+1 Skyblinder Staff

Makes our flyers nearly unblockable.

+1 Skyblinder Staff

As much as I want to vote for the Razortip Whip for the lulz at one more source of poking.

+1 Verdant Haven

we have 5 colors and really not much fixing yet. Our flyers don't care overly much about being blocked.

+1 Skyblinder Staff .... Not much of note in this pack has been left for us....

+1 Razortip Whip

We should be able to stall the board and the consistant damage should help.

+1 Knight of Obligation . Vigilance on a Pillarfield Ox is pretty good in this format.

The fuck are you all trying to build? We're making a real deck right now, not the kind of deck that wants crap like Razortip Whip and Skyblinder Staff .

Verdant Haven is also a realistic pick, but the knight is just better and all the mana fixing comes in the DGM pack.

Knight of Obligation has already been taken...

I thought about Razortip Whip . It's tempting. But our beef isn't terribly beefy. We could use the +1/0 pump. Besides, getting an angel through for 4 or 5 damage on one swing is equal to several turns with the whip.

@yousquiddinme LOL Your frustration is understandable, but you're reading the list of cards that have already been picked from this pack. Scroll down a bit.

+1 Verdant Haven

I like it more then the other options and the small life gain and mana fix/ramp is a nice addition on top of fueling up our Ethereal Armor

Oh, just realized.-1 Knight of Obligation +1 Armored Transport .

Still the only real card in the pack.

+1 Verdant Haven

+1 Skyblinder Staff

+1 Razorwhip Tip

+1 Skyblinder Staff

Armored Transport seems at odds with the deck's game plan so far. Hellraiser Goblin is the same, it would probably do us more harm than good. Verdant Haven is plausible, but I'm not sure if we would want to go green.

We have Firemane Avenger and Lobber Crew on red, and Drudge Beetle and Rites of Reaping on green. I guess we could do a two color splash and run Verdant Haven and whatever other fixing we might want, but that would be tricky. We are probably better off choosing a splash and making it worthwhile, giving us a stronger start with red.

This would leave Skyblinder Staff as the reasonable pick here, especially when you consider that in a slower, grindier format, an unblockable Angelic Skirmisher or such goes a long way.

Skyblinder Staff , red is our superior splash choice but the haste dude is not what we want.

+1 Razortip Whip

The whole idea of our deck is to grind.

+1 Armored Transport

It never hurts to have an extra guy. He can freely attack with Firemane Avenger to help trigger battalion. Nothing else seems likely to make it into our deck. Verdant Haven is probably a close second. But all Skyblinder Staff would do is give our creatures +1/+0 in most cases.

+1 Skyblinder Staff .

Think about it like this: would we EVER mainboard Armored Transport ? He's strictly worse than Gutter Skulk in this deck, his ability is too situational, and he actually CAN hurt us by being a completely dead draw when we're on the defensive (most of the time). He'd just be stuffed in the sideboard. At least Skyblinder Staff is a good sideboard card, as opposed to a bad one, and possibly even mainboard if we have the space. We already have 6 flying creatures, and our opponents will definitely have their own fliers.

+1 Verdant Haven

Staff is very over costed for its marginal effect and it's entirely dependent on our opponents having lots of flyers - and not only that, but lots of flyers who could profitably block ours anyhow. There would certainly be a time or two it would get us a game, but there will be far more times when it would be a draw that does nothing for us.

Also, I really don't understand how last pack, there was a mass of votes for Contaminated Ground because it's an enchantment, but this pack has an enchantment that's plausibly maindeckable depending on our colors and it's a run for the artifact instead?

+1 Razortip Whip . Poor man's Staff of Nin , and we're running so much control that it'll be helpful anytime we draw it. While the opponents creatures are tapped down or unable to attack, a nice little ping on top of that sounds nice.

@MagnorCriol- I think the reason most people got all hot and bothered by Contaminated Ground is the control aspect of the card, as well as it being black. We're playing black with 100% certainty. The same can't be said for green. It seems like it's coming down to whether or not we splash green or red, and with what we've been picking, it's becoming more clear we're going red. If we even had any green possibility, I'd say go for Verdant Haven for the fixing, but I don't see our deck going that way.

