Downsize

Bleh. What is with this junk.

Rites of Reaping . I don't like it much, but this format does seem like it'll be slower, and if we're in an Orzhov shell it'll be easier to get to 6 mana comfortably. And -3/-3 does take care of a lot of problems. Hopefully we'll be able to find better removal and we won't have to run it, but I think it won't be the worst if we do.

Yeah, Rites of Reaping is the best card in the pack. None of the other cards really do all that much.

Go Junk. Rites of Reaping .

Rites of Reaping is probably the best choice. Its pump and removal in one.

Grisly salvage.

Downsize

Downsize, used correctly, will devastate our opponent's board. It will completely decide one combat, and it is not to be trifled with. We can basically consider this a removal spell.

Rites of Reaping buff and kill spell in one.

I say Seek the Horizon for some mana fixing since we seem to be playing more than 2 colors.

Downsize

Rites of Reaping

Rites of Reaping is unlikely to make our pack at 6 mana, when DGM is so chock full of removal. That said the only other contender for me is Grisly Salvage which can help us fix colours or find creatures. I don't like doing that though, as at 2 mana we'll be more fixing ourselves into golgari. With rites, we could splash for the green if we have to, because it'll be later game.

I don't think we should slip into blue; we don't want to be stuck in Dimir come GTC. I'd rather see us taking Brozhov cards in GTC and DGM. Rites has my vote because it's easier to splash for and we might just use it.

Well, we're not stuck on colors yet, so let's just look at the options and see the best cards.

Downsize , Rites of Reaping are the best ones in my opinion. I don't think salvage has a place in the build we're getting, and horizon could work, but as I hear it, DGM has plenty of fixing.

I like Downsize but I'm not sure it's worth going into blue, and Rites of Reaping might have just enough raw power to compensate for the higher mana cost. Also, we're probably going to end up in black anyways.

Worth noting, no red and barely any white here, looks like people might be setting up for boros next pack

We may just want to hate draft Rest in Peace if we are going junk with our colors

Downsize or Gobbling Ooze , equal preference.

Rites of Reaping

It's expensive, but it fits where we want to go. I think we'll need to hit green pretty hard in the next set of packs.

Gobbling Ooze with Rites of Reaping as a second choice

Rites of Reaping . While it is a bit expensive, it can end games. Turn six play it, kill a chump blocker, pump an attacker, swing for a whole bunch.

Gobbling Ooze is probably my second choice, while it is an expensive 3/3 for 4G, the ability to turn chump blockers or dying creatures into counters makes up for it.

@squire1 : Grisly Salvage could be good, but we don't have the scavenge cards or graveyard interaction to make it worth it. We might get some later, but right now, I feel like the smart play is to choose something that is decent regardless of later picks.

Rites of Reaping with Seek the Horizon as a close second. we have a lot of removal and rites is another good limited removal choice that will help keep us on board. while horizon is a decent mana fixing card that can help by deck thinning.

this is why we should have gone with Tower Drake . bleh.

I'm going to say Downsize here. at this point we are reaching cards that won't make the MB. Downsize is a good SB card against battalion, however. Very powerful. more powerful that a 6 mana strictly worse augur spree.

You guys are trying to get locked into colors far too early right now.

Rites of Reaping

Rites of Reaping hopefully would more than Downstall.

Rites of Reaping hopefully would do more than Downstall.

Rest in Peace . Seems kinda obvious to me that someone will either a) figure out that we're (or someone) is drafting Golgari colors and take it of b) that someone will draft into Golgari colors...

If people to our right are picking up the red and white, we'll hurt them pretty badly by drafting into brozhov next pack, and it won't hurt us too badly in DGM either. I like that as a potential strategy. Also by passing good, powerful blue cards the way we have, we may have persuaded our neighbours down wind to go for blue. That should work in our favour in GTC.

As for Rest in Peace, it's pointless. We have no graveyard interaction, so we're not at risk (and we won't be grabbing scavenge creatures in the next two packs) and we don't want such a narrow, niche card for ourselves either.

