• Maze Abomination .
  

I am finally comfortable taking this card although I am slightly tempted by Toil / Trouble and Maw of the Obzedat

+1 Maze Abomination

This card will be a pain to deal with for others, and hopefully with the current stall drafted, we shouldn't have a problem getting this on the board.

For me, this comes down to Steeple Roc or yet another Maze Abomination

I figure the first thing the Abomination will do is block our opponent's Abomination and they'll cancel each other out.

Leaning toward the Roc.

The Steeple Roc will not trade with an abomination though.

Steeple Roc

We have 2 multicolor creatures, and they are both out of color.

Really? A Boros Guildgate ? Let's make things as complicated as possible eh?

Let me think about this one, there are a few good picks here for us.

I'm still deciding on this one... I've been in the BWR or BWrg camp, and a Boros Guildgate would be help either of those routes. One the other hand, Maze Abomination is a 4/5 with deathtouch, regardless of whether we have other multicolored creatures.

The Steeple Roc seems pretty vulnerable to me.

Maw of the Obzedat is a pretty awesome creature as well. We should not discount it. I am still unsure as to what I am voting for here.

+1 Gruul Cluestone

Keeps our ability to play red and greenopen, and we need the mana fixing

+1 Steeple Roc

First strike + flying + in color. It's either that or the Maze Abomination but given the choice I'll take flying over deathtouch. If we can stick our Unflinching Courage on it we're in really good shape.

+1 Maze Abomination

Not looking for the multi-color creature effect to come into play, but do like it's 4/5 deathtouch threat. The Steeple Roc is really good too, but we have good flyer representation and I think we need something that will stop almost anything on the ground... and likely survive.

+1 Maw of the Obzedat

It is a sweet card and we have enough creatures to fuel it. I think we should be leaning towars GWB, because it looks like that gives us the best of our cards.

+1 Maze Abomination

Maybe we can just leave the picking of colors to the deckbuilding part, idk. We'll take the best G or R cards we can find after they wheel and see what the smartest choice is after we have all the cards.

+1 Maw of the Obzedat

One of the bombiest creatures in DGM.

+1 Maw of the Obzedat

Really hard pack to choose from. Right now this as first glance, but i'd like to see other people's reasoning behind their picks.

+1 Maw of the Obzedat

+1 Maw of the Obzedat

It makes combat math a lot harder for our opponents and it's often useful to have a sac outlet. Also it lets us do something with irrelevant creatures.

+1 Maw of the Obzedat late game bomb

+1 Maw of the Obzedat Great creature, makes blocking really difficult for opponents.

+1 Maze Abomination

Some of you are focusing too much on its second ability. It's a 4/5 deathtouch beater for 6 mana; that's actually just fine, and it's a very solid threat on his own. It takes a lot for them to get rid of him - 5 toughness dodges most removal, and generally demands double-blocking or more, at which point we get super value for that trade. He's also a fantastic blocker. Plus, he randomly has the upside of giving one or two of our other guys deathtouch, which could be cool.

The Roc is also a good card, and fits very well with the deck, but it's so vulnerable to removal; I think I'd like the ground pounder here since he does a lot of good work for us.

+1 Maze Abomination

It's really hard to kill with damage and can trade with anything.

I was going to say Boros Mastiff, but I forgot the deck we're making is in no way centered around getting any form of battalion. So yes, Maze Abomination for sure here, but these packs are really hurting now...

Our creatures are flyers. They already make blocking difficult.

But I do appreciate the combat math problem. I would figure that Maw of the Obzedat works best with a bunch of low cost creatures or tokens. Most of our creatures are 4-drops. That doesn't seem like a viable synergy. That's just my gut reaction, though. I'll have to give this some thought.

MagnorCriol is also working his mind tricks on me for the second time.

+1 Maze Abomination

This is my choice right now anyway. That Boros gate is calling me, but it has a lot of potential to be a completely dead pick.

-1 Maw of the Obzedat + Maze Abomination

+1 Maze Abomination

i would rather have a bigger more expensive creature that will almost always trade, rather than a sac outlet we dont need

If we're sure that the opponent is lacking removal, he's not too bad to stick our Unflinching Courage on either

+1 Maze Abomination

I really want the gate, but I don't see it winning with how many people seem set on dumping our red. I'd rather pick the abomination over the Maw, easily.