Darkness1835 - fair point. I know green is less likely than red right now, but Haven still seems the better pick; we don't know what we're going to see in the Maze pack. I mean, red wasn't even really on the table for us until the Gatecrash pack, so the same thing could happen again and we get a bunch of good green; Haven feels like its keeping our options more open.

The "control aspect" side of things seems silly to me; our deck doesn't feel super controlly right now, and though KrazyCaley might shine brightest in a control build, but people are focusing too much on that. He does quite well with other strategies as well and forcing mediocre to poor cards because "it's a control card for Caley" will only result in a poor deck being handed to him.

@MagnorCriol- From what I see we've got lots of blockers, fliers, and various enchants that reduce the damage coming at us or make the creature unable to attack. That seems more control than not, although we do still have a pack to sift through. You're right, it is possible we go green due to what is in the next pack, but you can really imagine not mainboarding Firemane Avenger ?

How do you have RTR cards on pack 2 0.o

When drafting dmz its DMZ -> GTC -> RTR 0.o

+1 Skyblinder Staff

Tought choice though.

I'd just like to remind everyone that we currently have no solid removal. If someone lands that Skarrg Goliath we passed, what could we possibly do besides One Thousand Lashes ? Detain it for a turn? Put two Stab Wound s on it? It's still bigger than anything we have.

My point is that we do not have a very good control game right now, we only have stall. Basically, our late game sucks. We shouldn't be durdling with mana fixing enchantments with a color that we might not even run, we should try to give ourselves whatever edge we can. We need to prioritize on removal and bombs; if neither is present, evasion. Skyblinder Staff is evasion of sorts considering we have plenty of fliers. I'm not saying it's a good card, I'm saying it's better than the rest.

Darkness1835 - Haha, not at all. Honestly, the way DGM is, having a base two-color (in our case WB) deck that splashes lightly for two others (R and G) is quite easily attainable and not dangerous. I would rather be in just three, but it's not a terrible place to be in, depending on the power of the cards you're splashing for. Also - BR and RW are both very aggressive decks. I don't really see a WBR deck lending itself to the best control deck. =p

It's also less that I want to splash green instead of red, and more of a "if it happens" sort of situation. It's keeping our options more open, in that if we open up some awesome green cards (c'mon, Putrefy ) we have this useful fixer available to us,

I don't think just having blockers, fliers, and stalling enchantments makes us control. That feels to me more like tempo-aggro, described that way. Control strategies typically have a specific wincon, and the deck denies its opponent resources until it has command of the field, while it draws into its wincon. Right now our deck feels more like a canny aggro deck, with controllish elements that we'll use to make them stumble while we race them; we're not as likely to be sitting back and waiting for the moment to swing with our haymaker (because we really don't have one yet).

tl;dr Control is often a waiting game, and our deck doesn't feel like it wants a waiting game right now.

+1 Skyblinder Staff

Giving our creature's an additional +1/+0 and a bit of pseudo-evasion will be pretty good. Also, it makes our flyers virtually unblockable (unless our opponents are playing creatures with reach).

+1 Verdant Haven

If we eventually go green, it's a nice ramp and a nice fix too. I'm not too fond of the other cards.

+1 Hellraiser Goblin

C'mon guys! Where's your sense of adventure?!

+1 Verdant Haven

there isn't much in this pack left. but mana fixing is always nice

+1 Verdant Haven

Best card left and the others aren't really playable.

If you guys can convince me that splashing two colors for a 4-ish color deck isn't a bad idea in this format, I'm willing to change my vote to Verdant Haven . It'd be pretty amazing to run the best cards in those four colors (the idea of Putrefy and Warleader's Helix in the same deck has got me salivating), so if you all think we can do it, I say we would do well to keep our options open. Plus we would get to use that Golgari Guildgate

+1 Verdant Haven

I see the whole point about Skyblinder's staff, but it doesn't really ever do what you WANT it to do. It pretty much gives +1/+0. We can make a flyer totally unblockable, but if they have a flyer, we might want to leave our flyer back as defense. Putting it on Angelic Skirmisher would be awesome, but we shouldn't draft JUST because of that.

