The math holds.

Mostly followed your advice, went 4-1, then lost two games to mana screw.

**** this game.

EDIT: Somehow I can't quit even though the games aren't very fun and I'm mostly playing on autopilot. Oh well.



- Is Cling to Dust playable?
- Does 16 lands + Traveler's Amulet make sense? The format seems pretty slow in my experience thus far.
- Is Calix worth splashing for?

4-1 before variance took you out isn’t bad. You didn’t have any mega bombs but did have a number of B+ cards so I thought you had a chance at a nice run. Lands can be such a frustrating mechanic with flood and screw.

1) Playable filler, but most of the time it’s not going to make the cut. Like D level; not something you’re actively looking to pick up, but might end up playing
Why?

2) format is on the slower side. You have pursuits and rites to help find lands too. Could get away with it probably but I wouldn’t do it cause Calix is bad in your build.
Why?


3) Calix is a build around planeswalker, not a jam in any deck you can planeswalker. Only good contextually.
Why?


WWTIMHD?


EDIT: Fixed format (trying to make this my thing)

Played with Calix because I wanted to see how good he is, went 4-3 again after losing another two games to mana screw. One of the hands was probably too loose to keep, though. The other had two lands, one Forest and one Swamp, and four turns later I still hadn't drawn a 3rd land.

Canix was never cast so I can't tell how good he is; however the splashing off of one Plains did lead to Mire Triton milling the Plains once. Not good. Erebos was very mediocre. He takes so much devotion to turn into a creature - he contributes one, which means I still needed at least two creatures with BB symbols. I can't play him when behind because even if he is a creature, a removal spell on one of my other creatures would turn him off. Meanwhile his passive abilities are just so meh. Easily the best card in that deck was Shadowspear, which was really good. Entrancing Lyre also overperformed for once - it's a removal spell, but it turns out it can also tap two creatures for one turn, and that let me out-tempo my opponent. However, because the mana cost necessary is so high, I'm sure this situation is not common, and as a result I'm coming down on Entrancing Lyre by quite a bit. This card is likely worse than simple removal such as Mire's Grasp & Final Death (although it does shut off auras & escape cards for good).

For the other cards, the 4/4 green fight creature was surprisingly mediocre as well. Too many creatures are too big for it to fight, e.g. all the escape creatures after they've escaped. It's not a bad card by any means, but I don't think it's a card that draws you to green. The Spider was also very mediocre. This run, pretty much all it did was block Transcendent Envoy (which I suppose is not bad for a one-drop). If it escapes then it owns flying creatures, yeah (I didn't realize it outright does damage, I thought it fights the target), but there don't seem to be many threatening flyers in the format, and certainly not many X/1's.

Next draft is starting Black since P1P1 is probably Aphemia the Cacophony, but will leave that for another day.

I guess I'm done for THB. Enjoyed the format and it went exceptionally well:



Started out at Bronze 4, reached Gold within draft #8 and Plat in #18. I have > 100k gold, so I can buy the rest of the set out

Total gem cost is 5,300. Average Rares doesn't count Mythics, just in case anyone wonders about that. I've drafted 6 mythics, with that it's 3.90 per draft. We had a discussion somewhere where I claimed you could get 4 per. Maybe that's too high, maybe I was just unlucky in that regard - it's only 20 iterations after all.

Nice cap to your drafts, getting three 7 win runs out of the last four.

I see your BW runs were all poor. I haven’t been impressed with that color pair either when I’ve seen it. Seems like it should be decent with access to a bunch of removal (and could do some interesting things with tokens and sacrifice outlets), but when I’ve seen it in practice the creatures just too undersized and some conflict between black devotion and white devotion. What were your observations with the builds you did?

Funny your GW runs track pretty evenly with what I’ve seen. The builds either come together stronk or super weak. Haven’t seen much middling builds from that color pair. What was your observations between the varying success rates of your builds there?

