Lol, Courage wheeled. I guess there aren't a lot of Selesnya drafters who are taking auras. Should we nab another since we are turning into a full on WBG?

+1 Unflinching Courage

auras.dec here we come?

Holy crap, really?

+1 Unflinching Courage

I don't know if we'll run 3 of them, but I don't really want anything else here that badly, and if nothing else it's a good hate draft.

But, you know...we could go for the power aura deck. Ethereal Armor becomes very strong. Figure something might get 2 for 1ed, but something else won't, and that other one will be a real problem for our opponent.

+1 Unflinching Courage

...did that seriously wheel?

...and who picked Unflinching Courage over Gaze of Granite ?

+1 Unflinching Courage

Voltron deck anyone?

This one kinda picks itself...

Although I am a fan of the Cluestone. I know this community doesn't seem to like them, but they are great ramp/fixing in a slower format. Late game when you don't need the mana anymore they replace themselves, which can be a huge bonus.

+1 Unflinching Courage btw

lol I wouldn't mind the cluestone either

...if that beautiful Armadillo Cloak wasn't staring at us.

+1 Unflinching Courage

Hahahahahahahaha oh man. Auras galore. Let's not hope there is a crap ton of removal in these decks...

Whaaaaat.

+1 Saruli Gatekeepers , because dudes. And as much as I love Armaflinching Cloakage, I don't think we need three. Though, the thought of chaining them back-to-back is pretty funny.

Though picking up the third Courage it sure to irritate Elaine, which will be funny in its own right.

(Seriously, 7 people looked at this pack and decided to pass on this amazing aura? Seven other people at this table aren't playing GW?)

If someone didn't draft a Golgari Cluestone over the Armadillo Cloak I'd almost hope for the Gaze of Granite in the next pack.

Seriously, Golgari Cluestone over Armadillo Cloak .

@Supersun - the only situations I can come up with for that are that they are in, say, GUB or BRG - some wedge or shard without white, and it's too late for them to pick up a white splash, no matter how good. But still. Whaaaaat. If nothing else it's a better card to eliminate from your opponents' arsenals.

You would think, if GUB or BRG, they would have gone for the Flesh / Blood though...

+1 Saruli Gatekeepers

We need dudes. A 2/4 that might have 7 life attached is fantastic. We will not run 3 of that aura.

Auras as a whole are a gamble. They can make bad creatures into powerhouses, but they take an extra card slot to do so. A lot of people aren't willing to take that gamble.

Trust me, 2 Unflinching Courage is enough. We'll get it every game!

+1 Saruli Gatekeepers

Although I won't mind a 3rd Courage, at least it will stop it going elsewhere.

Crypt Incursion is pretty nice too.

I think people are assuming that since it's not Armadillo Cloak having more then one is a waste.

Just remember that we aren't exactly running a constructed voltron deck where we stack a ton of auras on top of a hexproof monster. Our monsters are vulnerable to removal, and having 2 different monsters, each with Unflinching Courage will put nearly any drafted deck into a terrible position.

Honestly, with the way our deck is set up it's almost better to spread the auras out as much as possible and if we draw it Ethereal Armor will be VERY hard to deal with that way unless they have a board wipe (coughcoughGaze of Granite coughcough)

+1 Unflinching Courage really underestimated

+1 Saruli Gatekeepers

We need guys. A 2/4 for 4 isn't great but it's playable. And with the perfect trifecta of gates (One for each of our guilds) it is possible that we might be able to turn on it's ability. 7 life can buy us a turn for our Stab Wound s and One Thousand Lashes to do work, or get in another attack if possible.

As far as Unflinching Courage goes, it's a really good aura, but three is a little excessive. If you get 2 for 1 ed once it's not a big deal. Twice is recoverable. But thrice is backbreaking. Two of these pretty much guarantee we'll see at least one. Not to mention, we need guys to put our first two onto. Yes we do have some creatures, but we need more. An unflinching courage on the Saruli Gatekeepers turns it into a 4/6 lifelinking trampler. At 6 toughness you dodge pretty much all removal that doesn't specifically say :"destroy."