I can't stress enough that Rites of Reaping is a SORCERY spell. It would be well worth 6 mana if it were an instant, but at sorcery speed there's no room to bluff. It's easy to chump block a pumped creature, even if you did just lose a blocker.

We're not worried about colors yet, guys. Just pick the best cards. Downsize will do at least as much work in combat as Rites will, for less mana, and at instant speed.

Even if whoever does pick up that Rest in Peace DOES board it in against us, that's fine. That makes their deck worse because RiP is not a good card to have in draft.

landgrafb - I don't know about everyone else voting for Rites, but my reason for it isn't for the buff, it's for the removal. I see the spell and read "4BG, Target creature gets -3/-3." The buff part of it will have an impact once in a blue moon but that's not significant to me.

So as far as that goes, a 6-mana sorcery that kills a creature is...okay. It's not great, especially since it's not even guaranteed, but there's a ton of 3-toughness or less creatures in this format that we do want to kill, so it's okay if we need it. I'm hoping we pick up enough good stuff where we don't have to run it, but I feel that way about anything in this pack, and Rites is better than Downsize in that case because it can at least kill something on its own. Downsize is good in fewer situations than Rites is.

You know, after consideration, I've decided to vote for Downsize . In the hands of Caley it might as well be removal, especially useful against battalion or voltron critters that he'd be able to block profitably. It's easier to cast and is an instant, so I think it's the more powerful card out of the two.

I think black is the only color we'll definitely be running at this point. We can ditch white or green cards easily as we go on

Rites of Reaping .

Rites of Reaping isn't really going to get much done, its good if we are going into golgari, but it is too early too choose colors.

Downsize is just the most helpful cards, and lets us go into blue if needed. Or start to go into blue. Maybe.

Gate, Gate, Gate.Yes your in black for sure.You have few solid white cards and the gate keeps blue open in casesome strong blue cards come in pack 2 or 3.

Downsize , simply because it's cheaper, and more versatile in my opinion.

Rites of Reaping because removal.

Seek the Horizon . I'll say again that I'm seeing Golgari as being very open. Also these packs have not been great.

Seek the Horizon or Downsize . Being assured of land drops is awesome, it allows you to consider higher CMC cards. Downsize is a nice combat trick, but that means you have to go U, which isn't one of our colours so far.

Seek the Horizon or Downsize

Rites of Reaping followed closely by the guildgate.

Downsize

Keep in mind that we are about to see packs that have already been opened, and from the cards I expect to be left when the packs reach us again some of the better ones seemed to be Water.

Starting to pick up whatever water is left over might not be a bad choice to give us the option to draft into Blue/Black (Dimir) since it seems like no one really wants water atm.

I think it unlikely that in an 8 man pod someone isn't drafting blue. They're just going to be on our left, not our right. If we try to jump into blue, we'll be hurting next pack. If we continue to cut hard into black, we increase the signal to the others (the ones who matter, on our left) what our intentions are.

I'd like to change my vote to the Azorius Guildgate with a close second going to Downsize .

I think we've seen better quality green than blue go through to us. Green is clearly pretty open, with blue not quite so much. I would expect a repeat of that in pack 3. I like Downsize , but I like Seek the Horizon as much if not more in a (probably)3-color format. I'm content to say we're BWG.

Seek the Horizon is not a card we splash for, we'd have to maindeck green. I do not think we want to be maining green come gatecrash, as it's isolated from our focus colours of black and white. I am making my selections based on the assumption that we're going to go orzhov main, with a splash into green or maybe red come GTC. We have no interest in blue that I can see (last third of a pack is a bad time to jump colours) so we ought to focus our picks for now on Black, White, or cards we can splash into.

It's not jumping colors to pick a good blue card halfway through pack one.

And, as many people have said so far, there's plenty of good blue cards in both GTC and DGM. Don't count out a color just because we haven't grabbed it yet. It is still VERY early in this draft.

Don't forget that DGM has enough fixing for every deck to be at least 3 colors, comfortably. Both of my prerelease decks were 4 colors, and I almost never had to worry about my color fixing.

Seek the Horizon

Tallied up the votes and Rites of Reaping and Downsize are well in the lead. If a user had voted for any other card with one of these as a close second, I put their tally in the one that could actually win.

