(stupid examples are stupid, but you know.)

First, I think we should vote on the style of deck we want to play. I think the R/W/u tempo build is the most popular choice, but it's worth checking.

Once we have that, we can hash out a quick shell and then vote on the fringe cards.

Of course there's more variables between games then just on the play and on the draw. If you looked at the decks though the only significant different between the 2 decks though is that I adjusted the mana bases.

Figuring out what mana bases we can run now, and what advantage they have in different scenarios is definitely something we can't really do once the matches start. For the rest of sideboarding, as I already mentioned, it's just best to leave that to Absinthman since he's the one in the pilot seat during the games.

Also, if this were constructed, I would be opposed to using a 41 card deck as well since if you need to adjust your mana base in a way that adding or removing land can't hit you can use mana fixing, deck fixing, ramp, ect....

In limited however, you don't necessarily have the luxury of being able to add all those cards since you can only use what you draft. While I agree that you should err on the side of caution to avoid mana screw, you can also swing too much in the wrong direction and have too much of a chance for mana flood.

If I remember correctly, with 40/17 you have a 35% chance of opening with less then 3 lands, and 32% chance of opening with more then 3 lands.
To increase a full step to 40/18 brings you to a 29% chance of opening with less then 3 lands and a 38% chance of starting with more then 3.
41/18 is a 32% chance of of opening with less then 3 and a 35% chance of opening with more then 3.

It's all situational. The group I was in for the last DDD for game 1 ran a 41/18 base. We needed more land for our deck than 40/17 provided, but 40/18 was just too much land for the deck as well while 41/18 landed us right where we needed to be.

Think of it this way. 40/17 is the equivalent of running 25.5 lands in a constructed deck while 40/18 is like running 27 lands. Sometimes while a deck needs more land adding an additional land and a half is way overkill. 41/18 lands you at the medium of 26.3 lands.

It's also another matter entirely if our deck had a super bomb and simply drawing that card would essentially guarantee our victory. Our deck doesn't really have that, or at least every card that we have that comes the closest to that we have at least 2 copies of in the first place. The biggest hit that would come from running a 41/18 would be phalanx leader (and if you noticed he was missing from the 41/18 example in the first place).

Also, I just threw together the R/U fliers just trying to make the strongest Red/Blue deck possible. I expected it to be quite a bit weaker then the R/W/u deck since the deck loses a good portion of its synergy (defensive creatures and SGR don't exactly go well together).

In regards to Ray. I'm not the best expert on whether it's worth main boarding or sideboarding in this format or not. Only thing I'm concerned about is that it seems to be a card that most of the time that will only become relevant at 6+ mana since that's where most bestows start being able to be cast.

A good number of the enchantments before that point would actually cause us to lose advantage since so many of the earlier ones come with a free cantrip. I'm just worried that the card will essentially be sitting in our hand dead until turn 6ish where it could have been one more card we could drop on the field to apply more pressure.

I mean for on the draw you could easily add it in to the deck instead of Chosen by Heliod, but for on the play what card would you propose removing it for? I wouldn't want to remove a more aggressive card for it, and every defensive card in there from what I can tell clearly outmatches Ray. Maybe you are thinking of something I'm not.

Chosen by Heliod is a pretty mediocre card. Even in Limited, with a Heroic subtheme.

It's not terrible on Phalanx Leader since that boosts him to 4 toughness which makes him fairly difficult to kill. It boosts Akroan Crusader to 3 which is enough to make him block most bears.

It can also boost a good portion of our 3 drops to 5 toughness which makes them significantly harder to kill.

In general though I agree with you. It's not an amazing card by any means, and it's even worse than normal in our deck. It's 2 mana we are spending that isn't really applying any pressure to the opponent, and ideally we want to apply as much pressure as possible.

Well, Chosen by Heliod makes our 4/3's and 5/4's not trade with other creatures of that power. Since we don't have any kind of first strike except for the Flamespeaker Adept (big bummer in this kind of deck) that is actually worth something.

Also the first bestows start at 4 with Hopeful Eidolon and Leafcrown Dryad. The most bestows are 5 or 6 and give stuff like intimidate, deathtouch, first strike, flying which is very relevant to remove, especially if the opponent thinks the creature can't be blocked because of flying/intimidate/deathtouch and then it falls off and boom, the creature is also dead.

Hopeful Eidolon is pretty bad, and Leafcrown Dryad against our deck has a irrelevant keyword.

It's the 5-6 ones that are actually somewhat scary, but at the same time we haven't actually seen a ton of them during the draft. We saw 1 red, 2 green, 0 blue, 0 white, and ...5 black ones (seriously, someone won the black lottery in pack 3).

