of 4 drops. It could be that the midrange deck with caryatid and reaper/demon is just better than this deck - but I want to try and get the ooze-troll-corpsejack thing working before I throw in the towel and get on the midrange train.
Renegade Krasis is too cute. I kept one in, but seeing multiples was really bad. The dream of E1-Sage-Krasis-Corpsejack is still alive, but you can't build the deck around it.
Golgari charm to sideboard - by dropping the krasis overextension plan and focusing more on E1 and troll with scavenge guys and instant-profit from corpsejack, we're less vulnerable to anger/verdict.
Grisly salvage - testing it maindeck to smooth out the game. I can't tell yet if this still constitutes an aggro or midrange deck or what. I don't usually want to salvage on t2, but late game it can drop some ooze food / scavenge in the bin while putting troll food into hand. These are definitely 3 slots I'd consider changing.
Cackler: I think this is too cute. He evolves E1 and gyre sage, and he has a chance of getting a bonus counter through corpsejack but otherwise he's meh and the unleash can be a late-game liability with scavenge. I tried deathrite shaman in its place, which still evolves e1 and can provide accelerationw ith grisly salvage, I just worry that DRS is rarely going to accel, and rarely going to eat creatures since I would much rather use those for oozes - is it worth a conditional B: shock to the face from DRS to run him?
So basically I have 5 flex-spots in the deck; the 3 salvages and 2 cacklers could be something else. Some number of that is definitely going to move to ranger's guile - this seems absolutely mandatory to handle azorius charm and non-overloaded cyclonic rift
I think its important not to overcommit your graveyard resources with this deck. You can't be using scavenging ooze, varolz, and whip of erebos at the same time - only one of those is going to function and its going to seriously hinder the rest.
So a real question is how many "eat my graveyard" effects can the deck support? I was looking at 3 oozes 1 varolz, and that's with 4x grisly salvages to fuel the yard when it gets empty. I also considered deathrite shaman but I think we want to stick with the counters theme.
Speaking of which, a major reason we play this deck is corpsejack menace - the more synergy we get around the +1+1 counter theme (without playing straight up jank) the better it gets. I don't see playing tormented hero or dryad militant in this deck - we have experiment one as the slam dunk and rakdos cackler as a second option if we're in the market for more 1 drops (e.g. some kind of varolz-focused build).
The best synergy with corpsejack is cheap evolvers. They give us a free instant bonus the turn we resolve the menace by earning an extra counter right away. Because of this I'm looking seriously at E1, Gyre sage and renegade krasis. The problem of course is these cards are not fantastic on their own and require synergy to be effective. Its the classic issue with evolve - the cards have to come in the right order or else they are all terrible.
I was iffy on troll because we don't generate traditional card advantage with this deck so discarding for counters sounds painful. On the other hand you can probably look at the combo of troll and ooze/varolz as a common bond variant - ooze+troll is g: common bond which isnt terrible value. The trample is relevant if we play the bow of nylea, and regenerate is the sort of thing we're looking for to shore up the game vs verdict/anger.
The "dream hand" with this deck goes off the exponential growth of corpsejack with krasis:
The obvious weakness in this curve is that if you tap out t3 for krasis and they play a sweeper you're 2-for-1d and left with a 1/1 on the board. We can play slower with thoughtsieze and golgari charm to shore this up, but then we're heading into midrange-control territory (which may be the right way to look at this deck rather than a t4 explosion deck).
Our 3-drop options seem to be krasis, varolz, witchstalker, dreg mangler, and reverent hunter. I can see witchstalker maindeck if we're running a lot of varolz, but lots of varolz clashes with lots of oozes. I think if we play witchstalker its in the board for matchups where he's likely to get counters on his own and/or where hexproof lines up well.