+1 Saruli Gatekeepers

We currently have about 9 good non-creature spells. Just think about this for a minute. Two Unflinching Courage already. If we run 3 of them, we're going to be light on creatures, or give up some versatility. And remember, courage is our splash. Currently, we will be wanting to main board these cards:

2x Stab Wound

1x One Thousand Lashes

1x Putrefy

2x Unflinching Courage

1x Pit Fight

1x Swift Justice

1x Ethereal Armor

I don't know about you all but I like to run 8 noncreature spells maximum and a minimum of 15 creatures. The Saruli Gatekeepers will gain us life, just like unflinching, put two power on the board just like unflinching. From the perspective of building the overall deck, a third Unflinching Courage is kind of unnecessary.

We might be able to score a Maze Sentinel in our next pack given how hated white has been so far (though a Steeple Roc did get taken this pack).

I think we definitely should be able to snag a creature in pack 4. From what we saw it had Maze Abomination , Battering Krasis , Ubul Sar Gatekeepers , and Saruli Gatekeepers . I'd be very surprised if all 4 of those got taken.

Though we will be close to autodrafting mode, pack 4 had 4 creatures as well. Maw of the Obzedat , Kraul Warrior , Steeple Roc , and Boros Mastiff . I'd be surprised if there wasn't at least one white creature left in the pack when it comes to us.

While there will only be two cards left in the pack there also might be a chance in pack 6 that we will get either the Haazda Snare Squad or the Boros Mastiff . The only reason I can realistically see them getting taken is if someone has nothing better to pick and just ends up hate drafting the easiest card to play in the pack.

I don't think we need to be concerned about creatures to the point that we are drafting them over a powerful useable card like Unflinching Courage . We should definitely be able to draft at least 2 more useable creatures still especially if we are picking a gatekeeper without a realistic chance of using its effect from this pack over it. I'd be very surprised if we don't at minimum have a useable gatekeeper that we can pick in pack 3 if not something better.

Ditto everything Supersun has said in this thread.

I'm sure we will get a couple more creatures that are equally or more playable than Saruli Gatekeepers . That creature would never make it out of our sideboard even if we stop drafting any more creatures after this pick. Let's not pick it over a strong card just because it's a dude.

If we don't mainboard either one of them, the aura is still the better hatedraft.

Come oooooooooon, Boros Mastiff x 2. Fingers crossed, everyone.

I just put this together in Deckbuilder. It's what we have so far. Haven't played tested yet. Copy and paste if you like. You have to have the left margin free of spaces. Feel free to make variations and start trying it out.

1x Angelic Skirmisher

1x Armory Guard

1x Azorius Arrester

1x Azorius Justiciar

2x Balustrade Spy

1x Concordia Pegasus

1x Corpse Blockade

1x Drudge Beetle

1x Dutiful Thrull

1x Ethereal Armor

3x Forest

1x Golgari Guildgate

1x Guardian of the Gateless

1x Maze Abomination

1x Ogre Jailbreaker

1x One Thousand Lashes

1x Orzhov Guildgate

1x Pit Fight

6x Plains

1x Putrefy

1x Rites of Reaping

1x Selesnya Guildgate

2x Stab Wound

4x Swamp

1x Swift Justice

1x Thrashing Mossdog

2x Unflinching Courage

+1 Saruli Gatekeepers

Guys, I love Armadillos too, but we need dudes!

@vic

Just go to the deck KC has built and use the copy button.

SupremeAlliesCommander- Cool, I didn't know about that. Thanks. Boy oh boy are we hurting for early game.

We may need certain dudes, but the last thing we need is a 4 cmc 2/4 "vanilla" creature.("Vanilla" since we are never realistically going to trigger his ability)

We have enough 4 cmc guys that we don't need to take an overcosted 2/4 over a better card.

We are pretty much guaranteed at least one more decent 4 cmc dude in the pack 2 from now (which might very well be a gatekeeper, but could be something else if we are lucky), and we have a decent chance at a bear in a pack after that.

Dammit. Unflinching Courage .

+1 Unflinching Courage

For the lols and because I don't think we need another 4+ cmc creature. We need the cheapies.

deck-large:dgm-draft-debate-deck-copy-25-05-13-1

Here's a very rough idea of what we might have.

I'd like to pick up one more gate, but with three plus Verdant Haven , I figure we can run 17 lands. This deck needs to make 4 mana by turn 4.

We have to start thinking about what we would cut to fit all picks from this pack forward.

+1 Saruli Gatekeepers

It's sad to pass another Courage, but we really need creatures at this point.

+1 Saruli Gatekeepers

We'll need dudes to put those Auras on.