Similar to the thinking of SupremeAlliesCommander, I think the maw works with larger numbers of cheap creatures. We have a lot of high profile creatures and not necessarily a large usable number. To make use of the maw, we'd probably end up sacrificing high-cost creatures.

+1 Steeple Roc

Argh! This pack sucks for exactly the opposite of the reason the last pick sucked!

On the one hand, we're going to have a few detain dudes to drop, who will land, detain something, hopefully fat butt our way to victory. But if we're getting beat on by something big, dumping one of those into the Maw of the Obzedat would give us a potential edge and get more value out of a guy whose purpose (the detain effect) has been spent.

On the other hand, Maze Abomination is somewhat bomby and is a big ol' fella with deathtouch. Hard to say no to that.

On a third hand that I've magically conjured, Boros Guildgate could definitely help us enact this magical happy christmas land vision I have of running WBrg and knocking some serious heads.

And on a fourth hand I've stolen from a Rakdos victim, it's entirely possible we see another guildgate that fixes us for our colors. There are numerous possibilities - Boros, Rakdos, Golgari, Gruul, Selesnya. Any of these five gates could potentially work for us. And I wouldn't turn down Orzhov again, either. We'll see more gates, so I'm not torn if we pass up this one. Which, of course, puts me back at the first two hands, and I'm still not sure which one we want more.

@IAmKingTony - Very good point. Deathtouch and trample make for a terrifyingly effective attacker.

@SupremeAlliesCommander - Your reasoning is exactly why I don't want Maw here. His ability is a strong one, but you need to be able to field more creatures - both to fuel him, and for him to affect. We're not looking like we're going to be fielding that many creatures at a time at the moment, at least not regularly.

Plus, that art is hella creepy. Gives me the goosebumps, man.

(Also, thanks. It's good to know I'm making sense - I know what I'm saying but I always worry that I don't communicate that well.)

+1 Toil / Trouble

I'm surprised almost nobody considers this a possibility. It's actually good in our deck even if we just cast its black side. I'm still supporting red splash over the green one, though this path suffered greatly by letting Punish the Enemy go in the last pack. I'm perfectly fine with Maze Abomination if this doesn't find support though.

+1 Maze Abomination

We seriously get a THIRD Maze Abomination passed our way?!? I definitely think the MTG Draft Gods are trying to hint something here... Oh, wait, people want to complain that we're (in some sense) losing the Firemane Avenger as our multi-colored beneficiary of Maze Abomination s ability.... Wonder if those people read the first line of the Abominations text that says IT has deathtouch? Wonder if those same people looked at the Abominations fat ass too?

+1 Maze Abomination

Safest pick. The Roc has great upside, but might die to something as simple as a Mugging . Maze Abomination has lasting power.

In completely unrelated news, I still think we will want to run 18 lands. This deck needs to make land drops.

+1 Maze Abomination . Quick return to nudge the hivemind towards sense.

+1 Maw of the Obzedat

I think we're okay with the Maze Abomination , but the maw is amazing. Every unprofitable block becomes a boon for the whole team.

A boon? Sure, until end of turn. And when are we ever going to block unprofitably, with all our big butts? The answer to that is: only when a +1/+1 won't matter.

+1 Boros Mastiff

Click on the deck that has been put together... assess the quality of early drops... find them severly lacking realize we badly badly badly need some 2 drops or this thing is just going to get blown to tiny kibbles and bits by anything with a decent curve and then come back and change your votes to the mastiff.

Should focus on rounding out our 2 drops for the rest of this draft imo if you want to have a chance. Don't need anything else mid game is covered. Early game is non existent.

@Goody

Umm.. no. What I mean is, when we sac one guy all our blockers grow and we kill a lot of their guys. Which makes it very hard for them to attack us. Also, we can sac defenders to boost up a few fliers and swing in for lethal. Maw of the Obzedat is a win condition at best and a tactical nightmare for our opponant at worst.

@thebeardedshuffler: That's true and terrifically effective when we have more than one or two guys on the field. We need creatures to throw into the maw, and creatures left over to benefit from it. We're not looking at having a bunch of creatures on the field, by the looks of our deck right now. Goody's point is that most of our guys are pretty solid bodies on their own, and if our guys are about to lose combat, it's probably more than just by +1/+1.

If we had ended up into a lower-curved WBR deck, or a nice heavy-populate Selesnya deck, the Maw would have been a slam pick - he's very strong for all the reasons you mentioned. Plus, he's great at shutting down your opponents "removal with benefits" spells (like Punishing Fire , Blast of Genius or Trostani's Judgment , just to name a few). But I feel he doesn't bring as much to the table in our deck as some of the other options here. I'd take the Mastiff before I took the Maw for our current deck, for that matter.

