I'm gonna start up the next Born of the Gods draft and this time it'll be 2 Born of the Gods packs and 1 Theros pack.

Pack 1:

Mogis, God of Slaughter
Raised by Wolves
Ornitharch
Sanguimancy
Fall of the Hammer
Hold at Bay
Swordwise Centaur
Divination
Floodtide Serpent
Evanescent Intellect
Stratus Walk
Eye Gouge
Oreskos Sun Guide
Epiphany Storm

My policy is to always take the highest rarity card with the word "bestow" in the rules text, but with none to speak of, I'll go for Ornitharch.

Ornitharch is good... But I think Mogis.

Mogis is a clock. Gotta pick him. Ornitharch is pretty amazing, tho, and was my favorite card at the pre-re.

Mogis is pretty powerful just as an Enchantment. He's my pick.

That said, Ornitharch is great and the next best thing in the pack.

Ornitharch is a pretty clear winner here. Its a 5/5 flyer for 5... or a 3/3 flyer with 2 1/1 token flyers. And it keeps you open on your second color.

Mogis is a sulfuric vortex without the life gain clause... that you may never be able to turn on. It has an immediate double color commitment and you can get cut on either/or... Sweet mythic... Money drafting I take him...

Ornitharch

This is clearly better than a 2/2 unblockable, which is what Mogis will be most of the time.

This pack has 3 very solid cards which will decide what color(s) we play.
Raised By Wolves is one of my favorite uncommons, Orintharch is obviously good, and Mogis is Mogis.

I just want to play black all the time in this danged block though, so my pick is Mogis. Otherwise, I'd say Orintharch.

Mogis, God of Slaughter.

I'd rather have wolves than ornitharch because 2/2s But we're taking mogis and drafting minotaurs. I demand it!

I thought about this and I am not sure it's that different in terms of color commitment.

Ornitharch on curve (90% by turn 5) demands 11 white sources.
Mogis on curve (90% by turn 4) demands 7 red + 7 black... which means with a little fixing you can probably splash if you only get cut out of one color (we can assume black).

I think it's pretty close. A 5/5 flyer is bad, but dies to way more removal than a god. A 3/3 flyer can be dealt with by about 15 common/uncommon creatures (and I didn't even count bestowing leafcrown and/or nimbus naiad)- and if you can block a 3/3 flyer you can probably block a 1/1 later. You will probably get pinged a bit - which makes it pretty similar to a mogis-that-has-an-answer-in-your-deck.

Obviously some decks are just dead to ornitharch, and Mogis would be a much slower clock (even coming down a turn earlier).

This is all assuming you never make him a 7/5 indestructable.

I don't think Mogis ever turns on in this format if you're not hard-forcing red+black.... and get ridiculously lucky during the actual play and no one interacts with you. Which we'll never be able to prove in just the draft room. Whereas Ornitharch is more steady value.

I could be wrong.

On the flip side, i think to make Orni work you just need to draft white. Drafting around Mogis seems a lot more fun and could actually teach us something. The "pro tour" pick would be Orni, but none of us is on the pro tour, even though there are some Spikes out there that want to pretend they are.

We picked impetuous sunchaser over deepwater hypnotist last draft, so I'm not listening to you guys on what the better card is anymore (I'm most definitely not coming up with weak reasons to pick mogis and playing it after opening it in pack 3 of a BHG-THS-BHG draft while being UR.)

Let's see how minotaurs are when we replace a pack of theros with one of Born of the gods.

I agree that there's a LOT of authoritative try-hards who aren't afraid to vocalize their opinion over yours.

I can also agree there's a lesson to be learned here from drafting Mogis and forcing... however I think there's an equally viable lesson from taking Ornitharch.... one is an exercise in positive reinforcement... and the other feels like learning from a mistake.

I don't think picking Mogis counts as a learning experience if we never actually play with the deck.

The difference in scale between these two is pretty narrow, yah? Maybe you undervalue evasion?

@cato: I learn from what people pick before/after us. Helps me get a feel for signals, etc. So picking Mogus and the impending difficulty drafting around it will reinforce what I already think: that Orni is better. But then sometimes it's awesome when the stars align and you actually get to say you drafted that Minotaur deck.

Could somebody please explain how picking Mogis makes drafting a Minotaur deck easier? Minotaurs need the lords, and nobody else picking the best red two-drop. Mogis is inevitability (not too much of that either), and fits a control deck, not aggro. Aggro wants to drop two Minotaurs on turn four and hit for 10 trampling damage (I'm too lazy to work out if this is even possible, but something like that anyway).

We can certainly pick Mogis and try for RB. It will most likely turn out to be pikers and removal. Which is fine. Or black devotion backed by burn. Which is also fine. Pulling off Minotaurs is a bit harder.

I guess I should say that I have played 2 games against Mogis. One was Standard someone was testing Grixis control. One was at the pre-release. In both cases I had at least 18 life and was way ahead so I didn't care at all about it. It can force mistakes (bad sacrifices or more rarely bad-non-sacrifices)... but maybe it just seems cool?

(BTW, in my only BNG-THS-THS draft I P1P1'd Ornitharch and 3-0'd with RW only losing 1 game I mulled to 5). I also had it my pre-release deck but ONLY DREW IT ONCE (and never played in a game I was way ahead).

So maybe psychologically I am handicapping myself? Or I just refuse to trust my experiences??

HMMMM. Upon a little more reflection - Ornitharch is not a unique card. It's a bomb-y flyer. There are lots of them in this set/block and lots in every draft. But Mogis is fancy-schmancy with it being indestructible and inevitable and ... interesting.

I think there is a good argument that the card value in limited is NOT close and Ornitharch is actually a no-brainer.

If we dismiss this (it will be proven one way or the other over time) and assume they are reasonably close in power level... I am inclined to take the card that costs 4 instead of 5.

But the fact that we got 15 posts debating it makes the thread worthwhile, no?

Agreed. Minotaurs are irrelevant to Mogis and and not particularly synergistic with him.

Yeah, Flying + Haste is better than +1 Power and a conditional shrinkage.

You don't really need to draft around Mogis. You just cast him, and your opponent takes damage or sacs dudes. I'm struggling to see how that isn't good even without the devotion.

I get that Orni is incredible, but Mogis is probably the best god in draft. That, and it lets us play black.

Obviously Orni is good against Mogis, but that wouldn't be something I'd worry about too much.

I'm willing to concede that Orni and Mogis are on comparable power level (which is some rather huge to admit, considering one is a Mythic and the other an Uncommon) and depending on the day of the week, I could easily take Orni over Mogis, but right now I'm in a Mogis mood.