This is the draft deck I mentioned in another thread. I think it's pretty good, except I wish the combat tricks and the banner were removal. Unfortunately two like minded individuals sat beside each other on the opposite side of the table and drafted all the fixing and the removal; the guy I lost to played the 3/4 flying rare against me two games and, without a way to deal with it, it took over the game.

p1p1 was Crackling Doom and p1p2 was the frampling Highspire Mantis. I intuited that red was closed bc I passed two Temur Charms to the guy to my left and that white was slim/closed bc I didn't see any.

The deck:

1 x Smoke Teller
1 x Archer's Parapet
1 x Rakshasa Deathdealer
1 x Alpine Grizzly
1 x Abzan Battle Priest
1 x Longshot Squad
1 x Salt Road Patrol
1 x Sidsi's Pet
1 x Sage-Eye Harrier
1 x Sagu Archer
1 x Pine Walker
1 x Armament Corps
1 x Hooting Mandrills
1 x Abzan Guide
2 x Woolly Loxodon

1 x Suspension Field
2 x Dragonscale Boon
1 x Incremental Growth
1 x See the Unwritten

1 x Abzan Banner

6 x Plains
8 x Forest
2 x Swamp
2 x Scoured Barrens


The mana, btw, was perfect. Most interesting play was putting a +1/+! counter on opponent's creature to give my dudes +2/+2 and +3/+3 for the win. Biggest blowout was game 3 match 1 against the guy I lost to--he flipped that morph dude that steals my spell and stole my See the Unwritten which was basically gg.

Hope this helps y'all drafting. I'll post my draft decks as I play 'em.

4.5 black sources for Rakhasa Deathdealer???? I might have swapped some plains for swamps there.

This worked fine for me.

How useful were see the unwritten and the 1/5 flyer?

See the Unwritten almost always got me 2 creatures, and once it got me 1 bc my opponent used removal on my big dude on the field, and once it got stolen from me by a rare I didn't know was in my opponent's deck. It's very good.

The 1/5 stopped the aggro decks and gave me reach/turns against my opponent's multiple flyers. It's worth playing. There's not a lot of flying evasion in this set, whch makes flying slightly better than usual. It's still probably a 20th or 21st card, but it was effective when it mattered.

So what did you learn?

The mana bases are the same as if you're playing DGM with 3 off-color spells.

Also, doing pretty much anything while your opponent has face down morphs feels awful, even when it shouldn't.

1-1-1 deck:

1 x Heir of the Wilds
1 x Ainok Bond-Kin
1 x Mardu Hordechief
2 x Watcher of the Roost
1 x Mer-Ek Nightblade
1 x Armament Corps
1 x Sagu Archer
1 x Sage-Eye Harrier
1 x Rotting Mastodon
1 x Pine Walker
1 x Sultai Scavenger
1 x War Behemoth

1 x Defiant Strike
1 x Savage Punch
1 x Kill Shot
1 x Rush of Battle
1 x Throttle
2 x Take up Arms
1 x Incremental Growth
1 x Rite of the Serpent

6 x Plains
5 x Forest
4 x Swamp
2 x Blossoming Sands
1 x Jungle Hollow

SB
1 x Rite of the Serpent
1 x Defiant Strike
1 x Savage Punch


Match 1: 2-0 vs Sultai

Fun deck to play against, both games very good. However, my opponent learned flyers are a thing. BC they are.

Match 2: 1-2 vs Temur

One of my playgroup friends. Excellent games 1 & 2, but game 3 I had him... until I drew 5 lands in a row. Whatcha gonna do? He also had 2 Ghost Blade and like 4 non-morph creatures

Match 3: 1-1-1 vs. Abzan

Crushed him game one with an army of first strike death touchers. Too bad he didn't notice bc he spent the entire game flipping through someone else's trade binder. Game 2 I scoop with a grip full of black cards and no black mana on the battlefield. Game 3 I have him... but his trade binder perusing puts us at time and even tho I am representing inevitability on the board, we draw.

Thankfully tiebreakers go to me, and I get 3 packs (4th) for my troubles. I'm opening all my packs for this set, and I opened a Polluted Delta and a Clever Imposter and a foil Altar of the Brood so woot!

@Cato: I learned that sticking with a color while drafting, almost like you're forcing it, is better than trying to swap shards mid-draft. I started off Mardu but kept getting these decent green cards.

Also, no creatures can attack through a 2/8. Most can't attack through a 3/6. Very, very relevant info right there.

Also, I tilt when I think someone's being a dick, like, say, flipping through a binder while we're supposed to be playing.

Pretty sure that I'm using the box I preordered to do a draft, and force all the drafters to draft under cameras so I can go back and analyze everything and post it here for you guys to laugh at all our terrible picks.

That'd be fun. And I'd need 7 more cameras.



Never play against me. I rarely am not doing something else while playing.

Or playing two matches at the same time online. I go play Solitaire when that happens, and let them wait on me.

Why do I think you drafted the same deck both times? That counter distributor creature seems like great value.

Any cards that exceeded/were exceeded by your expectations?

I don't get your mana base, why going full three color with only three fixers?

@HW Mana bases are built by number of sources not just by fixers. In this mana base I have:

8 white sources
8 green sources
5 black sources

Considering most decks have 9/8 split in sources (lands) I thought this was fine. I only have one BB commitment in my spells, the rest only need either G, W, or B to cast.

@Cato the bird that flips when you reveal a white card is a little annoying when you don't have white cards. And Defiant Strike was really good cycling through my deck, I might consider snatching these up sooner.