+1 Maze Abomination

I finally decided. We've passed too many of these - if nothing else, we prevent a neighbor from gaining the ability to drop two of these guys, or consistently pull one. We need a bigger beastie to beat. And if we get to drop him with Firemane? All the better.

I agree with Absinthman. Toil / Trouble definitely seems like the best option here, just for toil. I ran it in prerelease in a deck without red, and the easier-to-cast Sign in Blood is really good. Card advantage is huge in draft formats.

Sure but the mastiff doesn't do anything for our plan either. A bear doesn't really fit the sustainability plan and we're not aggro. I know we don't wanna wait TOO long to be casting stuff, but I think we can manage without cards we'd just be trading at best on. Outside of playing the mastiff early, it does pretty much nothing for us.

• 1 Maze Abomination

+1 Maze Abomination

+1 Maze Abomination .

This guy. He's baller. nobody can fight him and win. He eats all but the biggest bombs. He gives our stuff deathrouch. hes amazing.

+1 Maze Abomination

Big ol' booty... with deathtouch! What's not to like?

In all honesty I just hope we luck into usable gold creatures for a couple picks here. An Armored Wolf-Rider seems like something to keep our peepers peeled for.

+1 Maw of the Obzedat

So many combat tricks to be had.

+1 Maze Abomination

+1 Maze Abomination for sure.

For all the reasons listed above. We should draft some cluestones, if only as mana acceleration. Our curve isn't the best and could use some help from rocks

+1 Steeple Roc gets my vote

Just for the record, Toil / Trouble is easily the best pick here, but we're clearly not going to end up with it. So I voted for the obzedat.

Let's look at the candidates.

Maze Abomination -I think he's pretty much just a 4/5 for 6. Lack of multicolored makes that ability useless, and he's big enough that I think his own deathtouch will be redundant.

Steeple Roc - I just don't like his cost. If he were 4, I might be okay with it. Maybe.

Boros Mastiff - I think DeckBuilder345(#38) makes a good point. I would really like to see us get a 2 drop. Being our main color only, we're likely to be able to play him T2. If our opponent swings at us, we can trade blows, and maybe use his lifelink after all. I'd actually be fairly happy laying him down as an early defensive threat.

Boros Guildgate - We might gamble on 4 colors(but still need more gates), or we would have the option of swapping red for green as a sideboard option just in case we really wanna run that RW angel that badly.

Maw of the Obzedat - I'm surprised at the support this is getting. I can't see using his ability, since we lack tokens/little guys. Seems like he would just be a vanilla 3/3 for 5.

Toil / Trouble - I have found Sign in Blood to be a very reliable card. I run 4 in all my monoblack decks(including competitive). I could see running it just for the Toil. 1B makes it work for us.

For me it's between Toil / Trouble and (since we're lacking in 1-2 drops) Boros Mastiff .

4 colours is not a consideration, it never leads to a winning deck, unless you have truly insane cards.

And we do have one multicoloured creature, the Firemane Avenger . Giving her deathtouch AND enabling her battalion would spell game over for the opponent.

Personally, I think deathtouch is only relevant on small creatures, first strikers, and pingers, if you can give it to them. Okay, also with Lure effects.

It would be nice to somehow get that Firemane Avenger , though. The Boros Guildgate might wheel for us. We get another red fixer, and we could splash for just that one red creature.

And a Firemane Avenger with battalion is a pinger. With lightning helix. And if you have the avenger and the Maze Abomination , all you need is one other creature and you can attack, kill their best creature, gain 3 life and probably hit for 7 damage.

And there's still no reason we can't play the avenger. We just don't play green, and make a better deck!

He is suggesting the Firemane Avenger would be a pinger. If we get her on the table at the same time as Abomination. If we get battalion going. If our opponent has creatures strong enough to survive normal combat damage. It does work out in our favor that way.

Oops

Nath'd

Also a good reason for big creatures to have deathtouch is that if they block with multiple creatures you will pretty much kill all of them, not just the one you want dead most.

+1 Toil / Trouble

My other choice was the Boros Mastiff . We dont need a 5/6 cmc creature. We have plent of 4+ cmc creatures. We need card draw or 2 drops.

-1 Maw of the Obzedat

+1 Toil / Trouble

Who knows maybe enough people will see the light...