Nice bit of luck getting Dreamweaver in 3 drafts! Your collection is stoked

Also, lol, was deck titled RDW Kiora a monored deck that splashed Kiora saga?

What was your favorite color pair from the drafts? I’ve really liked the GU decks I’ve seen, but rarely seen.

Yes, I really had to stop then, couldn't get better - even exactly 77 wins

We agree on BW, like I said earlier, it doesn't work well together. Either color is fine with green or red, but they want different things, so your deck has no plan.

GW is mostly good, sometimes you have better cards, but the general plan is solid.

And yes, the decks with bonus names have their namesake bomb. That Kiora was in p2 or p3 and I had only red cards up to that point. Didn't go that well, but whatever. I've talked about it previously.

I still prefer Gruul with Furious Rise over GW for my favorites. Wouldn't run blue on purpose, but that UG deck this morning kinda happened.. and kinda won after starting 1-2. Had that card drawing hippo as p1p1, so that was a reason to pick blue cards.

Furious Rise is a house if you can support it. Red has some really cool things it can do with the right pieces. Seen the Dreamshaper Shaman do some cool things - one game opp had that plus Furious Rise out on an even board, then was abusing a rage hound (cheap regular cast and escape, and they didn’t want it attacking anyways) to Dreamshape things out along with the card advantage they were gaining from Rise to flood the board and run away with the game. I’m a big fan of Tectonic Giant too. Just feels more of a support color overall - I’d be more comfortable running mono black or mono green than mono red. Maybe even mono white with chimeras at common.

Yeah, blue being generally weak is prob why I don’t see more UG. Does seem like you need to open a powerful U card early to want to run blue; less likely to end up with U as second color through commons passed mid-pack as other colors When it does come together it can be very strong tho. The gold UG card is powerful, and some other good constellation synergies between the colors. Green can hold the ground while pigeons chip away, also ramp or colorfix sultai/bant for the U bombs.

Feels like I ought to apologize to anyone who ends up with this flaming turd in the Limited Workshop event:



The core of the deck is there I suppose, but I was definitely short on playables after pivoting out of blue and had to run some stinkers. Only saw Furious Rise in two games I think, but I'll agree with the above that it's obscene once you get rolling. Anax is still my favorite card in red though, feels great getting some value back when attacking wide into a giant blocker or two. To cap off the nonsense, a topdecked Wrap in Flames got me my seventh win:



Sigh.

Lol opp so close with that 25 power trampling demigod.

Wonder how the deck would have done with blue splash for UG gold card and the 3/2 chimera? Had the mana dork, and green omen in sideboard along with maybe artifact “land”. They’re both strong and you have 3 enchantments to chimera exploit in red omen, green fight aura, and blessing - plus repeated triggers for UG gold. Ya dilutes manabase and prob need to cut green giant but you were running hill giant: yuck, lol

Is Wrap in Flames better than I think, or only good that last attack?

You keep a spreadsheet with all your results Sol77? Wow, you are hardcore.



I'm probably taking this into my next queue. Would love to splash Purphoros's Intervention (my P3P1 too out of a pack that had mostly nothing else), but with the number of cards I have that can mill the Mountain, I'm wary of doing it. I'm short removal, but never saw a Mire's Grasp or Final Death or even that 4/4 fight creature, oh well.

Edit: went 3-3. Not having reliable removal was terrible. I knew Pharika's Libation was not going to be good, but I was shocked at how bad it actually was. After losing one game to a ground stall I also brought in Deluge, but it still didn't turn out well, since I didn't have a lot of green devotion. Aphemia was underwhelming. A good card, but not a bomb. 2 Mogis' Favor also feels like too much, it's just too situational to play many copies of. Funniest play of the run has got to be putting Mogi's Favor + Aspect of Lamprey on my Temple Thief vs. an opponent with all enchantment creatures, too bad I lost that game to Nadir Kraken as well since no removal.

