Cerebral Eruption all the way. This card is great! It outclasses everything else here.

Hell yes! Cerebral Eruption Only had a chance to play with this card once in draft and it single-handedly won me three games... However I feel like the black in this pack does a pretty good job.

Grasp of Darkness is very good, (obviously). and Necrogen Scudder is also a mainboard card.

I think Cerebral Eruption is the pick here, but B makes a case.

Unfortunately, there's no more dithering -- now is the time we have to choose between black and red.

Cerebral Eruption , Grasp of Darkness , and Necrogen Scudder are all legit first picks.

Necrogen Scudder will allow us to keep sitting on the fence about whether we're 'just splashing black.'

Grasp of Darkness means we go black all the way, mainboard Painful Quandary and start picking up Instill Infection s.

IF there's only one other black drafter and s/he is in infect, they'll pick Ichor Rats and there's a tiny chance that we'll see the Necrogen Scudder again.

That said, Cerebral Eruption is good, but not as good as Grasp of Darkness . sure, sometimes eruption is a one-sided Day of Judgment , but sometimes it wastes 4 mana to ping a bunch of late game creatures for one damage. I've definitely seen it fizzle more than I've seen it win games. Which is sad, 'cause remember that I really want to go red. but I think people overvalue this card.

My pick has to be Grasp of Darkness , though. we've got playable black cards, and there aren't any bombs in this pack, so let's take removal, instead.

I just don't think Cerebral Eruption counts as a bomb. ymmv.

0 Sac effects, Cerebral Eruption does nothing for us this late, pass it.

We are left with Grasp of Darkness and Necrogen Scudder.

Grasp commits us to black more but removal is removal

However Necrogen Scudder allows us to just splash for it and keep our options open.

I say just push into black here, allows us to make our 2 trigon of corruption better and grasp is a great card. still dont like painful quandry and memoricide tho...

I am very much in agreement with landot when he says now is the time to decide. Are we going black or red?

I feel inclined to stick with our initial strategy and go black. I like the Necrogen Scudder and i like the Grasp of Darkness both are really solid choices here... i find myself agreeing again w/ landot, that the Cerebral Eruption is not that great of a card.(and i think both black spells are better) As he mentioned it may merely fizzle out providing us with very little advantage.

The Grasp of Darkness kills almost everything in the set, and the Necrogen Scudder is a 3/3 flyer for 3 who can drive home a lot of damage and is a prime target for our Barbed Battlegear . I believe the scudder is one of the biggest natural fliers in the entire set. For these reasons i like the creature and vote scudder with a close second as the remove almost anything in the set Grasp of Darkness . In my mind the scudder wins out only since we have other removal options already.

@ Eyehate, MagnorCriol, and zerotimestatechamp To continue your discussion from the last pack: I too am a bit worried about how scatterbrained we have been in making our picks so far and think that we may have hurt ourselves some by passing on cards that could have made our deck even stronger.

In past drafts we have been as a community more focused, and chosen cards for a more cohesive goal in mind. I believe however that our lack of discipline in this series has everything to do with the set we are actually drafting.

Scars lends itself so well to color ambiguity because it is so jam packed with artifacts, which don't require a color commitment. Thus we are actually experiencing a very real dilemma that can happen when drafting this set, and making very real decisions that a player might make and possibly mistakes based thereon. If nothing else i think it is instructive for future scars drafts to be a bit more disciplined, but i am not certain it would be strictly necessary in future series as we haven't had this problem in the past.

In any event it will be informative how this turns out, and what the results of this pack are. Perhaps the other thing we haven't really done as much is focus on our overarching design as much as we have in other sets as a community... but i again attribute this to scars.

Ehhh. I agree with landot...Cerebral Eruption is potentially great. It's also potentially awful. I love the card, and I like red, but I don't know if we should really choose Eruption at this point in time.

Grasp may be the best card here in a vacuum, but I think it's not the best card for us. It commits us to black, and I feel like we have better cards for a W/R aggro or Weenifact deck rather than a W/B deck. That doesn't mean we can't get good cards for it, though, and Grasp is a strong step in that direction.

I think I'll cast my vote for Necrogen Scudder . It's an aggressively costed, evasive body with some meat on it, it keeps our options open because it's definitely splashable for us, and it's a solid all-around card.

Thought about this a bit more today, changing my vote to Necrogen Scudder

However, I think that come deckbuilding time, the Oxidda Scrapmelter is definitely splashable with our Iron Myr

Scudder sounds good

Necrogen Scudder is a good card, but given a choice between scudder and grasp, which would you rather have in your hand if the opponent has the other? especially in a draft group that's only this big -- it's almost as important to keep the grasp out of everyone else's hands as it is to get it into ours.

Passing grasp, especially out of this pack, which is meh for just about every archetype, almost guarantees that someone else will start jumping on even middling black cards.

it kills darksteel critters, it combos with infect critters or -1/-1 counters . . . Grasp of Darkness is just too good to pass.

I cannot believe this. I beg each and every one of you to reconsider. Cerebral Eruption has added strength in this set. 57/89 of the common and uncommon creatures in SoM have 2 or less toughness. Additionally, when considering this pick, notice previous picks:

Black-

1x Memoricide Sideboard

1x Dross Hopper Won't play

1x Psychic Miasma Won't play

1x Painful Quandary Mainboard

Red-

1x Turn to Slag Mainboard

1x Embersmith Mainboard

1x Oxidda Scrapmelter Mainboard

Our deck is fast in this format and the mean cost is 2.7...

