Black is nearly as prevalent in our picks as White or Blue though. I would probably go for the Phalanx leader. We have excellent heroic enablers. It's too early to count out white and send that strong of a signal, I'd say.

Ehh, the black cards we have aren't nearly on the same power level as the white and blue we have.

Another important thing to think about. What if we get passed a very strong card in the next pack of another color. If that's the case the Emissary might have been a better pick then the leader though even if white isn't our primary color the leader is still splashable in the late game where he is probably even more devastating then the early game.

+1 Phalanx Leader

It's a card that can win games.

I would call both the Phalanx Leader and the Emissary semi-bombs that are very likely to catch removal if the opponent is able to.

I've taken a look at what we passed and I've come to a conclusion that we actually haven't passed that much white to give up on it. Given our premium heroic enablers, I think we should give the Leader a shot. Emissary is indeed a safer pick, but I fear that blue's gonne get cut hard in pack 3 again and that we might actually end up just splashing it. Also, given the fact that neither player to our left is likely to run UW, we could get our hands on Battlewise Hoplite if we get lucky.

+1 Phalanx Leader

I agree with Absinthman's comment.

+1 Absinthman

That was of course supposed to be

+1 Phalanx Leader

Custom card Absinthman anyone? :P

Great idea Dallie. I too vote to pick Absinthman for our next pick.

+1 Absinthman

Yaaay, I'm the pick! But really, that's unfair to our opponents. I've been banned as a format breaker, and Mark Rosewater already officially apologized for ever printing me.

Luckily in limited whatever you open is allowed, right?

Yeah, that's the beauty of limited.

Now whenever you play the deck against the other DDDs and cast Phalanx Leader (since that's probably going to be our pick), you can say you're playing Absinthman. :)

I object, that's Absinthgirl ...woman ...fairy, or whatever, but certainly not a man. Otherwise, nice work. :-)

The only "absinthe man" that I know of is the fat fairy from Eurotrip. And there aren't any good pictures of him around.

Phalanx Leader is a clear winner here. Sending the pick to Caley.

Next pack is up.

+1 Emissary but don't overlook God's Willing which is one of the best white commons in the set.

We just are likely going red and that's a Semi-Bomb.

I really like God's Willing here but if we're only so much as splash red, the Emissary seems also very viable.

Both can potentially be a 2-for-1 or even better.

Main reason I went with the Emissary is that we REALLY need more creatures. If we are running W/R/u we only have 5 creatures atm while we already have 4 mainboardable non creatures. I tend to try to hit around 15 creatures (though that number can obviously drop if we are running a more Heroic R/W build) which leaves ~7 non creature slots in the deck.

We aren't in a terrible position, but between a good creature and a good non-creature it's probably better if we take the good creature for now. It's better then getting to the point where we are forced to take subpar creatures over decent non creatures.

Regardless I think the Emissary is better anyway. It's a game ender for a well curved aggro deck

One question: are we a well curved aggro deck?

We aren't right now, but we can work on it. I also like the Emissary better. Every piece of beef we let go now will need to be replaced by a subpar creature later and we can't afford that. While Gods Willing is great, we will need good creatures in the first place to utilize its full potential. Also, white emissary bestowed onto the red one (or the other way round) makes an Underworld Cerberus of sort which is huge.

+1 Purphoros's Emissary

Not yet

We need to be a well curved SOMETHING otherwise regardless of how awesome our cads are we'll get blown out of the water. From what I've studied in Theros tempo is very important and once you hit 3 mana you need to be making impactful plays on the board

I still think Midrange will be our sweetspot. We have some devastating 4-6 cmc cards and could easily crush some decks if we get some good creatures to fill in earlier (like some more good 2 drops like the Leonin, though I wouldn't mind some bestow either).

I think attempting late game could be a trap. R/W in general just doesn't compete in the late game as well. I saw some data of when the average deck type won in the Theros draft and R/W on average won a couple turns earlier then everything else. I'm not saying we need to be running R/W heroic blitz aggro since we don't really have the cards for it atm, but ending the game earlier is probably better then not given our colors. If you see us heading in a different direction that I'm not seeing though feel free to elaborate.

What I'm looking at so far is (note I'm more talking about the timing at which each are played, not the literal cmc on the card)

2-3cmc
Leonin Snarecaster

4cmc
Borderland Minotaur
Heliod's Emissary
Purphoros's Emissary
Phalanx Leader
Dauntless Onslaught

5+ cmc
Stoneshock Giant
Triton Tactics
Sea God's Revenge

I mean just from that shell you can see the win condition. Aggro away early on and then disrupt them in the midgame for the win. It's like RDW, but instead of burn spells with reach to finish the game early we have disruption cards for the mid game. We aren't even that terrible in the late game as Stoneshock Giant's monsterous pretty much reads "Win the game."

We are in the second pack and we need to start thinking about our strategy. This is just how I see this deck winning best.

R/W Heroic looks like a decent way to go, and the Emissary is all kinds of titties.

+1 Emissary.

Don't overlook Last Breath and the Chimera, though. The first is a surprisingly relevant removal spell, and you can never overlook a playable flyer.

Need more creatures, and the Emissary is an excellent one at that.

+1 Emissary.