Aliens most likely.

Of course!! Aliens! How didn't I think of that!

I can say that I don't have Russian ancestry. The story of my nickname is that back in the days when we LAN'ed Starcraft 1 as teens, we had a kind of tradition that we would choose a new name for each new multiplayer session. We had a lot of sessions (like one every day after school), so we were constantly inventing names. One of my friends (incidentally a Turkish dude) came up with Mongolischer Führer (Mongolian Leader) and we all had a good laugh.
At some point after that we tried playing online for the first time and we wanted to use that name for the Battle.net account, but it was too long. So instead we used something similar and came up with RussischerZar (exactly at the 13 character limit). Since it was my place, my computer and my internet everyone was using, I kind of assimilated that account and had everyone else make their own. And that name kind of stuck through my online-career since it's a very unique nickname and easily identifiable, shortening it to Zar when I stuck a clan tag on it.</random story>

And I live in Dublin since I work here. Localisation testing of games, if anyone cares. <brag>My (real) name appears in the credits of several big titles, like Mass Effect (the first one), Forza Horizon, Diablo 3 console version and Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn</brag>

TL;DR: Screen name stems from early online days, no Russian ancestry, moved to Dublin because of work.

:P

@RussischerZar: Cool story dude. I'm a translator/localiser too. English -> Czech. Unfortunately, I don't have access to game localisation as much as I would like to. The stuff I do for Microsoft is mainly Xbox marketing, Office Online and then a bit of Windows and SQL Server.

Random question: Do you happen to work for Lionbridge? I know they have a branch there in Dublin.

No, but I know several people that do work for Lionbridge or have worked for them. My company is called Keywords International.

It's information you would have in a normal draft. None of the cards are foil.

I hate 6 cost cards so my vote is for Wingsteed Rider even if it won't make a difference

So they either took a common or they opened a pack with a foil and they pulled the foil.

A foil appears in around 1 in every 6 packs (~16.5%).

While that number seems high to just dismiss offhand we can also ignore any foil below the uncommon level since if a foil common is replacing a common...well, that doesn't change the pack a lot.

Theros has 249 cards in the set that I believe. 101 are commons and 20 lands (none of the lands are consequential). That means that if a card in the pack was foil there is a 128/249 =51.59% chance that it actually changed the distribution of the pack.

That means there's a (1/6)*(.514) = 8.5% chance that the rarity distribution of the pack was changed from a foil.

The list of uncommons that are even debatable to take over SGR or Pegasus is a rather small list so what is the chance that if a foil landed in the pack that it would be a rare or mythic? There are 60 uncommons so 68/249= 27% that a foil would be rare or higher.

That means that the odds of a foil landing in their pack that is rare or higher is (1/6)*(.27) = 4.5%

So as it stands there is a ~95% chance that the people we received this pack from picked a strong common that is most likely either red or black (since I can't think of many blue, white, or green commons that you would take over what is already in the pack) or a ~5% chance that they just got a lucky foil and we essentially don't have any information about them.

Let's just ignore the 5% ghost for now unless something screams that it is wrong like read the bones and lightning strike getting passed to us on pick 8 or something lol.

VRonin says...I hate 6 cost cards so my vote is for Wingsteed Rider even if it won't make a difference

You hate Aetherling?

6 cost near bomb level cards are fine, especially if we get them this early since we can adjust accordingly what we draft from here such as giving a higher priority to early game disruption cards like Voyage's End.

Maybe they found a foil Sedge Scorpion and decided to take it because they like Sedge Scorpion. Lol

Supersun, for doing all that research and math you have my utmost repect.

I would totally first-pick a foil sedge scorpion.

I've already e-mailed Caley our pick because it's obviously not going to change. I think we can expect the next pack in about 9 hours.

If they took foil Sedge Scorpion, we better pack a spare pair of pants.

