As it currently stands it could look something like 8 Mountains, 6 Plains and 4 Islands? Although I'd actually like to have one more plains for the Phalanx leader...

Oh well.

Phalanx Leader hardly counts as a 2 drop imo lol (pretty sure I actually skipped it when I mentioned 5 2-3cmc creatures).

He's best dropped on turn 5-6 with a pump to follow to buff the entire field.

I mean you would drop him early, but I'd imagine that the opponent would dump his entire hand simultaneously to kill it asap (could actually be a smart play for baiting our removal). Imo it's a better idea to drop him and a pump spell on the same turn (turn 5+) so he can buff our entire field that we curved into.

Do you think 8R 6W is superior to 7R 7W? I mean we don't need to divide as a ratio as much as we need to calculate the statistical chances of certain key points (Big ones are R by turn 1 for Crusader, W by turn 2 for Leonin, U by turn 4/6 for Griptide/SGR, and RR by turn 4 for Borderland Minotaur).

8R/6W:
R on 1: 81%
W on 2: 76%
RR by 4: 65%

7R/7W:
R on 1: 77%
W on 2: 82%
RR by 4: 57%

Biggest factor between the 2 is definitely that RR on 4 for the minotaurs and the Armored Titans a turn following (which would raise the odds a little for RR on 5).

The Traveler's Amulet will definitely help out here since we can either sac it for a U or for our second W or R as necessary (and hope we aren't in a situation where we need BOTH a U and a second R or W).

+1 Traveler's Amulet

With Amulet, we can cut down to 3 island without killing our mana base. 3 Island plus an amulet still gives us 4 blue sources, but also gives us more shots at r/w if we've already seen our blue. Best of both worlds.

The cerberus is, as stated before, really bad outside the one deck he shines in. We aren't building that deck, so he remains really bad.

I see your points are pretty strong. Amulet it is.

Yeah, it also gives us the option to possibly cut down to 3 islands and run an extra Mountain or Plains if we need to (though I think running 4 Islands and the Amulet and re-adding Triton's Tactics might be better. Will need to number crunch and see what our final deck list is).

Indeed. Including TT again could be a good move. I love the way our deck is shaping. We must show all the other teams that rares are for kids. Real men play... semi-pauper, or what's this thing anyway.

By the way, I was thinking about removing the camouflage Progeniti from our deck completely as I'm getting tired of seeing them there. I think that the draft has reached the point where everyone is set in their colors and people around us probably have a good idea about our colors anyway (or if they don't, knowing will not affect their further drafting). So what do you guys think? Is there any point in keeping them?

Lol the people to our left have no idea what we are running.

We passed them a Purphoros, God of the Forge, with our main color being red XD

'Cmon, nobody wants Purphoros :-D. I wonder how far he made it.

+1 Absinthvelers Amuman.

Looks like we will have a rare after all.

+1 Land

Schrodinger's Rare does exist!

Definitely have to agree with the land. Our deck needs as much mana fixing as it can get and it's a card that will 100% go into the main deck.

Now the real question...

...do we replace a Plains or a Mountain?

I'm thinking it's probably a good idea to replace a Plains. Replacing a mountain, while keeping our land count the same, drops the possibility of a T1 Crusader since it comes in tapped, and would increase the total mountain count to 9 to help with that T4 Borderland Minotaur. The only double white we have is Phalanx Leader, and we probably won't want to drop him until at least turn 5, after we've already dropped a 4 drop on the field.

Increasing that from a 65% chance to a 73% chance will help quite a bit. The only thing that it will hit in any meaningful way is our chance at a white 2 drop which drops from a 76% to 74% (since drawing the tapped land on turn 2 as your plains doesn't exactly work).

6 Plains in general though does make it hard to play Phalanx Leader. By turn 6 we still only have a 60% chance to have 2 plains. Increasing the Plains count to 7 increases that chance well up to 70%.
(Note: The above calculations ignore the amulet. That's significantly harder to calculate).

These fixing cards that we are getting are REALLY going to help us out. It's already going to be a tight squeeze to fit everything in with a relatively stable mana base.

Yeah, +1 Temple of Absinth!

+1 Absinthle of Triuman

There are clearly strong arguments for the land in our colors.

Let's not forget about the strong sideboard card and the potentially very strong sideboard card.

Both Ray of Dissolution and Peak Eruption can be very powerful out of the sideboard. At least one other person in this draft is trying to run red, and if we can mana screw that person we'll be in a good way. It should be obvious why Ray is powerful in the format.

I definitely thought about those, but in general a main deck card should always take priority over a sideboard.

A main deck card will help us out every single game. A side board will only help us when sided in.

Unless the sideboard card is so completely dominant that it pretty much guarentees a significant win rate increase against a deck that multiple people are going to run it's hard for a sideboard to help contribute more towards winning overall then a mainboard card.

In regard to the actual cards though, Peak Eruption is a slightly better Demolish.

Ray is an excellent sideboard card and one that I wouldn't mind having a second of.

It's just that neither of those sideboards will help nearly as much as the land. Remember, lands that you draft (assuming they are helpful) are essentially free to add to your deck. While every other card has to compete for a limited number of non land slots (22 or 23 non lands) any good lands that you draft go towards another category (17 or 18 lands). While a sideboard card may be worth taking if we were drafting something that would be close to the chopping point for non lands the Temple will 100% go into our main deck. It's hard to justify taking a sideboard over the land especially with how much it helps with fixing in our greedy deck (also, it pumps Adept lol).

Yeah and it digs into the deck, if only a bit.

+1 Temple

We might be one of like 2 teams to actually mainboard a temple.

I was going to vote for the temple anyways. Just dropping in my early-morning debate starter.

+1 Temple

@GoldGhost012: Scry lands are actually mainboardable even if you play only one of their colors. I've seen people play them just for the sake of scry. And you don't even need to have a super grindy deck to take good advantage of that.

And yeah, I'm sending Caley to the temple. I mean temple to Caley.

Pick 3-8 is here. Wow those Hoplites. Such a shame our deck can't support them. We could have had three of those. But I guess in our position, the pick is the 2/1 trample guy.

Yeah, Satyr Rambler, although he dies to a Spark Jolt lol.

Btw, if you set the format to Casual or Standard, not all the cards will be listed as illegal :P

Yeah, he dies to Jol, but what can we do? I mean, we're not taking the Battle Priest over it.

Who mainboards Spark Jolt though lol

Anyway, this is what I think our deck currently looks like.

http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/draft-roughdraft/

(I'm sure I missed adding a few of you to the permission list. Let me know who I missed).

It's...interesting.

If it curves out it can do some stupid crap.

But, there are certainly games where the deck just flops on its face (like not getting any 4 drops).

In regards to mana base though, I'll need to play test it some more, but so far it seems to be working fairly well. There were certainly a few heart attack moments (like SGR and TT in hand and no islands, but I top deck an Island on turn 7), but nothing seemed to stick out of the ordinary (like mulling down to 3 and never getting more then 1 land in hand which is just statistically stupid in an 18 land + Amulet deck)

Flood may be happening more then preferred. I'll have to do some statistics on the mana base to see if 18 + Amulet is too much as we get closer to the end of the draft.

No, probably not. Also I don't see many people running Spark Jolt anyway. It might be a decent sideboard card against Phalanx Leaders or Sedge Scorpions, but that's pretty much it.