Also mana screwed out of my last game. I sure mana screw a lot. Would you guys have kept this hand? 2 Swamp, Aphemia, Relentless Pursuit, Acolyte of Affliction, Nylea's Huntmaster, Loathsome Chimera? Draw a forest and it's great, don't draw a forest (like I did) and it's unplayable.

P1P1 Iroas's Blessing, Chainweb Arachnir, or Alseid of Life's Bounty?

My interaction was ok, but I figured it wasn't quite good enough to keep up or win in the late game. Running the splash seemed less than ideal as I wanted to lean more aggro.

Wrap is...not unplayable I suppose, but still not great. Mostly ended up clearing Omen of the Sun tokens and some Loathsome Chimeras with it. Probably better in a proper WR aggro deck where it's more likely to be game ending and you'll have more opportunities to use it for incidental Heroic triggers.
Think Wings of Hubris would've been a better solution to ground stalls. Design only makes your big creatures bigger, it doesn't help much at getting damage through.

@Banedon

Blessing. I wouldn’t P1P1 Alseid - fine if you’re in white but not strong enough on its own to draw you into the color. I’m a fan of spider, but not P1P1 fan. Solid removal is almost always reasonable 1st pick, and Blessing is splashable unlike spider (who’s not good if you can’t escape with GG) and gets even better if you pick up recursion stuff.

Where you on play or draw with that 2 swamp hand? Def mull it if on the play. Still risky if on draw and I wouldn’t keep it cause you need a forest to cast anything else (another swamp gets you nowhere), and your odds of drawing something castable that isn’t forest is low (Not casting omen if you draw it, prob not casting a Favor T3 with Aphemia and needing opp to play an X/1 - really only 2 two-drop creatures as playable draws other than forest which is little under 1/3 of remaining deck). Some might take the gamble with 3 draws to find the forest by T3 and a decent hand if you get that, but I’d mull.

Aphemia wants more enchantments than you have. I count 6 and 2 have escape value (tho you don’t need both for escape option). A 2/1 flyer for 2 floor is good, but she won’t have a chance to play like a bomb without more enchantments to feed her ability. And yes, 2 favors is too much. The 1st one often makes the deck but diminishing returns on multiples. Unless I’m sideboarding in Bo3 against a deck with a lot of X/1s I don’t want 2.

I would have had lampad in the deck. Better than temple thief, especially in a deck that’s set up to be more grindy with graveyard value. Lampad solid playable (plays defense pretty well, offers reach, converts creatures about to die by chump or removal into some value) where Thief is more filler. I would have run wings too - with removal so light and poor, and lot of your beef being lower toughness, wings help close out games. Would have run Training as well. Cantrips at worst, and at best it could let you trade up or push damage on one of your fat escape creatures and feed Aphemia.

Libation is not very good, but has its moments. Hilarious when opp starts off building a voltron and you cast it on them. Unlike other black removal you can hit a saga or Furious Rise with it. If you’re managing the board early trading off then you can hit a good 4 drop. I think your early game wasn’t there to give it those moments tho. If you can’t get those early plays off the board then you’re only going to take out least relevant creature. I wouldn’t write if off as unplayable but ya it’s not very good. You were in a tough spot with your only other removal limited to X/1s...

Well, that is less for bragging and more to keep track of which rares I have. I draft until I reach a certain amount of rares before opening boosters.

I think you should be satisfied with a 3-3 record for that deck. Timmy and DCG covered most things already. To me it looks like those colors weren't really open. I'm counting 6 cards that I always liked in my decks + the rare Harpy, so 7 total. Not gonna make it a quiz, so these 6 are the 2x Loathsome Chimera, Voracious Typhon, Acolyte of Affliction, Nylea's Forerunner and Blight-Breath Catoblepas. Acolyte is the best of those and strong enough to splash for if you're only in one of it's colors. The others are nice playables in their respective colors, but you want more.

The rest of the deck isn't actively bad, but I wonder if another color could've given you more.