Just purely speculatory, but what cards would we be excited to pick up next? A nice creature'd be good, and it would be nice to start trying to figure out what our second colour's going to be. Griptide and Voyage's End are also cards we could realistically get passed and would both be excellent additions.

I really like Agent of Horizons and Benthic Giant. I think that if we ever see them again late enough in the draft, they should totally be up for consideration as finishers.

Heliod's Emissary... :D

No amount of Griptide will be too many griptide.

Since we have a little time left we could discuss our appx. deck ratio

I'm assuming we'll probably be running ~15 creatures, 17-18 lands, and the last 7-8 is where all our sorceries, instants, and enchantments will go (depending on what we draft we can always dip a bit below the 15 creature mark if we are cutting good sorceries for bad creatures and increase above 15 if the opposite is the case).

From there we'll need some form of curve as well. We can probably start at 3cmc, but if we are against an aggro deck it better be an impactful play.

It's a bit early to be freaking about a gap in our composition and pass something good for something mediocre just to fill that hole, but it's certainly something to think of earlier then later.

We currently have 2 non creature cards when we probably aren't going to run more then 8ish (though that can change). It might be a good idea to be a bit pickier with our non creature picks for now. I'm not saying pass Griptide or anything, but it might be a worth prioritizing mediocre creatures over mediocre buffs.

I've seen Akroan Horse do some serious work, but I still think I have to agree with lots of other people and say +1 Sea God's Revenge. It can either secure a win completely, or make for incredible comebacks, or completely undo stalls. I would like to put out a reminder to not get too many large mana costing junk, cause decks can't be Too slow or they get run over from what I've seen and read in drafting Theros. But that's obviously not a concern yet.
Also I'd like to apologize greatly for missing pack 1 pick 1. I will hopefully not have to miss anymore.

Welcome to the discussion bhrusson0. There's plenty of time left to participate fully.

I would recommend jumping on earlier in the day if possible because the conversations generally start up right around midnight Pacific time when the new pack info comes in.

By noon most of the good bickering is already done. Of course the European/American mix in the group adds an extra dimension to that element.

well around Pacific midnight time when Absinthman is here to update the page D:

Hi guys sorry for the delay. I went to visit a friend of mine in a hospital. Now I'm on my way to work, where I'll post pack 3. Stay tuned.

Life happens, though if you know that you will be gone or really late ahead of time you can let KC know and have someone act as a substitute in your place.

I know that. I just didn't expect it to take so long.

Very unfortunate that we don't get to see a blue card in this pack. It could just have been lacking blue in general but it might also mean that either of the two teams to our right took a blue card from this pack. I personally think that it could have had one blue card but not two.

As for what to take, for me it's Dauntless Onslaught. It's the strongest card in this pack and it suggests that neither of the two players to our right is going for white. Of course with the cards we've passed, the guys to our immediate left, or the guys after them at the latest, are going for white, but if that's the case and we and the guys left of us both end up white, we'll be on the better side of the deal at least.

+1 Dauntless Onslaught

So let's see here, a missing common (or foil) that was picked over Dauntless Onslaught, and a missing uncommon.

Something to note is that there is no blue in here. Is that because the pack just had no blue in it or the person 2 down grabbed a pick 1 griptide or something (definitely not the person immediately next to us since picking a blue pick 1 and the passing SGR seems...stupid).

White looks like it might be open so far, at least to our right, out of the first 2 packs passed to us we have seen 2 really strong white cards. While I wouldn't expect a ton of white in the second pack due to the stuff we've already passed to our left we have dibs over them in this pack and pack 3. For pack 2 we can just take all the blue they throw at us since I can't imagine anyone to our near left is going to move that heavily into blue given the subpar picks that we've passed them so far unless someone lucked into a Thassa or something.

I think it's worth at least considering the move into white. If we continue to get good white cards then great. if this is just a fluke then I'm not really going to regret missing much else in this pack.

+1 Dauntless Onslaught