To support Toil / Trouble , I see it as a potential mana fixing. It allows us to draw further into our deck so that we might potentially hit our splash land. It can also serve as a finisher once our opponent has suffered enough from stab wounds and lashes.

@vic - big creatures with deathtouch are actually some of the strongest, for exactly the reasons thebeardedshuffler mentioned; something with 5 toughness demands multiple blockers to kill, and deathtouch ensures that each and every one of them dies, while its buttalso makes it resistant to burn. A deathtouching fatty is a nightmare for the opponent to deal with.

That said, getting the Avenger's helix off with deathtouch is a complete pipe dream. There's so many "ifs" that have to happen first, it's not worth considering. It's a delightful situation if it ever does happen but it shouldn't be on the list of thought about why to take Abomination.

Also, thebeardedshuffler - a number of pros did quite well with average decks that were two colors and splashing lightly for two others at the recent PT. Yes, they're pros and so they play on another level generally, but the point is CCcc isn't an inherent death knell, IF we did it.

@thebeardedshuffler: That's true and it makes Maze Abomination and Unflinching Courage a game winning combo.

I don't really follow how the pros do their drafts, it's just common sense. Maths, even. I'll expand using an example without taking gates into consideration.

Let's say we have two primary colours and 17 land. We'd go with a 9/8 split, roughly.

Let's say, then, we splash for a third colour. Well we'd need a minimum of 3 sources, so we go 7/7/3. That's fine. The odds of drawing two splash colour lands early are low, but we ought to draw one by about turn 5/6, and have a good chance of opening both main colours.

We want to add a second splash? Well then We're going 5/6/3/3. Let's think about this. You are now more likely to draw into a splash coloured land than one of your main colours, and as likely as the other. You're essentially playing "three colour" in a sense, except that your third colour is divided into two colours.

Gates can mitigate going for this kind of a splash. In our case, we'd go like this:

1 OZ GG

5 plains

5 swamp

1 Gol GG

2 forest

3 mountain

Barring no more guildgates, that is our mana base if we try and go for two splash colours. As you can see, the gates do not mitigate colour problems by a very large percentage. If we have 4-5 on colour gates, all of them in at least one primary colour, it would be at least somewhat reliable, but we'd be turns behind on mana quite often. Also to take that many gates would require us to take considerably fewer mainboard cards, which is hard when we have 4 colours of interest because rarely will a pack have nothing we could want.

Now keyrunes are behind us so I won't explain why they aren't as bad, but cluestones are terrible fixing, as I've mentioned before. First of all, you need to get to three mana to play them. If you have the cluestone in your hand as the only source of a main colour at the start of the game, you're taking a huge risk, and each slot in your deck that is a cluestone, that could've been a creature or spell that would help develop your board.

Lastly, I've seen some people mention we have a good green card to help enable multicolours, Verdant Haven . I've explained this before but once again: this is only a useful card if green is your main colour. If you have a card in your splash colour that helps you get your splash colour, then by the time you can cast it it's already irrelevant. It's like a solar powered flashlight. By the time you can use it, you don't need it.

@Arachnarchist

Explain please, how? All it gives you is a 6/7 trample deathtouch lifelink. Yeah, it's a powerhouse, butt hey can still muster 7 power to kill it. At great cost, but they have to at that point. Or use a removal spell, or enchantment destruction.

It's very powerful yes, but it's still susceptible to a single spell removing it. Heck one deathtouch creature on their side of the field is all they'd need, and we already passed 2 Maze Abomination s.

At least with the Firemane Avenger there are two bodies involved. Combined they're extremely horrible, as it's targetted removal each turn, rather than just one big creature that lets the enemy decide what will die.

+1 Toil / Trouble , since it has more support than the Mastiff(my other choice).

I overlooked the pinger factor on Firemane Avenger . That would be nice indeed. I figure that Gruul Cluestone will wheel, for one thing. So we could realistically find ourselves in a situation where we run 4 colors, and splash in only Putrefy and the Firemane Avenger , with Pit Fight , Unflinching Courage and Lobber Crew as additional possibilities. I don't think that's far-fetched at all. But we still need to look for Gates.

Perhaps you can expand on why you think 4 colours would be viable? Please suggest the manabase you'd use in our 4 colour deck.

+1 Maze Abomination

We will rarely will get battalion going. Even more rare will be us getting battalion active with both avenger and abomination on the field. With that said I still think we need the abomination this pack. we need more critters and two drops are not important in this format, so Boros Mastiff is out. the bird costs too much for one toughness.

