I agree with the reasoning above. If the defensive pick was just a little bit more offensive, I would've went for that, but the difference on the clock is 15 turns.

I'll go ahead and cast my vote for

+1 Borderland Minotaur, so we can keep the idea of a midrange deck

<3 Minotaurs.

What about Coastline Chimera? It's a playable, however unexciting, and helps cut blue from the pack. I think Borderland Minotaur is undoubtedly a better card but taking Chimera sends a different signal. Just something to discuss.

Coastline Chimera is not a card that the guys to our left would consider a signal. Also, we've already ensured that they didn't get any blue in previous packs. So the probability of them going blue is close to none.

Well the nice thing about Stymied Hopes is that it hits any spell, unlike Annul or Swan Song AND has scry. Probably not worth taking now, but maybe later on.

I find Coastline Chimera kinda meh. Yes it can block multiples, but it also will probably die when it does.

Borderland Minotaur is definitely the best card in the pack. Now we pray we have enough Mountains to always cast it.

I'd also like to throw a plug out there for Scholar of Atheos.

She's also along the slower route, and requires black mana, but damn is she powerful. The ability to "extort" without a spell in hand can easily win in a stalled game.

My biggest problem with Coastline Chimera and Scholar of Atheos is that this is probably the worst format for fat butts in the history of Magic (exaggeration). Everyone will likely be playing some form of combat trick and in a format with limited removal options it's hard playing blockers when those combat tricks at times might as well read "Destroy target blocker."

Combat tricks in general favor the attacker since if you are playing properly the attacker can keep all his mana open for a trick while the defender doesn't have that luxury unless he doesn't need to cast another spell for the entire game or something.

That being said, 5 toughness is significantly better than 4 since 4 does get killed by more of the limited removal options of the format (Lash of the Whip).

Scholar of Atheos is a powerful card in a B/W deck, but not so hot outside of it. I'm not sure B/W is the most open color at the table. To our right someone is likely black control, if our reads are correct, to our left someone is likely white heroic, and considering we've already passed 2 Sentry of the Underworld someone at the table is very likely going to attempt B/W if they got their hands on both of those (especially since another Scholar of Atheos followed one of those Sentries).

Just throwing the idea out there. I'm leaning towards the minotaur myself.

Whoops, haven't done this yet.

+1 Borderland Minotaur

I finally found the time to update all our picks to the new layout.

If I count RussischerZar's cute heart as a vote for the minotaur, we're +5 on that, right now. I'd like to ask all who haven't cast their votes to do so in the next 3 or 4 hours. I'm going to send our pick to Caley around midnight GMT.

I like the pick layout. Informative and intuitive.

+1 Minotaur

If' we're real lucky we can be minotaur guy. There's always one.

Sending our Minotaur pick to Caley.

Someone's late sending their pack so we'll see if we get our packs tonight or not.

Got the pack a minute ago. Putting it on now.

Hi guys, here we go. Artisan didn't make it back to us, as expected.

I think, I'll give my vote to Spellheart Chimera. It's not a particularly good card in draft, but it's the only one out of the pack that has a chance to appear in our deck in my opinion. Boulderfall costs 8 mana which I think is too much. I've seen some people play it, but it's just too risky I think.

+1 Spellheart Chimera

+1 Chimera.

Has the potential to be good, and it's always nice then your 3 drops scales as the game progresses.

Maybe we'll run him, maybe we won't. But at least this card is mainboardable depending on the deck unlike the rest of this pack which is either things we are hatedrafting or sideboard material at best. Even then, he'll be good sideboard material against air force shenanigans if someone tries anything if we don't run him.

I'm starting to think the black mage to our right jumped ship and changed colors. There's a perfectly good Blood-Toll Harpy in the pack and it's really the ONLY good black card that was ever in the pack. If he is still black he would have to have picked up a splash color then, but I can't realistically see any card that he could have taken that was better then the harpy.

I don't think he took one of the white cards if he is using black since that Scholar of Athreos was in our last pack. He's definitely not blue since that Ship tabled last pack. I don't realistically see him getting a chance to draft either of those green cards, and there were no (good) red cards to pick from.

Given the Mogis's Marauder in pack 6 I'm going to assume that he jumped out of black and into another color, but the question is what would he switch into and what would make him switch like that.

He's probably not red since we got a pick 8 Minotaur. I am assuming he bailed out of black. Maybe he jumped into white or blue, but even then you would think he would still consider black his splash.

Maybe the assumption that he was in black was incorrect. Black does seem to be dryer then other colors especially for late game cards, but what if he opened a pack 1 foil green bomb. We know he's not likely white (at least to begin with) with what he has passed. He's also likely not red. He's also likely not blue. That just leaves black and green. Statistically from pack 1 and the fact that black was running dry we were assuming that he was black, but the recent cards we have been seeing aren't making sense if he is. That really only leaves green, and looking over it we haven't seen any ridiculous green cards being passed to us. We've seen some decent ones, but generally with a higher rarity missing. From there it seems like he's either running a blue or white splash since he took something over Shredding Winds (unless that asp or satyr tabled to him which would mean the entire table deserves a slap).

Anyone else thinking differently?

the chimera seems fair game

Looking back over the packs. It wouldn't surprise me if the person to our right is green/blue and he picked up the blue later. That's the only thing that makes sense out of the packs we've been getting.

I dunno guys, that Mountain looks pretty good...

Lol, just kidding. Chimera is a not terrible pick.

+1 Spellheart Chimera

Maybe the other guys switched to throw us off. It's working, I'm confused.

At worst it's 3 toughness in the air. At best it's a 3/3 flyer for 3. Good enough for me. If we DO end up going a heroic-ish route, he gets all the better.

+1 Chimera.

@Supersun: I find your contemplation on our neighbor's behavior quite interesting. The points you make are valid. I just can't help it but my curiousness about their drafting process rises with every passing day.

+1 Chimera

And not only because I like the name of it.

Sending Chimera as our pick then.

It seems that Supersun had it right. More black cards in this pack support his theory that the guys to our right either switched from black, or never actually were black (unless they are black/white and the Sentry made it that far around the table).

There is nothing particularly exciting for us left in this pack. Mnemonic Wall in a nice utility blocker, but it goes in a different type of deck than what ours currently looks like. Silent Artisan as a white card doesn't really impress me, but it has the highest mainboarding chance for us. Cutthroat Maneuver looks nice but for a combat trick, it's way too expensive and not worth going black for. I gotta cast my vote for the Artisan, but as I've said, I'll much rather run something better instead.

+1 Silent Artisan

Going to a sealed GPT today, wish me luch. :-)

In case you're wondering what it was that I wanted you wish me, it was supposed to be "luck". You don't need to wish me "lunch", but well, if you insist...