+1 Boros Guildgate

We need them, it's on color, helps trigger Gatekeepers, and the pack isn't that stellar.

(I'd prefer to have 6 gates, but we are going to need at least 3-4 to effectively run a 3 color deck. If we want to splash a 4th color we will NEED at least 6 dual color sources and even then it's not optimal, 9 would be better. 6 sources for 1 color is the minimum required, at least 7 is optimal).

+1 Gate

Yeah, this pack is just no good for us. Here's hoping those green gatekeepers come back around

for all the reasons stated above,

+1 gate

Why the Gate over the Mastiff and Gatekeeper?

Mastiff bad. and we have no gates as yet

So we go back to the Bear vs Ox debate? Ok that's easy enough to see why we should pass the Mastiff, but do we think the Gatekeeper will table?

if we get more gates, i def see the oxkeeper tabling

Gates really should be a fairly high priority pick. Over the course of the draft we will draft ~45 cards. Since a deck consists of 40 cards and ~17 of those spots need to be land only about 23 card or half of those picks will be used in the deck. Lands do not count towards this 23 card pool since they replace a basic land in the 17 card land pool.

Whenever you are in a situation where you get some picks where you are not sure if they are going to be worth putting into your deck or the card will make the final choice, but it's not that powerful of a card in the first place if you have the choice at a gate that's on color you should probably take it.

If you try to run a 3 color deck with 17 lands and only basics, assuming an even split of lands over the colors, you will have 6 of one color, 6 of another, and 5 of your 3rd color. By replacing 3 basics with 3 gates you now have 7 of one color, 7 of another, and 6 of your 3rd. Gates are a good thing in limited and they make the deck more consistent.

A sound argument. And considering how many gates we got last pack, they're pretty priority.

+1 Gate

I really kinda want the gatekeeper, but I feel like we're more likely to see it again than we are another gate.

we did see it again when we passed it the last pack...

That we did. Mayhaps a few other groups are underestimating the power of 2/4s?

Submitting the gate shortly.

Along with the Scion of Vitu-Ghazi we got last pack if we get some more Sunspire Gatekeepers, Wake the Reflections, and some more Gates we are pretty well on track to make an interesting token deck.

If we land some Trostani's Summoner's or an Advent of the Wurm they'll fit in quite nicely.

Really wish we took that Alive / Well though, oh well.

I think we may have a few options here.

Debt to the Deathless
Wear / Tear
Boros Guildgate
Kraul Warrior
Mending Touch
Sinister Possession
Smelt-Ward Gatekeepers
Steeple Roc
Tithe Drinker
Uncovered Clues
Wake the Reflections
Zhur-Taa Druid

Wow, lots of great options in this pack, and we are very likely going to get a favorable second pick from this pack. (Hope that Gate tables, but I won't be disappointed if the gatekeeper or even Wake tables)

In regards to this pack though I have to give the +1 to one of my favorite cards to draft.

+1 Zhur-Taa Druid

We need the Ramp if we are running 4 cmc and higher and he's probably the best in the format, and over a long game the damage he does really adds up. Most bears get their 2-4 damage then get stopped by a bigger body, this guy keeps zapping away.

Also should note, this pack should scare us away from black as it it were the plague (it is black after all). Everyone who was even considering running Orzhov to our left will probably jump onto that band wagon after seeing Debt to the Deathless or a Tithe Drinker come around to them. This just adds to the evidence that black may end up being hoarded hard to our left like blue is to our right.

OOOOOOHHHHH, hello OP wincon.

I'm just curious why not debt to the deathless? if its going to be grabbed it might as well get grabbed by the group we want to win, plus we are running both colors...

I've heard how good it is over and over again and then experienced how good it is during the last draft. Even if we don't end up going black (but naya withs black splash right?) we should still pick up debt to the debtless as a hate draft. Besides, my second pick would be the Druid and that would probably come back as well (remember scab clan giant?)

+1 debt to the debtless

Debt to the Deathless is pretty inconsistent and bad in my opinion. It really only works if you have an exceptionally grindy, rampy deck. I would much rather take something like the Druid or the Steeple Rock.

Druid because it helps us ramp while also giving us a consistent damage source without worrying about losing him to combat tricks or whatever.