Honestly Verdant Haven should not make it into our final deck, and if it does, then the majority of us are terrible deck builders. Green is our splash colour remember. If you take the haven, it'd purely be for mana ramp and in that scenario, it's inferior even to the cluestones, which don't need a colour and can be sacced for card draw when needed.

And with only 2 main colours and one splash, we really don't need to worry about fixing, especially if we aren't planning to come out of the gates at speed.

+1 Unflinching Courage

+1 Gruul Cluestone

In a last ditch effort to convince people we can still splash red and play Firemane Avenger , our 2nd best creature; and it has killer synergy with Maze Abomination (see what I did there). Also, if we can play the cluestone on turn three then it will accelerate us into a guaranteed 4-drop whether or not we make a land drop on our next turn. And there is an extremely high probability that we will have at least one 4 drop in our starting hand every game.

With Verdant Haven and Gruul Cluestone , we only need 1 or 2 mountains in our deck to effectively splash for Firemane Avenger and maybe Lobber Crew .

We already have six BETTER 4-cmc creatures (seven if we splash red for the angel). We don't need that gatekeeper. With only three gates in our pool, we'll never get the best value out of it anyway. It's a Pillarfield Ox , and we have better 4-drops already.

I won't be upset if we get the Unflinching Courage . We probably won't play all three of them, but it does keep someone else from having it. And hate drafting a card isn't the best strategy this late in a draft. What is the probability our opponent's will have this when they play us? It will probably make it into someone's sideboard and sit there. Why take that when we can grab a PLAYABLE cluestone.

Seriously though, we shouldn't throw away our 2nd best creature because we want a 3rd aura to hate draft other people from having it. Let's take the cluestone!

Gruul Cluestone won't be winning dcarpntr. You'd best be voting for the two other cards, Unflinching Courage and Saruli Gatekeepers that have a chance at winning.

I don't care about winning the vote. I'm choosing the card I would take, and Gruul Cluestone is the card I would take so that I could play Firemane Avenger and win games in the air.

Everyone else can change their votes.

+1 Saruli Gatekeepers

We're kind of light on dudes right now.

We should drop red. Running 4 colours is as bad an idea today as it ever was. Why water down our mana base and increase inconsistency in our draws for one creature? Avenger is good, but her gain does not outweigh that risk. Not does her benefit outweigh running either the cluestone or the verdant haven, which is basically like taking up two spell slots with 3CMC costing land.

We'd end up only playing 21 actual cards versus 23; I'm sure that won't backfire. If they cantrip'd it'd be another story, but they don't.

Running 4 colors was completely viable in the prerelease because you were guaranteed 6 guildgates and a crapton of cluestones. We don't have that luxury. I'm gonna agree with thebeardedshuffler (whaaaat!? lol). We're sticking to Junk colors if we're smart.

Along the same logic, the Gatekeeper cycle just isn't as strong in Draft unless you go full-on guildgate mode, which we haven't done. We have enough for fixing and to get away with using our Ogre. We don't have enough to rely on a Gatekeeper trigger.

+1 Unflinching Courage

What are you guys thinking? We will never run Saruli Gatekeepers . We have too many 4 cmc creatures, and they are ALL better than it. And we're not really that light on creatures because almost all of our creature picks are very playable. Plus we'll pick up a few more playables in the next packs

+1 Unflinching Courage

We can just play Courage.dec and take essentially any playable creatures we see from here on. That ought to give us enough dudes to put the auras on and any bear is a serious threat with Unflinching Courage attached. Three gives us enough that we can get one removed and still expect to see another one in a stalled board (likely given our removal suite). Plus Armadillo Cloak , so don't laugh, it works.

landgrafb - I agree with everything you said except that the Gatekeeper cycle isn't strong in draft. I've found them to be reliable enough even on just three Gates, and honestly, even a vanilla 2/4 for 4 isn't bad in our deck. There's plenty of other things I'd rather be doing but it's not bad for us since it blocks well enough and it wears an aura very well. The chance to occasionally gain a rather large chunk of life is just a nice upside.

I'm not arguing that they're a fantastic creature or anything, and I know our 4-drop spot is crowded; I won't be disappointed if the Courage wins (redundancy in a win-con is a very strong thing). But I think we're down to the wire enough on dudes that we need to start taking even mediocre ones, because we don't know what's going to be left in the packs to come.

