What is a good rubric for synergy drafting?

It's clear that it's somewhat different from BREAD/CABS ("Cards Affecting the Board State"), which I am pretty comfortable with. Essentially pick the best few cards, try to be mono colored pack 1, then go with what's open in pack 2.

This seems to be a recipe for .500 in BFZ. I think it must still be reasonable to take the best 3-4 cards even if they are totally different archetypes, then move in middle of pack 1.

Are their "audibles" when you draft a set like this?

I guess if I start drafting green scions I could go black or blue (or maybe even white tokens?) depending on pack 2.

R can end up in Allies or Landfall or RU colorless... but very few of the cards overlap. Maybe it's generally bad to go into red early, absent a bomb.

Blue is either awaken with white or colorless or ingest process or 5 color... but I think audibling into 5 color might be dangerous. Seems better to early pick Skyrider Elf and force. Is forcing ever good??

Black I just don't like

I'm not sure where you're going with this. But let me give you an example.

Yesterday, I tried to draft UB control. I got some good processors (p1p1 Wasteland Strangler and two Ulamog's Nullifiers), but no removal. I also got two Skyrider Elf and Exert Influence. So I switched to full control, using counterspells to exile things, some awaken for tempo/value, and the black allies for some life gain. The deck looked a mess, it had at least three themes going, mana base was 7/7/2/1 UBGW and an Evolving Wilds, but it played surprisingly well. 2/1, with a really close loss to another UB deck.



There are a Rising Miasma, Bone Splinters, Blighted Fen, Sheer Drop, Smite the Monstrous and Desolation Twin in the sideboard. I boarded out the six drop for Smite a few times.

Point is, don't go overboard for synergy. I only started drafting the black allies in pack three, when I finally noticed that Skyrider and Halimar Tidecaller are also Allies. The Nullifiers and the counters and Infiltrator work by themselves, no need to pass them if they fir your deck without ingest/process.

Oh, and did I say that I will be forcing blue in this set if at all possible? It's just so versatile and fun. Well, not for opponents who get things countered, but I really enjoy it so far.

Synergy in drafting should just be when your good cards make your other good cards GREAT cards, like drafting flyers and then picking up a Thunderclap Wyvern, or drafting elves and then grabbing that elf sweeper in Origins. It's what takes a decent deck and pushes it over the top.

Note this is different than combo, which usually means drafting weaker cards to suddenly be able to win more or less on the spot, or "forcing a deck," the way you could just pick up all the Lay of the Land in M14 if you had a couple Howl of the Night Pack already, and you'd basically draft mediocre green creatures to act as blockers/fluff until you flooded the board with 7-14 2/2 tokens and won the next turn.

OK, but in this set there is a fast ocean of mediocre cards that are only good synergistically.

There was a similar thing in KTK, the mana fixing was so good that you could take almost any card you got passed, so the main way to know which card to take was synergy. Any blue clan can cast Treasure Cruise in theory, but the Sultai would value it higher than the others.

Really? I see a lot of good cards that are great synergistically. A 2/3 flash flyer is always good in control; if you also counter a spell, great, but you don't have to go overboard and pick bad ingesters just to enable it. You pick Complete Disregard because it's a great card on its own, not because you have Ulamog's Nullifier. Then you have overrun on legs. Again, every green deck wants it, no need to pick bad allies to support it. And no need to pick bad allies at all, anyway.

I think the trick in this set will be to know how much synergy to go for, and when it's better to pick a good card in your color even if it doesn't synergize with your theme. There is just the BW drain deck where you need to go all out and pick cards that don't really work on their own, like Kalastria Healer.

One exampe of synergy drafting might be to pick lands (duals and Evolving Wilds) even higher than you think you should, because of converge. Those spells are really good.

I don't dispute that a 2/3 flash flyer is generically good, but it is better in some formats than others. BFZ seems to have slower decks that do stronger things to win. The kind of card your control deck needs in Origins is not necessarily gonna cut it here. As for Tajuru Warcaller, it's a five mana sorcery speed +2/+2 with no trample. That's not good in any format. You're either running allies to retrigger it or you have a ton of little tokens to make the first cast worth it or maybe you have a lot of natural tramplers, but you can't just chuck it into any green deck.

On most board states, the +2/+2 makes blocks difficult, and leads to two-for-ones or no blocks, effectively turning your creatures into removal/and or giving them evasion. It is not an instant-win, but it is certainly an effect that fits into most green decks. As long as you can attack with two creatures the turn you play the Warcaller, you are getting what you paid for.

As for that not being good in any format, do you remember Ampryn Tactitian? That was such an annoying card, doing exactly what I described above a lot of the time. And just by giving +1/+1.

Could be the case. Ampryn is also decent in its format even if you just get the body. Warcaller's body is not worth a card in this format (and since it usually can't attack on the turn it brings the boost, a 2/1 is all it'll ever be without support).

I just read this (honestly, didn't see it before I wrote the above):

"but with Tajuru Warcaller being one of the frontrunner mythic uncommons" (Neal Oliver, CFB, limited archetypes review).

Yeah, but he suggests using it with "a ton of white Allies", which possibly conflicts with your claim "no need to pick bad allies to support it" unless by bad allies you meant the non white ones

Warcaller has been touted but I have yet to see one resolve. There are actually a lot of overrun/anthem effects - especially if you count the red ally that grants menace, and they are in 4 colors.