Maw of the Obzedat is at it's strongest with a bunch of tokens and cheap guys, sure, but he can still tip combat in our favor with as little as two other creatures out. I could be swayed to pick him. but in the end a dude that can swing for 4 every turn and kill anything that blocks him is huge and will pull more work for us in this deck.

And to be clear, I would only consider a cluestone if it gives us both of our lesser colors in the scenario I described. I think that could be a good use for it.

+1 Toil / Trouble

I would vote for Boros Guildgate first. But no one likes it.

4 colours is not going to happen. I firmly believe that my reach into a 4th color last week was the reason I went 4-1 at FNM instead of 5-0.

I mean, I had to play those Madcap Skills eh? [DGR-Draft] Bant-r Hexproof

thebeardedshuffler if your question about mana base is for me, remember I was saying if we get more fixing. If we only run Putrefy and Avenger, I think could happen.

Don't plan on what you might open, plan to make the best use of what we have already opened. That kind of thinking is the reason we're distracted with green cards at all, when we should've focused on the red.

Actually I would argue that we should have focused on green back when we saw the Skarrg Goliath , but that's another story.

Anyhow, I wasn't "planning". Just noticing a possibility that may present itself.

We could not, at this point, get enough fixing to make 4 colours better than 3. You don't have any real idea what we'd need to make it work either, just a vain hope that it might happen.

I disagree about the goliath, but that's immaterial. What is matters, not what might have been. Or, what might be. The risks of going 4 colour are huge, the potential value does not outweigh the risk. The odds of getting enough to fix for 4 colours, and have enough in those colours to make the effort worthwhile, are miniscule.

thebeardedshuffler says...

"Sure but the mastiff doesn't do anything for our plan either. A bear doesn't really fit the sustainability plan and we're not aggro. I know we don't wanna wait TOO long to be casting stuff, but I think we can manage without cards we'd just be trading at best on. Outside of playing the mastiff early, it does pretty much nothing for us."

Let us suppose that we never use his special ability - he still is the best pick out of the pack because we have NOTHING to drop early. NOTHING. We need bears to allow us to cast all our other mid game / late game stuff. So yes he fits nicely into the plan we have. Look at our deck there is so very little we are going to be able to do before turn 3 or 4 it is ridiculous. Any aggressive deck with absolutely hose us.

Now on to the ability. How you can say life link doesn't give sustainability is beyond me. It is likely we are going to be winning this thing at some point by attacking. When he attacks he may enable us to get some critical extra life at the right moment to win us the game. Makes races very hard for the opponent.

There hasn't really been the cards required in the packs that we've seen to build a scary aggressive deck.

I went through and looked at them all and made a list and there's not a lot to be afraid of before turn 3-4.

thebeardedshuffler, I get the sense that you're talking to me like I'm an idiot. I suppose it doesn't matter, being as you're just a stranger online(to me), but I wonder if anybody else may feel that way when you post things. Just something to keep in mind.

vic - I'm getting "brusque" from him, not "condescending", but I also tend to try to assume the best since text removes all tone from a statement.

@vic

I'm sorry if that's how I'm coming across. I'm not talking to you like you're an idiot. I've noticed that I often ask people a specific question and get unspecific answers, and that leads me to ask ever more directly. It kind of snowballs to the point where I am marginally less polite and direct to the point that it seems rude.

I don't want to seem rude or make anyone feel I'm attacking them. I just am used to a certain debate style, is all. If you have a statement or an opinion, I like for people to be able to explain their logic, and it frustrates me when people respond with what seems like an answer but doesn't contain that background reasoning for me to further the debate.

I realise that some of my responses in these threads have been the longest, because I take the time to explain my reasoning. I kind of expect everyone to do that, but I am currently thinking people just look at it and assume I'm trying to Browbeat everyone into agreeing with me. I will have to try and hold back in future and only engage with others who respond in kind, so that people don't vote against something just because of their opinions of me.

So again, I apologise for how I may have come across to you, it was not intentional or meant to offend. Hugs and kisses?

thebeardedshuffler- All's cool man. I respect the debate process. I think there was a misunderstanding on that 4-color thing. I was just speculating, thinking out loud, so to speak. Wasn't taking a hard stance. But if I ever do, I'll try to be very clear about it. Thanks. No hugs and kisses. My cat would get jealous.