Also I think Theros limited is a great format, and while what we draft depends a lot on what we open, I'm a fan of the big stompy strategy. I think green is the strongest colour in theros by far, I think removal in general in the set is bad and should be drafted after evasion.

The aggro strategy can work but only if we're not competing for it, so we should pay attention to signals very carefully. Mmmm, this is going to be fun.

Welcome dberg101 and thebeardedshuffler!

Great list of suggestions there - We'll have ourselves a nice voting pool now.

thebeardedshuffler - I also agree about the removal being poor (avoided black in the prerelease only to find that I love it in draft), but (in my opinion) with the early aggro being slow compared to what we're used to, things like Pharika's Cure, Last Breath, and Voyage's End stall well into Divine Verdict and Lash of the Whip, with Griptide turning into a major game-changer. My preferred strategy for holding things up until the bombs are armed.

In my experience voyage's end and griptide are premium level removal that needs to be picked highly (assuming you're playing blue).

And while the other removal is pretty bad for the most part you still need to pick it fairly highly as there isn't a lot of it and you're still competing for it. You don't want to get stuck with something like boulderfall as your only source of removal.

Agreed. It's not really about the removal being bad - divine verdict, sip of hemlock and smite the monstrous especially are good all around removal. It's just that while removal will deal with traditional bombs, it doesn't do much to a bestow cluster. You can end up in a situation where a removal spell will stop a 5/5 lifelink deathtouch reach creature, only to give them a varied selection of creatures to overwhelm you with. Normally something that says "kill target creature" doesn't leave you in a worse, or nearly as bad board position, but in this format it can happen a little too often for my liking.

And then there's lightning strikes/magma jet, which frankly does little to nothing unless you're facing down the aggro. Lash of the whip is also a problem for me, as it doesn't get rid of the important creatures, the ones you want to be spending 5 mana to kill it just doesn't. I'd almost always rather run a creature over all of them. And unless we get good heroic creatures, I think creature heavy is the way to go.

Damnit, why do we have to wait?! I wanna draft nooooooow....

In my experience it's been easier to deal with the 2 3/3s or 3 2/2s than it is to deal with the 6/6. It's still not ideal, but generally you can find a big butt or trade with numerous smaller creatures where you would just chump the huge guy.

Also, yes, draft now please! :)

Agreed. But we'll get there soon enough! :p

Hopefully we'll all be here by Saturday, when I give us a little practice by starting the team name vote.

hey, be careful about being open though. the last draft, our team (gueri's) kept our mind opened too long :P

+devotion to G

In my limited THS draft experience, I've seen a really good mono-green (it might have had a splash, I forget) that just powered through removal and had too much toughness for anything to kill it but the actual "destroy target creature" spells. And that damn 20/20 colossus. That same draft also had an amazing U/B control deck that stabilized around 1 - 5 life and would mill with ashiok, so if we open one of those, I think we should maybe try that route. It was the only deck to beat the monogreen

Very true. We were what, open to four colors until the end?

Yep lol

(I'll clean up the comments with the next update, since we're still in introduction mode right now)

Alright, it's well into Saturday, so it's time to practice those voting skills. Normally I'd list our options, but anything and everything is still fair game (and the scrolling doesn't hurt too much yet).

Officially counting team name votes... now!

+1 Team Rocket-Powered Turbo Slug

As much as I like to pretend I don't have an ego, I'll admit Team Devotion to G is a real contender here, so I can't promise sticking to my Unhinged chops by the end of this one.

+1 for team Rocket-Powered Turbo Slug

Also +1 for Team Rocket-Powered Turbo Slug

+1 for team rocket-powered turbo slug, and remember not to tag cards

Whyfor not tag cards?

@Lavan ~ Comments with tagged cards in them show up in some sections of the site.

While not an issue at this moment, it'll become one once we start talking about draft-relevant cards.