At first I was liking Obzedat's Aid, but I think I was influenced a little by the simple fact that it is a BW rare. Whatever it pulls back would probably be a creature that normally costs 3 or 4. So it's kinda like playing one of those creatures for 5. Although I will say that pulling back Legion's Initiative is an interesting thought. On the other hand, it may not even have anything to pull out of the graveyard, so it could be a dead draw.

I'm gonna vote for the Mastiff again. I really think that having creatures in the 2 drop slot is valuable, no matter what the build. And decks that don't have them tend to lose. That has been my firm experience in drafting. And now with the Firstblade and 3 Drakes, we could actually get reasonably aggro at the beginning, and help to put our opponents in reach of a kill shot from Toil / Trouble or Debt to the Deathless . Even if his job is to help defend vs aggro against us, he is still useful.

Vote: Boros Mastiff

By the time we can cast obsedats aid we should have some creatures in the grave. If we don't then we probably don't need to cast it anyway. Bringing back the initiative is a pretty sweet trick, too. It'd probably be a sideboard cad against enchantment removal.

But a vanilla bear is not a bad pick when there's nothing better in the pack. I think I'll vote Boros mastiff.

+1 boros mastiff

just saying: if aid is a dead draw, we probably are winning anyway :P

...or in a stalemate.

To be honest, the aid is more likely to break a stalemate than the mastiff. But without anything better in the pack, a bear that can trade with a bear isn't the worst thing we could to. We might need 2 damage on a blocker to let our black gatekeeper finish someone off.

+1 mastiff

I think I agree about the bear. And on the off chance that it gets some life-linking powers, it could be pretty handy.

+1 Boros Mastiff

Calling the crew for pack 3, pick 9: vic, thebeardedshuffler, tigersfan774, VRonin, anewsome, GoldGhost012, xXBantbladesXx

Not many interesting things left here, I guess we'll take another firsblade to get again a bit more aggro.

Hoping for a 5th gate, but Firstblade is a pleasant surprise.

Firstblade.

Yeah. Kinda shocked to see this guy came all the way back around. Yay. Although now we may need to make the mana base slightly more even.. Although a 4/4 swing etb is fine late game. Forces an unfavourable block on our opponent, or gets a chunk out of their life total.

The good thing about having more of these smaller guys like firstblade and drake is that it allows us to wait longer for the gates to come around, to enable our gatekeepers

Well we've achieved 16 playable creatures. Cheers. Also we've got some aggro early(+ sinister possessions), gatekeeper shenanigans midgame, and our sorceries & maybe torturer damage for late game. So we're pretty well rounded.

Also we've recently made the +1s on Legion's Initiative a lot more relevant. Congrats guys, we're functional. Still hoping one of those gates comes back around. I really think we want 5. Still, we're looking pretty strong. Good job, guys.

I was having similar thoughts about our mana base. We did become less of a Bwr deck, and more BWR.

And yes, if we do have to hold out a while for that 2nd gate, we've got some early stuff to work with. Sinister Possessions may be a factor. We may play our first gatekeeper before we've got 2 gates, but hopefully in most of our games we'll eventually get that engine going.

I'm calling at least one of our opponents saying. "Oh YOU'RE the ones that took all the Orzhov gates." :D

Btw: if we put in cluestones, I'd rather put in the Rakdos ones since if we play them turn three we can still cast sinister possession in the same turn, which is not possible with the boros stone.

Yeah that's a tough one. I would imagine that more likely we'll be running either cluestones or sinister possessions, but probably not both. The non-creature spells will take some thinking. Really we would get better fixing out of the boros cluestone with the 2 firstblades and legion's initiative in the deck, but I do see your reasoning.

I would love to just say we don't need any cluestones at all, but the RW issue makes it a possibility.

And yes...I think someone will say that, too. :)

+1 first blade. Come on one more gate.

Cluestones are ramp, and we do need ramp for DttD. Also the card draw may not be irrelevant. I normally hate using stones at all ever, but we may have to consider them in this build.

So guys. If we don't run cluestones, by my reckoning we're going to want to play 18 lands. Reason being we REALLY want to be hitting land drops early. A stall on mana could keep us from getting a developed board.

I propose 18 land and play 41 cards. Also there will be a lot of times where we have a gatekeeper in hand without 2 gates in play. I think we need to be ready to play those keepers when we need blockers, and not care about losing value. The up shot of having so many gatekeepers, is that we draw them more often. That ensures we get to play about 3-4 of them with gates in play but we may need to be okay with just playing a 2/4 if we need blockers or have nothing else going on.

I knocked up a private deck out of what we have, which is pretty much just all of it minus the stones and the blaze commando or boros mastiff. Looks potent, but with 17 lands it is very risky. Of course, there's still 6 cards to come.

I agree that we want early land drops. To me, 17 lands is the number you use when in a situation like this. I normally run 16 and it serves me very well. But in a situation like this, I too run 41 cards, but 17 land. I think 18 is getting into mana glut territory, esp if we also run cluestones.

It's risky to include cluestones only for the purpose of DttD. It's one card. Most likely we won't even draw it half the time(actually a bit more than half). That said, I'm not necessarily against using them. I think the RW fixing and the card draw could be nice. And if we happen to use them to ramp into DttD sometime, that's useful. But I don't think we should maindeck them JUST because of DttD. And if we do include them, I think 18 lands is certainly too much.

I think we're going to be faced with a decision of Cluestones or Sinister Possessions. SP's could be a very nice early game option, esp against aggro. It's not an easy call to make. Some playtesting would be good.

Calling the crew for pack 3, pick 10: vic, thebeardedshuffler, tigersfan774, VRonin, anewsome, GoldGhost012, xXBantbladesXx