We can either go for pure power, or force the heroic deck. If we are forcing the heroic deck, then I'd go for dragon mantle. Dragon mantle is one of, if not my favorite heroic enabler. I'd play 10 of them if I could. Sure, they would appear to be weaker in multiple, but since they cycle and only cost one, they have almost no drawback. They are especially potent on cards with evasion such as rider.

Pure power, it's between sentry and eidolon as rstnme pointed out. I think sentry is slightly stronger overall, but eidolon is still a good (albeit slow) heroic enabler, so it's a bit of a compromise.

Some people like to force heroic really early on, but I've had mixed results doing that. Sometimes I have an amazing deck, other times someone upstream is doing the same thing and by the time I notice it, I wasted 3 or 4 pics. As such, I'll go for the compromise and pick baleful eidolon.

I prefer to play Heroic as a side choice - you can pretty much voltron anything for good effect. Heroic just wins more.

Eidolon and Sentry. I hear good things about Sentry, but never tried it myself, so...
Eidolon for me.

I'll go with Dragon Mantle.

Well, it's an interesting pack to be sure. It's probably a meta decision.
Best card I think is Baleful Eidolon.
Sentry goes in the category of "I always wanted to to try the BW deck"...
Dragon Mantle as everyone says is the heroic force.

I am interesting in forcing heroic, so let's force it. It may be illuminating if we fail. Dragon Mantle!

I want the Eidolon. I've seen it do all kinds of work, early game and late game, and I'm not worried about switching colors on pick three. I really hate to pass on the Sentry though.

satyr,wheel sentry.

I want dragon mantle now.

Sentry wheeling is very unlikely.

Pack 1:

Wingsteed Rider
Magma Jet
Baleful Eidolon

Next...

Stoneshock Giant
Satyr Hedonist
Bronze Sable
Nessian Asp
Aqueous Form
Vaporkin
Lagonna-Band Elder
Wild Celebrants
Gray Merchant of Asphodel
Chosen by Heliod
Opaline Unicorn

GARY!

Gary

That's a damn good pack. Gray Merchant, Asp, and Vaporkin are first-pickable.

I'll hop on the merchant wagon.

Stoneshock Giant is another solid card and is on color, but gray merchant is the better pick here, no questions.

Any stabs at what was picked before? I'm assuming at least one emissary and either sea god's revenge or nemesis or mortals. I don't know what other uncommons I'd want over what's in this pack. (Obvi not specking the rare without more pack info.)

Gary it is.

Dauntless onslaught,an ordeal or keepsake gorgon, maybe?

I have also heard that some people prefer phalanx leaderto gary.

If we assume a strong nonblack rare we have more options(xeganos, anax and cymede,fleecemane lion and prophet of kruphix are some good reasons to pick a card in color if possible, polis crusher, medomai the ageless and daxos of meletis could also be the reason, but those are much more debatable)

Since we have the eidolon I think gary is fine.

Gary oak

A signal even I can read. Take the merchant, don't look back. I like our lack of black we have shipped too (although I am going to cross check) EDIT we did ship a lifelink harpy and a disciple of Phenax, but not going to worry about those.

I really like Gary, but I think most people forget he's corrupt with a body attached. I played draft last night, and in the finals played against the scary 3-Gary deck, and dude just didn't have the curve to race my UW heroics. So while he's the pick here, I think he shines off the backs of disciples of pheaxes and especially those 2/2 lifelink harpies.

I agree that Gary isn't always an auto pick.

Do you think that the guy you played in the finals had more of a constructed Gary deck that lacks enough threats at the low end of the curve for limited, or did he just get bad draws?

I think he kept bad hands/didn't mull aggressively, and didn't use my deck info against me. Like, he kept the hands that won him games against the other midrange/controlly decks in the pool. I was the only aggro player--he should've boarded in pharika's cure and not been greedy with the hands he kept.

I watched some of his games and knew what he had, so when he tried to remove my voltron threat instead of developing his board, he got blown out by god's willing and basically just rolled over and died.