From your sideboard I would've run Setessan Training (Trample, cantrip, potential sacrifice target), Wings of Hubris (evasion at first, unblockable for lethal eventually) and Soul-Guide Lantern (cantrip at worst, very powerful vs graveyard shenanigans).

edit: Grim Physician is also a solid card. Trades with anything 2-toughness and threatens to snipe Chimeras etc when you attack into him.

Thanks guys - tells me I have a LONG way to go to learning Theros drafts.

@TIMH I was on the draw with the two swamp hand. I feel like Aphemia isn't much of a bomb even with more enchantments - the created zombies are just vanilla 2/2s, easily prevented from attacking. The trigger condition isn't trivial either, and has the drawback of making your later escape cards worse. Still a good card because as you mention it's a 2/1 flyer for 2, but doesn't feel like a bomb to me. You consider Lampad good? So far I've barely played it, because it looks so mediocre - its stats are weak, and its activated ability doesn't seem like much except in a sacrifice deck too.



Here's what I drafted in my next draft. None of the red or blue cards I have seem so attractive as to make me play the color instead of the other. Final Flare might not be worth it, I thought I have things to sac to it (Woe Strider's token, last chapter trigger on Tymaret Calls the Dead, maybe even Alirios's token), but the power level on that card doesn't seem that strong even if I had something to sacrifice. 3 black devotion payoffs seems quite good, maybe I should run Grim Physician (this is another thing to sac to Final Flare I suppose). No idea how good Enemy of Enlightenment is, but I do feel like I need some win condition. Overall though, the deck seems pretty mediocre in terms of power level. I got passed a P2P3 Banishing Light, as well as an awfully late Voracious Typhon, but it felt too late to switch by then. Didn't open any powerful bombs either, sadly.

It's possible I'm overrating Catoblepas. Like, it's "almost" a Ravenous Chupacabra right? If I see Catoblepas fairly late, is it correct to say Black is open?

Final Flare is a good card when you're in red. You don't even have to sacrifice a valuable creature - any enchantment is fine. So best case scenario you sac Omen of the Dead or Iroas's Blessing to it.
Now the next question is whether these two cards are splash-worthy or if you'd run them as your actual support color with Impending Doom and Skophos Maze-Warden. Those are both good when you're in red.

Your blue cards are similar - Witness of Tomorrow is Cloudreader Sphinx or Watcher in the Mist. Well, not exactly, it is slightly weaker because the scrying has a cost, but this is actually a common that you "never" see in TBH draft in my experience. It's a big flier that kills and survives most other fliers.
I'm also a big fan of Alirios, Enraptured, which I've seen more often than the Sphinx. So much stats for 3 mana. One with the Stars is mediocre removal. You can run it if you run Islands anyway. It's maybe even better than "destroy" removal for there's more graveyard interaction than with this enchantment.
Towering-Wave Mystic just stinks, is there a reason you have him in your deck? I'd rather run an Eidolon of Philosophy or Grim Physician. Eidolon is pretty great in the late game - obviously. Starlit Mantle and Shoal Kraken are solid playables, too. The 4 mana counter isn't very good, the other one is fine.

Now with all that being said, I'd probably go with your plan of going mainly black splashing the best cards of red and blue instead of going full Dimir. 9 Swamps, 4 of each of the others, wait with the amulet until you know which color is missing.

For the black cards:
Yes, Blight-Breath Catoblepas can be a Ravenous Chupacabra and this time you have a lot of black devotion (only reason to run the 4/3 4-drop over it's red cousin) so that this dream can come true. You're probably right though in that you're overrating him. It's 2 more mana and oftentimes a weaker effect than the green 4/4 that fights. The real stars at common in black are the two removal spells.

I'm not a big fan of the black omen, but it's okay filler. Could say the same for Temple Thief, Scavenging Harpy and Tymaret Calls the Dead (despite it's rarity). Tymaret himself is always good and often a one-man cemetery keeper - your opp will never escape anything or use premium removal on a 2-drop.