Goody - We don't know what the packs ahead are going to bring us. And I'd consider the Gatekeeprs over the Azorius Justiciar ; the double white could trip us up, and the detain ability is nice, but fleeting and not always relevant.

Definitely agree about dropping red, though. I abandoned it a few picks ago in my mockup of our deck so far - DGM DDD WIP (And other letters), which is more or less the same as most people's, I think - and it looks like a much stronger deck than trying to splash for the red.

+1 Unflinching Courage

I'd rater play a third one than Swift Justice , it will make their efforts to kill the first enchanted creature vain. Synergy, synergy. Better or same quality dudes may still come, and even if not, we are nearly ok with the number we've got.

Don't underestimate a good combat trick like Swift Justice . The first strike and lifelink could really change a whole combat step. Really, 2 Unflinching Courage are plenty. I'm not saying we need more creatures, I'm just saying if we go too deep on courage we really reduce the overall variety of our spells abilities. And the more creatures we have the more options we have on tailoring our deck and sideboarding versuse various strategies.

+1 Selesnya Cluestone

+1 Saruli Gatekeepers

I just don't see us every boarding into 3 Unflinching Courage , and I prefer Saruli Gatekeepers over Azorius Justiciar . We may not be able to trigger the gatekeepers on turn 4, but turn 7+ there's a chance.

Yeah, Swift Justice is a terrific card. It's one of the stronger combat tricks they've printed in a good while. +1/+0 and first strike for a single mana is already great, and having the lifelink is delicious icing on the cake. I wouldn't drop it for Courage #3, even as much as I love that aura.

People voting for Saruli Gatekeepers , go run a play test of the deck.

You will see that the last thing we need is another 4 drop creature, unless it's so good that it replaces another one. We do not have any use for a Pillarfield Ox . Playtest and see. We need to hope like crazy that the Boros Mastiff come back. Try and it and you'll see for yourself.

In terms of PLAYABLE 4 drops we have:

Thrashing Mossdog

Ogre Jailbreaker

2x Balustrade Spy

Azorius Justiciar

Armory Guard

Saruli Gatekeepers is better than Azorius Justiciar and probably Thrashing Mossdog . We should probably pick this up to replace the Justicar, because big butts are good for us and the lifegain potential is more valuable than the detain.

This isn't a case of whether we need more 4 drops. But we could use better 4 drops, and this qualifies. But we do not need a third Unflinching Courage , because we have a lot of things we want to play and we're stretched a bit thin on space for them. And we sure don't need a cluestone, which is a waste of a card in our deck.

PLUS ONE Selesnya Cluestone

What the hell are we going to do with 3 Unflinching Courage s? Seriously. We need the fixing.

Question for the cluestone proponents. What are you going to suggest we drop to fit in the cluestone? From this list of playable noncreatures:

2x Stab Wound

2x Unflinching Courage

One Thousand Lashes

Ethereal Armor

Putrefy

Pit Fight

Because, going 9 noncreature spells puts us seriously behind on creatures, especially when three of them require us to have a creature to use them on. Really, going 8 noncreature spells is a bit of a stretch but we can do it. So what are you wanting to put a cluestone into the deck in place of?

I am legitimately interested in hearing your reasoning so I can better understand this perspective.

Our noncreature section is great right now. We don't need more.

Especially for a clunky mana rock.

The cluestones seem better to me in Sealed because they help you play the crud you got. In Draft you get to hand-pick what you get, so you don't need to force as much fixing in. Now that we have our 3 gates, we should be pretty well off in the fixing department for our deck. We could use more, but we don't need to force it in if there are better picks.

+1 Unflinching Courage

lol holy crap

+1 Unflinching Courage

We keep it in the side. If our opponent shows little or no removal, we bring it in and bust heads.

@thebeardedshuffler

Yeah, I agree that Verdant Haven is a "bad" card. However, we need green early on for a few of our cards. And we need to get mana out quickly. Green is no longer a splash. If we take this Gatekeeper or the aura, green becomes as important as black. That said, if we can get more two or three drop creatures, I'll be happy to cut it from the 40.

@MagnorCriol

I do think we need more creatures. I just don't think another 4 drop is a high priority.

+1 Unflinching Courage

Meh. Best card. What else?

Courage takes it with 150% of the votes of the Gatekeepers. Moving on.