I want to take the haven because it provides more options as time goes on, and for us, we only have two colors.

-1 Skyblinder Staff

+1 Verdant Haven

MagnorCriol's jedi mind tricks are having the desired effect.

I very much agree with his description of the deck. We stall in the early game, but we're also set up to beat face before something truly nasty hits the table. We can't handle a situation where a true bomb hits the table. Skarrg Goliath , Leyline Phantom , and Ruination Wurm , will cost us a creature per turn before we dig up our best answer for them. Heck, even Sapphire Drake , Spawn of Rix Maadi , and Cobblebrute present a problem. And those are just the ones that we've seen. Our long game is weak. We are a midrange deck. We stall and ping until we get two of our angels out. Then we strike.

I was thinking the equipment helps us to make that strike happen. We do not have time to durdle around getting chump-blocked by imps, griffins, and drakes. However, it's not a big effect. It should help, but it's not a big help. The card may not even make the 40.

Meanwhile having enough fixing to splash for a true bomb is a big effect. It may not happen. We may not see a green card like Putrefy , Unflinching Courage , or Scab-Clan Giant , but if we do, at least we have a chance at it.

Passing on a utility card for the chance at something better in the last pack is a bit risky. But we don't loose much if it doesn't work out.

SupremeAlliesCommander: Yes....search your feelings. You know it to be true. :handwave:

Thank you. You put that far more clearly and succinctly than I could. We're a midrange who wants to survive early aggro but doesn't want to have to face down late-game bombs.

-1 Armored Transport
+1 Verdant Haven

I still think Armored Transport is the best pick. But it's pretty far behind in votes and I would much rather have Verdant Haven than Skyblinder Staff .

-1 Skyblinder Staff
+1 Verdant Haven

Alright, this pick makes sense to me now. Even if we don't really splash green it's not a big loss of a pick, but if we do, this card can help us quite a bit.

+1 Verdant Haven

@Arachnarchist: Thank you for summing up my argument. I think Armored Transport is by far the best pick here, but Verdant Haven is better than Skyblinder Staff .

-1 Skyblinder Staff +1 Verdant Haven

Do you really think we have enough Boros cards to make the Armored Transport work?

-1 Skyblinder Staff

+1 Verdant Haven

I'm convinced.

Armored Transport won't be a fantastic card in our deck, but with Firemane Avenger and Angelic Skirmisher , a creature that can attack freely each turn can be pretty useful. If you add on to that the fact that it's impossible for us to get color-screwed, it's at least playable. We're not even sure we can use Verdant Haven . And Skyblinder Staff is situational at best.

+1 Skyblinder Staff

What on earth is wrong with you people? Make our big fliers unblockable? Hell yeah. Verdant haven is bad because we're not playing green main, which you NEED to do to make that card whirthwhile. Armored transport is less bad but we don't wanna swing on the ground.

Please tell me this, kids. If we splash green, we're playing verdant haven for what reason? For fixing? If we can play it we already have the colour we need. Not to mention we have absolutely no reason to want to splash green at this point. At all.

For the love of all that's holy stop this madness.

I mainly switched my vote because it's not implausible that we get a strong green related bomb in DGM, and if we do we'll be kicking ourselves for not getting the Ramp.

I mean, you are voting for Skyblinder Staff . It's not exactly the most thrilling card ever. I'd rather take the risk of taking the Ramp which we will either not need it, which won't be a huge loss, or we'll hit some strong green and we'll be grateful we took it.

Moving along.

Tell me Verdant Haven didn't win :/ It's a great card but unless we're playing 4 colors it's a completely wasted pick. We're playing red. The best card in our deck is red and I can't honestly think of anything in DGM that would sway us to Junk colors instead of RWB. Playing 4 colors is ridiculous unless we pull like 5 guildgates out of DGM.