Aspect of Lamprey is often a good card, but don't overrate it. 4 mana discard 2 and you need a creature that doesn't die during the application. It can help you make Enemy of Enlightenment relevant, which he often isn't. Don't cast him when opp has 3 or more cards in hand. Your sphinx is a lot better, also your Wings can make anyone fly.

edit: The saga should be better than I gave it credit, but History of Benalia this is not. Just 2 2/2s for 3, which is a good rate but worse than Alirios for example.

Ah. I still would have mulled (more willing to risk if it was in your hand rather than ), but it’s more defensible keeping on the draw with 3 shots at getting a forest on time. If it worked you could play out your 4/1 or green divination to find the 4th land to cast GB gold card that you just added some pursuit cards for her ETB graveyard fetch. I could see a person accepting the risk there. Just got punished for it.

Ya, calling her a bomb is a stretch, but she can be bomby (bombish) in the right build if not answered. She was never going to do that in your build, but in an enchantment heavy build she can create an army of value. I’d call her a B in your average build just on her floor - 2/1 flyer for 2 who maybe makes a zombie, but she can get better than that

Lampad is a pretty good 2 drop. 3 butts block decently this set in the early game. Don’t underestimate her ability to close out the game by sacing your board to get that lethal reach. She’s not a bad top deck late. Sac cost is on the cheaper side, and not hard to find yourself with a mana open to get some value (small but something) when opp tries to use removal on a creature. She doesn’t have to be in a sacrifice deck to offer value. I’d put her in the solid C range, where Thief is more D range.

Agree. I would be reluctant to run Enemy of Enlightenment. Once in a blue moon you’ll find yourself with a 5/5 beater in the air putting in work, but most often you’ll find yourself with an undersized overcosted body that’s causing symmetrical pain on your upkeep. Not unplayable exactly, but I think it’s pretty bad and you never feel good about running it. Sphinx is way better at 5 mana, and wings can make other creatures fill the roll you might be plugging your nose to run EoE for.

Cut Enemy of Enlightenment and went 3-3 again. Mana screwed one more time (although I don't think anyone would disagree with my keep that game), which was especially frustrating because when I finally drew my 3rd land and cast Funeral Rites, I drew two spells and put two lands into the graveyard. Second loss was to a punt - I forgot Tymaret would die since I was sacrificing Catoblepass to Final Flare - though so not complaining. The last loss was partly because I kept my Scavenging Harpies in hand for too long. Opponent had a Rage Hound to escape, but I'd smartly thought opponent would not be bringing back Rage Hound since I had a 2/2 out, plus opponent had the more dangerous Pharika's Spawn on the board. Then opponent brought back Rage Hound twice while the Pharika's Spawn stayed on the board, and I got out-tempoed. Being able to make a land drop (aka mana flood) all the way till the end of the game around turn 9 or so didn't help, especially since I lost with yet another land in hand.

Deck indeed felt fairly mediocre in terms of power level. Woe Strider was great, but Tymaret Calls the Dead was not. It's indeed not History of Benalia, it's not a free play on turn 3 and the last chapter is not nearly as strong, plus the zombies don't have vigilance. The other cards more or less did what they were supposed to do. Gray Merchant was quite good draining for 4+, Catoblepass did a fair Chupacabra impression as well.

Yet to reach 5+ wins, but haven't been getting 2 or fewer wins either, guess I'm solidly average.

I've found Aspect to be a rather good card in limited TBD but to be fair I've found so far for myself that Rakdos is the strongest way to go. I've drafted ranked four times so far with good records and will be cashing in my token sometime this weekend.
On curve Aspect is usually taking their last two or close to last two cards and that can be very powerful without even considering the lifegain you just put on a decent creature. Aspect+decent creature+Sentinal's Eyes most of the time makes your winner.