Reverent hunter is an interesting question. This is a deck that's looking to commit heavily to the board to maximize corpsejack and krasis. Is the hunter good enough as a t3 4/4 (loxodon smiter)? How about as a t5 4/4 or 6/6 that leaves 2 mana up for abrupt decay / golgari charm? I think he's worth testing, but everytime he's a gray ogre or a nessian courser we're probably going to feel kind of bad.
Dreg mangler gives us another respectable aggressive start. If you substitute it for the renegade krasis in the E1-GS/troll-X-Corpsejack sequence our dmg goes:
T1: 0
T2: 2
T3: 8
T4: 12
The scavenge is one of the few mana sinks we have and is relevant when our board is nothing but a corpsejack (10/10 huzzah!), but most of the time we're probably just going to cheap out and feed him to an ooze or use varolz anyways.
So to recap I think this is the mix of creatures we are looking at:
Experiment One (for sure)
Rakdos Cackler (unlikely)
Scavenging Ooze (for sure - but maybe not 4)
Lotleth Troll (for sure - maybe not 4)
Gyre Sage (probably)
Renegade Krasis (yes - but maybe not 4)
Varolz (probably - count depends on oozes/whips)
Dreg Mangler (maybe)
Reverent Hunter (unlikely)
Witchstalker (sideboard)
Corpsejack Menace (definitely, main purpose of deck)
Polukranos (probably as a 1-of)
Desecration demon (maybe)
Kalonian Hydra (probably but not 4)
Mistcutter Hydra (maybe - sideboard)
I just started working on a GB counters decklist today and was hoping there'd be a thread on here of people also thinking about it!
Without having read anything previously this was the list I more or less settled on - although obviously a draft subject to testing and seeing what the main contenders are in the format:
I also considered cards like deathrite shaman, rakdos cackler, kalonian hydra, polukranos, lifebane zombie, arbor colossus, reaper of the wild, and reverent hunter.
The obvious things the deck probably needs to deal with are anger the gods / supreme verdict, azorius charm, and control/burn in general. You can also imagine selesnya goodstuff / midrange.
E1: Seems like an auto 4 of in just about any list
Scavenging Ooze: Not sure if we want 4, once you've used up the gas on 1 drawing extras gets a little worse. A hand with 3 of these would kind of suck.
Lotleth Troll: Has the history of underperforming although he does synergize with ooze. Requires card disadvantage to get his counters going - regen is important though vs anger/verdict.
Gyre Sage: a single tick and we've got a 2 mana 2/3 with upside. Its got some synergy with monstrous guys if we go there. I think this fights with the troll for a 2-drop spot.
Renegade Krasis: The impact of curving E1-Sage-Krasis-Corpsejack is pretty hilariously awesome.
dreg mangler: a scavenger to give value if we get wrathed, surprise dmg, evolves e1 sage and krasis
varolz: iffy. kind of non-bo with oozes
corpsejack: the main reason we're here. doubling up evolves and oozes
demon: debatable if this fits. it technically gets counters and is just plain good. Provides a 6 P/T for evolves if that should ever matter (krasis?)
Polukranos: obviously for monstrous, which gives an outlet should we get 2-3 counters on the gyre sage.
Thoughtsieze/Duress: we need to get rid of those supreme verdicts
Golgari charm: we need to answer those verdicts
Grisly Salvage: Seems like valuable CA if we dump some creatures for our oozes? This is probably the card most on the chopping block
Abrupt decay/Putrefy: does abrupt decay have a place? Are we going to see many creatures at 3 or less (reckoner etc) what about other permanents like det-sphere?
Eh of those extra examples two require telegraphing your move with 4 mana open on t4 and 2 are sideboard cards at best (last breath and shredding winds). Pharikas cure is a relevant omission, but I don't think it changes the point that the format is designed to let you get away with bestowing, and its not unrealistic to pull off the flyer-bestow "combo" on t4.
I hope nobody is saying the eidolon is a high pick. I think the surprise is that its a card you are fine with playing - probably a little better than "23rd card with a frown" and certainly not unplayable jank.