Against that 1 black person we absolutely want it, and it might be nice against the green person. Against every other color though? I'm just concerned that it'll be dead in hand since it only can really be offensively used if you blindside someone when they swing into you (or try to block you). Every other scenario I just think we would be better with a card that applies pressure, not just a card that can situationally remove something that may or may not significantly hinder the opponent.

Also, SGR can also detach the creature while wiping the field. Sure, they'll have a blocker, but they'll likely have to chump with it to survive the turn and they are still left with no creatures on the field after that starting their turn and unless they have a lot of low drops they might be in a bit of trouble.

How is Hopeful Eidolon bad? It gives lifelink which is VERY relevant against our deck in any kind of racing situation. And the Dryad still gives +2/+2, so that is at least a bit relevant - also they were just examples. I still think it's a very relevant card and should be mainboarded unless we find in game one that they have absolutely no bestows which I would find very strange.

Ray of Dissolution is pretty much the only (permanent) removal we have and I don't think we should put it flat out in the sideboard.

"I still think it's a very relevant card" <- obviously refering to Ray of Dissolution here

4 mana for +1/+1 and Lifelink is bad :/

I mean Unflinching Courage is +2/+2 Lifelink and Trample for 3.

Sure, you can't get 2-1ed with it exactly, but if you kill the creature it's bestowed to it only becomes a 1/1 with lifelink which isn't exactly bomb material.

I think I'll take my gimped Armadillo Cloak over that.

(Of course bad is relative. If we saw any in the draft I'd probably be the first one proposing we snatch it, but that's more because it's a 1 drop with lifelink and not because it has a completely overcosted bestow ability).

If someone really uses their 4th turn to bestow a Hopeful Eidolon on a 2 or 3 drop we are going to out tempo him so fast we probably won't even be able to return 3 creatures to his hand when we drop a SGR.

Besides, I think you are SEVERELY underestimating Griptide. Returning the card to the deck is virtually the best part about the card. If you Griptide a bear guess what they aren't drawing next turn....ANYTHING ELSE (barring an emergency scry by the opponent).

Sure, it's our only permanent hard situational removal, but this is Theros. There isn't exactly a ton of the stuff flying around in the first place. I mean I wouldn't mind running it over Chosen by Heliod, but I wouldn't replace any combat tricks with it, and I certainly wouldn't run it over a creature.

I just don't want to be facing a Nessian Asp ramp deck and top deck into this thing. At least a creature can attempt to unsuccessfully chump block it. I just see too many situations where it's just going to sit in the hand, target or not. Most Enchantment creatures aren't worth burning the 3 mana on over just dropping an additional creature (barring the Emissaries), and a lot of the early enchantments cantrip. Having a card in the main deck just to potentially 2-1 if our opponent has bestow creatures, has one in hand, and decides to bestow and attack on turn 5-6 assuming we have the mana open does not sound like a mainboard level card.

I'm not debating that it won't have targets. I'm debating that it won't have many relevant targets throughout the draft since the only 3 targets that are even worth nuking are non-cantripping enchantments, Emissaries, and a bestowed creature. The only threatening non-cantripping enchantment I can think of off the top of my head is Aqueous Form (which we only saw 1), we statistically have 1/3rd of the Emissaries at the table, and we should be wrapping up the game with a SGR around the time bestows should be hitting the field (we will probably outrace most decks to 6 mana since we are running "more land" then most opponents because of the amulet).

For the rest of the time it's essentially a 3 mana bear removal spell. That is not good a good tempo play. At least not compared to an additional creature or combat trick.

Sorry guys for not my somewhat lenghty absence. I haven't been feeling well for a couple of past day. I'll read thought all that has been said here tomorrow and provide my input.

What are we going to see more of, based on the cards we've seen? Decks with enchantment buff and evasion or decks with large beatdown creatures? Granted, there probably will be decks with a mix of both. It's really hard for me to see all the packs and cards because it's a giant scroll up and scroll down on my iPod, but it seems that a lot of enchantments, and enchantment creatures, are being taken early, especially in the last 2 packs.

Hope I'm not just spewing nonsense. :)

Here's what we know we will see based on the cards (or in some cases the complete lack of).

A nasty black deck to our left with a lot of bestow creatures and 2 Garys.
(Passed too many black bestows in pack 3 for there not to be. I mean look at the train of black that someone probably got to draft into in pack 3)

A white (/red) heroic deck to our right.
(I don't think we received a single Red or White heroic from our right outside of the Wingsteed for in 1-2).

A green ramp deck to our left.
(2 Voyaging Satyrs, 1 Nessian Asp)

Those are the 3 (or 2, pray that the black and green drafter aren't one in the same. That deck will murder the table if it is) that we will almost without a doubt see. From there the signals are a bit harder to read.

...I'm going to guess a Blue/Red deck somewhere across the table.
(Up to 5 Crackling Tritons, 4 Vaporkins)

Someone was trying to draft white to our left from what I can tell.
(Probably the black drafter who was also trying to go white since in pack 1 he likely got 2 Sentries to the Underworld)

Anyone else spot any obvious decks from what did and did not see?

I've reviewed the decks you posted, and I actually like Supersun's version (http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/draft-roughdraft-on-the-play-1/). Before that however. Let's indeed check what type of deck we want to play, as NobodyPicksBulbasaur has suggested. I'm obviously in favor of RWu tempo.

I saw the discussion about the Ray of Dissolution and I have a thing to say about it. First, I have a great experience with that one. It always hits something, often sooner than later. Supersun said that most troublesome bestows are at 5-7 mana, that's true, but you must not forget that people often play Nimbus Naiads as 2/2 fliers and Emissaries as various 3/3s for curve purposes much sooner. And the Ray is a great answer to that. I'm seriously thinking about including it. On the other hand, there is no clear candidate for what to swap it for. I don't want to remove creatures, so then TT seems like the least impactful card, but again, it really depends on the matchup. So I think we should try and figure out against how many matchups the Ray is better, compared to TT.

+1 RWu Tempo

By the way, I received the cards from Caley this morning (or midnight, depending on where you are). An interesting thing happened during the transfer. I was thinking whether I should tell you or not, because it's a kind of thing we're not supposed to know. But then I thought: Well, I know about it, so the whole team might as well know. The thing is:

I asked Caley how they were getting cards for DDDs, just out of curiosity, and he told me that they just buy 24 packs in MTGO, crack them, and then we draft them. Now, when I was receiving the cards, Caley put an Akroan Hoplite in there for me by mistake instead of Akroan Crusader. I alerted him to that, despite how much I would love the former rather than the latter. The notable thing about this is that there must have been an Akroan Hoplite in this draft (unless its a rogue card that the TappedOut account just happens to have for some reason). We haven't seen a single Akroan Hoplite over the course of the whole draft, so this kinda supports what I believe was Supersun's theory that there is another RW team around the pod. Just wanted to share this little intel with you. I hope it doesn't break the rules in some way. But as I've said, because I'll be playing, me knowing is what probably matters the most, and sharing this with you guys shouldn't be a problem.

Plus, with RWu tempo, we should be in a position to win by turns 6-8.

As for Ray, I see TT being only more useful either early game or late game past the time we're supposed to win at. I'm disregarding the trigger for Phalanx Leader almost completely here, considering we're going to want to use TT defensively. TT is a good deterrent against decks that manage to press the attack faster than we will. And it could be a way we survive into the next 2 turns if we're not curving out properly in turns 7-9.

But Ray will never be a dead draw for a long period of time. It may stay in our hands for a bit of time, but it's probably the best creature removal in the set for enchantment creatures. At instant speed and with lifegain. And we really need to watch out for decks that run Aqueous Form. That card is brutal, especially with that green heroic creature that gets 3 +1/+1 counters (Staunch-Hearted Warrior?).

Centaur Battlemaster is the one with 3 counters. The Staunch-Hearted only gains 2.

So, uhm is this going somewhere?

I would not be opposed to running the Ray over TT, and then sideboard as we like.

My suggestion is this: Let's use Supersun's build from above but vote for whether we want to have TT or Ray main deck in the first match. But then, I'm not sure myself what I'm gonna vote for. I mean, TT provides a great tempo swing even in cases when you don't kill anything during the block and it can act as a counterspell against direct damage spells... Tough choice indeed.

Also, just to throw this out there in case you didn't see it if it comes up in a game by chance.

You can activate Deathbellow Raider's regenerate with Unknown Shores in play with 4 mana lol.

Back on to the discussion at hand though. TT vs Ray depends on what you think we will see more of. Heroic Aggro (hopefully without the pony) or Enchantments.

Honestly though, if you remove TT you might as well remove Phalanx Leader instead. Double White is already really hard to play in our deck and with only 2 Heroic Triggers it might just be better to cut him entirely.

Has anyone that has playtested the deck actually had the Leader to be relevant besides being the world's biggest bluff?

The playtester doesn't like the deck apparently. I keep getting "Deck data is loading too slow or errored." Maybe because it's 40 cards. So, not me. But I think that after 2-3 turns of nothing happening with Leader on the field, our opponent's going to realize "He's got nothing."

@GoldGhost012: I believe the error occurs because the deck you're trying to playtest is not yours and it's set to private. Although, we have access to the deck itself, playtester apparently can't handle that. I remember having the same issue in the previous DDD.

Hello Guys. Our first match is scheduled for Saturday 10pm Pacific (Sunday 6am GMT). Il try and stream the match but I had some issues with lost frames during testing, so we shall see.

6am?? Are you nuts? :D