Current votes:

Downsize : 13

Rites of Reaping : 17

Now is the chance to push for your favorite.

Rites of Reaping instead.

Downsize

Downsize

Rites of Reaping

Rites of Reaping

We are clearly in black and can splash for green fairly easily. I do not think that dipping into Blue is wise, and so, have discounted Downsize .

The problem with Downsize is that you will almost always be holding this card thinking, "I don't want to use it here, because it's impact isn't big enough." You will always want Downsize to be better than a 1-1, which is difficult because the entire equation revolves around creatures.

Please remember that Limited is nearly always decided by combat. Cards which interact in some way to remove creatures are magnitudes better than cards which do not interact with creatures. In this pack, the best interactive card is clearly Rites because it doesn't forestall our early creature development, usually will kill a creature, and will make one of our creatures a wrecking ball (which usually results in a chop block of some kind). At the best, this card is +3 damage and removal (which you would pay for happily), and at it's worst, a kill spell going 1-1.

Play smart. Pick Rites.

ummm, why wouldn't we 1-1 with downsize? that's all we are getting out of rites anyway. a 6 mana kill spell is really not good, its not even going to be maindecked. Downsize gives us options.

Downsize is at worst a 1-1. AND, if we use it as such, can be done for exactly one mana. If we choose to overload it (still only 3 mana), it's going to be for at least a 2-1. I don't see the downside to Downsize .

Also, why are we hating on "dipping into blue"? We have to go at least 3 colors anyways, or our deck is gonna suck.

I have to say go with Downsize . I don't see the 6cmc as being worthwhile end-game...

Yeah. By the time we're at 6cmc, the thing we're gonna need to kill will probably be bigger than Rites can deal with.

@numa529

jkarnes did write that we would get a 1-1 with Downsize . In fact, we can do better than that. It simply requires very specific conditions. Hence jkarnes mentions holding onto the card - waiting for the right opportunity. It DOES give us options, but most all of them are even more conditional than Rites of Reaping .

If we are in a position where we want to get damage through, Rites of Reaping can get the job done. If they have a single creature, we kill it with the -3/-3 ability, then swing big with our +3/+3 critter. That's 1-1 with bonus damage. If they have multiple creatures, we can kill the chump blocker and probably force them to block a more valuable creature. No damage gets through, but we get 2-1 card advantage.

Rites of Reaping is NOT a good card. As mentioned earlier, it being sorcery speed really cripples it. Then there's the cost. Like Downsize , it is a conditional card. But the conditions necessary to make Rites of Reaping work are more readily achieved.

@landgrafb I agree with you on the blue part. I fully expect us to be playing 3 colors minimum.

I'm just not a fan of picking Golgari cards at this point. RTR has Golgari and Rakdos as the black ally guilds (black is the only color we're set in). GTC has Dimir and Orzhov. If we go Golgari, we won't get much help in the rest of this draft (and none until DGM). If we pick up some good white and blue (which we've done) we can get a solid base in GTC with Orzhov and Dimir picks, and shore it up in DGM.

With GTC coming next, we can also solidify our two colors (W/B or U/B) and figure out our third color later. Picking Rites right now is going to make us want to lean Golgari... is Rites a good enough card to make us want to do that? Not even close I say. I'd much rather lean towards Esper and know that help is coming in GTC next pack.

Yeah. Playing towards both the next two packs is a lot smarter than grabbing a color now just to get bad removal. If we start leaning towards green we won't get any help for an entire pack. That's probably a bad call.

landgrafb and exarkun809, that's what I've trying to tell everyone two picks ago, when I voted for Voidwielder .

Downsize

Playing towards the next packs is fine, but choosing a BG card doesn't mean we're not. It means we're going to focus on Orzhov next pack, which seems like our plan at the moment anyhow. Rites is bad removal, but it's miles better removal than Downsize is, which is such a situational card. It's far easier to get good use from a Rites than it is a Downsize, especially since with Maze cards added into the mix the format is slowing down. Rites can help us out when we're behind, while Downsize only gets us value if we have a creature on board and IF that creature can trade up.