Of course, there's always Magical Christmasland, where you suit up your Wingsteed Rider on turn four and your opponent can't do anything about it, but when they can, you have yourself a completely irrelevant creature on the board in your 1/1.
I'm not sure combining two commons together in a 40 card deck is that magical christmasland.... nor is expecting the opponent to have no answer to it in a format with such horrible removal. What can he realistically do on t4? Voyage's end, magma jet, lightning strike? 3 top-pick cards?
I thought the card was unplayable too, even looking at it as a mini-mark-of-the-vampire. But he did some good work for me at prerelease - triggers heroic, swings races.
The 1/1 leftover pretty much sucks, but there's the off-chance you can use it as a bestow target after. Turning it into a 3/3 flying lifelink with the blue aelid seems fairly relevant.
Daxos is nowhere near unbeatable. I had him in my pool and he stole one game suited up, but other times the opponent just has two 2/2s out and the nayad-suited 4/4 daxos still cant attack or he'll die.
When he does hit, if you flip a land you accomplish nothing; which is going to be 40% of the time?
So good card - yes. one of the biggest bombs in the set? no.
The sphinx is up there. As mentioned, you suit him up with pretty much anything and they better be able to race you or its all over but the cryin.
started out 3-0, ended 3-3. Picked green, played bant. Had green and white gods.
What I learned: a good creature like arbor colossus or shipbreaker kraken is WAY better than a god without devotion. In general gods without devotion were not even close to bombs - they were relatively lousy static effects (vigi/trample) and mana sinks if the game went late.
I never heroic'd the green promo card once. Had very few enablers in my pool.
It was very hard to find enough creatures - I think I was playing 12 or 13.
Griptide and voyage's end were both really good "removal".
In the abstract I like red and blue promos and think white is the worst.
monstrosity lets you develop your board now and upgrade it later if you flood or game stalls.
Bestow doesn't exist unless you're already flooded. Instead you get a creature that dies to a few extra spells as I don't think there are many/any positive enchantment themed cards in this set. No auramancers or ethereal armors.
I think BREAD type approaches keep people from making complete disasters of their draft, but agree completely that to draft well you need to go beyond that and worry about how your deck is actually going to work. Sometimes you really need some coral merfolk to tie the plan together, and have enough removal that liturgy of blood is not what you want.
The 4 point system is hard because what I want/need during the draft changes all the way through.
With my first few picks I basically take the best card ignoring colour... unless there's no clear best card, then I probably take the card most on-colour with my previous picks and notionally commit to that colour depending on my next few picks. I might also just take removal and stay open, depending on the cards.
In pack 2 I'm looking to shore up my colours, narrowing it down to 3 or less. I start passing good cards in favour of playable cards.
By the mid-way point of pack 2 I might have identified some major gaps in my deck - 2 drops, combat tricks, mana fixing, sac outlets, finishers, etc. I'll start prioritizing these which might mean taking a verdant haven over a warden of evos isle.
In pack 3 I take the best stuff in my colours and/or continue to try and plug the holes I noticed forming up in my deck.
So...
1. Take the abstract best card in the pack (early picks).
2. Take the best card that helps commit me to a colour - including switching colours if the signals are really strong (mid pack 1 to mid pack 2).
3. Take the best card to make my deck function (mid pack 2 to end).
4. Take sideboard cards like negate, mind rot, wind storm.
Did two 10-man drafts yesterday. Took first place with a monoblack deck full of synergy but no bomb rares (4x tenacious d + sac outlets; 3x corrupt; 3x quag sickness; 2x sengir vamp). Then I came in 7th with a UGb deck the second draft.
This format is awful. Games routinely had players with 30+ life, or coming back from 2 life to 20 life. There were routinely giant lines of creatures looking at each other with no way to break through.
Basically this:
What you need to avoid in core set is the pile of 16-17 average sized creatures and nothing really going on with your support spells. Those decks will always stagnate even if your individual creatures are all "fine." You need some big punches to throw eventually.
How many times did I see trollhide create a massive stall...
One match I had the 1/3 drake out vs the 1/3 griffin and the 2/3 seakite... bunch of big-butt flyers pecking me for 1 damage a turn. Race! That game ended once my opponent had lined up 3 more small flyers. I had a mark of the vampire on an accursed spirit with enlarge, illusionary armor, opportunity, and archaeomancer in hand. Looked like I was turning the corner for an easy win - opponent plays pay no heed on my first swing, drops me to within lethal, then archaeomancer's back her pay no heed making me unable to enlarge and swing for 13 unblockable lifelink...
What's sadder - that I was able to make 13 lifelink unblockable? That I needed that to stay in the game? Or that my opponent was able to run pay no heed as a trump card?
I had hive stirrings in originally but it seemed really bad with the two slivers we have. How good is a 1/1 double strike or a 1/1 vigilance?
I'm not sure if fodder cards are very good... I know I played howl of the nightpack and cast it several times for 4 wolves. Each time those wolves were nothing more than chump blockers.
I was looking at brave the elements as a way to interact since we have so little removal to work with, and possibly as a way to alpha strike with the 2x master of diversion (use them to tap down any other-coloured creatures)
What happens if I cast this at the end of my opponent's turn?
I'm a little confused because as an instant it seems like I should want to cast it at instant speed - specifically end of opponent's turn to create 2 turns back to back with all my mana open.
However it says "after this one" which suggests I might be taking my "extra" turn first, and sundial tricks aside, losing or winning the game before getting my normal turn making the whole spell pointless.
Intuitively I would guess the extra turn is "banked" until after my normal turn, but in a multiplayer game I believe I could cast it during player B's turn to slip in my (player A) turn before player C...
So instead of A B C A B C
I make it go A B A (final fortune) C... not A B C A A (ff)
4 Experiment One
2 Rakdos Cackler
4 Lotleth Troll
4 Scavenging Ooze
2 Gyre Sage
4 Dreg Mangler
1 Renegade Krasis
4 Corpsejack Menace
1 Deadbridge Goliath
3 Thoughtseize
3 Grisly Salvage
2 Abrupt Decay
2 Putrefy
Lands (24)
4 Overgrown Tomb
1 Golgari Guildgate
10 Forest
9 Swamp
2 Doom Blade
2 Devour Flesh
1 Gift of Orzhova
2 Abrupt Decay
2 Golgari Charm
1 Gaze of Granite
2 Pithing Needles
3 Duress
After goldfishing a bit a few things became clearer:
Lotleth troll + ooze is the backbone of the deck. If you peak with thoughtseize and see no answers to troll, you can dump 2-3 guys to create a monster on t3 that creates serious pressure. Ooze can either increase pressure or provide redundancy if they handle the troll by coming down just as big as the troll was after a turn or two.
Corpsejack works with ooze and troll - The aforementioned synergy gets huge with a corpsejack out - esp nice with troll where you can pitch immediately for the bonus.
Dreg mangler and deadbridge provide redundancy - Sometimes things don't go perfectly. Having these mana sinks in the gy gives you late game reach and can turn even an E1 into a nightmare for the opponent later on.
Desecration demon is random. I dropped it for the goliath. Demon is certainly a good card, but its not really synergizing with anything here and I don't think we want a glut of 4 drops. It could be that the midrange deck with caryatid and reaper/demon is just better than this deck - but I want to try and get the ooze-troll-corpsejack thing working before I throw in the towel and get on the midrange train.
Renegade Krasis is too cute. I kept one in, but seeing multiples was really bad. The dream of E1-Sage-Krasis-Corpsejack is still alive, but you can't build the deck around it.
Golgari charm to sideboard - by dropping the krasis overextension plan and focusing more on E1 and troll with scavenge guys and instant-profit from corpsejack, we're less vulnerable to anger/verdict.