I can't believe nobody has even cast a vote for Perilous Myr , its one of the best commons in this set! Oh my god! Pick this card, for real! Take it from the guy who has won his last 4 drafts lossless, I run perilous, and he works amazingly! Profit on attacks, or defense! 2 for 1 ridiculously often! Recur with Razor Hippogriff ! Rinse and repeat! Don't miss this guys! unlike grasp or the terrible rare, this crd can guarentee itself to make our maindeck, which is what smart picking is all about.

and having three of them is even better. our opponents are going to get sooooo frustrated!

@DeckBuilder345,

I posted a reply on that subject on the last pick comments before I saw your post. Just wanted to mention it here so if people were interested in that discussion they can read it and if not that can ignore me =)

@Pick discussion

The Cerebral Eruption , while playable to me has some consistency issues. It's better than Memoricide since it is main board material, and it can definitely have a massive impact on the board. I don't dismiss it out of hand as it is a potential one-sided wrath effect that is on-par with or better than Sunblast Angel (key word there is "potential")...but it is also unpredictable and that has to be a factor here.

Grasp of Darkness and Necrogen Scudder do make a case for black here, and I think Grasp of Darkness is usually the better pick but the double black cost is not ideal. If I were going the black direction I would seriously consider the Necrogen Scudder .

Perilous Myr is still really undervalued in my opinion. I have literally seen this guy hold off an army of infect creatures, he just trades so profitably that he can quite really get into your opponents head and buy you far more advantage than he really should. That being said, this "extra" advantage shrinks considerably against good opponents and I'm pretty confidenting drafting to beat the lower quality opponents is a losing strategy. Still, he is a very solid creature and one I'm not all that upset about first picking when the situation calls for it.

In this situation my assessment would be that since we are indecisive I would rule out the double cost spells Cerebral Eruption and Grasp of Darkness though between the two I would probably rather have grasp.

Between the Perilous Myr and the Necrogen Scudder I think I have to give the edge to the Necrogen Scudder , it's a legitimate body with evasion and a viable win condition.

I still think black is the wrong direction and if I felt more secure in the knowledge that we could stay on color I would pick between the myr and Cerebral Eruption , but that's not realistic to me at the moment.

My reluctant vote, Necrogen Scudder .

@landot,

What are our "playable black cards"? I must have been absent when we picked those =P

In all seriousness I don't mean to be dismissive but I can't at all agree with any assessment that calls our existing black cards "playable".

ARGHHH!!! This draft has thrown us in so many directions...

Right now... we're W/R, no question. We have MAYBE one mainboard card in black (Painful Quandary ) and three great red cards. However, we do have both a Leaden Myr and an Iron Myr .

So where does that leave us? I don't think we can pick Grasp of Darkness . It's a great card... but you have to be in black, which we are not.

I think it's between Perilous Myr , Necrogen Scudder , and Cerebral Eruption .

Necrogen Scudder fits us so well... it's tough to pass on. Cerebral Eruption requires luck... and I've never been lucky in MTG :). And Perilous Myr is the safe, effective choice.

For me, I like taking risk. I vote Necrogen Scudder and hope we pick up another Leaden Myr . We need a 3/3 flier too badly.

This pick alone is frustrating me so much. On the one hand as some of you have mentioned, we have three playable red cards, on the other we have maybe a half playable black card. I really think we need to ask ourselves a few questions.

Will there be enough Black in these next packs?

Was there enough Black cards going around pack 1 (because the same person will be passing/not passing it this round)?

What happens if all the Black that comes our way is Infect?

After looking back at Pack 1, unless one of the two people on our right has switched to Black, I think it COULD be open. There is a small possibility that it is open for us if someone on our left ripped the Fume Spitter and Grasp of Darkness we passed them. (If we decide to dive into Black, I hope they did.)

This pick seems really frustrating, and I agree we are divided as a team because we are divided individually. Hell, I am. This is a tough pick because it can make or break our deck.

Cerebral Eruption is obviously the card if we think Red is available, Black has a couple choices here, and of course there is the option of staying ambiguous and picking up another Perilous Myr .

The more I think about this pick the further I am from having a decision. Necrogen Scudder and Grasp of Darkness seem so appetizing, but what if that is it for black playables, it very well could be. We already have a few red main-boarders. The Eruption might be the safe rout, based on what we have, and I'm ok with that we have some Red removal anyway.

I don't know what the proper pick is here.

@ JaceFace at end of pack one and all through pack 2 we discussed how black was still open. Thus i don't think we need to fear that some one else is heavily in it.

As to the other posters, if we are in black, we would very likely play the Dross Hopper and it is also a real possibility we could run the Psychic Miasma as there is nothing quite like depriving an opponent of their combat tricks or land. There is even an argument for Memoricide main deck, as you can effectively review your opponents entire deck in round one, and decide what to dump from it in round 2/3. You also have some strategic advantage of knowing all your opponents cards which can be pretty powerful and is valuable information to have. I am not saying we definately main deck it I am saying we could. Depends on what else we pick up.

I agree with what JaceFace said. Are we going to go red, black, or weeniefact with a splash? If we decide, our pick from this pack is SIMPLE. Plus deciding now will make the rest of pack three a much more pleasant experience for all involved. So lets do ourselves a HUGE favor and come to a consensus then pick.

Red-we take Cerebral eruption

Black-we take grasp

Weeniefact with a splash-we take perilous myr

I'm ok with whatever we decide, but seriously...let's decide NOW.

my vote is we go w/b because there were more black playables pack 1. We can splash red for scrapmelter if it comes to that. So I vote for Grasp. Scudder isn't likely to come back, but grasp is less likely to and the rule is if you're picking between a creature and a removal spell that kills that creature, take removal. It's not an issue of double black versus being splashable. It's an issue of are we going black or are we just splashing stuff.

Will move on tomorrow.

-C