Besides, speaking of picking for the later packs - once we leave Azorius's flyers and spells behind in RtR, blue is one of the weaker colors. We could go into a GUB Simic build if we get lucky, but other than that and one or two shiny rares in Gatecrash and Maze (which arent reasons to go into blue since we can't bet on them) there's not much to look forward to in the coming packs from blue. We cetainly don't want to get sucked into the trap that is Dimir and it's awful schizophrenic plan and bad Cipher cards.

Just because Dimir lacks identity as a guild doesn't mean that it has bad cards in it. Sure, its mill cards won't help us, but power commons like Hands of Binding sure will. There's a number of good blue cards still left in the format.

If - and that's a big if - we do go green, I think it will be for a few common beatsticks, like Adaptive Snapjaw or Maze Behemoth . We can get beefy bodies in green. Personally, I'm not expecting to use much of scavenge, bloodrush, or evolve.

Likewise, I'm not expecting to get much from the blue mechanics. So, just like green, blue picks get judged on the strength of the individual card, not the mechanics that go with the color.

Downsize .

I'm tempted to pick Azorius Guildgate to give us more options later and possibly splash blue and make gatekeepers more playable but Downsize is a cheap combat trick and can be the difference between a win and a loss.

With all the division, I would rather pick the Azorius Guildgate and keep looking for better options later. Rites of Reaping and Downsize both have uses and are somewhat limited in application. In other words, not terribly spectacular.

If we pick up another gate now, then we won't HAVE to pick as many gates up later, when likely -everyone- else will. I don't want to be forced into that rat race.

Yes we would want blue to make full use of the gate, but we keep our options more open by doing so.

If we don't take the gate, at least take Downsize . Blue is perfectly useful in GTC. Hands of Binding was an allstar for me in particular, and I believe it was for our last Draft Debate.

Switching from Seek the Horizon (since it's not in the running) to Downsize . Rites of Reaping is spendy, and needs to be an instant to be worth it.

At this point my focus is that we establish ourselves in black and white, sending strong signals to our neighbours so that they aren't going be as willing to challenge us on the orzhov cards. I think we ought to look for our third colour in GTC.

Also we've passed a lot of good blue cards, as I've said before. We're going to have tough competition for blue in GTC from our neighbours, and we could do without that hassle. We're a bit too late to start grabbing the blue now when we already handed the colour to them on a silver platter.

The only blue card we've fought over has been Voidwielder , and that one's by no means game breaking. Passing playable blue cards is different than giving up on blue. It's not dead to us. It's fine if you don't want to pick Downsize , but don't avoid it because you're afraid of its color in pack one.

Also we haven't completely locked in on white yet. Neither of our white cards are so good that we can't give them up in favor of better ones in a different color later. Just keep grabbing the best cards, regardless of color, just as Elaine said.

Really, letting through a Rites of Reaping isn't going to suddenly give people to our left the idea that black is open (especially since there's already another Gruul card in this pack).The strong Rakdos cards in every pack that we passed on the other hand should have already given them that idea.

If you really want to be signaling that we want Orzhov it should be the white cards, not the black cards, that you should be snatching up as much as possible.

Honestly, as much as we might want Orzhov, if the person to our left drafting all that Rakdos is getting Orzhov bombs and Gruul and Boros junk then we might be a bit of trouble (which isn't that unlikely since it seems like someone off to our right is aiming for Boros).

That's why imo, water wouldn't be a bad choice.

I also suspect that one person to our near left is drafting water, but it's likely done in combination of green and maybe white judging by what we have passed that way. I doubt that they will aim for any Dimir mixed cards which will at least give us a functional plan B in case we can't get Orzhov.

By my count, it is now dead even between Rites of Reaping and Downsize . I will allow another 30 minutes, and if the tie remains, I will break it and move on. Last call.

Downsize . Phew.

rites of reaping

It wouldn't be terrible for KrazyCaley to break a tie anyway since that's who's running the deck anyway :P

Fine by me. Take it away Caley.

30 min up!

The suspense is Caley-ing me. Ha! Get it?

Sorry, got busy. Moving along now.

Better not troll us and pick the Mountain D: