I know we are all bored to tears of theros drafts. And I am not even sure anyone cares about my draft reports, but I find them useful.

Last night's draft was the usual bad of crazy mixed signals. Green and blue got spread all over the (7 man) pod. Only 1 red drafter.
I was in a world of hurt until pack 3 when I was passed a Gary, Insatiable harpy and keepsake gorgon. I cannot remember if I cracked or was passed the downfall but it was also a lucky pick.

Rather that the usual recap I thought I would post my pool because (other than the black) I think it's rather a tough build. This is ALL the BUG cards in my pool and I have no artifacts. I left the very marginal ones in the list because there real difficulty here is 2 vs. 3 color and how much of each. Also I should try drafting creatures....
I did have a basically hate drafted ordeal of purphoros but I wouldn't really consider splashing it in this deck.


//Black
2 baleful eidolon
1 fleshmad steed
1 fellhide minotaru
1 insatiable harpy
1 returned centaur
1 erebos's emissary
2 grey merchant of asphodel
1 keepsake gorgon

1 scourgemark
1 hero's downfall
1 lash of the whip
2 march of the returned
1 rescue from the underworld

//Green
1 leafcrown dryad
1 karametra's acolyte
1 nemesis of mortals
1 vulpine goliath

1 warriors' lesson
1 nylea's presence
1 ordeal of nylea
1 time to feed
1 commune with the gods


// Blue
1 triton shorethief
2 vaporkin
1 wavecrash triton

1 annul
1 lost in a labyrinth
1 voyage's end
1 griptide
1 sea god's revenge

I won't post spoilers since I don't want to bias anyone's thoughts. I did manage to avoid a DRAW for the first time in 5 3-round swiss tournies. I also managed to finish 2nd.... for the 5th time in a row.

EDIT: I forgot I also had 2x loathsome catoblepas. Which is theoretically relevant.

2 x Baleful Eidolon
1 x Fleshmad Steed
1 x Leafcrown Dryad
1 x Felhide Minotaur
1 x Wavecrash Triton
1 x Erebos's Emissary
1 x Insatiable Harpy
1 x Karametra's Acolyte
1 x Returned Centaur
2 x Gray Merchant of Asphodel
1 x Keepsake Gorgon
1 x Nemesis of Mortals

1 x Nylea's Presence
1 x Ordeal of Nylea
1 x Scourgemark
1 x Voyage's End
1 x Hero's Downfall
1 x Griptide
1 x Lash of the Whip
1 x Sea God's Revenge


7 x Swamp
4 x Island
7 x Forest

Sideboard

1 x Annul
1 x Lost in a Labyrinth
1 x Triton Shorethief
1 x Warriors' Lesson
1 x Commune with the Gods
2 x Vaporkin
1 x Time to Feed
2 x March of the Returned
1 x Rescue from the Underworld
1 x Vulpine Goliath
2 x Loathsome Catoblepas


As you say, you should draft critters Something is wrong when two Vaporkin don't make a deck. Anyway, GBu, because you're four cards short of a very good UB deck. I know you played the Lesson, but I went for the blue bounce instead. And only seven Swamps, since you're in trouble if you don't get the fixing anyway, and if you get it, you can fix the black too. Well done going 2-1 with this.

I like reading your reports, and I'm not sick of Theros yet, probably because I'm an addict.

On paper it looks like you could make up for the tempo loss of tossing stuff in the graveyard to recur it with the bounce spells and cheap critters. In practice I feel like you end up tossing your bounce spells in the graveyard and you end up wondering what the hell you were thinking in draft.

The BG curve is sweet if you had like two centaur coursers and an asp, then you play presence for the card draw and to splash Revenge, and you have a gritty, mean deck. It's hard to say what I would've done without a pick-by-pick.

I actually ran 2 decks. As for the actual draft... I was frankly screwed until pack 3 when I got a bunch of black. Green was cut from both sides and the whole other side of the table was blue. Which explains the 4 good picks and then bupkis (spread over 3 packs)

First two matches I splashed blue for only Griptide and Sea God's - very similar to Ziehtoba's deck.

I played commune, rescue, and vulpine goliath (?!?) instead of voyages, triton and a land.
I tried to run like 9-7-1 hoping that the presence and the ordeal would get me the blue if I needed it. I felt that I couldn't cut a creature or a spell.

I think I overrated (badly?) commune + nemesis.

I won match one vs. the durdliest RG deck ever - losing only game 1 to Xenagos/Bow/Hammer. I actually had hero's downfall... but had to kill a monstrous cyclops instead of xenagos.

match 2 I was crushed by a very good player (he's a level 5 judge) running GUw (he's the guy who sucked up all the fixing). Probably the lowlite of the match was milling my only island holding sea gods' revenge and griptide.

He suggested I play all the good blue and cut the big green. And like an 8-5-4 split which I thought was nuts but worked.

So I put in the Voyages' End, 2x Vaporkin, and the wave crash triton. Cut Nemesis, Commune, Goliath and Karametra's acolyte. Leaving me with:

//Black (10 dudes, 4 spells)
2 baleful eidolon
1 fleshmad steed
1 fellhide minotaru
1 insatiable harpy
1 returned centaur
1 erebos's emissary
2 grey merchant of asphodel
1 keepsake gorgon

1 scourgemark
1 hero's downfall
1 lash of the whip
1 rescue from the underworld

//Green (1 dude, 2 spells)
1 leafcrown dryad

1 nylea's presence
1 ordeal of nylea



// Blue (3 dudes, 3 spells)
2 vaporkin
1 wavecrash triton

1 voyage's end
1 griptide
1 sea god's revenge

Leaving only 14 creatures but a pretty nice array of spells.

Needless to say, I won the 3rd match (although I did drop game 2). I still want to run a graveyard shenanigans GB deck but I think since you (in this set) only care about creatures in the grave yard, you have to run like 18 of them. Not 14. Which I guess is what rstme is saying.

That's a very interesting build, playing low-cost creatures in all three colors. I did build this without the green, but I have this inner voice saying Vaporkin is no good on turn four. Thanks for posting this.

Edit: you have no double colored-mana costs in green or blue, so the mana base is not as shaky as it looks at first sight.

I probbaly would not have thought to run green at all, but it looks really good.

I thought the 8 swamps+1 for presence was trouble with all the double black. When I built the first green heavy build I add an outside thought of boarding in all the blue for game 2. Mediocre aggro is pretty good in this format because of the pumps and everyone running 4drop.dec. Obviously it croaks to "real" aggro (minos or heroic).

The problem with going NO green is that you have to play 3 cards including:
1) land
2) loathsome catoblepas
3) annul
4) shorethief

And you are already short on creatures. I think the philosophy here - with what is not a really tight draft pool - just throw the 23 best cards/3 colors in a deck and hope you don't get mana screwed (or can mulligan out of a bad 7).

I often seem to end up drafting 2 voyages' end (or whatever) and never playing them because blue goes no where.