Grisly salvage - testing it maindeck to smooth out the game. I can't tell yet if this still constitutes an aggro or midrange deck or what. I don't usually want to salvage on t2, but late game it can drop some ooze food / scavenge in the bin while putting troll food into hand. These are definitely 3 slots I'd consider changing.
Cackler: I think this is too cute. He evolves E1 and gyre sage, and he has a chance of getting a bonus counter through corpsejack but otherwise he's meh and the unleash can be a late-game liability with scavenge. I tried deathrite shaman in its place, which still evolves e1 and can provide accelerationw ith grisly salvage, I just worry that DRS is rarely going to accel, and rarely going to eat creatures since I would much rather use those for oozes - is it worth a conditional B: shock to the face from DRS to run him?
So basically I have 5 flex-spots in the deck; the 3 salvages and 2 cacklers could be something else. Some number of that is definitely going to move to ranger's guile - this seems absolutely mandatory to handle azorius charm and non-overloaded cyclonic rift
So a real question is how many "eat my graveyard" effects can the deck support? I was looking at 3 oozes 1 varolz, and that's with 4x grisly salvages to fuel the yard when it gets empty. I also considered deathrite shaman but I think we want to stick with the counters theme.
Speaking of which, a major reason we play this deck is corpsejack menace - the more synergy we get around the +1+1 counter theme (without playing straight up jank) the better it gets. I don't see playing tormented hero or dryad militant in this deck - we have experiment one as the slam dunk and rakdos cackler as a second option if we're in the market for more 1 drops (e.g. some kind of varolz-focused build).
The best synergy with corpsejack is cheap evolvers. They give us a free instant bonus the turn we resolve the menace by earning an extra counter right away. Because of this I'm looking seriously at E1, Gyre sage and renegade krasis. The problem of course is these cards are not fantastic on their own and require synergy to be effective. Its the classic issue with evolve - the cards have to come in the right order or else they are all terrible.
I was iffy on troll because we don't generate traditional card advantage with this deck so discarding for counters sounds painful. On the other hand you can probably look at the combo of troll and ooze/varolz as a common bond variant - ooze+troll is g: common bond which isnt terrible value. The trample is relevant if we play the bow of nylea, and regenerate is the sort of thing we're looking for to shore up the game vs verdict/anger.
The "dream hand" with this deck goes off the exponential growth of corpsejack with krasis:
T1: E1
T2: gyre sage/troll (swing 2)
T3: renegade krasis (swing 5)
t4: corpsejack menace (swing 18)
The obvious weakness in this curve is that if you tap out t3 for krasis and they play a sweeper you're 2-for-1d and left with a 1/1 on the board. We can play slower with thoughtsieze and golgari charm to shore this up, but then we're heading into midrange-control territory (which may be the right way to look at this deck rather than a t4 explosion deck).
Our 3-drop options seem to be krasis, varolz, witchstalker, dreg mangler, and reverent hunter. I can see witchstalker maindeck if we're running a lot of varolz, but lots of varolz clashes with lots of oozes. I think if we play witchstalker its in the board for matchups where he's likely to get counters on his own and/or where hexproof lines up well.
Reverent hunter is an interesting question. This is a deck that's looking to commit heavily to the board to maximize corpsejack and krasis. Is the hunter good enough as a t3 4/4 (loxodon smiter)? How about as a t5 4/4 or 6/6 that leaves 2 mana up for abrupt decay / golgari charm? I think he's worth testing, but everytime he's a gray ogre or a nessian courser we're probably going to feel kind of bad.
Dreg mangler gives us another respectable aggressive start. If you substitute it for the renegade krasis in the E1-GS/troll-X-Corpsejack sequence our dmg goes:
T1: 0
T2: 2
T3: 8
T4: 12
The scavenge is one of the few mana sinks we have and is relevant when our board is nothing but a corpsejack (10/10 huzzah!), but most of the time we're probably just going to cheap out and feed him to an ooze or use varolz anyways.
So to recap I think this is the mix of creatures we are looking at:
Experiment One (for sure)
Rakdos Cackler (unlikely)
Scavenging Ooze (for sure - but maybe not 4)
Lotleth Troll (for sure - maybe not 4)
Gyre Sage (probably)
Renegade Krasis (yes - but maybe not 4)
Varolz (probably - count depends on oozes/whips)
Dreg Mangler (maybe)
Reverent Hunter (unlikely)
Witchstalker (sideboard)
Corpsejack Menace (definitely, main purpose of deck)
Polukranos (probably as a 1-of)
Desecration demon (maybe)
Kalonian Hydra (probably but not 4)
Mistcutter Hydra (maybe - sideboard)
No scavenging oozes with full set of trolls... also completely wrong.
reaper seems to have nothing to do with anything
I just started working on a GB counters decklist today and was hoping there'd be a thread on here of people also thinking about it!
Without having read anything previously this was the list I more or less settled on - although obviously a draft subject to testing and seeing what the main contenders are in the format:
3 Gyre Sage
3 Scavenging Ooze
1 Lotleth troll
2 Dreg Mangler
3 renegade krasis
1 Varolz the Scar-Striped
4 Corpsejack Menace
1 Desecration Demon
1 Polukraons, World-Eater
2 abrupt decay 2
3 putrefy 1
2 thoughtsieze
1 vraska the unseen
1 golgari charm 2
2 abrupt decay
1 putrefy
2 golgari charm
3 duress
2 mistcutter hydra
2 devour flesh
2 gaze of granite
1 underworld connections
I also considered cards like deathrite shaman, rakdos cackler, kalonian hydra, polukranos, lifebane zombie, arbor colossus, reaper of the wild, and reverent hunter.
The obvious things the deck probably needs to deal with are anger the gods / supreme verdict, azorius charm, and control/burn in general. You can also imagine selesnya goodstuff / midrange.
E1: Seems like an auto 4 of in just about any list
Scavenging Ooze: Not sure if we want 4, once you've used up the gas on 1 drawing extras gets a little worse. A hand with 3 of these would kind of suck.
Lotleth Troll: Has the history of underperforming although he does synergize with ooze. Requires card disadvantage to get his counters going - regen is important though vs anger/verdict.
Gyre Sage: a single tick and we've got a 2 mana 2/3 with upside. Its got some synergy with monstrous guys if we go there. I think this fights with the troll for a 2-drop spot.
Renegade Krasis: The impact of curving E1-Sage-Krasis-Corpsejack is pretty hilariously awesome.
dreg mangler: a scavenger to give value if we get wrathed, surprise dmg, evolves e1 sage and krasis
varolz: iffy. kind of non-bo with oozes
corpsejack: the main reason we're here. doubling up evolves and oozes
demon: debatable if this fits. it technically gets counters and is just plain good. Provides a 6 P/T for evolves if that should ever matter (krasis?)
Polukranos: obviously for monstrous, which gives an outlet should we get 2-3 counters on the gyre sage.
Thoughtsieze/Duress: we need to get rid of those supreme verdicts
Golgari charm: we need to answer those verdicts
Grisly Salvage: Seems like valuable CA if we dump some creatures for our oozes? This is probably the card most on the chopping block
Abrupt decay/Putrefy: does abrupt decay have a place? Are we going to see many creatures at 3 or less (reckoner etc) what about other permanents like det-sphere?
Vraska: random 1-of to answer stuff
Eh of those extra examples two require telegraphing your move with 4 mana open on t4 and 2 are sideboard cards at best (last breath and shredding winds). Pharikas cure is a relevant omission, but I don't think it changes the point that the format is designed to let you get away with bestowing, and its not unrealistic to pull off the flyer-bestow "combo" on t4.
I hope nobody is saying the eidolon is a high pick. I think the surprise is that its a card you are fine with playing - probably a little better than "23rd card with a frown" and certainly not unplayable jank.
I'm not sure combining two commons together in a 40 card deck is that magical christmasland.... nor is expecting the opponent to have no answer to it in a format with such horrible removal. What can he realistically do on t4? Voyage's end, magma jet, lightning strike? 3 top-pick cards?
I thought the card was unplayable too, even looking at it as a mini-mark-of-the-vampire. But he did some good work for me at prerelease - triggers heroic, swings races.
The 1/1 leftover pretty much sucks, but there's the off-chance you can use it as a bestow target after. Turning it into a 3/3 flying lifelink with the blue aelid seems fairly relevant.
When he does hit, if you flip a land you accomplish nothing; which is going to be 40% of the time?
So good card - yes. one of the biggest bombs in the set? no.
The sphinx is up there. As mentioned, you suit him up with pretty much anything and they better be able to race you or its all over but the cryin.
What I learned: a good creature like arbor colossus or shipbreaker kraken is WAY better than a god without devotion. In general gods without devotion were not even close to bombs - they were relatively lousy static effects (vigi/trample) and mana sinks if the game went late.
I never heroic'd the green promo card once. Had very few enablers in my pool.
It was very hard to find enough creatures - I think I was playing 12 or 13.
Griptide and voyage's end were both really good "removal".
monstrosity lets you develop your board now and upgrade it later if you flood or game stalls.
Bestow doesn't exist unless you're already flooded. Instead you get a creature that dies to a few extra spells as I don't think there are many/any positive enchantment themed cards in this set. No auramancers or ethereal armors.
The 4 point system is hard because what I want/need during the draft changes all the way through.
With my first few picks I basically take the best card ignoring colour... unless there's no clear best card, then I probably take the card most on-colour with my previous picks and notionally commit to that colour depending on my next few picks. I might also just take removal and stay open, depending on the cards.
In pack 2 I'm looking to shore up my colours, narrowing it down to 3 or less. I start passing good cards in favour of playable cards.
By the mid-way point of pack 2 I might have identified some major gaps in my deck - 2 drops, combat tricks, mana fixing, sac outlets, finishers, etc. I'll start prioritizing these which might mean taking a verdant haven over a warden of evos isle.
In pack 3 I take the best stuff in my colours and/or continue to try and plug the holes I noticed forming up in my deck.
So...
1. Take the abstract best card in the pack (early picks).
2. Take the best card that helps commit me to a colour - including switching colours if the signals are really strong (mid pack 1 to mid pack 2).
3. Take the best card to make my deck function (mid pack 2 to end).
4. Take sideboard cards like negate, mind rot, wind storm.
This format is awful. Games routinely had players with 30+ life, or coming back from 2 life to 20 life. There were routinely giant lines of creatures looking at each other with no way to break through.
Basically this:
How many times did I see trollhide create a massive stall...
One match I had the 1/3 drake out vs the 1/3 griffin and the 2/3 seakite... bunch of big-butt flyers pecking me for 1 damage a turn. Race! That game ended once my opponent had lined up 3 more small flyers. I had a mark of the vampire on an accursed spirit with enlarge, illusionary armor, opportunity, and archaeomancer in hand. Looked like I was turning the corner for an easy win - opponent plays pay no heed on my first swing, drops me to within lethal, then archaeomancer's back her pay no heed making me unable to enlarge and swing for 13 unblockable lifelink...
What's sadder - that I was able to make 13 lifelink unblockable? That I needed that to stay in the game? Or that my opponent was able to run pay no heed as a trump card?
**** format.
I'm not sure if fodder cards are very good... I know I played howl of the nightpack and cast it several times for 4 wolves. Each time those wolves were nothing more than chump blockers.
I was looking at brave the elements as a way to interact since we have so little removal to work with, and possibly as a way to alpha strike with the 2x master of diversion (use them to tap down any other-coloured creatures)