+1 Druid.

1) Even with how good DtD is you shouldn't hate draft it unless there really isn't anything better to pick. If we don't pick it DtD will only go to one person and when we play that one player we probably won't see it more then one game, maybe 2. So out of the ~24 games we will be playing hate drafting it will only prevent us from realistically seeing it 1-2 of those ~24 games. There are cards in this pack that adding to our deck will help us win far more then just one or two games over just hate drafting a card from someone elses deck.

2) This pack is the perfect example of what a "death trap" is. If this was the first pick of the first pack that we opened in a normal DGM > GTC > RTR draft as tempting as Orzhov looks you should be very careful before taking a bite of that apple. If you pick one of the Orzhov cards, there's a good chance that someone to your near right will pick the other Orzhov card and take all the good Orzhov cards from the GTC pack when he passes them to you.

Now there is a reason I say we should avoid black like the plague with a pack like this. What information do we know so far. We know that someone to our near right drafted a Far / Away. That one person is probably going to run black in some form in the final deck. We can also deduce that two other people to our right are probably NOT running black (Izzet and Simic in some form with probably white splashes).

What do we know about our left? Not as much, but we do know that the person to our left first picked either a holographic card or a Tithe Drinker and we also know that from what we could tell all the quality black was getting sucked hard out of all the packs as if there was a racist vampires to our left or something (though admittedly that could have just as easily been luck as well). We also know that we recently just saw our 3rd Orzhov Guildgate.

So far what I have expected has been happening. All the quality blue is being drafted hard, but likewise I expect in pack 3 that all the black will be taken just like in pack one.

This is the exact same thing that happened in the previous draft debate. In the first pack we saw some amazing WBG cards, but then in pack 2 we saw some good Red come our way and we started biting at it then finally in pack 3 we had WBG bombs get thrown at us. The "indecisiveness" ultimately made our deck weaker as we clamped down on our colors far too late.

The same thing is happening here. We are probably going to see some good black hybrid cards come our way, but if I'm reading the signals correctly this will be the ONLY pack we see them.

----------Now even ignoring all of the above there is one very good reason why we shouldn't draft DtD to use in our deck.-----------

Look at it's casting cost. The WW is fine, but there's no way that we are going to be able to realistically pay a BB if black is only a splash (at least not before we statistically draw just short of half our deck) unless we draft a ton of Orzhov Guildgates...

Opps.

Really, this pack should clearly tell us that we should just drop the attempt at a black splash and focus on Naya since it seems no one else at the table is even remotely interested in drafting it. I mean from the left we got a T7 Scab-Clan Giant and from the right we got a T4 Zhur-Taa Druid. The table couldn't be signaling any louder that they don't want Gruul.

wow.

ok.

-1 Debt to the Deathless

+1 Zhur-Taa Druid

partly because it makes sense and partly because you spent all that time to convince me :P

well, wait, what about Tithe Drinker ? its still a good card and not too hard to cast if we splash black...

+1 Druid

Again Supersun graces us with his superb reasoning, and insights into signaling. This is something I think the larger DDD's were missing.

Tithe Drinker is a good card, and it wouldn't be too hard to run it.

I'd normally snatch it up from this pack even if the black splash was a risk except for 2 things.

1) There's a Zhur-Taa Druid in the pack which I, myself, consider to be just as powerful of a card as Tithe Drinker in draft, and it's a better fit to our strategy and colors.

2) We'll be passing a DtD to our left......
Don't expect too many Orzhov cards in the next pack lol.

Just remember though. There's an inherent risk with "signaling". It's all based on the assumption of what would you pick if you were the people next to you. You don't have complete information though and if someone picked a really strong card in certain colors that you don't know about like a P1 Resurgence then that person will probably be running GW regardless of what you pass them. (Though you can use later information to help determine whether someone got passed a pack 1 bomb or not).

Also assumes that their picks are somewhat logical which isn't always the case with Hive Mind :/ (coughcoughGazeofGranitecoughcough).

i'm surprised your reasoning didn't convince the community. (we chose Unflinching Courage right?) thanks for all of your experience with drafts. if we win, any credit given to me will be redirected to you Supersun as i'm have minimal knowledge about drafts :P